Syntax: The Sentence Patterns of Language

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Syntax: The word "syntax" refers to the relationships of words within a sentence. In English, speakers and writers generally indicate these relationships through word order. For example, the actor--or "subject"--in a sentence generally comes before the verb. Recipients of actions--or "objects"--generally appear after verbs. English syntax actually is much more complex than these examples suggest, but they illustrate a general principle: syntax is the system that speakers and writers use when they combine words into phrases and clauses, ultimately creating meaning.
Syntax and Sentence Structure

Syntax refers to the harmonious way in which words are put together to form phrases, clauses, or sentences. These words can be structured in a variety of patterns. The subject-verb structure emphasizes action and the subject's determination. A telescoping effect in a sentence can detail movement from general to specific or far to near. A periodic sentence suspends the main idea or subject until the end of the sentence. This creates suspense within the sentence and prolongs reader interest.

Syntax: the rules of sentence formation. Also, syntax represents the component of the mental grammar that represents speakers’ knowledge of the structure of phrases and sentences.


Grammatical or *Ungrammatical?

Grammatical (well-formed): Describes a well-formed sequence of words, one conforming to the rules of syntax.

*Ungrammatical (ill formed): Ill-formed structures (sequence of words) that do not conform to the rules of grammar/syntax.

A native/fluent speaker will judge intuitively that a sentence to be grammatical and the other one to be ungrammatical *.
Intuitive knowledge belongs to the linguistic competence of the native/fluent speaker.
In generative/transformational grammar there are three important aspects of sentence structure:
1) the linear order of words from left to right
2) the categorization of words into parts of speech
3) the groupings of words
Grammaticality is not based on:
1) Grammaticality does not depend on having heard the sentence before.
Example: Enormous crickets in pink socks danced at the prom.

2) Grammaticality does not depend on whether the sentence is meaningful or not.
Example: Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

Although the sentence does not make sense, it is syntactically well formed. However, it sounds “funny”.

Compare: Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. (sounds funny)
*Furiously sleep ideas green colorless. (ungrammatical)

3) Grammaticality does not depend on the truth of the sentence.
Example: Pregnant men are happy.
Unicorns live in the forest.

What else do you know about syntax?
Hierarchical Structure: the groupings and subgroupings of the parts of a sentence into syntactic categories.

Example: the bird sang [[the][bird][sang]]

We already saw these groupings and subgroupings with morphemes:
Example: unlockable [[un][lock][able]]


Ambiguity: will happen when a sentence has multiple meanings (as we saw with the word unlockable).

For sale: an antique desk suitable for ladies with thick legs and larger drawers.
We will oil your sewing machine and adjust tension in your home for $10.00
This will make you smart. (


These structures are ambiguous because of the grouping, therefore causing structural ambiguity

• Syntactic Rules describe the form of the sentences in the language. For example, in English, the sentence "They can fish" is syntactically correct, while the sentence "Can fish they" is incorrect. To take another example, the language of binary numerals uses only the symbols 0 and 1, arranged in strings formed by concatenation, so that the sentence 101 is syntactically correct for this language, while the sentence 1,110,211 is syntactically incorrect.

The syntactic rules in a grammar must at least account for:
1. the grammaticality of sentence
2. word order
3. structural ambiguity/Lexical ambiguity (semantic)
Flying planes can be dangerous (structural ambiguity)
The man pointing at the person with a gun (structural ambiguity)
The professor answered to the students with a smile (structural ambiguity)
This will make you smart (Lexical Ambiguity)
She found him a pig (Lexical Ambiguity)
4. grammatical relations (for example, which NP is the subject, and which NP is the direct object)
Bill hire Mom
I rented the room to you
5. whether the different structures have different meanings of the same meaning
Bill hired Mary
Mary was hired by Bill
6. the creative aspect of language
- unlimited number of sentences
- novel sentences
- unlimited in length of sentences (recursiveness)
What is SYNTAX?

• the rules of sentence formation
  
  
• the component of the mental grammar that represents speakers+BOA-knowledge of the structure of phrases and sentences.

• The grammars of all languages include rules of syntax that reflect speakers+BOA-knowledge of these facts.

• Sentences are not random strings of words. To be a sentence, words must conform to specific patterns determined by the syntactic rules of the language.

★ SENTENCE STRUCTURE

• subgroups of words
  
  
• Syntactic rules determine the order of words in a sentence, and how the words are grouped.

PHRASE STRUCTURE TREES（Constituent structure tree）
One approach to analyzing a sentence is to divide the words of a sentence into phrases (defined as words closely associated with one another syntactically). This technique is known as parsing. The most fundamental division is between subject and predicate (verb).
Sometimes a sentence or phrase allows for two different syntactic interpretations. Parsing using parentheses to show syntactic relations can disambiguate such a phrase as:
old men and women

Tree diagrams can be used to show such "long distance" grammatical relations.
Consider also the sentence:

The fish is too old to eat.

