Quiz 2
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
The boy found the ball.
The boy found quickly.
The boy found in the house.
The boy found the ball in the house.
Lisa slept the baby.
Lisa slept soundly.
Sentences are not random strings of words.
They must conform to specific patterns.
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What is the purpose of studying syntax?
To investigate word order and sentence
structure.
To be able to consciously articulate our
unconscious knowledge of English.
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The knowledge of sentences and their
structure.
Syntactic rules include:
◦
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The grammaticality of sentences
Word order
Hierarchical organization of sentences
Grammatical relations such as subject and object
Whether different structures have different
meanings or the same meanings

Grammaticality judgments do not depend on
having heard the sentence before:
Enormous crickets in pink socks danced at the
party.
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Grammaticality judgments do not depend on
meaning:
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
*Furiously sleep ideas green colorless
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Major word classes
Nouns
Verbs
Adjectives
Adverbs
Sentence with only major word classes:
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Adjectives
◦ Modify nouns
My favorite dog is hungry.
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Adjectives can have a predicative function or
an attributive function.
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Adverbs
Often considered the ‘garbage’ category
Unfortunately, some students drive very
quickly and create extremely dangerous
roads.
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unfortunately: sentence adverb
quickly:
manner adverbs
very:
degree adverbs
Phrasal category
Form
Function
NP
Headed by a noun
Subject of sentence
VP
Headed by a verb
Predicate of sentence
VP
NP
det
adj
The
friendly
person
NP
N
V
det
asked
a
N
question

The man with the toupee shocked the woman
at the bar.
Sentence (S)
Subject (NP)
Predicate (VP)
The man with the toupee shocked the woman at the bar
Hierarchical constituent structure
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Meaning
(1)A big sale of stereos
Big stereo sale
(2) a sale of big stereos
Big stereo sale
S
VP
NP
NP
PP
NP
NP
det
adj
The
tipsy
N
man
V
finished
det
N
P
det
N
the
drink
in
one
minute
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Every NP has a grammatical relation to some other
element in sentence.
NP: ‘the tipsy man’ relationship with ‘finished’=
SUBJECT
NPs to left of verbs = subject (dominated by S)
NP: ‘the drink’ = direct object
NPs to right of verbs and dominated directly by VP
= direct object
Other NP not related directly to verb but to
preposition (dominated directly by PP) = object of a
preposition
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Test 1: “stand alone” test
If a group can stand alone, they form a
constituent
Set of word that can answer a question:
What did you pass?
“the Linguistics class”
“passed the”
The student passed the Linguistics class.
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Test 2: “replacement by a pronoun” test
◦ Pronouns can substitute for natural groups.
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Pronoun that can answer a question:
◦ When did you pass the Linguistic class?
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“I passed it last trimester”
Do can also substitute for the whole predicate
passed the Linguistics class.
Som passed the Linguistics class and Boss
did too.
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Test 3: “move as a unit” test
◦ If a group of words can be moved, they form a
constituent.
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The student passed the Linguistics class
It was the Linguistics class that the student
passed.
The Linguistics class was passed by the
student.
S
NP
VP
CP
S
NP
VP
NP
det
The
N
professor
V
said
C
that
det
the
N
student
V
passed
det
N
the
exam.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
S =
NP =
VP =
VP =
VP =
PP =
VP =
CP =
NP + VP
Det + N
V + NP
V
V + PP
P + NP
V + CP
C+S
The woman laughed.
The meaning of language
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Why does a certain set of words mean
something and a similar set mean something
very different?
When do two different sentences mean the
same thing?
How can one sentence mean more than one
thing?
What is meaning?
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In our society, many people feel that the
dictionary definition of a word more
accurately represents a word’s meaning than
an individual speaker’s understanding of the
word.
But descriptivists arrive at their definitions by
studying the ways speakers of the language
use different words.
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The meaning of a word or expression is not
just a definition composed of more words in
the same language, since ultimately the
meaning of some words would have to be
known in order to understand the definitions.
Meaning is provided by a community of
language speakers, not by some special
authority like a dictionary or grammar book.
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Mental image
Reference
Sense
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Synonyms
Antonyms
Homonyms (homophones)
Hyponyms
mother
PARENT
ADULT
woman
father
bachelor
boy
MALE
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Incorrect “matching” of the semantic features
of different elements of a sentence can result
in ungrammatical (but syntactically sound)
sentences:
The man [-female] was pregnant [+female].
I sawed [+solid] the water [-solid].
The ideas [-living] are sleeping [+living].
The importance of context
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is concerned with the interpretation of
meaning in context.
2 contexts:
Linguistic context (discourse)
Situational context (anything non-linguistic)
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What’s the concept of deixis?
Holding texts together
Cohesion
Grammatical
Reference
Substitution
Lexical
Ellipsis
Repetition
Synonyms
Superordinates
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Reference
Using referring
expressions to refer to
referents in the
context.
Commonly used
reference: pronouns
Substitution
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky-tacky,
Little boxes, little boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
There’s a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they’re all made of ticky-tacky
And they all just look the same.
(Reynolds, 1963)
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Substitution
Similar function as pronouns
Using a word to substitute for its referent
Ellipsis
Omitting words and phrases mentioned
earlier
Purpose to avoid repetition
Martin loves his wife, and so do I.
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Repetition
Repeated words/phrases to exploit its
stylistic effect
◦ “Little boxes”
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Synonyms
To avoid repetition another word with the
same meaning is used.
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At 75 cm across and capable of cracking
open a coconut with its claws, the landdwelling coconut crab is your beach lounger’s
worst nightmare. Fortunately for the
sunbather, the world’s largest terrestrial
arthropod has been confined to tropical
islands across the Pacific and Indian oceans
only.
 (adapted from Cutting, 2002)
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Superordinates
Similar to hyponomy
The great white shark can
grow up to 8m long. It is one
of the more dangerous
predators in the sea.