In language, the ignorant have prescribed laws to the learned.

(Richard, 1830)

Syntax? Morpheme Categories Word Categories Phrase Categories

Phrase Marker Grammatical Functions Head, Complements & Modifiers

Syntax is:

A sentence is a sound in itself on which sounds called words may be strung.

The study of sentence structure

Syntax aims
To answer the following questions:
What are the parts that make up a sentence? What are the properties of these parts? How are these parts related to one another? How do these parts combine with one another to form a sentence? (Rules?)

Syntactic Hierarchy

From Words to Phrases

Lexical Categories
Why lexical Categories? Reason 1: Different words, same word categories. Reason 2: A sentence can contain an infinite number of words.

Determining the Lexical Categories

Three Criteria
o Semantic o Morphological o Syntactic

Semantic Criteria
Meaning-based Criteria Noun refers to a person, place or thing. Verb refers to an action. Adjective refers to a quality. Adverb refers to the manner, location, time or frequency of an action.

Semantic Criteria: Inadequate

sincerity, happiness, pain, etc. assassination, construction, etc. remain, appear, exist, etc.

Jabberwocky

by Lewis Carrol

Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe. Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun The frumious bandersnatch!

Morphological Criteria
Inflectional Properties -Different forms of the same word cat + -s cats Derivational Properties
How words are derived from other words sad + -ness sadness

Morphological Criteria: Not Sufficient

Morphological criterion, though reliable in many cases, is not a sufficient condition for determining lexical categories.
Many nouns such as information, love and pain do not have a plural form. Some adjectives such as absent and circular do not have comparative and superlative forms.

Syntactic Criteria
Different categories have different distributions. e.g.
1. They have no ____. 2. 3. 4. 5. They can ____. They read the ____ book. He treats patient very____. He walked right ____ the wall.

Only a restricted set of lexical categories can occur in each position.

Syntax of Major Word Classes

Noun
Morphological Properties
It can take a plural -s morpheme; Exceptions: children, deer, mice, etc.

It can be modified by a possessive (apostrophe: s)

It contains morphemes like the following: -ity, -ness, -action, -er, -ion, -ment, -ance, -hood.

Noun
Syntactic Properties
Preceded by determiners like: a, an, the, this, that, these, those and numerals like: one, two, three Preceded by an ADJECTIVE Followed by a PREPOSITION Preceded by a PREPOSITION

Verb
Morphological Properties
takes a past tense -ed; exceptions: went, left, etc. third-person singular agreement -s; e.g. writes takes a progressive tense morpheme -ing; e.g. running

Verb
Syntactic Properties
preceded by AUXILIARIES. preceded by MODAL VERBS. preceded by negation words like not and never. preceded by an ADVERB. can be followed by a NOUN.

Adjective
Morphological Properties
has morphemes like -ous, -y, -ish and, sometimes, -ly. e.g. fibrous, angry, freakish, friendly able to form comparatives and superlatives with -er and -est. e.g. angrier, angriest.

Adjective
Syntactic Properties
can be preceded by ADVERBS. can occur after determiners like the, a, this, these, those and numerals and before NOUNS. modifies a NOUN can follow VERBS.

Adverb
Morphological Properties often followed by the morpheme -ly e.g. swiftly, quickly, angrily. Exceptions: abroad, now, fast, often, well, also, very, too, never, so, etc.

Adverb
Syntactic Properties modifies a VERB; e.g. walks quickly
modifies an ADJECTIVE; e.g. swiftly angry, modifies another ADVERB; e.g. very angrily

Preposition
Morphological Properties Invariable; takes no affixes Syntactic Properties occurs before a noun phrase never occurs before an ADVERB or an ADJECTIVE by themselves. can precede another PREPOSITION.

Determiners
Determiners refer to articles, demonstratives, possessives, quantifiers.

Morphological Properties
invariable i.e. take no affixes

Syntactic properties
occur before adjectives and nouns

Auxiliaries
Morphological Properties
can be inflected for tense, voice, mood, aspect

Syntactic Properties
occur before the main verb or before an adverb modifying the main verb can occur before other auxiliary verbs can undergo inversion in questions

Conjunctions
Morphological Properties Invariable; dont take affixes Syntactic Properties Typically connect words of the same category

Complementizers
Morphological Properties invariable; dont take affixes. Syntactic Properties create embedded sentences e.g. I wonder if he did so.
- that, if, whether, for

Grammar with Lexical Categories

A man kicked the ball.

Det N V Det N

This grammar misses a great deal of properties that we can observe, e.g., the agreement and ambiguity facts in examples like the following:
a. The mother of the boy and the girl is arriving soon. b. The mother of the boy and the girl are arriving soon.

Constituency
Why two different agreement patterns? Two different possibilities for grouping the words
a. [The mother of [the boy and the girl]] is arriving. b. [The mother of the boy] and [the girl] are arriving. The grouping of words into larger units called constituents provides the first step in understanding the agreement facts.

Phrasal Categories
Evidence for the existence of phrase units Cleft Construction Constituent Questions Pronoun Substitution Coordination

Phrase Structure Rules (PS Rules)

Phrases are projected from lexical categories. o NP: Noun Phrase o VP: Verb Phrase o Adj P: Adjective Phrase o Adv P: Adverb Phrase o PP: Preposition Phrase

NP: Noun Phrase

head is noun. __ [liked ice cream]. Options:

PS Rule
NP (Det) (A) N (PP/S)

Ahmad, I, you, students, the students, the tall students the students from UMT, the students who cam from UMT, etc.

VP: Verb Phrase

head is verb. The student __. Options:
ran, sang, lifted heavy chair, walked the dog through the park, thought Izza is honest, etc.
VP

PS Rule
V (NP) (PP/S)

Adj P: Adjective Phrase

head is adjective. He feels__. Options:

PS Rule
Adj P Adj (PP/ VP/S)

happy, sad, proud of you, proud to be his students, proud that he passed the exam, etc.

Adv P: Adverb Phrase

head is adverb. He behaved __. Options:
well, carefully very politely, very well, etc.
Adv P

PS Rule
(AdvP) Adv

PP: Preposition Phrase

head is preposition. The squirrel ran right__. Options:
up the tree, into the box, etc.

PS Rule
PP P NP

Grammar with Phrases

PS rules can generate infinite number of grammatical sentences. Recursive application of PS rules PS rules help us to identify hierarchical structures, and thus enable us to represent the structural ambiguities of sentences.