Tree Diagrams: Hierarchical structures are generally depicted in a tree diagram. Tree diagrams make it easier to see the parts and subparts of a sentence.

Consider the following sentence:
The child found the puppy.
Possible Groupings: 1. (the child), (found the puppy)
subject predicate
2. (the child) (found) (the puppy)
subject verb direct object
3. (the) (child) (found) (the) (puppy)
determiner noun verb determiner noun



Notice: (found the puppy) --> found) (the puppy) but not *(found the) (puppy)
If someone asks, "What did you find?"
The answer should be something like the puppy, but not found the

• Therefore, every sentence has one or more corresponding constituent structures composed of hierarchically arranged parts called constituents.

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Constituents: refer to the natural groupings of a sentence. It is a syntactic unit in a phrase structure tree.

Example: The child found the puppy.

The child = noun phrase (NP)
found the puppy = verb phrase (VP)


Here is a summary of the different types of CONSTITUENTS:

(1) Noun Phrase (NP): may function as the subject or as an object in a sentence. They often contain some form of a noun or proper noun, but may consist of a pronoun alone, or even contain a clause or a sentence. See page 126 #1: identify the NPs.

(2) Verb Phrase (VP):it always contains a verb and may contain other categories (NPs, PPs) etc. see p. 127 #2: identify the VPs

(3) Sentence (S):contains an NP, AUX, and an VP

OR Inflectional Phrase (IP):contains NP, INFL, VP
(This is for Spanish and French)

(4) Adjective Phrase (AdjP):

(5) Preposition Phrase (PP):

(6) Complementizer Phrase (CP): An embedded clause or subordinate clause


These larger syntactic categories (NP, VP, PP, etc) are called NODES
Nodes, contain the following information
(parts of speech):

(7) Determiner (Det): is found in a NP

(8) Adjective (Adj): is found in an AdjP

(9) Noun (N): is found in a NP

(10) Preposition (P): is found in a PP

(11) Adverb (Adv)

(12) Auxiliary Verb (Aux) will, has, is, may, might, would, could, can, etc.
OR Inflection (Infl) this holds the inflectional information (tense, mood, gender, number) of RICH inflectional languages (Spanish, Italian, French-somewhat)


PHRASE STRUCTURE TREESp. 128
nodes, immediately dominate, dominate

★ Phrase structure trees represent:
1) the linear order of the words in the sentence
2) the groupings of words into syntactic categories
3) the hierarchical structure of the syntactic categories



Some Phrase Structure Rules
Sets of rules like these make up phrase structure grammar.

S → NP Aux VP Aux = will hold helping verbs
And inflection information

S → S conj S conj = conjunction (and, or)

NP → (Det) (Adj) (AdjP) N (PP)
Pro Pro = Pronoun (We, it, los, se, O)
NP conj NP
CP

VP → V (NP) (PP) (CP) (Adv)
Cop PNom (PP) (CP) Cop = copula, helping verb (links N V CP in first NP to the N in the NP under VP) (is)
PNom=Predicate Nominal
(I am a student, I am happy)

CP → COMP S COMP= Complementizer (that, etc.)

PP → P NP

PNom → NP
AdjP




AdjP*→ (Deg) Adj (PP) (NP) Deg=adverbial degree (very)
CP


Det → Art Art= Article (the)
Poss Poss = Possessive (my)
Dem Dem = Demonstrative (that, these)


*Note: In the text AdjP is referred to as AP.

( ) = denotes OPTIONAL information

Nodes specificallycontain: HEADS and COMPLEMENTS

[[The child]NP [[put]V [the puppy]NP [in the garden.]PP]VP]S DRAW!


V (put) is the head of VP
All the other constituents in the VP are the complements (NP, PP, etc)—the puppy, in the garden.

NPs are headed by __N_____?
PPs are headed by ___P____?
AdjPs are headed by _Adj______?


★ SELECTION: whether a verb takes one or more complements depends on the properties of verb. For example: Transitive verb requires a NP direct object complement. This additional specification called selection.

Example: [[The boy]NP [[found]V [the ball]NP]VP]S.
Note: Ungrammatical sentences are marked with *
(a) The boy found the ball
(b) *The boy found quickly
(c) *The boy found in the house
(d) The boy found the ball in the house
What can we say about the verb found? What does it need?

• the verb sleep patterns differently than find in that it may be followed solely by a word like soundly but not by other kinds of phrases such as the baby as shown in (e) and (f):

(e) *Disa slept the baby
(f) Disa slept soundly

• The word believe and try function in opposite fashion as illustrated in (g)-(l)

(g) Zack believes Robert to be a gentleman
(h) *Zack believes to be a gentleman
(i) *Zack tries Robert to be a gentleman
(j) Zack tries to be a gentleman

Example: [[Sam]NP [[put]V [the milk]NP [in the refrigerator]PP]VP]S
*Sam put the milk.
*Sam put in the refrigerator.
What can we say about the verb put? What does it need?

Transitive Verb: is a verb that requires a Noun Phrase direct object complement. This additional information is called “selection”.

