Download (PS) rules - kuas.edu.tw

SYNTAX
Introduction to Linguistics
•BASIC IDEAS
•What is a sentence?
•A
string of random words?
• If it is a sentence, does it have to be
meaningful?
•Grammaticality
•
•
•
Grammatical vs. ungrammatical
• well formed vs. ill formed
• words must conform to specific patterns determined
by the syntactic rules of the language
based on
• syntactic rules
NOT based on
• what is taught in school
• whether it is meaningful
• whether you have heard the sentences before.
Syntactic
categories
Lexical
categories
Phrasal
categories
•Lexical categories
Open lexical categories
• nouns
• verbs
• adjectives
• Adverbs
Closed lexical categories
• Pronouns
• prepositions
• Auxiliary verbs
• determiners (articles, demonstratives, quantifiers)
•PHRASE STRUCTURES
•Phrasal categories
•
•
•
Verb phrase (VP)
Noun phrase (NP)
Prepositional phrase (PP)
•Phrase structure (PS) rules
•
•
What are PS rules?
• How words of different parts of speech are connected.
Different languages have different PS rules
• English
• An adjective is placed before a noun.
• A beautiful woman
• French
• An adjective is placed either before or after a noun.
• Une belle femme ‘a beautiful woman’
• Une femme fatale ‘an attractive woman’
•Writing PS Rules
Books
• NP->N
• Read: An NP is composed of a noun.
A book
• NP -> Det N
John’s book
• NP -> Pos N
Good books; a good book
• NP -> Det Adj N
• NP -> Adj N
• NP -> (Det) (adj) N
Books on the table
• NP -> N (PP)
The PS rule of an NP
• NP -> (Det) (adj) N (PP)
•Phrase structure (PS) rules in English
• NP
-> (Det) (adj) N (PP)
• NP -> Pronoun
• VP -> ?
• AP -> ?
• PP -> ?
• CP -> COMP (that) S
•
•S
COMP: complementizer=that, if, unless
-> ?
•Phrase structure (PS) rules in English
NP -> (Det) (adj) N (PP)
NP -> pronoun
VP -> V (NP) (PP) (CP)
AP -> Adj (PP)
PP -> P NP
CP -> COMP (that) S
• COMP: complementizer=that, if, unless
S -> NP (Aux) VP
•A Tree Diagram
S
VP
NP
Det
NP
N
PP
V
Det
P
The
boy
N
N
from Taiwan
knew
the
answer
•What does a tree diagram show?
• Speakers’
syntactic knowledge of sentence
structure
the linear order of the words
• the categorization of words into particular syntactic
categories (i.e. constituents)
• the hierarchical structure of the syntactic
categories
•
•Grow your own trees.
• The
sun melted the ice.
• The boy put the toy in the box.
• The reporter realized that the senator
lied.
• A fast car with twin cams sped by the
children on the grassy lane.
• A stranger whispered to the Soviet agent
that a dangerous spy from the CIA loved
coffee.
•What can tree diagrams explain?
• Structural
ambiguity
•Structural ambiguity
•A
sentence may have two interpretations due
to different structural compositions of
constituents.
• Example :
•
The boy left Mary with a broken heart.
•Structural ambiguity
S
NP
Det
VP
N
NP
V
N
PP
P
The
boy
left
Mary
with
NP
a broken heart
•Structural ambiguity (2)
S
NP
Det
VP
N
V
N
The
boy
left
PP
NP
Mary
P
NP
with
a broken heart
Questions?