SYNTAX: THE SENTENCE PATTERNS OF
LANGUAGE
It is astonishing fact that any speaker of human
language can produce and understand an infinite
number of sentences.
EXAMPLE:
The kindhearted boy, had many girlfriends.
The kindhearted, intelligent boy had many
girlfriends.
The kind, intelligent, handsome boy had many
girlfriends.
*speaker could continue creating sentences by
adding another adjective, prepositional phrase, or
ran up the hill
relative clause.
SYNTAX- The part of grammar that represents a
speaker’s knowledge of sentences and their
structures.
Ran up the bill
WHAT THE SYNTAX RULES DO:
 The rules of syntax combine words into
phrases and phrases into sentences.
 The rules determine the correct order of
words for a language.
EXAMPLE:
SUBJECT- VERB- OBJECT (SVO) language
1. The President nominated a new Supreme
Court Justice. (GRAMMATICAL)
2. President the Supreme new justice Court a
nominated. (UNGRAMMATICAL/ ILL
FORMED)
 Second important role of syntax is to
describe the relationship between the
meaning of a particular group of words and
the arrangement of those words.
EXAMPLE: The word order of a sentence
contributes crucially to its meaning. It contains
same words but the meanings are quite different.
3. I mean what I say
4. I say what I mean
 The rules of syntax also specify the
grammatical relations of a sentence, such as
subject and direct object. In other words,
they provide information about who is doing
what to whom. This information is crucial in
understanding the meaning of a sentence.
EXAMPLE:
Grammatical relations in 5 &6 are reversed, so
the otherwise identical sentences have very
different meanings.
5. Your dog chased my cat
6. My cat chased my dog.
In 7 we see that the phrase ran up the hill
behaves differently from the phrase ran up the
bill.
 7a. Jack and Jill ran up the hill.
 7c. Up the hill ran Jack and Jill.
 7b. Jack and Jill ran the hill up.
 7d. Jack and Jill ran up the bill.
 7e. Jack and Jill ran the bill up.
 7f. Up the bill ran Jack and Jill.
- The pattern shown in the 7 illustrates
sentences are not simply strings of words
with no further organization.
- These phrases act differently because they
have different syntactic structures associated
with them. In ran up the hill, the words up
the hill form a unit as follows:
He ran [up the hill]
- The whole unit can be moved to the
beginning of the sentence, as in 7c, but we
cannot rearrange its subpart, as shown in 7b.
On the other hand, in ran up the bill, the
words up the bill do not form a natural unit,
so they cannot be moved together and 7f is
ungrammatical.
 Our syntactic knowledge crucially includes
rules that tell us how words form groups in a
sentence, or how they are hierarchically
arranged with respect to one another.
EXAMPLE.
The Captain ordered all old men and women off  A person’s ability to make grammatical
the sinking ship. judgements is when your syntactic
knowledge tells you when the sentence
- [old men] and [women] = Old modifies only
is ungrammatical.
men and women can be any of age.
 Our knowledge of language is creative
- [old [men and women]] = the adjective old
because none of us is limited to a fixed
modifies both men and women.
repertoire of expressions. Rather, we can
exploit the resources of our language and
grammar to produce and understand a
limitless number of sentences
embodying a limitless range of ideas and
emotions.
 Grammaticality depends on whether the
 This is similar to what we find in real objects are being discussed or
morphology for ambiguous words such as whether something is possible in real
unlockable, which have two structures, world. Make believe sentences can be
corresponding to two meaning. grammatical also.
 Many sentences exhibit such ambiguities,  The syntactic rules that permit us to
often leading to humorous results. produce, understand, and make
grammaticality judgements are
EXAMPLE: (structural Ambiguity) unconscious rules.
FOR SALE: an antique desk suitable for lady Sentence Structure
with thick legs and large drawers.
 ENGLSH SENTENCE TEMPLATE
We will oil your sewing machine and adjust Det-N-V-DET-N
tension in your home $10.00.
EX: The child found a puppy.
 Syntactic rules reveal the grammatical
relations among the words of a sentence
as well as their order and hierarchical
organization. They also explain how the
grouping of words relates to its meaning,
such as when a sentence is ambiguous.
 The rules of syntax permit speakers to
produce and understand a limitless The tree diagram shows, among other things, that
number of sentences never produced or the phrase found a puppy divides naturally into two
heard before- the creative aspect of branches, one for the verb found, and other for the
linguistic knowledge. direct object a puppy.
 Major goal of linguistics: to show clearly
CONSTITUENTS AND CONSTITUENCY
and explicitly how syntactic rules
TESTS
account for this knowledge.
 A theory of grammar must provide a  CONTITUENTS- natural groupings or
complete characterization of what parts of a sentence.
speakers implicitly know about their CONSTITUENCY TESTS
language. 1. Stand Alone Test- a group of words
can stand alone
WHAT GRAMMATICALLY IS NOT
BASED ON
EXAMPLE: As an answer to a question, they form
a constituent. In response to the question. So, in
response to the question, “What did you find?” a
speaker might answer a puppy, but not found a. A
puppy can stand alone while found a cannot. We
have clear intuition that one of these is a meaningful
unit and other is just a list of words. *Experiment: subject listen to sentences that have
2. Replacement by a pronoun- clicking noise inserted into them at random points.
Pronounce is substitute for natural - In some cases, the click occurs at a constituents
groups. boundary, and in other sentences the click is
EXAMPLE: inserted in the middle of a constituents.

