Syntax

Introduction

Week 1
13/10/22
 What is language?
• A means of communication/expressing
thoughts and feelings
• A rule-governed system of arbitrary signs
• Animals have their own ways of
communicating – how is their communication
different?
 How do people get to know things about
language?

Which of these sentences is ungrammatical?

1. John kissed Mary.
2. *Kissed John Mary.

• Everyone who speaks English knows this.

• No native speaker of English was taught (growing

up) “Word order in English is SVO”.
 How is it acquired?
• Nature-nurture debate (innate ability versus environment)
• There are arguments speaking in favour of innateness
1. Poverty of Stimulus argument – language is unlearnable given
the relatively limited data available to children learning a
language who are, nevertheless, capable of producing new
structures they haven’t heard before.
Plato’s problem – discusses the relationship between experience
and knowledge and poses the question of how it is possible to
know things that one has never been explicitly taught; how one
is able to calculate with reasoning and deduction, without
remembering. This represents a kind of a perfect knowledge.
Humans know more than what they derive from environment.
 People have language

• A linguistic capacity is part of being human.

• Like having two arms, ten fingers, a vision
system, humans have a language faculty.
• The language faculty (tightly) constrains
what kinds of languages a child can learn.
• =“Universal Grammar” (UG).
• https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Cgpfw4z8cw
 How is it acquired?
2. Language is not related to other cognitive functions.
• Critical Period Hypothesis
We do need stimulus, but the rate of development is
not related to the environment.
• Williams Syndrome and Specific Language Impairment
have been used as converse examples of evidence to
support the disassociation between cognition and
language.
• Broca’s and Wernicke’s aphasia
… Language is a biologically, genetically determined
system…
 Evidence that language acquisition is rule
governed…
• Berko used invented words to examine how children between
the ages of 4 and 7 form plurals in English. She showed the
children cards with simple line drawings of objects and animals
and elicited plurals:
This is a wug. Now there is another one. There are two of them.
There are two ___.
More than 75% of the children pluralized the invented words in
exactly the same way that adults did in a control group: they
added the sound -z to the word (Berko 1958: 159-162). Since
none of the children had encountered the invented words
before the experiment, their response clearly indicates that they
had acquired a plural rule and were using it to produce the novel
forms.
 Evidence that language acquisition is rule
governed…

• Children are also observed to produce novel rule-

based forms instead of existing irregular adult forms
(for instance, comed or goed instead
of came or went). Overregularized forms don't
amount to a large fraction of the forms that
children produce overall (less than 5% in the case of
past tense forms, according to Marcus et
al. 1992:35), but they are important because they
clearly show that even the acquisition of words
can't be completely reduced to rote memorization.
 Structural dependency
• Yes/no question formation in language acquisition

(1) a. The girl is tall.→Is the girl is tall?

b. The red pig can stand on the house.→Can the red
pig can stand on the house?
• In the course of language acquisition, the questions in (1) are
eventually replaced by those in (2), where we can think of the
auxiliary element as having been moved rather than copied.
(2) a. Is the girl ___ tall?
b.Can the red pig ___ stand on the house?
 Yes-no questions
1) The man is here.
2) Is the man here?
3) The man who is here is eating dinner.

Hypothesis 1: Move the first auxiliary to the front.

STRUCTURE-INDEPENDENT RULE
Hypothesis 2: Invert the order of the first auxiliary and the
initial noun phrase. STRUCTURE-DEPENDENT RULE

How do we know which of these two hypotheses children

entertain?
 Yes-no questions
1. The man who is here is eating dinner.
2. *Is the man who here is eating dinner?
3. Is the man who is here eating dinner?

No kid’s ever said (2) to mean (3). Why?

Kids don’t even entertain Hypothesis 1. In the

course of language acquisition children only use
structure-dependent rules.
 Scientific evidence for structural
dependency…
•  This prediction was tested in an experiment with 3-
to 5-year-old children by Crain and Nakayama 1987.
In the experiment, the experimenter had the children
pose yes-no questions to a doll. For instance, the
experimenter would say to each child Ask Jabba if the
boy who was holding the plate is crying. This task
elicited various responses:
1) Is the boy who was holding the plate crying?
2) Is [the boy who was holding the plate] is crying?
3) Is [the boy who was holding the plate], is he
crying?
 Scientific evidence for structural
dependency…
• The rules that the children used to produce questions are
structure-dependent in the same way that the adult rule is.
Out of the 155 questions that the children produced, none
were of the structure-independent type. Moreover, no
child produced a structure-independent question (4),
which results from copying (rather than moving) the first
auxiliary element in the sentence.
(4)  *Was the boy who was holding the plate is crying?
• In other words, regardless of whether a child succeeded in
producing the adult question, every child in the experiment
treated the sequence the boy who was holding the plate as
a structural unit, thus confirming Chomsky's prediction.
 Interim summary…
• Language is a uniquely human capacity
• There is biological evidence that language is
wired into the human brain (critical period +
evidence from brain damage)
• Language is structurally-dependent
What does it mean to know a language?
• Sounds
• Words (their form and meaning)
• Combining words into meaningful units
• Using them in a pragmatically appropriate way
Which disciplines deal with different levels of linguistic analysis?
Phonetics and phonology
Morphology
Semantics
Syntax
Pragmatics
Discourse analysis
What does it mean to know a language?
• Words (their form and meaning)
• Combining words into meaningful units
• Using them in a pragmatically appropriate way
Which disciplines deal with different levels of linguistic analysis?
Phonetics and phonology
Morphology
Semantics
Syntax
Pragmatics
Discourse analysis
 How can we define syntax?

