3. Syntax
I) Categories and structures:
Linguistics: the study of lg.—Chomsky: Language is a mirror of the mind

3 interrelated theories: a) Theory of lg. structure, b) Theory of lg. acquisition, c) Theory of lg. use.
Syntax : the system of rules and categories that underlies sentence formation in human lg.
A fundamental fact about words in all human lg.-es is that they can be grouped together into a relatively small number of classes, called syntactic categories . The 4 most studies syntactic categories are noun, verb, adjective, and preposition (??). A 5 th lexical category consists of adverbs, most of which are derived from adj.-s. Lg.-es may also contain nonlexical or functional categories , including determiners, auxiliary verbs, conjunctions, and degree words.
3 major criteria: meaning, compatibility with various types of affixes, type of elements with which it can combine to form larger utterances.
Word-level categories : a set of words, which have common linguistic properties.
Evidence: phonological (
V
↔
N
); semantic (lexical ambiguity: ball; structural ambiguity: mistrust wounds [N+V or V+N]); morphological (inflections attach only to certain words—e.g.: -s plural ending—Ns, Vs: base form, s, -ed, -n, -ing ; etc.) syntactic (distribution of words=the sentence position they occupy).
It’s often claimed that Vs denote actions, Ns entities, Adj.-s states, Adv.-s manner, Ps location, & Det.-s serve to modify. BUT: this criterion is unreliable
 assassination =N/action; illness =N/state.
Phrasal categories : a set of elements, which form constituents.
Constituency tests : the words that make up a sentence from immediate structural units called phrases. The existence of the syntactic units, or constituents, that make up tree structures can be verified with the help of special tests:
1) Movement test (preposing, postposing: [Your elder sister], I can’t stand. He explained to her [all the terrible problems he had encountered.] )
2) Sentence fragment test ( A: Where did he go? —B: Up the hill .)
3) Positioning of sentence- or VP-adverbials ( certainly =S-adverb; completely =VPadverb)
4) Ordinary coordination test ([ These [happy girls]] and [those [unhappy boys ]].)
5) Shared constituency coordination ( John walked and Mary ran [up the hill] .)
6) Pronominalisation ( What do you think of [the guy that…]/[him]?
)
7) Ellipsis/gapping
 only VPs ( John won’t wash the dishes. —I bet he will [√] if you’re nice to him.
)
8) Substitution
 one ( These [happy girls] & those [ones] )
Intermediate level : “small” NPs, VPs, etc.
II) Phrase structure rules:
Sentences aren’t formed by simply stringing words together; they have hierarchical structures. This internal str. is usually built around Ns, Vs, Adj.-s and Ps
 such units are called phrases . Phrases are built around a ‘skeleton’ consisting of 2 levels: the lowest level is reserved for the word around which the phrase is built—this element is called the head of the phrase. Words that have a special semantic or syntactic role in the phrase
(determiners, aux.-s, degree words) are said to function as specifiers. Semantically, they help to make more precise the meaning of the head; syntactically, they typically mark a phrase boundary. In Eng., specifiers occur at the left boundary:
NP VP AP PP
Det. N | Aux. V | Deg. A | Deg. P
the books | will eat | quite certain | almost in
Determiners serve as specifiers of Ns, Aux.-s as the specifiers of Vs, degree words as specifiers of As & Ps. A phrase may contain a complement also. These elements, which are themselves phrases, provide info about entities & locations whose existence is implied by the meaning of the head. Complements are attached to the right of the head in
Eng. Complements are themselves phrases.
VP PP
VP PP
NP NP
Det. N Deg. A Det. N
May eat the hamburger almost in the house
The arrangement of the elements that make up a phrase is regulated by a special type of grammatical mechanism called phrase structure rule . A phrase may consist of a specifier + a head & comp., a head + comp., a spec. + head, or just a head. There are obvious structural similarities among NPs, VPs, APs and PPs, thus, a general rule can be formulated:
XP Rule: XP

(Specifier) X (Complement) (

X=N, V, A or P).
The largest unit of syntactic analysis is the sentence. (S

NP VP)
Phrase structure rules specify how sentences are structured out of phrases, and phrases out of words. They are needed to produce underlying structures. Recursion : the property of being able to reapplied indefinitely many times.
S

