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What is Syntax?

What is Syntax?. The rules that govern the structure of utterances; also called grammar The basic organization of sentences is around syntax build sentences around syntactic constituents; not word meaning nonsensical sentences & non-grammatical sentences

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What is Syntax?

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  1. What is Syntax? The rules that govern the structure of utterances; also called grammar The basic organization of sentences is around syntax build sentences around syntactic constituents; not word meaning nonsensical sentences & non-grammatical sentences colorless green ideas sleep furiously -vs- run boy the quickly to dog home the

  2. More Proof Nonsensical words/lexical gaps ‘Twas brilig, and the slithytoves did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves and the mome rathsoutgrabe. The grammatical constituency is clear even if you don't know what the word means

  3. Two Levels of Structure surface structure final result of the grammar deep structure underlying structure, based upon grammatical categories and constructed by syntactic rules Most prescriptive grammars only deal with surface structure concerns. Why? They address how we write, not how we speak. Also most deal with style concerns, ie effective language use, rather than true grammatical rules

  4. Transformational Generative Grammar Generative Grammar rules that allow us to create any sentence Transformational Grammar uses “shortcuts” to change surface structures Descriptive not telling us how we should construct sentences, but trying to explain how we create sentences

  5. Levels of Constituency Word—smallest unit in syntax N, V, Adj, Adv, Det, Pro, Prep, Comp, Conj Phrase—consists of word level constituents Consists of a head and compliments NP, VP, PP, AP, CP Sentence—consists of Aux, Phrases, and a few function word constituents

  6. What is an Auxiliary? Aux is the head of a sentence AuxTense (modal) (have +en) (be +ing) Tense Past or Non-Past Modalcan, do, will, may, etc The “+en” and the “+ing” attach themselves to the main verb have +en eg. have written be +ing eg. is writing

  7. Properties of Syntactic Rules Grammatical—meet with native speaker’s linguistic competence Open-ended—allow for endless productivity in language Synonymy—allow to express idea in more than one way Ambiguity—allow a sentence to have more than one meaning

  8. A Few Notes About the Rules Simplified rules Hierarchical: follow L to R Parenthesizes mark optional components An arrow [] means “consists of” A superscript n [ n ] means this component can be repeated More than one rule means more than one choice

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