Introduction Getting serious about constituent structure Syntactic generalizations Trees and PS-rules Summing up constituents

Constituent Structure

Jean Mark Gawron

San Diego State University

2013 Jan 18

Jean Mark Gawron San Diego State University

Introduction Getting serious about constituent structure Syntactic generalizations Trees and PS-rules Summing up constituents

The problem

Form-meaning mapping
The same meaning may be expressed by quite different forms in different
languages. Are these differences only superficial? Are there categories and
concepts that are relevant across all languages realized with relatively
superficial formal differences? Alternatively, are there a few basic
architectural types that can help explain all the diversity?

Jean Mark Gawron San Diego State University

Introduction Getting serious about constituent structure Syntactic generalizations Trees and PS-rules Summing up constituents

Form-meaning anomaly

Within a single language, the same form may have more than one
meaning. We call such forms ambiguous:

1. Keep the promises you make to yourself.

Jean Mark Gawron San Diego State University

Introduction Getting serious about constituent structure Syntactic generalizations Trees and PS-rules Summing up constituents

Form-meaning anomaly

Within a single language, the same form may have more than one
meaning. We call such forms ambiguous:

1. Keep the promises you make to yourself.

When you make a promise to yourself, keep it.

Jean Mark Gawron San Diego State University

Introduction Getting serious about constituent structure Syntactic generalizations Trees and PS-rules Summing up constituents

Form-meaning anomaly

Within a single language, the same form may have more than one
meaning. We call such forms ambiguous:

1. Keep the promises you make to yourself.

When you make a promise to yourself, keep it.

When you make a promise, keep it to yourself.

Jean Mark Gawron San Diego State University

Introduction Getting serious about constituent structure Syntactic generalizations Trees and PS-rules Summing up constituents

Grammar

1 We call the formal patterns that help us recognize formal classes like
Subject, Noun, Verb, Adjective grammar:
1 Adjectives come before Nouns
2 Verbs come after Subjects
3 Plural Nouns end in /s/
2 Meaning can be conveyed without obeying the rules of grammar.
3 But the rules of grammar and semantic patterns involving prepositions
and sound sequences help us construct meaning representations even
when our grasp of word meaning is tenuous or non existent.

Jean Mark Gawron San Diego State University

Introduction Getting serious about constituent structure Syntactic generalizations Trees and PS-rules Summing up constituents

Grammar: Formal patterns of the language at multiple

levels

Components
syntactic The , imperatives (verse 2), relative
clauses (verse 2), poetic inversion (verse 1)
morphological -ous, -ish, -s
phonological brillig, gimble vs. bgillir, gmible
phonesthemic sl- → slithey, br- → brillig
poetic A-B, A-B rhyming pattern
discourse story telling sequence: description of place,
warning of peril, hunt, succesful return

Jean Mark Gawron San Diego State University

Introduction Getting serious about constituent structure Syntactic generalizations Trees and PS-rules Summing up constituents

Constituent patterns

i. The promises you make are very important.

ii. The promises you make to your self are very important.
iii. You always forget the promises you make.
iv. You always forget the promises you make to yourself.

Two constituents
The strings the promises you make and the promises you make to yourself
are constituents (recurring partials with constant meaning consisting of
one or more words). [To be revised.]

Jean Mark Gawron San Diego State University

Introduction Getting serious about constituent structure Syntactic generalizations Trees and PS-rules Summing up constituents

Constructions

I. i. He kept his business activities to himself.

“He was secretive about his business activities”
keep X to oneself ⇒ “be secretive about X”
ii. He kept everything to himself.
iii. He kept that information to himself.
Keep [x the promises you make to yourself] to yourself.
Keep [x the promises you make] to yourself.

II. He kept his promise/word/appointment.

keep X ⇒ fulfill the obligation entailed by X.
Keep [x the promises you make to yourself].
Keep [x the promises you make].

Jean Mark Gawron San Diego State University

Introduction Getting serious about constituent structure Syntactic generalizations Trees and PS-rules Summing up constituents

Constructions

I. i. He kept his business activities to himself.

“He was secretive about his business activities”
keep X to oneself ⇒ “be secretive about X”
ii. He kept everything to himself.
iii. He kept that information to himself.
Keep [x the promises you make to yourself] to yourself.
Keep [x the promises you make] to yourself.

II. He kept his promise/word/appointment.

keep X ⇒ fulfill the obligation entailed by X.
Keep [x the promises you make to yourself].
Keep [x the promises you make].

