Syntax
One aspect of our syntactic competence is our
understanding of the similarities and differences in the
behaviour of words in our language. Though all human
languages have numerous words, each word in a given
language is not entirely different in its behaviour from all
other words in that language. Instead, a large number of
words often show the same properties and this
suggests that this large number of words can be
grouped into a relatively small number of word
classes, often called lexical categories, based on their
morphological and syntactic properties.
For example, one of the morphological properties that the word
"book" has is that it has a plural morpheme /s/ as in "books".
This is by no means a unique property of the word "book".
There are thousands of words that have this property such as
'bag', 'cat', 'boy', 'cow', etc. All these words can occur in the
following context:
(1). ________+ plural morpheme.
A morphological frame: is the position of a word
with respect to the bound morphemes that can
attach to it within a word. All words occurring in
this morphological frame can also occur in the
syntactic frames in the following sentences (2), (3).
A syntactic frame: is a position in which a word
occurs relative to other classes of words in the same
phrase. That is, it is the syntactic context of a word.
(2)(3)-
DET ____________
the man
DET ADJ ____________ the young man
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We group all words that share this cluster of
properties into the lexical category of nouns. A
lexical category is a class of words that share
morphological and syntactic properties. That is,
words that may appear in the same
morphological and syntactic frames.
1)- Nouns: a noun is defined as the name of a
person, animal, place, thing or concept.
(2)- DET ____________
(3)- DET ADJ ___________
the man
the young man
2) Determiners: is an adjective-like word which
precedes both adjectives and nouns and can fit
into such frames as the following:
1)- __________ + noun
the garden
2)- ________ + adjective+ noun the big garden
There are five types of Determiners
1-Articles : a, an, the
2-Demonstratives: this, that, these, those,
3-Possessives: my, your, his, her, her, its, our
4-Numbers when they precede nouns: one girl,
three men
5-Indefinite determiners: some, any, less, few,
much, most, no, both, many
3)- Pronouns: can take the place of a noun or a noun phrase.
1- ______ VP
he has been working
2- V _____ Prep _____ buy it for him
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Pronouns have seven types:
a- Reflexive: myself, herself
b-Demonstrative: this, that, those
c- Interrogatives: what, where , which, whom.
d-Relative pronouns: that, which, who, whom
e- Distributive pronouns often followed by "of
you": all, both, each, either, neither.
f- Indefinite pronouns: some, any, such, so.
4)- Adjectives: predicative and attributive
1)- DET ______ N
2)- ADV________
3)- N _________
a happy day
attractively packaged
people responsible
5)- Verbs: they are used to express a state, action
or process. They can be lexical or auxiliary:
1)- N _________
2)- Pro ________
3)- Aux ________
4)- _____ing
John drives
she works
is eaten
going
6)- Adverbs: modify a verb, an adjective or
an adverb:
123-
V ______
________ ADJ
________ ADV
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arrive safely
relatively good
extremely well
7- Prepositions: always followed by a noun or
a noun phrase or a pronoun.
123-
______ N
______ NP
______ PRO
in car
on the big table
to him
8)- Conjunctions: co-coordinating and subordinating
1-main clause _____ main clause
2-main clause ______ subordinate clause
3-subordinate clause _____ main clause
9)- Interjections/exclamations
Good lord! Heaven! Oh! Wow! Ouch! Oh dear!
Syntax is the study of sentence structure. It
attempts to describe what is grammatical in
a particular language in term of rules. These
rules detail an underlying structure and a
transformational process. The underlying
structure of English, for example, would
have a subject-verb-object sentence order,
i.e. John hit the ball. The transformational
process would allow an alteration of the
word order which could give you something
like The ball was hit by John.
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Syntactic rules of a grammar account for at
least the following:
1. The grammaticality of sentences
2. Word order
3. Hierarchical organization of sentences
4. Grammatical relations such as subject
and object
5. Whether different structures have the
same meaning or not
6. The creative aspect of language
There are basic properties of sentence grammar:
1-Linearity: Words need to be produced in
some sort of sequence.
2-Hierarchy: Some words are grouped together
and these groups are put in larger groups and
ultimately to a large whole.
