Understanding of

English Linguistics
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
HYOWON SONG
CLASS 40 - 42
JUNE 3-4, 2024 (MON-TUE.)
CONTENTS

• Chapter 3 Syntax
Syntax: the sentence patterns of language
• The kindhearted boy had many girlfriends.
• The kindhearted, intelligent boy had many girlfriends.
• The kindhearted, intelligent, handsome boy had many girlfriends.
…
• John found a book in the library.
• John found a book in the library in the stacks.
• John found a book in the library in the stacks on the fourth floor.
…
General information

• All languages have mechanisms of this sort that make the number of
sentences limitless.
• Sentences are composed of discrete units that are combined by rules.

• Syntax: the study of sentences and sentence structures

• Textbook: the part of grammar that represents that a speaker’s knowledge of
sentences and their structures
What the syntax rules do
• Rules of syntax (roles of syntax)
1. Words  phrase  sentences: the rules specify the “correct” word order for a
language
• Grammatical vs. ungrammatical
• Correct vs. incorrect (X) – do not use these words in linguistics to judge whether a
structure is well-formed or ill-formed.
2. To describe the relationship between the meaning of a particular group of
words and the arrangement of those words
• Words: I, mean, what, say  making a sentence
• I mean what I say. Vs. I say what I mean.
3. To specify the grammatical relations of a sentence, such as subject and direct
object
• John loves Jane. Vs. Jane loves John.
4. To specify other constraints that sentences must adhere to
• *The boy found. *The boy found quickly. *The boy found in the house. …
5. Rules tell us how words form groups in a sentence, or how they are
hierarchically arranged with respect to one another.
• Ambiguity
• Old men and women (structurally ambiguous)
• He went to the bank. (lexical ambiguity)
• Structurally ambiguous phrases and sentences
• Tree diagrams

Old men and women Old men and women

What grammaticality is not based on

• Grammaticality: Native speakers’ syntactic knowledge tells that it is

grammatical or not.
• Grammaticality and meaningfulness are not the same thing.

• Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

• What do you think about this sentence? Grammatical or not?

Constituents and constituency tests
• Constituents (p.84)
• Definition: the natural groupings or parts of a sentence

• How do we judge whether or not the elements (or a group of

elements) are the constituents of a sentence? Constituency tests?
• Stand alone test c h t ype
st ud y ea
• Replacement test s ho uld
You a m ple !
• Movement as a unit it h a n ex
w
• Example: The puppy played in the garden.
• You must be able to explain the test types by using the given example!
• Constituent structure – represented by a tree diagram (p.83)
• Every sentence in a language is associated with one or more constituent structure.
(p.84)

• Practice constituent structure

• The puppy played in the garden.

• The cat played in the room.
• The boys found the puppy.
• The girls found the cat in the room. (ambiguous)
• Practice constituent structure

• The puppy played in the garden.

• The cat played in the room.
• The boys found the puppy.
• The girls found the cat in the room. (ambiguous)
Syntactic categories
• Definition (p.84)
• A family of expressions that can substitute for one another without loss of
grammaticality
• Noun phrase (NP): functions as subjects and as objects in sentences
• examples? (p.85)
• Verb phrase (VP): always contains a verb with possibly other
categories
• examples? (p.85)
• Prepositional phrase (PP): a preposition followed by an NP
• examples? (p.85)
Lexical and functional categories
• Lexical and functional categories (p.86)
• What are the phrasal categories given in the textbook?
• What are the lexical categories given in the textbook?
• What are the functional categories given in the textbook?
• Read the 2nd paragraph on p.87. (it starts with “Because of
the difficulties involved in ..)
• What are the morphological characteristics of noun, verb, and
adjective?
 A noun is a word that can occur with a determiner as in ‘the boy’.
It also takes a plural marker like ‘boys’. …
Phrase structure trees
• Head of phrase: the word whose lexical category defines the type of
phrase; the core of every phrase
• Complement: sister categories of the head; a phrasal category that
may occur next to a head, which elaborates on the meaning of the
head
• What is the head of each phrase below?
• NP
• VP
• PP
• CP
• Specifiers: an element preceding the head
NP
VP

the
mother of James Whistler Pavarotti

sing an aria
Terms for the tree diagram (p.89-91)
• node: a point in a tree where branches join
• dominate / immediately dominate (p.93)
• mother node
• daughter, sister

