SYNTAX Week 1

SYLLABUS
the scientific study of sentence structure in natural language.

Syntacticians seek to characterize the largely unconscious rules that determine how speakers of a
language combine words into larger units such as phrases and sentences, and how speakers parse
(i.e., assign a structural representation to) the phrases and sentences that they hear or read.

This course is an introduction to basic goals and methods of current syntactic theory.

We will analyse linguistic patterns, including phrase structure and constituency.

We will primarily investigate these topics in English, though we will occasionally compare English
with other languages.
TEXTBOOK:

Required

Department of Linguistics, The Ohio State University. (2016). Language files: Materials for an
introduction to language and linguistics, 12th Edition. Columbus: The Ohio State University
Press.

Optional

Yule, G. (2020). The study of language. Cambridge university press.

GRADING:

Mid Term Assignment: 50%

Final Assignment: 50%

Attendance and Participation

Any academic misconduct will NOT be tolerated, including (but not limited to) cheating, plagiarism,
and facilitation of academic misconduct.
THE BUILDING BLOCKS OF
LINGUISTICS

L203 Introduction to
Linguistics Analysis
WHAT IS LANGUAGE? WHY DO WE NEED IT?

• Jot down ideas independently

• Share with others around you

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 WHAT IS LINGUISTICS?

• Language: means of communication

• Linguistics: scientific study of language
• What do you KNOW when you know a language?
• You have a set of building blocks and rules
• You know how to use them

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 HUMAN LANGUAGE
Judgments about what is/isn’t allowed in a language.

So - language is rule-governed.

Knowing a language involves knowing the rules that allow generating potentially infinite
new combinations (generative grammar- finite number of words- create infinite number of
sentences).

These rules are unconscious; they’re not the grammar rules you were taught in school.
 MENTAL GRAMMAR
What linguists work on is describing how this language system (mental grammar) works

They try do describe what people really do with language – this is called descriptive grammar

And not what people “should do” with language – that’s called prescriptive grammar.
 HOW THESE BUILD

So:
Sounds (phonetics) > sound patterns (phonology) > word formation
(morphology) > phrase/sentence formation (syntax)

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Think of a sentence in English

Examples?

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What’s wrong with my sentence?

Ate John for omelet breakfast an.

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*Ate John for omelet breakfast an.

Note that linguists use an asterisk (*) to mark sentences that don’t follow
the patterns of language.

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 WHAT KIND OF BUILDING BLOCKS &
RULES?

How to build good PHRASES and SENTENCES (Syntax)

• a brown horse
• *a horse brown

• John’s house is clean

• *John’s house clean is.

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You probably don’t consciously know why the good ones are good, and
the bad ones are bad...

What’s behind your intuitions – your unconscious knowledge of the

patterns of language – is exactly what linguists try to understand.

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What do you know when you know a language?

How do you come to have that knowledge?

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Speakers use this finite set of building blocks and rules to create and
understand an infinite set of novel sentences.

Creativity is a universal property of human language (universal

grammar- Chomsky)

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Evidence that human language is creative:

Can create sentences you’ve never heard before

No limitation how long a sentence can be

Class example

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THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN
SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS
Are not independent of one another- sometimes
The way in which expressions or words are combined contributes to the meaning of
the resulting sentence.

1. Sally likes Bob.

2. Bob likes Sally.
(same expressions, different syntactic combination that results in different meanings)
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN
SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS
In 1, Bob is the object of likes and Sally is the subject. In 2 these relations are
switched.

This is called the principle of compositionality: it is when the meaning of the

sentence depends on the expressions it contains and on the way they are syntactically
combined.
Syntax is independent of semantics:

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

(good syntax, bizarre meaning)

*Green sleep colorless furiously ideas.

(bad syntax, no meaning)

* Me bought dog.
(have meaning( you can figure the meaning out easily, bad syntax)

I bought a dog.
 SYNTACTIC PROPERTIES OF
EXPRESSIONS CANNOT BE PREDICTED
ON THE BASIS OF MEANING
Sally ate an apple.
Sally devoured an apple.

Sally ate.
*Sally devoured. (requires an object)

This dog is mine. * This is mine dog.

*This dog is my. This is my dog.
DISCUSSION

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REMINDER!
Read:
LF. 5.1-5.2 (Moodle)

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