3-Categoricality: Some words or groups of
words behave grammatically in similar
ways, e.g. countable nouns take plural [s],
determiners precede nouns.
1)- A Phrase can be defined as a group of
words which function as a unit and do not
have a finite verb.
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A finite verb is a verb that takes as its
subject a pronoun such as I, he, she, or it.
A non-finite verb can occur with the
following forms:
The infinitive:
to eat, to go
The present participle: eating, coming
The past participle:
eaten, gone
1)- Noun phrase: it is a word that consists
of a noun as its headword and all the
words or word groups that belong with
the noun and cluster around it.
Man
The man
The young man
The clever young man
The clever young man in the garden
2)- Adjective Phrase: is a group of words
with an adjective as the headword and
modifies a noun. This adjective phrase can
function attributively or predicatively.
The extremely difficult question.
The question was extremely difficult.
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3)- Verb Phrase: consists of a group of
words with the verb as its headword and the
group of words that go with it.
walk
was walking
has been walking home
may be walking home along the road
The other words maybe modifiers (like adverbs, adverb
phrase), auxiliaries, direct objects, indirect objects,
subject complement, object complement.
A verb phrase: is a group of words that
function as a predicate in a sentence.
He arrived home. He will arrive home. He may have
arrived home.
4)- Adverb phrase: is a group of words
with an adverb as its headword and
functions as an adverb.
He is talking too quickly.
He almost always arrives on time.
He will visit us next year.
5)- Prepositional phrase: A group of words
that begins with a preposition.
He arrived by plane.
Ali is always late for classes.
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2)- The Clause: is a group of words which
contain a finite verb but which cannot
occur in isolation. That is, it constitutes
part of a sentence. If it can occur in
isolation it becomes a simple sentence. In
longer
sentences
usually
complex
sentences, there is a main clause, and one
or more subordinate clauses.
Clauses are usually classified according
to their function in the sentence.
Noun Clause: is a group of words which
has a finite verb and functions like a noun
 He said that he was so sorry.
 What you said was not true.
Adjective Clause (usually called relative
clauses) modifies a noun
 The man whom you have just seen is
my brother.
 The book which you are reading seems
very interesting.
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Adverb Clause: functions like an adverb
 When the student arrived, the
class had already begun.
 Put it where we can all see it.
 He passed the exam because he
studied hard.
SEE WORKSHEET
1- State what class each of the underlined words belong to:
1. He came quickly into the room.
2. Come in, please.
3. This is the wallet I lost last week.
4. This book is not mine.
5. Good Lord! What have you done?
6. Guess when he will come!
7. You or your brother will should
attend the meeting.
8. This question is extremely difficult.
9. Why did you listen to him?
3)- A sentence: can exist independently
and not depend on any other units and
can be interpreted without reference to
any other piece of language.
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A simpler definition of a sentence is a
linguistic unit that begins with a capital
letter and ends with a full stop.
3.1. Types of sentences:
a. Declarative sentences: statements
and requests
b.Imperative sentences: orders,
requests
c. Interrogative sentences:
d.Exclamatory sentences.
Sentences can be classified as Major and minor
Major sentences: contain finite verbs.
Minor sentences: contain non-finite verbs.
- Got a light?
- Just a minute.
- With some proverbs: out of sight, out
of mind.
3.2 Other categorization of sentences into
1- Simple sentences: contain only a finite
verb, i.e. independent clause.
 She studied hard for the exam.
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2- Compound sentence: two or more simple
sentences combined by a coordinating
conjunction- and, but, so, or, either ... or,
neither ... nor.
- She studied hard, but (she) got a low
mark on her exam.
- It was cold, so I wore a heavy coat.
3- Complex sentence: One simple
sentence (independent clause) and one
or more dependent or subordinate clauses.
 I always felt that he was a nice man.
 I returned home after I had seen my friend
off.
 Although it was cold, I wore a heavy coat.
4Complex-compound
sentences:
a
combination of complex sentences joined by
coordinating conjunction.
 I saw him when I entered the building
but I did not see him when he left.
 After
I graduated from high school,
I wanted to travel, but I had to work
in my family's business.
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