syntactic categories Flashcards
(40 cards)
syntactic categories
a set of expressions that have very similar syntactic properties
sentences (s)
a syntactic category that consists of all phrasal expressions that can grammatically occur in “sally thinks that __”
noun phrases (NP)
consists of proper names and any other expressions that have the same distribution
nouns (N)
consists of expressions that can combine with a determiner to their left and yield an NP
count nouns
nouns that can be counted (ie desk, cat, dog) and can be pluralized
mass nouns
nouns that cannot be counted or pluralized
verb phrase (vp)
expressions that when combined with a noun phrase on their left will result in a sentence
intransitive verbs
verbs that require no complements
transitive verbs (tv)
verbs that require a noun phrase complement to form a verb phrase
ditransitive verbs (dv)
consists of those expressions that if combined with 2 exxpressions of category noun phrase to their right result in a verb phrase
sentential complement verbs (sv)
verbs that require a complement of category s (sentence) to form a verb phrase
adverb
expressions that occur in a verb phrase as adjuncts
prepositional phrase
the name of a syntactic category that consists of those expressions that contain a preposition and a noun phrase.
can be verb phrase or noun adjuncts
phrase structure rules
a recipe for syntactically combining expressions of certain syntactic categories
phrase structure tree
a visual representation of how phrases are constructed within a descriptive grammar
lexical entries
a representation of a lexical expression and its linguistic properties within a descriptive grammar of some language
lexical ambiguity or homophony
the phenomenon where a single word is the form of two or more distinct linguistic expressions that differ in meaning or syntactic properties
ambiguous
the phenomenon by which a single linguistic form, can be the form of more than one distinct linguistic expression; the form that is shared by more than one expression is said to be ambifuous
structural ambiguity
the phenomenon where a single string of words is the form or more than one distinct phrasal expression. arises because the same expressions can combine differently syntactically resulting in distinct phrases that happen to have the same form
linguistic expression
a piece of language, it has a certain form, a certain meaning, and some syntatic properties
grammatical
when a string of words really form a sentence in a language
determiners
consists of expression such as “the, a, this, all,
consists of those expressions that when combined with a noun to their right result in a noun phrase
adjectives
morphologically=consists of words to which the comparative suffix (-er) or the the suffix (-ness) can be added
syntactically= consists of those expressions that can be a noun adjuncts or occur in between a determiner and a noun
grammaticality judgment
is a reflection of speakers’ mental grammar