syntactic categories, by dr. shadia yousef banjar.ppt [compatibility mode]

LANE 334 -EA: Syntax2011 – Term 2

By:

Dr. Shadia Y. Banjar

http://SBANJAR.kau.edu.sa/

http://wwwdrshadiabanjar.blogspot.com

Syntactic Categories

Dr. Shadia Yousef Banjar 1

2

PHONOLOGY

MORPHOLOGY

SYNTAX

SEMANTICS

LEVELS OF LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS


SEMANTICS

PRAGMATICS

Phonology looks at and describes the sound system

of a language.

Morphology looks at the way words are formed .

Syntax describes the way words fit together to form

sentences or utterances.

Semantics deals with meaning.


Semantics deals with meaning.

Pragmatics deals with usage.

Syntax

• Syntax: is the branch of

linguistics deals with sentence

structure.

• In order to study the structure of • In order to study the structure of

sentences, we have to know the

grammatical rules governing the

way words are combined to form

‘well-formed’ sentences.Dr. Shadia Yousef Banjar 4

1. I shot the sheriff.

2. *the shot sheriff I.

a ‘well-formed’

sentence

Native

speakerXXXXXXX

√√√√√√√


2. *the shot sheriff I.an ‘ill-formed’

sentence

Native

speaker

S(consist of)

(sentence)

word + word + word + …….

word order

rules


rules

To understand the language in terms of syntactic rules, we

have to know what are the SYNTACTIC CATEGORIES!

Syntactic category are either phrasal categories, such as

noun phrase or verb phrase, which can be decomposed into

smaller syntactic categories, or word category, such as noun

or verb, which cannot be further decomposed.

SYNTACTIC CATEGORIES


or verb, which cannot be further decomposed.

The three criteria used in defining syntactic categories are:

1. The type of meaning it expresses.

2. The type of affixes it takes.

3. The structure in which it occurs.

A family of expressions that can substitute for one another without loss of grammaticality is called a syntactic category.

1. The cat chases the mouse.

2. The dog chases the mouse2. The dog chases the mouse

3. The policeman chases the mouse.

4. The mother mouse chases the mouse.

If words and phrases could not be assigned to a small group of categories, it would be very hard to learn or use a language.


– In the given examples: 1-4,

– every word is a member of a category.

– a word’s category type determines the

kind of phrase it can form.

– a phrase is a word or string of words that functions as a unit in a sentence,

built around a head.built around a head.

– Every language has specific phrase

structure rules determining how phrasescan be combined to form sentences.


WORD

CATEGORIES

WORD CATEGORIES


FUNCTIONAL

WORD

CATEGORIES

LEXICAL

WORD

CATEGORIES

�Lexical word categories are:

� Words that have some sort of inherent meaning

are called lexical words (or content words).

� Categories related to such words are called

lexical categories e.g. NOUN, VERB, ADJECTIVE.

Open-class in the sense that new words can be

LEXICAL WORD CATEGORIES


�Open-class in the sense that new words can be

added, and thus have a large number of class

members.

Morphological properties

� it can take a plural -s morpheme;

� Exceptions: children, deer, mice, fish, . . .

�it can be modified by a possessive (apostrophe: ’s)

� it contains morphemes like the following: -ity, -ness, -

NOUN


� it contains morphemes like the following: -ity, -ness, -

action, -er, -ion, -ment, -ance, -hood.

�These are all NOUN- OR NOMINAL SUFFIXES e.g

friendliness, writer, government, neighborhood.

Syntactic properties of the class of NOUN

• preceded by articles like: the, demonstrative

pronouns like: this, that, these, those and

numerals like: one, two, three.

•preceded by an ADJECTIVE or several


•preceded by an ADJECTIVE or several

ADJECTIVES.

•followed by a PREPOSITION.

•preceded by a PREPOSITION.


• takes a past tense –ed1 form e.g. He walked.

• takes the –s form of the verb for third-person

singular agreement e.g. He goes to work daily.

• takes the –ing form to express the progressive

Verb


• takes the –ing form to express the progressive

aspect e.g. he is running.

• takes the –ed2 form to express the perfective aspect

e.g. I have finished my work.

Syntactic properties of the class of VERB

• preceded by AUXILIARIES. These are words like

do and have e.g. has come, does like.

•preceded by MODAL VERBS. These are words like

can, must, will and should e.g. can

cook, must work, will sleep, and should eat.


•preceded by negation words like not and never

e.g. Do not cry, Never shouts.

• preceded by an ADVERB or ADVERBS e.g.

quickly run.

• can be followed by a NOUN e.g. They hate John.


• has morphemes like -ous, -y, -ish, e.g. furious,

angry, brownish, friendly.

•able to form comparatives and superlatives with -er

ADJECTIVE


•able to form comparatives and superlatives with -er

and -est. e.g. bigger , biggest.

Syntactic properties of the adjective class:

• can be preceded by ADVERBS e.g. very

angry, more hard-working.

