Download Ôn thi Syntax

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