Syntax

1. Grammatical or ungrammatical.
2. Syntactic categories.
3. Heads and complements.
4. Phrase structure rules.
5. Sentence relatedness.

1. Grammatical or Ungrammatical.
The part of grammar that represents a speaker’s knowledge of sentences and their
structure is called syntax. Part of what we mean by structure is word order. The
meaning of a sentence depends largely on the order in which words occur in a sentence.

The grammars of all languages include rules of syntax that reflect speaker’s knowledge
of these facts. In English and in every language, every sentence is a sequence of words,
but not every sequence of words is a sentence. Sequences of words that conform to the
rules of syntax are well formed or grammatical, and those that violate the syntactic rules
are ill formed or ungrammatical.
The ability to make grammaticality judgments does not depend on having heard the
sentence before. You may never heard or read the sentence
Enormous crickets in pink socks danced at the prom.
But your syntactic knowledge tells you that it is grammatical.
Grammaticality judgments do not depend on whether the sentence is meaningful or not ,
As shown by the following sentences which do not make much sense although they are
syntactically well formed
Colourless green ideas sleep furiously.
A verb crumpled the milk.
You may understand ungrammatical sequences even though you know they are not well
formed
The boy quickly in the house the ball found
On the other hand , grammatical sentences may be uninterpretable if they include
nonsense strings
‘ Twas brilling, and the slithy tovesc
Did gyre and gimble in the the wabe
“Jabberwocky” , Lewis Carroll
Grammaticality does not depend on the truth of sentence .if it did , lying would be
impossible. Nor does it depend on whether real objects are being discussed , nor on
whether something is possible. Untrue sentences can be grammatical
Our unconscious knowledge of the syntactic rules of grammar permits us to make
grammaticality judgements. These rules are not the prescriptive rules the are taught in
school Children develop the rules of grammar long before they attend school .
Syntactic rules account for at least
1. The grammaticality of sentence
2. Word order
3. Hierarchical organization of sentences
4. Grammatical relations such as subject and object
5. Whether different structures have different meaning or the same meaning
6. The creative aspect of language.

2. Syntactic Categories.
Syntactic rules determine the order of words in a sentence, and how the words are
grouped. Tree diagrams are used to show the parts and subparts of the sentence

The child found the puppy in the garden

The child found the puppy in the garden

The child found the puppy in the garden

the puppy in the garden

the garden

The tree is upside down with its root being the entire sentence. It shows that the phrase
is divided naturally into branches. A different division found the puppy is unnatural.
The natural groupings of a sentence are called constituents.
Each grouping in the tree diagram is a member of a large family of similar expressions.
We can substitute any member of this family for the child without affecting the
grammaticality of the sentence, although the meaning of course would change.

The police officer found the puppy in the garden

Your neighbour found the puppy in the garden

A family of expressions that can substitute for one another without loss of
grammaticality is called a syntactic category
Some of the syntactic categories have traditionally been called parts of speech
Lexical categories Example Non-lexical categories Example
 Noun (N) policy  Determiner (Det) the , this
 Verb (V) remain  Degree word (Deg) very
 Adjective (A) good  Qualifier (Qual) always
 Preposition (P) near  Auxiliary (Aux) will
 Adverb (Adv) slowly  Conjunction (Conj) or
 Complementizer (Comp) that (
 clause )

Phrasal categories Example

 Noun Phrase (NP) the child
 Verb Phrase (VP) found the puppy
 Prepositional Phrase (PP) in the garden
 Sentence (S)
 Adjective Phrase (AP)
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A tree diagram with syntactic category information is called a phrase stricture tree , or
constituent structure tree.
Three aspects of a speaker’s syntactic knowledge are represented in phrase structure
trees:
1. the linear order of the words in the sentence
2. the groupings of words into syntactic categories
3. the hierarchical structure of the syntactic categories

