Chapter 4 Syntax
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Transcript of Chapter 4 Syntax
Chapter 4 Syntax
Instructor: Liu ChengyuSchool of Foreign Languages, Sout
hwest University
Introduction to Linguistics
Contents
Introduction4.1
Word classes 4.2
The Prescriptive Approach 4.3
The Descriptive Approach4.4
Constituent Structure Grammar 4.5
Transformational Grammar 4.6
Systemic Functional Grammar 4.7
4.1 Introduction
In the previous lecture, we have studied
morphology, the structure of words. When we put
words together to form sentences, we also get a
structure. If we focus on the structure and ordering
of components within a sentence, we are studying
what is known as the syntax of a language.
Morphology
is concerned with the internal composition of a word.
Syntax
is concerned with combination of words.
meaning of a sentence
the meaning of the words of which it is composed
the structure of the sentence, such as word order.
(1) a. The hunter fears the cries of the blackbirds.
b. The blackbirds fear the cries of the hunter.
Clearly, (1a) and (1b) do not have the same
meaning.
(2) a. Jack looked up the word.
b. Jack looked the word up.
Sometimes, however, a change of word order
does not influence meaning.
(3) * Cries fear the the of hunter blackbirds the.
(The asterisk * is often used to indicate that a structure is ill-formed, or ungrammatical.)
The grammars of all languages include rules of
syntax which reflect the speaker’s knowledge of
these facts. The rules of syntax also explain the fact
that although a sequence like (3) is made up
meaningful words, it has no meaning.
Sequences of words that observe the rules of
syntax are said to be well formed or grammatical
and those which violate the syntactic rules are
therefore ill formed and ungrammatical.
a. Cries fear the the of hunter blackbirds the.
b. The hunter fears the cries of the blackbirds.
unacceptable
acceptable
What we are here concerned with is the grammatical
structure.
4.2 Word Classes
Whether a word can occupy a certain position in a
sentence depends on its grammatical category
rather than its meaning. We can replace fear and
cries by admire and speed respectively and the
sentence is still grammatical, because both have
been replaced by a word of the same category.
The categories are traditionally called parts of
speech, but now they are generally called
word classes.
Nouns Words used to refer to people, objects, creatures, places, etc.
cats
Adjectives Words that describe the thing, quality, state or action which a noun refers to.
good
Verbs Words used to refer to various actions and states involving the “things” in events.
run, be
Adverbs words that describe or add to the meaning of a verb, an adjective, another adverb, or a sentence, and which answers the questions introduced by how, where, when, etc.
quickly, slowly
Prepositions words used with nouns in phrases providing information about time, place and other connections involving actions and things.
at, in, with
Pronouns words which may replace nouns or noun phrases. it, her
Conjunctions words used to connect, and indicate relationships between events and things.
and, but
Now we can put our sentence into classes.
S → art., N, V, art., N, prep., art., N.
(1) a. The hunter fears the cries of the blackbirds.
a. the very pretty girl the order “art., adv., adj., N”
b. *pretty the very girl the order “adj., art., adv., N”
acceptable
unacceptable
The rules which govern the structure of
phrases are known as phrase structure
rules or rewrite rules. Such rules allow for
the generation of grammatical sentences in a
language; they constitute a generative
grammar for that language.
4.3 The Prescriptive Approach
Some grammarians, mainly in eighteenth-century
England, lay down rules for the correct or “proper”
use of English.
(1)You must not split infinitives.
(2)You must not end a sentence with a preposition.
This view of grammar as a set of rules for the
“proper” use of a language is still to be found
today and may be best characterized as the
prescriptive approach.
It is valuable for us to be aware of the “proper”
use of the language. If it is a social expectation
that someone who writes well should obey
these prescriptive rules.
However, we should note that it does not mean
that these prescriptive rules cannot be broken.
In spoken English, for example, split infinitives
as to boldly go instead of to go boldly or boldly
to go are used sometimes.
Throughout the 20th century, linguists collect
samples of the language they are interested in
and attempt to describe the regular structures of
the language as it is used, not according to
some view of how it should be used. This is
called the descriptive approach.