• Syntax (Greek syntaxis from syn (together) +

taxis (arrangement)) is the study of rules of
combining words into larger units (phrases,
clauses and sentences).
• What is the task of syntax?
 Some things native speakers know…

• Is this English?
– The cat slept.
– Slept the cat.
– Cat slept the.
– Cat the slept.

• Why?
 The task
• What do we know?
– The comes before cat, cat comes before slept.
• Try to generalize.
– Slept is the verb, maybe this holds of all verbs.
– The cat is the subject, maybe this holds of all subjects.
– Subjects contain the and a noun, with the first.
– An English sentence has a subject followed by a verb.
• Formalize (make precise)
– Nouns: cat, dog
– Verbs: slept, yawned
– [Sentence [Subject the Noun ] Verb ]
 The task
• Check:
– [Sentence [Subject the Noun ] Verb ]
– The cat slept.
– The dog yawned.
– The cat yawned.
– The dog slept.

• Look at further data (predictions):

– The cat chased the dog.
• This is an English sentence, but our schema cannot produce it.
Our “theory of English sentences” is insufficient. We need to
revise/extend it.
 The task
• Consider the counterexample (or the class of
counterexamples) to understand where the current
theory falls short.
– The cat chased the dog.
• The dog is probably the same kind of thing as the cat, but we
don’t want to call it a “subject” (it’s traditionally called the
“object”).
• It contains the and a noun, and the noun seems to be the most
important part.
• Since it contains more than one word, we can call it a
“phrase”—it’s not a whole sentence, but it’s more than a word.
• So, we’ll call it a “noun phrase.”
 The task
• Consider the counterexample (or the class of
counterexamples) to understand where the current
theory falls short.
– The cat chased the dog.
• In this English sentence, there is a noun phrase both before and
after the verb. So, in addition to our previous schema, we add a
second one.

• Theory of English sentences:

– [Sentence [NP the Noun ] Verb ]
– [Sentence [NP the Noun ] Verb [NP the Noun ] ]
 Lather, rinse, repeat
• And the process continues.
– The cat chased a dog.
– A cat chased the dog.
– A cat chased a dog.
• It looks like a NP can either have the or a as its first element.
Thus our theory of English sentences needs to be revised:

• Theory of English sentences:

– [Sentence [NP the Noun ] Verb ]
– [Sentence [NP a Noun ] Verb ]
– [Sentence [NP the Noun ] Verb [NP the Noun ] ]
– [Sentence [NP the Noun ] Verb [NP a Noun ] ]
– [Sentence [NP a Noun ] Verb [NP the Noun ] ]
– [Sentence [NP a Noun ] Verb [NP a Noun ] ]
 Generalizing
• What we’ve ended up with is a bit clumsy, but we can now generalize
our schemas to make this more compact:
– [NP the Noun ]
– [NP a Noun ]
– [Sentence NP Verb ]
– [Sentence NP Verb NP]

• Not only does this reduce the amount we have to write down, but it
actually makes a more profound prediction: If this much of our
theory of English sentences is right, then anything that can be a
noun phrase subject can also be a noun phrase object. This is not
just making our notation more compact, but it is a substantive
addition to the theory.
 Compacting the notation
• There are some further ways we can consolidate our
theory of English sentences by using some common
notational tools.
• X is optional: (X)
• Either Y or Z: {Y/Z}
• Thus:
– [Sentence NP Verb (NP) ]
– [NP {the/a} Noun ]
• Unlike our introduction of a separate schema for NP, this
change is not a substantive change to our theory of English
sentences, it is just a shorthand for the same theory.
 The grumpy cat
• As a demonstration of the benefit of introducing a
separate NP schema, consider:
– The grumpy cat chased the unhappy dog.

