Syntax The study of phrases clauses and

Syntax

The study of phrases, clauses, and sentences. 1957 Noam Chomsky “Syntactic Structures” Syntax

The biggest house vs. theest big house The big house vs. big the house American history teacher or American history teacher ? What will Tiny Abner put on his head? Vs. what will Tiny Abner put a hat on his head? Katznelson is expected to run vs. Katznelson is expected will run Observations

Words are classified into categories according to their behavior: ◦ Nouns can be made plural… ◦ Adjectives can be made comparative and sup…. ◦ Determiners : only one article can precede the noun… ◦ Verbs agree with their subjects …. . Categories as theoretical constructs

Lexical: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs Phrasal: noun phrase, verb phrase, adjective phrase, adverb phrase Each phrase contains at least one lexical category of the same basic type NP, VP, AP, DP, Adv. P, QP…. categories

The brick house the old house Is brick an adjective? Use syntactic theory to account for the behavior of the following words: Walk-walked Week-weekest Wok-woked Weak-weakest Beast-beasts Best-bests Look!

See: The red car vs. red the car Phrase structure (PS) rules: - which elements are permitted in a type of phrase - the left-to-right ordering of those elements -whether any of the elements are optional Left to right ordering

SENTENCE: S NP-VP NOUN PHRASE: NP (Det)-(AP)-N-(PP) Ex. Leea is eating the apple VERB PHRASE: VP V-( NP )-(PP) AP Ex. The battery died Chris hit the ball He drove the car into a tree They are in the kitchen The teacher is angry My boss was very happy with her decision English PS rules

ADJECTIVE PHRASE: AP (I) –Adj Ex. He jumped very high AP Adj N PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE: PP Prep-NP Ex. I was at the hospital PP Prep NP Types of phrases in English

Ice floats The red car John In a bad mood In a very bad mood Gave a party for Mary Was a fool Was extremely silly Ran those people hit that man on the head • Ran with difficulty • Ran extremely quickly • • • English PS : SENTENCE: S NP-VP NOUN PHRASE: NP (Det)-(AP)-N-(PP) VERB PHRASE: VP V-( NP )-(PP) AP ADJECTIVE PHRASE: AP (I) –Adj PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE: PP Prep-NP Practice

Tree diagrams S dominates all of the other nodes Node S directly dominates NP and VP Nodes NP and VP are daughters of S Nodes of Det (art) , N, and PP are sisters

The children laughed at the clown. Haste makes waste. Two very small packages arrived. A meteor hit my red car. The fastest runner won the longest race of all. Learning a new language can be exhausting. Practice with trees