Linguistics 001: Structures

Syntax I
2-9-2009
Plagiarism at Harvard
• Last year, a Harvard student accused of
plagiarism of a teen novel
– Sabrina was the brainy Angel. Yet another example of how
every girl had to be one or the other: Pretty or smart
– Moneypenny was the brainy female character. Yet another
example of how every girl had to be one or the other: Smart
or pretty.

• The infinity of syntax gives a strong hint

Infinity of syntax
• Try typing in Google (in quotes) the first one,
two, three, four … words in today’s paper.
– A movement hopes to save from demolition
hundreds of buildings built by the Works Progress
Administration. (from NYTimes.com)
• Virtually every sentence you hear is new!
Syntax: Combinatorics
• Source of infinity: “infinite use of finite
means”
– Syntax as compression (ZIP files)
– Recursion
• Source of structures
– Phrases, constituents, ambiguity
– Cf. Features, consonants, vowels, onsets,
syllables, words, morphemes, …
Words and Categories
• Syntax is putting words together?
– “The cat meows”
– “The dog barks”
– Cannot memorize all the word combinations (see
Google search)
• Different combinations of words but same
combinations of different words
– “Article Noun Verb”
– Structures again…
 Structure Review
• As we saw in our discussion of phonology and
morphology, the structure is crucially involved in
the function

un lock able /k/ /ae/ /t/

What kind of structures
• AB, ABAB, ABABAB, ABABABAB ….

• AB, AABB, AAABBB, AAAABBBB ….

• Which group of patterns is more complex?

• Cognitive science was pretty much launched

by this kind of studies! (AB as linguistic units)
(AB)n vs. AnBn: syntax is not flat
Syntax
• Structure is critical in syntax; we will
examine two major points this week
– The notion of phrase; why do some sequences
of words “go together” more than others?
– Movement (Wed): how do we understand the
object of the verb in the following sentences:
John ate several apples.
What did John eat ___?
Structure of Questions
• At a first glance, question formation in
English appears to involve a rule like ‘move
the auxiliary to the front of the sentence’:

The cat is on the balcony.

Is the cat __ on the balcony?
Questions, cont.
• This rule is not adequate. In cases with
more than one auxiliary, we have to
know which one is affected:

The cat that is on the balcony is chasing the mouse

Is the cat that is on the balcony __ chasing the mouse?
*Is the cat that __ on the balcony is chasing the mouse?
Complex structures
• In examples of this type, the point was that the auxiliary
cannot be one that is ‘inside’ a complex subject. What
does this mean? Consider the following sentences:
1. John is in the garden.
2. The boy is in the garden.
3. The woman with the red hat is in the garden.
4. The woman with the red hat that John was talking to
yesterday when he went to the store to buy some
batteries for his camera is in the garden
 The subject can be arbitrarily long, and it cannot be
broken apart in question formation
Subjects, cont.
• The subjects in the sentences above are all different
from each other
• However, for the purposes of question formation,
they behave in exactly the same way
• The rule for questions of this type ignores subjects
and their internal structure, treating them all the
same
• Thus the rule cannot be stated linearly; it has to be
stated in terms of a complex organization of the
sentence
Phrases
• Consider again the subjects from the examples
above:
– John
– The boy
– The woman with the red hat
– The woman with the red hat that John was talking to yesterday when
he went to buy some batteries for his camera
• In terms of sentence structure, each of these behaves in the same way.
They are grouped under the heading ‘NP’ for ‘Noun Phrase’
• The idea here is that they are phrases that have properties of the head
(John, boy, woman, woman), independently of other things that might be
there
All about the cat
• The head of a phrase defines its
“aboutness”:
– The big cat
– The cat that made a mess
– The cat in the hat
– The hat-wearing cat
– The cat that came back
– The cat that came back in a hat
Phrases, cont.
• Each of these phrases has a head, where the
head is the important lexical category that
determines the properties of the phrase:
– Sample VP: [ kick the ball]
– Sample AP: [ proud of his daughter]
– Sample PP: [ in the garden]
Phrases and other phrases
• Phrases can contain other phrases; this is the
property of language that allows us to start with
words etc and assemble them into larger and larger
objects
• Example: Verb Phrase: [kick the ball]
– This VP is headed by the V(erb) kick
– Along with the V kick, we have the NP [the ball]:
VP

