IV. SYNTAX

1.1 What is syntax? Syntax is the study of how sentences are structured, or in other words, it tries to state what words can be combined with others to form sentences and in what order. 1.2 Categories word-level categories Category refers to a group of linguistic items which fulfill the same or similar functions in a particular language such as a sentence, a noun phrase or a verb. A fundamental fact about words in all human languages is that they can be grouped together into a relatively small number of classes, called syntactic categories. Lexical categories Major lexical categories Minor lexical categories (Noun, Verb, Adj. Prep) (Det, Deg, Qual, Aux, Con) To determine a word’s category, three criteria are usually employed, namely meaning, inflection and distribution.

4.2.2 Phrase categories and their structures Syntactic units that are built around a certain word category are called phrases, the category of which is determined by the word category around which the phrase is build. Phrases that are formed of more than one word usually contain the following elements: head, specifier and complement. The word around which a phrase is formed is termed head. The words on the left side of the heads are said to function as specifiers. The words on the right side of the heads are complements. 4.3 Phrase structure rule A certain word can only concur with certain other words. There must be certain grammatical mechanism that ensures the appropriate positions that specifiers, head, and complements occupy in phrase structure. Such special type of grammatical mechanism that regulates the arrangement of elements that make up a phrase is called a phrase structure rule. NP (Det) N (PP) XP VP (Qual) V (NP) AP (Deg) A (PP) Specifier X Complement PP (Deg) P (NP)

The XP rule: XP (specifier) X (complement) XP(phrase level) X- Specifier X (head) complement XP (specifier) X- X- X (complement) Coordination rule Some structures are formed by joining two or more elements of the same type with the help of a conjunction such as and or or. Such phrases are called coordinate structures and this phenomenon is known as coordination. Coordination exhibits four important properties First, there is no limit on te number of coordinated categories that can appear prior to the conjunction. Second, a category at any level (a head or an entire XP) can be coordinated. Third, coordinated categories must be of the same type. Fourth, the category type of the coordinate phrase is identical to the category type of the elements being conjoined. The coordination rule can be formulated as below: X X *Con X

4.4 Phrase elements Specifiers Specifiers have both special semantic and syntactic roles. Semantically, they help make more precise the meaning of the head. Syntactically, they typically mark a phrase boundary Complements The information about a word’s complement is included in the head and termed Subcategorization. Categorization information together with the phrase structure rules ensures that lexical items appear in the appropriate types of tree structures. The number of complement is not fixed. The XP Rule ( revised) XP (Specifier) X (Complement* ) Words which introduce the sentence complement are termed complementizers. The sentence introduced by the complementizer is called a complement clause. Thus the whole italicized part in the above sentence is called a complement phrase and the construction in which the complement phrase is embedded is called matrix clause.

4.4.3 Modifiers Modifiers specify optionally expressible properties of heads. XP (Spec) (Mod) X (Complement *) (Mod) 4.5 Sentences (The S rule) InflP(=S) NP VP Infl 4.6 Transformations Auxiliary movement Transformation: a special type of rule that can move an element from one position to another. Inversion: moves the auxiliary from the Infl position to a position to the left of the subject. Inversion: Move Infl to the left of the subject NP. A type of inversion operation involving the movement of a word from the head position in another is also known as head movement.

4.6.2 Do insertion Do insertion: Insert interrogative do into an empty Infl position Deep structure and surface structure There are two levels so syntactic structure. The first, formed by the XP rule in accordance with the head’s subcategorization properties, is called deep structure. The second, corresponding to the final syntactic form of the sentence which results from appropriate transformation, is called surface structure. The organization of the syntactic component of the grammat can be depicted below. The XP Rule DEEP STRUCTURE (subcategorization restricts choice of complements) Transformations SURFACE STRUCTURE

4.6.4 Wh Movement Wh movement: move the wh phrase to the beginning of the sentence. Wh movement(revised): move a wh phrase to the specifier position under CP Move a and constraints on transformations There is a general rule for all the movement rules. This general rule is referred to as Move a, where ‘alpha’ is a cover term for any element that can be moved from one place to another. Reference books Radford, A Syntax: A Minimalist Introduction. Cambridge University Press The End