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451 Chapter 5: Syntax Making it stick together… Covering Sections 1-3…
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Why Syntax?
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Key Vocab Grammatical (& ungrammatical) Transformational Grammar Universal Grammar Lexicon Computational System Merge Move
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Get Some Exercise (ex. 1) Grammatical or Ungrammatical? The pilot landed the plane The plane landed The journalist wrote the article The article wrote The instructor told the students to read The instructor suggested the students to read
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Syntactic Categories Lexical - N, V, Adj, Adv Nonlexical- Articles, Prepositions, etc Identification Strategies Meaning Inflection Distribution
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Key Vocabulary Constituent Groups and subgroups of words that “go together” Syntactic category Constituents that can be substituted for one another with loss of grammaticality NP, PP, Art, Conj, S, VP, Adj, Pro…
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Get Some Exercise (ex. 2) Identify the category of each word: That glass broke suddenly My paintings never seem quite right Don’t forget to supplement coming to class with reading the textbook & doing the exercises
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Syntactic Category: NP _________ was given a flag. The son of Isabel and Sam Isabel’s son The boy Joe
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Identify NPs
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Syntactic Category: VP Joe __________________. Finish the sentence
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Constituency Tests Substitution Pronoun Question Word Relocation Conjunction …. but Ambiguity ≠ All for 1 & 1 for all
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Phrase Structure Rules Define possible constituent groups What can a ____ look like… NP VP Etc. Enable generalizations Describe constituent groups without long lists of possible words… Link to phrase structure trees
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Phrase Structure Rules: English NP NJoe NP Art + Nthe boy NP Art + Adj+ Nthe smart boy NP Art + Adj 2 +N the big smart boy NP Prohe NP (Art) + (Adj)* + N Pro { }
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Phrase Structure Rules: Cont’d NP Art (Adj)* + N *the boy smart (not Standard English) (can be predicted by the rule…) Spanish: el muchacho inteligente (default style) ? el inteligente muchacho (¿special situations?) You tell me… a NP ‘default’ rule for Spanish
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Write a rule for Korean (just 1 is OK) The following data is from Korean. a)Terry-ka ku yeca-lul coahanta. Terry-NOM that girl-ACC likes ‘Terry likes that girl.’ b)I noin-i hakkyo ey kassta. this man-NOM school to went ‘This man went to school.’ c)Sue-ka chinkwu eykey chayk-ul ilkessta. Sue-NOM friend to book-ACC read ‘Sue read the book to a friend.’
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Key Vocabulary Constituent structure tree AKA: Phrase-structure tree Diagram of a phrase or sentence that reduces repetition by the use of syntactic category labels in the branches of a tree
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NP (Art) + (Adj) + Noun NP Art AdjN Thesmartboy Noun Phrase Article AdjectiveNoun Thesmartboy
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Get Some Exercise (ex. 3) Treeing NPs & OtherPs The zoo Always try Very competent
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Using Trees: Ambiguity The son of Isabel and Sam You tell me… Where is the ‘break’ for each meaning?
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Ambiguity Illustrated NP NP PP Art N P NP N Conj. N the son ofIsabel and Sam
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Ambiguity Illustrated: Cont’d NP NPConjNP NPPPNP artN PrepNN ThesonofIsabeland Sam
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Ambiguity Resolved The trees disambiguate the meaning… …of course, they do other stuff too…
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Verb Phrases & Sentences More Rules & Trees…
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You tell me: John found a ball. John found a ball in the grass. *John found. *John found in the grass. A VP phrase-structure rule would be: VP V t + NP (PP)
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Key Vocabulary: New Subcategorization Restricts how lexical items can occur Examples: Transitive Verb: VP V t + (adj)* NP Find, love, destroy Intransitive Verb: VP V i (adv)* Die, sleep
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Key Vocabulary: Review Phrase Structure Rules Specify grammatical ways of putting sentences together Lexical insertion rules Match syntactic categories with words or morphemes at the bottom of a tree
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Joe got a flag IP NP VP N I NP +pst V t Det N Joe got a flag
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Diagram THIS! (ex. 4-5) Start with “Play ball” (Beware the subject here…) then try “You’re going down, Roberts”
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Get Some Exercise (ex. 6-7) Are these constituents? Use Substitution & Movement tests… I’ve got [a date] with Paris Hilton When [does she] arrive?
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Key Vocabulary Transformational rule an operation that moves, deletes, or inserts a category a rule that applies to a syntactic tree to yield a new syntactic tree.
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Transformations
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IP NPVP I V - pst That seatistaken X Transformations (Movement) Questions Yes / No Wh- Do Insertion CP = Complement Phrase Surface & Underlying Structures… CP C Is
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Another Transformation? What is the “underlying” sentence? What should the “tree” look like after transformation?
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Complement Clauses (ex. 9) Key words (English) That Whether If … This is the house that Jack built… Sentence embedded in a sentence Universal
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Transformation Safari Find at least one TRANSFORMATION from a naturally occurring source Y/N? WH-? DO insertion Relative Passive Copy (or print screen) and bring to class
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Get Some Exercise (ex. 10-11) Diagram the following sentences: Who should the director call? Who should call the director? HINT: Only one of the sentences has visible movement…
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Additional Notes (value of trees) Structure Dependent Rules Surface words ≠ important Transformational rules constituents Head NP agrees with Main VP Regardless of intervening structures Regardless of transformations
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Internalized Syntax allows us to: produce and understand an infinite set of utterances distinguish between grammatical and ungrammatical strings interpret certain strings as well-formed grammatically but ill- formed semantically interpret certain strings as well-formed semantically but ill- formed grammatically understand the full meaning of a sentence from a string of words, which may not contain all the words necessary for an accurate interpretation perceive when two or more strings are synonymous (paraphrase) perceive structural ambiguity in a grammatical string account for grammatical and logical relations within a sentence Just Do It: Provide examples for each of the above…
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Additional Structures (section 5…) Coordination Pulls two parts together Relatives Tells more about an NP Passives Changes the focus De-emphasizes or obscures the ‘actor’
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Exercises Recommended: 1-7, 9-11 You can skip 8 & 12-14 Explore the poetry on pages 198-200…
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Tomorrow Chapter 6: Semantics Understand trees, Focus on concepts
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