The evenings have recently turned very cold, according to a short document. It discusses linguistic concepts like constituents, immediate constituents, and the relationship between linguistic units of different sizes, including sentences, clauses, phrases, words and morphemes. It also covers the differences between simple and complex sentences.

1. The evenings have turned very cold just recently.

2. Units smallers than the sentence itself:
- Clauses
- Phrases
- Words
- Morphemes
Constituency: the relationship between one unit and another unit
Immediate constituents

3. Simple vs. Compound sentences
The evenings have turned very cold just recently, but the afternoons have been quite warm.
Chain and choice relationships
The + evening + s + have + turn + ed + very + cold + just + recently
The weather has been very cold just recently.
it was cold recently.
A typical English sentence is a mixture of simple and complex units.

4. Some students will be working late in their rooms.

5. A hierarchy of potential size or extensibility:
Sentences, which consist of one or more
Clauses, which consist of one or more
Phrases, which consist of one or more
Words, which consist of one or more
Morphemes
They live on the top floor of a house in the corner of the old square behind the church.
Embedding: the occurence of one unit as a constituent of another unit at the same rank
in the grammatical hierarchy.

6. Subordination
The weather has been remarkably warm since we returned from Italy last week.
The room has a large window which faces south.
This is the house that Jack built.
This is the cat that killed the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.
- Subordinate clauses: clauses embedded in another clauses often introduced by a
subordinating conjunction
- However, subordination of clauses is not confined to clauses which are immediate
constituents of other clauses – relative clauses

7. Coordination
Coordination: two or more units of the same status on the grammatical hierarchy
connected by a coordinating conjunction.
Coordiantion of clauses: [[It was Christams day] and [the snow lay thick on the ground]].
Coordination of prepositional phrases: You can go [[Iby air] or [by rain]].
Coordination of nouns: His [[son] and [daughter]] live in London.
The colors of the rainbow are blue, green, yellow, orange, red, indigo...
The positive integers are one, two, three, four, five, six, seven,...

8. Thus, the constituents which function as elements of clause structure are either phrases or subordinate clauses.
Each phrase is named after a class of word which has a primary, and indeed obligatory function within it.
• Some people complained about it:
• Some people = subject (function) AND an NP (category)
• Function is a relational concept: when we say that some people is subject we are describing the relation
between it and complained, or between it and the whole clause. It is THE SUBJECT OF THE CLAUSE, not
simply a subject.
• A category, by contrast, is a class of expressions which are grammatically alike. An NP is (setting aside a
narrow range of exceptions) simply a phrase with a noun as head (it's not the NP of anything, it's just an NP).
The class of NPs thus includes an indefinitely large set of expressions like the following (where underlining
marks the head noun): some people, all things, Kim, people (as used in People complained), the people next
door, the way home, and so on.

9. The reason we need to distinguish so carefully between functions and categories is that the
correspondence between them is often subtle and complex. Even though there are clear tendencies
(like that the subject of a clause is very often an NP), a single function may be filled by expressions
belonging to different categories, an expression belonging to a single category may occur in different
functions.
ONE FUNCTION, DIFFERENT CATEGORIES ONE CATEGORY, DIFFERENT FUNCTIONS
His guilt was obvious. Some customers complained.
That he was guilty was obvious. Kim insulted some customers.

10. Parts of speech and their functions
Nine different categories of lexemes:
INTERJECTIONS oh, hello, wow, ouch
NOUN The dog barked. That is Sue. We saw you.
VERB The dog barked. It is impossible. I have a headache.
ADJECTIVE He’s very old. It looks empty. I’ve got a new car.
DETERMINATIVE The dog barked. I need some nails. All things change.
ADVERB She spoke clearly. He’s very old. I almost died.
PREPOSITION It’s in the car. I gave it to Sam. Here’s a list of them.
COORDINATOR I got up and left. Ed or Je took it. It’s cheap but strong.
SUBORDINATOR It’s odd that they I wonder whether They don’t know if
were late. it’s still available. you are serious.

