Chapter 4 Syntax

1. Chapter 4 Syntax 河南大学外语学院 姜玲

2. outline 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Word Classes 4.3 The Prescriptive Approach 4.4 The Descriptive Approach 4.4.1 Structural analysis 4.4.2 Immediate constituent analysis 4.5 Constituent Structure Grammar 4.6 Transformational Grammar 4.7 Systemic Functional Grammar 河南大学外语学院 姜玲

3. 4.1 Introduction • Syntax: study of the internal structures of sentence and the rules for the combination of words. • Difference between morphology and syntax • Morphology: the internal structure of words • Syntax: the combination of words 河南大学外语学院 姜玲

4. Syntactic rules • (1) a. The hunter fears the cries of the blackbirds. • b. The blackbirds fear the cries of the hunter. • (2) a. Jack looked up the word. • b. Jack looked the word up. • (3) *Cries fear the the of hunter blackbirds the. • Conclusion: The structure of sentence such as word order can change the meaning. Every sentence is a sequence of words but not every sequence of words is a sentence. Sentence formation has rules, so that we have well/ill formed or (un)grammatical sentences. 河南大学外语学院 姜玲

5. 4.2 Word Classes • Nouns are words used to refer to people, objects, creatures, places, events, qualities, phenomena and abstract ideas as if they were all things. cats, dogs, war, wedding, courage, beauty, rain, love, hatred • Adjectives are words that describe the thing, quality, state or action which a noun refers to. beautiful, red • Verbs are words used to refer to various actions and states involving the “things” in events. run, walk, seem 河南大学外语学院 姜玲

6. 4.2 Word Classes • Adverbs are words that describe or add to the meaning of a verb, an adjective, another adverb, or a sentence, and which answers the questions introduced by how, where, when, etc. carefully, slowly, then, now • Prepositions are words used with nouns in phrases providing information about time, place and other connections involving actions and things. • Pronouns are words which may replace nouns or noun phrases. • Conjunctions are words used to connect and indicate relationships between events and things. • Articles, Exclamations, Numerals 河南大学外语学院 姜玲

7. The definitions above are useful for identifying most forms, but they are never completely accurate. A different approach might focus on some other properties of the word classes. For example, a noun can be defined as a form that comes after an article (a, an and the) and can take inflections for possessive (-’s) and plural (-s). Of course, not all nouns (eg. information and mud) have all these characteristics. 河南大学外语学院 姜玲

8. Phrase structure rules • Representation: • The hunter fears the cries of the blackbirds • Art + N + V + Art+N+ Prep+Art + N • The rules which govern the structure of phrases are known as phrase structure rules or rewrite rules. 河南大学外语学院 姜玲

9. 4.3 The Prescriptive Approach • Definition: An approach taken by some grammarians, mainly in eighteenth-century England, who lay down rules for the correct or “proper” use of English by following Latin. • (a) You must not split infinitives. • (b) You must not end a sentence with a preposition. • To boldly go. →To go boldly. • Preposition is not a word you can end a sentence with. (funny) • Mary runs faster than me. →Mary runs faster than I. • Who do you see? →Whom do you see? 河南大学外语学院 姜玲

10. 4.4 The Descriptive Approach • Definition: An approach taken throughout the 20th century which attempts to describe the regular structures of the language as it is used by collecting samples. Various techniques may be employed. 河南大学外语学院 姜玲

11. 4.4.1 Structural analysis • A descriptive approach studying the distribution of linguistic forms in a language by means of test frames, which can be sentences with empty slots in them. • (4) The _____ makes a lot of noise. (nouns: car, radio, child, dog) • (5) I heard a _____ yesterday. (nouns: car, radio, child, dog) • (6) _____ makes a lot of noise. (noun phrases: it, the car, a dog, Peter, a new car, the scholar with an American accent) • (7) I hear _____ yesterday. (noun phrases: it, the car, a dog, Peter, a new car, the scholar with an American accent) 河南大学外语学院 姜玲

12. 4.4.2 Immediate constituent analysis • Language is linear and hierarchical. We can analyze language from its largest level to the smallest level, that is from its construction to its constituents by means of substitutability and expansion. The first divisions or cuts of a construction are called immediate constituents and the final cuts as the ultimate constituents. The approach to divide the sentence up into its immediate constituents by using binary cutting until obtaining its ultimate constituents is called immediate constituent analysis (IC). 河南大学外语学院 姜玲

13. Tree diagram • (8) The man bought a car. 河南大学外语学院 姜玲

14. Brackets • Brackets can also be used but are arguably less easy to read. • 9) a. [the man bought a car] • b. [[the man] [bought a car]] • c. [[[the] [man]] [[bought] [a car]]] • d. [[[the] [man]] [[bought] [[a] [car]]]] 河南大学外语学院 姜玲

