The Major Principles of Syntax
The Operations of the Lexicon,
Morphology,
and Word Order in the
Understanding of Language
Daniel Kies
College of DuPage
3/22/2016
1
The Three Components of
Syntax
The Basics of Syntax
The Grammatical
and Meaningful
Sentence
Lexicon:
The Major
Word Classes
College of DuPage
Word Order:
Marked and
Unmarked
3/22/2016
Inflectional
Morphology:
Function Words
& Word Endings
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Role of Lexicon in Syntax
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The lexicon adds meaningful (semantic)
components to the sentence.
The lexicon also plays a major role in determining
the grammatical structure of the sentence.
Selection restrictions are governed by the lexical
items chosen in each clause.
The water evaporated quickly.
*The boy evaporated quickly.
*The water evaporated the dog.
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3
The Elements of the Lexicon
The Lexicon
Lexicon:
The Major
Word Classes
Nouns
Verbs
Adjectives
Adverbs
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3/22/2016
4
The Role of Word Order
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UNMARKED WORD ORDER
functions to distinguish the grammatical and semantic roles
of sentence constituents.
Grammatical roles include subject, verb, object,
complement, & adverbial.
Semantic roles include agent, action, goal, beneficiary,
instrument, location, and more.
MARKED WORD ORDER
allows us to choose the ‘point of view’ in the sentence
and allows us to emphasize various parts of our message.
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5
The Grammatical Roles in
Word Order
Word order helps us understand the
grammatical function of each constituent.
 Subjects in English for example are usually
at the beginning of the clause.
 John left yesterday after he gave his lecture.
 Objects in English occur after the verb.
 “Close the door,” she yelled, kicking it shut.
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The Semantic Roles in Word
Order
Constituents also serve semantic roles in
sentences, such as agent, action, goal,
instrument, location and many more.
 John
opened the door with a key.
agent action
goal
instrument
 subject verb
object
adverbial
In most cases, grammatical & semantic
roles overlap, but not always.
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Interplay of Grammatical &
Semantic Roles
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Semantic roles ‘realize’ grammatical functions.
In the usual, unmarked case, agents are realized
by subjects, actions are realized by verbs, etc.
Occasionally, language users do not choose to use
some semantic roles, resulting in a marked
realization of semantic roles.
The key
opened the door.
instrument
action
goal
subject
verb
object
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Marked Word Order & ‘Point
of View’
Marked word order not only allow us to
promote ‘unusual’ semantic roles to
unexpected grammatical functions, it can
also allow us to choose a ‘point of view.’
 Elizabeth helped Emily.
 Emily was helped by Elizabeth.
 This is called voice; the 1st example is
called active voice, the 2nd passive voice.
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9
Marked Word Order &
‘Emphasis’
Marked word order also allows us to
emphasize the most relevant portion of our
sentence, our message. Compare:
 John sent the letter to Mary.
 It was the letter that John sent to Mary.
 This variation allows us to ‘emphasize’ the
relevant portion of our sentence as message;
the 2nd example is called a cleft sentence.
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10
The Role of Morphology
Morphology provides us with two
additional sets of language clues about the
structure of a sentence:
 Function words
 Inflectional morphemes (which usually
occur as word endings in English)
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Function Words & Syntax
Function words are minor word classes.
 In English, those are prepositions,
pronouns, articles, and conjunctions.
 These function words provide valuable
grammatical information: how easily can
you read the following text for example?
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12
Examples of Function Words
Was walking front door, dropping bags
going.
 It was me -- walking out of my front door,
dropping my bags and going back in. (O. J.)
 Function words provide important
information about the grammatical &
semantic roles played by the constituents in
a sentence.
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13
Grammatical Morphemes &
Syntax
Other grammatical morphemes (primarily
word endings in English) serve a similar
function:
 English uses grammatical inflections to
provide different kinds of grammatical
information on the major word classes -nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.
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Grammatical Inflections in
Nouns
English uses the grammatical morphemes to
mark case
 This is John’s book,
 number
 He owns several rare books,
 and gender
 Adrienne Rich hates being called a poetess.
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Grammatical Inflections in
Verbs
English uses grammatical morphemes to
mark
 tense
Liz walked with her sister.
 aspect Liz has helped her often.
 voice
Liz was pleased by her cleverness.
 modalityLiz must be smarter than Dad.
 mood
God bless this ship & all who sail
in her.
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Grammatical Inflections in
Adjectives & Adverbs
English uses grammatical morphemes on
adjectives and adverbs to mark
 grammatical function
 Ingenious Liz can do this easily.
 comparison (degree)
 Liz is smarter than her father. She learns
faster than he does.
