Slide Linguistics: Structures syntax

Linguistics 001 Syntax Linguistics Structures Syntax I 2009 Plagiarism at Harvard Last year, a Harvard student accused of plagiarism of a teen novel Sabrina was the brainy Angel Yet another example of how every girl had to be one or the other Pretty or smart Moneypenny was the brainy female character Yet another example of how every girl had to be one or the other Smart or pretty The infinity of syntax gives a strong hint Infinity of syntax Try typing in Google (in quotes) the first one, two, th.

Linguistics: Structures

Syntax I 2009

Plagiarism at Harvard

• Last year, a Harvard student

accused of plagiarism of a teen

Infinity of syntax

• Try typing in Google (in quotes) the first one, two, three, four … words in today’s paper

– A movement hopes to save from demolition hundreds of buildings built by the Works

Progress Administration (from

NYTimes.com)

• Virtually every sentence you hear is

new!

– Phrases, constituents, ambiguity

– Cf Features, consonants, vowels, onsets, syllables,

words, morphemes, …

Words and Categories

• Syntax is putting words together?

– “The cat meows”

– “The dog barks”

– Cannot memorize all the word combinations (see Google search)

• Different combinations of words but

same combinations of different words

– “Article Noun Verb”

– Structures again…

Structure Review

• As we saw in our discussion of

phonology and morphology, the

structure is crucially involved in the

function

un lock able /k/ /ae/ /t/

What kind of structures

• AB, ABAB, ABABAB, ABABABAB ….

• AB, AABB, AAABBB, AAAABBBB ….

• Which group of patterns is more complex?

• Cognitive science was pretty much launched

by this kind of studies! (AB as linguistic

units)

(AB)n vs AnBn: syntax is not flat

• Structure is critical in syntax;

we will examine two major

points this week

– The notion of phrase ; why do some sequences of words “go together” more than others?

– Movement (Wed): how do we understand the object

of the verb in the following sentences:

John ate several apples.

What did John eat _?

Structure of Questions

• At a first glance, question

formation in English appears to involve a rule like ‘move the

auxiliary to the front of the

sentence’:

The cat is on the balcony.

Is the cat on the balcony?

Questions, cont.

• This rule is not adequate In cases with more than one auxiliary, we

have to know which one is affected:

The cat that is on the balcony is chasing the mouse

Is the cat that is on the balcony chasing the mouse?

* Is the cat that on the balcony is chasing the mouse?

Complex structures

• In examples of this type, the point was that the

auxiliary cannot be one that is ‘inside’ a complex subject What does this mean? Consider the

following sentences:

1 John is in the garden.

2 The boy is in the garden.

3 The woman with the red hat is in the garden.

4 The woman with the red hat that John was talking

to yesterday when he went to the store to buy

some batteries for his camera is in the garden

 The subject can be arbitrarily long, and it cannot

be broken apart in question formation

Subjects, cont.

• The subjects in the sentences above are all different from each other

• However, for the purposes of question

formation, they behave in exactly the

same way

• The rule for questions of this type ignores

subjects and their internal structure, treating them all the same

• Thus the rule cannot be stated linearly; it has

to be stated in terms of a complex

organization of the sentence

– The woman with the red hat

– The woman with the red hat that John was talking to

yesterday when he went to buy some batteries for his camera

• In terms of sentence structure, each of these behaves in the same way They are grouped under the heading ‘ NP’

for ‘Noun Phrase’

• The idea here is that they are phrases that have

properties of the head (John, boy, woman, woman),

independently of other things that might be there

All about the cat

• The head of a phrase defines its “aboutness”:

– The big cat

– The cat that made a mess

– The cat in the hat

– The hat-wearing cat

– The cat that came back

– The cat that came back in a hat

Phrases, cont.

• Each of these phrases has a

head, where the head is the

important lexical category that determines the properties of

the phrase:

– Sample VP: [ kick the ball]

– Sample AP: [ proud of his daughter]

– Sample PP: [ in the garden]

Phrases and other phrases

• Phrases can contain other phrases; this

is the property of language that allows

us to start with words etc and assemble them into larger and larger objects

• Example: Verb Phrase: [kick the ball]

– This VP is headed by the V(erb) kick

– Along with the V kick, we have the NP [the

Quiz: Pick out the phrases

• in front of the mirror

When in doubt …

• Vertigo(NP) The third man (NP)

• Kill Bill (VP) On golden pond (PP)

• Bend it like Beckham (VP)

• Mr Smith goes to Washington

(S(entence))

• One flew over (*PP)

• When Harry met (*VP)

• It’s a wonderful (*NP)

Even toddlers know that!

The warm milk is for cookies

The apple juice is all gone

This one is crappy I want that truck

Kitties like sleeping

Secrets of baby talk

The milk [is [for cookies] ] The juice [is [all gone] ]

I [want [that truck] ] Kitties [like sleeping]

Cookie Monster [has cookies [for supper]] (why

can’t I?) Daddy’s [ gone [all the time]]

I don’t want [a truck [that small]]

You are [ sleeping [like a pig]

Tests for adults

• The organization of words and

phrases into larger units involves

• There are reasons for grouping

some units together but not

others

– Let’s look at some of these reasons

– He put it on the table that’s by the door.

– *He put it there that’s by the door.

• The PP in the second example is [on the table that’s by

the door] Thus there cannot be substituted for the

subpart on the table

Test 2: Movement

• In the next lecture we will look at

movement in detail For right now, note

that movement is another way of

diagnosing constituent structure:

• Ok:

– I like these apples

– These apples , I like

• Not Ok:

– I like the apples that John bought

– * The apples I like that John bought.

• Ok:

– The apples that John bought , I like

Putting it together

• To this point, we have concentrated on establishing that words are assembled into phrases

• Larger units like clauses and sentences involve hierarchical structures as well

• They involve the arrangement of these phrases with respect to one another

A simple sentence

• Consider:

The boy kicked the ball

• We have three lexical categories

here; the nouns boy, ball, and the

verb kick

• This gives us three phrases

• Determining how these phrases are organized into the sentence involves the same reasoning we applied above

Possible structures

• In principle, the three phrases could be arranged in two ways; this is exactly

parallel to what we did with words

before (I’m using ‘S’ here as the label for ‘sentence’):

NP V NP NP V NP

the boy kicked the ball the boy kicked the ball

The options

• The different structures take different

positions on the status of the VP; is it

– The object and verb that form a VP, or – The subject and verb that form a VP?

• We can use the diagnostics above to give

us an answer

• Recall the Dear Old Queen vs Queer Old Dean example

Substitution:

– John ate an apple

– Mary did too.

– Did = <ate an apple >

– ??? an apple?

Verb + Object behaves like a constituent

Movement:

Mary said she would fix the car with a wrench

…and [fix the car with a wrench ] she did

 Tests indicate that Verb + Object behave like a constituent (structure 1)

Recursion: Toddlers vs Teens

• “This is the dog that worried the

cat that chased the rat that ate the cheese that lay in the house that

Jack built”

• “There is a rumor going around

that she told me that you told her that I saw you kissing Jim that he

told you not to.”

Recursion in Harry Potter

http://youtube.com/watch?v

=jsiF_G78aLs

Ronald would like me to tell you

[ that Seamus told him [ that

Hagrid ís looking for you ] ] ]

• This is the cheese that lay in the house.

• This is the cheese that the rat ate that lay

in the house.

• This is the cheese that the rat that the cat

• This is the cheese that the rat that the cat

that the dog worried chased ate that lay

in the house.

• (more when we talk about language

processing in the brain)