15. Disambiguity • old men and women 河南大学外语学院 姜玲

16. 4.5 Constituent Structure Grammar • A grammar which analyzes sentences using only the idea of constituency, which reveals a hierarchy of structural levels. The main principle is labeling and bracketing based on the idea that linguistic units can be parts of larger constructions or can themselves be made up of smaller parts. (binary and verb-centered) 河南大学外语学院 姜玲

17. Tree diagram Binary Verb-centered 河南大学外语学院 姜玲

18. Generative Rules • The syntax of a language is then seen as a set of rules which generate sentences in that language. • S→NP＋VP • VP→Vtr. ＋NP • NP→Art＋N • Vtr. →buy, sell, build, repair, wash, etc. • N→man, woman, car, house, bicycle, etc. • Art→a, an, the 河南大学外语学院 姜玲

19. Sentences generated • (12) a. The man bought a car. • b. The man sold a car. • c. The woman repaired the bicycle. 河南大学外语学院 姜玲

20. More complex rules • There is a large number of sentences in English that such rules cannot produce. This set of rules has very limited generative power. The above rules only deal with simple noun phrases and transitive verbs. They do not allow us to deal with any part of the verb structure such as tense, modals or aspect. 河南大学外语学院 姜玲

21. More complex rules 河南大学外语学院 姜玲

22. Sentences generated • (13) a. The man sells the car in the garage. • b. The woman washes the bicycle in the • street. • c. The boy repairs the bicycle in the • house. 河南大学外语学院 姜玲

23. Disambiguity S VP NP V NP Art PP N Art N Prep Art N The boy repairs the bicycle in the house 河南大学外语学院 姜玲

24. Recursion (PP rule, CP rule) • PP: in the house around the corner • CP: • Mary helped George. • Cathy thought Mary helped George. • John said Cathy thought Mary helped George. • A children’s rhyme: • This is the house that Jack built. • This is the cat that lived in the house that Jack built. • This is the dog that chased the cat that lived in the house that Jack built. • This is the man that keeps the dog that chased the cat that lived in the house that Jack built. • This is the woman that married the man that keeps the dog that chased the cat that lived in the house that Jack built. 河南大学外语学院 姜玲

25. Some problems • Lexical selection restriction • With simple constituent structure rules, any noun can be introduced in a combination with any verb. This does not happen in natural language. We cannot say: • (17) *The belief washed an apple. • Discontinuousness • The boy cleaned the room up. • The student looked the word up in the dictionary. • Relation between sentences that seem to be closely related structurally and semantically • Brian hit George→George was hit by Brian. 河南大学外语学院 姜玲

26. 4.6 Transformational Grammar Noam Chomsky, (1928--)，founder of Transformational Grammar 河南大学外语学院 姜玲

27. 4.6 Transformational Grammar • Grammar: in the broadest way, a theory of grammar including phonology and semantics. a linguistic theory • We shall only focus on the syntactic aspect of transformational grammar. 河南大学外语学院 姜玲

28. Classical theory • Three parts: phrase structure rules, transformational rules and morphophonemic rules. • S→NP+VP; simple active declarative kernel sentences; • negative, passive or interrogative sentences • passive transformation • (17) NP1＋Aux＋V＋NP2→NP2 ＋Aux＋be＋en＋V＋by＋NP1 • The boy has repaired the bicycle →The bicycle has been repaired by the boy. 河南大学外语学院 姜玲

29. The morphophonemic rules • The morphophonemic rules would apply to the output of the transformational rules. Their function is to provide the correct morphological shape to the various parts of the structure and finally to give the appropriate phonological description. • en + repair → repair + en → repair + ed[d] • en +write → write + en → writt[rit] + en 河南大学外语学院 姜玲

30. Standard theory • competence and performance (Chapter 1) • deep structure and surface structure • The deep structure of a sentence is its most basic structure both semantically and syntactically. The surface structure is the form that people can actually say. It is fairly arbitrary. Two superficially similar structures may convey a substantially different message. 河南大学外语学院 姜玲

31. deep structure and surface structure • Consider the following pair of sentences: • (18) a. John is easy to please. • b. John is eager to please. • In the first sentence John is doing the pleasing, and in the latter he is on the receiving end. • Structurally similar sentences might be very different in their meanings, for they have quite different deep structures. 河南大学外语学院 姜玲

32. Standard theory 河南大学外语学院 姜玲

33. Different stages of generative grammar • Extended Standard Theory • Revised Extended Standard Theory • Government and Binding Theory (GB) • Principles and Parameters Approach (P&P) • Minimalist Program (MP) 河南大学外语学院 姜玲

34. Other branches of GG • Throughout the development of transformational grammar, Chomsky has maintained the centrality of syntax. The syntactic component of transformational grammar is the generative core. Other components are interpretive and dependent on the basic and deep syntactic structure. • Not everyone agreed with him on this point. • Generative semantics: give semantics the central generative role • Case grammar: see syntax as central but prefer to work with “case” structures and dependency relations. 河南大学外语学院 姜玲

