SYNTAX

Lectures : Mr. Rizki Ma’arif S.Pd

Presented by : Group 4

Summarized By : Alkhorin Mawarda / 23020230005

Syalzabilla Sevia Sari / 23020230002

1. Definition of Syntax
Syntax is a central component of human language. Language has often been
characterized as a systematic correlation between certain types of gestures and
meaning. It is not the case that every possible meaning that can be expressed is
correlated with a unique, unanalyzable gesture, be it oral or manual. Rather, each
language has stock of meaning-bearing elements and different ways of combining
them to express different meaning, and these ways of combining them are themselves
meaningful.(Robert and Valin, 2001). Syntax can thus be given the following
characterization, taken from Matthews (1982:1) the term ‘syntax’ is from the Ancient
Greek syntaxis, a verbal noun which literally means ‘arrangement’ or ‘setting out
together’. Traditionally, it refers to the branch of grammar dealing with the ways in
which words, with or without appropriate inflections, are arranged to show
connections of meaning within the sentence. Similar to the explanation of Matthew,
Robert and Van Valin (2001) expresses the essence of itself as the following syntax:
“First and foremost, syntax deals with how sentences are constructed, and users of
human language employ a striking variety of possible arrangements of the element in
sentences”.
From the experts’ explanation above we can conclude that syntax is the study
of internal structure of sentences. In this case, it explains how words are arranged
become phrases and clauses for constructing sentence. It is commonly we call
structure. Structure manages how words can be combined with another for creating
good sentence.

2. Definision of Syntactic Construction

Syntactic Contruction is a grammatical construction that can be in the form of

sentences, clauses, and phrases.
 Types of Syntactic Construction

Types of Syntactic Constraction are divided into two types dipending on their
distribution and their relation between their constituents. The constituent is all the words
and phrases that make up a sentence.

SENTENCE AND CLAUSE

SENTENCE

1. Simple Sentence
She is beautiful woman.
2. Compound Sentence
It is sentence at least two independent clause and conjuction like:
And, but, so, either, or, neither, nor, the, yet.
So,can be:

Jhon wants to go to the beach,but her little sister instint to go amusement park.

3. Complex Sentence:

It is sentence with one independent clause

Independent clause: I like the book

Dependent clause: that you bought yesterday

Complex sentence: I like the book that you bought yesterday.

CLAUSE

When my mother came,I was watching television with my brother and his friend.

There are3 types:

1. Adjective clause is a dependent clause that explain noun/pronoun

Example:

The man wich won the competition is a doctor.

2. Adverbial clause is a dependent clause that classification based on meaning from previous
conjungation.

Example:

Shut the door before you go out.

3. Noun clause functioning like a noun.

Example:

What you said was not true.

●Endocentric

- One whose distribution is functionally equivalent to that of one or more of its constituents.

- It has a HEAD or CENTRE.

- Compound word, noun, phrases, verb phrases, and adjective phrases belong to endocentric
types.

- The head word is important.

● Exocentric

- A group of syntactically related words where none of the words is functionally equivalent
to the group as a whole.

- There is no definable HEAD or CENTRE.

- Basic sentences, prepositional phrase, predicate ( verb + object ) constraction, and

connective ( be + complement ) constraction.

● Example of Syntactic Construction

1. Endocentric Construction

- Five funny cats (noun phrase)

The word cats is headword, and then cats related to funny to make “funny cats” and five to
make “five cats”. But the word five and funny do not related one another direcly.

- Dogs and Sheeps (cordinate noun phrase)

The word dogs and sheeps is a headword.

- News + Paper = Newspaper (compound word)

- Classroom, handbag, bookstore (compound word)

The central meaning of each one is carried by the second word of the compound.

- I decided to give the old queen sized bed away.

“The old queen sized bed” is a noun phrase. And “the old queen sized” the optiomal element.

2. Exocentric Construction

- Mr. Reyhan came to Australia

Mr. Reyhan (a noun) and cametoAustralia (a verb phrase)

- Show + Off = Showoff (compound word)

The central meaning of the compound isn’t conveyed by the head. The meaning is external to
the literal meaning of the compound. The word showoff doesn’t contain a noun but rather a
verb and a particle. When the words show and off are written separately, it’s actually a verb.

- Red + Head = Redhead

It is person with redhair. And not a person who has a redhead. The meaning is external to
the words red and head.

3. GRAMMATICAL JUDGMENT

=> DEFINITION

Juncture, in linguistics, is the manner of moving (transition) between two successive

syllables in speech.[1] An important type of juncture is the suprasegmental phonemic cue by
means of which a listener can distinguish between two otherwise identical sequences of
sounds that have different meanings.[1]
=> FUNCTION

The results of three experiments which investigated the time course of grammaticality
judgement are presented. We used sentences that varied in error type (agreement,
transposition, omission of function words), part of speech (auxiliaries vs determiners) and
location (early vs late error placement). Experiment 1 was a word-by-word cloze experiment
in which subjects were presented with successively longer fragments of a sentence and
instructed to complete the sentence grammatically, if possible. Experiment 2 was a self-
paced, word-by-word grammaticality judgement experiment. The results of both experiments
are quite similar, showing that some error types elicit a broad and variable “decision region"
instead of a more punctate ”decision point". To explore the implications of this finding,
Experiment 3 looked at on-line judgements of the same stimuli in an RSVP paradigm, with a
single response (and reaction time). Correlations among the three experiments were
extremely high and all significant, suggesting that the incremental tasks were tapping into the
same decision-making process as is foundon-line.Theimplicationsofthesefindings for the
error types that do and do not appear in aphasia are discussed.

