Introduction to Syntax

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Introduction to Syntax

• Linear structure
• Hierarchical structure
• Ambiguity

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Syntax is
Syntax, n. ???????The study of grammatical
relations between words and other units within
the sentence.

• The study of sentence formation
• Subconscious grammatical knowledge
• Word order

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What do children know?

• Children, when acquiring language learn the
  following from the language surrounding them
• Word order (SVO, SOV, etc.)
• N-Adj or Adj-N
• What do you think (whats) in there?
• How do kids master this so quickly?

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Universal Grammar? (UG)

• Child hears the surrounding language
• Detects patterns and matches them with already
  stored structures
• Switches on those that match switches off those
  that dont (subconsciously)
• Kids seems to develop, instead of learn language.
  (Human children construct language! Clark p.
  222 (Heny))

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What do native speakers know?

• Grammaticality
• Implied interpretations
• Ambiguity
• Synonymy

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Grammaticality Judgments

• We went to my grandmothers house.
• Visiting relatives can be a nuisance.
• The children might being sing.
• We fed her snail poison.
• Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
• Me and Beth are watching a movie.
• Swedes like fish more than Italians.
• She aint got nothing to hide.

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Grammaticality Judgments

• We went to my grandmothers house.
• Visiting relatives can be a nuisance.
• The children might being sing.
• We fed her snail poison.
• Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
• Me and Beth are watching a movie.
• Swedes like fish more than Italians.
• She aint got nothing to hide.
• A ambiguous, ungrammatical,
• grammatical, but nonsensical,
• grammatical in a non-standard v.

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Ambiguous?

• I scratched the dog with a stick

I love linguistics!!!
Im a stick
Im a dog (I think!)
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Do I mean this?

• I scratched (the dog with a stick)

Nice doggie!
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Or do I mean this?

• I scratched (the dog) with a stick.

scratch
scratch
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The two meanings are a result of
HIERARCHICAL STRUCTURE Sentences are more than
just ordered sequences of words. They have
internal hierarchical structure as well.
scratched the dog with a stick scratched
the dog with a stick
dog has stick I have stick
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Unavoidable Ambiguity

• Why cant we convey these internal hierarchical
  structures and avoid ambiguity?
• LINEAR ORDER
• Human verbal communication is limited by linear
  production. Consequently, sentences are
  organized linearly.

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Two kinds of ambiguity

• She called her boyfriend from Australia.
• STRUCTURAL AMBIGUITY
• We went down to the bank yesterday
• LEXICAL AMBIGUITY

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Basic Word Order

• SVO (English, Chinese)
• The boy saw the man.
• SOV (Russian, Turkish, Japanese)
• Pensive poets painful vigils keep. (Pope)
• VSO (Irish, Arabic, Welsh)
• Govern thou my song. (Milton)

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Basic Word Order

• OSV (Jamamadi Yoda)
• When nine hundred years you reach, look as good
  you will not.
• Soput subject in front of the verb, would you?
  Fail this test you will.
• OVS (Apalai - Amazon basin)
• VOS (Malagasy (Madagascar)

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Word Order (contd)
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Word Order (contd)
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How would you say

• English (SVO)
• Susie brings coffee
• Japanese (SOV)
• sushi-ga cohi-o mottekuru
• Susie coffee bring
• Malagasy (VOS)
• Entin kafe Susie
• bring coffee Susie

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Two principles of sentence organization

• 1. LINEAR ORDER
• not only a limitation, we actually make use of
  the linearity of the language
• In English, limited morphology forces us to use
  word order to distinguish subject from object.
• Tom chased Jerry.
• Jerry chased Tom.

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Two principles of sentence organization

• 2. HIERARCHICAL STRUCTURE
• As we saw with the ambiguous sentence, this
  structure is invisible upon first glance.
• However, there are tests we can perform to
  discover the hierarchical structure of sentences.

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Constituency
CONSTITUENT a group of words in a sentence that
behave syntactically and semantically as a unit.
I have stick
dog has stick
scratched the dog with a stick scratched
the dog with a stick
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How to determine constituency

• Semantic intuitions
• sometimes, we just know that certain strings of
  words go together as a unit.
• Constituency Tests (more reliable)
• tests that can be applied to string of words in a
  given sentence to determine if the string is a
  constituent or not.

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Next .

• Constituency tests
• Phrase Structure Rules