Analysis of Grammatical Structure

•  Parts of Speech •  Agreement •  Structural Analysis •  Grammatical Constituents

Parts of Speech/Word Class

articles a, an, the

determiners a, the, other, some, these...

nouns house, experience, Ronald…

pronouns you, me, they…

adjectives red, tall, furious…

verbs run, bark, ruminate…

adverbs quickly, mostly, very…

prepositions in, under, with, to…

conjunctions and, but, or…

Agreement

The relationships between words are based on agreement. Words have to agree in the following ways:

number singular/plural person first/second/third person tense past/present/future gender natural (male/female)/grammatical voice active/passive voice

Structural Analysis

Structural analysis helps to investigate the distribution of forms in a language. For example: many English sentences follow and SVO pattern:

Subject Verb Object [The earthquake] [shook] [the house].

Different languages prefer different word order. Here is Japanese:

Subject Object Verb [Masuda-ga] [tegami-o] [kakimasu]

Masuda letter write. (Masude writes a letter)

Test Frames

Examples:

The_____________ gets wet when it rains.

_____________ melt in the summer heat.

Have you seen ___________.

The old building by the library ________________.

Ø  Forms that fit into the same test-frame likely belong to the same grammatical category [noun/noun phrase/verb phrase/etc.]

Constituent Analysis

•  Small constituents (articles, nouns, etc) combine to form larger constituents:

Ø  noun phrases verb phrases prepositional phrases clauses sentences

And speakers arrange these constituents according to the conventions of the grammatical rules of the language they are speaking.

;{prescriptivism & descriptivism};

Ø  Prescriptive grammarians are interested in formulating grammatical and usage rules that should be followed by speakers of the language.

Ø Descriptive linguists use structural analysis to help them describe the structural rules as they are applied by speakers of a language.

Constituency

How would you group the words in the following sentence?

Ø  The Danish captain sang salty shanties.

Constituency

How would you group the words in the following sentence?

Ø  The Danish captain sang salty shanties.

The Danish captain sang salty shanties.

Constituency

How would you group the words in the following sentence?

Ø  The Danish captain sang salty shanties.

The Danish captain sang salty shanties.

[S [subject (NP)] [Predicate (VP)]] The Danish captain sang salty shanties

Constituency

How would you group the words in the following sentence?

Ø  The Danish captain sang salty shanties.

The Danish captain sang salty shanties.

[S [subject (NP)] [Predicate (VP)]] The Danish captain sang salty shanties

[S [NP[Det] [Adj] [N]] [VP [[V] [NP[Adj] [N]]]] The Danish captain Sang salty shanties.

Phrase Structure Rules

q General schema:

X à Y Z

“X consists of Y followed by Z”

Phrase Structure Rules

Noun Phrase (NP)

•  John N

•  the boy Det N

•  a little boy Det Adj N

•  a boy in a bubble Det N PrepP

Phrase structure rule for NPs:

NP à (Det) (Adj) N (PrepP) (where ‘()’ indicated optionality)

Phrase Structure Rules

Prepositional Phrase (PrepP)

•  in Moscow Prep N

•  to the store Prep det N

Phrase structure rule for PrepPs:

PrepP à Prep NP

Phrase Structure Rules

Verb Phrase (VP) •  sang V •  ate the cake V NP

•  ate the cake hungrily V NP Adv •  sang a song in the shower V NP PrepP

•  drove into the lot slowly V PrepP Adv

Phrase structure rule for VPs:

VP à V (NP) (PrepP) (Advl)