•can occur after determiners like the, a, this,

these, those and numerals and before

NOUNS e.g. the angry boy, those twelve small


NOUNS e.g. the angry boy, those twelve small

monkeys.

• modifies a NOUN.

•cannot immediately follow PREPOSITIONS

e.g. *in angry.

•can follow VERBS. E.g. He is angry.

XXXXXXX


• often followed by the morpheme –ly, e.g. swiftly,

quickly, angrily.

Exceptions: abroad, now, fast, often, well, also, very,

too, never, so, ...

Syntactic properties

ADVERB


Syntactic properties

• modifies a VERB; e.g. walks quickly.

•modifies an ADJECTIVE; e.g. swiftly angry.

•modifies another ADVERB; e.g. very angrily.

Functional word categories are:

� Words that don’t have (an easily detectable) inherent

meaning are called functional words because such words

perform some function in the sentence.

�Functional word categories tend to be CLOSED-CLASS (new

words may not be added) and have a small number of class

members.

Functional word categories


members.

�functional word categories like the following:

• DETERMINERS/QUANTIFIERS

•AUXILIARIES

•CONJUNCTIONS

•COMPLEMENTIZERS

This is a general term for articles (a, an, the), demonstratives (these, those, this), possessive pronouns (his, her, their, her), some quantifiers and interrogatives (how many, what, where, which, how, why), numerals (one, two, . . . ).Morphological properties: Invariable; i.e. cannot

Determiners/Quantifiers


Morphological properties: Invariable; i.e. cannot take affixes Syntactic properties: occur before adjectives and nouns.

This is a general term for the so-called “helping verbs”. These are auxiliary verbs like: do, have, be and modal verbs like: can, must, should, will, ought.Morphological properties: can be inflected for tense, voice

(active, passive), mood (subjunctive, indicative, . . . ), aspect (progressive, perfective). e.g. can, could, could have, was sent, . . . .Syntactic properties:

Auxiliaries


Syntactic properties:– typically occur either immediately before the main verb or before an adverb modifying the main verb. e.g. can work, can always work.– can also occur before other auxiliary verbs. e.g. could have come.– can undergo inversion in questions. e.g. You can speak Spanish vs. Can you speak Spanish?

This refers to words like and, or, both, either, neither...Morphological properties: invariable; don’t take affixes.Syntactic properties: typically connect words

Conjunction


Syntactic properties: typically connect words of the same category. e.g. two or more nouns, two or more verbs, two or more sentences, two or more adjectives, . . .

This includes words like: whether, so that, in that, because, if, since, that, . . .Morphological properties: invariable; don’t take affixes.Syntactic properties: create embedded

Complementizer


Syntactic properties: create embedded sentences. That is, they create sentences within sentences. e.g.[John likes Sue because [she is pretty]].

Phrasal Categories: Just as words have word

categories, phrases have phrasal categories.

• Phrasal categories, are ultimately much more useful than just individual phrases, for the study of

sentence structure. A phrasal category is directly

determined by the category of the word which the

Phrasal Categories


determined by the category of the word which the phrase is about. Such a word is called the head of the phrase.

•How to determine a phrasal category:The concept of a “head”:• The head of a phrase is the main word of that phrase.• It is essentially what the entire phrase is about.• The category of a phrase is directly determined from the category of its head .To see how this works, consider the following example with the phrases marked out in brackets:[[The tiny woman] [went [to [the store ]] ] ]


[[The tiny woman] [went [to [the store ]] ] ]Sentence (S) = The tiny woman went to the storePhrase 1 = the tiny woman :Noun Phrase (NP, for short). Phrase 2 = went to the store: Verb Phrase (VP). Phrase 3 = to the store: Prepositional Phrase (PP). Phrase 4 = the store : Noun Phrase (NP).

Constituents

A constituent is a grammatical unit which is part of a larger grammatical unit.

in example (1):

• The cat = noun phrase

• Noun Phrase =determiner + noun


• Noun Phrase =determiner + noun

• "determiner" and "noun“ are the constituents of the noun phrase.

Three aspects of a speaker’s syntactic

knowledge are explicitly represented in tree

diagrams:

1. The linear order of the words in the

sentence,

TREE DIAGRAMS


sentence,

2. the groupings of words into syntactic

categories, and

3. the hierarchical structure of the syntactic

categories.

The Tree Diagram For:

Juliet loves Romeo

S

VPNP


N

V NP

N

Juliet loves Romeo

•Words can be grouped in certain patterns to form

sentences.

•In terms of forms, a sentence consists of a noun

phrase and a verb phrase.

•In terms of function, a sentence consists of a

Form and Function


•In terms of function, a sentence consists of a

subject and a predicate. A predicate must contain

a predicator which is a verb.

•The class of a constituent indicates its form and

what the form does or act as a grammatical unit

indicates its function.

syntactic categories, by dr. shadia yousef banjar.ppt [compatibility mode]

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syntactic properties

lexical words