Linguistics 2B Final Exam
Syntax = how words are organised into groups (phrases) and how these phrases are
organised into sentences. It’s about patterns (ex: play – plays – played).
Prescriptive statement = what people should be saying (ex: stating a sentence is
ungrammatical in English).
Descriptive statements = what people do say.
A string of words that go together form a constituent. 2 constituents can form a new one
together. A string of 1 word also forms a constituent. We can use tests to find them. Do
to be sure. Tests:
- Substitution: constituents can be replaced by one word, usually a pronoun (incl. do so),
question word, or then, there, etc.
There was a power failure there last night.
Due to the power failure, Sam stayed at home. His parents did so, too.
- Unit of sense: constituents form a semantic unit.
There was a power failure in New York last night – a power failure = blackout, New York
= city in us, In New York = a location, so it’s a constituent.
- Sentence fragment: constituents can answer the rest of the sentence as a wh-question.
What was there in New York last night? A power failure.
- Movement: constituents can be moved together (fronted or clefted). Clefting builds a new
structure: “It is/was… that”
Last night there was a power failure in New York.
It was last night that there was a power failure in New York (clefting).
- Coordination: coordinators and, but, or are used to conjoin constituents to constituents.
There was a power failure and a traffic jam in New York last night.
Phrase marker = trees that show constituent structure.
Branch = The lines in a tree.
Node = The end of a line.
Mother = Higher node, Daughter = Lower node,
Sister = Same level node.
Terminal nodes = Nodes without any daughters.
Root node = Node at the top, with no mother above it.
Domination = A node dominates everything below it,
which is connect by a line.
There are 8 lexical categories in English. Morphological behaviour: words in the same
class will typically take the same sort of affixes (ex: walked – verb, walker – noun, -y for
adjective, -ly for adverb). Syntactic behaviour: where words position in a sentence and with
what they can combine. Not all members of a class will have all properties & some words
belong to multiple classes (ex: work).
Major categories
Nouns
- Nouns refer to objects and people.
- Distribution: nouns can follow a determiner, an adjective, or be part of the subject.
- Frequent suffixes are -ness, -ity, -er, -ee, -ation, -ment.
- Common nouns = typical nouns like word, school and can always have the before it. They
1
Syntax = how words are organised into groups (phrases) and how these phrases are
organised into sentences. It’s about patterns (ex: play – plays – played).
Prescriptive statement = what people should be saying (ex: stating a sentence is
ungrammatical in English).
Descriptive statements = what people do say.
A string of words that go together form a constituent. 2 constituents can form a new one
together. A string of 1 word also forms a constituent. We can use tests to find them. Do
to be sure. Tests:
- Substitution: constituents can be replaced by one word, usually a pronoun (incl. do so),
question word, or then, there, etc.
There was a power failure there last night.
Due to the power failure, Sam stayed at home. His parents did so, too.
- Unit of sense: constituents form a semantic unit.
There was a power failure in New York last night – a power failure = blackout, New York
= city in us, In New York = a location, so it’s a constituent.
- Sentence fragment: constituents can answer the rest of the sentence as a wh-question.
What was there in New York last night? A power failure.
- Movement: constituents can be moved together (fronted or clefted). Clefting builds a new
structure: “It is/was… that”
Last night there was a power failure in New York.
It was last night that there was a power failure in New York (clefting).
- Coordination: coordinators and, but, or are used to conjoin constituents to constituents.
There was a power failure and a traffic jam in New York last night.
Phrase marker = trees that show constituent structure.
Branch = The lines in a tree.
Node = The end of a line.
Mother = Higher node, Daughter = Lower node,
Sister = Same level node.
Terminal nodes = Nodes without any daughters.
Root node = Node at the top, with no mother above it.
Domination = A node dominates everything below it,
which is connect by a line.
There are 8 lexical categories in English. Morphological behaviour: words in the same
class will typically take the same sort of affixes (ex: walked – verb, walker – noun, -y for
adjective, -ly for adverb). Syntactic behaviour: where words position in a sentence and with
what they can combine. Not all members of a class will have all properties & some words
belong to multiple classes (ex: work).
Major categories
Nouns
- Nouns refer to objects and people.
- Distribution: nouns can follow a determiner, an adjective, or be part of the subject.
- Frequent suffixes are -ness, -ity, -er, -ee, -ation, -ment.
- Common nouns = typical nouns like word, school and can always have the before it. They
1