• How can we extend our theory of English sentences to

allow for this sentence? What other word sequences are
predicted to be English sentences? Are they?
 Now, what are we doing?

• Ok, so we have the beginnings of a theory of English sentences.

But what is it?
• As we’ve developed it, it is a description of sentences of English, what
we might need if we wanted to program a computer to produce English
sentences.
• But it is also a subset of what English speakers know about
English.
• You may or may not have previously thought about the fact that
subjects precede verbs and objects follow verbs (or the analogue in
your native language), but you knew it nevertheless. You could identify
sequences of words that did not have this property as not being part of
your language, but it’s tacit knowledge. As such, we have to study this
knowledge indirectly, based on what are judged to be valid sentences
and what aren’t.
 What English speakers
know about English

• An English speaker has a complex system of knowledge

that allows him/her to distinguish between sentences of
English and non-sentences of English. We’ll refer to this
system as a grammar. At its simplest, a grammar is a
means of deciding whether a sequence of words is
grammatical (e.g., a sentence of English) or not. We’re
studying the properties of that system.

• NOTE: The rules that we have come up with for our

theory of English sentences are purely descriptive.
Syntacticians are rarely interested in prescriptive rules.
 Prescriptive rules
• Prepositions are things you don’t end a sentence with.
• It is important to religiously avoid splitting infinitives.
• Remember: capitalize the first word after a colon.
• Don’t be so immodest as to say I and John left; say John
and I left instead.
• Impact is not a verb.

• We’re not interested in studying the prescriptive rules; we could

just look them up, and it isn’t likely to tell us anything deep about
the makeup of the human mind. They’re really just a “secret
handshake,” allowing educated people to detect one another.
 What is wrong with these sentences?

• (4)a. *Over there is guy the who I went to

party the with.
• b. *Over there is the who I went to the party
with guy.
• c. *Bill and me the store to went.
More on descriptive and prescriptive rules…

• Rules of descriptive grammar have the status of scientific

observations, and they are intended as insightful generalizations
about the way that speakers use language in fact, rather than
about the way that they ought to use it.
• Descriptive rules are more general and more fundamental than
prescriptive rules in the sense that all sentences of a language
are formed in accordance with them.
• A useful way to think about the descriptive rules of a language is
that they produce, or generate, all the sentences of a language.
The prescriptive rules can then be thought of as filtering out
some (relatively minute) portion of the entire output of the
descriptive rules as socially unacceptable.
Approaches to the study of syntax

• Traditional approach
• Transformational Generative Grammar
approach
• Systemic-Functional approach
• Structuralist approach
 Traditional approach
• Basically prescriptive
• Obsession with language correctness; Latin
• English: major descriptive grammars of the early 20 th century

• The study of syntax deals with units larger than words, their inner
structure and how trey are combined
• Familiar terminology: subject, predicate, object…
simple, compound, complex sentence…
declarative, exclamative, interrogative sentence…
subordinate clauses of time, place, manner, condition, purpose…

• Major problems: the notions of form, function and meaning are not
always clearly distinguished (e.g. the ‘good old’ definition of subject
– ‘doer’ of the action): He is considered an honest man.
 Transformational Generative Grammar
approach

• TGG (GG) developed in the USA mid 20th century by Noam Chomsky
• Dominant for half a century; considers syntax the central part of the
study of language

• Analyses language at two levels

1. the deep structure (underlying, unobservable, d-structure)
2. the surface structure (observable, s-structure)

• They are connected by a set of formal syntactic operations called

transformations
• Although it analyses language in a highly formalized way, it also takes
into account semantic, lexical properties
 Transformational Generative Grammar
approach
• What does he study? – the surface structure
• (Question (he study what)) – the deep structure
• The Q-marker shows that the sentence is a
question, which will get its proper form at the
s-structure
• He studies linguistics.
• What – object
• What = linguistics
 Transformational Generative Grammar
approach
• How did what get to the initial position?
• There are two transformations here.
1. one moves the auxiliary in front of the subject
2. the other moves what into the very first slot
• These are the two empty branches in the deep structure diagram.
(what(does(he ___ study ___)))
• The blank lines signal the starting positions of the moved
elements.
• No context
• The ultimate aim is to provide answers about the human language
faculty in general, i.e. how the mind works so that we are able to
produce and understand language.
 Systemic-Functional approach
• Grammatical categories are viewed in terms of their communicative
functions
• Developed during the 70s of the 20th century – as direct opposite to TGG
• Language is first and foremost identified and defined by its function, i.e.
what L does and how it does it
• Unlike TGG and the structuralist approach, SFG does not place language
elements in the centre of its research, but the three levels of meaning
and language functions: ideational (experience of reality), interpersonal
(interaction with others participants) and textual (our and interpersonal
meanings organized into a linear and coherent whole).
• The aim is to present a view of language in terms of both the structure
(grammar) and the words (lexis) - lexicogrammar
 Systemic-Functional approach
• Ideational function (embodies our experience,
events, states, processes, participants,
circumstances):
Does he study syntax?
Actor Process Goal
• Interpersonal (we interact with others, we ask, tell,
request…):
Does he study syntax?
Finite Subject Predicator Complement

