User:Gert

Syntax 1 Wiki

The English Language and its Grammar

In this course, I am going to introduce you to syntactic theory, the science of the grammar of phrases and sentences. While we will use examples from other languages from time to time, mostly we will concern ourselves with the structure of English.

Let us begin by asking ourselves why we need grammars at all. I don't mean grammars in the sense of grammar books, but rather in the sense of what someone needs to know in order to correctly speak a language. For instance, pretty much every native speaker of English is able to say that the strings of words in (1) below are English whereas the ones in (2) are non-English:

(1) dogs, to go shopping, loves Jill, waiting for the bus, it is raining, happy cats, . . .
(2) Hunde, einkaufen gehen, go to shopping, waiting for bus the . . .

A video on constituent tests

When you look up the word scissors in the Oxford Learner's Dictionary, you are given the following information about it:

Phonology	scissors
Part of speech	noun
Number	plural
Content	a tool for cutting paper ...

The following representation shows how we will structure the information in a word in this course:

Determine the part of speech of the words in the sentences.
Use the following part of speech labels: A, Adv, Conj, Comp, Det, N, P, V

a. Alex/ talked/ to/ my/ best/ friend/ .

b. You/ might/ suspect/ that/ Pat/ is/ a/ genius/ .

c. The/ title/ of/ a/ book/ largely/ determines/ whether/ it/ will/ be/ successful/ or/ a/ flop/ .

Determine the syntactic categories of the following groups of words in the sentences.
Use the following labels: AP, AdvP, NP, PP, VP. Write "-" if the group of words does not form a constitutent.
Example: [S: Pat [VP: will [VP: wait [PP: for Alex]]]]

a. [ Alex [ talked [ to [ my best friend]]]]

b. [ [ The president] [ announced [CP: that [ there [ will [ be [ no further taxes]]]]]]].

{VP[read the paper]}

Head: {read _15 } Category: {NP _5 }

Complement 1: {the paper _15 } Category: {NP _5 }

Complement 2: Category:

3. It is the task of English syntax to explain in a precise and principled fash.ion which strings of words native speakers of English accept as well formed English and which not.

4. This task would be easy to accomplish, if one could simply list all the English strings. But, unfortunately, one cannot do that, since there are infinitely many well formed English strings:

a. Mary is tired. Mary is very tired. Mary is very, very tired. Mary is very, very, very tired. . . .

b. Mary went to the store. Mary went to the store but Jill stayed home. Mary went to the store but Jill stayed home and Sue had the flu. . . .

5. So, it is impossible to list all and only the well formed strings of English words. But what is possible, is to find a property that all and only the strings of English have in common: they and only they are grammatical according to the Grammar of English! All other strings are ungrammat.ical according to the Grammar of English.

6. So, we need to concern ourselves with the Grammar of English. This is what this course is all about!

Quiz question types