Jean Mark Gawron San Diego State University

Introduction Getting serious about constituent structure Syntactic generalizations Trees and PS-rules Summing up constituents

Analysis of ambiguity

The sentence:

Keep the promises you make to yourself.

is ambiguous because it can be derived two different ways:

(a) Substitute the constituent the promises you make into the Keep X to
yourself construction.
(b) Substitute the constituent the promises you make to yourself into the
Keep X construction.

Thus we have an ambiguity of both constituent structure and construction.

Jean Mark Gawron San Diego State University

Introduction Getting serious about constituent structure Syntactic generalizations Trees and PS-rules Summing up constituents

Current definition of constituent too loose

Two constituents
Constituents are recurring partials with constant meaning consisting of
one or more words. [To be revised.]

i. He kept that promise.

ii. She kept that appointment.

Jean Mark Gawron San Diego State University

Introduction Getting serious about constituent structure Syntactic generalizations Trees and PS-rules Summing up constituents

Better definition of constituent

Constituents
Constituents of type X are recurring partials with constant meaning
consisting of one or more words that can be substituted into
constructions allowing constituents of type X.

i. He kept that appointment.

* He kept [x kept that].
* He kept [x kept that] to himself.

Jean Mark Gawron San Diego State University

Introduction Getting serious about constituent structure Syntactic generalizations Trees and PS-rules Summing up constituents

Intuition

Meaningful expressions
The constructions of the language define slots into which meaningful
expressions of the right type can be substituted. kept that is not a
constituent because there is no construction of English that treats it as a
meaningful unit.

Jean Mark Gawron San Diego State University

Introduction Getting serious about constituent structure Syntactic generalizations Trees and PS-rules Summing up constituents

Defining meaningful expression

Meaningful expressions of type X
Words of type X are meaningful expressions of type X. Phrases that can be
substituted for meaningful expressions of type X into constructions calling
for meaningful expressions of type X are meaningful expressions of type
X-Phrase.

Type
a. He kept [x promises]. Noun
b. He kept [x his promises] Noun Phrase
c. He kept [x the promises] Noun Phrase
d. He kept [x the promises he made] Noun phrase
e. He kept [x the promises he made to himself.] Noun Phrase

Keep [np X ]: fulfill the obligation entailed by X.

Jean Mark Gawron San Diego State University
Introduction Getting serious about constituent structure Syntactic generalizations Trees and PS-rules Summing up constituents

Defining meaningful expression

Meaningful expressions of type X
Words of type X are meaningful expressions of type X. Phrases that can be
substituted for meaningful expressions of type X into constructions calling
for meaningful expressions of type X are meaningful expressions of type
X-Phrase.

Type
a. He kept [x promises]. Noun Phrase
b. He kept [x his promises] Noun Phrase
c. He kept [x the promises] Noun Phrase
d. He kept [x the promises he made] Noun phrase
e. He kept [x the promises he made to himself.] Noun Phrase

Keep [np X ]: fulfill the obligation entailed by X.

Jean Mark Gawron San Diego State University
Introduction Getting serious about constituent structure Syntactic generalizations Trees and PS-rules Summing up constituents

Substitutability

Intuition: Complex linguistic expressions are always related (built up out

of) simpler ones:

Jean Mark Gawron San Diego State University

Introduction Getting serious about constituent structure Syntactic generalizations Trees and PS-rules Summing up constituents

Malay example
Lone verbs define constructions: X makan Y = X eats Y (Malay)
(i) Ahmad makan nasi (v) Orang tua itu makan ikan
Ahmad eats rice Person old this eats fish
(ii) Orang ini makan nasi (vi) Anjing itu makan tulang besar
Person this eats rice Person this eats bone big
(iii) Anjing itu makan nasi
dog that eats rice.
(iv) Orang tua itu makan pisang
Person old this eats banana

nasi (’rice’), pisang (’banana’), tulang, and ikan are Nouns, and Ahmad,
orang, and anjing are Nouns, so we define our makan construction as:

[np X] makan [np Y] = X eats Y

Jean Mark Gawron San Diego State University
Introduction Getting serious about constituent structure Syntactic generalizations Trees and PS-rules Summing up constituents

Generalizations: Phrase structure

We find, across an enormous variety of languages, an enormous amount of

regularity in the word order in constructions. So in Malay whenever we
have [np X]:

Noun Adj Det

Noun Adj
Noun Det
Noun
This is NOT the same word order we find in English [np X], but it is
consistent in Malay. So we write a Phrase Structure Rule for Malay:

NP → Noun (Adj) (Det)

Jean Mark Gawron San Diego State University

Introduction Getting serious about constituent structure Syntactic generalizations Trees and PS-rules Summing up constituents

Hierarchy

So far we can handle a certain class of English sentences by assigning

them to one of two constructions.

