INTRODUCTION TO LANGUAGE

PART 4: SYNTAX

Lecturer: Misheck Banda

 SYNTAX
• Consider the following words:
• Mary (noun), ate (verb), Nsima (noun),
yesterday (adverb)
• when combined these words will form a
statement: Mary ate Nsima yesterday.
• Mary in this case is the subject and nsima the
object of the verb ate.
• The study of such structure is what is called
syntax.
• Thus syntax looks at how words are put
together to form sentences in a language.
 Disambiguating ambiguous sentences

• Carefully study the following constructions

and say what you think of them:
 
i) Munilla whacked a man with an umbrella.
ii) I shot an elephant in my pyjamas.
iii) Old men and women.
• These three sentences are ambiguous, that is,
they are capable of denoting more than one
meaning.
• To disambiguate the sentences (that is, the
process of making the sentences
unambiguous) we need to give all the
meanings that the sentences are capable of
giving. Let us disambiguate them:
• Sentence i) reads: Munilla whacked a man
with an umbrella.
Meaning number 1
Munilla used the umbrella she was carrying to
whack a man.
Meaning number 2
Munilla probably used her hand to whack a man
who was carrying an umbrella.
• Sentence ii) reads: I shot an elephant in my
pyjamas.
Meaning number 1
• I shot an elephant while I was dressed in my
pyjamas.
Meaning number 2
• I shot an elephant which was dressed in my
pyjamas.
• Phrase iii) reads: Old men and women.

Meaning number 1
• Men who are old and women who are not.
 
Meaning number 2
• Men who are old and women who are also
old.
 Conclusion:
• A single sentence is capable of denoting even
more than two meanings and we can decipher
meanings by examining the sentence very
closely.
 Symbols used in syntactic description

• In Syntax, we use symbols that represent

categories and phrases. It is evident then, that
instead of using full words, in Syntax we use
short forms of such words. Below are symbols
used in Syntactic description:
S - Sentence
N - Noun
Pro - Pronoun
VP - Verb Phrase
NP - Noun Phrase
PP - Prepositional Phrase
V - Verb
Adv - Adverb
ADVP - Adverbial Phrase
PN - Proper Noun
Art - Article (det – determiner)
Prep - Preposition
Adj - Adjective
AP - Adjectival Phrase
*(Asterisk) - Means that the construction
occurring after it is
ungrammatical.
= - consists of
( )- optional constituent
{ } - one and only one of these
constituents must be selected
→ - comprise
 Labeled tree diagrams

• The sequence of a sentence can alternatively

be shown in a hierarchical organization.
• Example: The monkey
 NP

Art N

  The monkey
• This is a Noun Phrase which is broken down
into article or determiner ‘the’ and noun
‘monkey’. It is noun phrase because the head
word in the phrase is a noun: monkey.
Interestingly, sometimes a single word in
Syntax can be a phrase.
• For example ‘Naloli touched the monkey’.
Naloli here is a noun phrase.
 Tree-diagram represantation
• The tree-diagram representation contains not
only grammatical information found in other
analysis but also shows more explicitly the fact
that there are different levels in the analysis.
Now let us consider a different sentence:
The monkey ate a banana.
 S
 

NP VP
 
 

Art N V NP
 

the Monkey ate art N

 

a Banana
• The highest level of this construction is a
sentence (s) followed by phrases VP and NP and
finally words and articles.
• Unlike other branches of linguistics, Syntax has
one right answer just as is the case with
mathematics.
• We can therefore conclude that there is no way
the above sentence can be diagrammed in a
different way.
 Phrase structure rules
• For every single sentence a tree diagram can
be drawn.
• Because we have a precise set of rules, we can
generate a large number of sentences by using
this small number of rules.
• These rules are called phrase structure rules.
For example:
 S

  NP VP

What rule can be drawn from the above tree

diagram?
Rule: S NP VP
(a sentence comprises an NP and a VP)

• This therefore, is our first rule and it is the

most important rule
 Other rules:

Lexical rule: N (boy, girl, …)

S NP VP
 
NP {Art (Adj) N PN}
 
VP V NP (PP)
PP Prep NP
 
N (boy, girl, dog)

PN (George, Mary)

Art / det (a, the, an)

Adj (small, crazy)

 
V (saw, followed, helped, whacked)
Prep (with, near, beyond)

Adv (yesterday, recently, happily)

 Recursion
• This is when sentences are included within
other sentences. For example:
John said Cathy thought George helped Mary.
• From this sentence we note that we have
three sentences embedded in it, these are: (1)
John said (2) Cathy thought and (3) George
helped Mary. This can be presented in a
labeled diagram as below:
 Recursion…
S
NP VP
S
N V
NP VP
John said S
N V
NP VP
Cathy thought V NP
N
helped
George N

Mary
NB: In principle, there is no end to the recursion exercise
 The Adverb
• When an adverb appears at the end of a
sentence, like in this sentence, George helped
Mary yesterday; we avoid a scenario where
three constituents stem from the same phrase
by using an alternative called adjunction.
With adjunction, we create a higher phrase for
the phrase being joined. Now let us diagram
our sentence.
 George helped Mary yesterday.

S
 
NP VP
ADVP
N VP
adv
George
V NP

Mary yesterday
helped
 
• As you can see from the tree diagram, we
created a higher VP to accommodate the
adverb phrase to avoid a situation like:
 wrong:

S
 
NP VP
ADVP
N
adv
George
V NP

Mary yesterday
helped
 
• The rules of Syntax do not allow this except
where the verb used is a trivalent verb. Let us
not worry about trivalent verbs for now.
 complementiser phrase (CP)
• On the other hand when the adverb occurs at
the beginning of a sentence, like in the
sentence:
‘Yesterday George helped Mary’
it attaches to the complementiser phrase
(CP).
• Note that before the next constituent, a blank
CP node is drawn. This blank CP node can
accommodate other constituent constructions
which you need not to worry about at this
level.
• Now let us diagram our sentence:
 Yesterday George helped Mary
CP CP S
 
AdVP NP VP

Adv N V NP

Yesterday George helped N

Mary
 The particle
From your secondary school knowledge, how
can you define a particle?
 Particle…
• We define a particle as an adverb or
preposition that can combine with a verb to
make a phrasal verb.
• For example in the sentence Liviness picked up
the magazine; our particle is ‘up’.
• Remember, even though a particle looks
similar to a preposition, it serves a totally
different function, it forms part of a phrasal
verb and our phrasal verb here is ‘picked up.’
 Now let us diagram our sentence:

S
 
VP
NP V NP

N V part Art
N
Danny picked up the
Magazine
Note: The particle attaches by adjunction to the verb.
 Important note:
• The best way to master syntax is to
understand rules and practice regularly
• Remember it is the only branch of linguistics
with one right answer.