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LING Ch 6 Syntax
Chapter 6 Term from Essentials of Language, 2nd edition
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| + | Notation indicating there can be multiples of the attached constituent; similar to ₙ |
| → | The notation for “consists of” |
| ( ) | Notation indicating an optional element in a phrase structure rule |
| # | The symbol used at the beginning of a sentence to indicate the sentence is semantically odd (i.e., has a weird meaning) rather than syntactically (or structurally) ungrammatical |
| Accusative case | The grammatical case used to receive the direct object of a transitive verb |
| Adjective | A word that belongs to a class whose members modify nouns or pronouns |
| Adj | The notation for an adjective |
| AdjP | The notation for an adjective phrase |
| AdjP→(DegP) Adj (PP)ₙ | Phrase structure rule indicating what may be found in an adjective phrase |
| Adposition | A cover term for prepositions & postpositions |
| Adv | The notation for an adverb |
| AdvP | The notation for an adverb phrase |
| AdvP→(DegP) Adv (PP)ₙ | Phrase structure rule indicating what may be found in an adverb phrase |
| Adverb | A word belonging to a class of words which modify any constituent class of words except nouns or pronouns, e.g., verbs, adjectives, adverbs, phrases, clauses, sentences |
| Affix | A morpheme attached to a word stem or base to form a new word or word form |
| Agreement | The (grammatical) alignment of a word to accord with other words to which it relates |
| Answers to questions | A constituency test in which a group of words can stand alone as the answer to a question based on the sentence |
| Arguments | (Noun) phrases that correspond to the participants or actors involved in a sentence’s predicate |
| Article | A word that comes before a noun to show whether it's specific or general, e.g., the, a, an |
| Asterisk (or star) * | The symbol used at the beginning of a sentence to mark linguistically ungrammatical examples |
| Auxiliary | A “helping verb” that accompanies the lexical verb of a verb phrase to express grammatical distinctions not carried by the lexical verb, such as person, number, tense, aspect, & voice |
| C | The notation for a coordinate conjunction or, in syntax trees, a complementizer |
| Case (grammatical) | A grammatical category that refers to inflections which make it clear exactly what function a given word fulfills in a given sentence |
| Clause | A grammatical unit including a predicate & a subject (explicit or implied) & expresses a proposition |
| Cleft | (noun) A sentence with the structure “It is/was __ that ___”; (verb) to divide a sentence into two parts to fit the “It is/was __ that ___” structure |
| Cleft test | A constituency test in which one divides two parts of a sentence from each other, putting part after “It is/was” & the second part after “that” in an “It is/was __ that ___” structure |
| Clitic | A morpheme that has syntactic characteristics of a word, but shows evidence of being phonologically bound to another word, e.g., ‘s for possession in English as in Bob’s Burgers |
| Closed class | A grammatical class of words with limited membership & having primarily grammatical meaning |
| Comp | The notation for a complementizer |
| Complement | A constituent of a clause, such as a noun phrase or adjective phrase, that is used to predicate a description of the subject or object of the clause |
| Complementary distribution | The situation in which terms occur in non-overlapping environments, i.e., never occur in the same environments |
| Complementizer | A (subordinate) conjunction which marks a complement clause, e.g., that for, if, whether |
| Complex sentence | A sentence is one that contains a subordinate embedded clause—a clause inside a clause |
| Compound sentence | A sentence that has at least two main clauses, linked by a coordinating conjunction |
| Conjunction | A word used to connect words, phrases, & clauses, e.g., and, but, or; because, although, etc. |
| Constituent | A group of words that acts together in a sentence; one of two or more grammatical units that enter syntactically or morphologically into a construction at any level |
| Constituency | The relation between a unit which is a part of a larger unit & the whole of which it is a part |
| Constituency test | One of several tests used to identify constituents (words acting together as a unit) in a sentence |
| Coordinate conjunction | A functional category |
| Coordination test | A constituency test in which |
| CP→(Comp) S | Phrase structure rule indicating what may be found in a complementizer phrase |
| D | The notation for a determiner |
| Dative alternation | The alternation between a prepositional indirect-object construction (The girl gave milk to the cat) & a double-object construction (The girl gave the cat milk) |
| Dative case | A situation in which a verb with both a direct object & an indirect object can appear in two structures: one with two noun phrases (NP NP) & one with a noun phrase & a prepositional phrase (NP PP) |
| Declarative (clause) | A clause that makes a statement, something that can be true or false |
| Definite article | An article used before a noun to indicate that the identity of the noun is known to the reader, e.g., the |
| Deg | The notation for degree |
| DegP | The notation for a degree phrase |
| Degree | The extent to which something happens or is the case or the amount which something is felt |
| Determiner | A word or a group of words that specifies, identifies, or quantifies the noun or noun phrase that follows it |
| DP | The notation indicating a determiner phrase |
| Ditransitive predicate | A predicate takes three arguments (subject, direct object, and indirect object); two objects |
| Do-replacement | A constituency test to identify a verb phrase by putting a present or past tense form of “do” in the position the verb phrase occupied in the original sentence |
| Do-support | The use of the auxiliary verb do (including does & did) to form negated clauses, questions, & other constructions in which subject–auxiliary inversion is required |
