Theoretical Linguistics 2: Syntax Syntax

Autumn 2011

Syntax: the study of the arrangement of words into larger structure by applying the rules of grammar. Larger structure may contain more than one sentence. It is how we can put words together to make sentences according to the rules of grammar that tell us what can come first and what can come second. For example we cant say football the boy play; but we say the boy play football.

Grammar is a set of rules. We have to follow the rules in order to make any sentence. For example we have a rule that says that add s to the verb in the present simple or change the verb into the past when we talk about something in the past and so on.

So grammar is an essential part of syntax. What is grammar? Grammar is a set of rules that show us how to put words together. There are many things to study in syntax such as parts of speech or form classes, clauses, phrases, syntactic combinations and many other things. Clauses: is a group of words that contain a subject and predicate (verb). Clause is a sentence. For example: the boy played football yesterday. The boy is a subject. The rest of the sentence is a predicate. It is predicate not a verb because it may consists of more than a verb. For example: he died. In this sentence the predicate consists of one word, but in the following sentence the predicate consists of more than one word: He died in a car accident Predicate is anything that comes after the subject, it may contain a verb only or it may contain a verb and other words.

Clause
indepedent or main clause or principle clause dependent or subordinate
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An independent clause is a clause that can stand alone without any help, so all simple sentences are independent clauses. For example: she likes chocolate. They play tennis. She cooks fish and so on.

Dependent clause is the clause that cannot stand as a full sentence by itself; it needs to be attached to an independent clause; it helps to give extra information. For example: the man who works in the bank is my uncle. Who works in the bank is dependent clause. The car which I bought yesterday needs repairs.

Both clauses exist in any language because all people want t use them in their speech.

We have many kinds of dependent clauses such as noun clauses, adjective clauses and adverbial clauses ..etc. Phrase is the opposite of clause; it is a group of words or expressions that doesnt contain neither subject nor predicate. For example: this afternoon, a week from today, this coming Saturday, on the small tableetc. There are different types of phrases: depending on the first word that the sentence started by. Such as

1- Gerund phrase, phrase that begin with a gerund, for example: Jogging in the morning is good for your health. Studying lesion early gives you better chance to pass.

2- Infinitive phrase: phrase that start with infinitive for example: To become a doctor you have to study for seven years. To live safely you need to choose your friends. To smoke heavily everyday you will have a bad result.

3- Participle phrase: phrases begin with participle; we have present participle (-ing form) and past participle (past form). For example: Finishing my work early, I went home. It means after I finished my work Waiting for the bus, I spent my time reading.
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Damaged in the accident, my car will never be the same again.

Theoretical Linguistics 2: Syntax | Mr. Ahmed Maher

4- Participle phrase : (past form)

Theoretical Linguistics 2: Syntax

The differences between the gerund and participle.

Autumn 2011

* Gerund is a noun (verbal noun) that refers to the process, operation or activity of something such as smoking as a habit. Smoking is not good for health. Smoking is a noun here; it is a gerund phrase. Smoking heavily, he almost lost his breath. Smoking here is a verb it means after he smoked heavily; it is participle phrase started with participle.

Parts of speech
1) 2) 3) 4) 5) 6) Nouns. Verbs. Adjectives. Adverbs. Pronouns. Determiners. Noun: a word that refers to a person, a thing or an idea, for example: idea like happiness, courage, honestly, thing like city, kitchen or names like Ahmed, mohammed etc. We have different kinds of nouns

Collective noun: is the noun that refers to a number or collection of people or things for example, team, family, army..etc. Verb Verbs: a word that express a action or a state of being. Action verbs: go, come, study...etc. State of being: like seem, appear, look...etc. for example, he seems angry. Seems here refer to the state of being angry. We have abstract nouns ad a abstract verbs. Abstract noun: like honest, sadness (the nouns that we cannot see it). Abstract verb: such as believe, dream, imagineetc. (we cannot use these verbs in progress). In other words, they are the verbs of emotions, sense, feelings and thinking. Adjective An adjective is a word that modifies (describes) a noun or pronoun. Ex: big house or
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large room.
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Theoretical Linguistics 2: Syntax | Mr. Ahmed Maher

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The adjective sometimes modifies the pronoun. Ex: poor you you. or

Autumn 2011
lucky

We have degrees of the adjective. Like the using of comparative or superlative adjectives. Ex: short Long shorter (it is comparative) Longer shortest (it is super in size). Longest.

Sometimes we use other kinds of adjective like more beautiful ad most beautiful, but they all show the degrees.

Adverb An Adverb: a word that modify a verb or an adjective. For example: She reads slowly (slowly describes the verb, the way of reading) He speaks loudly (loudly describes the way of speaking). We have many kinds of adverbs such as: Adverb of manner like: slowly, quicklyetc. Adverb of time like: sometimes, usually, oftenetc. Adverb of place like: here, anywhere, everywhereetc.

