THE LEXICON

Dosen Pengampu: Rivari Baron, Dr

Disusun Oleh:

1. Aprilya Kristanti Tiladuru 201712500444

2. Claudia Mayo H 201712500551

3. Glenda Christine 201712500492

4. Katrina Octavia 201721500337

5. Mikhael. S Hutajulu 201721500452

6. Natalia 201721500055

7. Desiana Mega 20174650058

SYNTEX

Universitas Indraprasta PGRI 2019

The lexicon

A. Syntax and lexical items

I. Syntax cannot be isolated from other areas of language; and individual lexical items, particularly
verbs, exercise strong control over syntactic structure. We have already seen in Chapter 4 that when
setting up word classes we have to appeal to syntactic criteria, to morphology and morpho-syntax and to
meaning. In the very first chap-ter, we examined the idea that the head of a given phrase controls the
other constituents in the phrase, and we saw immediately that there are different subclasses of nouns and
verbs that impose different require-ments on phrases and clauses. We saw only a small fraction of the
exten-sive interplay between syntactic structure and individual lexical items; in this chapter again we can
discuss only the main features, going into the topic in more detail but leaving huge areas untouched.

Analysts can isolate the syntactic constructions of a given language, as we started to do for English in Chapter 2 on
constituent structure and in Chapter 3 on constructions. Syntactic constructions, however, are not identical with specific
clauses; particular clauses do not appear until lexical items are inserted into a general syntactic structure. For example, the
structure Noun Phrase–Verb–Noun Phrase corresponds to indefi-nitely many clauses: The dog chewed its bone, The
cat scratched the dog, Dogs like meat and so on. The process of insertion is not simple. As mentioned above,
particular lexical items only fit into particular pieces of structure

some verbs combine with one noun phrase, others with two, and a third set of verbs with three. Some
singular nouns combine with the and a, and some exclude them. In addition there are many instances both of
par-ticular lexical items that typically combine with other specific lexical items (rock hard ) and of fixed
phrases (know something like the back of one’s hand ). Current searches of very large electronic bodies of
text are begin-ning to reveal just how pervasive these restricted combinations and fixed phrases are

II. Lexical items and syntactic structure has always been available in all but the smallest dictionaries.
Chambers 20th Century Dictionary (1983), for example, includes the follow-ing information in the entry for
knife. knife [ nı¯f ]; an instrument for cutting; verb transitive : to cut knifeless; knifing the act of putting a knife into
someone. War to the knife have one’s knife in......

The entry gives some information about syntax; the verb is described as transitive, which means that
in the basic ACTIVE DECLARATIVE construction it requires a noun phrase to its right. There is a rough
guide to the pronunciation which does not use the International Phonetic Alphabet, a definition of the
meaning of the noun, two words that are derived from the basic stem and two idiomatic phrases. The
entry would not be very useful for a non-native speaker with a limited knowl-edge of English, but the
dictionary is intended primarily for native speakers. The limitations become clear from the entry for put,
which describes it as a transitive verb but does not say that put is different from knife in requiring a noun
phrase and prepositional phrase to its right – put the parcel on the table vs *put the parcel. The entry
for accuse does not specify that it requires a noun phrase and a prepositional phrase to its right, nor that
the preposition must be of – Mandragora accused Panjandrum of plagiarism. This kind of information
is supplied in dictionaries intended for schoolchildren and for people learning English as a second language,
and must be included in adequate descriptions of English. What counts as an adequate description of a
language? The major grammars of languages, particularly languages that are both spoken and written, include
information about all the word, phrase, clause and sentence constructions in a large body of data, mostly drawn
from written texts but nowadays likely to include transcripts of speech. The current most comprehensive
grammar of English, A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language by Sir Randolph Quirk et al.
(1985), also includes infor-mation about how sentences combine to form larger texts and about typical or fixed
combinations of lexical items.

Another approach to the writing of grammars has as its goal the writing of explicit rules, which ‘generate’
sentences. This task involves the writing of rules that specify syntactic constructions, it involves the
writing of an accurate and detailed dictionary and it involves a detailed account of how the correct lexical
item is inserted into a given syntactic structure and of how only acceptable combinations of lexical items
are specified. This approach must also ensure that the rules do not specify unacceptable structures. This
introduction does not aim at completely explicit rules, but we will exploit the idea of explicit rules and of a
system of rules in order to organise our discussion of the lexicon. What is of crucial concern, of course, is the
set of concepts to be used in the analysis of syntax (whether the syntax of English or of some other language);
that is what this book focuses on.

