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Syntax
THE STRUCTURE OF SENTENCES
Formal syntax: Learning objectives
 Explain the notions “language organ” and “Universal
Grammar”
 Explain the similarities and differences between
languages (principles and parameters)
 Explain how sentences are constructed
Evidence for an independent language faculty:
 People display a knowledge of grammar that is
deeper than what they could get from the linguistic
input they receive – the poverty-of-the stimulus
argument
 Language impairment (aphasia/Down syndrome):
language independent from intelligence
Transformational generative grammar
 Chomsky: structuralist explanations could not
distinguish between sentences such as: John is easy
to please and John is eager to please
 While the surface structure is similar, the deep
structure reveals a major difference: the implied
subject in the first is John and in the second John is
the object
Transformational generative grammar
 Chomsky: structuralist grammars could not explain
ambiguity which can arise from the syntactic
arrangement of clauses, e.g. Stolen painting found by
tree
Universal Grammar: Principles & parameters
 People – “pre-programmed” with principles of
grammar – Universal Grammar (UG)
 Universal grammar has a biological basis– a
language organ
 Principles of UG are common across all languages
 One of these principles, which is considered as an
essential property of human language, is recursion:
allows individuals to understand an unlimited
number of sentences without memorizing each one
of them (cf. poverty of stimulus)
Principle of recursion
 Grammars are finite but they nonetheless enable
individuals to produce and understand an infinite
number of sentences
 This is made possible through the principle of
recursion
 Recursion means that grammatical processes can
apply more than once, which enables speakers to
produce sentences of indefinite length and
complexity
Mechanisms of recursion
 Embedding: One can always add additional
subordinate clauses within a frame of the sentence
e.g. This is the house that Jack built<This is the cheese that lay in the
house that Jack built< This is the mouse that nibbled the cheese
that lay in the house that Jack built etc.
Coordination: We can use coordinating conjunctions
(and, but, or etc.) to link an indefinite number of
sentences
e.g. Mary went to the airport and John went to the bus station but
Joanna cancelled her trip and went to the mall.
Parameters of UG
 Some of the principles of UG are underspecified,
which means that they can be realized through
different parameters in different languages
 Once all the parameters have been correctly set for a
particular language, then we have a grammar for this
language
 Example: every language must have a subject –
principle (underspecified); subject can be expressed
in different ways – parameter values (pronouns in
English and Italian)
Modularity of language
 Principles and parameters – part of a syntactic
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computational mechanism
This mechanism feeds both the articulatory (phonetic)
component and the interpretative (semantic) component
Each of these components functions independently modularity
Various modules can feed each other through interfaces
Phonetic form (PF) interface with articulatory module;
Logical form (LF) – interface with the interpretative
module
Y-model: centrality of syntax
 Syntax draws information from the lexicon and
“feeds” both PF and LF
 PF
LF
Syntax
Lexicon
Table of grammatical categories
Type
Word category
Examples
Phrasal
category
Lexical
Noun (N)
Puppy, park
Noun Phrase (NP)
Lexical
Verb (V)
Take, run, be
Verbal Phrase (VP)
Lexical
Adjective (A)
Good, red, big
Adjective Phrase
(AP)
Lexical
Adverb (Adv)
Happily, fast
Adverb Phrase
(AdvP)
Functional
Determiner (D)
This, the, a, his
Determiner Phrase
(DP)
Functional
Preposition (P)
In, on, between
Prepositional
Phrase (PP)
Functional
Complementizer
(C)
that
Complementizer
Phrase (CP
Lexical vs. Functional categories
 Words that belong to lexical categories are
semantically rich and contribute primarily to the
meaning of the sentence (nouns, verbs, adjectives,
adverbs, prepositions) – open category
