Syntax

Question 1

Syntax

Answer 1

the investigation of the parts sentences consist of and thier connections and dependencies. More strict than Diction.

Question 2

Sentence Structure/Syntactic Units

Answer 2

They are constituents or phrases that can be combined to form organised combinations of words.

Question 3

Pronominalisation

Answer 3

A test in order to prove constituent status by substituting a constituent with a pronoun/pro-form.

Question 4

Movement

Answer 4

A test for determining constituent/prhase status. If a string of words can be moved to other sntential positions, it is proof of the string’s being a constituent/phrase.

Question 5

Sentential position of subjects in English

Answer 5

severely resticted, in that they generally occur before the verb complex.

Question 6

Coordination test

Answer 6

Test to determine constituent/phrase status. Only constituents that can be coordinated by the coordinating conjunction ‘and’ (this conjunction has the wonderful property of combining only constituents of the same kind.) So, if we can coordinate two expressions with ‘and’, this is good evidence for their being constituents.

Question 7

Gapping

Answer 7

Test to determine constituent/phrase status by adding a tag question; works with certain types of phrases/constituents.

Question 8

Sentence Fragment test

Answer 8

Test to determine constituent/phrase status by asking a who, what, where, when question for each hypothesized constituent/phrase.

Question 9

How do we determine whether a given word is the most important element?

Answer 9

There are a number of tests through semantics, structural relations, distribution, and projections that determine whether a given word is the most important element.

Question 10

Semantic

Answer 10

The subfield studies meaning and can be used to indicate the head of a phrase/constituent when the word is semantically the most important element.

Question 11

Head

Answer 11

Most important element of a phrase/constituent

Question 12

PP

Answer 12

Prepositional phrases [to the station]

Question 13

AP

Answer 13

Adjective phrases [proud of his results

Question 14

VP

Answer 14

Verb Phrases [go to the station]

Question 15

ADVP

Answer 15

Adverb Phrases [incredibly often]

Question 16

Structural relation

Answer 16

Indicates the head of a phrase/constituent in relation to the other constituents/phrases. Ex: in VP (verb phrases) and PP (prepositional phrases) the head assigns case to the constituent to its right.

Question 17

Same Distribution

Answer 17

Indicated head of phrase/constituent. It means that in all sentential positions where we can find a given phrase, we should also be able to find only the head of that given kind of phrase.

Question 18

Projects

Answer 18

Indicates head of phrase/constituent. The head projects its properties onto the phrase as a whole. (Also the reason why phrases/constituents/structural units are also called projections of their head.)

Question 19

Syntactic categories/Word-Class

Answer 19

Examples: nouns, prepositions, adjectives, verbs, etc.

Question 20

How do we find out a word’s ‘word-class’?

Answer 20

Semantics, morphology, and syntactics

Question 21

Semantic Classification

Answer 21

A way to find a word’s ‘word-class’ and is taught to us as children that different words express different kinds of meanings.
Ex: nouns=person, place, thing
verbs=actions or events
adjectives= properties or qualities
prepositions= relations
However, semantic classification alone is not entirely satisfactory

Question 22

Morphology

Answer 22

Parts of words with meaning, and a way to find a word’s ‘word-class’. Words of a particular syntactic category/word-class have a specific morphological make-up.
Ex: verbs= suffix past tense -ed
Nouns= suffix -ness
Adjectives = suffix -less
However, morphology classification alone is not entirely satisfactory.

Question 23

Syntactic

Answer 23

Sentence structure that is used to find a word’s word class. Positional considerations can show us what a word’s word class is.
English example: Subject followed by the verb
Verb followed by its object
Noun preceded by the article ‘the’ is quite common
Adjectives often immediately precede nouns and nouns often follow adjectives.

Question 24

Articles, demonstratives, and possessives

Answer 24

Smaller subclasses of a larger class of word-class called determiners

Question 25

Determiners

Answer 25

a nominal syntactic category distinct both from adjectives and nouns, despite the close affinity among them. They are commonly understood to comprise the word classes of article, demonstrative, and quantifier, as well as some possessives and some nominal agreement markers.

Question 26

Subordinate clauses

Answer 26

Different from phrases; sentences inside other sentences.

Question 27

Subordinate Clause Internal Structure

Answer 27

has a clause which is a syntactic unit that consists minimally of a verb phrase and subject.

Question 28

Sentences

Answer 28

Largest syntactic units and they are made up of one or more clauses.

Question 29

Simple Sentence

Answer 29

One clause

Question 30

Complex sentence

Answer 30

Contains at least one subordinate clause

Question 31

Superordinate Clause

Answer 31

also known as the matrix clause or main clause and are opposite of a subordinate clause. They are clauses that can stand on their own.

Question 32

Subject

Answer 32

This is part of the functional level of syntax. The English language requires one in sentences and it occurs immediately before the verb. Criteria: Subject-verb, agreement, position, obligatoriness, and case marking.

Question 33

Case Forms

Answer 33

Forms that mark the grammatical function of noun phrases in a sentence or phrase. Ex; There is a morphological distinction that is only visible with pronouns between a subject case and an object case

Question 34

Objects

Answer 34

Words at the functional level of a sentence. They are the thing/person action is done to. Criteria for objecthood: pronoun case morphology, sentential position, obligatoriness, and passivisation

Question 35

Adverbials

Answer 35

Part of Sentence Function. Constituents that provide information about the circumstances of the action denoted by the verb and its subject and object(s). (Modifiers of the clause or verb phrase). May concern: time, place/location, manner, cause, or purpose.

Question 36

Predicates

Answer 36

in linguistics, the part of a sentence or clause that is not the subject but asserts a property, action, or condition of the subject. The predicate of a sentence may range from a single intransitive verb (as in She smiled) to a long and complex construction.

Question 37

Complement

Answer 37

Semantically and structurally highly dependent sister constituents of heads. Predicative complements do not behave like objects also because they cannot be passived.

Question 38

Grammatical Categories like word-classes and phrases

Answer 38

are used to account for the patterning of words in English sentences.

Question 39

Common word order in the English Language

Answer 39

SVO (Subject, Verb, Object)

Question 40

Diction

Answer 40

The style of written or spoken language. Choices made within rules of grammar and syntax. It is more flexible than syntax.