| Embed | Insert or including one sentence in another |
| Finite | Having a limit or end |
| Fixed word order | (Of sentences) Relying on the order of constituents to convey grammatical information |
| Flexible word order | (of sentences) Relying less on the order of constituents & more on inflection, stylistic factors, the topic or focus of the sentence, etc. to convey grammatical information |
| Focus | Information to be emphasized in a sentence, e.g., something new, of high communicative interest, etc. |
| Function | How a sentence or clause is used, i.e., to make a statement, ask a question, or give a command |
| Functional categories | Sentence elements that have purely grammatical meanings or uses |
| Generativity | The ability to produce sentences never before said & to understand sentences never before heard |
| Grammatical | (Of sentences) Consistent with the patterns & structural rules required by the internal grammar of a language |
| Grammaticality judgement | A linguistic tool involving showing participants sentences that are either grammatical or ungrammatical to investigate the linguistic system of individual users |
| Head | The part of a phrase determining the grammatical category of the whole phrase |
| Head directionality | The ability of heads to either precede or follow their complements |
| Headedness (syntax) | The condition of having one distinct element (the “head”) that determines the category of a phrase as a whole |
| Head final | The head of a phrase follows its complements |
| Head initial | The head of a phrase precedes its complements |
| Head morpheme | The morpheme or base to which an affix is joined |
| Hierarchical structure | The format of linguistics representations in which, in syntax, words are embedded into constituents which are recursively embedded into larger constituents |
| Illocutionary act | The use of a sentence to express an attitude with a certain function or "force" that carries a certain urgency & appeal to the meaning & direction of the speaker |
| Illocutionary force | The speaker's intention in producing an utterance; the effect a speech act is intended to have by a speaker |
| Imperative (clause) | A clause that expresses a request or command |
| Indefinite article | An article used before a noun that is general or when its identity is not known, e.g., a, an |
| Indirect object | The person or thing that receives the direct object & answers the question "for what," "of what," "to what," "for whom," "of whom," or "to whom" |
| It-clefts | A constituency test in which |
| Interrogative (clause) | A clause that asks a question |
| Intrans | The subscript notation for an intransitive verb |
| Intransitive verb | A verb that does not takes an object |
| Intransitive predicate | A predicate that takes one argument (the subject); no object |
| Lexical categories | Class of words (e.g., noun, verb, adjectives, adverbs) which differ in how other words can be constructed out of them |
| Main/independent clause | A clause that can stand alone as a complete sentence |
| Modal auxiliary | A verb (e.g., can, must, might, should) used with another verb to indicate that the state or action expressed is something other than a simple fact (as a possibility or a necessity) |
| Morphology | The study of how words are put together; the study of the internal structure of words |
| Movement | The process of changing or transforming an existing syntactic tree once it has been built |
| Movement/displacement test | A constituency test in which one transforms an original sentence by moving components around, the idea being that one can only move a constituent |
| Negation | A lexical item that denies or inverts the meaning of another lexical item or construction |
| Neopronoun | A word created to serve in place of “she,” “he,” or “they” as a pronoun without expressing gender when referring to a person |
| Nominative case | The naming case used for the subject of the sentence/verb |
| ₙ | The subscript notation indicating that the element can be repeated any number of times |
| N | The notation for a noun |
| Noun | A word that refers to people, places, things, ideas, or concepts & may act as the subjects of a verb, the object of a verb (direct or indirect), or object of a preposition (or postposition) |
| Noun phrase | A phrase that has a noun as its head; a groups of words that contain a noun & in which the noun is the “most important” element |
| NP→(Det) (Num) (Adj)ₙ N (PP)ₙ | Phrase structure rule indicating what may be found in a noun phrase subject |
| Num | The notation for number |
| NumP→(DegP) Numₙ | Phrase structure rule indicating what may be found in a number phrase |
| NP | The notation for a noun phrase |
| Object | The thing/person that the action is done to or that is affected by a verb |
| Open class | A grammatical class of words with a potentially unlimited membership & having content meaning |
| P | The notation for a preposition |
| Particle | A functional category |
| Phrase | A set of words (syntactic structure0 consisting of more than one word but without the subject-predicate organization of a clause |
| PSR | Phrase structure rule |
| Phrase structure rule | A rule that generates a sentence or other syntactic construction from words & phrases & identifies its constituent structures |
| Position | An abstract place of one turn relative to another turn to which it is functionally related |
| Possessor | A determiner indicating possession |
| Postposition | An adposition that occurs after its complement. |
| PP | The notation for a prepositional phrase |
| PP→(Deg) P (NP)ₙ N (PP)ₙ | Phrase structure rule indicating what may be found in a preposition phrases |
| Predicate | The state, event, or activity that the sentence attributes to its subject |
| Prefix | An affix that attaches before its base |
| Preposition | An adposition that occurs before its complement; a word that shows the relationship in time, space, etc. between a noun or pronoun & other words in a sentence, e.g., in, out, below, before, after, of, etc. |
