Syntactic atom - a constituent of syntactic structure
Phrase structure rules - define the constituency of syntactic structures. Meaning is irrelevant.
Subcategorization rules - constraints on the syntactic combinability of particular words. Often have to do with particular meaning categories.
Noun subcategories - some nouns can take articles, others cannot or can do so only with special meaning:
common count nouns proper nouns mass nouns
book, table, boy Emily, Utah, Mars snow, mud, water
"a" or "the" freely usu. no article usu. only "the"
Verbs subcategories - define verb government
Can a given verb take a NP object? a prepositional phrase?
transitive verb - can take an object
1. optionally: read, write, play (object may be merely implied)
2. obligatorily: make, put
3. ditransitive: takes direct and indirect object: give, send, tell (something to somebody)
intransitive verb - cannot take an object
can take no object, complement or preposition: exist, sleep
linking verbs take a predicate nominal complement: is, become, smell, make
Parsing - dividing sentences into their syntactic constituents
The big dog // ate the bone.
Parsing problems - can be solved by tree diagrams:
old men and women
a) old men and old women b) women and old men
The chicken is too old to eat.
The chicken is too for it to eat.
The chicken is too old for people to eat it.
Flying planes can be dangerous.
Operating a plane is dangerous.
A plane that someone is flying can be dangerous for you.
Transformational rules - convert one syntactic structure into another while preserving the real-world meaning.
| ACTIVE | PASSIVE |
| I ate the ice cream. | The ice cream was eaten by me. |
| I ate the ice scream. | Who ate it? What did I eat? |
transformational-generative grammar. Noam Chomsky (1957):
1) Surface syntax in a language derives from a small number of deep structures.
2) These deep structures are universal.
3) These deep structures are inborn.
Definitions of Grammar
OUR DEFINITION - the set of patterns in language that have specific function but no set meaning.
Other common definitions
descriptive grammar - detailed account of natural usage.
prescriptive grammar - corrective description, w/ value judgements
grammars of foreign languages - teaching descriptions