LING1000

Introduction to Language
Week 6
Syntax

O. Lam
[email protected]
Oct. 11, 2023 (Wed)
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Today’s Plan
• Syntax
• Basics of syntax
• Phrase structure rules & constituents

• Readings for today’s class:

• Yule (2020)
• Ch. 7 ‘Grammar’
• Ch. 8 ‘Syntax’

• Reading for next class:

• Yule (2020)
• Ch. 9 ‘Semantics’
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Syntax

Basic terms and concepts in syntax:

Word classes, noun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition,
subcategorization, transitivity (intransitive, transitive,
ditransitive verbs), constituent, head, phrase structure rules,
lexical insertion rules, tree diagram
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Word classes
• Name some of the word classes that you know.
• These are also known as parts of speech in traditional
grammar.

• Why is a ‘noun’ a ‘noun’?

• Nouns are used to refer to people, places or things.
• This is a definition based on meaning, i.e. a semantic
definition.
• But, consider destruction.
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Categorization
• We can put words into different groups or categories.
• Words can be categorized based on their meaning.
• But words can also be categorized based on their
morphological and/or syntactic behaviours.
• Grammatical categorization is based on morphological
and syntactic evidence.
• Words that belong to the same word class exhibit similar
morphological and syntactic properties.

• The word classes that we will look at include:

• Noun (N)
• Verb (V)
• Adjective (A/ Adj)
• Adverb (Adv)
• Preposition (P)
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Nouns (N)
• Morphologically, nouns may take the –s suffix, which encodes plural
number.
(1) a. a chair
b. many chair-s

(2) a. a sheep
b. *many sheep-s

• Syntactically, nouns may appear in the following environment. (Some of

the examples below are from Radford (1997).)

(3) They have no _______.

(4) a. They have no car/ conscience/ friends/ ideas.

b. *They have no went/ for/ older/ conscientiously.
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Verbs (V)
• Morphologically, verbs may have a number of forms.
(5) SHOW: show, shows, showed, shown, showing

• There are, of course, a number of irregular verbs in English.

(6) GO: go, goes, went, gone, going

• Syntactically, (the base form of) verbs may appear in the following
environment.

(7) They/ It can ______.

(8) a. They can stay/ leave/ hide/ die/ starve/ cry.

b. *They can gorgeous/ happily/ down/ door.
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Verb Subcategorization
• Words can be subcategorized into smaller groups.
• One example is verb subcategorization.
• Verbs can be further categorized based on their ability or
inability to take objects, i.e. their transitivity.

• Intransitive verbs
• An intransitive verb cannot co-occur with an object.
(9) a. John yawned.
b. *John yawned Mary.
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Verb Subcategorization
• Transitive verbs
• A transitive verb requires one object.
(10) a. John kicked the ball.
b. *John kicked.
c. *John kicked the ball the book.

• Ditransitive verbs
• A ditransitive verb requires two objects..
(11) a. Mary showed John her picture.
b. *Mary showed.
c. *Mary showed John.

• Sentential complement verbs

• A sentential complement verb requires an independent
sentence as its complement.
(12) Mary believes that [it is going to rain].

• That - complementizer
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Adjectives (A/ Adj)

• Adjectives can be preceded by the adverb very.

(13) They are very _____.

(14) a. They are very tall/ pretty/ kind/ nice.

b. *They are very slowly/ women/ working/ from.
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Adverbs (Adv)
• Adverbs can also be preceded by the adverb very.
(15) a. He treats her very badly/ kindly/ nicely/ rudely/ well.
b. *He treats her very chairs/ dancing/ bad/ of.
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Prepositions (P)
• Prepositions may appear in the following environment:
(16) right/ straight ______

(17) a. He went straight up to his room.

b. He went right in.

(18) a. *He right/straight laughed.

b. *They are right/straight fools/ foolish.
c. *He treated her right/straight badly.

• Only certain (forms of) pronouns may follow a preposition:

(19) She was there with me/ *I/ *my.
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Lexical Categories
• Nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs and prepositions are
lexical categories.
• They have inherent meaning.

• There are also functional categories.

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Phrase structure rules

&
constituents
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Constituents
• Consider the following string of words.
(20) The little boy took the cookie.
• An observation that we can make is that some words belong
together.

• A constituent is a set of words that belong

together as a unit.
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How are constituents represented?

• 1). Labelled and bracketed diagrams
(21) [[The little boy]NP [ate [the cookie]NP ]VP ]S.

