Phrase Structure and Universal Grammar

Phrase Structure and Universal Grammar

• Language is structure-dependent, and the units come in different categories to build that structure
• Phrase structure is studied using scientific methods, terminology, and representations such as trees
• Syntax involves studying word classes, how words combine into phrases and sentences, and the internal structure of these phrases
• Syntactic constituents are the building blocks of sentences
• Words are syntactic building blocks of sentences and come in different syntactic categories

Categories and Structural Criteria for Nouns

• A noun denotes an object but can also represent concepts like justice, explosion, or time
• Nouns take plural markings as dogs
• Nouns occur alongside determiners, as in "the dog"
• Nouns can be modified by adjectives, such as "the big dog"
• Nouns can be modified by relative clauses as in "the dog that died"
• Nouns can be suffixed with '-less' as in 'dogless'

Categories and Structural Criteria for Verbs

• Verbs take tense markings as in 'talked'
• Verbs take auxiliaries such as "can talk"
• Verbs can be modified by adverbs, such as "talk fast/loud/quickly"
• Verbs can be suffixed with -able, as in 'talkable'

Categories and Structural Criteria for Adjectives

• Adjectives take comparative/superlative marking in the following sample longer, longest
• Adjectives modify the nouns, take example "long boat"
• Adjectives can be modified by the adverbs, take for example "extremely long"
• Adjectives can be suffixed with -ly, take for example "longly"

Categories and Structural Criteria for Determiners

• Determiners precede nouns as in 'the/a woman'
• Determiners precede modified nouns as in 'the long boat'
• Determiners cannot precede other determinants as in '*my the boat'
• Determiners don't take any morphology

Syntactic Constituents

• Constituents are sentence parts in which some sequences of words belong together
• Constituents should follow an order, they should behave as a unit
• Constituency is made up of intuition, and grammatical evidence
• Constituency can be tested using substitution, coordination, and movement tests

Substitution Test

• This involves replacing a group of words with a single word or phrase
• Valid phrases should retain the original sentence structure
• Consider "(3) The Belgian scientist who won the Nobel Prize at the age of 22 retired today"
• "it" can substitute The Belgian scientist who won the Nobel Prize at the age of 22 while retaining valid structure

Coordination Test

• Only constituents of the category can be conjoined
• "John's exposé in The Guardian gave new hope to the government's opponents"

Movement Test

• Only constituents can be moved
• "John will leave a book on the table"
• Strings that are not constituents cannot be moved, as their movement would result in an invalid sentence

Note the following are true when drawing trees:

• Syntactic rules are known unconsciously by speakers
• Parts of sentences are called constituents
• Syntactic rules specify how constituents can be put together to form grammatical sentences
• Hierarchical structure of sentence is called syntactic constituency and is represented by syntactic trees

Syntactic Trees

• Syntactic trees represent our knowledge of levels of organization (head-level, phrase level)
• Syntactic rules include:
  • PP -> P, NP (to the store, at the bank, from John, towards the future)
  • NP -> Det, N (the book, that airplane, a review, several decisions)
  • NP -> (Det), N (the) books
  • NP -> (Det), (AP), N, (PP) (the) (bright green) books (about magic potions)

Drawing a Tree

• Always start with the word classes at the bottom
• Always have 'S' at the top, branching to NP and VP
• Lines are never allowed to cross
• Each node must be labelled

Elements of Phrase Structure Trees

• A phrase structure tree has branches, nodes, and labels
• Dominance exists when one node can trace a path to another, moving downward through a tree
• Immediate Dominance is when one node can directly reach another every node which is only one node level below
• Precedence indicates that Node A neither dominates Node B, nor Node B dominates Node A; instead both are dominated by the same node, with Node A appearing to the left of Node B
• Immediate Precedence indicates Node A is directly followed by Node B, with no intervening node between them

C-Command

• A node A c-commands a node B under the conditions that:
  • A does not dominate B
  • B does not dominate A
  • There exists a branching node which dominates A and B

Levels in the Tree

• Complements serve to complete the meaning of a head
• Adjuncts, on the other hand, are modifiers that add extra information

Two Levels

• One can substitute for N or NP.
• Using one as N may result in an ungrammatical phrase.
• Using one for NP may result in an ungrammatical phrase.
• Phrase structure has three levels.
  • Phrase or Maximal Projection level.
  • The intermediate level.
  • The head level

Complements

• Complements cannot stand alone without the head
• Complements complete the meaning with the head
• Complements are not equivalent to adjuncts

Adjuncts

• Adjuncts exist as optional modifiers that enrich rather than complete the meaning of a head
• Characteristics include recursiveness, extraposition, and preposing

X' Theory

• X-bar theory suggests a universal schema for phrase structure rules
• The cognitive system uses a general format for phrase structure rules, regardless of syntactic category

X’ Theory Rules

• Specifier Rule: XP → (Spec), X'
• Adjunct Rule: X' → X', (YP)
• Complement Rule: X' → X, (ZP)

Principles of the X’ Theory

• Endocentricity, which stipulates only one head
• Maximality, where X must project a phrase XP
• Binary Branching

Phrase Structure: Word Order Parameter

• Specifies word arrangement based constituents
• Includes 2 alternatives for ordering of constituents