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Introduction to Linguistics II Ling 2-121C, group b

Lecture 4

Eleni Miltsakaki

AUTH

Spring 2006

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Syntax review

• What is syntax?

• What are grammaticality judgments (not) based on?

• Do all grammatical sentences make sense?

• Are all ungrammatical sentences non-sensical

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Syntax review

• Can you give examples of syntactic ambiguity?

• How do we account for syntactic ambiguity?

• What determines the structure of sentences?

• What are constituents and how can we find them?

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Sentence structure

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

– The child found the puppy

How many groupings are possible?

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Are any strings represented as constituents that shouldn't be? Are any strings not represented as constituents that should be? Are any of the trees misleading in other respects?

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Heads and complements

• Phrase structure rules show relations between the members of the phrase

• A VP, for example, contains a V which is the head of the phrase

• The VP may contain other categories but the entire phrase refers to what the head refers– E.g. Put the puppy in the garden refers to the event of ‘putting’

• The other constituents in the phrase are complements

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Heads and complements

• Every phrasal category has a head of its same syntactic type:– VP: V– NP: N– PP: P etc.

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Practice

• Find the head and the complements of the following NPs– The man with the telescope– The destruction of Rome– A person worthy of praise– A boy who pitched a perfect game

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Complement selection

• Whether a verb takes more than one complement depends on the properties of the verb

• The verb find is a transitive verb and requires an NP direct object complement

• This information, selection, is included in the lexical entry of the word and explains for the grammaticality judgment of the following:

– The boy found the ball– *They boy found quickly– *The boy found in the house

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Complement selection

• Sleep is intransitive, it cannot take an NP complement– Michael slept– *Michael slept a fish

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Complement selection

• Think takes (selects) a clausal complement. Tell selects for and NP and an S, feel selects an AP or an S

– I think that Sam won the race– I told Sam that Michael was on the bicycle– They felt strong as oxen– They feel that they can win– *They feel

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Complement selection

• It’s not only verbs that have selectional restrictions

• Belief selects a PP or an S

• Sympathy selects a PP

• Tired selects a PP etc

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The Lexicon

• The Lexicon includes not just words with POS and phonological descriptions but also selectional restrictions

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The infinity of language

• aka recursion

• The number of sentences in a language is infinite

• This is because sentences can be lengthened by various means

• The heart of this linguistic property is the ability to generate recursive structures

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The infinity of language

• The is the farmer sowing the corn– that kept the cock that crowned in the morn,– that waked the priest all shaven and shorn,– that married the man all tattered and torn,– that kissed the maiden all forlorn,– that milked the cow with the crumpled horn,– that tossed the dog, – that worried the cat, – that killed the rat,– that ate the malt,– that lay in the house that Jack built

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Infinity of language

• The girl with the feather on the ribbon on the brim

• Tree

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Infinity of language

• The repetition of categories within categories is common in all languages and explains the infinity of language

• Our brain capacity is finite and able to store only a finite number of categories and rules for their combination

• These finite means place an infinite set of sentences at our disposal

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Phrase structure rules

• The basic possibilities of the structure of basic sentences of languages may be represented by phrase structure rules– A sentence consists of a subject and a

predicate

S NP VP– A noun may be modified by an adjective

NP Adj N

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Two senses of grammar

• S NP VP – A sentence rewrites as a noun phrase

followed by a verb phrase– A device for producing/generating language

• S NP VP– A sentences consists of a noun phrase

followed by a verb phrase– A device for interpreting language

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Some PS rules for English

1. S NP VP

2. NP Det AdjP N (PP)

3. VP V NP S (PP)

4. PP P NP

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Recursion

• Recursion occurs when a phrase appears within a phrase

• E.g., S occurs in (1) and also in (3), PP occurs in (2) and (3)

• Because of recursion sentences are open ended

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Categories

• Phrasal categories: NP, VP, AdjP…• Lexical categories: V, P, Adj, Adv…

• PS rules must apply until no phrasal categories remain

• The bottom of the tree contains only lexical categories

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Coordination

• The boy and the girl

• NP NP conj NP

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Embededness• The teacher believes that the student knows the answer

• ‘the student knows the answer’ is embedded in the larger sentence

• The word ‘that’ belongs to the class of complementizers: ie an element that turns a sentence into a complement

• Also ‘if’, ‘whether’…– I don’t know whether I should talk about this– Sam asked if he could play soccer

• CP Comp S

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Transformational rules

• A way to capture the relationship between a declarative and a question is to allow phrase structure to generate the structure using special rules: transformation rules

• Move Aux: take the first aux and move it to the left of the subject

• The boy is sleeping Is the boy ___ sleeping?

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Deep and surface structure

• Deep structure: the basic structure

• Surface structure: the resulting structure after applying a transformational rule

• The boys is sleeping: Deep

• Move Aux

• Is the boy sleeping? Surface

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Other transformational rules

• Active passive (aka passivization)– The cat chased the mouse– The mouse was chased by the cat

• There-sentences– There was a man on the roof– A man was on the roof

• PP-preposing– The astronomer saw the star with the telescope– With the telescope, the man saw the star

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Syntactic dependencies

• Wh-questions– Who did Helen say the senator wanted to hire ___?– Who did Helen say the senator wanted the congressional representative

to try to hire ___?– Who did Helen say the senator wanted the congressional representative

to try to convince the Speaker of the House to get the Vice President to hire ___?

• Long-distance dependencies created by wh-movement are a fundamental part of human language.

• They provide evidence that sentences are not just strings of words but they are supported by rich phrase structure trees. These trees express the underlying structure of the sentence as well as their relation to other sentences in the language

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Universal grammar

• UG provides the basic design for human language

• Individual languages are variations on the basic design

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Parameters

• All languages have phrase structure rules

• All languages have heads and complements

• In some languages heads come before complements (English)

• In others, complements come before heads (Japanese).

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Wh-islands

• Emily paid a visit to the senator who wants to hire who?

– *Who did Emily pay a visit to the senator that wants to hire ___?– Miss Marple asked Sherlock whether Poirot had solved the crime– Who did Miss Marple ask ___ whether Poirot had solved the

crime?– *Who did Miss Marple ask Sherlock whether ___ had solved the

crime?– *What did Miss Marple ask Sherlock whether Poirot had solved

___?

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Universal wh-islands

• Constraints against wh-movement depend on structure, not length

– John ate bread and cheese (Coordinate).– John ate bread with cheese (DO).– *What did John eat bread and?– What did John eat bologna with?