File 5: Syntax Vocabulary

Question 1

linguistic expression

Answer 1

a certain form, certain meaning, and some syantic properties

Question 2

grammaticality judgment

Answer 2

a reflection of speaker’s mental grammar, and not a test of their conscious knowledge of the prescriptive rules

Question 3

syntax

Answer 3

how sentences and other phrases can be constructed out of smaller phrases and words

Question 4

principle of compositionalit

Answer 4

The fact that the meaning of a sentence depends on the meaning of the expressions it contains and on the way t hey are syntactically combined

Question 5

lexical expressions

Answer 5

words

Question 6

syntactic properties

Answer 6

expressions that determine behavior

Question 7

word order

Answer 7

how expressions are allowed to be ordered with respect to one another

Question 8

Co- Occurrence

Answer 8

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

Question 9

arguments

Answer 9

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

Question 10

complements

Answer 10

a non-subject argument of some expression

Question 11

modifiers

Answer 11

adjuncts are sometimes called

Question 12

agreement

Answer 12

the phenomenon by which certain expressions in a setence must be infectionally marked for the same person, number, gender, etc.

Question 13

syntactic constituent

Answer 13

a group of linguistic expressions that function as a syntactic unit within some larger expression; the smaller expressions out of which some larger phrasal expression was constructed in accordance with the phrase structure rules

Question 14

morphosyntax

Answer 14

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

Question 15

cleft

Answer 15

a kind of sentence in which some constituent is displaced (or moved) to the left

Question 16

substitution

Answer 16

a constituency test that involves replacing a constituent with a single word (or simple phrase), such as a pro-form

Question 17

pro-forms

Answer 17

a word that can replace a syntactic constituent

Question 18

syntactic categories

Answer 18

consists of a set of expressions that have very similar syntactic properties; that is, they have approximately teh same word order and co-occurrence requirements

Question 19

syntactic distribution

Answer 19

refers to the set of syntactic environments in which an expression can occur. if two expressions are interchangeable in all syntactic environments, we say that they have the same syntactic distribution and therefore belong to the same syntactic category

Question 20

noun phrases

Answer 20

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

Question 21

nouns

Answer 21

(N); consists of words to which the plural suffix -s or suffix -like can be added

Question 22

determiners

Answer 22

(Det); the name of a lexical and syntactic category taht consists of expressions such as; the, a, this, all, etc. consists of those expressions that when combined with an expression of category noun to their right result in an expression of category noun phrase.

Question 23

count nouns

Answer 23

a noun that can be counted and pluralized

Question 24

mass nouns

Answer 24

a noun that cannot be counted and cannot be pluralized

Question 25

adjectives

Answer 25

the name of a lexical category and a syntactic category. the category consists of those expressions that can be noun adjuncts or occur in between a determiner and a noun

Question 26

verb phrase

Answer 26

the name of a syntactic category that consists of all expressions that, if combined with a noun phrase to their left, result in a sentence

Question 27

intransitive verbs

Answer 27

the name for the set of lexical expressions whose syntactic category is verb phrase

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

transitive verbs

Answer 29

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 30

sentential complement verbs

Answer 30

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

Question 31

adverb

Answer 31

many expressions that can occur in a verb phrase as adjuncts

Question 32

Verb Phrase adjuncts

Answer 32

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

Question 33

Noun adjuncts

Answer 33

a kind of adjunct that comobines with an expression of syntactic category noun with the resulitng expression also being of category noun

Question 34

prepositional phrase

Answer 34

the name of a syntactic category that consists of those expressions that contain a preposition and a noun phrase

Question 35

lexicon

Answer 35

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

Question 36

lexical entries

Answer 36

a representation of a lexical expression and its linguistic properties within a descriptive grammar of some language

Question 37

ambiguity

Answer 37

the phenomenon by which a single linguistic form can be the form of more than one distinct linguistic expression

Question 38

lexical ambiguity

Answer 38

the phenomenon where a single word is the form of two or more distinct linguistic expressions that differ in meaning or syntactic properties

Question 39

syntactic category

Answer 39

a group of expressions that have very similar syntactic properties. all expressions that belong to teh same syntactic category have more or less the same syntactic distribution

Question 40

lexical expression

Answer 40

a linguistic expression that has to be listed in the mental lexicon