• Syntax : definition

• Generative Grammar
• Constituent: single node / phrase
• Lexical categories / Functional categories
• Phrase structure trees / phrase structure
rules/ Brackets
• Syntactic ambiguity
• Constituents and constituency tests
 Syntax

• The word ‘syntax’ comes originally from

Greek and literally means ‘a putting
together or arrangement’.
• Syntax concentrates on the structure and
ordering of components within a sentence.
• It is the study of the organization of
words into larger units (phrases and
sentences).
 Generative Grammar (GG)

• Inspired by the original work of Noam

Chomsky, linguists have attempted to
produce a particular type of grammar that
has a very explicit system of rules specifying
what combinations of basic elements would
result in grammatical sentences.
• This model could be used to describe all
human language and to predict the
grammaticality of any given utterance (that is,
to predict whether the utterance would sound
correct to native speakers of the language).
• The grammar will have a finite number of
rules, but will be capable of generating an
infinite number of grammatical sentences.
• In this way, the productivity of language
would be captured within the grammar.
• The goal of GG is to build a grammar that
generates all of the possible sentences
and none of the impossible sentences.
• Generative grammar defines the syntactic
structures of a language.
• The grammar will generate all well-formed
syntactic structures of the language and
will not generate any ill-formed structures.
• This has been called the ‘all and only’
criterion, that is, all the grammatical
sentences and only the grammatical
sentences will be produced.
• The individual words in a sentence are
organized into naturally coherent groups call
constituents.
• A constituent is any word or combination of
words that is dominated by a single node.
• A word or a group of words that function as a
unit and make up larger grammatical units.
e.g. the young linguist will talk about syntax.
• The string the young linguist is a constituent,
but the string the young is not.
• A phrase is a string of (one or more)
words that functions as syntactic unit (or
constituent).
• A phrase is a syntactic unit headed by a
lexical category such as Noun, Adjective,
Adverb, Verb, or Preposition.
• Phrases are named for their heads
• Lexical categories have particular kinds of
meanings associated with them. e.g. verbs
usually refer to actions, events, and states (kick,
marry, love). The V in an VP is called the head of
the VP, (usually the head is the only obligatory part
of a phrase).
• A term that is used to indicate that words belong
to different classes with different morphological
and syntactic properties.
• The major lexical categories are noun (N), verb (V),
adjective (A), and preposition (P). Other terms are
lexical class and syntactic category or class.
• Functional categories are called so
because their members have a
grammatical function rather than a
descriptive meaning, for example, the
category determiner (Det), which includes
articles (the, a, an) as well as
demonstratives (this, that, these, and
those) and ‘counting words’ ( each and
every).
• Another category is Auxiliary (Aux) which
include be and have and modals.
 There are five categories of phrasal constituents
corresponding closely to the lexical categories which head
them :
• An NP is a constituent headed by N.
• is a projection of N.
• A VP is a constituent headed by V.
• Is a projection of V.
• A PP is a constituent headed by P.
• is a projection of P.
• An AP is a constituent headed by A.
• is a projection of A.
• An AdvP is a constituent headed by Adv.
• Is a projection of Adv.
• A more general principal can be
formulated:
• An XP is a constituent headed by X.
• is a projection of X.
• The same information can be represented
in tree diagram format:
XP

… X …
Phrase structure trees and phrase structure rules

• Phrase structure trees and brackets are notational

equivalents.
• Consider the following example:
• (1) the boy kicked the ball. It can be represented
either by a tree as the following:
IP
NP VP
Det N V NP
the boy kicked Det N
the ball
• IP or InflP: Inflectional phrase is a
functional head containing (in English)
auxiliary verbs and/or tense and/or
agreement features. Also written as I (I0).
More recently, Infl has been reinterpreted
as a conflation of two separate heads AGR
(agreement) and T (tense).
• Or by using brackets:
• [IP [NP [Det [the] N [ boy]] VP[V [ kicked]] NP [N [Det
[the] N [ball]]]].
• These labeled brackets correspond to
labeled nodes on a phrase structure tree.
• A tree diagram with syntactic category
information is called a phrase structure
tree.
• This tree shows that a sentence is both a
linear string of words and a hierarchical
structure with phrases nested in phrases.
• Words appear in trees under labels that
correspond to their syntactic category. E.g.
Nouns are under N, determiners under det,
verbs under V, and so on.
• In discussing trees, every higher node is
said to dominate all the categories
beneath it.
• VP dominates V, NP, and also dominates
Det and N.
• A node is said to immediately dominate
the categories one level below it.
• VP immediately dominates V and NP.
• Categories that are immediately
dominated by the same node are sisters.
• V and NP are sisters in the PS tree of the
boy kicked the ball.
• The information represented in a PS tree
can also be represented by another formal
device: phrase structure rules. The general
schema is: XP ( YP) X (ZP)
• We can read it as: XP consists of YP
followed by X followed by ZP. The
elements in parenthesis are optional, and
the elements without parenthesis are
obligatory. X, Y and Z are variables
representing any category e.g. (N. V. P. A .
etc).
• The example (1) can be represented as
the following:
• IP NP VP
• NP Det N
• VP V NP
• To the left of the arrow is the dominating
category, for example VP, and the
categories that it immediately dominates
–that comprise it- appear on the right, V
and NP.
• VP V NP
V Adv
V PP
V PP Adv
V CompP
• Another option open to the VP is to
contain or embed a clause. For example,
the sentence ‘The teacher said that the
boy kicked the ball’ contains the clause
‘the boy kicked the ball’. Preceding the
embedded clause is the word that, which
is a Complementizer (Comp). Comp is a
functional category, like Aux and Det. Here
is the structure of such sentences:
 IP
NP VP
Det N V CP
the teacher said C IP
that
NP VP
Det N V NP
the boy kicked Det
N
• These phrase structure rules fulfill at least three
roles:
• 1.They show how sentences can be broken down
to illustrate their structure.
• 2.They show a general manner of creating
sentences.
• 3.They provide a way for us to compare
languages.
• Thus phrase structure rules were formulated in
order to construct unlimited sentences with a
small number of rules.
 Syntactic ambiguity
• It results from the syntactic structure of
the phrase or sentence. Consider the
following example:
• “The PP is a constituent of the NP vs …of
the VP.”
• Draw a PS tree for the following sentence:
I hit the man with the hammer.
 drink [tea with honey ] Drink [tea] [with honey]
VP VP
V NP V NP PP
N PP N P NP
P NP N
N
• The PP is a vs the PP is a
constituent of the NP. constituent of the VP.
• Draw a PS tree for the following sentence:
• I hit the man with the hammer.
 Constituents and Constituency tests