sing an aria

sister
The X-bar theory
• A template or blueprint that specifies how the phrases of a language
are organized
• Definition: An intermediate level category necessary to account for
certain syntactic phenomena
• S(entence) category
• Phrase structure tree: a tree diagram with syntactic category
information
• Three aspects of a speaker’s syntactic knowledge
• Linear order of the words in the sentence
• Identification of the syntactic categories of words and groups of words
• Hierarchical organization of the syntactic categories as determined by the X-
bar schema
Selection
• We noted that complements (and specifiers) are not always present in
the phrasal structure. They are optional; only the head is obligatory.
• Whether a head takes a complement or not depends on the
properties of the head. For example, verbs select different kinds of
complements: find is a transitive verb and requires an NP
complement (direct object), as in The boy found the ball, but not *The
boy found, or *The boy found in the house. Some verbs like eat are
optionally transitive. John ate and John ate a sandwich are both
grammatical. Sleep is an intransitive verb; it cannot take an NP
complement:
• Michael slept. • Paul felt strong as an ox.
• *Michael slept their baby. • He feels he can win.

• Let’s think about it.

• I think a girl won the race.

• I told the boy a girl won the race.

• Certain verbs, for example perception verbs such as see and hear and
the causative verb make among others, select a particular kind of
complement called a small clause. A small clause is an XP composed
of an NP followed by a bar level category, for example:
• I saw [John on the boat].
• The information about the complement types selected by particular
verbs and other lexical items is called C-selection or subcategorization,
and is included in the lexical entries of the items in our mental lexicons.
(C stands for “categorial.”)
• A verb also includes in its lexical entry a specification that requires
certain semantic properties of its subjects and complements, just as it
selects for syntactic categories. This kind of selection is called S-
selection. (S stands for “semantic.”) For example, the verb murder
requires its subject and object to be animate, while the verb quaff
requires its subject to be animate and its object liquid. Verbs such as
like, hate, and so on select animate subjects. The following sentences
violate S-selection and can only be used in a metaphorical sense. (We
will use the symbol “!” to indicate a semantic anomaly.)
• !Golf plays John.
• !The beer drank the student.
• !The tree liked the boy.
• ?Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

• The well-formedness of a phrase depends, then, on at least two

factors: whether the phrase conforms to the structural constraints of
the language as expressed in the X-bar schema, and whether it obeys
the selectional requirements of the head—both syntactic (C-
selection) and semantic (S-selection).
Building Phrase Structure Trees
• The information represented in a PS tree and by the X-bar schema can
also be conveyed by another formal device: phrase structure (PS)
rules. Phrase structure rules instantiate the principles of the X-bar
schema and can be used as a guide for building PS trees. A few of the
PS rules needed to express the structures for S and for some of the
phrases given above are:
The infinity of language: recursive rules
• … languages have various means of creating longer and longer
sentences, such as adding an adjective or a prepositional phrase. For
example, an NP may contain any number of adjectives as in the
kindhearted, intelligent, handsome boy. How do we account for this?
Here is one reason that linguists posit the abstract category N̅. To
account for the potentially limitless number of adjectives we need a
recursive rule—one that repeats itself—on N̅:
• Without N̅ we would be forced to have a recursive rule on NP such as
NP→A NP, but although that would capture the recurring nature of
the adjective, it would not work because it would allow the Det to
show up in an impossible place as in *kind-hearted, intelligent, the
boy:
A phrasal category that is sister to an X̅ and
daughter of a higher X̅, as in the above
structures, is called an adjunct, and is
distinct from a complement, which, as we’ve
In verb phrases the direct object is
seen, is defined structurally as sister to the
always the complement and nearly
head X. And like complements, adjuncts may
every other addendum is an adjunct. As
be of any phrasal type (XP). The first of the
we have seen, the puppy in found the
adjunct patterns above is reflected in the
puppy is a complement, but in the park
adjective and intensifier recursive rule (15)
in found the puppy in the park is an
where the adjunct is the intensifier.
adjunct.
What heads the sentence

• John may/must/can win the race today/tomorrow.

• *John may/must/can win the race yesterday.
• John could/would have tantrums when he was a child.
• John could leave the country tomorrow.

Just as the VP is about the situation described by the verb—eat ice

cream is about “eating”— so a sentence is about a situation or state
of affairs that occurs at some point in time. Thus, the category
Tense is a natural category to head S.
 The child ate.

The girl may cry.

Structural ambiguities

• ambiguity ( 중의성 ): a structure that has more than one meaning

• The boy saw the man with the telescope.
More structures
PS rules introduced in the textbook
References

• https://www.google.com/search?
q=linguistics&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjPlNC8kPXwAhWLPZQKHcupCVcQ_AU
oAXoECAEQAw&biw=1049&bih=755#imgrc=n-7-U2aNnxKZIM
• Radford, A. 2003. Syntax: a minimalist introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Trask, R.E. 1993. A dictionary of grammatical terms in linguistics. London/New York: Routledge.