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Almen sproglig viden og metode (General linguistics) IntroductiontotheStudyofSyntax DN´ CLM, engelsk tt NP NPP PNP DN´ NPP P NP Ø
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Grammar Syntax: the structure of sentences Morphology: the structure of words
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Rules Syntax describes the rules by which words combine into sentences Morphology describes the rules by which morphemes combine into words
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Grammaticality Meaningfulness Ambiguity Some basic notions
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Grammatical or …?
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… not?
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Meaningfulness Colorless green ideas sleep furiously - vs. grammaticality *Green furiously ideas sleep colorless
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Ambiguity
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What he means… syntheticbuffalohides …and what she scribbles syntheticbuffalohides
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The hierarchical structure of sentences late - switch the order of the first two words? late*secretary the general was late [The secretary general] is a syntactic unit – a constituent - switch the order of the first two constituents (better – but not yet quite correct) hewas ? the secretary generalwas ? Rule of question formation:
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The aim of syntax to identify the constituents of sentences to name those constituents* to determine their syntactic functions * another way to say this: to assign constituents to syntactic categories to determine their semantic functions
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Principles of Syntactic Analysis Thisishowitworks S NPVP VS´ AdvP NPVP S
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Identifying constituent boundaries: the adverbial test [All the students may pass their exams] [[Naturally] [all the students may pass their exams]] [[All the students] [may] [naturally] pass their exams] [[All the students] [naturally] may pass their exams] [[All the students] [may] [ pass their exams] [naturally ]] *All [naturally] the students may pass their exams *All the [naturally] students may pass their exams *All the students may pass [naturally] their exams *All the students may pass their [naturally] exams naturally
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Identifying constituents… [Naturally [all the students may pass their exams]] [[All the students] [may] naturally [pass their exams]] [[All the students] naturally [may pass their exams]] [[All the students] [may] [ pass their exams] [naturally]] Naturally = of course Naturally = in a natural way [Sentence adverbial] [Manner adverbial]
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Identifying constituents: the substitution + deletion tests [All the students] [The students] [All students] [Students] [They] [All] *[The] [may pass their exams]
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Identifying constituents: the substitution + deletion tests [may pass their exams] [do] [may] [pass their exams] [pass] [*may their exams] [All the students] Constituents that may substitute for each other belong to the same distributional class, or paradigm
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Identifying constituents: movement tests [[All the students] [may] [pass their exams]] [[May][all the students] [pass their exams]] [[Pass their exams] is what [all the students] [[may]] [[Their exams] is what [all the students] [may] [pass]] [[The students] [may] [all] [pass] [their exams]] *[[Pass their ][all the students] [may] [exams]] Only constituents at some level of analysis may move!
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All constituents identified [[[All] [[the] [students]]] [[may] [[pass] [[their][exams]]]]] Allthestudentsmaypasstheirexams This is a simple box-diagram
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Naming constituents: lexical and phrasal categories Lexical categories N (oun) V (erb) A (djective) Adv (erb) D (eterminers) Subord (inator) Coord (inator) P (reposition) Interjection - Pro (noun) - Proper (name) Phrasal categories NP VP AP AdvP DP PP S (entence) CL (ause) - Main; Lexical - Aux (iliary); Modal N´ Phrasal categories are said to be projections from lexical categories Clausal and sentential categories V´
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Naming constituents [ S [ DP [ D All] [ NP [ D the] [ N students]]] [ VP [ Aux may] [ VP [ V pass] [ NP [ D their][ N exams]]]]] This is a socalled ’labelled bracketing’ It is difficult to read, therefore …
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exams Allthestudents maypasstheir VP NP NDD DP AuxV DN S S DP [ ] [ [[ [ [ [[[[ [ [[ ]]]] ]]]]]]]]
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exams Allthestudents maypasstheir VP NP NDD DP AuxV DN S S DP [ ] [ [ [ [ [ [[[[ [ [[ ]]]] ]]]]]]]]
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S VP Aux VNP D may pass DN theirexams NP DN All thestudents This is a so-called tree diagram, growing the wrong way. The top node [ S ], is the root, the lines are branches, and the words at the bottom are leaves. The nodes connected by the lines carry category labels.
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S DP VP Aux VNP D may pass DN theirexams NP DN All thestudents Naming constituents
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Syntactic functions (’kryds og bolle’) All the studentsmay passtheir exams Subject Verb ○ ○ Object Δ Δ Is this right?
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Syntactic functions (’kryds og bolle’) All the studentsmay passtheir exams Subject Verb ○ ○ Object Δ Δ Is this right?
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Syntactic functions (’kryds og bolle’) All the studentsmay passtheir exams Subject Verb ○ ○ Object Δ Δ This is (almost) right - but as you can see, (at least) two levels of analysis are needed Predicate
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S DP VP Aux VNP All the students may passtheir exams Assigning syntactic functions to constituents SubjectPredicate PredicatorObject Operator The important thing here is that V(erb ) is reserved as a category label. The syntactic function of the verb is split into two, i.e. an Operator function (the finite auxiliary) and a Predicator function (the lexical verb).
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Terminological problems Grundled (subjekt) Prædikat - Verballed (Objekt) -Genstandsled -Hensynsled Omsagnsled t. grundled Omsagnsled t. genstandsled - (Adled) Adverbialled Danish Subject Predicate Operator Predicator Object - direct - indirect Subject Complement Object Complement Adverbial Complement Adjunct (Adverbial) English
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Conceptual problems Syntactic functions at clause level: Subject, Predicate, Adjunct - but what about functions within phrases? S PPNPVP As a matter of factall the studentsmay pass their exams AdjunctSubjectPredicate
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Standard functions within VP VP Aux VNPmay PredicatorObject Operator passtheir exams ? We’ll return to the question mark later
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S DPVP Aux VNP D may pass DN theirexams NP DN All thestudents Assigning syntactic functions to constituents SubjectPredicate ? ? ? ?Predicator ? Object Operator??
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Adjunct positions… S DP VP Aux VNP D may pass DN theirexams NP DN All thestudents naturally Naturally AdvP naturally AdvP naturally
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Adjunct positions… S DP VP Aux VNP D may pass DN theirexams NP DNAll thestudents naturally AdvP naturally AdvP naturally
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More syntax next time!
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