 Words in functional categories – semantically weak,
and contribute more to the grammar of sentences
than to the meaning (e.g. determiners) – closed
category
Compositionality
 Grammar of every language – compositional and
hierarchical
 Sentences are made of smaller constituents
(phrases), which in turn are made up of even smaller
constituents (words)
Compositionality: Constituency tests
 1) noun replacement (A girl with a golden earring
ate an apple > She ate an apple vs. *She with a
golden earring ate an apple)- only an entire
nominal constituent can be replaced with a pronoun
 2) verb replacement (She ate an apple and so did I
vs. *She ate an apple and so did I a pear)- only an
entire verbal constituent can be replaced with do
 Certain groups of words form close units:
constituents, e.g. Nominal constituent (1) (NP=noun
phrase), (2) verbal constituent (VP=verb phrase)
Hierarchy
 Even though sentences are linear on the surface,
their constituents are organized in a hierarchical way
Projection
 Composing the structure of a sentence begins with
words that belong to categories such as noun, verb,
preposition, adjective, or determiner
 These words – heads of phrases
 Phrases are constructed bottom-up: words are drawn
from a lexicon – a mental dictionary stored in
people’s brain - and merged into structures
 Once they are inserted into structures they project
phrases (XPs) of the same category (e.g. NP, VP, DP)
which form larger constituents that compose a
sentence
Merge
 Structure building begins with the predicate, which
is the central element of a clause
 Once a predicate projects its phrase, it has to be
combined with a phrase/s of the type it needs
 To do that, the grammar must have a mechanism
that combines phrases
 This is done by merging one phrase with another
Merge: example
 (1) Those children want a puppy
 Want – a transitive verb or a two-place predicate, which
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means that it requires two NPs of a certain type as
arguments: an agent argument and a theme argument
(thematic (theta) roles)
It projects two empty positions which need to be filled by
NPs (e.g. Those children - agent and a puppy - theme)
Direct object (puppy) – internal argument because it
forms a closer unit with a predicate
Subject (Those children) – external argument; does not
form the same unit as predicate and direct object
Substitution test: Those children want a puppy and so
do I; *Those children want a puppy and so do I a cat
Nominal constituent merge (DP)
Each of the nominal constituents that the predicate
selects is a product of a separate merge operation
which consists of merging a noun and a determiner
Note the nominal constituent a puppy in Example 1:
The determiner a projects a determiner phrase (DP),
which needs a noun phrase (NP) as its complement
Since DP selects NP and not viceversa, DP is the head
of the nominal constituent (e.g. a puppy)
DP merge
 NP puppy is inserted in the complement NP node
projected from D a to create DP a puppy
 DP
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NP
 D: a
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N: puppy
VP merge
 DP a puppy merges with V want to create VP want a puppy
 VP
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DP
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NP
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 V: want
D: a
N: puppy
Merge: sentence construction
 So far the grammar has created a new constituent
(VP) by merge
 The next step is to merge the VP with the external
argument (subject) to form the whole sentence
 The external argument cannot be directly merged
onto the VP (substitution shows that they do not
form the same constituent)
 We need a separate node (XP) above VP to merge
the subject with
Tense phrase (TP)
 Semantic core of the sentence is constituted by tense
 Tense projects its own phrase (TP) which connects
different constituents together into a sentence
 T-head contains information related to tense, as well
as agreement
 Tense phrases provide the central “scaffolding” for a
sentence, a structure to which the more meaningful
lexical phrases will be attached
 External argument is linked with VP through TP
Tense Phrase (TP)
 Those children want a puppy.