4.4 The Descriptive Approach
4.4.1 Structural analysis
One type of descriptive approach is called
structural analysis. Its main objective is to
study the distribution of linguistic forms in a
language.
The method involves the use of “test-frames”.
(4) The _____ makes a lot of noise.
car, radio, child, etc. noun
All these linguistic forms fit in the same test-
frame, they are likely to belong to the same
grammatical category, i.e. noun.
Thus, we need different test-frames for these
linguistic forms, which could be like the following:
(6) ______ makes a lot of noise.
(7) I heard a ______ yesterday.
By developing a set of test-frames of this type
and discovering what forms fit the slots in the
test-frames, we can produce a description of
some aspects of the sentence structures of a
language.
4.4.2 Immediate Constituent Analysis
Another approach with the same descriptive
purposes is called immediate constituent
analysis (IC analysis). This is simply the idea
that linguistic units can be parts of larger
constructions and may themselves also be
constructions composed of smaller parts.
These constituents can in turn be further analyzed
into smaller constituents, such as noun phrases an
alyzed into an article and a noun. This process con
tinues until no further divisions are possible. The fir
st divisions or cuts are known as the immediate c
onstituents (ICs), and the final cuts as the ultimat
e constituents (UCs).
We can identify five constituents at the word
level.
(8) The man bought a car.
Noun Phrase (NP)
Verb Phrase (VP)
Why, for instance, do we class the man and
bought a car as constituents rather than man
bought and bought a? The answer is that
whether or not a sequence is a constituent is
judged by its substitutability. The technical
term used for this substitution test is
expansion.
For example, the man in (8) can be replaced by
the pronoun he. The fact that there is a
separate element to substitute for the man
shows that it is a constituent of English. No
element exists that can be substituted for
bought a or man bought a, which are not
constituents.
(8) The man bought a car.
The best way to show IC is to use a tree diagram.
The man bought
a car
Brackets can also be used but are arguably less easy to read. For example:
(9) a. [the man bought a car]
b. [[the man] [bought a car]]
c. [[[the] [man]] [[bought] [a car]]]
d. [[[the] [man]] [[bought] [[a] [car]]]]
This approach to divide the sentence up into its
immediate constituents by using binary cutting
until obtaining its ultimate constituents is called
immediate constituent analysis.
Cutting sentences into their constituents can
show up and distinguish ambiguities, as in the
case of the ambiguous phrase old men and
women, which may either refer to old men and
women of any age or to old men and old women.
old men and women old men and women
Cutting sentences into their constituents can show up and
distinguish ambiguities, as in the case of the ambiguous
phrase old men and women, which may either refer to old
men and women of any age or to old men and old women.
4.5 Constituent Structure Grammar
A grammar which analyzes sentences using only
the idea of constituency, which reveals a hierarchy
of structural levels, is referred to as a constituent
structure grammar or constituent structure
syntax .
There are a number of ways that sentences
or strings can be cut up into constituents. T
he principles used may vary but the proces
s is usually referred to as “labelling and br
acketing”.
(10) S
NP VP
Art N V NP
Art N
The man bought a car
There an alternative analysis.
(11) S
NP V NP
Art N Art N
The man bought a car
These analyses emphasize different aspects of
structure. The first shows only binary cutting
and gives a consistent phrasal structure. The
second gives greater emphasis to the verb as
a central element in sentence structure.
For convenience and consistency, in this section,
we shall consider a constituent structure that is
called phrase structure—used in early
transformational grammar. S→NP + VP VP→Vtr. + NP NP→Art. + N Vtr. →buy, sell, build, repair, wash, etc. N→man, woman, car, house, bicycle, etc. Art→a, an, the
Even such a very simple set of rules allows us to produce quite a few sentences in English. We can produce sentences like:
(12) a. The man bought a car.
b. The man sold a car.
c. The woman repaired the bicycle.
We can have other rules to account for such
structures and for other types of structure. For
instance, if we change the rules to account for
adverbs (Adv) and prepositional phrases (PP),
then we can generate a larger number of
sentences.
