Syntax

DESCRIPTION
Sidenote

Syntax was the center of the Chomskyan Revolution in linguistics.

Your book is Chomskyan.
The theory we will go over I will disagree with, but it is the reference point
now for the entire field.
The “Constructing a Grammar” section is only about Syntax and speaks only
of theorists.
Grammar
• Mental Lexicon
• Morphological ‘Rules’
• Syntactic ‘Rules’

Unknown how these ‘Rules’ are stored

Unknown if these two ‘Rules’ aren’t really just one component
Grammaticality

Grammaticality vs. Ungrammaticality

based off Native Speaker Intuition
Language-Specific
presupposes underlying system of all native speakers
That book is great.
That is a wall.
That book is.
I ran.
I ran a mile.
I bought a book.
I bought.
I put a book.
Interlanguage Differences

English
The king loves the queen.
The queen loves the king.
The king the queen loves.
Loves the king the queen.
Latin
Rex amat reginam.
king love queen
Reginam amat Rex.
Amat rex reginam.
Rex reginam amat.
Latin Morphology
King
when subject: Rex
when object: Regem
Queen
when subject: Regina
when object: Reginam

Inflectional suffixes mark its role in the syntax.

Morphology vs. Syntax

Not predictable
ex. Pro-drop
Spanish
French
English
Compositional Semantics

The meaning is based off the assumption that you are simply adding the
meanings of morphemes in predictable ways.

Once something is marked for its role in the sentence, the meaning gets
added to the sentence.
Transitivity (Valency)

Required information to use verb correctly

Marked in the lexical entry of each verb
That book is great.
That is a wall.
That book is.
I ran.
I ran a mile.
I bought a book.
I bought.
I put a book.
Intransitive
only subject
ex. I ran.
Transitive
subject and object
ex. I bought a book.
Ditransitive
subject and two objects
ex. I gave her a book.
What is the transitivity?
walk sing judge work
run drive be go
buy love seem require

Use examples to justify your answer.

If there is more than one answer, give all the answers and determine how
this information is stored in the lexicon (different lexical entries? one lexical
entry with relaxed transitivity?).
Arguments vs. Adjuncts

Arguments: The required information that determines

transitivity
ex. I bought a book.

Adjuncts: The unrequired information

ex. Yesterday I bought a book about linguistics.