35. 4.7 Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) Linguists who adopt this view are interested in relating the various kinds of structures and patterns that language shows to the functions that language fulfills and to the social settings in which it is used. Difference from TG: function and contextual, purposeful Halliday’s three meta-functions : ideational, interpersonal, textual M.A.K Halliday 河南大学外语学院 姜玲

36. Ideational • Ideational: the function in which we conceptualize the world as a representation of experience • (19) The boy kicked the post. (The post was kicked by the boy) • (20) The man liked the new house. • (21) The child is homeless. • (22) The girl laughed. • (23) The visitor said “hello”. • (24) There is a girl over there. 河南大学外语学院 姜玲

37. Transitivity 河南大学外语学院 姜玲

38. Interpersonal • Interpersonal: set up and maintain social and personal relations, including communication roles such as questioner and respondent, and express the language user’s own attitudes and comments on the content of an utterance. • Traditionally declarative, interrogative and imperative • Declarative: give information and perform the function of statement • Interrogative: request something and perform the function of question 河南大学外语学院 姜玲

39. Interpersonal • Imperative: give instructions and perform the function of commands • However, exact correlation between form and function only occurs in idealized sentences. We can use declarative to ask questions, and to issue instructions. • You are going out. 河南大学外语学院 姜玲

40. Mood • Demand for, and offer of, goods or services • Demand for, and offer of, linguistic information • Politeness increases • (27) a. Pass the salt. • b. Please pass the salt. • c. Can you pass the salt? • d. Could you possibly pass the salt? • e. You couldn’t possibly pass the salt, could you? • The more indirect the demand, the more polite it is felt to be. 河南大学外语学院 姜玲

41. Textual • Textual: enable the speaker or writer to construct a text, and the listener or reader to distinguish a text from a random set of sentences. • We have to decide how to order the parts of the message so as (a) to make it clear to our audience, and (b) to emphasize, or make prominent, the essential elements of it. 河南大学外语学院 姜玲

42. Information structure • given (old, known) + new (unknown) • marked vs unmarked • There is a bird on the tree. (unmarked) • A bird is on the tree. (marked) • (28) a. James enjoys tennis more than John. • (less cumbersome) • b. James enjoys tennis more than John • enjoys tennis. 河南大学外语学院 姜玲

43. Textual • The items that are semantically close are syntactically close. • (29) a. The day came at last when we were due to leave. (more marked) • b. The day when we were due to leave came at last. 河南大学外语学院 姜玲

44. thematic relation • theme: the first constituent, the starting point of the clause ---- what it is going to be about. • rheme: the rest of the clause • (30) a. Gas explosion killed thousands. • b. Thousands were killed by gas explosion. • (31) a. The rain came down. (unmarked) • b. Down came the rain. (marked) 河南大学外语学院 姜玲

45. Textual Functional approaches concentrating on textual aspects feature quite highly in discourse analysis and we will be returning to them in Chapter 7. 河南大学外语学院 姜玲

46. Summary 4.1 Definition 4.2 Word Classes(ten:5+5) 4.3 The Prescriptive Approach 4.4 The Descriptive Approach 4.4.1 Structural Analysis (with slots) 4.4.2 Immediate constituent analysis (tree) 4.5 Constituent Structure Grammar (tree, rules, merits, features, problems) 4.6 Transformational Grammar (grammar, classic, standard, stages, other branches) 4.7 Systemic Functional Grammar(ideational, interpersonal, textual) 河南大学外语学院 姜玲

47. Exercise • 1. Define the following terms. • syntax, word class, prescriptive approach, descriptive approach, IC analysis, ultimate constituent, transformational grammar, ideational function, interpersonal function, textual function • 2. Draw two tree diagrams for the following sentence to show the different relationship of in the car. • The dog bit the man in the car. 河南大学外语学院 姜玲

48. Questions for chapter three and chapter four • 1. How many types of morphemes are there in the English language? State what they are and illustrate how they work. • 2. Give examples to tell the difference between derivation and compounding. • 3. Give examples to illustrate the distinction between deep structure and surface structure. 河南大学外语学院 姜玲

49. Questions for chapter three and chapter four • 1. How many types of morphemes are there in the English language? State what they are and illustrate how they work. • There are two types of morphemes in the English language: free morphemes and bound morphemes. Free morphemes are independent units of meaning and can be used freely all by themselves such as help, table, room, etc.; bound morphemes are those that cannot be used independently but have to be combined with other morphemes, either free or bound, to form a word such as un-, diss-, anti-, -ful, -ish. 河南大学外语学院 姜玲

50. Questions (continued) • 2. Give examples to tell the difference between derivation and compounding. • They’re two important ways of forming new words in the English language. In terms of morphemic analysis, derivation can be viewed as the addition of affixes to stems to form new words. For example, we add affix “-ly” to a free morpheme “quick” and we will get a derivative “quickly”. Compounding is the combination of two or sometimes more than two words to create new words, e.g. when the adjective “dead” is added to a free morpheme “line”, we get a compound “deadline”. 河南大学外语学院 姜玲