Syntax

November 14, 2012

Welcome Back!• Now give me your phonology homeworks!

Flashback• Way back when, we talked about how it’s possible to produce infinitely long sentences in a language.

• Example:

John said that Mary thought that Robin knew that Angela saw that Quinton wanted Sam to think that Becky heard that Steve wished that Forrest hoped that Bronwen believed that....

• Idea: our knowledge of language consists of “patterns of patterns”

Flashback• We also talked about sentences like the following...

• Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

• I’m memorizing the score of the sonata I hope to compose someday.

• ‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe…

• The claim was that these were “acceptable” sentences of English, even though they made no sense.

Flashback• In contrast, the following sentences were not acceptable:

• Green sleep ideas furiously colorless.

• I’m memorizing the perform of the score I sonata to hope someday.

• Brillig and, slithy and the toves

Wabe gimble in the gyre and did…

• What makes these sentences unacceptable, and the other sentences acceptable?

Syntax• Syntax = the rules a language has for putting words together into sentences

• also: rules for putting words together into phrases

• Important terminology: grammatical

• = strings of words that form possible sentences of a language

• = conform to the syntactic rules a language has for putting words together into sentences

• What is grammatical is based on a native speaker’s judgment of acceptability.

• (descriptive grammar)

On the other hand• Another important term: ungrammatical

• = string of words that is not a possible sentence in a language

• = cannot be produced by the syntactic rules of a language

• What is ungrammatical also reflects a native speaker’s judgments

• Symbolized with a * before a string of words:

*Green sleep ideas furiously colorless.

Game Plan• Our goal for today:

• Figure out some basic syntactic rules

• i.e., how languages put words together into larger units

• Let’s start with this observation:

• The rules for putting words together into sentences do not necessarily yield utterances that make sense.

• Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

• Q: If syntactic rules are not based on what words mean, how do they work?

Lexical Categories: Distribution• The rules for putting words together into sentences

operate on lexical categories (word types), not word meanings.

• Words of each lexical category have a specific syntactic distribution:

• = the words that may appear around them, in their “syntactic environment”

• Also: there are restrictions on the inflectional affixes which may attach to them.

• = “morphosyntax”

Lexical Categories: Distribution• Example: Nouns (N)

• Semantically: refer to persons, places and things

• Syntactically:

1. May occur after Determiners

• this book, the water, an idea

• *this excite, *the somber, *an exactly

2. May be modified with Adjectives

• this funny book, the bad water, a slippery idea

• Also, nouns can be plural:

• the dogs, the cats, *the sombers, *the exactlys

Lexical Categories: Distribution• Verbs (V)

• Semantically: refer to events and states of affairs

• Syntactically: may appear after Auxiliaries

he can go, she will stay, I have walked

*he can printer, *she will strange, *I have occasionally

• Verbs also take specific inflectional affixes:

• He runs, She plays, It works.

• *He printers, *She stranges, *It precipitouslies.

• He is running, She is playing, It is working.

• *He is printering, *She is stranging, *It is occasionallying

Lexical Categories: Distribution• Adjectives (Adj)

• Semantically: describe things that nouns refer to

• Syntactically: may appear after Degree Words

very funny, too wet, quite slippery

*very building, *too walk, *quite these

• Adjectives can also take specific inflectional affixes:

• wetter, funniest

• *buildinger, *walkest

Lexical Categories, part 1• The familiar lexical categories are “open-class” categories…

• It is relatively easy to add new items to the category.

• Nouns (N): wickedness, phonology, smock, blog…

• Verbs (V): eat, smash, insult, hug, chillax…

• Adjective (A): creepy, red, humungous, snarky…

• Adverb (Adv): quickly, now, sneakily…

• Note: many adverbs are derived from adjectives.

• But remember that category membership can be fluid...

• Ex: Calvin’s verbing of nouns

Lexical Categories, part 2• Other lexical categories are “closed-class” or functional categories…

• It is very difficult to add new items to the category.