• 2). Tree diagrams

(22)

NP VP

Art AP N V NP

A Art N

The little boy ate the cookie.

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Constituent Structure
• A constituent structure gives us information about:-
• (i) the constituents and the internal structure of constituents;
• (ii) the category/ type of the constituents; and,
• (iii) the relations among the constituents.
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Heads & Phrases

• What is the most ‘important’ word in the following example?
(23) the book of linguistics

• The head of a phrase determines:-

• the core meaning of the phrase;
• the syntactic (e.g. distributional) properties of the phrase; and,
• the category of the whole phrase.
• A noun phrase (NP) has a noun as its head.

• The head is the only item that is obligatory/ required in the

phrase.
(24) a. NP -> N
b. VP -> V
c. PP -> P
d. AP -> A
e. AdvP -> Adv

• The rules in (24) are known as phrase structure rules (PSRs).

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Phrase Structure Rules (PSRs)

• Consider again:
(25) [Repeating (20)]
The little boy took the cookie.

• We identified the following constituents:-

• the little boy
• the cookie
• took the cookie

• We can write the following PSRs to describe the structure of these constituents:
(26) a. NP -> Art AP N
b. NP -> Art N
c. VP -> V Art N
d. AP -> A

• To make things simpler:

(27) a. NP -> Art (AP) N
b. VP -> V NP
c. AP -> A
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Some Symbols
• The NP and VP together form a sentence S.
(28) S -> NP VP
• ‘The sentence consists of an NP and a VP.’
• ‘S is rewritten as NP and VP.’
• Rewrite rules

• Other symbols:
• Parentheses ( ) indicate optionality.
• Curly brackets { } indicate set membership.
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More Phrase Structure Rules (PSRs)

• We noted earlier that the head is the only obligatory item in a phrase.
Consider:
(29) a. Students love syntax.
b. Students yawned.

• The rules in (26) & (27) can now be combined and be further revised:
(30) a. S -> NP VP
b. NP -> (Art) (AP) N
c. VP -> V (NP)
d. AP -> A

• What about sentences with slightly more complicated NPs and VPs?

• NPs
(31) the big book of linguistics
(32) NP -> (Art) (AP) N (PP)
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Phrase Structure Rules (PSRs)

• VPs
• We noted that there are intransitive verbs, transitive verbs and ditransitive
verbs:
(33) VP -> V (NP) (NP)

• VPs may include a prepositional phrase (PP):

(34) a. The girl walked into the room.
b. The girl read a book in the room.
c. The girl gave the student a book in the library.

(35) VP -> V (NP) (NP) (PP)

• Verbs may be modified by adverbs.

(36) a. The girl walked into the room quietly.
b. The girl read a book in the room quietly.
c. The girl gave the student a book in the library quietly.

(37) VP -> V (NP) (NP) (PP) (AdvP)

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Phrase Structure Rules (PSRs)

• PPs
(38) The student put the book on the table.
(39) He went right in.
(40) PP -> P (NP)

• APs
(41) The tree is very tall.
(42) AP -> (AdvP) A

• AdvPs
(43) The girl walked into the room very quietly.
(44) AdvP -> (AdvP) Adv
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Recursion
• It is possible to generate (in theory) sentences of infinite length because of
recursion.

• Consider the following rules:

(45) NP -> (Art) (AP) N (PP)
(46) PP -> P (NP)

• Re-applying these two rules will give us a structure like:

(47) the book on the table in the room in the library…
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Phrase Structure Rules (PSRs)

• A language has only one SET of PSRs.
• The set of PSRs describe the constituent structure of this language.

• Based on the sentences that we saw in this class, we have the following
set of PSRs to describe the (simplified) constituent structure of English:

(48) a. S -> NP VP
b. NP -> (Art) (AP) N (PP)
c. VP -> V (NP) (NP) (PP) (AdvP)
d. PP -> P (NP)
e. AP -> (AdvP) A
f. AdvP -> (AdvP) Adv
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Lexical Insertion Rules

• Of course, we need words to make meaningful sentences.

(49) a. Art -> { the, a }

b. N -> { boy, cookie, students, syntax, book, linguistics,
girl, room, library, student, table, tree }
c. V -> { took, love, yawned, walked, gave, put, is, read}
d. P -> { of, into, in, on}
e. A -> { little, big, tall }
f. Adv -> { quietly, very }

• The rules in (49) are known as lexical insertion rules.

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Reference
Radford, Andrew. 1997. Syntax: A Minimalist Introduction. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.