NP (M) VP PP

P NP
VP

V (NP) (NP) PP* AP

Adv. P A
NP

(Det.) N Adv.P

Adv.
(Tree-diagram; labeled tree-diagram=phrase marker; labeled bracketing, etc.)
III) X ’categories:
Intermediate levels: “small” NPs, VPs, etc. E.g.:
NP
Det. ?
the
N PP
king of England
Rulon Wells

“?” = NP?
 then NP

D NP would be recursive!
 Wells’ suggestion: “?” is an intermediate level, larger than N, smaller than NP.
Zelling Harris: ‘raised numbers’: N 0 , N 1 , N 2 …
Chomsky: ‘bar levels/notation’: N, N, N…
Jackendoff: ( X-bar Theory
 ’bar levels’) 
prime notation: N, N’, N’’…
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Internal construction of phrases across lg.-es. Bar levels: stand for various degrees of complexity. X = a variable, can have various values. X’ = X-prime/-bar; X’’ = X-doublebar. Jackendoff’s theory can’t be applied to other lg.-es effectively; a more generalized framework, recent developments based on his theory: X’’’ (=XP)
|
WP X’’
|
X’ (ZP)
Adjunct = free modifier
| any number
X YP*
Complement
This can be applied to all lg.-es; but ordering of phrases is subject to parametric variation:
E.g.: Eng.: X” Japanese: X’
Spec. X’ Spec. Comp. X
X Comp.
Lyons

Endocentric structures : str.-es where the category of the phrase is the same as that of the head.
Jackendoff

Endocentricity Constraint (final version): All constituent structure rules are of the form X n 
… X m … (n ≥ m), where m ≠ n if … is null (i.e. if X n is nonbranching)

BUT: no constraint on elements which an appear as Spec., Adjunct,
Attribute, or Comp.

Jackendoff+Chomsky: Modifier Maximality Constraint : Every non-head term in the expansion of a rule must itself be a maximal projection of the category (e.g.: ZP = Z’’ or YP = Y’’ above).
Category-neutral rules : X’’ 
(YP) X’ (Generalized Specifier Rule)
X’

YP X’ (Generalized Attribute Rule)
X’

X’ YP (Generalized Adjunct Rule)
X’

X YP* (Generalized Complement Rule)
Optional
IV) Complements and modifiers:
Human language allows many different complement options. There are structures in which a head takes 2 (or more) complements (e.g.: put

requires both a NP & a PP comp.) Info about the complement permitted by a particular word is included in its entry in a speaker’s lexicon, or mental dictionary. A word may belong to more than 1 subcategory, and may have more than 1 complement option. There are words, which can be used without a comp. ( The child arrived .), or that can be used with even 3 complements ( We opened the door for Andy with a crow bar .) The classification of words in terms of their complement option is called subcategorization . All human lg.-es allow sentence-like constructions to function as complements; these are called complement clauses or embedded clauses, while the larger phrase in which they occur are called a matrix clause. (Words like that, if, and whether are called complementizers, & take an S complement, forming the CP.) There’s no limit on the number of embedded clauses that can occur in a sentence

this is made possible by the fact that each CP complement can contain a V that itself permits a complement CP.
Modifier : an optional element that describes an optionally expressible property of the head ( a good book, He slept soundly.) . Adj.Ps make up the single most commonly used class of modifiers in Eng., they serve as modifiers to NPs. The most common modifiers of Vs are Adv.Ps & PPs that describe manner or time. Adj.Ps precede the N, while PPs follow the V

Eng. modifiers vary in terms of their position with respect to the head.
V) Transformations:
(Old theories: raising, extraposition, topicalization; New theory: Government & Binding.)
There are syntactic phenomena that phrase structure rules cannot describe in an entirely satisfactory way (e.g.: Move α—(i) WH-movement, (ii) NP-movement). Phrase structure rules determine the internal structure of phrasal categories; transformations can modify these structures by moving an element from 1 position to another. Rules applying to underlying structures: transformations . The entities we end up with after all tr.-s have applied = surface structures . Hypothesis: tr.-s will generate grammatical sentences, and structures that the hypothesis doesn’t allow to be generated as surface str.-s are ungrammatical. a) Reflexivization (Obligatory): A NP that’s coreferential with a preceding NP in the same clause becomes a Reflexive pronoun. b) Imperative deletion (Optional): rule that deletes the subject “you” from imperatives. It produces from underlying str.-s like [ you kick you ] imperative sentences like Kick yourself ! c) Activization vs. Passivization: real essence: grammatical functions of the 2 arguments change: SUBJ
 by -phrase, OBJ

