This document discusses the key concepts of generative grammar including: - Generative grammar defines syntactic structures and generates all grammatical sentences of a language using a finite set of rules. - Syntax is the study of how words are combined into phrases and sentences. Phrases are groupings of words headed by a lexical category. - Sentences contain lexical categories like nouns, verbs, adjectives as well as functional categories like determiners and auxiliaries. - Verbs select complements like objects, predicates, and clauses that are required, while adjuncts provide optional details like time and manner. - Recursion allows categories to embed within each other, generating infinitely long phrases.

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Mohamed I University Prof. Derraz
Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences Syntax S6
Syntax
This chapter deals with the rules and categories that underlie sentence formation and focuses
on the internal structure of grammatical sentences following the principles of generative
grammar.
1. Definition
Inspired by the original work of Noam Chomsky, linguists have attempted to produce a
particular type of grammar that has a very explicit system of rules specifying what
combinations of basic elements would result in grammatical sentences. This model could be
used to describe all human language and to predict the grammaticality of any given utterance
(that is, to predict whether the utterance would sound correct to native speakers of the
language).
Generative grammar (GG) defines the syntactic structures of a language. The grammar will
generate all well-formed syntactic structures of the language and will not generate any ill-
formed structures. This has been called the „all and only‟ criterion, that is, all the grammatical
sentences and only the grammatical sentences will be produced.
The grammar will have a finite number of rules, but will be capable of generating an infinite
number of grammatical sentences. In this way, the productivity of language would be
captured within the grammar.
The goal of GG is to build a grammar that generates all of the possible sentences and none of
the impossible sentences.
The word „syntax‟ comes originally from Greek and literally means „a putting together or
arrangement‟. Syntax concentrates on the structure and ordering of components within a
sentence. It is the study of the organization of words into larger units (phrases and sentences).
Syntax is the study of the rules governing the way words are combined to form sentences in a
language.
Before we begin, we need to recognize that the individual words in a sentence are organized
into naturally coherent groups called constituents.
A constituent is any word or combination of words that is dominated by a single node. A
word or a group of words that function as a unit and make up larger grammatical units.
Consider the following example,
(1)The young linguist will see his teacher after the session.
The string the young linguist is a phrase and a constituent, but the string the young is not.

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“A phrase is defined as a group of related words that lacks both subject and verb.” A phrase is
a part of a sentence. It is a group of words (within a sentence) that does not contain both
subject and verb and does not express a complete idea. A phrase can consist of just one word,
but usually it contains more than one. Examples include:
(2)John
(3)This stupid mistake
Phrases are often classified into four basic types, taking their names from what is considered
to be the class of the most important word in the phrase. The following are word classes:
the verb, the noun, the adverb, the preposition and the adjective.
The class of the most important word in any phrase will decide what type of phrase it is. This
important word is often referred to as the head of the phrase. The head is the most important
word in a phrase. All the other words in a phrase depend on the head. The head of a phrase is
the element that determines the syntactic function of the whole phrase. A head bears most
important semantic information of the phrase.
A Word class of head determines word class of entire phrase.
In the following examples, the head word is given in bold:
(4) The unseen intruder
(5) The food was wonderful.
(6) She dances beautifully.
(7) The dinner is on the table
The phrase (4) has a noun as its head word; it is, therefore, a noun phrase. In (5), the head is
an adjective, so it is an adjective phrase. In (6), the head is an adverb, so it is an adverb
phrase. In (7), the head is a preposition, so it is a prepositional phrase.
Therefore, a phrase is a string of (one or more) words that functions as syntactic unit (or
constituent). A phrase is a syntactic unit headed by a lexical category such as noun, adjective,
adverb, verb or preposition. Phrases are named for their heads.
2 Lexical and functional categories
Lexical categories have particular kinds of meanings associated with them. For example,
verbs usually refer to actions, events and states (kick, marry, love). The V in a VP is called
the head of the VP, (usually the head is the only obligatory part of a phrase).
A term that is used to indicate that words belong to different classes with different
morphological and syntactic properties. The major lexical categories are noun (N), verb (V),
adjective (A), and preposition (P). Other terms are lexical class and syntactic category or
class.

