Syntax Overview

Question 1

syntax

Answer 1

part of grammar that represents speaker’s knowledge of sentences & their structures

Question 2

what does the rules of syntax do?

Answer 2

they combine words into phrases and phrases into sentences/define the correct word order for a language

Question 3

what type of language is English?

Answer 3

subject-verb-object (SVO) language

Question 4

grammatical relations

Answer 4

the relationship between “who is doing what to whom”

Question 5

subject

Answer 5

“who” of the grammatical relations

Question 6

direct object

Answer 6

“whom” of the grammatical relations

Question 7

syntactic category

Answer 7

aka part of speech/a family of expressions that can substitute for one another w/o loss of grammaticality

Question 8

noun phrase (NP)

Answer 8

function as subjects/objects in sentences

Question 9

what are NPs consisted of?

Answer 9

determiner + noun, proper noun, a pronoun, a noun w/o determiner, clause/sentence

Question 10

determiner (Det)

Answer 10

an article that is often put in combination with a noun

Question 11

verb phrase (VP)

Answer 11

functions as a verb/consists of a verb or NP or prepositional phrase

Question 12

prepositional phrase (PP)

Answer 12

a preposition followed by an NP

Question 13

what do syntactic categories consist of?

Answer 13

phrasal categories & lexical categories

Question 14

what are phrasal categories consisted of?

Answer 14

noun phrase, ver phrase, adjective phrase, prepositional phrase, adverbial phrase

Question 15

what are lexical categories consisted of?

Answer 15

noun, verb, preposition, adjective, adverb

Question 16

demonstratives

Answer 16

“this,” “that,” “these,” “those,” etc.

Question 17

quantifiers

Answer 17

“each,” “every,” etc.

Question 18

the rules of syntax allow us to…

Answer 18

produce & understand a limitless number of sentences never produced before/heard before (creative aspect of language)

Question 19

recursive

Answer 19

a repeated application of a rule that allows for successive results

Question 20

adjunct

Answer 20

phrasal category that is sister to an x̄ and daughter of a higher x̄/can be of any grammatical category

Question 21

complements vs. adjuncts

Answer 21

complements are sisters to X while adjuncts are sisters to x̄

Question 22

parameters

Answer 22

points of variation in phrases and sentences