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Another thing all approaches to syntax have in common: Categories (& subcategories) Morphology/Syntax Categories Categories are ‘parts of speech’ • Noun: • So-called parts of speech are, e.g., Nouns – Person, place, or thing Prepositions Conjunctions Adjectives Adverbs Verbs • Verb: etc. • “Parts of speech” refers to different types of words, which behave in different ways in sentences, phrases, and word-combinations. The [N boy] likes basketball. #The [N rock] likes basketball. Classic definitions of P.O.S *The [N swim] likes basketball. *The [N red] likes basketball. – Action, occurrence or state of being • Adjective: – Modifier that expresses quality, quantity or extent. • Adverbs: – Modifier that expresses manner, quality, place, time, degree, number, cause, opposition, affirmation or denial • Prepositions: – Modifier that indicates location or origin. ‘Parts of speech’ are also called lexical categories or syntactic categories. Problems with classic definitions • The main problem with definitions like these is that they are based on semantic criteria. The theft of our property caused us to question the honesty of our neighbors. A theft is not a person, place, or thing. It’s an action. By semantic criteria, this word should be a verb. But it’s not – ‘theft’ is a noun. Honesty is an attribute, a property normally associated with adjectives. Yet here it’s a noun. Evidence against semantic definitions (#1) • Many words can change their part of speech depending upon where they appear in a sentence. Gabrielle’s mother is a pilot. N Stanley’s girlfriend likes to mother him. V Olaf’s mother language is Norwegian. Adj If a word’s syntactic category were determined by its meaning, we would not expect this to happen. 1 Evidence against semantic definitions (#2) Evidence against semantic definitions (#3) • Words that mean the same thing can have different syntactic categories in different languages. • Some parts of speech don’t lend themselves to semantic definitions at all. Warlpiri (Pama–Nyungan, Northwest Australia): Wita-ngku ka maliki wajilipinyi small-SUBJ AUX dog chase.PRES “The small (one) is chasing the dog.” – Some words don’t seem to have meaning at all. • Romeo say that he wanted to see Juliet. – Other words’ meanings are determined by the context in which they appear. • Hillary sat by Carlos at the party. • You should be at the airport by 10am. • These plays were written by Shakespeare Here, the word ‘wita’ (“small”) functions like a noun (e.g., taking subject marking). Is this a noun or an adjective? If parts of speech were based on the meaning of the word, how could we assign a part of speech to word for which the meaning isn’t clear? Evidence against semantic definitions (#4) Conclusion... • The most striking evidence semantic definitions for parts of speech are inadequate is that we can know the part of speech of a word without even knowing what it means: The yinkish dripner blorked quastofically. Adv Adj N V If parts of speech were based on the meaning of the word, how could we know the part of speech of word whose meaning we don’t know? Distributional criteria • There are two kinds of distributional tests for determining part of speech: – Morphological distribution – Syntactic distribution • Morphological distribution refers to the kinds of affixes (prefixes, suffixes, etc.) that can appear on a word. • Syntactic distribution refers where a word can appear in relation to other words. • The criteria we use to determine part of speech are not based on I.e., P.O.S. is not determined the meanings of the word. semantically. • Rather, we a word’s part of I.e., P.O.S. is speech determined by its distributional behavior, i.e., by determined where the word can appear in a syntactically & sentence and in relation to other morphologically . words and morphemes. Because different languages have different word-orders and different morphemes, the criteria for determining P.O.S. will be language specific, i.e., they will be different for each language. (English) Nouns Morphological distribution • Can be inflected for case, number and gender – I / me; he/him; we/us, etc. – Dog/dogs; cat/cats; child/children, etc. – Waiter/waitress; host/hostess; actor/actress, etc. • Can appear with derivational suffixes -ness, -ment, -ism, -er, etc. Syntactic distribution • Can appear after determiners – [ the _____ ]; [ every _____ ] • Can be the subject/object of sentence – [ ____ is in front of ____ ] • Can be modified by Adjectives – [ a large ____ ] • Are negated by no (as opposed to not or un-) – No apples were eaten. 