| Prepositional phrase | An adpositional phrase in which a preposition is the head; a phrase that begins with a preposition |
| Progressive | The form of a verb is used to show that the action is continuing |
| Pronoun | A word that functions like a noun & substitutes for a noun or noun phrase, e.g.. they, she, it, them, etc. |
| Proposition | That part of the meaning of a clause or sentence that is constant, despite changes in such things as the voice or illocutionary force of the clause |
| Quantifier | A determiner that expresses a referent's definite or indefinite number or amount, e.g., every, some, each, most, etc. |
| Question | An utterance which serves as a request for information |
| Recursion | The repeated sequential use of a particular type of linguistic element or grammatical structure; the ability to place one component inside another component of the same kind |
| Referent | The concrete object or concept that is designated by a word or expression, i.e., an object, action, state, relationship, or attribute, real or imagined, that a person may talk about |
| Replacement/substitution test | A constituency test in which one replaces a string of words with something whose category is known to establish that the string of words must share a category with the thing it is replaced it with |
| S | The notation for a sentence |
| S→NP VP | Phrase structure rule: A sentence can be made up of a noun phrase followed by a verb phrase |
| S→(AdvP) NP/CP (Aux) (Neg) VP (AdvP) | Phrase structure rule indicating a sentence with adverb phrases, an auxiliary, & negation |
| Selection | The ability of predicates to determine the semantic content of their arguments |
| Sentence | A grammatical unit composed of one or more clauses; a string of words that expresses a complete proposition; a clause that stands on its own |
| Simple sentence | A sentence containing only one clause |
| SOV | Subject-Object-Verb, the most common basic word order in world languages |
| Statement | An illocutionary act that says that some state of affairs is true |
| Structure | The state of whether sentences contain one clause or more than one clause, & (if more than one clause) how the sub-clauses are related to one other |
| Subject | The part of a sentence or clause that commonly indicates (a) what it is about or (b) who or what performs the action (i.e., the agent) |
| Subject agreement | A formal relationship between the number of the subject & verb of a sentence, e.g. singular subject – singular verb, plural subject – plural verb |
| Subordinate/dependent clause | A clause that cannot stand alone as a complete sentence |
| Subordinate conjunction | A conjunction (a connecting word or phrase) that introduces a subordinate/dependent clause, joining it to a main/independent clause, e.g. because, while, although, etc. |
| Suffix | An affix that follows its base |
| SVO | Subject-Verb-Object, a common word order in world languages |
| Syntactic head | The word that determines the syntactic category (i.e., often the part of speech) of that phrase |
| Syntactic category | A set of words &/or phrases sharing common characteristics, e.g., similar structure & sameness of distribution |
| Syntactic function | The grammatical relationship of one constituent to another within a syntactic construction |
| Syntactic Tree | A graphical representation of the structure of a sentence or phrase in terms of its constituent parts to show the hierarchical relationships between different elements of a sentence or phrase |
| Syntactic variation | The differences in the way sentences are structured across different languages or dialects of a language |
| Syntax | The study of how words are organized into phrases & sentences |
| Tense | A verbal category relating the time of a narrated event to the time of the speech event |
| Topic | What the sentence is about; a noun phrase expressing what a sentence is about & to which the rest of the sentence is related as a comment |
| Topic-comment word order | A word order in which the first element in the sentence is the topic (what the sentence is about) & the rest is a comment on that topic |
| Transformation | A type of syntactic rule or convention that can move an element from one position to another in a sentence |
| Trans | The subscript notation for a transitive verb |
| Transitive predicate | A predicate that takes two arguments (subject & direct object); one object |
| Transitive verb | A verb that takes a direct object |
| Transitivity | The number of objects a verb requires or takes in a given instance |
| Tree diagram | A two-dimensional diagram used to display the internal hierarchical structure of sentences as generated by a set of rules; a method for diagramming sentences |
| Ungrammatical | (Of sentences) Inconsistent with the patterns & structural rules required by the internal grammar of a language |
| V | The notation for a verb |
| Valency | The capacity of a verb to take a specific number and type of arguments (noun phrase positions) |
| Verb phrase | A phrase that has the syntactic role of a simple verb, i.e., main verb + auxiliary etc.; a syntactic unit corresponding to the predicate |
| VP | The notation for a verb phrase |
| VP→V intrans | Phrase structure rule indicating what may be found in a verb phrase with an intransitive verb; note: intrans should be in subscript |
| VP→V trans NP | Phrase structure rule indicating what may be found in a verb phrase with a transitive verb; note: trans should be in subscript |
| VP→V ditrans NP NP | Phrase structure rule indicating what may be found in a verb phrase with a ditransitive verb with two noun phrases; note: ditrans should be in subscript |
| VP→V ditrans NP PP | Phrase structure rule indicating what may be found in a verb phrase with a ditransitive verb with a noun phrase & a prepositional phrase; note: ditrans should be in subscript |
| VP→V(AdvP) V (NP) (NP/PP) (AdvP)ₙ | Phrase structure rule indicating what may be included in a verb phrase |
| VSO | Verb-Subject-Object, a word order found in Celtics languages as well as Anishinaabemowin |
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