Practical Grammar 3: Difference between revisions
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(3) those bottles<br> | (3) those bottles<br> | ||
(4) *those bottle | (4) *those bottle | ||
In this unit, we will change the grammar so that it makes the correct predictions about (1)-(4). | |||
The source of the problem pointed out above is easy to spot: English determiners and nouns can both be singular or plural and in an NP of the form 'D N' the two words have to agree in number: either they are both singular or both plural. This is shown by (1)-(4). | |||
What this shows, is that so far, the grammar does not contain enough information about words. Besides a part of speech, words also have '''inflectional features''' and the values of these features are regulated in the syntax (this is why these features are also called 'morphosyntactic features': they determine the morphological shape of words, but there distribution is determined by the syntax). | |||
Revision as of 08:50, 10 November 2020
Features
The lexical entries in Grammar 1 all looked like the following:
this D;
those D;
bottle N;
bottles N;
Together with the rule
NP -> D N;
the grammar accepts all the following strings as grammatical:
(1) this bottle
(2) *those bottle
(3) those bottles
(4) *those bottle
In this unit, we will change the grammar so that it makes the correct predictions about (1)-(4).
The source of the problem pointed out above is easy to spot: English determiners and nouns can both be singular or plural and in an NP of the form 'D N' the two words have to agree in number: either they are both singular or both plural. This is shown by (1)-(4).
What this shows, is that so far, the grammar does not contain enough information about words. Besides a part of speech, words also have inflectional features and the values of these features are regulated in the syntax (this is why these features are also called 'morphosyntactic features': they determine the morphological shape of words, but there distribution is determined by the syntax).