SYNTAX

Syntax
- the study of phrases, clauses and
sentences.
-In contrast to semantics, it is one of
the better understood areas within
Linguistics.
-deals with how to put words together
to form sentences which mean what we
want.
1. The boy sees the girl.
2. The girl sees the boy.
 Learning Outcomes:
OutcomesoOOutcom
Within one-hour session, you are expected
to:
 es
State the importance of Syntax as one
areas of Linguistics;
 Identify the different Phrase Structure
Rules of English Language
 Discuss its own principles, concepts, and
objects of study.
 CATEGORIES
-A class of words that share a characteristic.

Example: Nouns can be made plural

Verbs can be inflected for tense

-The Classification of words into categories or

parts of speech goes back at least as far as
Plato, who first mentioned the categories
noun( noma), verb( rhema), and
logos(sentence)
Linguists have historically classified words
into categories solely because postulating
such categories helps them explain
phenomena that they otherwise could not
explain .
Example:
Some words can be made plural
( table-tables, boy-boys, idea-ideas)
Whereas others cannot
(quick-quicks, of-ofs, the- thes)
Nouns can be made plural; other words
cannot
 Take a look!

Children are taught in school that articles are

type of adjectives.

Is this however a legitimate

claim?

Unfortunately, NO
The reason is that ADJECTIVES and ARTICLES
behave differently; that is, they have different
properties.

 First, adjectives can be made comparative

and superlative
(tall, taller, tallest) , whereas articles can’t
( the- theer, theest)
 Second, a noun can be modified by more
than one adjective, but not by more than one
article
( a short, fat man) ( a the fat man)
Articles are not type of adjective simply
because they do not behave like adjectives.
Articles are members of another category
Determiner.

Determiner
-Articles ( a, an, the)
- demonstrative ( this, that, these, those)
- possessive personal pronouns ( my,
yours, his, her, its, our, their)
 Two Corresponding types of
Categories
 Lexical or Word Categories- which include items
such as nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs

 Phrasal Categories - which include items such

as noun phrases, verb phrases, adjective phrases and
adverb phrases. The theory is that every phrasal
category contains at least one lexical category of the
same basic type.
Example: Every noun phrase contains at least one
noun
The fat man- man
The red car- car
 Left-to –Right Ordering
Words in English cannot appear in any random order
Example:
the red car is acceptable but not red the car
-The left to right sequence within a phrase is
governed by principles that are codified in PHRASE
STRUCTURE RULES.
-PS Rules specify 3 types of information
 which elements are permitted in a particular type
of phrase
The left-to right- ordering of those elements
 whether any of those elements are optional
 Some Examples of Specific PS Rules for
English

 Sentence: S NP –VP- a sentence consist

of a noun phrase followed by a verb phrase
Example: Maria went to town.

 Noun Phrase : NP (Det.)-(A P)- N-(PP)

- A noun phrase must contain a noun. The noun
may be preceded by a determiner phrase or
both and may be followed a prepositional
phrase.
 Verb Phrase- VP V – (NP, AP)- (PP)
A verb phrase must contain a verb. The verb
may be followed by a noun phrase, an
adjective phrase, or neither. The verb phrase
may end in a prepositional phrase, but need
not.
Example:
The police examined the old photograph in
the stone house.
 Adjective Phrase: AP (I)-Adj.
- An adjective phrase must contain an
adjective. The adjective may preceded by an
intensifier ( very)

Prepositional Phrase: PP Prep-NP

A Prepositional Phrase consists of a preposition

followed by a noun phrase
Example: in the garden
 Verb Phrase Rules
 V- The battery died
 V-NP Chris hit the ball
 V- NP-PP He drove the car into the tree
 V-PP They are in the kitchen
V- AP The teacher is angry
V-AP-PP My boss was very happy with her
decision
Tree Diagrams
PS rules form the basis for tree
diagrams, which allow us to visualize
how the components in a phrase are
related.
Here, the parts of a sentence are
shown in a graphical way that
emphasizes the hierarchical
relationships between the components
of a sentence.
Where:
Subject = “the boy” (article + noun)
Verb = “kicked”
Object = “the ball” (article + noun)
 Recursion
-refers to the ability to repeat two types
of phrases by embedding them in each
other-that is by allowing each type to
directly dominate the other type
Example:
"The boy with red shorts kicked the ball."
"with red shorts" is a prepositional
phrase that further describes “the boy” .
Here we can see how the Prepositional Phrase
(PP) “with red shorts” is embedded within the
subject Noun Phrase (NP) so that the subject
is subdivided into a Noun Phrase and
Prepositional Phrase (PP). The Prepositional
Phrase itself contains a further Noun Phrase.
The parsing diagram clearly shows the
hierarchical relationship between the
sentence and its components.
 Constituents Structure
Constituent- two or more words dominated
entirely and exclusively by a single node
(the node dominates those words and no
others
Example : American history teacher
[ American history] [teacher]
- Teacher of American history
[American] [history teacher]
- History teacher who is American
 X Y
Y X

American history teacher American history teacher

Structural Ambiguity- the condition whereby an

expression can be assigned more than one syntactic
structure.
 Conjoining
It is also possible to extend sentences by
joining together complete structures or
complete and incomplete structures.

Example:
"The boy with red shorts kicked the ball and
scored a goal"
The conjunction “and” joins together the
complete sentence:
"The boy with red shorts kicked the ball"
"The boy with red shorts kicked the ball and
scored a goal“

The conjunction “and” joins together the

complete sentence:
"The boy with red shorts kicked the ball"
and the verb phrase:
“scored a goal"
This could be represented as follows:
 Transformation
-An operation that alters syntactic structure or an operation
that moves a phrasal category ( e.g. NP,VP, PP) from one
location to another within a structure.
Thank you for Listening!