Lecture 5: Syntax I

[Note: these are lightly edited versions of overheads and notes used in class. They are provided in order to help you study, but they are not a substitute for coming to class and being prepared. The notes are incomplete, and will often be hard to make sense of if you were not in class.]

Outline

 

1. What syntax is about

Morphology:

how to build words out of morphemes, as in...
wa + me + fika
plural + past + arrived (Swahili)

Syntax:

how to build sentences out of words
the + children + have + arrived

A. Explaining grammaticality judgments

1a. Wallace fed Gromit.
1b. *Wallace Gromit fed.
 
2a. Wallace believes Gromit to like cheese.
2b. *Wallace believes to like cheese.
2c. *Wallace tried Gromit to like cheese.
2d. Wallace tried to like cheese.
 
3a. Disa diapered the baby.
3b. Disa burped the baby.
3c. *Disa slept the baby.
 
4a. Jack and Jill ran up the hill.
4b. Jack and Jill ran up the bill.
 
4c. *Jack and Jill ran the hill up.
4d. Jack and Jill ran the bill up.
 
4e. Up the hill ran Jack and Jill.
4f. *Up the bill ran Jack and Jill.

B. similarities and differences across languages

English: John sees that book.
Korean
Chun ku chayk poata.
Chun that book see
 
English: John speaks with Bob.
Korean
Chun Bob-hako malhata.
Chun Bob with speak
 
English: Bob put the money in the cupboard.
Selayerese (Indonesia)
Lataroi doe injo ri lamari injo i Baso.
put money the in cupboard the Baso
What Syntax is about...

C. Creativity

Sentences never heard before...

"Some purple gnats are starting to tango on the microwave."

Sentences of prodigious length...

"Bill said that he thought that the esteemed leader of the house had it in mind to tell the unfortunate vice president that the calls that he made from the office in the White House that he thought was private ..."

D. Ambiguity

one string of words, two meanings
 
1. The lifeguard rescued the swimmer with no clothes on.
2. An American English teacher
3. Visiting relatives can be boring.

 

2. What syntax is not about

An explanation that won't work
 
"You just string words together in an order that makes sense"
 
in other words... syntax is determined by meaning

Note: the argument that follows is not intended to show that semantics is irrelevant to syntax, merely that syntax cannot be entirely reduced to semantics.

Why there's more to syntax than meaning

A. Nonsense sentences with clear syntax

1a. Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
1b. A verb crumpled the milk.
 
2a. *Furiously sleep ideas green colorless.
2b. *Milk the crumpled verb a.
 
"Twas brillig and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe"
("Jabberwocky", Lewis Carroll)
 
Toves slithy the and brillig 'twas
wabe the in gimble and gyre did...

B. Ungrammatical sentences that make perfect sense

1a. Gwendolyn put the sweater on.
1b. Gwendolyn put on the sweater.
 
2a. Gwendolyn put it on.
2b. *Gwendolyn put on it.
 
3a. Tony gave a book to Maggie.
3b. Tony gave Maggie a book.
 
4a. Tony mentioned a movie to Maggie.
4b. *Tony mentioned Maggie a movie.

C. If syntax was entirely determined by meaning, then we should not expect to find syntactic differences between languages of the world.

 

3. Building a grammar

Goal: a grammar that generates all of the possible sentences of (English, German, Swahili), and none of the impossible sentences. This enterprise is often referred to as "Generative Grammar".

We can express syntactic generalizations in a variety of forms: as a rewrite rule, as a prose description, or as a fragment of a phrase structure tree.

S --> NP VP
 
"a sentence consists of a noun phrase and a verb phrase"
or
"S goes to NP, VP"

Sample Noun Phrases: all contain a noun, sometimes much more

Fred
the cat
seven young llamas from darkest Peru
Samantha
a feeling
the strangest story that you ever did hear

Verb Phrase: all contain a verb, sometimes much more

slept
fed the dog
tiptoed through the tulips
left
said that he thought that the weather was turning out better than expected
kicked the bucket

NP + VP combinations: by using the S --> NP VP rule we can combine random NPs and VPs from the lists above, and be certain that the result will be a grammatical sentence.

1. Fred slept.
2. The cat fed the dog.
3. Seven young llamas from darkest Peru tiptoed through the tulips.
4. Samantha left.
5. A feeling said that he thought that the weather was turning out better than expected.
6. The strangest story that you ever did hear kicked the bucket.

In this way we can begin to account for creativity & grammaticality judgments.

Pieces of NP & VP: expressed as rules or as tree fragments.

NP --> Det N
NP --> N
VP --> V NP
VP --> V

Tests for phrase structure

"Verb Phrase Deletion"

1. Wallace likes Gromit,
and Gwendolyn does too.
does = likes Gromit
 
2. *Wallace likes Gromit,
and does too Gwendolyn
does = Wallace likes

"Coordination"

Noun Phrase coordination
1. The man chased [the dog] and [the cat].
2. [The man] and [the cat] chased the dog.
 
Verb Phrase coordination
3. The man [chased the dog] and [fed the cat].
 
Impossible coordination of [N V]
4. *The [man chased] and [cat caught] the dog.