1. Introduction to Linguistics
SYNTAX
Introduction to Linguistics

2. BASIC IDEAS

3. What is a sentence?

4. Grammaticality Grammatical vs. ungrammatical
well formed vs. ill formed
words must conform to specific patterns determined by the syntactic rules of the language
based on
syntactic rules
NOT based on
what is taught in school
whether it is meaningful
whether you have heard the sentences before.

5. Syntactic categories
Lexical categories
Phrasal categories

6. Lexical categories Open lexical categories Closed lexical categoreis
nouns
verbs
adjectives
Adverbs
Closed lexical categoreis
Pronouns
prepositions
Auxiliary verbs
determiners (articles, demonstratives, quantifiers)

7. PHRASE STRUCTURE

8. Phrasal categories Verb phrase (VP) Noun phrase (NP)
Prepositional phrase (PP)

9. Phrase structure (PS) rules
What are PS rules?
How words of different parts of speech are connected.
Different languages have different PS rules
English
An adjective is placed before a noun.
A beautiful woman
French
An adjective is placed either before or after a noun.
Une belle femme ‘a beautiful woman’
Une femme fatale ‘an attractive woman’

10. Writing PS Rules Books NP->N Read: An NP is composed of a noun.
A book
NP -> Det N
John’s book
NP -> Pos N
Good books; a good book
NP -> Det Adj N
NP -> Adj N
NP -> (Det) (adj) N
Books on the table
NP -> N (PP)
The PS rule of an NP
NP -> (Det) (adj) N (PP)

11. Phrase structure (PS) rules in English
NP -> (Det) (adj) N (PP)
NP -> Pronoun
VP -> ?
AP -> ?
PP -> ?
CP -> COMP (that) S
COMP: complementizer=that, if, unless
S -> ?

12. Phrase structure (PS) rules in English
NP -> (Det) (adj) N (PP)
NP -> pronoun
VP -> V (NP) (PP) (CP)
AP -> Adj (PP)
PP -> P NP
CP -> COMP (that) S
COMP: complementizer=that, if, unless
S -> NP (Aux) VP

13. A Tree Diagram S VP NP NP Det N PP V Det N P N The boy from Taiwan
knew
the
answer

14. What does a tree diagram show?
Speakers’ syntactic knowledge of sentence structure
the linear order of the words
the categorization of words into particular syntactic categories (i.e. constituents)
the hierarchical structure of the syntactic categories

15. Grow your own trees. The sun melted the ice.
A fast car with twin cams sped by the children on the grassy lane.
The boy put the toy in the box.
The reporter realized that the senator lied.
A stranger whispered to the Soviet agent on the corner that a dangerous spy from the CIA loved coffee.

16. What can tree diagrams explain?
Structural ambiguity
long-distance relationships

17. Structural ambiguity
A sentence may have two interpretations due to different structural compositions of constituents.
Example :
The boy left Mary with a broken heart.

18. Structural ambiguity S NP VP Det N NP V N PP P NP The boy left Mary
with
a broken heart

19. Structural ambiguity (2) **更正**NP VP
Det N NP V PP N NP P
left
The
boy
Mary
with
a broken heart

20. Long-distance relationships- The guy who has two houses and three cars (seem, seems) kind of cute.

21. How do we know that it is a constituent?
The substitution test
Mr. Smith asked the students to leave.
Mr. Smith asked them to leave.
Clefts: It is/was X that Y
It was in this house [PP] that they had a party _____[PP].
*It was this house [NP/PP?] that they had a party in _____[PP].
The movement test
They had a party in the house [PP].
In the house [PP] they had a party.
The coordination/conjunction test
They went into the bookstore [VP] and bought a book [VP].
*They went into the bookstore [VP] and a book [NP].

22. Questions?