1、Introduction to Syntax,Linear structure Hierarchical structure Ambiguity,Syntax is:,The study of sentence formation Subconscious grammatical knowledge Word order,Syntax, n. The study of grammatical relations between words and other units within the sentence.,What do children know?,Children, when acq
2、uiring 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?,Universal Grammar? (UG),Child hears the surrounding language Detects patterns and matches them with already store
3、d 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),What do native speakers know?,Grammaticality Implied interpretations Ambiguity Synonymy,Grammaticality Ju
4、dgments:,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.,Grammaticality Judgment
5、s:,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
6、, #: grammatical, but nonsensical, %: grammatical in a non-standard v.,Ambiguous?,I scratched the dog with a stick,I love linguistics!,Im a stick,Im a dog (I think!),Do I mean this?,I scratched (the dog with a stick),Nice doggie!,Or do I mean this?,I scratched (the dog) with a stick.,scratch,scratch
7、,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,Unavoidable Ambiguity,Why cant we convey thes
8、e internal hierarchical structures and avoid ambiguity?LINEAR ORDER Human verbal communication is limited by linear production. Consequently, sentences are organized linearly.,Two kinds of ambiguity:,She called her boyfriend from Australia. STRUCTURAL AMBIGUITYWe went down to the bank yesterday LEXI
9、CAL AMBIGUITY,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),Basic Word Order,OSV (Jamamadi & Yoda) When nine hundred years you reach, look as good you wi
10、ll not. Soput subject in front of the verb, would you? Fail this test you will. OVS (Apalai - Amazon basin)VOS (Malagasy (Madagascar),Word Order (contd),Word Order (contd),How would you say,English (SVO) Susie brings coffee Japanese (SOV) sushi-ga co:hi:-o mottekuru Susie coffee bring Malagasy (VOS)
11、 Entin kafe Susie bring coffee Susie,Two principles of sentence organization,1. LINEAR ORDER not only a limitation, we actually make use of the linearity of the languageIn English, limited morphology forces us to use word order to distinguish subject from object. Tom chased Jerry. Jerry chased Tom.,
12、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.,Constituency,CONSTITUENT a group of words in a sentence
13、that behave syntactically and semantically as a unit.,scratched the dog with a stick scratched the dog with a stick,dog has stick,I have stick,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.,Next .,Constituency tests Phrase Structure Rules,
