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What is Syntax? • Syntax is the study of how sentences are formed. • Morphology is the study of how words are formed. • The tasks of syntax Breaking down the sentence into its component parts. A assigning some grammatical label to each constituents, to say what grammatical category it belongs to and what grammatical function it serves. – Grammatical categories = (e.g. noun or verb) – Grammatical function = (e.g. subject or predicate) An example: 1. The student talked. - This sentence has two constituents : (a). The student (b). Talked • Grammatical category of the constituent: – The student = Noun; Talked = Verb • Grammatical function of the constituent: – The student = Subject; Talked = Predicate. Syntactic units - Sentence => Clause => Phrase => Word => Morpheme Representing a syntactic structure • There are two ways to represent a syntactic structure: a). Labelled Bracketing [a square brackets ] = [ S John died] XP b). Tree Diagrams X XP X XP X X Examples Labelled Bracketing Sentence (S): e.g. The boy took the ball and (he) hid it. • [S1 [ S2 the boy took the ball] and [S3 hid it]] Clauses (S): • [ S1 the boy took the ball] and [S2 hid it] Phrases (P): • [S1 [ S2 [NPthe boy] [VP took [NPthe ball]]] and [S1[VP hid [NP it]]]] Words: [S1[S2[NP [Det the][N boy]] [VP [V took] [NP [Det the] [N ball]]]] [Cor and] [S3[NP [N he]] [VP [V hid] [NP [N it ]]]]] Representing a syntactic structure b). Tree Diagrams e.g. The boy took the ball and (he) hid it. S1 Coord and S2 NP Det the NP VP N boy V took PRN (he) NP Det the S3 N ball VP V hid NP PRN it Additional terminology Node is the point in a tree diagram which carries a category label (e.g. S, NP, VP, N … etc). Branch: e.g. S2, S3, and Coord are branches of S1 Terminal Node is one at the bottom of the tree (e.g. Det, N, V, PRN). Terminal nodes are immediately above words (i.e. S1 lexical items) Coord and S2 NP Det the NP VP N boy V took PRN (he) NP Det the S3 N ball VP V hid NP PRN it Constituency What is a constituent? • A constituent: is a syntactic unit which combines with other components to form a larger structure such as a phrase , a clause or a sentence. Types of constituents? Words : (e.g. Mary , take, he, smart …etc). Phrases: (e.g. [NP the boy] , [ VP took [NP the ball ]] Clauses: (e.g. [ S1 [ S2 The boy took the ball] and [S3 (he) hid it]]. How to test constituents? • Clefting is a process by which a constituent can be given more emphasis by placing it at the beginning of the sentence and surrounding it by the words it is/was ….. that • e.g. John gave this book to Mary on Friday. • It was on Friday that John gave this book to Mary. On Friday is a constituent. • Pseudo-clefting is a process that is similar to clefting but it involves the use the word what to form a sentence. • e.g. John gave this book to Mary on Friday. • What John did was gave this book to Mary on Friday. gave this book to Mary on Friday is a constituent. • Passivisation is a process by which a constituent undergoes movement from the object position to the subject position • e.g. John wrote several books. • Several books are written. Several books is a constituent. • Under coordination a constituent can be substituted by a single word. • Examples: a) Ahmad likes the math teacher and the students like him too. • A constituent may be fronted as a unit. • Examples: a) The minister received the letter directly from the king. b) Directly from the king, the minister received the letter. Phrase Structure Rules (PS rules) Different constituent structures may give rise to different meanings like the following. This is known as ambiguity. Ambiguous sentences S NP VP John V hit NP the man with an umbrella S NP John VP V hit NP the man PP with an umbrella Thank you See you next time 2014 KAU-Syntax/ LANE-334 10