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3/22/2016
17
All the Elements of Syntax
The Elements of Syntax
The Grammatical
and
Meaningful
Sentence
Lexicon:
Word
Order
the Major
Word Classes
Nouns
Marked
Word
Order
Morphology
Unmarked
Word
Order
Function
Words:
the Minor Word
Classes
Inflectional
Morphology
Verbs
Prepositions
for Nouns
for Verbs
for Adjectives
for Adverbs
Adjectives
Articles
Case
Tense
Comparison
Comparision
Pronouns
Gender
Aspect
Conjunctions
Number
Modality
Adverbs
Mood
Number
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3/22/2016
18
The Entire Syntax System in Concert
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There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie,
and Dim, Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar
making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark
chill winter bastard though dry. The Korova Milkbar was a milk-plus
mesto, and you may, O my brother, have forgotten what these mestos
where like things changing so skorry these days and everybody very
quick to forget, newspaper not being read much neither. Well, what
they sold there was milk plus something else. They had no license for
selling liquor, but there was no law yet against prodding some of the
some of the new veshches which they would put into the old moloko,
so you could peet it with vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom or one or
two other veshches which would give you a nice quiet horrorshow
fifteen minutes admiring Bog And All His Holy Angels And Saints in
your left shoe with lights bursting all over your mozg. Or you could
peet it with knives in it, as we use to say, and this would sharpen you
up and make you ready for a bit of dirty twenty-to-one, and that was
what we were peeting this evening I’m starting off the story with.
Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
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19
Finding Nouns in A Clockwork Orange
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There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie,
and Dim, Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar
making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark
chill winter bastard though dry. The Korova Milkbar was a milk-plus
mesto, and you may, O my brother, have forgotten what these mestos
where like things changing so skorry these days and everybody very
quick to forget, newspaper not being read much neither. Well, what
they sold there was milk plus something else. They had no license for
selling liquor, but there was no law yet against prodding some of the
some of the new veshches which they would put into the old moloko,
so you could peet it with vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom or one or
two other veshches which would give you a nice quiet horrorshow
fifteen minutes admiring Bog And All His Holy Angels And Saints in
your left shoe with lights bursting all over your mozg. Or you could
peet it with knives in it, as we use to say, and this would sharpen you
up and make you ready for a bit of dirty twenty-to-one, and that was
what we were peeting this evening I’m starting off the story with.
College of DuPage
3/22/2016
20
Finding Verbs in A Clockwork Orange

There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie,
and Dim, Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar
making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark
chill winter bastard though dry. The Korova Milkbar was a milk-plus
mesto, and you may, O my brother, have forgotten what these mestos
where like things changing so skorry these days and everybody very
quick to forget, newspaper not being read much neither. Well, what
they sold there was milk plus something else. They had no license for
selling liquor, but there was no law yet against prodding some of the
some of the new veshches which they would put into the old moloko,
so you could peet it with vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom or one or
two other veshches which would give you a nice quiet horrorshow
fifteen minutes admiring Bog And All His Holy Angels And Saints in
your left shoe with lights bursting all over your mozg. Or you could
peet it with knives in it, as we use to say, and this would sharpen you
up and make you ready for a bit of dirty twenty-to-one, and that was
what we were peeting this evening I’m starting off the story with.
College of DuPage
3/22/2016
21
Finding Modifiers in A Clockwork Orange

There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie,
and Dim, Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar
making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark
chill winter bastard though dry. The Korova Milkbar was a milk-plus
mesto, and you may, O my brother, have forgotten what these mestos
where like things changing so skorry these days and everybody very
quick to forget, newspaper not being read much neither. Well, what
they sold there was milk plus something else. They had no license for
selling liquor, but there was no law yet against prodding some of the
some of the new veshches which they would put into the old moloko,
so you could peet it with vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom or one or
two other veshches which would give you a nice quiet horrorshow
fifteen minutes admiring Bog And All His Holy Angels And Saints in
your left shoe with lights bursting all over your mozg. Or you could
peet it with knives in it, as we use to say, and this would sharpen you
up and make you ready for a bit of dirty twenty-to-one, and that was
what we were peeting this evening I’m starting off the story with.
College of DuPage
3/22/2016
22
In Summary
Despite the apparent, incredible variety of
sentence structure in any one language, not
to mention the 5200+ languages around the
world, syntax in all human languages is
realized by the simultaneous work of three
systems:
 the lexicon
 word order
 inflectional morphology
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3/22/2016
23
‘Doing Syntax; Doing Linguistics’
In a literal way, syntax -- like all of
linguistics -- is something we do. We do
linguistics every time we make or decode a
sentence.
 Despite the enormous variety of human
language, we make or decode every
linguistic act with just a few elements:
those elements are used in a system and we
recognize the patterns. Doing linguistics is
learning to see and understand those
patterns of human language.
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3/22/2016
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