An important topic in languages: grammar

1. Syntax
Universidad de El Salvador
Linguistics
By: Carlos Lara
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2. • Order words make sense
need to…
• Words need order to make
sense….
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3. Syntax
Is "the study of the principles and
processes by which sentences are
constructed in particular languages".
The term syntax is also used to refer
directly to the rules and principles that
govern the sentence structure of any
individual language
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4. Generative Grammar
The hypothesis of generative grammar is that
language is a structure of the human mind.
The goal of generative grammar is to make a
complete model of this inner language. This
model could be used to describe all human
language and to predict the grammaticality of
any given utterance.
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5. Deep Vs. Surface structure
• Surface structure can be defined as the
syntactic form they take as actual
sentences. In the other words, it is forms
of sentences resulted from modification/
transformation. Consider these sentences:
• (1) You close the door.
• (2) The door is closed by you.
• (3) Close the door!
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6. • The first sentence is active, second is
passive, and the last is imparative.
However, if you take a look those
closely, you will find that those three
are very closely related, even
identical. They seem to be identical,
since they have the same undelying
abstract representation that is called
deep structure.
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7. Structure ambiguity
• The lexical ambiguity of a word or phrase
pertains to its having more than one
meaning in the language to which the
word belongs. "Meaning" hereby refers to
whatever should be captured by a good
dictionary. For instance, the word "bank"
has several distinct lexical definitions,
including "financial institution" and "edge
of a river".
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8. Example:
Small boys and girls
This can refer to “ small boys and (small)
girls” or “ small boys and (all) girls.
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9. Recursion
Recursive rules have the capacity to be
applied more than once in generating a
structure. For example:
THE GUN WAS ON THE TABLE NEAR THE
WINDOW IN THE BEDROOM.
We must be able to repeat the rule that
creates a prepositional phrase over and over
again.
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10. Symbols used in syntactic
description
• We
encounter
some
symbols
as
abbreviations for syntactic categories.
1. → (Arrow) It can be interpreted as «consists
of» or «rewrites as».
NP → Art N
2. () (Round brackets) Whatever occurs inside
these round brackets will be treated as an
optional constituent.
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11. Examples:
1. NP → Art N
A Noun Phrase (NP) such as The dog
consists of (→ ) an article (Art) the and a
noun (N) dog.
2. NP → Art (Adj) N
A Noun Phrase consists of (→ ) an article
(Art) and a Noun (N) with the opion of
including an adjective (Adj).
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12. Symbols used in syntactic
description
3. {} (Curly brackets) These indicate
that only one of the elements
enclosed within the curly brackets
must be selected.
4. * (Ungrammatical sentence)
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13. Examples:
3.
NP
Art N
Pro
PN
A Noun Phrase can consists of an
expressions such as The dog (Article
plus Noun), or it a Pronoun (Pro) or
Cathy a Proper Noun.
4. * Followed the dog (does not make
sense) Cathy followed the dog.
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14. Summarized list of symbols and
abbreviations.
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
S
N
V
Art
NP
Vp
Adj
Pro
PN
Adv
Sentence
Noun
Verb
Article
Noun Phrase
Verb Phrase
Adjective
Pronoun
Proper noun
Adverb
• Prep
• PP
Preposition
Prepositional
phrase
• * Ungrammatical
sentence
• → Consists of
• () Optional
constituent
• {} Only one of these
constituent must be
selected
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15. Tree diagrams
Are used to create a more explicit
representation
of
the
hierarchical
organisation of one structure.
NP
NP
Art
N
[The] [girl]
Art
N
The
girl
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16. S
NP
Art
N
VP
V
NP
Art
The
girl
saw
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a
N
dog
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17. Phrase structure rules
• These rules state that the structure of a
phrase of a specific type will consist of one
or more constituents in a particular order.
• We can use phrase structure rules to
present the information of the tree diagram
in another format.
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18. Lexical rules
Lexical rules specify which words can be
used when we rewrite constituents such as
N. The first rule in the following set states
that «a proper noun rewrites as Mary or
George».
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19. •
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
PN → {Mary,George}
N → {girl, dog, boy}
Art → {a,the}
Pro → {it, you}
V → {followed, say, run}
Adj → {green, tall, intelligent}
Prep → {near, on}
Adv → {yesterday, late, there}
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20. Back to recursion
Each time we create an S, we only create
a single S (sentence sturcture). We
actually need to be able to include
sentence strucutres within other sentence
structures.
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21. Example:
Kriscia helped Oswaldo is a sentence.
Cathy knew that [Kriscia helped Oswaldo].
Eduardo believed that [Cathy knew that
[Kriscia helped Oswaldo] ]
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22. Complement phrases
That, as used in the previous examples, is
called a Complementizer (C). The role of
that as a complementizer is to introduce a
Complement phrase (CP).
We can see from the same sentence that
the Complement phrase (CP) comes after
a verb (V) Knew.
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23. Eduardo believed that Cathy knew that
Kriscia helped Oswaldo.
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24. S
NP
VP
V
CP
C
S
NP
VP
V
CP
C
S
NP
VP
V
PN
PN
PN
NP
PN
Eduardo believed that Cathy knew that Krsicia helped Oswaldo.
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25. Transformational rules
Essentially what they do is take a specific
part of structure, like a branch of the tree,
away from one part of the tree diagram and
attach it to a different part.
In order to make this possible in grammar,
we need other rules that will change or
move constituents in the structures derived
from the phrase structure rules.
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26. S
NP
VP
V
Mary
saw
NP
Adv
George recently
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27. S
Adv
NP
VP
V
Recently Mary
saw
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NP
George
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28. S
NP
Aux
VP
V
Pro
You
NP
PN
will help Cathy
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29. S
Aux
NP
VP
V
Pro
Will
you
NP
PN
help
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Cathy
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