• Sentences, or clauses, are not simply a

string of words; they are hierarchically
organized in units of different levels.
Clauses have a structure.
Consider the following example: (1)
• [The young linguist] will meet [his friend]
[in the local gallery] [after lunch].
• This example contains 13 words, but
some of these words are more closely
connected to each other than others.
• Square brackets […] demarcate a unit of
structure or a constituent
• Various linguistic tests reveal the
constituents of a sentence. They are
called constituency tests: they are used to
determine which elements in a sentence
form a syntactic unit or a constituent.
 1 The semantic criterion
• A set of words that can stand alone form a
constituent. The demarcation in (1) is
based on the interpretation of the units.
• There is a tighter semantic connection
between the words that compose the
strings the young linguist or his friend
than there is between the words friend in
the.
 2 Substitution

• The second test is ‘replacement by a

pronoun’.
• His friend can be replaced by the pronoun
him.
• [The young linguist] will meet [him] [in the
local gallery] [after lunch].
• Similarly, we can replace in the local
gallery bythere , the young linguist byhe
and after lunch by afterward .
• [He] will meet [him] [there] [afterwards].
 3 Movement

• The strings which we have identified as

constituents can sometimes be moved
around in the sentence.
• [After lunch] The young linguist will meet
his friend in the local gallery.
• a-Whom will the young linguist meet
in the local gallery after lunch?
• In (a), the pronominal question word
whom refers to his friend and it is also
moved to the beginning of the sentence
• b-Where will the young linguist meet his
friend after lunch?
• In (b), where replaces in the local gallery
and is also moved leftward.
• c-When will the young linguist meet his
friend in the local gallery?
• In (c), when replaces after lunch and is
also moved leftward.
 deletion
• Another property of constituents is that
they can sometimes be omitted, but only
adjuncts of time and place.
• Constituents which realize the argument
structure of the verb cannot be omitted
because of the theta-criterion.
• The young linguist will meet his friend
after lunch.
• The young linguist will meet his friend in
the local gallery .
• The young linguist will meet in the
local gallery after lunch.
 6 Focalizing a constituent

The cleft sentence

• The constituents identified so far can also
become the focal element of a sentence.
• It is the young linguist who will meet his
friend in the local gallery after lunch.
• It is in the local gallery that the young
linguist will meet his friend after lunch.
• It is after lunch that the young linguist will
meet his friend in the local gallery.
• In these examples, one constituent XP is
inserted in a string of the type:
• It is [XP] who / that ….
• Structures like those are called cleft
sentences.
• .
• In a cleft sentence, we cut (cleave) one
constituent represented as XP out of the
sentence and place it in a position in
which it will receive contrastive stress and
in which it will function as a contrastive
focus.
• The cleft sentence test offers another
means for identifying which groups of
words form a constituent.
• The pseudo-cleft sentence allows us to
isolate the constituent containing the verb.
• What the young linguist will do is [ meet
his friend in the local gallery after lunch].
• [Meet his friend in the local gallery after
lunch] is what the young linguist will do.
• In these examples, we cleave the
sentence into two parts: the bracketed
string [ ] gets contrastive stress. This
paraphrase separates will from the string [
• Will and meet do not form one
independent constituent; they are not part
of the same constituent. This conclusion
is confirmed by another substitution test,
illustrated in the following:
• The young linguist will meet his friend in
the local gallery after lunch and his
brother will do so too.
• Do so too replaces [meet his friend in the
local gallery after lunch ].
• To conclude, this sentence must be
decomposed at least into the following
units:
• [The young linguist] will [ meet [his friend]
[in the local gallery] [after lunch]]
 IP
NP Aux V

Det A N will V NP PP PP
 Exercises
• The following sentences are ambiguous.
Try to paraphrase the different meanings
of these sentences to show the ambiguity.
• a-John greeted the boy with a smile.
• b-George said that he was happy after the
party.
• She loves me more than you.
• John loves his wife and so do I.
 Which of the following expressions would
be generated by the two phrase structure
rules
1-NP det (Adj) N ?
a- A house b- The old roof c- A
big window d- A garden
2- VP V (PP)
a-Move! b-Get out of the way. c- I apologize
d-Could you please sit down?
e-You’re in the way. f- Read your
questions carefully.
• Explain the ambiguity in the following
sentences.
• the magician touched the child with the
wand.
• Dick finally decided on the boat.
• Draw tree diagrams for the following
sentences.
• I wish that my English teacher will be kind.
• He says that his friend likes fast cars.
• The teacher will give a present to his
student.
• They are hunting dogs.
• They saw the woman with the telescope.
• 3-Decide whether the underlined strings of
words in the following sentences are
constituents or not. Give at least one
reason.
• Martha found a lovely pillow for the couch.

• The light in this room is terrible.