1. SYNTAX 1 NOV 9, 2015 – DAY 31 Brain & Language LING 4110-4890-5110-7960 NSCI 4110-4891-6110 Fall 2015

2. Course organization Schedule: http://www.tulane.edu/~howard/BrLg/t1-Intro.html#schedule-of- topics http://www.tulane.edu/~howard/BrLg/t1-Intro.html#schedule-of- topics Today's chapter: http://www.tulane.edu/~howard/BrLg/t19-aIFG.html Fun with https://www.facebook.com/BrLg15/https://www.facebook.com/BrLg15/ Quiz before Thanksgiving will be in class & on Blackboard. 11/09/15Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 2

3. Grades Q1Q2Q3Q4Q5Q6Q7 MIN 6554734 AVG 9.08.8 8.49.27.58.7 MAX 10 11/09/15Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 3

4. COMBINATORIAL NET 2 11/09/15Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 4

5. The lexical interface 11/09/15Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 5

6. SYNTAX 1 11/09/15Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 6

7. What are the parts of speech/syntactic categories? Major/content categories noun verb adjective adverb preposition/postposition? Minor/functional categories determiner: article, quantifier, demonstrative pronoun negation conjunction: coordinating, subordinating auxiliary verb? Interjection 11/09/15Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 7

8. Words group to together to form phrases What are the thematic roles of "Mary" and "John" in "Mary kissed John"? Mary is Agent (and subject) John is Patient (and direct object) What goes before, or can be the Agent of, "kissed John"? Mary kissed John. She kissed John. That girl kissed John. The tall girl kissed John. The girl over there kissed John. A girl that you don’t know kissed John. 11/09/15Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 8

9. Restatement of subject data as NP Answer A word that is ‘nouny’, or a group of words that contain a noun; it does not matter which one. We want a way to generalize over all of these possibilities, and the infinite number of alternatives that we can think up. Let’s do this by calling it a noun phrase or NP. An NP goes before, or can be the Agent of, "kissed John" [ NP Mary] kissed John. [ NP She] kissed John. [ NP That girl] kissed John. [ NP The tall girl] kissed John. [ NP The girl over there] kissed John. [ NP A girl that you don’t know] kissed John. 11/09/15Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 9

10. Words to phrases 2 What goes after, or is the Patient of, "John kissed"? John kissed Mary. John kissed her. John kissed that girl. John kissed the tall girl. John kissed the girl over there. John kissed a girl that you don’t know. Answer The same ‘nouny’ thing as before. So let’s also call it a NP. 11/09/15Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 10

11. Restatement of object data as NP An NP goes after, or is the Patient of, "John kissed": John kissed [ NP Mary]. John kissed [ NP her]. John kissed [ NP that girl]. John kissed [ NP the tall girl]. John kissed [ NP the girl over there]. John kissed [ NP a girl that you don’t know]. The structure of our sentence now looks like this: NP kissed NP. 11/09/15Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 11

12. NPs get around English treats NPs as units, in the sense that they can appear in different parts of a sentence: a. Which girl kissed John? ~ Which girl did John kiss __? b. THAT girl kissed John. ~ THAT girl, John kissed __. c. Not even Mary kissed John. ~ Not even Mary did John kiss __. d. That girl is who kissed John. ~ That girl is who John kissed __. e. Who kissed John is that girl. ~ Who John kissed __ is that girl. 11/09/15Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 12

13. More phrases But it seems to be that ‘kissed NP’ is a unit, too: 1. Kiss Mary, I would never do. 2. *Kiss, I would never do Mary. 3. What John did was kiss Mary. 4. *What John did Mary was kiss. 5. What did John do? –– Kiss Mary. 6. *What did John do Mary? –– Kiss. 7. John said he would kiss Mary, and he did so. 8. #John said he would kiss, and he did Mary. Let’s call this new unit VP, so our sentence looks like this: NP [ VP kissed NP] By the way, how do you know which ones are bad? Because you are an expert in the grammar of your native language. 11/09/15Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 13

14. A bigger unit The structure that we just saw covers a whole sentence, and it would be convenient to point this out in some way. So let us just make up a new unit, say ‘S’ for sentence: [ S NP [ VP kissed NP]] Many people find it hard to keep up with all the labels and brackets, though, so linguists came up with an alternative, the tree structure: 11/09/15Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 14 S NPVP kissedNP

15. Compositionality Compare these next two sentences: 1. Mary kicked the mule. 2. Mary kicked the bucket. #2 has two readings a. Mary applied force to the bucket with her foot. b. Mary died. In the (a) reading, the sentence means what the sum of its words mean; in the (b) reading, it means something special, not predictable from the individual words. This happens in morphology, too: a. the past tense of depart: departed b. the past tense of go: *goed, went We call the (a) readings compositional, while the (b) readings are non-compositional or lexical. 11/09/15Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 15

16. More on kicking the bucket Almost any change, no matter how minor, makes "kick the bucket" lose its non-compositional meaning: 1. Mary kicked the buckets. 2. Mary kicked a bucket. 3. Mary kicked that bucket. 4. Mary kicked the pail. 5. Mary kicked the big bucket. 11/09/15Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 16

17. What is syntactic processing? “Narrowly defined, syntactic processing involves the assignment of syntactic structure to word strings that qualify as a ‘sentences’”. 11/09/15Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 17

18. What is a sentence? Some definitions A complete thought. Mary kissed John. Mary kissed. Mary. Kissed. Kissed John. A subject and a predicate. Mary kissed John. Mary kissed. Mary. Kissed. Kissed John. A string of words starting with a capital letter and ending with a period. 11/09/15Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 18

19. What we said at the beginning S = NP VP, or [ S NP VP] [ S Mary [ VP kissed John]] 11/09/15Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 19 S NP Mary VP V kissed NP John

20. But … … we very often utter incomplete sentences: a) Who kissed John? b) Mary. c) What did Mary do? d) Kiss John. So the missing information can be filled in by the context: a) Who kissed John? b) [ S Mary [ VP Ø]] c) What did Mary do? d) [ S [ NP Ø] [ VP kiss John]] 11/09/15Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 20

21. What is a grammar? “A grammar is an explicit set of rules for distinguishing the well-formed sentences of a language from those that are ill-formed (ungrammatical).” We have already seen a fragment of a grammar of English: ① S → NP VP ② VP → V NP Which of these strings are ill-formed (ungrammatical), according to this grammar? Mary kissed John. Mary kissed. Mary. Kissed. Kissed John. 11/09/15Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 21 * * * *

22. Final project Improve a Wikipedia article about any of the topics mentioned in class or any other topic broadly related to neurolinguistics. Write a short essay explaining what you did and why you did it. Print the article before you improve it, highlighting any subtractions. Print the article after you improve it, highlighting your additions. 11/09/15Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 22

23. NEXT TIME More syntax 11/09/15Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 23