Module 23

Introduction to linguistics

Syntax

Spring semester
2023/2024
M. Eddakhch
 Syntax- Constituents

Activity 1: Consider the following English sentences.

The boy read the book.

The boy left.
The girl ate an apple.
The girl eats an apple for breakfast on a daily basis.

1. Can you identify how many constituents there are in each of the sentences above?

2. Can you label these constituents?

3. Can you work out arguments that sentences do in fact have internal constituents?

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 Syntax- Constituents

Activity 1:
Constituents 1 = Words (N, V, P, Adj, Det...)

[DetThe] [Nboy] [Vread] [Detthe] [Nbook]

[DetThe] [Nboy] [Vleft]

[DetThe] [Ngirl] [Vate] [Detan] [Napple]

[DetThe] [Ngirl] [Veats] [Detan] [Napple] [Pfor] [Nbreakfast] [Pon] [Deta] [Adjdaily] [Nbasis]

Discovering which smaller expressions a sentence is built out of is necessary for understanding its
syntactic structure

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Syntax- Constituents & structure tests

Activity 1:
Constituents 2 = Larger constituents

He did it

[The] [boy] [read] [the] [book]

Who? What?

did
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 Syntax- Constituents & representation

Activity 1:
Constituents 2 = Larger constituents (Phrases= P)

[NP[DetThe] [Nboy]NP] [VP[Vread] [NP[Detthe] [Nbook]NP]VP]

[NP[DetThe] [Nboy]NP] [VP[Vleft]VP]

[NP[DetThe] [Ngirl]NP] [VP[Veats] [NP[Detan] [Napple]NP] [PP[Pfor]

[Nbreakfast]PP] [PP[Pon] [Deta] [Adjdaily] [Nbasis]PP]VP]

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 Syntax- Sentence level

Activity 1:
Constituents 2 = Larger constituents yet (Sentence= S)

[S [NP[DetThe] [Nboy]NP] [VP[Vread] [NP[Detthe] [Nbook]NP]VP] S]

[S [NP[DetThe] [Nboy]NP] [VP[Vleft]VP] S]

[S [NP[DetThe] [Ngirl]NP] [VP[Veats] [NP[Detan] [Napple]NP] [PP[Pfor]

[Nbreakfast]PP] [PP[Pon] [Deta] [Adjdaily] [Nbasis]PP]VP] S]

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 Syntax- Labeled bracketing

Activity 1:
Constituents 2 = Larger constituents (Phrases= P)

[S [NP [DetThe] [Nboy] ] [VP [Vread] [NP [Detthe] [Nbook] ] ] ]

[S [NP[DetThe] [Nboy]] [VP[Vleft]]]

[S [NP[DetThe] [Ngirl]] [VP[Veats] [NP[Detan] [Napple]] [PP[Pfor] [Nbreakfast]]

[PP[Pon] [Deta] [Adjdaily] [Nbasis]]]]

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 Syntax- Tree diagrams

NP VP

NP

Det N V Det N

The boy read the book

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 Syntax- Structure tests

Activity 1:
Constituents 2 = Larger constituents

[The boy] [read [the book]]

More arguments:

The one who read the book is:

the boy
What the boy read is:
the book

What the boy did is:

read the book

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 Summary so far

• Sentences have internal structure

That is called syntax.
The smaller constituents in sentences are called word level categories (N, V, Adj,
Adv, P, Det...) or phrase level categories (NP, VP, AdjP, AdvP, PP).

• Tests of structure are important in determining the internal structure of

sentences

• How do we represent structure:

• Possibility 1: Labeled bracketing.
• Possibility 2: Tree diagrams

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 Practice
Find word constituent, then find Phrase constituents

• The student wrote the lesson on a new tablet

• The girl plays with the doll
• The speaker gave an interesting speech
• They spilled the hot chocolate
Levels in SS: Deep and Surface Structure

Previous lesson:
• Syntax is the study of the internal structure of sentences.
• The main elements in a syntactic structure:
• word constituents ( N, V, P, Adj… )
• phrasal constituents (NP, VP, AdjP…)
Levels in SS: Deep and Surface Structure

• Two levels in syntactic structures: the deep structure and the surface structure.
The book was written by Laaroui. Same meaning
Different
Was the book written by Laaroui? structures
Laaroui wrote the book.

