Chapter 5 Syntax Flashcards
(40 cards)
object
the expression that occurs immediately to the right of the verb
subject
the English- the expression that usually occurs immediately to the left of the verb.
grammatical
syntactically well-formed
ungrammatical
syntactically ill-formed
syntax
A component of mental grammar that deals with constructing phrasal expressions out of smaller expressions. (the study of how expressions combine)
principle of compositionality
the meaning of a sentence depends on the meaning of the expressions it contains and on the way they are syntactically combined.
grammatical judgement
a reflection of speakers’ mental grammar and not a test of their conscious knowledge of the prescriptive rules
linguistic expressions
Is a piece of language 1)- that has a certain form (what it sounds like) 2)- a certain meaning - and most relevantly, 3)- some syntactic properties as well.
word order
how expressions are allowed to be ordered with respect to one another
co-occurrence
If some expression occurs in a sentence, what other expressions can or must co-occur with it in that sentence.
complements
non-subject arguments
adjunct
certain kinds of expressions whose occurrence in a sentence are purely optional
syntactic constituents
certain groups of expressions within a larger phrase can form a syntactic unit (smaller expressions out of which the phrase was constructed)
cleft
a kind of sentence in which some constituent is displaced (or moved) to the left
sentential complement verb
verbs that require a complement of category “S” to form a VP
ditransitive verbs (DTV)
verbs that require 2 NP complements and a subject NP argument
transitive verbs (TV)
verbs that require a NP complement to form a VP
verb phrase (VP)
consists of those expressions that, when combined with an NP on their left,will result in a sentence, that is an expression of category “S”
noun phrase (NP)
consist of personal pronouns (he, she, you, it, we, etc.) proper names and any other expressions that have the same distribution
N adjuncts
adjectives combined with nouns
VP adjuncts
adverbs combined with a VP to form an expression of category VP
syntactic categories
consists of a set of expressions that have very similar syntactic properties
intransitive verbs
verbs that require no complements
sentence(S)
a syntactic category that consist of all phrasal expressions that can grammatically occur