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CAS LX 522
Syntax I
Week 2a. Categories
Describing the grammatical
system
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Our goal is to describe the systematic
grammatical knowledge that people have.
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To describe how words can be combined
(and how they cannot be combined) into
sentences requires classification of words
into different groups that each share
syntactic properties, the syntactic
categories.
Grammatical categories
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A grammatical category is a class of
expressions which share a common set of
grammatical properties.
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Some that we know when we see:
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frog, utensil, liberty: noun
jump, know, donate: verb
smooth, intense, magenta, likely: adjective
rapidly, halfheartedly, effectively, well: adverb
on, under, aboard: preposition
Nouns
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Nouns generally are used to refer to something,
a person, an object, an abstract idea.
Nouns can often have a plural.
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But: sheep, deer
But: furniture
But: policy decisions
The distinction between singular and plural is a
grammatical distinction. The difference between
dog and cat is a difference of content, whereas
the difference between dog and dogs is
predictable if you know what dog means.
Predictable things are part of the grammar.
Inflectional morphology
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Morphology like the plural -s in English
that marks a grammatical property is
inflectional morphology.
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In a sense, these markings reflect
meaning.
Verbs
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Verbs carry inflectional morphology that
reflect tense and aspectual properties.
BASE
PERF
PAST
PRES
PROG
sew
sewn
sewed
sews
sewing
go
gone
went
goes
going
speak
spoken
spoke
speaks
speaking
see
seen
saw
sees
seeing
came
comes
coming
come
wait
waited
waits
waiting
meet
met
meets
meeting
cuts
cutting
cut
Derivational morphology
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Inflectional morphology is distinguished from
derivational morphology, which can be seen as
changing or adding to meaning.
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un: tie, untie.
iN: possible, impossible, regular, irregular, tolerable,
intolerable
re: retie, rewrite.
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This is still at a fairly intuitive level, of course…
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Derivational morphology and
category
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Derivational morphology often seems to be
sensitive to category and can change words
from one category to another.
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noun  adjective: ish, like, esque
verb  noun: er,
adjective/adverb  adjective/adverb: iN, un
adjective  noun: ness
…
The point is: we need to recognize categories of
words to adequately describe/explain language.
Sharing properties
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There are a number of morphological hints
(but they are not completely reliable, due
to irregularity):
nouns can have a plural (+s, usually)
 verbs inflect for 3sg agreement (usually)
 verbs inflect for tense/aspect: ing, en/ed.
 adjectives can often be emphasized with very,
as can adverbs.
 adverbs often end in ly.
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Distribution
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One of the best definitional characteristics
of a syntactic category is its distribution.
In general, you can substitute something
with another thing of the same syntactic
category.
Obvious is an adjective.
 It is obvious that Pat likes Tracy.
 It is likely that Pat likes Tracy.
 So, likely is also an adjective.
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Distribution
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They have no noun.
They can verb.
They are adjective.
Very adverb, very adjective.
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so long as it makes sense (e.g., with gradable
adjectives; #they are very absent)
Right preposition
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right over the house
Lexical and functional
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Nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs: These are
lexical categories. They carry significant and
arbitrary meaning, and they are open-class (new
ones can be invented).
But not all words are of this kind (except maybe
on telegrams).
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Telegram: Ancient form of instant messaging.
Sentences are held together by little “function
words” as well. These are the functional
categories.
Lexical and functional
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Functional categories are more like the syntactic
“glue” of a sentence, concerned more with
grammatical properties.
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Determiners: the, a(n)
Quantifiers (determiners): some, every
Demonstratives: that, this, those
Possessive pronouns: my, your
Any old pronouns: you, him, they
Infinitival to
Auxiliaries/Modals: have, be, do, can, should
Complementizers: that, for, if
Determiners
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Determiners generally come before a noun, and
come in a few different types.
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Articles: the, an.
Quantificational determiners: some, most
Interrogative determiner: which
Demonstratives: that, this
Possessive pronouns: my, your, their
These types are similar to… and different from…
one another. For now, we’ll lump them together.
Determiners v. adjectives
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Can we lump determiners together with
adjectives? Maybe we could have a simpler
theory of categories if we just put determiners
and adjectives together.
They both come before nouns (in English)
They both seem to “modify” the noun.
