‫الجامعة السعودية االلكترونية‬

‫الجامعة السعودية االلكترونية‬

‫‪26/12/2021‬‬
DENG 300 Language Awareness
Chapter 8: Syntax
Content

• Syntax.
• Syntactic Rules.
• Generative Grammar.
• Deep and Surface Structure.
• Structural Ambiguity.
• Tree Diagram.
• Symbol Used in Syntactic Structures.
• Phrase Structure Rules.
• Lexical Rules.
• Movement Rules.
Syntax

• Syntax is the linguistic study of how words are put together to form larger
structures such as sentences and phrases.

• The etymology of the word syntax shows that it was derived from Greek, and it
means: (i) to put together; (ii) to arrange.

• Syntacticians study the ”structure” and “order” or sentences to determine their

acceptability.
Syntactic Rules

• Syntacticians analyze the syntactic structures of sentences in various languages while

adhering to the “all and only” criterion.

• The syntacticians’ analyses must “account” for the following:

(i) All well-formed sentences
(ii) Only well-formed sentences.

• Therefore, the adoption of these syntactic rules should not result in ungrammatical or ill-
formed sentences.
Generative Grammar

• Generative grammar was introduced by the father of modern linguistics, Noam Chomsky,
back in the 50s.

• Generative grammar is a linguistic approach for studying the syntactic structures to

uncover the rules for generating sentences in languages.

• The adjective phrases in the English language contain an adjective (usually preceding) the
modified entity (either noun or verb).
Generative Grammar

• The native speakers of English unconsciously abide by this syntactic

rule generating “a finite” number of phrases.

• This rule is just one of many rules that are described by the generative
grammar.
Deep and Surface Structure

• Syntacticians conduct two different analyses on sentences: surface and deep structure.

Charlie broke the window (active voice)

The window was broken by Charlie (passive voice)

• The surface structure: both sentences have different structures.

• The deep structure: both sentences have the same underlying structure (NP + V + NP).
Structural Ambiguity

• Structural ambiguity is common across languages, especially when a sentence or phrase

has different interpretations at the same time.

The boy hit the monkey with a banana on his head.

• Two interpretations arose:

(i) The boy threw a banana at the monkey.
(ii) A monkey who happened to have a banana on his head was hit by a boy.
Symbols Used in Syntactic Structures

• Syntacticians adopt several symbols to describe the syntactic structure of sentences:

S (Sentence) NP (Noun Phrase) N (Noun)

Art (Article) VP (Verb Phrase) V (Verb)
 (consist of)

NP  Art N
Symbols Used in Syntactic Structures

The Camel
NP  Art N

The huge elephant

NP  Art (Adj) N

The round bracket ( ) means “the constituent” is not obligatory.

Symbols Used in Syntactic Structures

The Dog It Cathy

NP  Art N NP  Pro NP  PN

Art N
NP  Pro NP  Art N, Pro, PN
PN
Tree Diagram

• After learning about the syntactic symbols, we will learn how to build syntactic trees or
diagrams.

• The syntactic tree contains a “S” (sentence) which gets further split off into different
constituents.
Tree Diagram
Phrase Structure Rules

S  NP VP
NP  Art (Adj) N, Pro, PN
VP  V NP (PP) (Adv)
PP  Prep NP
Lexical Rules
• Lexical rules ”turn (phrase) … structures into recognizable English.”

PN  Mary, George Art  a, the

N girl, dog, boy Pro  it, you
V  followed, helped, saw

• These lexical rules generate well-formed English sentences as follows:

A dog followed the boy.

Mary Help George.
George saw the girl.
Movement Rules

S  NP Aux VP
Aux  can, should, will
NP Aux VP AUX NP VP
References

• Yule, G. (2014). The study of language (5th ed.). Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.
Thank You