Syntax and Phrase Structure

What is the study of the principles governing how words can be assembled into sentences?

What does morphology deal with?

What are the three aspects of sentence structure?

What are the two types of questions about a phrase?

What are the parts of speech?

Every phrase has a head.

Which of these are types of phrases?

The structure of a phrase consists of a head and dependents.

What determines the category of a larger unit?

If standing alone, the head could perform the syntactic function of the whole construction.

The head of a phrase may govern the agreement of grammatical categories.

What is the concept that describes the relation between a noun phrase and its function in a clause?

What is a class of expression which are grammatically alike?

What are the functions that noun phrases can have in a clause or sentence?

What is a typical NP (noun phrase) structure?

What do nouns typically inflect for?

Nouns can normally fill the head position in phrases with any of the four functions.

What are the dependents that occur exclusively or almost exclusively with nouns as a head?

Determinatives are found only in NP structure with certain types of singular noun as head.

What does a determinative do to a noun phrase?

What are the optional elements that add specification to the meaning of the head?

What are the properties that are inherent in the head of a noun phrase and are visually observable and objectively recognizable?

Adjectives following the head can occur in fixed phrases.

Adjectives ending in '-able/-ible' can only occur in pre-head position.

What are the two cases of nouns?

The genitive of regular nouns is realized in speech only in the singular.

The genitive of singular nouns is realized in writing by adding an apostrophe + s and the genitive of plural nouns is realized by adding an apostrophe after the plural.

The zero genitive adds nothing to regular plural nouns in speech and is realized in writing with only an apostrophe.

The zero genitive is used to avoid repetitive or awkward combinations of sounds with Greek names that end in 's'.

With many other names ending in '/z/', the pronunciation of the genitive is most commonly '/iz/' and the spelling is an apostrophe only.

The 's' ending in the 'group genitive' is a case ending in the same sense that languages like Latin, Russian, and German have.

What is the group genitive (or 'embedded genitive')?

The Saxon genitive is only used with nouns highest on the gender scale.

The Saxon genitive uses an apostrophe 's' with the head noun and adds the dependent noun (e.g. 'the boy's bike').

The group genitive is more common with inanimate objects than for personal names.

Geographical names use the group genitive more often when they reference the people of a country.

Which of the following are temporal nouns?

Which words are used to show possession/ownership?

The 'of' construction is more common with personal nouns than with inanimate objects.

To avoid awkward constructions with inanimate objects, the genitive construction is preferred over the 'of' construction.

The genitive construction with determinative function (e.g. 'Susan's son' instead of 'a Susan's son') will have definite reference.

The 'post-genitive' construction results from combining an 'of' construction with a genitive to create a new construction.

In the post-genitive construction, the independent genitive acts as a prepositional complement following 'of'.

The post-genitive construction is required when the head of the noun phrase is inanimate and there is another determiner.

The post-genitive construction is acceptable when the head noun is human and the post-modifier is definite (i.e. a name) and human.

The head of the superordinate noun phrase in a genitive construction may be omitted if the context makes its identity clear.

The local genitive is used for normal residences, institutions such as public buildings, and places where business is conducted.

The Saxon genitive alternates with the position of the central determiner.

The genitive in Czech is a masculine noun or feminine gender.

Which of these are genitive meanings?

Adjectives are words that define more precisely the reference of a noun or pronoun.

Adjectives can occur before nouns, modifying a noun phrase, and after verbs, complementing a verb.

Adjectives can form pairs that contrast in meaning.

Many adjectives are derived from other words and it's easy to recognize them by their suffixes.

Adjectives can freely occur in the attributive function, but cannot freely occur in the predicative function.

Adjectives can function as a subject complement.

Adjectives can take comparative and superlative forms.