11. The two largest and most important categories are the noun and the verb. The most basic kind of
clause contains at least one noun and one verb and may contain just a noun and verb.
Categories of noun, verb, adjective, determinative, adverb, preposition - can function as the head of
corresponding phrases (noun phrase, verb phrase, adjective phrase, etc.).

12. Parts of speech and their functions
Nouns - generally function as head of NPs, and NPs in turn have a range of functions, including that of
subject, object, subjective complement.
Verbs - occur as head of VPs that themselves function as predicate in a clause.
Adjectives - Most adjectives can occur in either of two major functions, attributive and predicative:
ATTRIBUTIVE PREDICATIVE
Some hot soup The soup is hot.
A jealous husband He became jealous.
In the attributive use the adjective functions as modifier to a following noun in NP structure. In the
predicative use it generally occurs after the verb be or one of a small subclass of similar verbs such as
become, feel, seem, etc.

13. Parts of speech and their functions
Determinatives -The two most common members are the and a. These function as determiners in
NP structure. They mark the NP as definite (in the case of the) and indefinite (in the case of a). We
use a definite NP when we assume you will be able to identify the referent. We say Where 's the dog?,
for example, only if I'm assuming you know which dog I ' m referring to. There's no such assumption
made with an indefinite NP, as in I could hear a dog barking.
Determinative is the name of a category (a class of words), while determiner is the name of a
function:
1. Articles
Indefinite a/an (a pencil, an eraser)
Definite the (the pen)
2. Possessives (my aunt, John’s book)
3. Demonstratives (this child, those boys)
4. Numbers (four girls, the fifth girl)
5. Words of indefinite quantity (some people, more books)

14. Parts of speech and their functions
Adverbs - adverbs mostly function as modifiers of verbs (or VPs), adjectives, or other adverbs.
MODIFYING A VERB OR A VP She spoke clearly. I often see them.
MODIFYING AN ADJECTIVE a remarkably good idea It’s very expensive.
MODIFYING AN ADVERB She spoke quite clearly. I’ll end quite soon.
Prepositions - occur as head of preposition phrases (PPs), and these in turn function as dependents of a
range of elements, especially verbs (or VPs), nouns and adjectives. In the following examples we use
single underlining for the preposition, brackets for the PP, and italics for the element on which the PP is
dependent:
DEPENDENT ON A VERB OR A VP I sat [by the door]. I saw her [after lunch].
DEPENDENT ON A NOUN the man [in the moon] the day [before that]
DEPENDENT ON AN ADJECTIVE keen [on golf] superior [to the others]

15. Parts of speech and their functions
Coordinators - The central members of the coordinator category are and, or, and but - in traditional
grammar they are called 'coordinating conjunctions' . Their function is to mark the coordination of two
or more expressions, where coordination is a relation between elements of equal syntactic status. This
syntactic equality is typically reflected in the ability of any one element to stand in place of the whole
coordination, as in:
1. We need a long table and at least eight chairs.
2. We need a long table. We need at least eight chairs.
In 1. we have a coordination of a long table and at least eight chairs, each of which can occur in place
of the whole, as evident from the two examples in 2. Precisely because the elements are of equal status,
neither is head: coordination is not head + dependent construction.

16. Parts of speech and their functions
Subordinators - The most central members of the subordinator category are that, whether, and one
use of if- the one that is generally interchangeable with whether (as in I don 't know whether/if it 's
possible). These words serve to mark a clause as subordinate.
MAIN CLAUSE SUBORDINATE CLAUSE
He did his best. I realize [that he did his best].
He did his best is a main clause, one which, in this example, forms a sentence by itself. Addition of
the subordinator that changes it into a subordinate clause. Subordinate clauses characteristically
function as a dependent element within the structure of a larger clause. In that he did his best is a
dependent of the verb realize, and hence is part of the larger clause I realize that he did his best. That
is often optional: in I realize he did his best the clause he did his best is still subordinate, but it is not
overtly marked as such in its own structure.