Chapter 5 Syntax Flashcards
(40 cards)
Adjunct
A linguistic expression whose occurrence in a sentence is optional: also called a modifier.
Adverb
The name of a lexical category and a syntactic category that consists of expressions such as quickly, well, furiously, etc.Syntactically, adverbs can be verb phrase adjuncts.
Agreement
The phenomenon by which certain expressions in a sentence (e.g. a verb and its subject) must be inflectional marked for the same person, number, gender, etc.
Argumen
A linguistic expression that must occur in a sentence of some other expression occurs in that sentence as well. If the occurrence of an expression X in a sentence requires the occurrence of an expression Y in the sentence, we say that Y is an argument of X.
Cleft
A type of sentence that has the general form It is/ was X that Y, e.g. It was Sally that wanted to meet. Can be used as a constituency test.
Complement
A non subject argument of some expression.
Compositionality
The principle of compositionality underlies the design feature of productivity.
Constituent
Reveal the syntactic of the sentence; in other words, they show how the sentence was built out of smaller expressions.
Conjunct
An argument of a coordinating conjunction such as and or, or.
Co-Occurrence
The set of syntactic properties that determines which expressions may or have to co-occur with some other expressions in a sentence.
Distransitive Verb
The name of a syntactic category that consists of those expressions that if combined with two expressions of category noun phrase to their right result in a verb phrase. A verb that needs two noun phrase complements.
Expression
A linguistic expression is just a piece of language it has certain form( e.g.what it sounds like), a certain meaning, and , most relevantly, some syntactic properties as well. These syntactic properties determine how the expression can combine with other expressions.
Grammatically judgment
An instance of a native speaker of some language deciding whether some string of words corresponds to a syntactically well-formed or grammatical phrasal expression in their native language.
Intransitive Verb
The name for the set of lexical expressions whose syntactic category is verb phrase.
Lexical Ambiguity
The phenomenon where a single word is the form of two or more distinct linguistic expressions that differ in meaning or syntactic properties.
Lexical Entry
A representation of a lexical expression and its linguistic properties within a descriptive grammar of some language. A collection of lexical entries constitutes the lexicon. A lexical entry has the form f- X, Where f is the form of some particular lexical expression, and X is its syntactic category.
Lexical Expression
A linguistic expression that has to be listed in the mental lexicon,e.g. single-word expression and idioms.
LInguistic Expression
A piece of language with a form, a meaning, and syntactic properties.
Morphosyntax
The name for syntax and morphology considered jointly as a single component of grammar.
Modifiers
A word, especially an adjective or noun used attributively, that restricts or adds to the sense of a head noun.(e.g. Sally likes small dogs). This sentence tells us that Sally likes dogs but specifically small dogs in general. The adjective small modifies the meaning of dogs.For this reason adjuncts are sometimes called modifiers.
Noun Adjunct
A kind of adjunct that combines with an expression of syntactic category noun with the resulting expression also being of category noun.
Noun Phrase
The name of a syntactic category that consists of proper names, pronouns, and all other expressions with the same syntactic distribution.
Object
A noun phrase that usually occurs immediately to the right if the verb in English. A noun phrase complement.
Phrasal Expression
A linguistic expression that results from the syntactic combination of smaller expression. A multi- word linguistic expression. A sentence is a special kind of phrasal expression.
