The document discusses the levels of linguistic analysis and syntactic categories. It explains that syntax examines how words are combined to form sentences based on grammatical rules. There are two main types of syntactic categories - lexical categories like nouns, verbs, adjectives which have inherent meaning, and functional categories like determiners and auxiliaries which have grammatical functions. The document provides details on the morphological and syntactic properties of nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, determiners and auxiliaries.

1. LANE 334 -EA: Syntax
2011 – Term 2
Syntactic Categories 2
By: http://SBANJAR.kau.edu.sa/
Dr. Shadia Y. Banjar http://wwwdrshadiabanjar.blogspot.com
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2. LEVELS OF LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS
PHONOLOGY
MORPHOLOGY
SYNTAX
SEMANTICS
PRAGMATICS
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3. Phonology looks at and describes the sound system
of a language.
Morphology looks at the way words are formed .
Syntax describes the way words fit together to form
sentences or utterances.
Semantics deals with meaning.
Pragmatics deals with usage.
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4. Syntax
• Syntax: is the branch of
linguistics deals with sentence
structure.
• In order to study the structure of
sentences, we have to know the
grammatical rules governing the
way words are combined to form
‘well-formed’ sentences.
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5. √√√√√√√ a ‘well-formed’
sentence
1. I shot the sheriff.
Native
XXXXXXX speaker
2. *the shot sheriff I.
an ‘ill-formed’
sentence
Native
speaker
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6. (consist of)
S word + word + word + …….
(sentence) word order
rules
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7. SYNTACTIC CATEGORIES
To understand the language in terms of syntactic rules, we
have to know what are the SYNTACTIC CATEGORIES!
Syntactic category are either phrasal categories, such as
noun phrase or verb phrase, which can be decomposed into
smaller syntactic categories, or word category, such as noun
or verb, which cannot be further decomposed.
The three criteria used in defining syntactic categories are:
1. The type of meaning it expresses.
2. The type of affixes it takes.
3. The structure in which it occurs.
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8. A family of expressions that can substitute for one
another without loss of grammaticality is called a
syntactic category.
1. The cat chases the mouse.
2. The dog chases the mouse
3. The policeman chases the mouse.
4. The mother mouse chases the mouse.
If words and phrases could not be assigned to a
small group of categories, it would be very hard to
learn or use a language.
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9. – In the given examples: 1-4,
– every word is a member of a category.
– a word’s category type determines the
kind of phrase it can form.
– a phrase is a word or string of words
that functions as a unit in a sentence,
built around a head.
– Every language has specific phrase
structure rules determining how phrases
can be combined to form sentences.
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10. WORD CATEGORIES
WORD
CATEGORIES
FUNCTIONAL LEXICAL
WORD WORD
CATEGORIES CATEGORIES
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11. LEXICAL WORD CATEGORIES
Lexical word categories are:
Words that have some sort of inherent meaning
are called lexical words (or content words).
Categories related to such words are called
lexical categories e.g. NOUN, VERB, ADJECTIVE.
Open-class in the sense that new words can be
added, and thus have a large number of class
members.
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12. NOUN
Morphological properties
it can take a plural -s morpheme;
Exceptions: children, deer, mice, fish, . . .
it can be modified by a possessive (apostrophe: ’s)
it contains morphemes like the following: -ity, -ness, -
action, -er, -ion, -ment, -ance, -hood.
These are all NOUN- OR NOMINAL SUFFIXES e.g
friendliness, writer, government, neighborhood.
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13. Syntactic properties of the class of NOUN
• preceded by articles like: the, demonstrative
pronouns like: this, that, these, those and
numerals like: one, two, three.
•preceded by an ADJECTIVE or several
ADJECTIVES.
•followed by a PREPOSITION.
•preceded by a PREPOSITION.
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14. Verb
Morphological properties
• takes a past tense –ed1 form e.g. He walked.
• takes the –s form of the verb for third-person
singular agreement e.g. He goes to work daily.
• takes the –ing form to express the progressive
aspect e.g. he is running.
• takes the –ed2 form to express the perfective aspect
e.g. I have finished my work.
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15. Syntactic properties of the class of VERB
• preceded by AUXILIARIES. These are words like
do and have e.g. has come, does like.
•preceded by MODAL VERBS. These are words like
can, must, will and should e.g. can
cook, must work, will sleep, and should eat.
•preceded by negation words like not and never
e.g. Do not cry, Never shouts.
• preceded by an ADVERB or ADVERBS e.g.
quickly run.
• can be followed by a NOUN e.g. They hate John.
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16. ADJECTIVE
Morphological properties
• has morphemes like -ous, -y, -ish, e.g. furious,
angry, brownish, friendly.
