In

In language,
language, the
the ignorant
ignorant have
have prescribed
prescribed laws
laws to
to the
the learned.
learned.

(Richard, 1830)
 A sentence is a sound

Syntax is: in itself on which

sounds called words
may be strung.
strung

• The study of sentence structure

Syntax aims

To answer the following questions:

• What
What are
are the
the parts
parts that
that make
make up
up a
a sentence?
sentence?
• What
What are
are the
the properties
properties of
of these
these parts?
parts?
• How
How are
are these
these parts
parts related
related to
to one
one another?
another?
• What
What are
are the
the rules
rules and
and principles
principles underlying
underlying
sentence
sentence structure?
structure?
Syntactic Hierarchy
 MORPHEMES
Morphemes represent the inner structure of words
Morpheme Categories
• Morpheme is the minimal distinctive unit of grammar
• Based on the differences between morphemes,
we can categorize them into groups:
• Bound vs. Free morphemes
1.Morphemes like the past-tense -ed and the
plural marker -s are called bound morphemes
because they cannot occur on their own in
language. Instead, they are always attached
to other morphemes inside a word.
2.But morphemes like cat are called free
because they can also occur as independent
words.
Morpheme Categories
• Content vs. Function
1.Morphemes like -ed and -un are
function morphemes because they
have no inherent lexical meaning (i.e.)
don’t refer to anything in the real
world.
2. In contrast, morphemes like lock and
color are content morphemes
because they have inherent content or
meaning. Such morphemes are also
called roots.
 WORDS
Words matter to syntax because:
• Sentences are made up of words.
• A word’ category (part of speech) shows
how a word functions in a sentence.
Why Word Categories?

• Reason 1: A sentence can contain

an infinite number of words.
• Reason 2: Different words, same
word categories.
• If we have categories for words that can appear in certain
positions and categories for those that don’t, we can make
generalizations (scientific ones) about the behavior of
different word types. This is why we need parts of speech
in syntactic theory.
Categorizing Words

Three Criteria
o Semantic
o Morphological
o Syntactic
 Semantic Criteria

Meaning-based Criteria
• Noun refers to a person, place or thing.
• Verb refers to an action.
• Adjective refers to a quality.
• Adverb refers to the manner, location,
time or frequency of an action.
Semantic Criteria:
Inadequate
Counterexamples:
• sincerity, happiness, pain, etc.
• assassination, construction, etc.
• remain, appear, exist, etc.
• The meaning of that in ‘She said that he
would call you’?.
• you can know the part of speech of a word
without even knowing what it means:
The yinkish dripner blorked quastofically
into the nindin with the pidibs.
Morphological
Criteria

• Inflectional Properties
-Different forms of the same word
cat + -s cats
• Derivational Properties
– How words are derived from other
words sad + -ness sadness
Morphological Criteria:
Not Sufficient

• Morphological criterion, though reliable

in many cases, is not a sufficient
condition for determining word
categories.

• Many nouns such as information, love and pain do

not have a plural form.
• Some adjectives such as absent and circular do
not have comparative and superlative forms.
 Syntactic Criteria

• Different categories have different

distributions.
e.g. 1. They have no ____.
2. They can ____.
3. They read the ____ book.
4. He treats patient very____.
5. He walked right ____ the wall.

Only a restricted set of words

can occur in each position.
Morpho-syntax of Major Word
Classes
Noun

Morphological Properties
• It can take a plural -s morpheme;
Exceptions: children, deer, mice, etc.
• It can be modified by a possessive (apostrophe: ’s)
• It contains morphemes like the following: -ity, -ness,
-action, -er, -ion, -ment, -ance, -hood.
Noun
Syntactic Properties
• Preceded by determiners like: a, an, the,
this, that, these, those and numerals like:
one, two, three
• Preceded by an ADJECTIVE
• Followed by a PREPOSITION
• Preceded by a PREPOSITION
Verb

Morphological Properties
• takes a past tense -ed; exceptions: went, left
etc.
• third-person singular agreement -s; e.g.
writes
• takes a progressive tense morpheme -ing;
e.g. running
Verb

Syntactic Properties
• preceded by AUXILIARIES.
• preceded by MODAL VERBS.
• preceded by negation words
like not and never.
• preceded by an ADVERB.
• can be followed by a NOUN.
Adjective