2 (English) Verbs Some preliminaries: Classes of verbs • Pedagogical grammars often distinguish main verbs from ‘helping verbs’ – John has been eating shrimp – John may eat some shrimp. – John did not eat shrimp. • The technical term for a helping verb is an auxiliary. Verb Aux +Aux Mod – Modal auxiliaries: will, should, can... Aspect – Non-modal auxiliaries: +Mod Support • Aspectual auxiliaries : have, be • Support auxiliaries : do Adjectives & adverbs • Adjectives – take comparative and superlative inflectional suffixes • soft, softer, softest – – – – take derivational affixes like -ish, -some and -esque appear between ‘the’ & noun [ the _____ book ] can follow ‘very’ [very ______ ] can appear in copula constructions [John is _______ ] • Adverbs – – – – take -ly affix appear before adjectives and verbs [very _____ ] can appear at very beginning or end of sentence Morphological & syntactic distribution of verbs Aux verbs +Aux verbs • Take derivational affixes like -ify, -ize, re-, un- , etc. • Appear after auxiliaries • Cannot invert to form questions (*Swim you?) • Do not take derivational suffixes. • Can invert to form questions (Has Bill arrived? Can you swim?) Modal verbs: • Take -s, -ed, -en, -ing, inflectional affixes (can be inflected for tense, mood, aspect) • Can appear as infinitives (to swim, to have, to be) +Modal verbs: • Take no inflection (*shoulded, *wills) • Have no infinitive form (*to should, *to can) WARNING: Many suffixes in English are homophonous bakes steals bites weaker whiter sweeter eaten written taken inflectional suffix marking 3rd person singular present tense inflectional suffix marking plurality inflectional suffix marking adjective as comparative derivational suffix: “one who Vs” inflectional suffix marking verb as past participle derivational suffix: “to make more Adj” cakes wheels nights speaker writer heater tighten soften weaken Be careful when using affixes for morphological distribution tests. Adjectives & adverbs: one category • In contemporary linguistics, Adjectives and Adverbs are seen as belonging to the same syntactic category (usually abbreviated ‘A’). • The reason: adjectives and adverbs are in complementary distribution, and when linguistic elements appear in complementary distribution, this is strong evidence that they are positional variants of one another. • Adjectives (like quick) appear in one environment (inside Noun Phrases), Adverbs (like quickly) appear (only) elsewhere. Complementary distribution in linguistics is the relationship between two different elements, where one element is found in a particular environment and the other element is found in the opposite environment. Are N, V, A and P primitive categories? • The categories can be characterized as follows in terms of the features [±N] (substantive) and [±V] (predicative): • This notation allows crosscategorical reference to sets of categories. [±N] [±V] (substantive) (predicative) N V A + – + – + + P – – E.g., the two categories that can appear with an NP complement in English – Verbs and Prepositions – can now be referred to with the single feature: [–N]. 3 Open vs. closed classes Lexical vs. functional categories • Some parts of speech allow neologisms (= new words). • Some parts of speech don’t allow neologisms. • Categories that allow new members are said to be open categories. Those that don’t (or where coinages are very rare) are closed categories. • N, V, and A constitute the open categories. • Lexical parts of speech provide the “content” of the sentence. Nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are all lexical parts of speech. • Functional parts of speech by contrast provide the grammatical information or link parts of a sentence together. • Functional categories include Determiners, Prepositions, Complementizers, Conjunctions, Negation, Auxiliaries and Modals. • The lexical/functional distinction is similar to (but not identical to) the open/closed distinction. Some Functional (Closed) Categories of English Some Functional (Closed) Categories of English • Prepositions (abbreviated P) appear before nouns (or more