Syntax

• sentence structure depends on rules of a language

  Syntax: structure of sentence
• Grammar refers to complete system of phonological, morphological, syntactic& Semantic

  information& rules of a speaker in a given language

  . also refers to the book containing grammar rules (can only be incomplete representation of

  language system)-> simplifies language

  -> study of syntax investigates the parts sentences consist of a their connections and dependencies
• movement: if a string of words can be moved to another sentential position, it is a constituent

  Coordination (test): constituents can be coordinated by and

  >Many people will go to the station => [[Many people]and [my friends]]will go to the station:

  [Many people]is a constituent
• • gapping: if a part can be left out and the sentence is still intact, it is a constituent;

  if a part is left out and the sentence is missing a fundamental piece, then it's a valuable constituent (e. g. subject)

  • sentence-fragment-test: if a part of a sentence can be replaced by a question can be answered by the replaced part, it is a constituent
• mother node: node immediatly above a given node in a tree diagram

  Sister node: nodes that share the same mother node in a free diagramm

  structural ambiguity: different interpretations arise through different sentence structures
• head: most important element of a phrase -> the semantics (meaning)of the phrase

  · the head of the phrase has the same distribution as the whole phrase

  · the phrase obtains/inheits syntactic and semantic properties of the head
• noun phrase (NP): phrase headed by a noon

  prepositional phrase (PP): headed by a preposition; indicates direction/goal, assigns case to right-hand constituent

  adjectival phrase (AP): headed by an adjective

  verb phrase (VP): headed by a verb; assigns case to right-hand constituent (eg: saw HER)

  adverb phrases (ADVP): headed by an adverb

  · phrases can contain other phrases

  · a word is a head of a phrase when the phrase can be omitted only the head
• projections: head projects its properties onto the phrase as a whole (eg. [my older sister]-> Isne])

  word class = syntactic category = parts of speech= Lexical category (eg. verb, noun, ... )

  
• Semantic approach to determine word classes: words of the same class share kinds of meanings (e. g. norns denote people/things.... )-> Lack explanation (e. g. love') BUT we can also determine word class without knowing the word
• morphological approach to determine a word class: certain affixes are primarily prescribed to certain word classes

  (e. g. red for past tense verbs)-> lacks because affixes can also be bound to multiple word classes (eg beheaded)
• Syntactical approach to determine word classes: words classes can primarily show up in certain places in a sentence
• word classes: nouns, verbs, adjectives, prepositions (eg to, from), adverbs (eg. extremely), articles, demonstratives (eg. these),

  possesives (e. g. theirs), conjunctions (e. g. because), ...

  determiners: word class consisting of definite/indefinite articles, possesives, demonstratives

  occur in first slot of a NP (e. g. this good student)

  demonstratives& possesives can replace NP
• subordinate clause: sentences inside sentences, cannot stand on their own

  clause: syntactic unit that consists minimally of a VP and a subject

  sentences: Largest syntactic units, made up of one or more clauses

  matrix clause/main clause: superordinate clause of a sentence, can stand on its own
• phrase structure rules: rules that build syntactic structure

  
• Subject: entity which the sentence is about, usually occur immediately in front of VP (in English), obligatory constituent

  subject-verb agreement: subject and verb share same person& number features

  case forms: mark grammatical function of NP (subject case & object case, eg. l and me)

  object: enteties affected by action of subject, receive object case, occur immediately after verb, often obligatory constituents
• transitive verbs: call for an object (most of the time)

  intransitive verbs: cannot take an object

  di-transitive verbs: can take two objects
• direct object: undergoes action or process denoted by verb

  indirect object: denotes goal; recipient/beneficiary of verb-event
• adverbials: give circumstances of event (place, time.... )-> modifiers of clause or UP; not obligatory,

  not necessarily adverbs (also PP, NP)
• complements: structurally a semantically highly dependend sister constituents of heads

  predicative complements: complements of verbs (e. g. She is a bad cook)

  predicate: says something about subject/verb