S→NP + VP ( + Adv) VP→Vtr. + NP NP→Art + N ( + PP) PP→Prep + NP
Vtr. →buy, sell, etc. N→man,car, etc Art→a, the, etc. Prep→in, on, etc.
Adv→ adverbs of place etc. PP
In the above rules, the normal brackets ( ) show that the constituent is optional, the curly brackets { } show that we may choose one constituent or the other. We can now generate sentences like:
(13) a. The man sells the car in the garage.
b. The woman washes the bicycle in the street.
c. The boy repairs the bicycle in the house.
14.(14) S
NP VP Adv
Art N V NP Prep NP
Art N Art N
The boy repairs the bicycle in the house
This tree diagram means that the boy repairs the bicycle while he was in the house.
S
NP VP
Art N V NP
Art N PP
Prep NP
Art N
The boy repairs the bicycle in the house
This tree diagram means that the boy repairs the bicycle which is in the house.(15)
The rules introducing prepositional phrases
also introduce the important concept of
recursion.
(16) This is the house that Jack built.
This is the cat that lived in the house that Jack built.
This is the dog that chased the cat that lived in the
house that Jack built.
…
There are a number of features of language that
constituent structure analysis may not be able to
account for. We shall consider two.
1 Elements in a construction can be
discontinuous.
2 What is the relationship between sentences
that seem to be closely connected.
a. The boy cleaned the room up. b. The student looked the word up in the dictionary.
In both of these sentences the particle up is closely linked to the verb but is not immediately adjacent to it. Such relationships are not clearly or easily shown in constituent structure tree diagrams because their positions are discontinuous.
1
a. Brian hit George.
b. George was hit by Brian.
The two sentences seem to be structurally and semantically related but constituent structure analyses do not account for this.
Chomsky proposed a transformational grammar to account for these relationships amongst many others.
2
4.6 Transformational Grammar
The “grammar” in transformational grammar
should be understood in the broadest sense.
It is a theory of grammar including phonology
and semantics. Syntax is its core component
as it has been developed by Chomsky. It
provides the generative power of the model.
In the earliest version of transformational
grammar, Chomsky put forward a model which
consisted of three parts:
(1) phrase structure rules
(2) transformation rules
(3) morphophonemic rules.
Differences
phrase structure grammar
emphasizing the generation of sentences; context free
constituent analysis
aiming at discovering the structures
Original phrase structure rules : S→NP + VP.
Chomsky then introduced the idea of a set of tr
ansformation rules which could transform these
simple “kernel” sentences into a number of relat
ed sentences.
The original formulation of the passive transformation was as follows:
(17) NP1 + Aux + V + NP2
↓
NP2 + Aux + be + en + V + by + NP1
a. The boy has repaired the bicycle.
b. The bicycle has been repaired by the boy.
Using the idea of transformations, Chomsky
argued that he could show a number of
systematic relationships between sentences that
could not be accounted for by simple phrase
structure grammars.
The morphophonemic rules would apply to the
output of the transformational rules. For example,
these rules might give the correct past tense form
of a verb and its pronunciation. e.g. turning “be +
en + V” in the rule into “has been repaired”.
This model was later developed into what is
usually called the standard theory of
transformational grammar. Chomsky also put
forward the idea of two levels of syntactic
structure:
(1) deep structure
(2) surface structure
The Standard Theory
Base Component
Categorial Sub-component Lexical Sub-component
Phrase Structural Rules Lexicon + Rules
DEEP STRUCTURE → To Semantics
Transformational Component
SURFACE STRUCTURE → To Phonology
The meaning of a sentence is interpreted from
its deep structure. The deep structure
undergoes a process of transformation to
produce a surface structure. The surface
structure is given a phonological interpretation.
In this way, transformational grammar is held to
relate sound to meaning. The central generative
part of the model is the base syntactic
component.
The standard theory
↓ The extended standard theory
↓ The revised extended standard theory
↓ The theory of government-binding (GB)
↓ The Minimalist Program (MP)
4.7 The Systemic Functional Grammar
Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) has its r
oots in the work of the British linguist J. R. Firth,
although it also owns much to Prague School li
nguistics and to the work of Hjelmslev and Who
rf. However, the master mind behind the syste
mic-functional perspective is M. A. K. Halliday.
