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Syntax
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The study of phrases, clauses, and sentences.
1957 Noam Chomsky “Syntactic Structures”
Syntax
The biggest house vs. theest big house
 The big house vs. big the house
 American history teacher or
American history teacher ?
 What will Tiny Abner put on his head? Vs.
what will Tiny Abner put a hat on his head?
 Katznelson is expected to run vs.
Katznelson is expected will run
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Observations
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Words are classified into categories
according to their behavior:
◦ Nouns can be made plural…
◦ Adjectives can be made comparative and sup….
◦ Determiners : only one article can precede the
noun…
◦ Verbs agree with their subjects …..
Categories as
theoretical constructs
Lexical: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs
 Phrasal: noun phrase, verb phrase,
adjective phrase, adverb phrase
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Each phrase contains at least one lexical
category of the same basic type
NP, VP, AP, DP, AdvP, QP….
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categories
The brick house
the old house
Is brick an
adjective?
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Use syntactic theory
to account for the
behavior of the
following words:
Walk-walked
Week-weekest
Wok-woked
Weak-weakest
Beast-beasts
Best-bests
Look!
See: The red car vs. red the car
 Phrase structure (PS) rules:
- which elements are permitted in a type of
phrase
- the left-to-right ordering of those
elements
-whether any of the elements are optional
Left to right ordering
SENTENCE: SNP-VP
NOUN PHRASE: NP(Det)-(AP)-N-(PP)
Ex. Leea is eating the apple
VERB PHRASE: VP V-( NP )-(PP)
AP
Ex. The battery died
Chris hit the ball
He drove the car into a tree
They are in the kitchen
The teacher is angry
My boss was very happy with her decision
English PS rules
ADJECTIVE PHRASE: AP (I) –Adj
Ex. He jumped very high
AP
Adj
N
PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE: PP  Prep-NP
Ex. I was at the hospital
PP
Prep
NP
Types of phrases in English
Ice floats
The red car
John
In a bad mood
In a very bad mood
Gave a party for Mary
Was a fool
Was extremely silly
Ran those people hit
that man on the head
• Ran with difficulty
• Ran extremely
quickly
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Practice
English PS :
SENTENCE: SNP-VP
NOUN PHRASE:
NP(Det)-(AP)-N-(PP)
VERB PHRASE:
VP V-( NP )-(PP)
AP
ADJECTIVE PHRASE:
AP (I) –Adj
PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE:
PP  Prep-NP
Tree diagrams
S dominates all of the other nodes
Node S directly dominates NP and VP
Nodes NP and VP are daughters of S
Nodes of Det (art) , N, and PP are
sisters
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The children laughed at
the clown.
Haste makes waste.
Two very small packages
arrived.
A meteor hit my red car.
The fastest runner won
the longest race of all.
Learning a new language
can be exhausting.
Practice with trees