Ling 1 Lecture Slides - Constituency & Agreement PDF

Ling 1 online version Scott Gaines, Santa Monica College 1 Ch. 7: Grammar Lecture 2 – Constituency and Agreement 2 Goals • Learn about constituents and constituent structure • Learn about various kinds of grammatical agreement 3 Constituency • As we've seen, different-sized building blocks...

Ling 1 online version Scott Gaines, Santa Monica College 1 Ch. 7: Grammar Lecture 2 – Constituency and Agreement 2 Goals • Learn about constituents and constituent structure • Learn about various kinds of grammatical agreement 3 Constituency • As we've seen, different-sized building blocks occupy the same slots in a sentence. • • • • My old friend got a new job. John got a new job He got a new job. He got it. • These blocks are called the "constituents" of a sentence. 4 Constituency • Common Constituents in English: • Noun Phrases, which can be composed of either... • a pronoun by itself he • a proper noun by itself John • a combination of [an article +/- one or more adjective phrases + a noun +/- a Prepositional Phrase]: the old, happy man in the corner • Adjective Phrases, which can be composed of... • an adjective either by itself or an adjective modified by an adverb hot surprisingly hot 5 Constituency • Common Constituents in English: • Prepositional Phrases, which can be composed of... • a preposition + a noun phrase (of any size) on the table on the very large table in the corner • Adverb Phrases, which can be composed of... • an adverb either by itself or an adverb modified by another degree-type adverb quickly very quickly 6 Constituency • Verb phrases, which can be composed of... • a verb by itself (intransitive verbs only): • a verb + a noun phrase (of any size) (where the noun phrase is functioning as the object of that verb) • "be" + a noun phrase (of any size). • "be" + an adjective phrase (of any size) I [ate], I [slept]. I [ate a sandwich]. You [are a good student]. You [are highly intelligent]. and any of these may contain... • adverb phrases or prepositional phrases: I [ate a sandwich at the beach yesterday], • an Auxiliary verb. I [can eat.] I [can eat a sandwich.] I [can be a good student.] 7 Constituency • As we saw in a previous lecture, constituent phrases function as a single unit, and, as such, they can be replaced by a pronoun. • Noun Phrase: I saw [the tall man] = I saw [him]. • Verb Phrase: I [ate a sandwich at the beach yesterday], ...and John [did], too. 8 Constituency • Sentences are built from constituents (phrases) rather than just the parts of speech. • Full sentences in English must contain a Noun Phrase + a Verb Phrase, either of which may contain further modifying constituents. • Each constituent phrase can have smaller constituent phrases inside. They "nest" inside each other. (phrases inside of phrases inside of phrases...) 9 This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA Constituency NP AdjP PP NP • I bought [a very old book by a philosopher]. NP I bought [it]. 10 Constituency VP NP AdjP PP NP VP • I [bought [a very old book by a philosopher] ], and John [did], too. 11 Agreement • ...but putting words into constituents is not enough to give us correct, full sentences. • Compare the following: * = "ill-formed" / not allowed. • • • • • "I drink coffee every day." * "She drink coffee every day." * "Yesterday I drink coffee." "this book" * "this books" It indicates that speakers of this language find the sentence (or word) to be incorrect/weird/bad. 12 Agreement • ...but the constituents are not enough to give us correct sentences. • Compare the following: • • • • • "I drink coffee every day." * "She drink coffee every day." → "She drinks coffee everyday" * "Yesterday I drink coffee." → "Yesterday I drank coffee." "this book" * "this books" → "these books" * = "ill-formed" / not allowed. It indicates that speakers of this language find the sentence (or word) to be incorrect/weird/bad. 13 Agreement • Words must be in morphological form which matches the properties of another constituent in the sentence / discourse. This phenomenon is called grammatical "Agreement". 14 Agreement • Common forms of Agreement are... • 1) Subject-Verb Agreement. • 2) Adjective-Noun Agreement. so this must be 3rd person, singular, too 3rd person singular She drink-s un libro rojo "a red book (masc.)" una mesa roja "a red table (fem.)" • 3) Article-Noun Agreement these books libro is masculine, so the article and adjective must be masculine, too mesa is feminine, so the article and adjective must be feminine, too plural... ...so the article must be plural, too 15 Common agreement features • For nouns, adjectives and articles frequently copy... • • • • Person: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, (4th?) Number: singular, plural, etc. Grammatical Gender: masculine, feminine, neuter, etc. Case: subject form, object form, indirect object form, possessive form, etc. ...of the noun they are modifying • Verbs frequently copy.... • Person, Number, Gender of the subject noun phrase. • (and sometimes the person, number, gender of the object noun phrase, too) 16 Example of Subject-Verb agreement in Spanish present tense cf. English Singular Plural Singular Plural 1st person hablo hablamos 1st person I speak we speak 2nd person hablas habláis 2nd person you speak you speak 3rd person habla hablan 3rd person she speaks they speak 17 Next • Word order and typology 18