SUBJ d) Subject-to-object Raising: raises complement subject to matrix sentence, where it becomes object, deletes the that -complementizer & puts the “down-stairs” V in the infinitival form (e.g.: Mary believes to be flawless .) e) S-Erasure: deletes the subject of the complement clause, deletes the that complementizer, and puts the V in the infinitival form. ( Mary believes to be flawless .) d) & e)
 triggering Vs: believe, show, imagine, prove, proclaim — two-place predicates.
f) Equi-NP Deletion: The subject of S
2
in sentences like Tom i
wants that Tom i
leaves town is coreferential with the subject of S1 (Tom wants to leave town).
The subj. of S2 is deleted if it’s coreferential with the subj. of S1 by a rule called
Equi-NP Deletion. Triggering Vs: 3-place predicates
g) Inversion: moves the Aux. from its position within the VP to a position to the
left of the subject (e.g.: Will the boy __leave?)
└──────┘
Inversion, revised: Move Aux. To C.

rater: I-to-C Movement . h) Wh Movement: Wh- phrases must be fulfilling the complement function in wh questions.
2

DS
S
NP V
NP
Det. N Aux. V Det. N
| | | | | |
the man should fix which car
In order to convert the deep structure into the corresponding surface structures, we need a transformation that will move the wh -phrase from its position in DS to a position at the beginning of the sentence. This tr. is called Wh Movement . Wh
Movement revised: Move a wh phrase to the specifier position under CP.
i) V Movement: (Chomsky: affix movement = I-to-V; Koopman: V-to-I Movement)
( John annoys me .)
It is not possible to move an element out of a subject phrase. The subject constraint: No element may be moved from a subject phrase. A constituent (such as the subject) that doesn’t permit extraction of a component part is called an island .
It’s also not possible to remove a wh word from a coordinate structure. The coordinate structure constraint: No element may be removed from a coordinate structure.
VI) Deep structure vs. surface structure:
2 levels of syntactic structure:
1) Deep structure: formed by the phrase structure rules in accordance with the head’s subcategorization properties. DS plays a special role in the interpretation of sentences.
2) Surface structure: corresponds to the final syntactic form of the sentence. It results from applying whatever transformations are appropriate for the sentence in question.
S Will the boy _ leave?
└─────┘
NP VP
Det. N Aux. V The surface structure for the question pattern
The boy will leave is formed by applying Inversion transformation.
VII) Universal grammar and parametric variation:
Recent work suggests that all languages share a small set of syntactic categories and that these categories can be combined to form phrases. Transformational operations are also subject to highly similar constraints in all languages. The sys. of categories, mechanisms, and constraints shared by all human languages is called Universal Grammar .
Nevertheless, UG leaves room for specific types of variation. The set of alternatives permitted for a particular phenomenon is called a parameter .
Of the syntactic categories, only Ns & Vs are found in all human lg.-es. In many lg.-es
(e.g.: Hausa, Korean, Tegulu, Swahili, etc.), there are no adj.-s. Still other lg.-es seem to lack the P category; there are lg.-es that lack both As & Ps. These facts suggest that there is a lexical category parameter that allows at least the following alternatives: Nootkan:
N, V; Jacaltec: N, V, A; Korean: N, V, P; English: N, V, P, A.
Even where lg.-es have the same categories, the precise rules for sentence formation may differ. (E.g.: Thai

Det.-s follow N; Japanese
 heads in final position in the phrase.)
Still, any lg.-es contain phrases.
Lg.-es often differ from each other in the kinds of rules they use to forma a particular sentence type. In Tamil, f.e., yes-no questions are formed without an Inversion transformation by simply adding the particle – ā to the end of the sentence. Many lg.-es don’t make use of Wh Movement; and lg.-es may also differ from each other by adopting slightly different forms of the same basic transformational rule. (E.g.: Fr. Allows inversion of regular [non-aux.] Vs.)
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