precisely noun phrases). • Prepositions of English: to, from, under, over, with, by, at, above, before, after, through, near, on, off, for, in, into, of, during, across, without, since, until. • Determiners (D) of English: a) Articles: the, a, an b) Deictic articles: this, that, these, those c) Quantifiers: every, some, many, most, few, all, each, any, less, fewer, no d) (Cardinal) numerals: one, two, three, four, etc. e) Possessive pronouns: my, your, his, her, its, our, their f) Some wh-question words: which, whose Some Functional (Closed) Categories of English Some Functional (Closed) Categories of English • Conjunctions (Conj) are words that connect two or more phrases together on an equal level • Conjunctions of English: and, or, nor, neither … nor, either … or • The class of complementizers (C) also connects structures together, but they embed one clause inside of another instead of keeping them on an equal level. • Complementizers of English: that, for, if, whether • (For now!) we'll say the Tense category (T) consists of auxiliaries, modals and the nonfinite clause marker.* • Tense categories of English (T): laser internet FAX disco Robot defriend – Auxiliaries: have/has/had, am/is/are/was/were, do/does – Modals: will, would, shall, should, can, could – Non-finite Tense marker: to *In the older syntactic literature, the category T is sometimes called Infl (inflection) or Aux (Auxiliary). We’ll use the more modern T. 4 Some Functional (Closed) Categories of English • There is one special category containing only one word: not, which we’ll call negation (Neg). • There are other categories that express negation (e.g., the determiners no, any, and the noun none). We’ll reserve the category Neg for the word not, however. (Partial) Typology of English morphemes Morphemes Bound Free (root) Affix Derivational Prefix Inflectional Suffix (Bound) Closed class Root Open class -ceive the (D) kiss (V) and (Conj) by (P) whether (C) can (T) smile (V) mad (A) madly (A) dog (N) him (N) honesty (N) preuncon- -ly -ist -ment -ing -en -er -ject -fer -mit -gruntle anti- -able -s -mantle A Closed Lexical Subclass • You may have noticed that the open class and lexical class correspond to exactly the same categories; • Similarly all of the cases of functional categories we’ve mentioned are pretty clearly closed class items. • But... there are two cases where we have a mismatch between the terms: Pronouns and Anaphors. • These are lexical (they are a subtype of N), but they are closed classes. Subcategories and features • Recall: – six different kinds of D (articles, deictics, quantifiers, numerals, possessive pronouns, whwords), and – three kinds of T (auxiliaries, modals, and the nonfinite marker). • The technical term for these subtypes is subcategories. NB: ‘Bound root’ morphemes often appear in English textbooks, but, according to definition, they are not truly morphemes. Subcategories and features • One way to mark subcategories is through the use of features. • Consider the case of pronouns. To distinguish among the subcategories we can appeal to the features person, number and gender and case: he her you Person 3 3 2 Number sg. sg. -- we 1 pl. Gender Case masc. nom. fem. obl. -nom./obl. -- Subcategories of Nouns: ±plural • English nouns can be either singular or plural. • Singular nouns in English require a D; plural ones do not require a D, although they allow one: – *Cat ate the spider – The cat ate the spider – Cats ate the spider – The cats ate the spider nom. 5 Subcategories of Nouns: ±count • English nouns can be either count nouns or mass nouns. • Count nouns represent individual, ‘countable’ elements: thing, person, moment, city • “Mass nouns” usually can’t be counted in the same way: sincerity, air, salt, amnesia Mass nouns take the quantifier much. much air *many air many things *much things Count nouns take the quantifier many. Subcategories of Nouns: ±pronoun , ±anaphor Subcategories of Nouns: ±common • English nouns can be either proper names or common nouns. • For the most part proper names resist taking determiners – Jason – *the Jason • There are some exceptions to this generalization. – the Smiths – Spanish: La Rosamaria “the Rosemary” Subcategories of Verbs • Pronouns and anaphors differ from the other Ns in that they are closed. They never allow determiners or adjectival modification. *the he