In answer to the question “Where did you find a
puppy?” a speaker can say “I found him in the
park.” Words such as do (which is not a pronoun
per se) can also take the place of the entire predicate
found a puppy, as in “John found a puppy and Bill
did too.”
 If a group of words can be replaced by a
pronoun or word like do, it forms a
constituent.
- The subject report where the click occurred.
2 Important Rules
1. Subjects noticed the click and recalled its
location best when it occurred at a major
constituent boundary. (e.g., between the
subject and predicate.
2. Clicks that occurred inside the constituents
were reported to have occurred between
constituents.

3. Move as a unit- If a group of words SYNTACTIC CATEGORIES

can be moved, they form a
Syntactic Category- A family of expressions that
constituent.
can substitute for one another without loss of
EXAMPLE: grammaticality.

If we compare the following sentences to the

sentence “The child found a puppy,” we can see that
certain elements can be moved:
It was a puppy that the child found.
 Noun Phrase: Your neighbor, police officer
A puppy was found by the child. - Contains a determiner (a or the) + noun
- Can also consist of a proper name, a
 In all rearrangements the constituents a pronoun, a noun without a determiner, or
puppy and the child remain intact. even a clause or a sentence.
 Found a does not intact because it is not
constituents. Syntactic Category- parts of a speaker’s
knowledge of syntax.
Subject: child predicate: found a puppy
1. Noun Phrases- function as sub and verb
direct object: a puppy a) a bird
b) the red banjo
c) have a nice day
d) with a balloon
e) the woman who was laughing
f) it
 g) down
h) went
Test the claim:
What/who I heard was, ____________, Who found
_________? And __________ was seen by
everyone.
 2. Verb Phrase
- Contains a (V) Verb, also noun phrase or
prepositional phrase (PP), which is a
proposition followed by an NP, such as in
the park, on the roof, with a balloon.
EXAMPLE:
- VPs are those phrases that can complete the
sentence “The child
a) Saw a clown
b) A bird
c) Slept
d) Smart
e) Ate the cake
f) Found the cake in the cupboard
g) Realized that the Earth was round
Lexical and Functional Categories
Syntactic Category includes Phrasal and Lexical
Categories
Another Categories
- Determiner (Det)- articles [a and the]
- Demonstrative [this, that, these, and those
- Quantifiers [each and every]
- T(ense) – modal auxiliaries [may, might,
can, could, must, shall, should, will, and
would
 Tense and Determiners are functional
categories because their members have
grammatical functions.
 Modals express notions such as
possibility
 Auxiliaries (helping verbs) - larger class
of verbal elements
Lexical Categories
Verb- actions, events and states
Example: kick, marry, love
Adjective- qualities and properties
Example: Lucky, old
Common nouns to general entities
Example: dog, elephant, house
Proper nouns to particular individuals, place
Example: Noam Chomsky, Dodger Stadium
PHRASE STRUCTURE TREES
 The core or every phase is a lexical
category of its syntactic type (italicized),
which is head.
COMPLEMENT- defined as a phrasal category
that may occur to a head, and only there, and which
elaborates on the meaning of the head.
Example: The head N mother takes the PP
complement of James Whistler.
SPECIFIERS- element preceding the head
Example: NP: the mother of James Whistler
The determiner the is the specifier of the NP.
NODE- a point in tree where branches join.
SISTERS- categories under the same node
 Complement is defined as the sisters of
the head, and the specifier is defined as
the sisters to the head + complement
complex

