Chapter 5 Vocab

Question 1

syntax

Answer 1

a component of mental grammar that deals with constructing phrasal expressions out of smaller expressions

Question 2

linguistic expressions

Answer 2

a piece of language with a form, a meaning, and syntactic properties

Question 3

grammatical

Answer 3

a term used to describe a sentence that is in accordance with the descriptive grammatical rules of some language, especially syntactical rules

Question 4

grammaticality judgement

Answer 4

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

Question 5

subject

Answer 5

an expression, typically a noun phrase, that occurs to the left of the verb phrase in an English sentence

Question 6

object

Answer 6

a noun phrase that usually occurs immediately to the right of the verb in English

Question 7

principle of compositionality

Answer 7

the notion that the meaning of a phrasal expression is predictable from the meanings of the expressions it contains and how they were syntactically combined

Question 8

lexical expressions

Answer 8

a linguistic expression that has to be listed in the lexicon, e.g. single-word expressions and idioms

Question 9

phrasal expressions

Answer 9

a linguistic expression that results from the syntactic combination of smaller expressions

Question 10

syntactic properties

Answer 10

properties of the linguistic expressions that dictate how they can syntactically combine with other expressions, namely, word order and co-occurence properties

Question 11

word order

Answer 11

the linear order in which words can occur in some phrasal expression

Question 12

co-occurence

Answer 12

the set of syntactic properties that determines which expressions may or have to co-occur with some other expressions in a sentence

Question 13

topicalization

Answer 13

a syntactic process by which a syntactic constituent occurs the beginning of a sentence in order to highlight the topic under discussion

Question 14

argument

Answer 14

a linguistic expression that must occur in a sentence if some other expression occurs in that sentence as well

Question 15

complement

Answer 15

a non-subject argument of some expression

Question 16

adjunct

Answer 16

a linguistic expression whose occurrence in a sentence is optional, also called modifier

Question 17

modifiers

Answer 17

a linguistic expression whose occurrence in a sentence is optional, also called adjunct

Question 18

agreement

Answer 18

the phenomenon by which certain expressions in a sentence (e.g. a verb and its subject) must be inflectionally marked for the same person, number, gender, etc.

Question 19

morphosyntax

Answer 19

the name for syntax and morphology considered jointly as a single component of grammar

Question 20

syntactic constituent

Answer 20

a group of linguistic expressions that function as a syntactic unit within some larger expression

Question 21

cleft

Answer 21

a type of sentence that has the general form it is/was X that Y, e.g. It was Sally that I wanted to meet

Question 22

conjuncts

Answer 22

an argument of a coordinating conjunction that consists of functional words such as and, but, however, etc.

Question 23

syntactic categories

Answer 23

a group of expressions that have very similar syntactic properties

Question 24

syntactic distribution

Answer 24

refers to the set of syntactic environments in which an expression can occur

Question 25

noun phrases

Answer 25

the name of a syntactic category that consists of proper names, pronouns, and all other expressions with the same syntactic distribution

Question 26

determiners

Answer 26

the name of a lexical category and a syntactic category that consists of expressions such as the, a, this, all, etc.

Question 27

transitive verbs

Answer 27

the name of a syntactic category that consists of those expressions that if combined with an expression of category noun phrase to their right result in a verb phrase; a verb that needs a noun phrase complement

Question 28

ditransitive verbs

Answer 28

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

Question 29

sentential complement verbs

Answer 29

the name of a syntactic category that consists of those expressions that if combined with a sentence to their right results in a verb phrase; a verb that needs a sentence as its complement

Question 30

adverbs

Answer 30

the name of a lexical category and a syntactic category that consists of expressions such as quickly, well, furiously, etc.

Question 31

verb phrase adjuncts

Answer 31

a kind of adjunct that combines with an expression of syntactic category verb phrase with the resulting expression also being of category verb phrase

Question 32

noun adjuncts

Answer 32

a kind of adjunct that combines with an expression of syntactic category noun with the resulting expression also being of category noun

Question 33

preposition

Answer 33

the name of a lexical category and a syntactic category that consists of expressions such as of, in, for, with, etc.

Question 34

lexicon

Answer 34

a mental repository of linguistic information about words and other lexical expressions, including their form, meaning, morphological, and syntactic properties

Question 35

phrase structure rules

Answer 35

a recipe for syntactically combing expressions of certain syntactic categories

Question 36

ambiguity

Answer 36

the phenomenon by which a single linguistic form (e.g. a word or a string of words) can be the form of more than one linguistic expression

Question 37

homophony

Answer 37

the phenomenon by which two or more distinct morphemes or non phrasal linguistic expressions happen to have the same form, i.e., sound the same

Question 38

structural ambiguity

Answer 38

the phenomenon where a single string of words (or morophemes) is the form of more than one distinct phrasal expression

Question 39

sentence

Answer 39

a syntactic category that consists of all phrasal expressions that can grammatically occur in "Sally thinks that ____"

Question 40

ungrammatical

Answer 40

not in accordance with the descriptive grammatical rules of some language, especially syntactic rules