1. Syntax

2. Syntax The study of phrases, clauses, and sentences.
1957 Noam Chomsky “Syntactic Structures”
Syntax

3. Observations The biggest house vs. theest big house
The big house vs. big the house
American history teacher or
American history teacher ?
What will Tiny Abner put on his head? Vs.
what will Tiny Abner put a hat on his head?
Katznelson is expected to run vs.
Katznelson is expected will run
Observations

4. Categories as theoretical constructs
Words are classified into categories according to their behavior:
Nouns can be made plural…
Adjectives can be made comparative and sup….
Determiners : only one article can precede the noun…
Verbs agree with their subjects …..
Categories as theoretical constructs

5. categories Lexical: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs
Phrasal: noun phrase, verb phrase, adjective phrase, adverb phrase
Each phrase contains at least one lexical category of the same basic type
NP, VP, AP, DP, AdvP, QP….
categories

6. Look! The brick house the old house
Is brick an adjective?
Use syntactic theory to account for the behavior of the following words: Walk-walked Week-weekest Wok-woked Weak-weakest Beast-beasts Best-bests
Look!

7. Left to right ordering See: The red car vs. red the car
Phrase structure (PS) rules:
which elements are permitted in a type of phrase
- the left-to-right ordering of those elements
-whether any of the elements are optional
Left to right ordering

8. SENTENCE: SNP-VP NOUN PHRASE: NP(Det)-(AP)-N-(PP) Ex
SENTENCE: SNP-VP NOUN PHRASE: NP(Det)-(AP)-N-(PP) Ex. Leea is eating the apple VERB PHRASE: VP V-( NP )-(PP) AP Ex. The battery died Chris hit the ball He drove the car into a tree They are in the kitchen The teacher is angry My boss was very happy with her decision
English PS rules

9. Types of phrases in English
ADJECTIVE PHRASE: AP (I) –Adj
Ex. He jumped very high AP
Adj N
PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE: PP  Prep-NP
Ex. I was at the hospital PP
Prep NP
Types of phrases in English

10. Practice Ice floats The red car John In a bad mood In a very bad mood
Gave a party for Mary
Was a fool
Was extremely silly
Ran those people hit that man on the head
Ran with difficulty
Ran extremely quickly
English PS :
SENTENCE: SNP-VP
NOUN PHRASE:
NP(Det)-(AP)-N-(PP)
VERB PHRASE:
VP V-( NP )-(PP) AP
ADJECTIVE PHRASE:
AP (I) –Adj
PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE:
PP  Prep-NP
Practice

11. Tree diagrams S dominates all of the other nodes
Node S directly dominates NP and VP
Nodes NP and VP are daughters of S
Nodes of Det (art) , N, and PP are sisters
Tree diagrams

12. Practice with trees The children laughed at the clown.
Haste makes waste.
Two very small packages arrived.
A meteor hit my red car.
The fastest runner won the longest race of all.
Learning a new language can be exhausting.
Practice with trees