TP
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DP
those
VP
NP
children
want
DP
a
NP
puppy
Tense Phrase
 TP takes VP as its complement
 The external argument (subject) is not a complement: it
does not occupy a complement position but a specifier
position to the left of TP (in English)
 Two syntactic levels: VP – lexical information pertaining
to constituents; TP: grammatical information pertaining
to the sentence (tense+agreement)
 There is an even higher level of structure, which contains
information pertaining to discourse: at this level,
sentence type (e.g. declarative, interrogative) is encloded
 This highest structural level is usually defined as CP
(Complementizer phrase)
Complementizer phrase (CP)
 The basic function of complementizers is to turn an
independent sentence into a complement
 Therefore each subordinate clause is headed by an
additional phrase projected by the complementizer
(CP)
 Different types of complementizers depending on the
type of subordinate clause: in declaratives,
complementizers like that (I heard that those
children want a puppy); in interrogtives, comps like
if (He wondered if it would rain)
 A CP selects a TP in this context
Projection of CP from that
 CP
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 C: that
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TP
those children want a puppy
CP in simple sentences
 Matrix clauses can also be divided in different types
(e.g. declarative, interrogative, exclamative)
 In subordinate contexts, different types of clauses
are associated with different complementizers, which
means that clause type is determined at the CP level
 Since matrix clauses can also be divided along the
same lines, CP is also present and determines clause
type in matrix contexts (even though there is no
overt complementizer)
Adjunction
 Merge joins phrases by placing one phrase into the
complement or specifier of another phrase
 It is also possible to merge phrases that are not
complements or specifiers of their host phrase - this
is called adjunction and it adds modifiers to phrases
 Heads, complements, and specifiers make up the
core meaning of a phrase, while adjuncts add extra
description (Those little children in the park want a
puppy badly)
Adjunction
 Since adjoined phrases are different from complements
and specifiers, adjunction creates a site for Merge by
copying the phrasal node of the host phrase
 All the adjuncts are attached to the extended structures
 In this way the integral parts of a phrase,i. e. head,
specifier, and complement, are distinguished from
adjuncts
 There are restrictions on the number of complements or
specifiers we can have in the sentence but not on
adjuncts: the phrasal node can be copied indefinitely
Adjunction
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VP
VP
AdvP
DP badly
NP
V:want D: a N:puppy
Movement
 Besides building phrase structures, syntax can also
move parts of phrase structures around, by
detaching them from the position in which they were
originally inserted in the structure, and moving them
somewhere else
Movement and deletion
 Movement functions by copying an item into a new
location, leaving a copy in the original position
(sometimes described as a trace (t).
 This copy must later be deleted, because both copies
cannot be pronounced at the same time
 Syntax distinguishes between two types of
movements: head movement (e.g. auxiliary
movement in questions) and phrasal movement (e.g.
wh-movement in questions)
Auxiliary movement
 Auxiliary (Aux) movement comes into play when we
want to generate a simple question in English
 e.g. Does the man like movies?
 The auxiliary do is originally inserted under T,
acquiring tense and agreement features, and then
moves to C
 CP has an empty complementizer C as its head and it has a
TP as its complement. Aux movement in the case of simple
questions takes whatever there is under T
(do+tense/agreement=does) and moves it to the previously
empty head position, C
Illustration
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CP
TP
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C
does
T
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DP
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the man
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Move
VP
[PRES/AGR]
V
like
DP
movies
WH-movement
 Wh-questions (e.g. What do you like?), unlike simple
questions, exhibit two different movements to CP:
head movement of the auxiliary (T-C) and phrasal
movement of the wh-phrase (i.e. wh-movement)
 Therefore, in questions such as “What do you like?”,
CP must contain two empty positions to host the
moved elements: the C-head position for the
auxiliary and the specifier position for the wh-phrase
WH-movement
 What appears after the verb like, as its complement.
Like is a transitive verb and requires a direct object
complement, and what stands in for the missing
thing that you would like (e.g. What do you like? I
like coffee).
 First, aux movement applies . The auxiliary do
undergoes head movement from T to C.
 Then, wh-movement applies. The wh-phrase moves
from its original complement position (since it
replaced the complement of the verb like) to the
specifier of CP.
WH-movement
CP
SpecCP
What
C
do
TP
SpecTP
you
VP
T
aux movement
wh-movement
V
like
DP
what
Summary
 Much of grammatical structure does not have to be
“learned”
 People “know” a lot about what is or isn’t a possible
grammatical structure without having been taught,
or even having had the right kind of experience to
have learned it: they know it because principles of
UG are innate
 The principle of recursion enables individuals to
produce and understand an infinite number of
sentences based on a limited input (cf. Poverty of
stimulus)
Summary
 One principle of the structure of sentences –
compositionality: sentences are composed of clauses
and phrases, which in turn are made up of smaller
clauses and phrases or words
 Compositionality - achieved by projection of simple
phrases from words from the mental lexicon
 The phrases projected take on the lexical and
functional categories of the words that project them
Summary
 Formal syntax - based on deducing abstract
grammatical principles from observing what
sentences are possible and not possible, without
regard to how they are used
 Formal approaches insist on the centrality of syntax
whithin the human language faculty; other types of
approaches (e.g. functional perspectives) put greater
emphasis on semantics or language usage
Learning objectives
 Explain the notions “language organ” and “Universal
Grammar”
 Explain the similarities and differences between
languages (principles and parameters)
 Explain how sentences are constructed