Dr. Monira Al-Mohizea MORPHOLOGY & SYNTAX WEEK 12

Prototype theory Prototype theory was developed by Eleanor Rosch in 1970s. The same idea of prototype categories with degrees of membership applies to grammar, just as some birds are less ‘birdy’ than others, so some nouns, verbs are ‘less nouny or ‘less verby’ than others. The typical nouns are those referring to people, animal, things. And among these are those which children learn first. The typical verb is a ‘doing word’. E.g. walk, eat. Therefore, when defining grammatical terms, we use ‘typical’ or ‘general’ to indicate that there are fuzzy boundaries of grammatical classes especially in relation to meaning.  Discuss examples of typical vs. less typical noun. plurals vs.??

Conclusion.. Grammar is not a precise logical or mathematical system. It has much in common with systems or organisms in real life- in the sense that it involves typical vs. atypical membership.

Word classes and frequency Comparing nouns and pronouns: Type: is a unique form of a word (e.g. v+ed pattern) If we count the tokens (i.e. individual instances) of word classes in texts, we find that the use of word classes varies greatly in frequency. In general, then, content word classes have become more frequent, and function words less frequent.  The most notable difference is in nouns and pronouns: nouns are very common in typical written texts - especially in newspapers - while pronouns are very common, in speech. Here are typical examples from a written text and a spoken dialogue. The aviation and casino kingpin Kirk Kekorian finally sold MGM’ film entertainment division to Path boss Gincarlo Parretti inNovembr…) I think you'll find it counts towards your income.

Compound-complex sentence A compound-complex sentence: is a sentence consists of: two or more independent clauses (main clauses) and at least one dependent (subordinate clause).  Example: Consider?? Although she worked hard to gain recognition, many people did not know who she was, and her friends did not even appreciate her work.

Solution.. Although she worked hard to gain recognition (dependent clause), many people did not know who she was (independent clause), and (coordinating conjunction) her friends did not even appreciate her work (independent clause).

GRAMMATICAL RELATIONS We have looked at the types of sentences based on the usage, form, and structure. Now we will focus on the internal structure of sentence, involving the grammatical relations (syntactic functions) Commonly, the basic pattern of the simple English sentence is: (Adjunct) + (Subject) + Predicate + (Object) + (Complement) + (Adjunct) (A) (S) P (O) (C) (A) where only the Predicate (P) is essential, and in which the Adjunct (A) is mobile.

NOTE: A noun (person or thing) which performs the action of a verb, or which Subject is joined to a description by a verb. (S) A part of sentence or clause containing a verb and stating something Predicate about the subject. (P) Object A noun (person or thing) that is affected by the action of a verb or (O) involved in the result of an action that is done by a subject. Adjunct A word used as modifier in a sentence. (A)Complement A word or word group that completes the predicate in a sentence. (C)

Example, consider ? The man called the boy suddenly. (Noun Part) ? (Verb Part) ? (Noun Part) ? (Adverb Part) ?  Think in terms of (S P O A) pattern

A complement Complement (C) is word or a group of words that involve “linking verbs” (e.g. APPEAR, BECOME, BE, SEEM, GROW, LOOK, TASTE, SMELL, SOUND, FEEL, etc.) to complete the predicate in a sentence. E.g., She is beautiful. As the name suggests, a complement is something that completes something.  Examples: She becomes a doctor. He was in the bus. Your perfume smells very good. Before the show, she seemed nervous. Thus, beautiful, a doctor, in the bus, very good, and nervous are complements.

Types of Complements (1)Subject complement: is the complement that provides information about the subject  E.g. He was in the bus. S P C (‘in the bus’ provides the information about the subject he). (2) Object complement: is the complement that provides information on the object,  E.g. (1) The man called his brother a fool. S P O C (‘a fool’ provides the information about the object his brother) (2) Susan found the assignment difficult. S P O C (‘difficult’ provides the information about the object assignment)

Example Example of the complete basic pattern of simple English sentence: John often called his brother a fool. S A P O C

Sentence patterns There are four kind of operations that can be used to examine a sentence variation without changing its semantic aspect: 1) Insertion (Addition) 2) Deletion 3) Substitution 4) Transposition (Permutation)

Insertion & deletion 1. Insertion (Addition): is the process of putting one or more constituents inside a sentence.  Example: The boy is clever. → The handsome(insertion1) boy is very(insertion2) clever. 2. Deletion: is the process of removing one or more constituents of a sentence.  Example:  The handsome boy is very clever. → The boy is clever.

Substitution & Transposition 3. Substitution: is the process of substituting both subject or object into pronouns, or verb phrases into auxiliary verbs.  Examples: The young man visited her mother → He visited her. 4. Transposition (Permutation): is the process of exchanging the position or the order of constituents in a sentence without changing the grammatical and semantic aspects.  Examples: 1.The man called the boy suddenly. S P O A 2.The man suddenly called the boy. S A P O 3.Suddenly the man called the boy. A S P O

GRAMMATICAL vs. UNGRAMMATICAL In English and in every language, every sentence is a sequence of words, but not every sequence of words is a sentence. Sequences of words that conform to the rules of syntax are “grammatical”, and those that violate the syntactic rules are called “ungrammatical”. Utterances (spoken sentences) which are constructed appropriately based on grammatical rules are normally called “grammatical sentences”; while utterances which are not constructed based on the grammatical rules are called “ungrammatical sentences”.

Example In linguistics, an ungrammatical sentence is normally marked with an asterisk (*) – sometimes two in front of it.  Example: a) The mother kissed the girl. (grammatical) b) *The mother kissing the girl. (ungrammatical)

GRAMMATICAL & ACCEPTABLE As “grammatical” refers to the condition in which the utterance is constructed appropriately based on grammatical rules, “Acceptable” is used to decide whether or not an utterance (sentence) can be accepted in case of form or the effectiveness of the sentence.

Consider.. The man hit the dog. (grammatical-acceptable) The dog chased the cat. (grammatical-acceptable) The cat died. (grammatical-acceptable) Based on the structure, we can combine the three sentences as follow: The cat that the dog that the man hit chased died. (grammatical-unacceptable) Most native speakers would not accept the sentence above. It is certainly grammatical in that all we have done is add one adjective clause “that the man hit” that describes the dog. However, the consecutive serial verbs (hit-chased-died) make the sentence unacceptable.

When they are embedded within a sentence, most people cannot accept more than two adjective clauses. However, as soon as the adjective clauses occur at the end of the sentence, we can accept any number of them. Thus, the previous sentence will be both grammatical and acceptable in this structure: This is the man that hit the dog that chased the cat that died. (grammatical-acceptable)

AMBIGUOUS & INTERPRETABLE When a word or phrase has more than one possible meaning and may cause confusion, this is called “lexical ambiguity”. This is a common feature of English and of many other languages.  Example: CHIP (Lexical Ambiguous) can be: a small piece of wood a long thin piece of potato a small piece of silicon

Syntactic ambiguity There is “syntactic ambiguity” where a structure is capable of more than one interpretation.  Example: {Visiting relatives can cause problems} This sentence is ambiguous because it can be interpreted as: 1. Relatives who visit us can cause problems. OR 2. When we visit relatives, there can be problems.

Thank you