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Tall building.
That building.
A building.
My building.
Determiners v. adjectives
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The big fluffy pink rabbit
The my rabbit
The that rabbit
Every my rabbit
To properly describe the distribution of these
elements, we really need to separate them into
two classes. Lumping them together will not give
us a simpler descriptive system.
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Determiners cannot co-occur with other determiners,
and must precede any adjectives.
Adjectives can occur with other adjectives.
Regarding chairs and
furniture
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Nouns can be broken up into two classes, the
mass nouns that refer to “stuff” and the count
nouns that refer to things we can count.
Furniture is a mass noun, chair is a count noun.
The use of determiners is sensitive to this
difference. What are you looking for? *Chair,
*fancy chair, a chair, that chair, furniture, fancy
furniture.
It seems that in a fragment response, you need
to have a determiner if you’re going to use a
count noun. An adjective won’t do, hence
adjectives can’t be the same as determiners.
Pronouns
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Pronouns differ from nouns in a couple of
ways, and should be considered a
functional category.
The pronouns of English express person,
number, and gender (3rd person).
1st person: I, me, we, us
 2nd person: you
 3rd person: he, she, him, her, they, them, it
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Case
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Pronouns differ from regular nouns in that
they give an indication of their function in
the sentence. They are marked for case.
Subject: he, she, I, they
Non-subject: him, her, me, them
You and it do not vary regardless of
function, but they could hardly be of a
different category that I/me, they/them.
Auxiliaries and modals
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Different from verbs: have, be, do, will, can,
might.
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In questions, auxiliaries “invert” with the subject,
verbs don’t.
Will you leave? Can you leave? Do you leave often?
*Leave you often?
Auxiliaries occur before not, verbs don’t.
You will not leave. You did not leave. *You left not.
Notice the extra do: “do-support”.
Auxiliaries are responsible for things like tense,
mood, modality, aspect, voice. Grammatical
things.
Infinitival to
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I like to go to the movies.
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Kind of looks like a preposition, but it’s not.
Prepositions take nouns, to as a P has a
kind of contentful meaning (endpoint of a
path). Infinitival to takes (bare) verbs only,
means nothing (apart from “untensed”).
Infinitival to like a modal?
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To and modals (can, might, should) seem
to appear in the same place (between the
subject and a bare verb form).
I like that John can pick up his dry-cleaning.
 I’d like for John to pick up his dry-cleaning.
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I (a.k.a. INFL)
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This whole class of functional elements (modals,
to, auxiliaries) seem to be responsible for tense
(and subject agreement, as we’ll discuss).
These are the things reflected by the verbal
inflectional morphology.
These elements seem to behave basically alike,
so we’ll suppose they are of a single category, I
(for Inflection).
In many languages, infinitives are marked with a
special inflectional ending, not unlike finite
verbs. So, we might take to to be marking a
special kind of tense: untensed (non-finite).
Complementizers
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Pat will leave.
I heard that Pat will leave.
I wonder if Pat will leave.
I am anxious for Pat to leave.
It is perfectly possible to embed a sentence
inside another one. When we do this, it is
indicated with a complementizer (introducing a
complement clause).
The P for v. the C for
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For is of course a preposition (I looked for
you for three hours), but not when it is
introducing clauses.
He headed right for the back row.
 *He’d like right for the class to be over.
 *He expressed interest in the class to be over.
 Who would you vote for in the primary?
 *Who are you anxious for to win the primary?
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The D that v. the C that
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Same kind of thing holds for that.
I like that movie.
 I heard that the movie involved guinea pigs.
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Sometimes you can replace for clauses
with that clauses.
It is important that Pat votes.
 It is important for Pat to vote.
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So…
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Lexical categories:
N: noun
 V: verb
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A: adjective
P: preposition
Adv: adverb
Functional categories:
I: inflection/aux/modal
 C: complementizer
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D: determiner
PRN: Pronoun
[A labeled ] [N brackets ]
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A common way of indicating the syntactic
categories of words is by using labeled brackets,
putting [brackets] around the word and marking
the first one with a syntactic category label.
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[N Pat] [I is] [A anxious] [C for] [N Tracy]
[I to] [V win] [D the] [N election] [P in]
[N November] [Adv decisively].
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