 The X-bar schema is hypothesized to be

part of Universal Grammar. As such, all
language has phrases that consist of
heads, specifiers and complements that
 To capture the generalization that each relate to each other as just described.
category has the same internal structure  Order of the head and complement may
we substitute X in place of N, V, P, A differ in different language.
Example: ENG= HEAD=COMPLEMENT
JAPANESE= COMPLEMENT= HEAD

X-BAR (X) SCHEMA- 3- tiered structure; is a

template or blueprint that specifies how the phrases
Japanese X-bar schema
of a language are organized. The X-Bar schema
“stands for” the various phrasal categories given
above.
 The specifier of an NP may be absent or
if any determiner or complement or
another PP category. The head N(oun) of
the NP is obligatory, however, so a
stripped-down NP compose solely of a
noun. English X-bar schema
 - A formal device that reflects the speaker’s
intuitions about the natural groupings of
words in a sentence
PS tree represents three aspects of a speaker’s
syntactic knowledge:
“BACK TO THE CATEGORY S(ENTENCE) 1. The linear order of words in the sentence
2. The identification of the syntactic categories
of words0020and group of words.
3. The hierarchical organization of the
syntactic categories as determined by the X-
bar schema
SELECTION
“The child found a puppy.”  Complements and specifiers are not
always present in the phrasal structure
(optional). Head is obligatory.

EXAMPLE:
- The labels show the entire sentence belongs Verbs select different kinds of complements.
to the syntactic category of S (because the S-
node encompassed all words)
PHASE- STRUCTURE TREE/ CONSTITUENT
STRUCTURE TREE (PS TREES)
- a tree diagram with syntactic category
information.

SMALL CLAUSE- is an XP composed of an NP

followed by a bar level category.
EXAMPLE:
  Whether it obeys the selectional
requirements of the head- both syntactic (C-
I saw [John on the boat].
selection) and semantic (s- selection)

BUILDING PHRASE STRUCTURE TRESS

PHRASE STRUCTURE (PS) RULES
- Instantiate the principles of the X-Bar
schema and can be used as a guide for
building PS Trees.
PS RULES:

 They make
explicit a
speaker’s knowledge of the other words
and the grouping of words into syntactic
categories.
 The PS rules are general statements
about a language and do not refer to any
specific VP, V, or NP.
C- SELECTION/ SUBCATEGORIZATION
 In applying the rules to build trees
- the information about the complement types certain conventions are followed. The S
selected by particular verbs and other lexical occurs at the top or “root” or the tree
items. (tree is upside down). First, find the rule
- Included in the lexical entries of the items in with S on the left side of the arrow (rule
our mental lexicon. 1), and put the categories on the right
side below the S. Example:
S- SELECTION (S=SEMANTIC)
- A verb includes in its lexical entry a
specification that requires certain semantic
properties of its subjects and complements,
just as it selects for syntactic categories.