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Languages may contain also functional categories; they are called so because their members
have a grammatical function rather than a descriptive meaning, for example, the category
determiner (Det), which includes articles (the, a, an) as well as demonstratives (this, that,
these, and those) and „counting words‟ ( each and every) . Another category is Auxiliary
(Aux) which includes be and have and modals.
There are five categories of phrasal constituents corresponding closely to the lexical categories
which head them:
a. An NP is a constituent headed by N.
b. A VP is a constituent headed by V.
c. A PP is a constituent headed by P.
d. An AdjP is a constituent headed by A.
e. An AdvP is a constituent headed by Adv.
So, phrases are built around a „skeleton‟ consisting of two levels, as shown below. The symbol P
stands for „phrase‟.
Phrase level NP VP AdjP PP
Word level N V Adj P
3 Heads and modifiers
The distinction between heads and modifiers has been put in terms of one word, the head, that
controls the other words in a phrase and the modifiers, the optional elements that describe a
property of the head. If we think of language as a way of conveying information – which is
what every speaker does with language some of the time – we can consider the head as
conveying a central piece of information and the modifiers as conveying extra information.
Thus, in the phrase expensive books the head word books indicates the very large set of things
that count as books; while, expensive indicates that the speaker is drawing attention not to the
whole set but to the subset of books that are expensive. In the longer phrase the expensive
books, the word the signals that the speaker is referring to a set of books which have already
been mentioned or are otherwise obvious in a particular context.
4 Complements and adjuncts
Modifiers fall into two classes, obligatory modifiers, known as arguments, and optional
modifiers known as adjuncts. The arguments are divided into two categories; the external
argument which always refers to the subject and the internal arguments that refer to the
complements of the verb. The complements include direct object, indirect object, predicative
complement, and oblique complement since these are all potentially required by some verb or

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other. The distinction was first developed for the phrases that modify verbs and indeed
applies most easily to the modifiers of verbs; we will focus on verbs, but the distinction is also
applied to the modifiers of nouns.
The elements which are required by the verb are called complements; while, the elements
which do not require license from the verb to occur in the predicate are called adjuncts and are
typically optional elements. They can be omitted without affecting the grammaticality and
central meaning of the sentence. They provide additional meaning connected to the when,
where, how or why of the situation (i.e. time, place, manner, etc.) but not what or who.
In the example, the young linguist will see his teacher after the session, the complement is his
teacher and the adjunct is after the session.
The adjunct can be a phrase or a clause, as shown in the following examples.
(8)John gave Bill the money in the living room.
The adjunct in (8) is the phrase „in the living room’, and the complements are the two phrases
„the money‟ and „Bill’.
(9)Because it was too heavy, John probably put the parcel on the desk last night.
The adjuncts in (9) are the dependent clause „because it was too heavy‟ and the two phrases
„probably’ and „last night’.
So adjuncts provide information about time, manner, reason, place, modality, and so on.
Adjuncts are not the arguments of a verb.
5 Verbs’ arguments
Consider the following examples:
(10)John abandoned the project.
(11)*John abandoned.
(12)*John abandoned after the project.
From these examples, we can say that the verb abandon must be associated with a noun
phrase. The absence of the NP renders the sentence ungrammatical. So abandon is a transitive
verb that requires a complement of the category NP, which is its direct object.
(13) John smiled.
(14) *John smiled his friend.
Unlike abandon, smile doesn‟t require the presence of an NP. Traditionally, smile is an
intransitive verb. This means that it cannot be followed by an NP like his friend.
(15) John lives in an apartment.
(16)*John lives an apartment.

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The verb live selects a PP and not an NP. We will say that a verb selects a complement of a
specific kind.
Other verbs select a clause as their complement:
(18)John wondered [whether bill would leave].
The verb wonder selects the complement [whether bill would leave], which is itself a clause.
The list of verbs is so long, e.g. put, hand , give…
The specific realization of the complements selected by a verb may differ from one language
to another. While English ditransitive verbs may be followed by two NPs, or by an NP and a
PP, only the latter option is obtained in French.
(19)John gave Bill the present.
(20)*John a donné Bill le cadeau.
(21)John gave the present to Bill.
(22)John a donné le cadeau à Bill.
To conclude, we will say that verbs such as abandon has two arguments, and we will
represent them as follows:
Abandon: 1
2
The verb smile has only one argument:
Smile: 1
The verb give has three arguments:
Give: 1
2
3
6 Recursion
Recursion is defined as a property of language that allows for the embedding of categories
(which can yield infinitely long phrases). It is described as the ability to place one component
inside another component of the same kind, as shown in the following examples.
(23)The cat on the mat in the house on the street.
(24)John believed that Cathy knew that Mary helped George.