Welcome to the flashcards tool for ‘The Study of Language, 5th

edition’, Chapter 8

This is designed as a simple supplementary resource for this textbook, and

aims to help students grasp the meaning of the core essential terms within the
book. Each term will appear on its own, and you can then click to check the
definition.

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 term:

syntax (syntactic
structures)

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 definition:

(the analysis of) the structure of

phrases and sentences

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 term:

generative grammar

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 definition:

a set of rules defining the

possible sentences in a
language

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 term:

deep structure

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 definition:

the underlying structure of

sentences as represented by
phrase structure rules

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 term:

structural ambiguity

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 definition:

a situation in which a single

phrase or sentence has two (or
more) different underlying
structures and
interpretations
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 term:

surface structure

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 definition:

the structure of individual

sentences after the application
of movement rules to deep
structure

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 term:

tree diagram

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 definition:

a diagram with branches showing

the hierarchical organization of
structures

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 term:

phrase structure rules

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 definition:

rules stating that the structure

of a phrase of a specific type
consists of one or more
constituents in a particular
order
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 term:

prepositional phrase (PP)

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 definition:

a phrase such as with a dog,

consisting of a preposition plus
a noun phrase

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 term:

lexical rules

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 definition:

rules stating which words can

be used for constituents
generated by phrase structure
rules

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 term:

auxiliary verb (Aux)

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 definition:

a verb such as will used with

another verb

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 term:

movement rules

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 definition:

rules that are used to move

constituents in structures
derived from phrase structure
rules. They have a special
rewrite arrow
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 term:

complementizer (C )

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 definition:

word such as that introducing a

complement phrase

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 term:

complement phrase (CP)

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 definition:

a structure such as that Mary

helped George used to
complete a construction
beginning with a structure such
as Cathy knew
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