1 LIN 1310B Introduction to Linguistics Prof: Nikolay Slavkov TA: Qinghua Tang CLASS 11, Feb 9, 2007

2 Today Announcements and Reminders: -Start reading chapter 5. -DGDs resume as of next week (Feb 13) Today’s Lecture: - Start Syntax - Start going over Test 1

3 Syntax Syntax is the study of sentence structure. It examines the rules for sentence formation, i.e. how words are combined. It seeks to find out why certain sentences are grammatical and others ungrammatical. It tries to explain why and how we create an infinite number of grammatical utterances with a finite number of resources.

4 Key terms in syntactic theory lexicon computational system merge move Universal Grammar (UG) transformations

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6 Syntax One of the main issues syntax deals with is word order. But not necessarily only linear word order. Syntactic structure is not linear – i.e. it does not consist of a string of words put together in one line or on one level. Syntactic structure is hierarchical and works at more than one level; it consists of groups of words or phrases that act like units.

7 Examples Consider the following data: I wore these boots last week. I wore them last week. them = these boots  ‘these boots’ acts as a unit  ‘last week’ also seems to be a unit intuitively  but ‘boots last’ does not seem to be a unit.

8 Examples Compare these data: John went to the store. Mary did so too. did so = went to the store  ‘went to the store’ is a unit. Mary went there. there=to the store  ‘to the store’ is a unit Mary went to it it=the store => ‘the store’ is a unit

9 Examples Compare these data: John went to the store on Rideau street to buy eggs. Mary did so too. did so = went to the store on Rideau street to buy eggs  ‘went to the store on Rideau street to buy eggs’ is a unit.

10 Constituents The above examples illustrate that syntactic structure is not linear. It is organized in units, called constituents, which combine with one another. Constituents can be smaller or bigger (e.g. two words vs. three words, etc.) A larger constituent can contain several smaller constituents.

11 Syntactic trees Because syntax structure is not linear, we use syntactic trees to analyse sentences. A syntactic tree has a hierarchical structure combining the different constituents at different levels.

12 Example of a syntactic tree

13 Syntactic categories Before we get to analysing constituents and different levels of structure, and before we learn how to build syntactic trees, we have to consider the different syntactic categories (parts of speech) first. We have to be able to identify syntactic categories. Syntactic categories can be divided into lexical categories and non-lexical or functional categories.

14 Syntactic categories

15 Determining syntactic categories Three different criteria can be used to determine reliably a syntactic category: 1)Meaning 2)Inflection 3)Distribution

16 1) Meaning Nouns: name entities –objects (book) –people (Mary) Verbs: designate –actions (eat) –sensations (feel) –states (be, seem) Adjectives: designate properties and attributes of what nouns name (heavy book) Adverbs: Denote properties and attributes of what verbs designate (eat quickly) Adverbs tell us ‘how, why, where, when’.

17 However… Meaning alone is not always enough to determine the word category. e.g. difficulty, truth, likelihood brush, run, work, etc… like vs. fond We can’t determine if these are nouns or verbs based only on the meaning of the word in isolation.

18 2) Inflection Inflection can sometimes help determine the word category. e.g. nouns take plural –s verbs take –ing, ed, -s, adjectives take –er, -est.

19 However… Inflection alone is not always reliable e.g. intelligent, beautiful (*-er *-est) bravery, knowledge, moisture (* pl -s) overreacting (-ing derivational or inflectional???)

20 3) Distribution Nouns occur with a determiner Verbs occur with an auxiliary Adjectives occur with a degree word E.g. a car, the book has gone, will stay very beautiful, so lucky

21 However… Distribution alone is not enough to determine the category unambiguously E.g. degree words can occur not only with adjectives, but also with adverbs (very quick, very quickly) E.g.determiners don’t always appear next to nouns: an adjective may intervene (a quick car).