LINGUIS 101 1st Edition Lecture 21 Syntax 3 constituency tests structural ambiguity How do we discover structure One important technique used by syntacticians is a constituency test o Only consituents can be targeted for certain syntactic processes such as substitution and movement displacement reordering o Non constituents cannot be targeted for syntactic processes since they do are not syntactic units Substitution tests o An NP can be substituted with a pronoun o A VP can be substituted with do so Movement tests o Topic phrase NP PP VP can be moved to the front of the sentence o Focused phrases can be clefted with it was FOCUS that Pronoun substitution o Some constituents can be replaced by a pronoun The boy with the green hair left he left o An NP constituent can be replaced with an appropriate pronoun such as he she it they etc o Non constituents cannot be replaced by a pronoun The boy with green hair left he with green hair left o The failure of pronoun substitution here shows that the boy is not an NP in this tree Do so substitution o A VP constituent can be replaced with the expression do so Jack ate the beans and Jill did so too o Therefore ate the beans is a constituent in this tree o A non constituent cannot be replaced with the phrase do so Jack ate the beans and Jill did so the pork o Therefore ate is not a VP constituent in this tree Movement topicalization o If a string of words is a constituent it can often be moved Topicalization Jack met Jill in the meadow in the meadow jack met Jill o Therefore in the meadow is a constituent in this tree o Non constituent strings cannot be moved by topicalization Jack met jill in the meadow in the Jack met Jill meadow o Therefore in the is not a constituent in this tree Movement VP topicalization o A VP constituent can be fronted in the following context Jack said he will run up the hill and run up the hill he will o Therefore run up the hill is a VP constituent in this tree o Non constituents cannot undergo VP topicalization Jack said he will run up the hill and run up he will the hill o Therefore run up is not a VP constituent in this tree Movement clefting o Various types of constituents can be moved via clefting it was X that Y Jack met Jill in the meadow it was in the meadow that Jack met Jill o Therefore in the meadow is a constituent in this tree o Constituents that can be clefted include NPs VPs and PPs The boy with green hair met Jill it was the boy with the green hair that met Jill o Therefore the body with green hair is a constituent in this tree o Non constituents cannot be moved by clefting The boy with green hair met Jill it was the boy that with green hair met Jill o Therefore the boy is not a constituent in this tree Ambiguity o Another type of evidence for syntactic structure comes from structural ambiguity o An ambiguous word phrase or sentence is one that has more than one meaning Vegetarian chicken soup Vegetarian chicken soup Lexical ambiguity o Words or morphemes with different meanings in the lexicon that happen to sound alike I picked up the bat Bat nocturnal flying mammal Bat wooden club used in baseball o Ex I picked up the nocturnal flying animal I picked up the wooden club o This sentence is lexically ambiguous Structural ambiguity o Ambiguity that arises due to multiple possible structural representations Bart hit the clown with a balloon Bart used the balloon to hit the clown Bart hit the clown who was holding a balloon o This sentence is structurally ambiguous Modifier rule o A modifying phrase attaches outside the phrase it s modifying o Bart vp hit np the clown pp with the balloon Pp with a balloon is inside the VP so it modifies the V hit o Bart vp hit np the clown pp with a balloon Pp with a balloon is inside NP so it modifies the N clown Coordination o We can also get structural ambiguity with coordination Wealthy men and women Wealthy men and women both are wealthy Wealthy men and women the women are not necessarily wealthy