Syntax I_ Constituents and Structure - Duke University

Syntax I:Constituents and Structure
Gareth Price – Duke University
Rules for Lectures in Syntax
Structural Analysis
The ___________ is very noisy.I heard a ___________ yesterday.camelbig run baby whitesevendog sing wheel carradio bottle quiet yellowsirenpeople always love word play
Structural Analysis
The ___________ is very noisy.I heard a ___________ yesterday.Gareth Professor Price an airplanemy dog this lecture four bags of wheatthe man with the red face a butterflya change of scenery his words BarakObama
Structural Analysis
___________ is very noisy.I heard ___________ yesterday.Gareth Professor Price an airplanemy dog this lecture four bags of wheatthe man with the red face a butterflya change of scenery his words BarakObama
What does StructuralAnalysis tell us?
Substitution – what can we remove / re-combinre-work from a sentence ‘structure’?Words: Nouns, Verbs Adjectives etc.Larger units?Phrases?NPs, APs etc.Goal: to analyse not just words but theirrecombination into larger units within thesentence
Immediate Constituent Analysis
What are the components of these sentences?The cat saw the mouseThe cat saw the mouse under the tableThe big cat saw the little mouse under the big table[the] [big] [cat] [saw] [the] [little] [mouse] [under] [the] [big] [table]
Immediate Constituent Analysis
If components are merely words, then are these OK?*cat the saw big mouse the table under big little the* big little big the big mouse tabletablecat the bigWhat are the ‘immediate constituents’ here?E.gthe cat / *table catsaw the mouse / *saw table big
Phrase Structure
Where the HEAD is the most important word in the phrase ...![the cat] NP[the dog] NP[his tree] NP[saw the dog] VP[in his tree] PP[[the cat][saw[the dog]][in[his tree]]]
Re-write Rules
NP = Ns / PN / ‘N’ /det+ NVP = V NPPP = P NPN =(cat, dog, tree)Ns = (catS,dogS,treeS)‘N’ = proper noun (Gareth, John, Grandpa)PN = pronoun (I, he, she, it, etc.)V = saw, brought, heardP = (in, on, through, up, under)
Hierarchy
THREE MEN ATE SANDWICHES IN A CARNP VP NP PP NPMycat brought a mouse to my desk
Embededness