1、Topic 5,Syntax,Pre-reading questions: Study the following sentences and pick out those incorrect sentences. 1. The boy found the ball. 2. The boy found quickly. 3. The boy found in the house. 4. The boy found the ball in the house.,6. Zack believes Robert to be a gentleman. 7. Zack believes to be a
2、gentleman. 8. Zack wants Robert to be a gentleman.,Definition of Syntax,Syntax is a subfield that studies the sentence structure of language. 1. Syntax as a system of rulesthe syntactic rules,Functions of Syntactic Rules,1) the grammaticality of sentences The green colorless cloud sleeps furiously.
3、I dont look TV. 2) word orderThe boy milk spilt the. The boy spilt the milk.,The table is on the cat. And The cat is on the table. She got married and became pregnant. She became pregnant and got married. 吃啥有啥。 有啥吃啥。,3) structural ambiguitySynthetic buffalos hides,Synthetic buffalos hides,4) grammat
4、ical relationssubject-predicate 5) whether different sentences have different meanings or the same meaningsCF: The dog caught the fox.The fox was caught by the dog. 6) the creative aspect of language,2. Sentence structure,Example: John likes linguistics.Subject Predicate,3. Types of sentences,A sent
5、ence is an independent unit of language with a complete idea, ended with a stop,or a question mark or an interjection mark.Simple sentenceComplex sentenceCompound sentence.,4. The linear and hierarchical structures of sentences.,The students like the new professor.The visitors like the new professor
6、.The teens like the new professor. The trees welcome the spring rain.The dogs like their new master.,5. Syntactic categories.,5.1. lexical categoriesNoun(N): student, homeVerb(V): like read, goAdjective (Adj): tall, lovelyAdverb(Adv): loudly, constantlyDeterminer (Det): the, a , this, hisAuxiliary:
7、can, will, do, be, havePrepositions(Prep): with, from, at. ToPronouns (Pron): he, she, us, none Conjunction(Conj): and, but, whileInterjection (Int): oh, ah, eh,5.2. Phrasal categories,Noun phraseNP: a tall man, the student, KennedyVerb phraseVP: read, hit the ball, walk with a stickPrepositional ph
8、rase-PP: with a stick, in the parkAdjective phraseAdjP: quite rudeAdverb phraseAdvP: very fast, swiftly,SNP VP The student V NPlikes the new linguistics professor.,S NP VPV SNP VPV NPJohn insists (that) Mary take the piano class.,More examples (Exercises):,1) The puppy found the child. 2) A frighten
9、ed passenger landed the crippled airliner. 3)The house on the hill collapsed in the wind. 4) The ice melted. 5) The hot sun melted the ice. 6) A fast car with twin camps sped by the children on the grassy lane.,7) The old tree swayed in the wind. 8) The children put the toy in the box. 9) the report
10、er realized that the senator lied. 10) Broken ice melted in the sun. 11) The guitar gently weeps. 12) That the president realized that the headmaster lied surprised her.,Analyze the ambiguity of the following sentences.,1) Dick finally decided on the boat. 2) The professors appointment was shocking.
