ENG1200 L4 Syntax PDF

ENG1200 Introduction to Linguistics Lecture 4: Syntax Form (Basic Concept in Syntax) Dr. Michelle Huang ([email protected]) Last Week 2  Agenda Basic Ideas of Syntax 1) Parts of Speech (POS) 2) Syntactic Analyses through: Phrase structure rules (PS r...

ENG1200 Introduction to Linguistics Lecture 4: Syntax Form (Basic Concept in Syntax) Dr. Michelle Huang ([email protected]) Last Week 2  Agenda Basic Ideas of Syntax 1) Parts of Speech (POS) 2) Syntactic Analyses through: Phrase structure rules (PS rules) Syntactic tree diagrams (PS trees)  Components of Grammar Morphology The systematic study of the internal structure of words Syntax The systematic study of the internal structure of sentences. Part of syntax is about using the right word form (esp. the use of inflectional suffixes) to satisfy syntactic rules.  What does syntax do? Syntax is the systematic study of how words are combined into phrases, and phrases into sentences. 5  What does syntax do? Place a star * before the sentence(s) that you consider to be ungrammatical. 1. Michelle kicks. 2. Michelle kicks quickly. 3. Michelle kicks in the classroom. 4. Michelle kicks the ball. You know that only d) is grammatical because you know (whether consciously or subconsciously) that all transitive verbs require a direct object. 6  What does syntax do? In fact, all native and competent speakers would have the same judgement about the grammaticality of sentences 1) to 4) in the previous slide. In other words: Syntax provides rules which determine grammatical judgments shared by speakers of a language. 7 PARTS OF SPEECH  Parts of Speech (word classes) Observe this example: Michelle kicks the ball. What can we say about this sentence? There are four words in this sentence. (useless!) Michelle is different from other words in the sentence, and kicks does not behave in the same way as the. These words are syntactically different from each other. To explain such differences, linguists classify words into different parts of speech. 9  Parts of Speech ‘a class of expressions which share a common set of grammatical properties’ (Radford 1997) Every word in a language belongs to a part of speech (or word class). 10  POS (or Word Class) Abbr Meaning Example N Noun river, people PN proper noun Hong Kong, Michelle Det Determiner The, an, his, this, many P preposition In, of, over Pron pronoun He, I, me Adj Adjective Clucky, resentful Adv Adverb Swiftly, hopefully Conj conjunction And, but, although 11 ? ? ?  Main Verbs = Lexical verbs Verbs that take inflections; Verbs that are obligatory in a sentence; Verbs that modify the subject. e.g. kick, eat, help, buy, sleep, play, etc. Sam ate three donuts in class. The students slept. 12  Auxiliary verbs An auxiliary verb helps the main verb by adding more specific meaning to it. In other words, they are verbs that add grammatical information such as tense and aspect that is not conveyed by the main verb alone. Modal auxiliaries (will/would, can/could, may/might, must, shall/should, ought) Aspectual auxiliaries (be, have): I have done my classwork. The passive auxiliary (be): I am done! The dummy auxiliary (do): He does not think so. 13 Example sentences with auxiliaries Modal auxiliaries I can eat three pizzas at a time. Aspectual auxiliaries (be, have) I am eating three pizzas. I have eaten three pizzas. The passive auxiliary (be) Three pizzas were eaten by me. The dummy auxiliary (do) Do you eat pizzas? I do not eat pizzas. I do eat three pizzas. Do not eat pizzas. 14 Identifying Determiners (Det) Common nouns can be preceded by words such as the, a, this/these, that/those, etc. These words can be called determiners. Determiners specify definiteness, indefiniteness, ownership, and quantity of the nouns they precede. 15  Determiners (Det) Type Examples Articles a, an, the Demonstratives this, that, these, those, which, etc. Quantifiers all, few, many, several, some, every, each, any, no, etc. Numbers: one, two, fifty, etc. Possessive my, our, your, his, her, its, their, determiners whose, etc. 16  Exercises With the above criteria, we can identify parts of speech for words that do not even exist! What is the part of speech of wug in the following set of sentences? a. The dog wugged the ball. b. The dog gently wugs the ball. c. *The wug kicked the ball. In syntax, the symbol * means the sentence is ungrammatical. 17 PHRASES & SENTENCES  Structure The sequential and hierarchical organization of linguistic units (e.g. words, phrases, sentences). Phrase structure: the way in which words are organized into phrases. Sentence structure: the way in which phrases are organized into sentences. 