We have some adverbs that can be used as adverb and adjective. For example: He studies hard (adverb) He drives fast (adverb) & He is hard (adjective) & The car is fast (adjective)

The adverb can modify an adjective. For example: She is extremely happy or this is terribly bad. Determiners is a number of words that comes before noun that determines its nature and make it well known to us.

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Patterns: mean the types of sentences that we normally use. The following are the common patterns that are used in English: 1- S + V. the verb is intransitive (it does not need an object) 2- S + V + O. She drinks tea. He reads newspaper. She speaks English. Birds fly She died. They disappeared. She swims. She slept.

3- S + V + indirect O + direct O. He gave me a gift. She sent her a letter. She told him a secret.

4- S + V + Complement. He is a student.

5- S + Linking Verb + Adjective. Gebriala is cleaver. The weather is wonderful.

6- S + Linking Verb + Adjective. My father is a doctor. I am a student.

7- S + Linking Verb + Adjective. My friend speaks quickly. Thomas drives quickly. Anna doesn't sleep deeply.

The difference between the object and the complement.

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The object is used after an action verb and it is a thing that undergoes the action of the verb. For example He eats a sandwich (sandwich is object it is the receiver of the action)

The complement can be either a noun or an adjective. He is a student. (the complement is a noun) He is happy. (the complement is an adjective)

How does the language work? They stated that the mind produces only simple sentences. We use the grammatical rules to produce simple sentences in simple words. To make another sentence we need to go to another stage which is the transformational rules and then the last stage which is called lexicon. When we want to change a simple sentence to another form, we need to change it to a new pattern. Transformational grammar has three stages: all these stages are inside our minds. 1- The application of phrase structural rules which is the Diagram form. 2- The application of the transformational rules which means changing the forms of the sentence. 3- The application of lexicon which means changing the symbols to words. Phrase structure rules: 1- S 2- AUX 3- Tense 4- VP 5- PP 6- NP
Q+ (NEG) NP + AUX + VP. IM P NEG NP Tense Past S AUX Have En VP

Tense (M) (have + en) (be + ing).

Past Non-Past

V (NP) (PP). Prep + NP. (Det)(Adj) N.

N Tree structural diagram

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Based on the assumption that says that the S always consists of NP + AUX+ VP We can derive different sentences by applying the different grammatical rules of the language. For example, at the level of the first rule, we can get six possibilities: 1 2 3 4 5 6 NP + AUX+ VP NEG + NP + AUX + VP Q + NP+ NP + AUX + VP Q + NEG+ NP + AUX + VP IMP+ NP + AUX + VP IMP+ NEG+ NP + AUX + VP EX: EX: EX: EX: EX: EX: He left He didnt leave. Did he leave? Didnt he leave? Leave! Dont leave!

By applying the second rule, we can get different possibilities by replacing the AUX of a sentence with one of its chooses i.e. Tense (M) (have + en) (be + ing) and so on. Phrase structural rules are used to analyze the sentences into smaller parts. Also called diagramming sentences because what we get at the end of the diagrams is a pattern that can be applied in all sentences. It can be bracketed string reads or tree diagram. Examples: ** The small boy speaks slowly (is analyzed into smaller parts as DET + ADJ + N + AUX + V + ADV)
NP S VP

** The small boy cannot speak fluently [NEG] + [DET+ ADJ + N] NP + [m] AUX + [V +ADV] VP
NEG NP S AUX VP

** Can the boy speak English?

Q

S AUX NP VP Page

Theoretical Linguistics 2: Syntax | Mr. Ahmed Maher

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Theoretical Linguistics 2: Syntax

Autumn 2011

Transformational rule: The rules that we use to make any change or changes on the sentence (any type of change whether negative, question or deletion rule). For example, The small boy speaks slowly (NP + AUX + VP); we can change this sentence into negative as follows: the small boy doesnt speak slowly (NEG + NP + AUX + VP). In representing these rules Chomsky suggested to use al jebral symbols as it exactly describes what happens in our minds before we produce the sentence. The purpose of the transformational is to show relations between deep and surface structures. They are operations which add, delete, or permute (i.e. change order and sometimes also hierarchic relationship among) constituents. In other words, transformations specify the ways sentences and parts of sentences may be put together using the rules of grammar while preserving basic meaning. Simply, transformational rules actually connect the form of the sentence with the meaning. Surface structure: is the form of the sentence that we see. Deep structure: it includes the meaning of the sentence. Every sentence has a form and meaning; however, we may have one surface structure with more than one deep structure and it is called sentence ambiguous. For example, The woman cant bear children & Flying plans can be dangerous. On the other hand, we may have two surface structures with only one deep structure. For example, I gave the money to john and I gave john the money. We can use the active and passive voice to get sentences that have two surface structures with only one deep structure. For example, the boy broke the window and the window was broken by the boy.

The End
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