Vocabulary 5: Syntax

Question 1

Linguistic expressions

Answer 1

A piece of language with a form, a meaning, and syntactic properties.
Example:
Words- cake, out, ate
Phrases- out the window

Question 2

Grammatical

Answer 2

Describes a sentence that is in accordance with the descriptive grammatical rules of some languages, especially syntactic rules.
Also: syntactically well-formed

Question 3

Ungrammatical

Answer 3

Not in accordance with the descriptive grammatical rules of some language, especially syntactic rules.
Also: syntactically ill-formed

Question 4

Principle of compositionality

Answer 4

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.

Question 5

Complements

Answer 5

A non-subject argument of some expression.

Question 6

Adjunct

Answer 6

A linguistic expression whose occurrence in a sentence is optional- also called modifier.

Question 7

Agreement

Answer 7

The phenomenon by which certain expressions in a sentence [ex: a verb and its subject] must be inflectionally marked for the same person, number, gender etc.

Question 8

Syntactic constituent

Answer 8

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 9

Constituency tests

Answer 9

A useful tool for discovering the syntactic constituents of a sentence, but they are not perfectly reliable.
Other examples of constituency tests: coordination, deletion, and topicalization.

Question 10

Cleft

Answer 10

A type of sentence that has the general form. Can be used as a constituency test.
Example: It is/was X that Y, e.g., It was Sally that I wanted to meet.

Question 11

Substitution

Answer 11

In SYNTAX: A constituency test that involves replacing a constituent with a single word, such as a pro-form.

Question 12

Pro-forms

Answer 12

A word that can replace a syntactic constituent.
Pronouns are the most popular
e.g., he/him, she/her, they/them, one, that.

Question 13

Syntactic categories

Answer 13

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.

Question 14

Syntactic distribution

Answer 14

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 15

Noun phrases

Answer 15

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

Question 16

Determiners

Answer 16

Det. The name of a lexical category and 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.

Question 17

Count nouns

Answer 17

A noun that can be counted and pluralized.

Question 18

Mass nouns

Answer 18

A noun that cannot be counted and cannot [normally] be pluralized.

Question 19

Verb phrase

Answer 19

VP. 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 20

Intransitive verbs

Answer 20

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

Question 21

Transitive verbs

Answer 21

TV. 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 22

Ditransitive verbs

Answer 22

The name of a syntactic category that consist 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.

Question 23

Sentential complement verbs

Answer 23

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 24

VP adjuncts

Answer 24

A kind of adjunct that combines with an expression of syntactic category verb phrase with the resulting expression also being of category verb phrase.

Question 25

N adjuncts

Answer 25

A kind of adjunct that combines with an expression of syntactic category noun with the resulting expression also being of a category noun.

Question 26

Prepositional phrase

Answer 26

PP. The name of a syntactic category that consists of those expressions that contain a preposition and a noun phrase.

Question 27

Lexicon

Answer 27

A mental repository of linguistic information a bout words and other lexical expressions, including their form and meaning and their morphological syntactic properties.

Question 28

Lexical entries

Answer 28

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

Question 29

Phrase structure rules

Answer 29

A recipe for syntactically combining expressions of certain syntactic categories. Along with the lexicon, phrase structure rules are a part of a descriptive grammar of some language.

Question 30

Phrase structure tree

Answer 30

A visual representation of how phrases are constructed within a descriptive grammar, given the lexicon and the phrase structure rules.

Question 31

Ambiguity

Answer 31

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 ambiguous.

Question 32

Lexical ambiguity

Answer 32

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

Question 33

Structural ambiguity

Answer 33

The phenomenon where a single string of words or morphemes is the form of more that one distinct phrasal expression or word. Arises because the same expressions can combine differently syntactically, resulting in distinct phrases that happen to have the same form.

Question 34

Syntax

Answer 34

A component of mental grammar that deals with constructing phrasal expressions out of smaller expressions. Also a name for the sub-field of linguistics that studies how expressions can combine to form a larger expression.

Question 35

Lexical expressions

Answer 35

A linguistic expression that has to be listed in the mental lexicon, e.g., single-word expressions and idioms.

Question 36

Subject

Answer 36

An expression, typically a noun phrase, that occurs to the left of the verb phrase in an English sentence.

Question 37

Object

Answer 37

A noun phrase that usually occurs immediately to the right of the verb in English. A noun phrase complement

Question 38

Topicalization

Answer 38

A syntactic process by which in English a syntactic constituent occurs at the beginning of a sentence in order to highlight the topic under discussion.

Question 39

Syntactic constituent

Answer 39

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 40

Adverb

Answer 40

Adv. The name of a lexical category and a syntactic category that consists of expressions such as quickly, well, furiously, etc. Syntactically, adverbs can be verb phrase adjuncts.