=> Examples and Observations

"I owe you an explanation of what it means to claim that 'you can't say this' or 'such-
and-such is ungrammatical.' These judgments are the most commonly used empirical data in
linguistics: a sentence under a certain interpretation and in a certain context is classified as
grammatical, ungrammatical, or having various degrees of iffiness. These judgments aren't
meant to accredit a sentence as being correct or incorrect in some objective sense (whatever
that would mean). Designating a sentence as 'ungrammatical' simply means that native
speakers tend to avoid the sentence, cringe when they hear it, and judge it as sounding odd."

"Note too that when a sentence is deemed ungrammatical, it might still be used in
certain circumstances. There are special constructions, for example, in which English
speakers use transitive verbs intransitively, as when a parent says to a child Justin bites, I
don't want you to bite.Calling a sentence ungrammatical means that it sounds odd 'all things
being equal', that is, in a neutral context, under its conventional meaning, and with no special
circumstances in force."(Steven Pinker, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window Into
Human Nature. Viking, 2007)
●Acceptability and Grammaticality

- "The concept of grammaticality is intrinsically linked to Noam Chomsky and was intended
to account for possible violations of the basic phrase structure."

(Anita Fetzer, Recontextualizing Context: Grammaticality Meets Appropriateness. John

Benjamins, 2004)

- "Acceptability is the extent to which a sentence allowed by the rules to be grammatical is

considered permissible by speakers and hearer; grammaticality is the extent to which a 'string'
of language conforms with a set of given rules."

"Acceptability . . . is related to speaker's performance, that is the actual use of her language in
concrete situations. As stressed by Chomsky, acceptability should not be confused with
grammaticality: while an acceptable sentence must be grammatical, not just any grammatical
sentence is necessarily acceptable. For a sentence to be judged acceptable, it must also appear
natural and appropriate in a given context, be easily understood and, possibly, be to a certain
extent conventionalized."

(Marie Nilsenova in Key Ideas in Linguistics and the Philosophy of Language, ed. by
Siobhan Chapman and Christopher Routledge. Edinburgh University Press, 2009)

●Grammaticality and Good Style

"For human language, the distinction between grammaticality and good style is, for most
linguists and for most cases, clear. But there are definitely borderline cases where it's not
clear whether a problem with a sentence is grammatical or stylistic. Here is a notorious
example, involving self-centre-embedding, a contentious issue since the beginnings of
generative grammar. Where is the book that the students the professor I met taught studied?
The orthodox view in generative linguistics is that such examples are perfectly grammatical
English, but stylistically poor, because they are hard to parse."

(James R. Hurford, The Origins of Grammar: Language in the Light of Evolution. Oxford
University Press, 2012)

●Grammaticality in Context

"[T]here are a great many cases where it makes no sense to speak of the well-formedness or
'grammaticality' of a sentence in isolation. Instead one must speak of a relative well-
formedness and/or relative grammaticality; that is, in such cases a sentence will be well-
formed only with respect to certain presuppositions about the nature of the world."

(George Lakoff, "Presupposition and Relative Well-Formedness." Semantics: An

Interdisciplinary Reader in Philosophy, Linguistics and Psychology, ed. by Danny D.
Steinberg and Leon A. Jakobovits. Cambridge University Press, 1971)

The Lighter Side of Grammaticality

Dwight Schrute: Speaking of funerals, why don't you go ahead and go die?

Andy: Oh, that was a really well-constructed sentence. You should be an English professor at
"Or Not" University.

Dwight Schrute: Idiot.

(Rainn Wilson and Ed Helms in "The Merger," The Office)

The Modern Language Journal 80 (1), 32-46, 1996

This study investigated whether the methodologies of explicit and implicit language
instruction account for differences in the identification of grammatically well‐formed
sentences for college students who have completed one semester of college Spanish. Students
in the explicit language classes were instructed in the grammar‐translation approach wherein
explicit statements of the rules of grammar were taught. Students in the implicit language
classes were instructed in the comprehension of Spanish sentences through the use of pictures
and Total Physical Response activities. A grammaticality judgment test was used to compare
the grammatical knowledge of these two instructional groups. The grammatical elements and
the lexical items of the grammaticality judgment test were units that were common to both
methods of instruction. Students in the implicit grammatical instruction classes achieved
significantly higher scores than students in the explicit grammatical instruction classes. These
results suggest that language instructional procedures result in the use of different language
processes to judge the grammaticality of sentences.

FUNCTION
Transformational rules serve to define "inner structure" and "surface structure" to
show the relationship of sentences.

●Why do we use Transformational Rules?

Rules of Transformational Rules help in transforming the function to a new function, because
of the change in its domain or the range values.

● Bacsic Phrase amarker

Phrase-markers

In the previous chapter, we used Phrase-markers to represent the constituent structure

of sentences. But what exactly is a Phrase-marker? It's useful to think about this problem for
a while, and to devise some appropriate technical terminology for describing the internal
structure of P-markers, since this will turn out to be of vital importance in subsequent
chapters. But why do we need technical jargon? Well, any adequate description of any
phenomenon in any field of enquiry (in our present case, Syntax) must be maximally explicit,
and to be explicit, it must be formal – i.e. make use only of theoretical constructs which have
definable formal properties.

Derived Phrase Marker

● EXAMPLE

For example, transformational rules relates the active sentence “John read the book”
with its corresponding passive, “The book was read by John.” Or, "John read the book"
(active sentence)

"The book was read by John" (passive sentence)

Although sets such as there active and passive sentences appear to be very different
on the surface.