CONTENTS

SYNTAX 1

WHAT SYNTAX RULES

2 DO

WHAT GRAMMATICALTY
3
IS BASED ON
WHAT GRAMMATICALITY IS
4 NOT BASED ON

SENTENCE STRUCTURE 5

CONSTITUENTS AND
6 CONSTITUENCY TEST
 CONTENTS

SYNTACTIC CATEGORIES 7

8 SYNTACTIC LABELS

PHRASE STRUCTURE 9
TREE

10 RECURSIVE RULES

STRUCTURAL AMBIGUITY 11

TRANSFORMATIONAL
12 ANALYSIS
 SYNTAX
GREEK
•In linguistics, "syntax" refers to SYNTAX
the rules that govern the ways in
which words combine to =
form phrases, clauses, and sentences. ARRANGE
TOGETHER
 
•The term is also used to mean the study
of the syntactic properties of a language.
• Any speaker of any human language can
produce and understand an infinite
number of possible sentences

• Thus, we c a n ’ t possibly have a mental

dictionary of all the possible sentences SYNTAX
• Rather, we have the rules for forming
sentences stored in our brains

– Syntax is the part of grammar that

pertains to a speaker ’ s knowledge
of sentences and their structures. It
states the rules for using words,
phrases, clauses and punctuation,
specifically to form sentences.
Before you get confuse…
Grammar
• Mental representation of a speaker’s linguistical
competence.
• What a speaker knows about the language,
including its phonology, morphology, syntax,
semantics and lexicon

Syntax
• The rules of sentence formation.
• The component of the mental grammar that
represents speakers’ knowledge of the structure of
phrases and sentence.
Chief swore president the Justice the in
new

• Sequence is made up of meaningful words.

• DOES IT MAKE SENSE?

Chief swore president the Justice the in
new

• Every sentence is a sequence of words.

• But not every sequence of words is a sentence.
 well formed
GRAMMATICAL

• Sequence of words that conform to the rules of

syntax are said to be…
ill formed
UNGRAMMATICAL

• Those that violate the syntactic rule are

therefore…
 well formed
GRAMMATICAL

• Sequence of words that conform to the rules of

syntax are said to be…
ill formed
UNGRAMMATICAL

• Those that violate the syntactic rule are

therefore…
 What the Syntax Rules Do
•The rules of syntax combine words into phrases and phrases into
sentences.

•They specify the correct word order for a language.

-For example, English is a Subject-Verb-Object (SVO)
language.
1. The President nominated a new Supreme Court
Justice.
2. President the new Supreme justice Court a
nominated.

•They also describe the relationship between the meaning of a

group of words and the arrangement of the words.
- I mean what I say vs. I say what I mean
 What the Syntax Rules Do
•The rules of syntax also specify the grammatical relations of a
sentence such as the subject and the direct object.
-Your dog chased my cat vs. My cat chased your dog.

•Syntax rules specify constraints that sentences must adhere

to.
a. The boy found
a. Disa slept the baby.
b. The boy found quickly.
b. Disa slept soundly.
c. The boy found in the house.
d. The boy found the ball .
a. Zack believes Robert to be a gentleman.
b. Zack believes to be a gentleman.
c. Zack tries to be a gentleman.
d. Zack tries Robert to be a gentleman.
 What the Syntax Rules Do
•Syntax rules also tells us how words form groups and are hierarchically
ordered in a sentence.

“The captain ordered the old men and women off the ship.”

•This sentence has two possible meanings:

1. The captain ordered the old men and the old women off the ship.
2. The captain ordered the old men and women of any age off the ship.

•The meanings depend on how the words in the sentence are grouped
(specifically, to which words is the adjective ‘old’ applied?)
1. The captain ordered the old [men and women] off the ship.
2. The captain ordered the [old men] and [women] off the ship.
 What the Syntax Rules Do

•These groupings can be shown hierarchically in a tree

•These trees reveal the structural ambiguity in the phrase “old men
and women”
-Each structure corresponds to a different meaning
 What Grammaticality is Based on…
• Determined by the rules shared by the speakers of a
language.

Example:

Jack and Jill ran up the hill.

I’m proud to be my mother.

Vicente believes to be a gentleman.

Joanna ate the baby.

 What Grammaticality is Not Based on…

• Grammaticality is not based on prior exposure to a

sentence
-Enormous crickets in pink socks danced at the
prom.

• Grammaticality is not based on meaningfulness.

• Grammaticality is not based on truthfulness

 Sentence Structure
•We could say that the sentence “The child found the puppy”
is based on the template:
Det-N-V-Det-N

The words in the sentence may be grouped into [the child] and
[found a puppy], corresponding to subject and predicate of
the sentence. Further division [the child], [found], [a puppy],
finally for the individual words. [[the] [child]] [[found] [[a]
[puppy]]].]
 Sentence Structure
•A tree diagram can be used to show the hierarchy
of the sentence:
Root

The child found a puppy

 Constituents and the Constituency Tests
•Constituents are the natural groupings in a sentence.

•Tests for constituency include:

1. “stand alone test”: if a group of words can stand
alone, they form a constituent.
a. “What did you find?” .
b. “A puppy.”

2. “replacement by a pronoun”: pronouns can replace

constituents.
a. “Where did you find a puppy?”
b. I found him in the park.”
 Constituents and the Constituency Tests

3. “move as unit” test: If a group of words can be

moved together, they are a constituent.

a. “The child found a puppy.”