• the basic structure is Laaroui wrote the book

• So: three surface structures and one deep structure.
• The deep structure is the abstract representation which consists of basic elements determining the
structural interpretation, and it can be the source of many surface structures.
Levels in SS: Deep and Surface Structure

• The man saw the lady with the telescope

Same structure
• How many meanings?
Different
1- “The man saw the lady who has the telescope » meanings
2- “The man used the telescope to see the lady »

• In this case, one surface structure but two deep structures

• This is called structural ambiguity.
 Syntactic Rules

• Rules that determine the well formedness of a sentence in a language

• They reflect the native speaker’s knowledge about his language
• Phrase-structure rules + Lexical insertion rules
• Which one is well formed?
I wrote a letter
Me bought dog
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously

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 Phrase-structure rules (1)

• Phrase-structure rules:
The rules that determine the basic constituent structure of sentences are called phrase-
structure rules. They state what every constituent can be composed of.

• Claim: the grammars of all languages have phrase-structure rules because all sentences in all
languages conform to certain constituent structures.

• Our knowledge of syntax consists of a knowledge of such rules.

• Phrase structure rules generate trees (generative grammar).

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 Phrase-structure rules (2)

• Phrase-structure rules have the following form:

XP à ... X ...
where all material in “…” is optional and X is a variable ranging over
lexical categories (N, P, V, Adj, Adv…), i.e. it is possible for a phrase
category to consist only of its head.
• Examples:
S à NP VP
NP à (Det) (Adj) N
VP à V (NP)
PP à P NP
AdjP à (Adv) Adj
AdvP à (Adv) Adv
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 Lexical insertion rules

• Lexical insertion rules: A sentence is obtained only when the lexical entries of the appropriate
category are inserted onto the bottom of a tree.

• Lexical insertion rules are expressed in PS-rules:

e.g.
V à {walk, drink, sleep, forgive, dream...}
N à {tree, freedom, bread, house,
woman...}
A à {weak, big, hot, evident, short...}

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 Representations

Representation: Phrase-markers

• Labelled-bracketing
• Tree diagrams.

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 Transformational rules

• Transformational rules: Transformations take structures created by PS-rules and transform

them into new structures.

• E.g. Question formation:

The police want to arrest which man.
Which man do the police want to arrest?

• Any structure to which a transformation applies is called an underlying structure.

• The result of applying a transformation to an underlying structure is called the surface structure

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 Syntax- Labeled bracketing

[S [NP [DetThe] [Nboy] ] [VP [Vread] [NP [Detthe] [Nbook] ] ]

]
[S [NP[DetThe] [Nboy]] [VP[Vleft]]]
[S [NP[DetThe] [Ngirl]] [VP[Veats] [NP[Detan] [Napple]] [PP[Pfor]
[Nbreakfast]] [PP[Pon] [Deta] [Adjdaily] [Nbasis]]]]

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 Syntax- Tree diagrams

NP VP

NP

Det N V Det N

The boy read the book

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Syntax- Tree diagrams

NP VP

Det N V

The boy left

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 Syntax- Tree diagrams
S

NP VP

Det N
V NP PP PP

The girl
P NP P NP
eats
Det N N

an apple for breakfast on a daily basis 24

 Homework

• Write PSRs and draw tree representations for the following:

The lady in red
Very interesting
Quite good
The lady with the umbrella with the red handle
The man in the black coat in the corner
John went to London during the summer.
The police will shoot terrorists with rifles.
(Be careful, the last sentence is ambiguous!)

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