Vocabulary 5 Flashcards
(40 cards)
syntax
a component of mental grammar that deals with constructing phrasal expressions out of smaller expressions; also a name for the subfield of linguistics which studies how expressions can combine to form larger expressions
linguistic expressions
a piece of language with a form, a meaning, and syntactic properties
gramaticality judgment
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
principle of compositionality
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
lexical expressions
a linguistic expression that has to be listed in the mental lexicon, e.g. single-word expressions and idioms
phrasal expressions
a linguistic expression that results from the syntactic combination of smaller expressions. A multi-word linguistic expression. A sentence is a special kind of phrasal expression
syntactic properties
properties of linguistic expressions that dictate how they can syntactically combine with other expressions, namely, word order and co-occurrence properties
word order
the linear order in which words can occur in some phrasal expression. Also, the set of syntactic properties of expressions that dictates how they can be ordered with respect to other expressions
co-occurrence
the set of syntactic properties that determines which expressions may or have to co-occur with some other expressions in a sentence
topicalized
a syntactic process by which a syntactic constituent occurs the beginning of a sentence in order to highlight the topic under discussion
argument
a linguistic expression that must occur in a sentence if some other expression occurs in that sentence as well. If the occurrence of an expression X in a sentence requires the occurrence of an expression Y in that sentence, we say that Y is an argument of X
complement
a non-subject argument of some expression
adjuncts
a linguistic expression whose occurrence in a sentence is optional; also called a modifier
syntactic constituent
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
cleft
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. Can be used as a constituency test.
syntactic categories
a group of expressions that have very similar syntactic properties. All expressions that belong to the same syntactic category have more or less the same syntactic distribution
syntactic distribution
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.
determiners
name of a lexical category and a syntactic category that consists of expressions such as the, a, this, all, etc. Syntactically, consists of those expressions that when combined with an expression of category noun to their right result in an expression of category noun phrase
intransitive verb
the name for the set of lexical expressions whose syntactic category is a verb phrase
ditransitive verbs
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. a verb that needs two noun phrase complements
sentential complement verb
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
VP adjuncts
a kind of adjunct that combines with an expression of syntactic category verb phrase with the resulting expression also being of category verb phrase
N adjuncts
a kind of adjunct that combines with an expression of syntactic category noun with the resulting expression also being of category noun
lexical entries
a representation of a lexical expression and its linguistic properties within a descriptive grammar of some language. A collection of entries constitutes the lexicon. A lexical entry has the form f –> X, where f is the form of some particular lexical expression, and X is its syntactic category.