.
 “A puppy was found by the child.”
 Syntactic Categories
A family of expressions that can substitute for one another
without loss of grammaticality is called a syntactic category.
The child found a puppy. The child found a puppy.
A police officer found a puppy. The child ate the cake.
Your neighbor found a puppy. The child slept.
.
•All the underlined groups constitute a syntactic category known as a noun
phrase (NP).
-NPs may be a subject or an object of a sentence, may contain a
determiner, proper name, pronoun, or may be a noun alone.

• All the bolded groups constitute a syntactic category known as the verb
phrase (VP)
- VP’s must always contain a verb but may also contain other constitutes
such as a noun phrase or a prepositional phrase (PP)
 Syntactic Categories
• Phrasal structure grammar: NP, VP, PP, Adv

•Lexical categories:
- Noun: puppy, girl, soup, happiness, pillow
- Verb: find, run, sleep, realize, see, want
.
- Preposition: up, down, across, into, from, with
- Adjective: red, big, candid, lucky, large
- Adverb: again, carefully, luckily, very, fairly

•Functional Categories:
- Auxiliary: verbs such as have, and be, and modals such
as may, can, will, shall, must
-Determiners: this, a, this, that, those, each, every.
Symbols and Abbreviation in Syntactic Description
 Sentence :S
Determiner : Det
Adjective : Adj
Adverb : Adv
Noun :N
Verb :V .
Pronoun : Pro Syntactic Syntactic
Preposition :P Labels
Auxiliary Verb : Aux
Preposition Phrase : PP
Adverb Phrase : AdvP
Adjective Phrase : AdjP
Noun Phrase : NP
Verb Phrase : VP
 Building Phrase Structure Trees
• Phrase structure rules specify the well-formed structures
of a sentence.

– A tree must match the phrase structure rules to be

grammatical.
.
 Phrase Structure Trees

• Phrase structure tree/ constituent structure tree - it

is the tree diagram with syntactic category
information. It shows that a sentence is both linear
string of words and hierarchical
. structure with
phrases nested in phrases.
 Phrase Structure Trees
• Phrase structure (PS) trees show the internal structure of a
sentence along with syntactic category information:

The child found a puppy.

.
 Phrase Structure Trees
PS trees represent three aspects of a speaker’s syntactic
knowledge:

1. The linear order of the words in the sentence

.
2. The identification of the syntactic categories of words and
groups of words
3. The hierarchical structure of the syntactic categories (e.g., an
S is composed of an NP followed by a VP, a VP is composed of
a V that may be followed by an NP, and so on)
 Phrase Structure Trees
•The information represented in the PS tree, can also be
presented by other formal device, the PS rules.

•PS rules can capture the knowledge that the speakers have
about the possible structure of .knowledge

• Rule 1 - says that a sentence (S) contains NP and VP in that

order.
 Phrase Structure Trees

• Rule 2 - one sub tree for English NP looks like this:

• Rule 3 - says that a verb phrase consist of verb followed by an

NP.
 Phrase Structure Trees
• Rule 4

• Rule 5 . Rule 5

• Rule 6
Rule 6
PP
 Phrase Structure Trees

Rule 7

Rule 8
.

complementizer

• Rule 7
• Rule 8
 Phrase Structure Trees

• Rule 9

.
 The Infinity of Language: Recursive Rules
Recursive rules are rules in which a phrasal category can
contain itself.

• Recursive rules allow a grammar to generate an infinite

number of sentences .

–the kindhearted,
intelligent, handsome, …
boy
 Structural Ambiguity
The presence of two or more possible meanings within a single
sentence or sequence of words, as opposed to
lexical ambiguity, which is the presence of two or more
possible meanings within a single word.

•The boy saw the man with telescope.

The meanings are:
1. The boy used the telescope to see the man.
2. The boy saw the man who had a telescope.

• Each of these meanings can be represented by a different

phrase structure tree.
- The two interpretations are possible because the PS rules
allow more than one structure of the same string words.
 Structural Ambiguity
The boy used a telescope
to see the man.

The boy saw the man

who had a telescope.
 Transformational Analysis
• Recognizing that some sentences are related to each
other is another part of our syntactic competence.

The boy is sleeping. Is the boy

sleeping?
• The first sentence is a declarative
.
sentence, meaning that
it asserts that a particular situation exists.
• The second sentence is a yes-no question, meaning
that asks for confirmation of a situation.

• The difference in meaning is indicated by different

word orders, which means that certain structural
differences correspond to certain meaning
differences.
– For these sentences, the difference lies in where
the auxiliary occurs in the sentence.
 Transformational Rules
• Yes-no questions are generated in two steps:

1. The PS rules generate a declarative sentence which

represents the basic structure, or deep structure ( d -
structure) of the sentence.
.
.

2. A transformational rule then moves the auxiliary before

the subject to create the surface structure (s-structure).
.
 .
Pro
Pro

We thank you!
Reference
• https://www.thoughtco.com/syntax-grammar-1692182
• https://
www.slideserve.com/brigit/syntax-the-analysis-of-sentence-
structure
• https://www.slideshare.net/reinacutiee/sentence-structure-
.
in-linguisitcs#:~:text=2.,sentences%20such%20as%20the%2
0following
.
• https://www.slideshare.net/sovannakakk/syntax-49938218
• https://
www.slideshare.net/LanzManipor/syntax-5161096/41
• http://home.chuhai.hk/~winnieho/index.html/Syntax(F&R)C
h.pdf
FIRST EVEN GROUP
BSE-ENGLISH 2b

Baldoza, Caren
Bonifacio, Joyce Aifer
Culambo, Hidie
Domingo, Angela
. Michaella
Estrella, Jerelyn
Gono, Hyra
Mabini, Esther
Mengorio, Jazmin
Pateña, John Rendel
Rabosa, Christine May
Sevilleno, Kathleen
Verano, Renz Cyrus