Example: [[Michael]NP [slept]VP]S.
*Michael slept a fish.
What can we say about the verb sleep? What does it NOT need?

Intransitive Verb: verbs that cannot take an NP complement.

What heads the sentence?

Words like will, have, is, may, might, would, and could are in a class of Auxiliary. The auxiliaries other than be and have are also referred to as modals. Auxiliaries are function words.
To better express the idea that aux is the head of S, the symbols INFL (Inflection) and IP (Inflection Phrase) are often used instead of Aux and S. p. 134

★ Structural Ambiguities: Some certain ambiguous sentences have more than one phrase structure tree, each corresponding to a different meaning.
Example: The boy saw the man with the telescope. P.143

These are all the phrase structure rules:

• 1. S→ NP Aux VP
     
     
  2. NP → (Det) (AP) N (PP)
     
     
  3. VP → V (NP) (PP) (Adv) (CP)
     
     
  4. PP → P NP
     
     
  5. AP → Adj (PP)
     
     
  6. CP → Comp (that ) S (S+V)

★ Sentence Relatedness: sentences may be related in various ways:
a) Sentences may have the same phrase structure but differ in meaning because they contain different words
b) they may have different meanings but contain the same words in the same order and only differ in structure (ambiguous sentences)
c) they may differ in structure (w/small differences in grammatical morphemes) but with no difference in meaning
The father wept silently. vs. The father silently wept.
Mary hired Bill. vs. Bill was hired by Mary.
d) they may have structural differences that correspond systematically to meaning differences
The boy is sleeping. Is the boy sleeping?
The boy will sleep. Will the boy sleep?



The above sentences in c) and d) are not accounted for by the phrase structure rules presented.


TRANSFORMATION RULES

Noam Chomsky noticed that languages contain systematic ways of paraphrasing sentences:

a) Active sentences can regularly be turned into passives:
The boy kicked the ball.--> the ball was kicked by the boy. (passive transformation)

b) Statements can be regularly turned into questions: He is there? Is he there? (interrogative transformation)


He came to believe that such parallel syntactic means of expressing the same meaning were simply
surface manifestations of
deeper structural units of language.


To study and describe such deep structures), he devised the theory of transformational grammar.


These Transformational Rules are syntactic rules that apply to an underlying phrase structure tree (deep structure) of a sentence and derive a new structure (surface structure)
by moving or inserting elements into the tree.

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For example, in ENGLISH, a way to capture the relationship between a declarative and a question is to allow the phrase structure rules to generate the structure corresponding to the declarative sentence, and have another formal device (i.e. Transformation Rules) that move the auxiliary in front of the subject. Therefore....

Transformation-rule: MOVE Aux move the first auxiliary verb following the subject NP to the left of the subject.




SURFACE STRUCTURE
The T-rule of MOVE Aux related the deep structure sentence
The boy is sleeping.
to the surface structure
Is the boy sleeping?

So…what happened?
1) The phrase structure rules generate a basic structure (deep structure).
2) Aux-movement applied to produce the derived structure (surface structure).

Surface structure: the structure that results from applying transformational rules to a deep structure. It is syntactically closest to the actual utterance.

Deep structure: Any phrase structure tree generated by the phrase structure rules of a transformational grammar. The basic syntactic structure of the grammar.



Sentences are organized according to two principles:

(1) constituent structure -the hierarchical organization of the subparts of a sentence- Phrase structure rules..

(2) syntactic dependencies -the dependencies that exist among the elements in the sentence. That is, the presence of a particular word or morpheme can depend on the presence of some other word or morpheme in a sentence. For example:
a) Selection (transitive vs. intransitive verbs)
b) Agreement (the features in Aux and on the verb must match the features of the subject)
c) Wh-questions

Let’s look at some sentences:
i) What will Max eat?
“eat” is a transitive verb, so where is the direct object?

ii) Where has Pete put his ball?
“Put” selects a direct object and a preposition phrase, so where is the PP following “his ball”?

iii) Which dog do you think loves bones?
“Loves” carries the third-person –s inflectional morpheme, so where is the subject to trigger this agreement?

These are all gaps where the wh-phrase is assumed to be at the beginning of the sentence. The wh-phrase in:
(i) acts as the D.O.,
(ii) acts as the PP, and
(iii) acts as the subject.

We have here another Transformational Rule: Move -wh
T-rule: move -wh wh questions are moved up to a new CP.



★UG Principles and Parameters

l All languages have phrase structure rules. Phrases consist of heads and complements, and sentences are headed by Aux (or INFL), which houses notions such as tense, agreement and modality
l Languages may have different word orders within the phrases and sentences.
l UG .specifies the structure of a phrase. It must have a head and may take one or more complements.
l Each language gets to decide for itself the relative order of these constituents: English is head initial, Japanese is head final.
We call the points of variation parameters. l All languages seem to have movement rules. The transformational rule Move Aux is a version of a more general rule that exists in languages

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