This document discusses English morphology and syntax. It covers several key topics: 1. What is syntax and syntactic structure, including parts of speech and phrase structure. 2. The difference between deep and surface structure, where deep structure is the underlying form and surface structure is the actual form after transformations. 3. Grammaticality, which refers to sentences that follow syntactic rules rather than other factors like meaning or truth. 4. Types of ambiguities, including lexical ambiguities due to ambiguous words, and structural ambiguities due to multiple possible syntactic trees.

1. English Morphology & Syntax
Grammaticality, Deep vs. Surface
Structures, and Ambiguity
 Dewi Deviarini
 Istia Puji Rahayu
 Miftah Nuraulia Putri
 Nurani Rusmana Putri
 Nurmalita Yasmin

2. What is Syntax ?
 Syntax is the study of sentence patterns of
language.
 Syntax is the part of the grammar that
represents a speaker’s knowledge of the
structures and formation.
 The aim of this study is to show you what
syntactic structure is and the rules that
determine syntactic structure are like.

3. Syntactic Structure
• Syntactic structure is a set of words or phrases in a language
which share a significant number of common characteristics.
• Syntactic structures commonly include :
1. Part of Speech
(Noun, Verb, Adverb, Adjective, Pronoun, Determiner,
Preposition, Auxiliary, etc.)
2. Phrase Structure Grammars
(Noun Phrase, Adjective Phrase, Verb Phrase,
Adverb Phrase, Preposition Phrase.)
3. Sentence, as the core of the structure.

4. Grammaticality

5. What is Grammaticality ?
Sequences of words that conform to the rules of
syntax are grammatical (well formed).
Those that violate the syntactic rules are
ungrammatical (ill formed).
e.g grammatical (well formed) :
o The cat is on the mat.
o The mat is on the cat.
e.g ungrammatical (ill formed) :
o The cat on is the mat.
o The mat on the is cat.

6. What Grammaticality Is Not Based On
 Grammaticality is not based on what we learn
in school.
 Children acquire most of the syntactic rules of
their language even before learning to read.
 Does not depend on having heard a sentence
before.
Example: Enormous crickets in pink socks
danced at the prom.

7.  Does not depend on a sentence being
meaningful.
Example: Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
 There are grammatical sentences that you
might think are ungrammatical.
Example: The horse raced past the barn fell.
 Grammaticality does not depend on truth.
Example: I look like Piola Pascual.

8. Deep vs. Surface
Structures

9. Syntactic Structure
Syntactic
Structure
Deep Structure
Surface
Structure

10. Deep Structure
• Deep structure is the basic structure of
sentences. It is specified by the “phrase
structure rules”.
• Phrase structure rules create initial syntactic
trees.
PS : S  N VP
VP  V NP
NP  Det N

11. • E.g. of deep structure
S
NP VP
John V NP
loves Mary

12. Transformational Rules
• Transformational rules is a syntactic rule that
applies to an underlying phrase structure tree
of sentence.
• It derives a new structure by moving or
inserting elements.
• It is a way to capture the relationship between
a declaration and question.

13. • E.g. ‘passive’ transformation
S
NP VP
John V NP
loves Mary

14. • Delete its subject:
S
NP VP
V NP
loves Mary

15. • Move the object to subject position:
S
NP VP
Mary V PP
loves by John

16. • Insert the passive auxiliary:
S
NP VP
Mary V PP
Aux V by NP
was loved John

17. • Insert the passive morpheme:
S
NP VP
Mary V PP
Aux V by NP
was loved John
• The passive structure is related to the active because it was
formed from it

18. • Suppose all structures start off with a more
abstract underlying form which is then
‘transformed’ into the structure we actually
see:
underlying form
transformations
surface form

19. Surface Structure
Surface structure is actual form of a sentence.
It is forms of sentences resulted from
modification/ transformation.
Surface structure is a form of language that is
based on deep structure.

20. Examples
1. Same deep structure and different surface
structure
• You push the chair (active sentence)
• The chair is pushed by you ( passive sentence )
• Push the chair! (imperative sentence)
Note : three sentences have the same abstract
representation ( deep structure ) which is you as a
person push the chair.

21. 2. Same surface structure and different deep structure.
e.g.
John saw the man with a telescope
Note : Who has the telescope? John, or the man?

22. Phrase Structure Rules
S = NP + VP
VP = V + NP
NP = det + N

23. Syntactic Analysis
John has a telescope

24. The man has the telescope

25. Ambiguity

27. An ambiguous sentence is a sentence that has
two meanings. Some sentences are ambiguous
because they contain a word that is ambiguous.
Such cases are called lexical ambiguities
(the lexicon is just the set of words in a language).
By contrast, some sentences are ambiguous
without containing any ambiguous words. These
cases can be explained when it is observed that
the sentences in question can be given two
distinct syntactic trees, leading to what is called
a structural ambiguity.

28. Structural vs. Lexical Ambiguities
1. John is sitting near the bank.
a. Meaning 1: bank = financial institution
b. Meaning 2: bank = slope at the side of a river
(1) has two meanings, which appear to be
reducible to the two meanings of the word 'bank'.

29. (2) Mary will hit the student with the book
a. Meaning 1: Mary will hit the student. She'll do
so with the book. (=The hitting is done with the
book)
b. Meaning 2: Mary will hit the student who is
holding the book. (=The student is holding the
book)
☞ None of the words in (2) is ambiguous.
So why is the sentence ambiguous?
Because it can be given two distinct syntactic
trees.