• Textual (we organize our messages to fit the

context):
Does he study syntax?
Theme Rheme
 Structuralist approach
• Dominant in the first half of the 20th century
• The foundation for most of the descriptive language studies, even
now prevailing in applied linguistics
• Central notions – STRUCTURE and SYSTEM
• Language is viewed as a structure, a network of interrelated units;
meaning and relevance of parts can be specified only with
reference to the whole
• The LEGO building blocks analogy (pp. 26-27)
• Language consists of its own building blocks: phonemes (sounds),
morphemes (parts of words) and words, which are combined –
interrelated – to build other words and stretches of language
longer than a word
 Structuralist approach
• How can we study and analyse linguistic units
• Two kinds of relationships: syntagmatic /ˌsɪntæɡˈmætɪk/ and
paradigmatic /ˌpærədɪɡˈmætɪk/
• Syntagmatic – how the units can be ordered
• Paradigmatic – what the similar, systematically related elements are

• E.g. NP (Noun phrase) the large book

• Def. art. precedes N and Adj to form a NP (the + (large) + book) –
syntagmatic aspect
• Def. art. is the member of the family (paradigm) of articles (a, an, the),
which is further the member of the family of determiners. Therefore,
instead of the in front of the noun we can put: a, this, my, John’s –
paradigmatic aspect
 Structuralist approach
• Developed as a reaction to the traditional, mostly philological and notional
study of language
• The aim was to make it more scientific
• ‘father’ of structuralism – Ferdinand de Saussure
a) Language is a system of interrelated units; we study both language use
PAROLE (speech) and language system LANGUE
b) the sign = the signifier (the acoustic set of sounds) + the signified (the
notion it refers to). This connection is arbitrary, conventional (book, livre,
knjiga…)
c) The history of language (diachronous aspect) should be studied separately
from the study of language at any particular period (synchronous aspect).
d) Linguistic units can be studied in terms of syntagmatic (linear, possible
positions in larger units) and paradigmatic (associative, functional value)
relationships.
 Structuralist approach
• In the US – American structuralism; Edward Sapir, Leonard
Bloomfield
• Numerous new ideas and concepts, some of which are now outdated,
but some of the ideas about morphology and syntax are still valid.
• Language consists of linguistic forms, which are defined as phonetic
forms which have meaning. They can be bound or free, simple or
complex.
• Complex forms consist of components – CONSTITUENTS
– underdevelopment under-, develop, -ment
– under- + development; develop + -ment
• Immediate constituent (IC) analysis is performed in both morphology
and syntax
 IC analysis

Students read good books.

 Structuralist approach
• Bloomfield defined a sentence as the independent linguistic form
not included in a higher linguistic form, which has a specific
intonation.
• Sentences can be complete or incomplete
• Two basic types of syntactic constructions:
• Endocentric where at least one constituent is of the same class as
the whole construction (NP a clever student; N student) or it can be
a coordinated construction of two formally or functionally identical
elements, e.g. two coordinated nouns (students and teachers).
• Exocentric where none of the constituents making up the
construction is of the same class as the whole construction (S The
books arrived. – NP + V; none of the constituents can be considered
the centre)
 Sentence as a structure
You are reading about structuralist syntax and it looks bewildering.
– Analogy: string of pearls and Russian dolls (p. 31)
• This is a string of words, or sounds
• It is also a sentence perceived as a unit
• Although it appears as a string of words in a linear order, it does
not have a purely linear structure: ‘you are reading about
structuralist syntax’ and ‘it looks bewildering’, each of the two units
further consists of the subjects and predicates, and so on.
• Therefore, the basic characteristic of language is that it has a
hierarchical, not a linear structure, despite appearing linearly in
time and space. We need to find and describe that hierarchical
relationship, that hierarchical structure, despite the linear
manifestation.
 Sentence as a structure
• Put the following words in a meaningful and grammatical unit:

in / having / a / we / are / April / test

a) We are having a test in April.

b) In April we are having a test.
c) Are we having a test in April?
d) *Having we are test in a April.
e) *In April a test we having are.

• What goes with what? In which order? How do we know? How do we know which
sentences are grammatically correct and which are not? – the basic questions for
syntax
• So, the task of syntax is to describe the rules that govern the combinations of words
into larger units, as well as to specify and describe the units themselves and their
functional relationships.