1. Syntax

2. He is sleeping. (well-formed [grammatical])
*He are sleeping. (ill-formed [ungrammatical])
Native speaker’s grammatical judgment

3. Prescriptive vs. Descriptive grammar
Rule: Do not end a sentence with a preposition. (prescriptive)
Explaining the mental grammar. (descriptive)

4. Romeo loves Juliet vs. Juliet loves Romeo
The combination of linguistic expressions affect meaning.
Principle of Compositionality (productivity)
Syntax depends on semantics, but not all the time!

5. Syntax doesn’t depend on semantics, and vice versa.
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously
Me ate chicken burger.

6. Words behaving, syntactically, differently!
eat vs. devour
Ahmed eats.
*Ahmed devours.
Ahmed devours an apple.
Both words have different syntactic properties.

7. Syntactic properties:
1. Word order
2. Co-occurrence of expressions in a sentence

8. Word Order:
SVO: Ahmed eats an apple.
VSO: أكل الولد التفاحة
VOS: (Malagasy - Madagascar)
Manasa lamba amin’ny savony ny lehilahy.
washes clothes with the soap the man.
‘ The man washes the clothes with the soap.’

9. Co-occurrence
Some linguistic expressions allows or requires certain expressions to occur in a sentence
Ahmed devoured an apple.
An apple, Ahmed (arguments -complements-) of devoured.

10. Ahmed devoured a sweet candy.
a sweet (adjunct - optional) for devoured.
Ahmed and candy, are arguments of devoured.

11. Arguments
Adjuncts
Obligatory:
Ahmed seemed happy.
*Ahmed seemed.
Optional:
The cat was sleeping on the table.
The cat was sleeping.
The fluffy cat was sleeping.
Cannot have more than required:
Ahmed seemed cute.
*Ahmed seemed cute happy.
*Ahmed Ali seemed cute.
Can have as many as you like:
The gray cat was sleeping.
The fluffy gray cat was sleeping.
Ahmed left.
Ahmed left yesterday.
Ahmed left yesterday around 3P.M.
Cannot be freely ordered with respect to one another:
Ahmed put the book on the table.
*Ahmed put on the table the book.
Ahmed persuaded Ali to study linguistics.
*Ahmed persuaded to study linguistics Ali.
Can be freely ordered with respect to one another:
The gray fluffy cat was sleeping.
Ahmed left around 3P.M. yesterday.

12. Agreement Concerned with the grammatical form of the arguments
The inflectional form of an expression can convey information about: 1) number, 2) person, 3) gender, and other grammatical features

13. This girl came.
*This girls came.
*These girl came.
These girls came.

14. Some languages do not mark grammatical number on nouns at all, for example Korean. In the following example, ‘chaka’ can refer to one car or more than one.
kile chaka dallinta.
road car run
‘There is one car running on the road.’
‘There are (multiple) cars running on the road.’

15. Other types of agreement observed in languages
Other types of agreement observed in languages. For example, in Italian and some other languages, certain verbal forms have to agree with the subject in gender.

16. Lei è andata a Palermo.
‘She went to Palermo’
Lui è andato a Palermo.
‘He went to Palermo’

17. *Lei è andato a Palermo.
*Lui è andata a Palermo.

18. أحمد طالبٌ متميز
سارة طالبةٌ متميزة
*أحمد طالبةٌ متميز
*سارة طالبٌ متميزة

19. Syntactic Constituent
groups of expressions within a larger phrase forming a syntactic unit.
Ahmed is a student. (S)
is a student (VP)
Ahmed (NP)

20. Syntactic Constituency Tests:
Answers to questions:
The cat is on the mat. (check: on the mat)
Where is the cat? On the mat.
Clefting:
it takes the form of “it was X that Y”.
The cat on the mat.
It is the cat on the mat / It was the cat on the mat.

21. Syntactic categories in English
Syntactic Category
Relevant Properties
Example
S (sentence)
can occur in Ahmed thinks that _____
Ahmed is short
NP (noun phrase)
has the same distribution as a personal pronoun of a proper name
she, the cat under the bed
N (noun)
needs a determiner to its left to form an NP
cat, cute dog
Det (determiner)
occurs to the left of the noun to form an NP
the, every, this
Adj (adjective)
occurs between a determiner and a noun; can be a noun adjunct, that is, combines with a noun to its right which results in an expression that is also of category N
cute, gray, fluffy
VP (verb phrase)
consists minimally of a verb and all its complements; combines with an NP to its left which results in a sentence
slept, liked
TV (transitive verb)
needs an NP complement to form a VP
liked, devoured
DTV (ditransitive verb)
needs two NP complements to form a VP
gave, sent
SV (sentential complement verb)
needs a sentential complement to form a VP
believed, said
Adv (adverb)
can be a VP adjunct, that is, combines with a VP to its left which results in an expression that is also of category VP
fast, quickly. tomorrow
P (preposition)
combines with an NP to form a PP
at, for, with
PP (prepositional phrase)
can be a VP or an adjunct; consists of a preposition and its NP complements
a the table, for Ahmed, under the bed

22. Phrase Structure Rules
They are a recipe for syntactically combining expressions of certain syntactic categories. Along with the lexicon, phrase structure rules are a part of a descriptive grammar of some language.
S --> NP VP
NP --> Det N
N --> Adj N
VP --> SV S (Ahmed said the exam is easy.)