Syntax of a particular language is a description of:
- How words are organised into groups (phrases).
- How these phrases are organised into sentences.
How is language generative?
It can generate potentially very long (and unusable) structures recursively. Grammatical rules don’t restrict the length of sentences.
Grammaticality vs acceptability
Grammaticality = whether a sentence displays acceptable structure.
Acceptability = a general judgement about a sentence’s suitability in a real-word context.
Prescriptivism
- Seems to prescribe how a language should be used.
- Emphasises the importance of rules of language.
- Offers rules that prescribe what is socially acceptable.
Descriptivism
- Seeks to describe how native speakers use language.
- Is only concerned with the rules of language that are learned naturally.
- Offers rules that describe what is socially acceptable in a language.
Phrases
Sentences are composed of phrases and phrases are composed of words.
Phrases are usually meaningful units; ‘Susan’, ‘the boy’.
Domination
A node dominates everything below it which is connected to it by a line.
Node
The end of a line
Constituent
A node and everything it dominates, and a group of words that go together.
Language variation happens…
- Over time
- Variation over space
• Geographical space
• Social space
What are the two famous theories as to why language is acquired?
- Nativist theory: the fact that children will learn whatever language is used around them.
- Behaviorist theory: a child imitates the language of its surroundings, parents and teachers; that humans learn language by seeing and hearing, as well as punishment and reward. Second language students learn from repetition.
Syntactic variation
- Double marking of comparatives and superlatives (that’s the most supidest thing I’ve ever heard).
- Plural marking is optional for nouns with human referents (the three girl there don’t want to talk).
- Double determiners, determiner + possessor (this your son is very funny).
- The subject is present in imperatives (come you here!).
- ‘Like’ as a quotative particle (I was like, “who does she think she is?”)
- Which instead of who in relative clauses (he’s the man which looks after the cows).
- No number distinction in demonstratives (I’m sending you this boxes)
Dependency of:
1. Subject-predicate
2. Modifier-head
3. Head-complement
4. Heads
- Subject-predicate: mutual, two-way dependency.
- Modifier-head: one-way; modifiers depend on heads and are optional.
- Head-complement: two-way.
- Heads: obligatory, every phrase has a head and no more than one.
What is an example of a coordinate phrase?
Max and Jack is a coordinate noun phrase.
Stuffy and hot is a coordination of two AdjPs.
What does it mean when two words have the same distribution?
They are likely to have the same category.
What is the head in with his children?
With
How do we know a noun is a noun?
- Identifies any class of people, places are things.
- They all co-occur with the word the.