B. Individual verbs, complements and adjuncts

In Chapter 1, we discussed the concepts of complement and adjunct. Every type of phrase has a head, and
the modifiers of heads fall into the two classes of complement and adjunct. The distinction applies best to
the modifiers of verbs, for which it was originally developed and which are the focus of Chapter 1.
Complements are modifiers which typically occur next to the head (but not always) and which are
required or excluded by particular lexical items. In (1), Sarah and the cakes are com-plements of
devoured. Devoured requires a noun phrase to its left and a noun phrase to its right – *Sarah
devoured is unacceptable.

(1) Sarah devoured the cakes in the kitchen last night.

Adjuncts are not necessarily next to the head; indeed, they are typically at a distance from the verb. They are not
obligatory. Whereas comple-ments ‘complete’ the meaning of the verb, giving it both syntactic and semantic completion,
adjuncts merely provide additional information that could be dispensed with. In (1) in the kitchen and last night are
adjuncts; (1) is acceptable and complete without them – Sarah devoured the cakes. Adverbs of time and location are
always adjuncts. Adverbs of location have to be distinguished from adverbs of direction (as per the discussion in Chapter
1); a verb such as barge requires a directional adverb

– Sarah barged into the kitchen –( and a verb such as pushed allows it).

– Sarah pushed the pram and Sarah pushed the pram into the kitchen.

Even where a verb merely allows a directional adverb, the latter is a comple-ment, because there are verbs that exclude
them Sarah was cooking into the kitchen. The fact that some (in fact, many) verbs exclude directional adverbs
means that dictionary entries must include information about whether a given verb excludes an adverb of direction or not.
This means that even for push, which allows rather than requires an adverb of direc-tion, phrases such as into the
kitchen are complements. A given lexical verb controls various properties of its complements. Most
obviously, it controls how many complements occur and what type of complements – noun phrases,
adjective phrases, prepositional phrases or complement clauses. the examples.

1. Mr Knightley despaired.
 2. Emma slighted Miss Bates.

3. Frank Churchill gave Jane Fairfax a piano.

4. Fairfax seemed upset.

5. Mr Woodhouse sat in an armchair.

6. Knightley walked into the drawing room.

7. Mr Elton handed his wife into the carriage.

8. Emma gave bad advice to Harriet.

9. Mr Knightley suggested that thieves would break into Hartfield House.

despaired excludes a noun phrase to its right, slighted requires one, and gave allows two noun phrases
to its right. (We will see in Chapter 8 that the first of these noun phrases, for example Jane Fairfax a
piano, is felt to be less closely connected with the verb than the other noun phrase.), seemed is a verb
that requires some phrase, here the adjective upset. A relatively small number of verbs allow adjective
complements. sat (in the sense of ‘was sitting’ as opposed to ‘sat down’) requires a prepositional phrase
describing a location, here in an armchair. Remember that the label ‘prepositional phrase’ relates to the
type of constituent, a phrase with a preposition as its head. In is the head of the prepositional phrase in
the armchair, and the armchair is the complement of in. Such phrases describing a location are said to
function as adverbs of location, which is a shorthand way of combining information about their meaning
and about their function – they modify verbs. Walked allows just a prepositional phrase describing a
direction, into the drawing room. (Note that this account of sit does not contradict the statement that
adverbs of location are typically adjuncts. There are no verbs that exclude adverbs of location, merely
some that require them.)

Handed requires a noun phrase to its right, here his wife, and a prepositional phrase describing a direction, here into the
carriage. Gave allows the same types of complement as handed; ‘allows’ and not ‘requires’ because gave also occurs with
two noun phrases . Note that not all verbs of giving or assigning behave like give. Attribute requires the structure.

– Everyone attributed good intentions to Frank Churchill vs *Everyone attributed Frank Churchill good intentions.
Finally, suggested is a verb that allows an ordinary noun phrase to its right, as in Mr Knightley suggested this plan, but it
also allows a complement clause, here that thieves would break into Since very many verbs exclude a complement
clause, the information that a complement clause is allowed must be stated in the dictionary entries for
individual verbs.