• Prepositions (P): to, in, on, near, at, by…

• Pronouns (Pro): I, you, he, she, we, they, it…

• Auxiliaries (Aux): will, can, may, must, should, could…

• Determiner (Det): a, the, this, those, my, their…

• Conjunction (Con): and, but, or…

• Degree (Deg): too, so, very, more, quite…

• The meaning of these categories is harder to define; their function is to help string words in a sentence together.

Check it out!• Words can be categorized on the basis of distributional and morphosyntactic evidence...• Even if they don’t mean anything:

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

did gyre and gimble in the wabe.

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

Pro V A Con Det A N

V V Con V P Det N

Det A V Det N

Con Det A N V

‘Twas Brillig?• “Brillig” is actually in the appropriate syntactic frame for either an adjective or a noun or a verb.

• “It was pleasant…”

• “It was evening…”

• “It was four in the afternoon….”

• So once again, we have an example of language exhibiting ambiguity.

A First Hypothesis• How do we put words together into (grammatical) sentences?

• A really simple way = string one word category after another:

S Det N V Det N

( = “may consist of”)

The child found a puppy.

S Det A N V P Det N

The slithy toves gimbled in the wabe.

• These syntactic rules could capture patterns of words.

Important Data• What’s going on in these sentences?

1. We need more intelligent leaders.

2. I like green eggs and ham.

3. The police shot the terrorists with rifles.

• Syntax also puts words together in units that are smaller than sentences.

• These units are called phrases.

• Same string of words, more than one interpretation =

• more than one phrase structure

• structural ambiguity

Actual Newspaper Headlines• One way in which syntax can enrich your life is through

unintentional humor.

1. HOSPITAL SUED BY SEVEN FOOT DOCTORS

2. LAWYERS GIVE POOR FREE LEGAL ADVICE

3. ENRAGED COW INJURES FARMER WITH AX

4. COMPLAINTS ABOUT NHL REFEREES GROWING UGLY

5. CROWDS RUSH TO SEE POPE TRAMPLE MAN TO DEATH

6. FRENCH OFFER TERRORIST REWARD

Ambiguity (again)• There are two ways to represent structural ambiguity in

sentences.

• Method 1: Bracketing

a. [more intelligent] leaders

b. more [intelligent leaders]

• Just like morphological bracketing:

• [[unlock]able]

• [un[lockable]]

Ambiguity (again)• Method 2: Phrase Structure Trees

more intelligent leaders

more intelligent leaders

Tree Terminology

more intelligent leaders

more intelligent leaders

node

constituents

root node

Ambiguity (continued)• Recall: in morphology, each node in a tree had to be a real word

Adj

Adj

Aff Verb Aff

[un-] [lock] [-able]

• = not able to be locked

Ambiguity (continued)• Recall: in morphology, each node in a tree had to be a real word

Adj

Verb

Aff Verb Aff

[un-] [lock] [-able]

• = able to be unlocked

Phrases

• The nodes in a syntactic tree above the word level represent phrases.

• phrase = string of words that function as a unit

• Basic phrase types:

1. Noun Phrases (NP): [intelligent leaders]

2. Verb Phrases (VP): [shoot terrorists]

3. Prepositional Phrases (PP): [with rifles]

4. Adjective Phrases (AP): [more intelligent]

Phrase Phacts• Every phrase has to have at least one constituent

• This constituent is called the head of the phrase.

• The head determines the phrase’s function, behavior and category.

• For example, noun phrases have to consist of at least one noun.

Bob the book

a picture of Bob a picture of the unicorn

that weird picture of Bob’s unicorn

In General• There’s a pattern to how these things work:

• Noun phrases (NPs) are headed by nouns

• NP N

• Verb phrases (VPs) are headed by verbs

• VP V

• Prepositional phrases (PPs) are headed by prepositions

• PP P

• Adjective phrases (AdjP) are headed by adjectives

• AP A

• Basic Phrase Structure Rule: XP X