Differences
Transformational Grammar
emphasizing structure of language; context free
SFG
emphasizing language function and context
M. A. K. Halliday’s three metafunctions:
(i) ideational function
(ii) textual function
(iii) interpersonal function
(i) Ideational Function
The metafunction in which we conceptual
ize the world for our own benefit and that
of others is called ideational function.
(19) The boy kicked the post.
the actor the goal
(19) The post was kicked by the boy.
the actorthe goal
material process: running, dressing, climbing, etc.
(20) The man liked the new house.
the sensor the phenomenon
mental process: hate, love, know, etc.
(21) The child is homeless.
carrier attribute
relational process: be, become, appear, etc.
(22) The girl laughed.
The behaver
(23) The visitor said “hello”.
The sayer The target
Verbal process: say, report, etc.
(24) There is a girl over there.
The existent attribute
existential process: there be.
(ii) Interpersonal Function
Language serves to set up and maintain social
and personal relations, including communication
roles such as questioner and respondent, and to
express the language user’s own attitudes and
comments on the content of an utterance. This
function of language is called interpersonal
function.
Verbal communication: addresser vs. addressee
Classifications of sentences: declarative, interrogative, and imperative.
declarative give information the function of statements
interrogative request something
the function of questions
imperative give instructions the function of commands
Mood : please, possibly, kindly, frankly, etc.
Exchange 1
demands for, and offers of, goods and services of some kind, for example Give me a biscuit.
Exchange 2
demands for, and offers of, linguistic information, for example, What is he giving her?
Examining the interpersonal dimension of syntax
means looking closely at the relation between the
form and function of utterances. As we have seen,
sentences might have the form of declaratives,
interrogatives or imperatives, but function quite
differently.
(27) a. Pass the salt.
b. Please pass the salt.
c. Can you pass the salt?
d. Could you possibly pass the salt?
e. You couldn’t possibly pass the salt,
could you?
What we can observe here is the element of politeness and deference increasing with each permutation of pass the salt.
(iii) Textual function
Language also makes links with itself and with
features of the situation in which it is used. This
is what enables the speaker or writer to
construct a text, and enables the listener or
reader to distinguish a text from a random set of
sentences. This function of language is called
textual function.
There is a bird on the tree.
empty subject new information
the starting point of clause given information
the end point of clause new information
Processes involving ellipsis, for example, in which we leave out constituents of the clause, enable us to abbreviate and simplify our utterances while keeping the message recoverable. For example, (28a) is clearly less cumbersome than (28b):
(28) a. James enjoys tennis more than John.
b. James enjoys tennis more than John enjoys tennis.
Similarly the requirement to make our messages clear means that we normally, that is, in unmarked clauses, try to ensure that items which are semantically close are syntactically close. Thus, (29a) is more marked in structure than (29b) because of the separation of the clause when we were due to leave from the noun phrase, the day, which it post-modifies.
(29) a. The day came at last when we were due to leave.
b. The day when we were due to leave came at last.
What we have really been considering here a
re the thematic relations of the clause. The
theme is the first constituent, and it denotes t
he starting point of the. The rest of the clause
is called rheme, the information that is new.
(30) a. Gas explosion killed thousands.
b. Thousands were killed by gas explosion.
Unmarked Theme Rheme
Marked Theme: new information
Rheme
Exercise 1 Analysis
Analyze the sentence below with a tree diagram:
Flying planes can be dangerous.
a.
S NP VP Flying planes can be dangerous.
b. S
S’ VP NP VP(Someone) flying planes can be dangerous.
F
F
T
Syntax is a subfield of linguistics that studies the sentence structure of language, including the combination of morphemes into words.
Grammatical sentences are formed following a set of syntactic rules.
Sentences are composed of sequence of words arranged in a simple linear order, with one adding onto another following a simple arithmetic logic.
Exercise 2 T or F
That’s all for Chapter 4.
Thank you.