•able to form comparatives and superlatives with -er
and -est. e.g. bigger , biggest.
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17. Syntactic properties of the adjective class:
• can be preceded by ADVERBS e.g. very
angry, more hard-working.
•can occur after determiners like the, a, this,
these, those and numerals and before
NOUNS e.g. the angry boy, those twelve small
monkeys.
• modifies a NOUN.
•cannot immediately follow PREPOSITIONS
e.g. *in angry. XXXXXXX
•can follow VERBS. E.g. He is angry.
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18. 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, ...
Syntactic properties
• modifies a VERB; e.g. walks quickly.
•modifies an ADJECTIVE; e.g. swiftly angry.
•modifies another ADVERB; e.g. very angrily.
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19. Functional word categories
Functional word categories are:
Words that don’t have (an easily detectable) inherent
meaning are called functional words because such words
perform some function in the sentence.
Functional word categories tend to be CLOSED-CLASS (new
words may not be added) and have a small number of class
members.
functional word categories like the following:
• DETERMINERS/QUANTIFIERS
•AUXILIARIES
•CONJUNCTIONS
•COMPLEMENTIZERS
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20. Determiners/Quantifiers
This is a general term for articles (a, an, the),
demonstratives (these, those, this), possessive
pronouns (his, her, their, her), some quantifiers and
interrogatives (how many, what, where, which, how,
why), numerals (one, two, . . . ).
Morphological properties: Invariable; i.e. cannot
take affixes
Syntactic properties: occur before adjectives and
nouns.
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21. Auxiliaries
This is a general term for the so-called “helping verbs”. These
are auxiliary verbs like: do, have, be and modal verbs like:
can, must, should, will, ought.
Morphological properties: can be inflected for tense, voice
(active, passive), mood (subjunctive, indicative, . . . ), aspect
(progressive, perfective). e.g. can, could, could have, was
sent, . . . .
Syntactic properties:
– typically occur either immediately before the main verb or
before an adverb modifying the main verb. e.g. can work, can
always work.
– can also occur before other auxiliary verbs. e.g. could have
come.
– can undergo inversion in questions. e.g. You can speak
Spanish vs. Can you speak Spanish?
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22. Conjunction
This refers to words like and, or, both, either,
neither...
Morphological properties: invariable; don’t
take affixes.
Syntactic properties: typically connect words
of the same category. e.g. two or more nouns,
two or more verbs, two or more sentences, two
or more adjectives, . . .
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23. Complementizer
This includes words like: whether, so that,
in that, because, if, since, that, . . .
Morphological properties: invariable; don’t
take affixes.
Syntactic properties: create embedded
sentences. That is, they create sentences
within sentences.
e.g.
[John likes Sue because [she is pretty]].
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24. Phrasal Categories
Phrasal Categories: Just as words have word
categories, phrases have phrasal categories.
• Phrasal categories, are ultimately much more
useful than just individual phrases, for the study of
sentence structure. A phrasal category is directly
determined by the category of the word which the
phrase is about. Such a word is called the head of
the phrase.
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25. •How to determine a phrasal category:
The concept of a “head”:
• The head of a phrase is the main word of that phrase.
• It is essentially what the entire phrase is about.
• The category of a phrase is directly determined from the
category of its head.
To see how this works, consider the following example with the
phrases marked out in brackets:
[[The tiny woman] [went [to [the store ]] ] ]
Sentence (S) = The tiny woman went to the store
Phrase 1 = the tiny woman :Noun Phrase (NP, for short).
Phrase 2 = went to the store: Verb Phrase (VP).
Phrase 3 = to the store: Prepositional Phrase (PP).
Phrase 4 = the store : Noun Phrase (NP).
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26. Constituents
A constituent is a grammatical unit which
is part of a larger grammatical unit.
in example (1):
• The cat = noun phrase
• Noun Phrase =determiner + noun
• "determiner" and "noun“ are the
constituents of the noun phrase.
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27. TREE DIAGRAMS
Three aspects of a speaker’s syntactic
knowledge are explicitly represented in tree
diagrams:
1. The linear order of the words in the
sentence,
2. the groupings of words into syntactic
categories, and
3. the hierarchical structure of the syntactic
categories.
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28. The Tree Diagram For:
Juliet loves Romeo
S
VP
NP
V NP
N
N
Juliet loves Romeo
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29. Form and Function
•Words can be grouped in certain patterns to form
sentences.
•In terms of forms, a sentence consists of a noun
phrase and a verb phrase.
•In terms of function, a sentence consists of a
subject and a predicate. A predicate must contain
a predicator which is a verb.
•The class of a constituent indicates its form and
what the form does or act as a grammatical unit
indicates its function.
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