Linguistics 3

Week 1

Central tenets of generative syntax:
 Grammar as the mental knowledge of speakers:
 We will define a mental grammar.
 Basic rules are similar in all languages:
 We will define a universal grammar that holds for all human languages.

Grammar as mental knowledge:
 But what are the grammatical sentences of English?
 Is there a comprehensive list?
 Sentences are potentially infinite in number.
 With no list available, we ask native English speakers about the grammaticality of
sentences.

What rules are similar in languages?
 All languages combine a noun modifier and the noun in one constituent.

Syntactic structure:
 Constituents make up a hierarchal organization: syntactic structure
 The hierarchal structure is the only thing syntactic rules can ‘see’ (refer to).

How to represent syntactic structure?
We want structural representations to show:
 Hierarchical relations between syntactic items
(Which parts belong together: the constituency of the sentence)
 Functional relations between the parts
(Head, complement, modifier/adjunct adverbial)

Generative syntax used to have re-writing rules in its early days:
S  NP (Aux) VP
NP  (Det) (AP) N (PP)
PP  P NP

Phrase markers: c-command
 X c-commands Y only if the first branching node that dominates X dominates Y.
 A node does not c-command itself.
 A node does not c-command anything that it dominates.

Syntactic categories:
o Nouns, adjectives, adverbs verbs, prepositions
o Auxiliaries, determiners, complementizers
 Syntactic categories are defined based on their syntactic distribution and
morphological shape:
o Distribution: the syntactic environments the word can be found in
o Morphological shape: the kinds of morphemes the word can combine with



Constituency tests:

,  Constituency tests identify which parts of the sentence belong together:
o Replacement with a pronoun (he, she, it, then, there)
o Replacement with one(s)
o Replacement with do so
o Movement/topicalization (placement in front of the sentence)
o Coordination with a similar element


Week 2

Phrase structure and constituency:

NPs last year:
 A complement is a sister to the head.
 Modifiers are sister to NOM.
 Determiners are immediately dominated by NP.

Levels in the NP:
 N’: “N-bar”
NP phrasal-level



DET N’ intermediate-level


ART N head-level
the tulip

Intermediate level in the NP: evidence
 One-replacement:
o I like that student of History and you like this one.
o *I like that student of history and you like this one of Economy.
o I like this summary of the facts and not that one.
o *I like this summary of the facts and not that one of the argument.
 One necessarily replaces the noun and its complement.
 One replaces something that is bigger than a noun, but smaller than an entire noun
phrase.
 This is the intermediate constituent N’.
 One replaces an N’.




Three levels in the NP:

, NP


DET one

DEM N PP

that student of History
 I like this blue Dutch tulip and you like that red Turkish one.
o Since one replaces the N’ level, the noun (without complement) must form an
N’ level as well.
 I like this blue Dutch tulip and you like that red one.
o Since one replaces the N’ level, the noun and a modifier must form an N’ level
as well.
 I like this blue Dutch tulip and you like that one.
o Since one replaces the N’ level, the noun and more modifiers must form an N’
level as well.
NP

one

one

DET AP AP one

DEM A A N

this blue Dutch tulip

The structure of NPs:
 The complement is the sister of the head.
 The modifiers are sisters to N’.
 Determiners are immediately dominated by NP.

Prepositional phrases last year:
 PPs were introduced with just two levels.
 There is evidence for an intermediate level in PPs as well.




PPs with three levels:

,  Replacement by so:
o Jill was utterly in love.
o Jill was [PP: utterly in love] and Tim was only [PP: partly so].
PP


AdvP so

utterly P NP

in love
 So replaces something that is bigger than a preposition, but smaller than an entire PP.
This is the intermediate constituent P’:
PP



AdvP P’

right
P’ Conj P’

P NP and P NP

above the line under the signature
 Coordination:
o This was [PP: right above the line and under the signature].

Adjective phrases last year:
 APs were introduced with just two levels.
 There is evidence for an intermediate level in APs as well.

APs with three levels:
 Replacement by so:
o Harry was very fond of snakes.
o Harry was [AP: very fond of snakes], and Ron was [AP: less so].
 So replaces something that is bigger than an adjective, but smaller than an entire adjective
phrase. This is the intermediate constituent A’.
AP


AdvP so = A’

very A PP

fond of snakes
 Coordination:
o Harry was [AP: very fond of snakes and afraid of lions].

VPs with three levels: