Syntax

What syntax is

• How words and phrases are arranged
• How words and phrases are grouped (or tied ) together
• Syntactic categories: kinds of words and phrases (noun, verb, etc.)
• Syntactic relationships: how words and phrases relate to each other (subject, direct object, modifier, head)

Two views of syntax

• The generative view
  • Syntax can be studied in its own right. There are purely syntactic principles and constraints.
  • The overarching goal is to arrive at universal principles governing the structure of all languages and particular types of languages.
  • Seek explanations that relate (often highly abstract) underlying representations ("D-structure") to surface forms ("S-structure"). (But generativists may disagree on the degree of abstractness that is permissible.)
• The cognitive/functional view
  • Syntax can only be studied in terms of its communicative functions.
  • One important goal is to arrive at universal tendencies governing the ways in which languages or particular types of languages use grammar to package information.
  • Seek explanations that are based mainly or entirely on surface forms.

Generative syntax: overview

• Motivating independent syntax: semantic vs. syntactic well-formedness
• Syntactic categories: lexical and phrasal
• Order and constituent structure (or dependency relations)
• Relationships between sentences; transformations
• Constraints on structure and transformations

Semantic vs. syntactic well-formedness

• Semantically interpretable but syntactically anomolous:
  Peaceful sleep young young child.
• Syntactically well-formed but semantically anomolous:
  Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. (But see here for some contexts in which this makes sense.)
• Implication: syntax and semantics can be dealt with separately.

Syntactic categories

• Lexical and phrasal categories, subcategories, subcategorization
• Nouns, noun phrases
  • Proper nouns
  • Count and mass nouns
  • NP heads and modifiers
  • Determiners, articles
  • Quantifiers
  • Classifiers
  • Case markers
• Verbs, verb phrases, clauses
  • Verb phrases, subjects, and direct objects
  • Syntactic arguments of verbs
  • Transitivity
    • Intransitive, transitive, and ditransitive verbs
    • Accusative languages (e.g,, English)
    • Ergative languages (e.g., Eskimo, Basque)
      
  • Linking verbs, verbs with sentential complements
• Adjectives, adjective phrases
  • Languages without adjectives (e.g., Mandarin Chinese); verbs or nouns instead
  • Predicative and attributive adjectives
• Adverbs, adverb phrases
• Adpositions (pre-, postpositions), adpositional phrases
• Conjunctions

Syntactic structure

• Constituent structure
• How do we know where the boundaries between constituents are?
  • Can the phrase be replaced by a single word?
  • Do the elements of the phrase constrain each other more than they do the elements outside the phrase?
  • Do the elements of the phrase tend to stay together when the sentence is manipulated?

Phrase structure and phrase structure rules

• Phrase stucture is
  • Generative
  • Hierarchical
  • Recursive

• A possible set of phrase structure rules for English

  S    --> NP VP 	              VP   --> TV NP      
  NP   --> (Det) AdjP* N PP*    VP   --> LV AdjP      
  NP   --> NP CoordConj NP      VP   --> LV PP      	      
  NP   --> Pro                  VP   --> CV that S  
  VP   --> Aux VP               AdjP --> Adv* Adj   
  VP   --> IV                   PP   --> P NP       
  	 		      
  N --> tomatoes                TV --> can
  Pro --> this                  LV --> seemed
  CoordConj --> and             Adj --> pretty
  Aux --> can                   Adv --> pretty
  IV --> died                   P --> under
  CV --> said
  

Phrase Structure: Another Example (Oromo)

1.  gammaccuun  dhagaa  guddaa  arge.
    G.          stone   big     he-saw
    'Gammaccuu saw a big stone.'

2.  dhagaa  guddaa  arge.
    stone   big     he-saw
    'He saw a big stone.'

3.  dugdakoo  duuba   odeessani.
    my-back   behind  they-talked
    'They talked behind my back.

4.  buddeena  kana  bite.
    bread     this  he-bought
    'He bought this bread.'

5.  buddeenicca  kan    bite       jaallatu.
    the-bread    which  he-bought  they-like
    'They like the bread which he bought.'

Transformations

• Problem: how to generate a sentence such as what was Willard wearing? using phrase-structure rules?
• Transformation: structural description (conditions), structural change (actions)
  

  WH question rule

  SD: PRO_wh somewhere in sentence
  SC: (1) move first Aux to left of subject NP, (2) move PRO_wh to beginning of sentence

  Passive rule

  SD: transitive, (topicalize direct object OR avoid subject)
  SC: (1) move subject NP to end, insert by before it, optionally delete, (2) move direct object NP to beginning of sentence, (3) insert tensed form of Aux be as first Aux, (4) put verb in past participle form

• Movement, juxtaposition, insertion, deletion
• Deep and surface structure
• Relations between sentences: questions and declarative, imperative and declarative, passive and active, "topicalized" and untopicalized sentences, "dative-shifted" and non-dative-shifted sentences
• Optional and obligatory transformations

Syntactic ambiguity

• A grammar should assign more than one structure to a syntactically ambiguous sentence. (It is the job of semantics or pragmatics to disambiguate.)
• Some syntactically ambiguous English sentences
  • Francine reads books on volcanoes.
  • The man kept the dog in the house.
  • We painted all the walls with cracks.
  • I dream of you with nothing on.
  • Grover said that Dudley left in his car.
  • We need more honest politicians.
  • Time flies like an arrow.
  • Mary criticized Fran's apartment, so she knocked her flat.

