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ECS 5 ENGLISH SYNTAX

Chapter 2 Syntactic Categories

OBJECTIVES

By the end of this lesson, you should be able to:

 Identify the different syntactic categories and their functions; and
 Classify words and their roles in sentences.

Identifying Syntactic Categories

A syntactic category is a family of expressions that can substitute for one another without loss of
grammaticality. Syntactic categories are distributional not semantic.

One of the fundamental problems with the way traditional parts of speech are defined is that
they are often a mixture of semantic and syntactic features, and the definitions are not usually
explicit enough to be useful.

For example, nouns are often said to be a ‘person, place, thing or idea‘, while verbs are said to be
‘actions or states of being‘. We can immediately see various problems with this kind of
definition. For example, in (1a) fighting is a verb, while in (1b), fighting is a noun. But
semantically, it seems that fighting in both words is describing an action. The reason we say
that the two words are of different categories is because of their syntactic behavior: in (1a)
fighting combines with an auxiliary verb might and be, while in (1b) it combines with a
Determiner the.

(1.) a. John might be fighting with Bill.

b. The fighting was fierce.

We can see another problem with the semantic definition of verbs as states of being if we
compare verbs and adjectives, as in (2). In (2a) we cannot say that fear is an action, so it must be
a state of being. But then we can‘t distinguish (2a) from afraid (2b) which is also a state of being.
But afraid is an adjective and not a verb. We can tell this again, by distributional properties: in
(2a) fear agrees with the subject fears vs. fear, but in (2b) afraid can‘t stand by itself without is.
Therefore (2c/d) are ungrammatical: in (2c) fear as a verb can‘t combine with is and afraid can‘t
behave like a verb by having agreement with the subject.

(2.) a. John fears ghosts.

b. John is afraid of ghosts.
c. *John is fear ghosts.
d. *John afraids of ghosts.
Five Signals of Syntactic Structure

1. Word order : Position of words relative to each other

2. Prosody: Combinations of Pattern of pitch, stress, and juncture.

3. Function words: Words with little or no lexical meaning which are used in combining
other words into larger structures.
4. Inflections: Suffixes, always final, which adapt words to fit varying structural positions
without changing their lexical meaning or part of speech.
5. Derivational Contrast: Derivational prefixes and suffixes which change words from one
part of speech to another.

Ways of identifying syntactic categories

Instead of semantic properties to determine syntactic categories, we will use groups of

distributional tests (not definitions) to determine the category of a word. Remember also, that
words can fall into more than one category, so the category of a word is always relative to the
sentence it is in.

Lexical vs. Functional Categories

There are two kinds of lexical items (words). lexical categories are open class, in that there is an
unlimited number of them, and new words are added all the time both to the language as a whole,
and to individual speaker‘s mental lexicons. Functional categories, on the other hand are closed
class in that they have a small and fixed number of items. These are also the words that
traditional grammar that usually doesn‘t give semantic definitions for either.

Syntactic Categories (LEXICAL)

1. NOUNS
 Traditionally: Person, place, or thing.
 Distributionally:
- modified by Adjectives;
- follow determiners (the, a, this etc. or the possessive my, your etc.);
- can be singular or plural; and
- can‘t take an object.
 Frame: X is/are a pain in the neck.

2. VERBS
 Traditionally: Action (sometimes state)
 Distributionally:
– can combine with auxiliary verbs can, will, might etc. or to;
– can agree with the subject;
– takes tense (-ed), aspect (-en) affixes; and
– can take an object.
 Frame: They can X or They X-ed the banana.

3. ADJECTIVES
 Traditionally: State (modifying), qualities, attributes
  Distributionally:
– follows very;
– modifies noun (and follows determiner);
– can‘t take an object; and
– takes derivational affixes like -ish, -some.
 Frames: She is very X; or I want the X book.

Syntactic Categories (FUNCTIONAL)

4. ADVERBS

Traditionally: Modifier of anything other than a noun.

 Distributionally:
– takes -ly suffix;
– Cannot appear where adjectives often appear (e.g. between determiner and noun.);
and
– Can appear between Subject and Aux.
 Frames: Bill treats Fred X; John can X do that.

5. PREPOSITIONS
 Traditionally: locations, space, directions
 Distributionally:
– take no morphology;
– can take an object; and
– can be modified by right.
 Frame: He is right X. (doesn‘t work for of, with and perhaps a few other Ps for
semantic reasons.)

Eight Main Groups of Function Words

1. Noun Determiners
the, a/an, my, her, their, that/this

one, two, some, all, many, few, other, more

2. Auxiliaries
can, may, could, will, would, shall, should, need,
do, be, have, be going to….

3. Qualifiers
Very, quite, rather, a little, so, more, most, less, enough, too,

4. Preposition
simple: after, around, before,
compound: back of, due to, together with..
Phrasal: by means of, in front of, on account of,…
 5. Coordinators
and, not, but, nor, rather than, either, …

6. Interrogators
simple: when, where, how, why

Interrogative Pronoun: who, what, which, whoever, whatever

7. Includers
simple: after, although, how, since,…

relative pronoun: who, which, that, when, etc.

8. Sentence-linkers
Simple: consequently, furthermore, hence
Phrasal: at least, in addition, in fact, etc

Four Types of Syntactic Structure

1. Structures of Modification
Consist of two immediate constituents a head (H) and a modifier (M).
Hungry people
M H
Home town
M H
Easily superior
M H

2. Structures of Predication
Consist of two immediate constituents a subject and a predicate.
The sun sets in the west
S P
The snow was cold
S P

3. Structures of Complementation
Consist of two immediate constituents: a verbal element and
a complement.
We are learning grammar
He gives a lesson
He caught and ate the fish

4. Structures of Coordination
Consist of two or more immediate constituents which are equavalent units joined in a
structure which function as a single unit.
He bought his friend a doctor and a gentleman.
FOR YOUR INFORMATION:

THE TIE-BACK

A.

B. Summary of Functions for Lexical Categories.

1. Nouns - Here are some examples of the noun tests in action:

a. Dogs/cats/people/tables/cars are a pain in the neck. (Frame test (also plural))
b. He dog/my dog/Bill‘s dog is a pain in the neck.(Determiner/possissive test)
c. * John‘s fight Bill (Can‘t take an object (Bill ))

2. Verbs
a. John can/might/will leave/eat dinner. (Combines with Auxiliary verb)
b. John wants to leave. (Combines with to)
c. eat/ate/eaten; sing/sang/sung; walk/walked/walked (Inflects for tense or aspect)
d. John ate dinner. (Can take an object).

3. Adjectives
a. John is very happy/sad/unhelpful/busy. (Frame test)
b. I want the big/red/first/top book. (Frame test).
c. * I am proud Bill (Can‘t take an object).

4. Adverbs

a. * The quickly man (Can‘t appear between Det and N)

b. John treats Bill well/nicely/better (Frame test)
c. John can usually/often/never/ do that. (Frame test)
5. Prepositions
a. John is right outside/inside/under the table/behind me. (‘right‘ test; also under, behind
take objects.)
CHECKPOINT

Written Activity 1. Test your English Skills.

First Tier: Click this url: https://quizizz.com/join?gc=24111065

This is a 10 item quiz in a game form. In the sentences provided, you are going to determine the
syntactic category of the underlined word.

Second Tier: Take a screenshot of your score, send it to my email, edelmae.emo@gmail.com or

to our groupchat.

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Prepared by:

Ms. Edel Mae D. Opeña

Reference: ENGL_20013_ENGLISH_SYNTAX.pdf.pdf