Syntax

Ling 101

What is Syntax?
The study of how words are combined into larger units of meaning.

Ex. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.

Key Concepts

Grammaticality
Parts of Speech
Phrases

Grammaticality

NOT prescriptive grammar!!!

Our mission is to boldly go where no man has gone before.

*Our mission is to go where boldly no man has gone before.

NOT if the sentence is logical!!

Ex.

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

* Furiously sleep ideas green colorless.

Grammaticality

IS what speakers agree is well formed language

Ex

Ex

Ex

John turned on the light and off the radio

John turned off the light and turned on the radio
Mary blew out a candle and and blew up a balloon
Mary bew out a candle and up a balloon
John wrote a postcard and a letter.
John wrote to Mary and to Pat.
Mary wrote a letter and to John.

Why does Grammaticality matter?

It highlights patterns that illuminate rules of well-formed word combinations in a
language.

Parts of speech
Categories of words that share Syntactic and Morphological features.
NOT based on the word alone, but by the word in context

Content Words

Add important information

Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives, Adverbs

Noun

CAN take Determiners

The, a, an, these, those, that, my etc.

Can be modified by Adjectives

SOME can be pluralized

Verb

CAN take tense

CAN take modals

Can, May, Could, Will etc

Adjectives

CAN modify Nouns

CANNOT modify non-nouns

CAN be Comparative and Superlative

-er, -est

Adverbs

ISNT a good category in English

Discussed further in upper division linguistics

CAN modify non-nouns

CANNOT modify nouns

Function Words

Express relationships between Content Words

Prepositions, Determiners, Conjunctions

Closed categories- New function words can not easily be added to a language!

Prepositions

Express relationship in terms of Time Place

In an hour, At 2:00

In the library, At Starbucks, To the store

Can express possession and with what something was done.

The man with a wife, The wife of the man

The reporter shot the child with a camera

Determiners

Words like A, An, The, Every, My, Our, That etc

We will discuss this more then we discuss Phrases

Conjunctions

Combine words of the same Part of Speech or combine Phrases

And, Or, But etc

Phrases

Meaningful units below the level of sentence that are combined into larger
units
Build around Parts of Speech

The core part of speech is known as a Head

Ex
A happy lion never chases a pigeon.

Noun Phrase (NP)

Robin
The book
The big book

NPs can have NPs inside of them!

A picture of Robin
A picture of a unicorn
A nice picture of a unicorn
A very nice picture of a pink unicorn
A library with books of very nice pictures of pink unicorns in verdant meadows

Verb Phrase (VP)

Fell
Fell slowly
Was eating
Was eating greedily

VPs can have NPs inside of them!

Fell into the pond

Was eating a cake
Was eating a cake with vanilla frosting with a knife and fork

Sentences (S)

An English sentence is generally an NP and a VP

That boy is tall for his age

The room was empty
The cat dogs our footsteps

Thursday

More phrases

Prepositional Phrase (PP)

Adjectival Phrases (AP)

Phrase Trees
Sentence Trees