19 Basic Noun Phrase Rules (NP rules)  Noun Phrase (NP) A noun phrase (NP) is built around a head noun. A head noun is obligatory. With optional modifiers (extra information about the head) Some examples of noun phrases in English: Michelle She Movie the movies the interesting movies the movie about her life the interesting movie about her life the very interesting movie about her life Can you come up with the rules which govern NPs in English?  Some NP Rules in English Michelle NP → She NP → movies NP → the movies NP → the interesting movies NP → the movies about her life NP → the interesting movies about NP → her life the very interesting movies NP → about her life 22  NP We can be much more economical by using one rule to cover all of the above rules: PN NP → Pron (Det) (AP) N (PP) Description: A noun phrase consists of one of the following: a proper noun, OR A pronoun, OR a noun that is optionally modified by a determiner, an AP, or a PP.  Syntactic Symbols and Notations → The symbol → indicates that a phrase consists of…, or has the constituents… e.g. NP → Det N This means ‘an NP consists of a determiner and a noun.’ (X) The parentheses ( ) indicate optionality. X is optional. {X, Y} The curly brackets { } indicate that there is a choice between X and Y. Apply either X or Y, but not both. Basic Verb Phrase Rules (VP rules) -Copular verbs -Transitive verbs -Intransitive verbs -Ditransitive verbs -Locative verbs  Verb Phrase (VP) Copular / Linking Verbs (verbs that have little independent meaning – typically be, become) This type of verbs can be captured by the PS rule: VP → V {NP, AP, PP} This is the VP rule for VPs that have the verb to be or become as the predicator (the head verb). He became a doctor. NP He is very tall. AP He is in the classroom. PP  VP involving transitive verb PS rule for VP involving a transitive verb PS rule: VP → V NP The verb must take a direct object NP Examples: pick, kick, buy The students bought the textbooks.  VP involving intransitive verb PS rule for VP involving an intransitive verb PS rule: VP → V The verb cannot be followed by an NP object Examples: sleep, cry, yawn The students yawned.  VP involving ditransitive verb PS rule for VP involving a ditransitive verb PS rule: VP → V NP NP The verb is followed by two obligatory NP objects Examples: give, promise, send Michelle gave them some money.  VP involving locative verbs Intransitive Locative Verbs PS rule: VP → V PP The verb is followed by a PP indicating location e.g. sit, stand, hang, lean The little boy sat on the table. Transitive Locative Verbs PS rule: VP → V NP PP The verb is followed by an obligatory NP object and a PP which indicates location e.g. put, lay, store The student put the books on his desk.  Basic VP rules in English If V is a copular verb (be/become), VP → V {NP, AP, PP} Otherwise, VP → V (NP) ({PP, NP}) VP → V VP → V NP VP → V NP NP VP → V PP VP → V NP PP Basic Prepositional Phrase Rules (PP rules)  Prepositional Phrase (PP) Prepositions usually combine with noun phrases to form prepositional phrases. of the intelligent students after several days in the big classroom under the water  PP rule The PS rule for the English PP is fairly simple: PP → P NP Description: A prepositional phrase consists of a head preposition and an obligatory noun phrase. Basic Adjective Phrase Rules (AP rules)  Adjective Phrase (AP) An adjective phrase is built around a head adjective. Possible adjective phrases: funny A very funny AdvP A Adjectives can be stacked in the following orders: a beautiful white Italian glass flower glass AP AP AP NP NP N Order: opinion > size/length/height > colour > origin > material > purpose  Phrase Structure Rule for AP AP → ({AdvP, AP, NP}) A Description: a basic adjective phrase consists of an adjective and an optional adverb phrase and/or an optional adjective phrase/noun phrase. Basic Adverb Phrase Rules (AdvP rules)  Adverb Phrase (AdvP) An adverb phrase is built around an adverb. Possible AdvP in English: very Adv quickly Adv very quickly AdvP Adv  PS Rule for a basic AdvP AdvP → (AdvP) Adv A basic adverb phrase consists of an adverb and an optional adverb phrase. Phrases with Conjunctions  Coordination Conjunctions such as and, or, but conjoin phrases of the same category. So we have the following rule: X → X Conj X (x refers to any phrasal category) NP → NP conj NP (The students and Michelle) VP → VP conj VP (eating or drinking) AP → AP conj AP (old but clean) AdvP → AdvP conj AdvP (happily and quickly) S → S conj S (He likes you but you don’t like him.) …etc. 4 2 Applying PS rules to sentences  Basic PS rules we have discussed so far: S → NP VP 1. NP → PN Pron (Det) (AP) N (PP) 2. VP → V (copular) {NP, AP, PP} 3. VP → V (NP) ({PP, NP}) 4. AdvP → (AdvP) Adv 5. PP → P NP 6. AP → (AdvP) A 7. X → X Conj X  Test yourself To produce a grammatical sentence, the ‘computer’ in our mind needs input from a set of syntactic rules. What rules do you need in order to generate the sentence – The students greeted the teacher?  