Syntax

Question 1

Causative

Answer 1

making (causing) someone to do something
ex. I make him wash his clothes
-requires: person doing the making, “make”, person doing the action, the action

Question 2

What is syntax?

Answer 2

the rules and principles governing the sentence structure of a language

Question 3

Syntactic properties can include…

Answer 3

word order, restrictions on what needs to appear with what (inflectional morphology, co-occurrence restrictions)

Question 4

Word order

Answer 4

the order of syntactic constituents of a language
ex. english=SVO, japanese=SOV

Question 5

Intransitive verbs

Answer 5

verb doesn’t need a subject (in english)
ex. jumps/dances

Question 6

Ditransitive verbs

Answer 6

verb requires a second subject (in english)
ex. the dinosaur devoured the cat

Question 7

Transitive verbs

Answer 7

verb only needs one object
ex. the dinosaur slept

Question 8

Constituents

Answer 8

a group of words that belong together in a sentence (form a syntactic unit)
-sentence itself is a constituent as well
ex. I like eggs and ham. con: eggs and ham
NOT a con: eggs and

Question 9

Question and Answer (constituency tests)

Answer 9

can you ask a question in such a way that the group of words in question can form a grammatical answer?
ex. S: sam likes eggs and ham. Q. what does sam like? A. eggs and ham

Question 10

Substitution (constituency tests)

Answer 10

can you substitute the group of words with a pronoun/”do so”/”do that/”that way”?
ex. S: sam likes eggs and ham
1. sam likes them

Question 11

Clefting (constituency tests)

Answer 11

can you move the constituent to the left of the sentence?
ex. sam likes eggs and ham
1. it is eggs and ham that sam likes

Question 12

Proposition

Answer 12

the claim expressed by a sentence

Question 13

Truth Value

Answer 13

the ability of a sentence to be true/false

Question 14

Truth Conditions

Answer 14

conditions necessary for a proposition to be true

Question 15

Entailment

Answer 15

If the truth of Proposition A guarantees the truth of another Proposition B, then P.A entails P.B
OR if sentence A entails sentence B, sentence A cannot be true without B being true as well
ex. all dogs bark (A), Sarah’s dog barks (B)

Question 16

Mutual Entailment

Answer 16

when two propositions entail each other (two words that are synonymous)
ex. Sarah has a female sibling, Sarah has a sister

Question 17

Principle of Compositionality

Answer 17

the meaning of a complex expression is determined by the meanings of its constituent expressions and the rules used to combine them
TLDR; must pay attention to rules AND words

Question 18

Idioms

Answer 18

expressions which do not conform to the principle of compositionality; the meaning may be unrelated to the meaning of its parts

Question 19

Semantic Roles are determined by….

Answer 19

the verb

Question 20

Agent (semantic role)

Answer 20

the one who deliberately performs an action
ex. /Jane/ melted the ice with a blowtorch
/John/ jumped
/James/ shouted at the world

Question 21

Theme (semantic role)

Answer 21

the one or thing which undergoes an action; often results in a change of state/shape/position
ex. John melted /the ice/ with a blowtorch
/the ice/ was melted by Jane with a blowtorch
/John/ fell
Sally threw /the ball/ to Mark

Question 22

Experiencer (semantic role)

Answer 22

the one who perceives/experiences something; usually accompanies a verb dealing with the senses
ex. /Lucretia/ saw the bicycle
it was /Bill/ who smelled the bacon first
the explosion was heard by /everyone/

Question 23

Goal (semantic role)

Answer 23

place to which an action is directed
ex. no one saw the robbers breaking /into the house/
sally threw the ball /to john/
put the glass /on the table/

Question 24

Instrument (semantic role)

Answer 24

the means by which an action is performed
ex. dad cleaned the floor /with a mop/
the customer ate his pizza /with a fork/

Question 25

Syntactic Categories

Answer 25

a group of expressions that have very similar syntactic properties; all expressions that belong to the same syntactic category have more or less the same syntactic distribution (can occur in more or less the same place in a sentence)
ex. THE CAT and GIZMO
sally likes the cat/sally likes gizmo
the cat is sleeping/gizmo is sleeping

Question 26

Noun categories

Answer 26

noun, noun phrase

Question 27

Preposition categories

Answer 27

preposition, prep. phrase

Question 28

Verb categories

Answer 28

intransitive verb, transitive verb, ditransitive verb, verb phrase