Unit 2: Constituent Structure

Topic 3: Introduction to constituent structure

1. Words: word classes (Part of Speech) _________________________________

There are three essenctial concepts in iurtheory to describe english syntax and morphology:
I. Sentences have parts, which many themselves habe parts → basis of constituent
structure analysis
II. Parts of sentence belond to a limited range fo types → the root of parts of a speech or
categories
III. Parts have specific roles of funcions within the larger parts they belong to → the idea
of grammatical of syuntactic functions

Words can be grouped together into categories or parts of speech

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If we assign words to the same class, we imply that they share a number of properties. In this way, we

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can draw generalizations and prediction for the whole class instead of for individual word.

• CONTENT WORDS (or lexical Mostrando

words) →5carry
páginas de 9 meaning of the sentence
the principal
(they have synonyms, antonyms, etc); they name objects, events and characteristics that are
centras for the massage the sentence is meant ro convey. They are Open-class Items: new
members can be easly incorporates, suchas as Google of Twitter

• FUNCTION WORDS (functional/grammatical words) → Don’t contribure to the meaning

of a sentence ut determine its syntax. Their function is to make the lexical categores fit
togetger; they are needed by the surface structure to “glue” the content words together to
indicate what goes with what and how. They belong to Closed – Classes.

1.1. Lexical categories and grammatical/functional categories

A)
a. Noun: John, room, answer, play
b. Verb: search, grow, play, be, have, do
c. Adjective: happy, steady, new, large, round
d. Adverb: steadily, completely, really, very, then
 e. Preposition? of, at, without, in spite of [see Appendix]
f. Pronoun? he, she, anybody, which... [see Appendix]

B)
g. Determiner: articles (the, a(n)), demonstratives (that, this, those, these), some possessives,
some quantifiers, some interrogatives, some numerals.
h. Auxiliary: have, be, do, can, may, might, could...
i. Conjunction: and, when, although, or, but...
j. Complementizer: that, for, if and whether
k. Interjection: Oh, ugh, phew…

1.2. Criteria for the classification of words

The semantic criterion Vista previa

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➔ Verbs: are said to be actions, states, processes
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Nouns: are said to be entities (car, hat,5hill...)
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➔ Adjectives: describe qualities typical of nouns, e.g., nationality, color, size... (rich,
intelligent, ill)
➔ Adverbs: describe qualities typical of verbs, e.g., place, manner, time (quickly,
slowly...)
➔ Prepositions: express location (at, on, under, etc.)
➔ Determiners: serve to specify (this book)

(4)
→ Nouns: handshake, death, assassination, roundness
→ Adjectives: fast [fast food → identify as a adverb (way in which the food is cooked)]
→ Prepositions: He’s good at languages
 The morphological criterion: endings of the word

➔ Inflectional suffixes → express grammatical meaning, Tense, person, number, case,

degree)
➔ Derivational (the rest)
*(In Spanish is the variable and novariable distinction)

The shape of a word:

• Prepositions (Invariable)
• Determiners (Invariable)
• Nouns (number)
• Adjectives and Adverbs (degree)
• Verbs (tense) → 5 distinct forms:

Base Form (Infinitive)

Past Tense (-ed)
Past participle (3rd column)
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Present tense (-s in 3rd person)
Present Participle (-ing)
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A. *under-s, *under-ing, *under-est, *before-s, *befor-ing, *befor-est…
B. *the-s, *the-st, *this-es … but these / those
C. doll, dolls; John’s house; for him; *doller
D. tall, taller, tallest; beautiful, more beautiful, most beautiful; *talls
E. happily, more happily; slowly, slowlier; more reluctantly… but well = better, best
F. prove, proved, proven, proves, proving

(6) Some problems with this criterion:

A. brief, fly, lack → if they don’t have endings?
B. lovely → is not an adverb, is an adjective.
C. drier → polysemy in suffixes
 The syntactic criterion: the notion of distribution
The distribution of a word is the set of sentence positions it can occur in.

(7) Nouns as a beguining of the sentence:

a. _____________ can be a pain in the neck
b. Linguistics, boys, TV can be a pain in the neck
c. *for, *went, *boring can be a pain in the neck

(8) Nouns after the determiners:

a. The/Those ___________ (actions) by the government came too late
b. That expensive __________ (book) sold out quickly
c. The/Those __________ (actions) by the government came too late

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(9) Adverbs (can go with degrees adverbs like “very”)
a. John is very ________ (slow)
b. John walks very ______ del
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c. *Very ______ love to have fun. (girls) 5 páginas de 9
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d. * John very _____ her. (adores)

(10)
a. John treats her _______ (badly, politely, arrogantly)/ *(good, strange, correct)
b. John is ________ terribly slow.
c. John walks ______ terribly slowly.

(11)
a. John is ________ (tall, silly, arrogant)
b. * John is ________ (silently, innocently)
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LUNCH WAS O.K. → Adjective

CAN YOU O.K. THIS FOR ME? → Verb
I NEED YOUR O.K. ON → Noun
THIS; WE DID O.K. → Adjective