GRAMMAR AND SYNTAX

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* the in bus * bus in the

in the bus

GRAMMAR

: a system of rules which accounts for all grammatical sequences in a language, or expressed differently: all the ways that words can be combined systematically into phrases, clauses and sentences.

i) Visiting relatives can be boring.

ii) Complaining relatives can be boring.

iii) *Relatives be can visiting/complaining boring.

TYPES OF GRAMMAR

Traditional grammar (grammatical categories; concord/agreement, number, gender etc) Pedagogical grammar (‘teaching grammar’) Reference grammar (the grammar counterpart of a dictionary) Theoretical grammar (beyond the specific language)

Mental grammar (our intuitive knowledge of right and wrong in a language)

Prescriptive grammar (do not end a sentence with a preposition, do not split an infinitive)

Descriptive grammar (grammar as language description), which leads on to the descriptive approach…

Structural analysis (test frames)

The distribution of forms - how is it determined what forms can go in what frames?

The ___________ is very expensive.

My ______________ costs a lot.

__________________ barks a lot.

_________________ eat porridge every morning.

Constituent analysis

Labeled and bracketed sentences

[[They] [eat] [porridge]] [[every] [morning]]]

[[My] [tall], [fat] [uncle]][drives] [a] [very] [old]

[car]]]

SYNTAX

: the structure and ordering of components within a sentence (Gr. 'arrangement')

Chomsky, 1957 Syntactic structures. The goal is to describe what the individual speaker knows, their ‘internalized language’. A limited number of rules (phrase structure rules) generate all (an infinite number of) grammatically correct phrases and those.

Deep structures (the underlying level) and surface structures (the structures we see) should be able to deal with sentences that look different but do in fact mean the same thing:

The dog chases the cat.

The cat is chased by the dog.

Sentences that look similar, but are, in fact, not so similar:

John is easy to please

John is eager to please

The rules of grammar must be able to handle: Structural ambiguity: She hit the man with a stick.

Recursion: I knew that she said that they had been told that the doctor had …

These structures are shown in tree diagrams, which use the following symbols:

S = Sentence

NP = Noun phrase

VP = Verb phrase

N = Noun

V = Verb

PP = Prepositional phrase

Art = Article

PN = Proper Noun

Pro = Pronoun

Adj = Adjective Adv = Adverb

CP = Complement phrase

Prep = Preposition

→ = rewrites as

( ) = optional

{ } = only one of these constituents can be used

Lexical rules will ensure that all generated sentences are grammatical and stop a sentence like

*Relatives can be complaining boring. Phrase structure rules generate all possible sentences. The following rules: S → NP VP NP → Art (Adj) N (PP) VP → V NP can generate:

S

NP VP

Art N V NP

Art N

The student eats a banana

S

NP VP

Art N V NP

Art N

S

NP VP

Art N V NP

Art Adj N

The child bought a red balloon

with an added NP:

S

NP VP

Art N V NP PP

Art N Prep NP

Art N

The clown loves the girl on the trapeze

What would the tree diagrams for these two sentences look like?

We met the dog with wild eyes.

We saw him in the park.

Exercise: What would the tree diagrams for the following sentences look like?

The big cat chases the rat across the room.

The cat chases the rat with big ears.

She hit the man with the stick.

Exercise: What kind of sentences could be generated by the following phrase structure rules?

S → NP VP

NP →{(Art) (Adj) N (PP), Pro}

VP → V NP

PP → Prep NP

Recursion is brought about by complement phrases (CPs): I know that she said that the doctor suggested that …

Movement rules change the surface structure, eg changing a statement to a question. She is here → Is she here?