11、 3) The design has big squares and circles. 4) That sheepdog is too hairy to eat. 5) Could this be the invisible mans hair tonic? 6) The governor is a dirty street fighter.,7) I cannot recommend him too highly. 8) Terry loves his wife and so do I. 9) They said that they would go yesterday. 10) No sm
12、oking section available. 11) Burning grass is dangerous.,7. A brief review of syntactic studies in history.,7.1. Traditional grammarAims at defining and classifying English words into parts of speech categories and proceeds from those sentences.Phrases: verb phrase, predicate phrase, syntax independ
13、ent, dependentsentence types,7.2. Structural grammar,Structuralist grammar covers three levels 1) phonemics 2) morphology 3) syntax IC analysisimmediate constituent analysis. In IC analysis sentences are divided into their principal parts or immediate constituents. Each of these is then divided and
14、subdivided until the ultimate constituents of the sentence are reached.,Limitations of IC analysis:,Too subjective and arbitrary. Some structures cant be divided in this way. Are you going? The kind of English The shooting of the hunter frightened all of us.,7.3. Transformational-Generative GrammarT
15、G,Chomsky puts forth an “adequate grammar”: 1) It should produce all grammatical sentences and rule out all ungrammatical ones. 2) It should be able to explain what the mature native speakers know to be possible in a language. 3) It explains the speakers ability to produce and understand unlimited u
16、mber of sentencesthe well-known hypothesis “genetic components” 4) must explain recursion,Transformational aspect:,A sentence structure may have two levels of syntactic representation: Deep Structure and Surface structure. The deep structure can be transformed into the Surface structure:,Transformat
17、ional aspect,Phrase structure rules + the lexiconD-structureMovement rulesS-structure,Transformational aspect,Phrase structure rules + the lexiconD-structureMovement rulesS-structure,The generative aspect,We can produce all or any of the possible sentences of the language following the phrase struct
18、ure rules and some movement rules. For example:S NP VPNP Det NVP V,8Phrase Structure Rules,SNP VP a phrase structure rule, or rewrite rule:S NP VP We read this as “consist of,”, or “is written as”.,Exercises,Write out the phrase structure rules that each of the following rule abbreviate. Give an exa
19、mple sentence illustrating each expansion.VP V(NP)(PP)(Adv)NP (Det)(Adj) N(PP),VP Rewriting,VP V Smoking kills. VP V NP Smoking killed John. VP V PP John stayed in the hotel. VP V Adv. John hit hard. VP V NP PP John hit the man in the middle. VP V NP Adv The dog killed the fox bravely. VP V PP Adv.
20、The smoke came out of the window slowly. VP V NP PP Adv. John met his sister in the station unexpectedly.,NP Rewriting,NP N Roses are beautiful flowers. NP Det N Those roses are extremely beautiful. NP Adj N Stale bread cannot be beaten. NP N PP Buses in motion are inaccessible. NP Det Adj N PP The
21、faded flower on the table will be collected tomorrow. NP Det N PP The roses on the table are far away. NP Det Adj N PP The unpacked gifts on the table have to be checked again. NP Adj N PP Public buses in motion are inaccessible.,8.2. The recursiveness of phrase structure rules.,“An S contains a VP
22、that may contain another S;A VP may include an S that contains another VP;A PP consists of an NP that may be followed by another PP; and an NP take a PP that includes an NP and/or an S!”,There may appear a specifier in front of the head, and a complement after the head:XP (Spec) X (Compl) NP, VP, AP
23、 and PP all share similar syntactic features.,For example:Specifier X Complement NP I know the boy who likes maths. AP She is very curious of the answer. VP They each told a story. PP He stood right in the middle.,XPYP (Spec) XX ZP(Compl),YP, a daughter of XP and sister of X, is the Specifier of XP,
24、 often shortened as Spec (XP); ZP, a daughter of X and sister of X, is the complement. Examples: The Romans destroyed the city.,The Romans destroyed the city.VPNP VV NPThe Romans destroyed the city.,The Romans destruction of the city.NPDet NN PPThe Romans destruction of the city.,8.4. Syntactic move
25、ment and movement rules,Phrase structure rules provide explanations on how syntactic categories are formed and sentences are generated. This is the generative aspect of language. The transformational aspect of language is dictated by rules traditionally called transformational rules, whose operation
26、 may change the syntactic representation of a sentence.,8.4.1. NP-movement and WH-movement.,One example of NP movement is in the representation of passive voice. The man beat the child. The child was beaten by the man.Questions are formed by wh-movement:John sold Mary a computer. What did john sell
27、Mary?,8.4. 2. Aux-movement,Move auxiliaries to the initial place of a sentence, so as to form questions, or some special clauses. She is an English professor. Is she an English professor?,8.4.3. Move a general movement rule,Theoretically we can move any constituent to any place of a sentence. But ac
28、tually there are certain restrains of grammar in certain language, such as the principles of Case Condition and Adjacency Condition. We will discuss this in the following section.,9. Some general Principles of Universal Grammar,9.1. Case Condition A noun must have its case, and it is assigned to the
29、 object position by V or Prep, or by AUX to the Subject position,9.2. Adjacency Condition,This principle states that a Case assignator and a case recipient should stay adjacency to each other. For example, no other phrasal category can intervene between a verb and its direct object John read the linguistics book quickly. John read quickly the linguistics book.,