PS Rules To express the sentence given above, we need the following set of PS rules: Rule 1: S → ____ _____ (basic sentence structure) Rule 2: VP → _____ _____ (greeted the teacher) Rule 3: NP → ____ _____ (The students, the teacher)  PS Rules To express the sentence given above, we need the following set of PS rules: Rule 1: S → NP VP (basic sentence structure) Rule 2: VP → V NP (greeted the teacher) Rule 3: NP → Det N (The students, the teacher) Remember, these rules work together as a SET in order to generate possible sentences. So the NP in Rule 1 must adhere to the NP rule specified in rule 3. The VP in Rule 1 must satisfy the VP rule in Rule 2, and so on.  PS Rules a relatively simple rule can describe or generate an infinite number of possible structures, because of the possibility of including or leaving out optional parts of the phrase. For example, the NP rule NP → (Det) N can generate all possible phrases containing a head noun with an optional determiner preceding it. The boy, The girl, The student, A boy, A girl, A student, Boy, Girl, Student………. Rules of syntax allow native (competent) speakers to produce and understand an unlimited number of sentences which they have never produced or heard before.  PS Rules We can use PS rules as a guide (or template) for building PHRASE STRUCTURE TREES that follow the structural constraints of the language. Let’s draw a tree for The students greeted the teacher.  Phrase Structure Trees ◼ The students greeted the teacher. NP → Det N S S → NP VP NP VP VP → V NP Det N V NP NP → Det N Det N The students greeted the teacher.  Common Abbreviations Abbr. Meaning Abbr. Meaning A Adjective AP Adjective Phrase Adv Adverb AdvP Adverb Phrase Det Determiner N Noun NP Noun Phrase PN Proper Noun Pron Pronoun S Sentence P preposition PP Prepositional Phrase V Verb VP Verb Phrase 5 2  Phrase Structure Trees 1) A tree diagram provides labels for each of the constituents of the sentence ‘The students greeted the teacher.’ S NP VP Det N V NP Det N The students greeted the teacher.  Phrase Structure Trees 2) These labels show that the entire sentence belongs to the category called ‘S’ (Sentence), because the S-node encompasses all the words. S NP VP Det N V NP Det N The students greeted the teacher.  Phrase Structure Trees 3) The tree also tells us that ‘the students’ and ‘the teacher’ belong to the same category (NP), and that ‘greeted the teacher’ belongs to the category VP, or a verb phrase consisting of a V and an NP. S NP VP Det N V NP Det N The students greeted the teacher.  Structural Ambiguity Consider the example: The officer killed the thief with a gun. How do you interpret this sentence? i) ii)  Structural Ambiguity Consider the example: The officer killed the thief with a gun. How do you interpret this sentence? i) The officer has a gun, which s/he used to kill the thief. ii) The thief has a gun, and s/he was killed by the officer. We say that the above example is ambiguous not only in meaning, but also in its structure. This type of ambiguity is called structural ambiguity.  Structural Ambiguity The following shows how the sentence is ambiguous in structure: i) [The officer] [[ [killed] [the thief ] ] [with a gun] ] ii) [The officer] [killed] [[the thief ] [with a gun]]. One of the purposes of studying syntactic structures is to disambiguate sentences by showing the hierarchical relationships between different discrete units in a sentence. Such units are called constituents.  Exercise a) Write a set of PS rules that can generate the following sentence. (1) Tom bought me a dictionary of linguistics. b) Now draw a tree diagram for sentence (1). 59  a) PS Rules S → NP VP VP → V NP NP NP → PN Pron (Det) N (PP) PP → P NP 60 b) Tree S NP VP V NP NP Det N PP P NP PN Pron N Tom bought me a dictionary of linguistics. 61  Parts of a Tree: NODE and BRANCH A node is the end of a branch. S NP VP Det N V NP Det N The students enjoyed the lecture.  More trees to draw Draw syntactic trees for the following sentences: 1. The students greeted the very old professor. 2. Pat shot the thief with a gun. 3. Michelle and her students yawned.