V NP
kick the ball
Quiz: Pick out the phrases
• in front of the mirror
• be patient
• drink plenty of
• Peter likes
• the big bad wolf
• kick up a notch
When in doubt …
• Vertigo(NP) The third man (NP)
• Kill Bill (VP) On golden pond (PP)
• Bend it like Beckham (VP)
• Mr. Smith goes to Washington (S(entence))
• One flew over (*PP)
• When Harry met (*VP)
• It’s a wonderful (*NP)
Even toddlers know that!
Possible truncations
for cookies The warm milk is for cookies
all gone The apple juice is all gone
that truck This one is crappy. I want that truck
like sleeping. Kitties like sleeping
Impossible truncations

cookies for. Cookie Monster has cookies for supper

gone all. Daddy’s gone all the time
truck that I don’t want a truck that small
sleeping like. You are sleeping like a pig
Secrets of baby talk
The milk [is [for cookies]]
The juice [is [all gone]]
I [want [that truck]]
Kitties [like sleeping]

Cookie Monster [has cookies [for supper]] (why can’t I?)

Daddy’s [gone [all the time]]
I don’t want [a truck [that small]]
You are [sleeping [like a pig]
Tests for adults
• The organization of words and phrases into
larger units involves the notion of
constituent (a unit)
• There are reasons for grouping some units
together but not others
– Let’s look at some of these reasons
Test 1: Substitution
• The substitution test can be used for other cases as well; take the
prepositional phrases:
• Ok:
– He put it on the table.
– He put it there.
• Not Ok:
– He put it on the table that’s by the door.
– *He put it there that’s by the door.
• The PP in the second example is [on the table that’s by the door]. Thus
there cannot be substituted for the subpart on the table
Test 2: Movement
• In the next lecture we will look at movement in
detail. For right now, note that movement is
another way of diagnosing constituent structure:
• Ok:
– I like these apples.
– These apples, I like __
• Not Ok:
– I like the apples that John bought.
– *The apples I like that John bought.
• Ok:
– The apples that John bought, I like ________
Putting it together
• To this point, we have concentrated on
establishing that words are assembled into
phrases
• Larger units like clauses and sentences
involve hierarchical structures as well
• They involve the arrangement of these
phrases with respect to one another
A simple sentence
• Consider:
The boy kicked the ball
• We have three lexical categories here; the
nouns boy, ball, and the verb kick
• This gives us three phrases
• Determining how these phrases are
organized into the sentence involves the
same reasoning we applied above
Possible structures
• In principle, the three phrases could be arranged in
two ways; this is exactly parallel to what we did
with words before (I’m using ‘S’ here as the label
for ‘sentence’):
Structure 1 Structure 2
S S
VP VP

NP V NP NP V NP
the boy kicked the ball the boy kicked the ball
The options
• The different structures take different positions on the
status of the VP; is it
– The object and verb that form a VP, or
– The subject and verb that form a VP?
• We can use the diagnostics above to give us an answer
• Recall the Dear Old Queen vs. Queer Old Dean
example
Tests
Substitution:
– John ate an apple.
– Mary did too.
– Did = <ate an apple>
– ??? an apple?
 Verb + Object behaves like a constituent
Movement:
Mary said she would fix the car with a wrench
…and [fix the car with a wrench] she did

 Tests indicate that Verb + Object behave like a constituent

(structure 1)
Recursion
• A concept from math: self-
reproducing/defining
– 2 in an even number
– If X is an even number, so is X-2
• A phrase can include another phrase of the
same type (or the very same phrase)
– “the cat in the hat from the store beside the street
at the heart of the city
Recursion: Toddlers vs. Teens
• “This is the dog that worried the cat that
chased the rat that ate the cheese that
lay in the house that Jack built”
• “There is a rumor going around that she
told me that you told her that I saw you
kissing Jim that he told you not to.”
Recursion in Harry Potter
http://youtube.com/watch?v=jsiF_G78aLs

Ronald would like me to tell you [ that

Seamus told him [ that Dean was told by
Parvati [ that Hagrid ís looking for you ] ] ].
Confused?
• This is the cheese that lay in the house.
• This is the cheese that the rat ate that lay in the
house.
• This is the cheese that the rat that the cat
chased ate that lay in the house.
• This is the cheese that the rat that the cat that
the dog worried chased ate that lay in the
house.
• (more when we talk about language processing
in the brain)