Syntactic typology

• Heads of phrases
• Head-initial and head-final languages
• Specific orderings
  • Verb -- Direct Object
  • Aux -- Verb
  • Adposition -- NP
  • N -- Adj Phrase
  • N -- Relative Clause
  • N -- Possessive NP
  • (Subject -- Predicate)

Modern developments in generative syntax

• Opposition to transformations: they are directional (work for generation, but not parsing), they are too powerful (they permit lots of ungrammatical structures), they are probably not psychologically real, they are not really necessary
• Elaborated phrase structure alternatives to transformations (in Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar, Lexical-Functional Grammar frameworks)
• Attempt to constrain the sorts of phrase-structure rules that are possible through X-Bar Theory, which posits a general rule schema for all phrase types (NP, VP, etc.)
• Attempts to constrain the sorts of transformations that are possible (in Government and Binding / Principles and Parameters framework)

Syntax and semantics from a cognitive-functional perspective

• Some facts about what we need language to do for us
  • The world has lots of regularity in it, and our perceptual systems impose other regularity.
  • We categorize things in the world, and we attend differentially to different things. Language should distinguish different kinds of things from each other.
  • Our perceptual systems group things in the world: relations and the objects they relate, objects and their properties, similar objects into sets. Language should make the relationships between things clear.
  • We can construe situations in the world in more than one way. Language should offer the flexibility to refer to the same situation in different ways.
  • We have different purposes behind the utterances we produce. In many cases we will want produce some effect in an addressee.
  • To achieve our communicative purpose, the addressee must recognize our purpose and must be able to identify the objects that we refer to. Language should make the purpose clear and should offer ways to help the listener identify referents.
  • We may help the addressee by marking some aspects of our utterance as more informative than others. Language should have devices for marking prominence.
  • We tend to say several things about a single object, so we will often need to refer multiple times to the same object. Language should have devices for efficient multiple reference.
• Language and its functions
  • Function
    • Semantics: what language is about
    • Pragmatics: what language does
  • Form: carries meaning, indicates function
    • Syntax
    • Morphology
    • Intonation
• Kinds of things
  • Objects: individuals and types (categories)
  • Relations: atemporal (states), temporal (events)
  • Attributes of objects
• How things relate to each other
  • Coreference: pronouns
  • Objects playing roles within relations
    • Mary loves John. John loves Mary
    • Terry attached herself to the wall with velcro.
    • (Finnish) Juho lyö Heikkiä. Juho Heikkiä lyö. Heikkiä Juho lyö. Heikkiä lyö Juho. Lyö Juho Heikkiä. Lyö Heikkiä Juho. 'Juho is hitting Heikki.'
    • (Swahili) Ni-na-ku-penda. 'I love you.'
      A-na-m-penda. 'He (she) loves him (her).'
  • Syntactic and semantic roles
    • Language offers a small number of syntactic roles in sentences: subject, direct object, etc.
    • A variety of semantic roles (though not many for a single event or state) must be mapped onto a small number of syntactic roles.
    • How this is done for a given language is specified in part in the lexicon ("the SUBJECT of see refers to the PERCEIVER"), in part more generally in the language ("the SUBJECT of verbs of perception in the active voice refers to the PERCEIVER"), in part universally ("if a sentence has an AGENT, it will tend to be referred to by the SUBJECT", unless there are pragmatic reasons to do otherwise")
    • Examples

      

      Clark rolled the ball.
      Clark rolled the ball to Lois.
      The ball was rolled to Lois (by Clark).
      The ball rolled to Lois.
      The ball rolled.
      Lois saw the ball.
      The ball was seen by Lois.

  • Syntactic roles and pragmatic/psycholinguistic considerations
    • Prominence: information, topicality, figure/ground, contrast
    • Universals for how prominence relates to position and syntactic roles ("TOPICs tend to come first, to be SUBJECTs", "NEW INFORMATION tends to come last")
    • Language-specific constructions for dealing with particular types of prominence: word order, morphology, stress
      • My house is south of the campus. The campus is north of my house.
      • I like potatoes. I like potatoes. Potatoes I like. It's potatoes I like. What I like is potatoes. I like potatoes. I'm the one who likes potatoes. It's me that likes potatoes.
      • (Watasi wa) zyagaimo ga suki desu. (Japanese) 'I like potatoes.'
      • Watasi ga zyagaimo ga suki desu. 'I like potatoes. I'm the one who likes potatoes.'
      • The advertisers defaced the classroom. The classroom was defaced by the advertisers. The classroom was defaced.
  • Modification
    • Distinguishing the appropriate referent from other candidates

      
      Clark rolled the red ball.
      Clark rolled the ball he had gotten for his birthday.
      Clark rolled the ball to the girl with dark eyes.

    • Providing more interesting information about a referent
    • Adjectives, relative clauses
    • How languages show what modifies what: agreement, case marking, order; in languages with completely free word order, case marking and/or agreement provides the only information

      (Guugu Yimidhirr: Australia)
      Yarraga-aga-mu-n  gudaa    gunda-y   biiba-ngun
      boy-GEN-mu-ERG    dog-ABS  hit-PAST  father-ERG
      'The boy's father hit the dog.'
      

    • How languages show what role in a relation is played by the object modified by the relation: gaps, relative pronouns
  • Nominalization: treating an event or state as an object

    
    Lois saw Clark roll the ball to her.

• Things we won't have time for: negation, questions, commands, conditional, politeness; iconicity