1 Keep [np X] to oneself = ‘be secretive about X’

2 Keep [np X] = ‘fulfill the obligation entailed by X’

But consider this sentence:

He kept [np the appointments he kept [np ]

] to himself = ’He was secretive about the appointments he
kept.’
An instance of BOTH constructions simultaneously. One inside the other.

Jean Mark Gawron San Diego State University

Introduction Getting serious about constituent structure Syntactic generalizations Trees and PS-rules Summing up constituents

Hierarchy

So far we can handle a certain class of English sentences by assigning

them to one of two constructions.

1 Keep [np X] to oneself = ‘be secretive about X’

2 Keep [np X] = ‘fulfill the obligation entailed by X’

But consider this sentence:

He kept [np the appointments [s he kept [np those appointments ]

] ] to himself = ’He was secretive about the appointments he
kept.’
An instance of BOTH constructions simultaneously. One inside the other.

Jean Mark Gawron San Diego State University

Introduction Getting serious about constituent structure Syntactic generalizations Trees and PS-rules Summing up constituents

Sentences inside sentences

1 Relative clauses
He kept [np the appointments [s he made [np those
appointments ] ] ] to himself

2 Clause complements
He believed [s that Mary was a fool.]

3 Subordinate clauses
He liked Susan, because [s she was a Republican like him.]

Jean Mark Gawron San Diego State University

Introduction Getting serious about constituent structure Syntactic generalizations Trees and PS-rules Summing up constituents

NPs inside NPs

1 [np a book [pp about [np the president ] ] ]

2 [np a dessert [pp with [np dark chocolate ] ] ]

Jean Mark Gawron San Diego State University

Introduction Getting serious about constituent structure Syntactic generalizations Trees and PS-rules Summing up constituents

Recursion

X inside X
Whenever we find a constituent of type X inside another constituent of
type X, we call it recursion.

1 S: [s John believed [s Mary was a fool ] ]

2 NP: [np the shop [pp at [np the end [pp of the street ] ] ] ]
3 PP: [np the shop [pp at [np the end [pp of the street ] ] ] ]
4 VP: [s John [vp believed [s Mary [vp was a fool ] ] ] ]

Jean Mark Gawron San Diego State University

Introduction Getting serious about constituent structure Syntactic generalizations Trees and PS-rules Summing up constituents

Representing hierarchical structure

NP VP

V ADJP
NP PP
is Adj
D N big
P NP
the house
on
NP PP

D N P NP
the corner of D N

the street

Jean Mark Gawron San Diego State University

Introduction Getting serious about constituent structure Syntactic generalizations Trees and PS-rules Summing up constituents

Colorlessness

The autonomy of syntax: This is grammatical; that is, it obeys the

language’s formal requirements, while remaining hard to interpret;

NP VP

V ADVP
ADJP ADJP N
sleep Adv
Adj Adj ideas
furiously
colorless green

Jean Mark Gawron San Diego State University

Introduction Getting serious about constituent structure Syntactic generalizations Trees and PS-rules Summing up constituents

Constituency

(a.) Substitutability: Constituents of types X can be substituted into

construction slots of type X. As a result, we expect to find
constituent of type X in more than one construction.
NPs
Can be subjects, direct objects, objects of preposition, possessors, ...

(b.) Type of construction slot: We determine the type of a construction

slot by finding one word fillers. The part of speech of the word
determines the type of the slot. (But what about S slots?)
(c.) Constructions: regular syntactic patterns in the language defining a
fixed meaning when all of the slots are filled.
1. Idioms (keep X to yourself)
2. Verb constructions (Give [np X ] to [pp Y Give [np Y] [np X], believe that [s
X], * walk that [s X]
Jean Mark Gawron San Diego State University
Introduction Getting serious about constituent structure Syntactic generalizations Trees and PS-rules Summing up constituents

Phrase structure

a. Generalizations across constructions

b. Regularities in the order of the words in [np X], [pp X], [vp X], and so on.
c. Phrase structure rules are quite variable from language to language:
NP rules
English NP → (D) (Adj) N (PP) (S)
Malay NP → N (Adj) (D)
Japanese NP → (D) (Adj) (PP) (S) N

Jean Mark Gawron San Diego State University

Introduction Getting serious about constituent structure Syntactic generalizations Trees and PS-rules Summing up constituents

English phrase structure: Version 1

S → NP (Aux) VP
PP → P NP
NP → (D) (AdjP)* N (PP)* (S)
VP → (AdvP) V (NP) (PP) (S) (AdvP)*
AdjP → (AdvP)* Adj
AdvP → (AdvP)* Adv

Jean Mark Gawron San Diego State University