 Continue by matching any syntactic

 The well-formedness of a phrase
depends on:
 Whether the phrase conforms to the
structural constraints of the language as
expressed. In the X-bar schema
category at the bottom of the partially
constructed tree to a category on the left
side of a rule, then expand the tree
downward using the categories on the
right side. EXAMPLE: Apply the NP
Rule
  The categories at the bottom are Det, N
and VP, and both N and VP occur to the
left of an arrow. We may choose to
expand either one; order doesn’t matter.
If we choose VP our work in progress
looks like this.

ANOTHER PS RULES:
\
 Although, not mentioned specifically in
our five rules, certain verbs take a PP
complement. According to the X-bar
schema, then, the rule that we have just
described can be written V-> V PP.

EXAMPLE:
In going about constructing such trees, a strategy of
“divide and conquer” is in order.

All that is left to expand is the PP, and then we’ll 1st= assemble the subtree for the NP subject,
fill in the remaining lexical items. 2nd= subtree for the VP predicate.
Each level of the tree mentions the rule or rules (1-
13 or lexical insertion) that apply.
 THE INFINITY OF LANGUAGE:
RECURSIVE RULES
 To account for the potentially limitless - Repeating the category of intensifier (INT)
number of adjectives we need a within AP. (intensifier functions as the
recursive rule- one that repeats itself on specifier of A)
N:

- By including this rule, that is - A slightly different form of recursion that

by permitting such structures, to grow, we can allows sentences of theoretically limitless
easily represent the structure of the NP in question. lengths involves PP recursion.
ADJUCNT- a phrasal category that is a sister to an
X and daughter of higher X
COMPLEMENT- structurally as sister to a head X

 As the structures grow longer, they become

increasingly, more difficult to produce and
understand. This can be due to short term
memory limitations, muscular fatigue,
breathlessness, boredom, or any number of
performance factors.

WHAT HEADS THE SENTENCE

 Sentences are always tensed.
 Tense provides a time- frame for the event
Illustrates NP and PP recursion:
or state described by the verb.
EXAMPLE:
PRESENT: PAST:
John dances. John danced.
 Future tense is expressed with the modal
will (John will dance.)
 Necessity (John must dance.)
 Ability (John can dance.)

TPs comforting in the X Bar scheme

EXAMPLE:

The dog destroyed the house

yesterday diff from Th e dog
STRUCTURAL AMBIGUITIES yesterday destroyed the
house. (ungrammatical)
The boy saw the man
with a telescope is
structurally ambiguous.

 Adjectival modification of the NP, VP has

more deeply tiered structure.

For meaning on the example, need to use

recursive rule 16.
TRANSFORMATIONAL ANALYSIS
Declarative sentence ex. The boy will dance.
YES-NO Question Ex. Will the boy dance?
 Related sentences come from common
underlying structure:
 YES-NO question begins as a declarative
sentence in the X-bar schema
 To deprive a well- formed question, Move
must refer to phrase structure and not to the
linear order of elements.

FURTHER SYNTACTIC DEPENDENCIES

2 BASIC PRINCIPLES OF SENTENCE
ORGANIZATION
1. X-Bar schema deprived constituent structure
on the one hand.
2. The syntactic dependencies derived from the
lexical properties of individual words (C-
selection and S- selection)
SYNTACTIC DEPENDENCIES – the presence of
a particular word or morpheme can be contingent on
the presence of some other word or morpheme in a
sentence.
DEEP STRUCTURES/ D STRUCTURES- basic
WH QUESTIONS
structures of sentences.
SURFACE STRUCTURES/ S- STRUCTURES-
deprived structures – the ones that follow the
application of transformational rules.
A. Verb - transitive (chase) – no direct object
following
B. Verb (put)- direct object and a prepositional
phrase
C. (does)- 3rd person singular s- morpheme

THE STRUCTURE DEPENDENCY OF RULES

 The transformation moves acts on phrase
structures without regard to the particular
words that the structure contains.
3 transformation occur:
1. Move relocates the WH expression from its
d- structure position to a structural position
at the beginning of the sentence.
2. Move preposes the modal to precede the NP
subject.
3. Transformational rule of do – insertion
inserts the dummy verb do into T carry the
tense future.