Syntactic structure in familiar and exotic languages

1. Syntactic structure in familiar and exotic languages Richard Hudson Krakow, October 2009

2. Plan • Understanding syntactic structure • Showing syntactic structure • Teaching syntactic structure • Using syntactic structure

3. verb preposition 1. Understanding syntactic structure • For example: Time flies like an arrow and fruit flies like a banana. Groucho Marx • The sentence-parts have: • different word classes. noun verb • but also different relations among words. • i.e. different syntactic structures

4. How to analyse syntactic structures? • Two theoretical traditions: • the old European tradition • the young American tradition • Poland contributed to the old tradition • Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz invented Categorial Grammar (1935) • But the young tradition dominates theory.

5. The old tradition • How old? • At least 1,000 years • in 8th century Arabic grammar from Basra and Kufa • Part of a much longer tradition of grammatical analysis • starting in Babylonia

6. About 2,000 BC

7. Babylonia earliest written language, out of fashion new, semitic, in fashion Akkadian Babylon Sumerian

8. Becoming literate in Babylon

9. Verb conjugations(Sumerian and Akkadian)

10. 4000 years ago!!! NB!!! We – you – they (in that order)

11. Syntactic structure: old tradition • Among the units, words are basic. • but also some word-combinations: • clauses and prepositional phrases • Syntactic relations: • relate words directly to one another. • are classified: • subject • object, etc.

12. The new tradition • Invented in 1933 in USA • by Leonard Bloomfield • Called ‘Immediate Constituent Analysis’ • then ‘Phrase structure grammar’ • Assumed by all leading theories • Chomsky: Minimalism • Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar, etc.

13. Syntactic structure: new tradition • Units: • most units are ‘phrases’ – word groups • words have no special status • Relations: two primitive relations: • order: A before B • part-whole: A is part of B • but sometimes combined with ‘subject’ etc.

14. For example … fruit flies like a banana. • old tradition: the wordflies is subject of the wordlike • new tradition: the phrasefruit flies is the first part of the phrasefruit flies like a banana • no direct link between flies and like

15. Who cares? • Linguists care. • So they’ve formalised these traditions: • old = dependency grammar (no phrases) • new = phrase structure grammar (no classified relations) • Psychologists care too: • how do our minds handle syntax?

16. Claim: Our minds use dependency grammar • We recognise abstract classified relations in other areas • e.g. social relations: brother, cousin, colleague, friend, … • So why not in syntax? • e.g. fruit modifies flies, which is subject of like • But then phrase structure is redundant.

17. 2. Showing syntactic structure • Complex structures need a notation. • geography has maps • music has musical notation • mathematics has formulae, graphs, etc. • Syntax needs a notation. • first introduced in 19th century • for teaching grammar in school

18. Standard notation for phrase structure OK before VP Time flies like an arrow. S VP OK after D PP agreement NP NP N V P D N

19. A notation for dependency structure Time flies like an arrow. adjunct complement subject s a c c N V P D N

20. The joke s a c Time flies like an arrow c N V P D N a s o c and fruit flies like a banana. N N V D N

21. 3. Teaching syntactic structure Dependencies are relevant to: • meaning • agreement • selection • optionality • word order

22. Teaching meaning LIKE and PLEASE are synonyms, but … Him liking it feeler stimulus him it s o s o It pleased him. He liked it.

23. agreement Teaching agreement s a c Time flies like an arrow c N V P D N a s o c and fruit flies like a banana. N N V D N

24. Teaching selection selection c s c RELY selects ON He relies on her. predicative p s CAN selects an infinitive He can swim. extra dependency s infinitive o genitive SZUKAĆ selects a genitive Szukam prezentu. I seek present.

25. Teaching optionality • Some verbs demand an object, others allow one: He took it   obligatory object He ate it   optional object • Absent objects usually have indefinite meaning: He ate. = He ate something.  *He made a sandwich and ate.  • This is English. What about other languages?

26. Japanese o mo keeki-wa yaki-mashita-ka already cake-topic make- did - ? Have you baked a/the cake? o hai, yaki-mashita yes make-did • Most dependents are optional • When absent, they are definite

27. Why use dependencies? agreement Relations are abstract, not just word order: • ‘subject’, not ‘the noun before the verb’ • The man who we think knows the answer • ‘complement’, not ‘the noun after the verb’ • The man on whom she relies • ‘dependent’, not ‘nearby word’ s selection c

28. Teaching word order • All word-order rules use dependencies. • Many languages have very general rules. • Dependents take their position from the head: • freeorder: no restrictions • head-final: head follows all dependents • head-initial: head precedes all dependents • head-medial: head follows some dependents and precedes others.

29. Free order o s s o Marię kocha Jan Jan kocha Marię Polish o s o s kocha Jan Marię kocha Marię Jan s o s o kocha Jan Marię kocha Jan Marię

30. Head-final or -initial Japanese s shinbun-ga teburu-no ue-ni desu newspaper-subj table-’s top-on is Welsh Mi roddes i lyfr da i dad Eleri - gave I book good to father Eleri I gave a good book to Eleri’s father.

31. Head-medial English We dread cold weather just before Christmas. • Every dependent is either a pre-dependent or a post-dependent. • Every major word class allows both. • Why?

32. 4. Using syntactic structure • Speakers use syntactic structure to combine words. • Hearers use it to combine meanings. • Therefore, we must hold words in memory until their dependencies are complete. • This places a load on memory. • No problem if dependencies are short.

33. Dependency distance • A word’s dependency distance is the number of words that separate it from its ‘parent’. That Cracow is a very beautiful city by any standards is clear. It is clear that Cracow is a very beautiful city by any standards. dd = 9 dd = 1

34. Some figures • Human minds are the same everywhere • so we expect similar dd figures in all languages. • Conversation: • English: 0.4 (mean dd) • Japanese: 0.4 • German: 0.9 • Chinese news: 1.89 • head-initial: 3.3 • Are these figures correct and typical? • If so, what do they tell us? ! !! !!!

35. Conclusions • Syntactic structure is important when teaching languages or learning them. • Dependency structure is better than phrase structure. • Structural analysis allows important generalisations. • Syntactic structure needs diagrams.

36. Dziękuję • This slide-show is available at www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/talks/cracow.ppt • The theory is called Word Grammar www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/wg.htm