LING 2100 Exam 3 Study Guide Chapter 5 Syntax Basic Ideas of Syntax Syntax is the component of grammar that deals with how words and phrases are combined into larger phrases Linguistic Expression o A piece of language words and phrases that has a certain form what it sounds like a certain meaning and some syntactical properties as well Grammatical vs Ungrammatical o If a sentence is grammatical then it syntactically makes sense o ungrammatical sentence Syntactic Properties Word Order o In English the subject typically precedes the verb while objects then follow Ex Sally ate an apple vs Sally an apple ate Co Occurrence o Arguments If a certain word is used in a sentence it sometimes requires another part to the sentence obligatory Cannot have more than required Ex Sally seemed cute happy Sally seemed happy Cannot be freely ordered with respect to one another Ex Sally put on the table the book Sally put the book on the table Ex Sally devoured an apple Devoured requires two arguments o The apple object o And Sally the subject Non subject arguments are called compliments o An apple is a compliment of devoured o Adjuncts These are optional phrases that may be added to a sentence can add as many as you want Can add as many as you like Ex The really fluffy grey cat was sleeping Can be freely ordered with respect to one another Ex The really grey fluffy cat was sleeping o Agreement Distinct expressions in a sentence may be required to have the same value for some grammatical feature in which case we say that they agree with respect to that feature Ex This girl came vs This girls came Syntactic Constituency Syntactic Constituent o Idea that certain groups of expressions within a large phrase can form a syntactic unit o The small expressions out of which the phrase was constructed o They reveal the syntactic structure of the sentence they show how the sentence was built out of smaller expressions o Ex In the sentence Sally devoured an apple the constituent is an apple Answers to Questions o The cat was sleeping on the desk Is on the desk a constituent YES Where was the cat sleeping On the desk Is sleeping on the desk a constituent YES What was the cat doing Sleeping on the desk Is the cat a constituent YES Who was sleeping on the desk The cat Clefting o A kind of sentence in which some constituent is displaced or moved to the left o Is on the desk a constituent YES It was on the desk that the cat was sleeping o Is the cat a constituent YES It was the cat that was sleeping on the desk Syntactic Categories Syntactic Distribution o When expressions can occur in almost all the same syntactic environments Ex substituting the name Fluffy in for the cat in every sentence The cat is sleeping vs Fluffy is sleeping However you cannot substitute Fluffy for cat in every sentence so they do not have the same syntactic category The Fluffy is sleeping vs Cat is sleeping Syntactic Categories o NP noun phrase Has the same distribution as a personal pronoun or a proper name She sally the cat this cute dog that cat under the bed o N noun Needs a determiner to the left to form a NP Cat cute dog cat under the bed o D determiner Occurs the left of the noun in the NP The every this o A Adjective Occurs in between a determiner and a noun can be a noun adjunct that is combines with a noun to its right which results in an expression that is also of category N Cute fluffy gray o VP Verb Phrase Consists minimally of a verb and all its complements combines with an NP to its left which results in a sentence has the same distribution as slept or did so Slept wrote the letter quickly liked Bob walked believed she liked that man o TV transitive verb Needs an NP complement to form a VP Liked devoured o DTV ditransitive verb Needs two NP complements to form a VP Gave sent o SV sentential complement verb Needs a sentential complement to form a VP Believed said o Adv adverb Can be a VP adjunct that is combines with a VP to its left which results in an expression that is also of category VP Fast quickly tomorrow o P preposition Combines with NP to form a PP At for with o PP prepositional phrase Can be a VP or an N adjunct consists of a preposition and its NP complement At the table for Sally under the bed Constructing Grammar Ambiguity o Linguistic forms that can correspond to more than one distinct expression o Ex a Sally works at the local bank b There is a bike path along the east bank o Types of Ambiguity Lexical Ambiguity Homophony A single word corresponds to distinct expressions that differ in meaning Ex Sally has a fast car Adj Sally walks fast Adv Structural Ambiguity Ex Sandy said Tom would be here yesterday o Yesterday could be a VP would be here yesterday or it could be an adjunct to the VP in which she said that yesterday The cop saw the man with the binoculars o With the binoculars could be a VP adjunct the cop had the binoculars or a Noun adjunct the man had the binoculars Chapter 6 Semantics Overview of Semantics Lexical Semantics o Deals with the meanings of words and other lexical expressions including the meaning relationships among them Compositional Semantics o Concerned with phrasal meanings and how phrasal meanings are assembled Two Aspects of Linguistic Meaning o Sense Mental representation of its meaning some kind of concept o Reference By virtue of knowing the sense of some expression you also know its relationship to the world its reference Mental representation of what cats are four legged furry etc Referents The particular entities in the world to which some expression refers to Garfield Felix Fluffy are all referents of the expression cat The collection of all referents of an expression is its reference Meanings of Words Dictionary Style Definitions o Defines words in terms od other words but that also reflects the way that speakers of a language really use that word Mental Image Definitions o Words often seem to conjure up particular mental images o Different people s mental images may be very different from each other without the words meanings varying very much from individual to individual o Ex The word lecture for a student creates a very different mental picture than that for a teacher Usage Based Definitions o Regardless of the form that our mental representations of word meanings take if we know that the word means then we know under what conditions it is appropriate to use it Meaning Relationships Hyponymy o Word X is a hyponym of a word Y if the set that is the reference of X is always