he *the himself himself *big he *big himself • Pronouns belong to the class [+pronoun, –anaphor]. • Anaphors are [–pronoun, +anaphor]. • All other nouns are [–pronoun, –anaphor]. • Two major ways in which we can divide up verbs into subcategories. Subcategories of Verbs Argument structure • Some basic terms: – A predicate defines the relation between the individuals being talked about and the real world – as well as with each other. – The entities (which can be abstract) participating in the relation are called arguments. • Consider: Gwen hit the baseball. – Two arguments in this example: Gwen and the baseball. These are elements in the world that are participants in the action described by the sentence. – The predicate here is hit. It expresses a relation between the two arguments. – Along the lines of tense/finiteness (i.e., whether the verb is left, leaves, (will) leave or (to) leave. We'll return to this later! – In terms of the number of Noun Phrases (NPs) and Prepositional Phrases (PPs) or clauses (CPs) they require. • This second kind of division is known as argument structure. • A particular predicate’s argument structure refers to the number of arguments that a particular predicate requires. Another name for argument structure is valency. Transitivity Intransitive Transitive Ditransitive Valency 1 argument 2 arguments 3 arguments Example smile, arrive hit, love, kiss give, put 6 Subcategories of Verbs • Predicates also place restrictions on the categories of the things that go with them. • A verb like ask can take either an NP or a clause (embedded sentence = CP) as a complement: – I asked [NP the question]. – I asked [CP if you knew the answer]. • But a verb like hit can only take an NP complement: – I hit [NP the ball]. – *I hit [CP that you knew the answer]. Subcategories of Verbs: transitives • Intransitives verbs require a single NP subject and nothing more. – John smiled – *John smiled Mary. • We’ll mark this with the feature [NP _ ], where the underscore represents where the verb would go in the sentence. • We can set up a series of features based on how many and what kind of arguments a verb takes. Subcategories of Verbs: transitives • Most transitive verbs require an NP object. We can mark these with the feature [NP_NP]. – An example of this is the verb hit. • Verbs like ask, think, say, etc. allow either an NP object or a CP (embedded clause) object. – Bill says dirty words. – Mary says that Philip left yesterday. • We can mark this using curly brackets { } and a slash. {NP/CP} means “a choice of NP or CP.” So the feature structure for predicates like this is [NP_{NP/CP}] Subcategories of Verbs: ditransitives (2) • The opposite kind of ditransitive is found with the verb put. Put requires an NP and a PP: – *I put [NP the box] [NP the book]. – I put [NP the book] [PP in the box]. • This kind of ditransitive takes the feature: [NP _ NP PP] Subcategories of Verbs: ditransitives (1) • Ditransitive verbs come of several major types. • Some ditransitives require two NP objects (the first is an indirect object the other a direct object.) – The verb spare is of this category. It does not allow an NP and a PP: • I spared [NP him] [NP the trouble]. • *I spared [NP the trouble] [PP to him]. • This category of ditransitive is marked with the feature: [NP_NP NP] Subcategories of Verbs: ditransitives (3) • We also have ditransitives that appear to be a combination of these two types and allow either an NP or a PP in the second position: – I gave [NP the box] [PP to Leah]. – I gave [NP Leah] [NP the box]. • These have the feature [NP _ NP {NP/PP}] 7 Subcategories of Verbs: ditransitives (4) • Finally we have ditranstives that take either two NPs, or one NP and one CP, or an NP and a PP: – I told [NP Daniel] [NP the story]. – I told [NP Daniel] [CP that the exam was cancelled]. – I told [NP the story] [PP to Daniel]. • Verbs like tell have the feature : [NP _ NP {NP/PP/CP}] Subcategories of Verbs • The following chart summarizes all the different subcategories of verb we’ve discussed: Subcategory V [NP_ ] (intransitive) Example leave V[NP _ NP] (transitive type 1) V[NP _{NP/CP}] (transitive type 2) V[NP _ NP NP] (ditransitive type 1) V[NP _ NP PP] (ditransitive type 2) V[NP _ NP {NP/PP}] (ditransitive type 3) hit ask spare put give V[NP _ NP {NP/PP/CP}] (ditransitive type 4) tell See you next time, 8