The child found the puppy in the garden

S

The child found the puppy in the garden

NP VP

The child found the puppy in the garden

Det N V NP PP

the puppy in the garden

Det NP P NP

the garden
Det N

3. Heads and Complements.

Phrase structure also shows relationships among elements in a sentence. One kind of
relationship is between the head of a phrase and the other members of the phrase which
are called complements.
Every phrasal category has a head of its same syntactic type :NPs are headed by nouns ,
PPs are headed by prepositions and so on, and every category can have complements.
The head –complement relation is universal , however the order of the two constituents
may differ in different languages.
Whether a verb takes one or more complements depends on the properties of the verb ,
which is called selection
The boy found the ball ( transitive verb requires a NP)
Michael slept. ( intransitive verb cannot take NP )
I think that Sam won the race ( requires sentence as a complement)
Other categories select their complements:
The belief in freedom of speech ( noun requires PP)
The belief that the freedom is a basic right (noun requires a S)
Tired of sandwiches ( adjective requires P)

All phrases including Sentences have heads.

Sam will kick the ball

Sam has kicked the ball
Sam is kicking the ball
Sam may kick the ball

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Words like will , have , is and may are in class of Auxiliary Verbs (aux). The Aux other
than be and have are also referred as modals. Aux specify a time frame of the sentences,
possibility , the agreement features of the subject. The category Aux is a natural
category to head S.

Not all sentences have auxiliaries In sentences without auxiliaries, the tense of the
sentence is its head.

In addition to specifying the time reference of the sentence, Aux specifies the agreement
features of the subject.

4. Phrase Structure Rules.

A speaker cannot have an infinite list of sentences in her head, so she cannot have an
infinite set of phrase structure trees in her head. Rather, a speaker’s knowledge of the
permissible and impermissible structures must exist as a finite set of rules that provide a
tree for any sentence in a language. These are phrase structure rules.. Phrase structure
rules specify the structures of a language precisely and concisely. They express the
regularities of the language, such as the head complement order and other relationships.
Example:
 NP ® (Det) N (PP)
 PP ® P NP
The bus (NP) The bus in the yard (NP)

Det N Det N PP

P NP
The bus
The bus in the yard

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These rules define some of the phrase structure trees (examples in English)

S - NP Aux VP
NP - Det N (PP) , (Det ) (AP) N (PP)
VP - V (NP) (PP), V (NP) (PP) (Adv) , V (NP) (PP) (Adv) ( CP)
PP - P NP
AP - Adj(PP)
CP - Comp S
There are several possible ways to view phrase structure rules. We can regard them as
tests that trees must pass to be grammatical. We may also view the rules as a way to
construct phrase structure trees that conform to the syntactic structures of the language

Ambiguous sentences have more that one phrase structure tree , each corresponding to a
different meaning . The sentence
The boy saw the man with the telescope is ambiguous. Its two meaning
correspond to the following two phrase structure trees

One meaning of this sentence is “the boy used a telescope to see the man”. In its other
meaning , “ the boy saw a man who had a telescope” Two interpretations are possible
because the rules of syntax permit different structures for the same linear order.

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4. Sentence Relatedness
Sentences may be related in various ways:
- they may have the same structure , but differ in meaning because they contain
different words
The boat sailed up the river
A girl laughed at the monkey
- they may differ in structure , but with no difference in meaning
Mary hired Bill
Bill was hired by Mary
- they may contain the same words in the same order and differ only in structure
The boy saw the man with the telescope
- they may have structural differences that correspond to meaning differences
The boy is sleeping.
Is the boy sleeping?
Transformation rules account for relationships between sentences such as declarative
and interrogative: The boy is sleeping. Is the boy sleeping?
Wh questions : Max will chase _____ What will Max chase
active-passive : The cat chased the mouse The mouse was chased by the cat
there sentences : There was a man on the roof The man was on the roof
PPpreposing: The astronomer saw the quasar with the telescope With the
telescope , the astronomer saw the quasar

The basic structures of sentences are called deep structures, the structures that result
from the application of transformational rules are called surface structures.
Transformations act on structures without regard to the words that they contain. They
are structure dependant.

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