Morphological Properties
• has morphemes like -ous, -y, -ish and,
sometimes, -ly. e.g. fibrous, angry, freakish,
friendly
• able to form comparatives and superlatives
with -er and -est. e.g. angrier, angriest.
Adjective

Syntactic Properties
• can be preceded by ADVERBS.
• can occur after determiners like the, a,
this, these, those and numerals and
before NOUNS.
• modifies a NOUN
• can follow VERBS.
Adverb

Morphological Properties
• often followed by the morpheme -ly
e.g. swiftly, quickly, angrily.
Exceptions: abroad, now, fast, often,
well, also, very, too, never, so, etc.
Adverb

Syntactic Properties
• modifies a VERB; e.g. walks quickly
• modifies an ADJECTIVE; e.g. swiftly angry,
• modifies another ADVERB; e.g. very angrily
Preposition

Morphological Properties
• Invariable; takes no affixes
Syntactic Properties
• occurs before a noun phrase
• never occurs before an ADVERB or
an ADJECTIVE by themselves.
• can precede another PREPOSITION.
Determiners

• Determiners refer to articles,

demonstratives, possessives, quantifiers.
Morphological Properties
• invariable i.e. take no affixes
Syntactic properties
• occur before adjectives and nouns
Auxiliaries

Morphological Properties
• can be inflected for tense, voice, mood, aspect
Syntactic Properties
• occur before the main verb or before an adverb
modifying the main verb
• can occur before other auxiliary verbs
• can undergo inversion in questions
Conjunctions

Morphological Properties
Invariable; don’t take affixes
Syntactic Properties
Typically connect words of the same
category
Complementizers

Morphological Properties
• invariable; don’t take affixes.
Syntactic Properties
• create embedded sentences
e.g. I wonder if he did so.
- that, if, whether, for
Grammar with
word Categories

A man kicked the ball.

S Det N V Det N
• This grammar misses a great deal of properties
that we can observe, e.g., the agreement and
ambiguity facts in examples like the following:
a. The mother of the boy and the girl is arriving soon.
b. The mother of the boy and the girl are arriving soon.
PHRASES
Constituency

• Why two different agreement patterns?

• Two different possibilities for grouping the words

a. [The mother of [the boy and the girl]] is arriving.

b. [The mother of the boy] and [the girl] are arriving.

• The grouping of words into larger units called

constituents provides the first step in understanding
the agreement facts.
Constituency Tests

Evidence for the existence of phrase

units
• Cleft Construction
• Constituent Questions
• Pronoun Substitution
• Coordination
 Syntax of Major
Phrase Categories
Phrase Structure
Rules (PS Rules)
Phrases are projected from lexical categories.
o NP: Noun Phrase
o VP: Verb Phrase
o Adj P: Adjective Phrase
o Adv P: Adverb Phrase
o PP: Preposition Phrase
NP: Noun Phrase

• head is noun.
__ [liked ice cream]. PS Rule
Options: NP (Det) (A) N (PP/S)
• Ahmad, I, you, students,
• the students,
• the tall students
• the students from UMT,
• the students who cam from UMT, etc.
VP: Verb Phrase

• head is verb.
The student __.
PS Rule
Options:
• VP V (NP) (PP/S)
ran, sang,
• lifted heavy chair,
• walked the dog through the park,
• thought Izza is honest, etc.
Adj P:
Adjective Phrase
• head is adjective.
PS Rule
He feels__.
Options: Adj P Adj (PP/ VP/S)

• happy, sad,
• proud of you,
• proud to be his students,
• proud that he passed the exam, etc.
Adv P:
Adverb Phrase
• head is adverb.
He behaved __.
PS Rule
Options:
• well, carefully Adv P (AdvP) Adv

• very politely, very well, etc.

PP:
Preposition Phrase

• head is preposition.
The squirrel ran right__. PS Rule
Options: PP P NP
• up the tree,
• into the box, etc.
Grammar with
Phrases

• PS rules can generate infinite number of

grammatical sentences.
– Recursive application of PS rules
• PS rules help us to identify hierarchical
structures, and thus enable us to represent
the structural ambiguities of sentences.
Phrase
Representation

• Labelled Bracketing
[The woman] [went] [to the store]]
• Tree Diagram (Phrase Marker)
S
NP VP
Det N V PP
P NP
Det N
 3 Dimensions of Analysis

The monkey scratched a boy on Monday.

• Syntactic Categories
[[S
S [[NP
NP The
The monkey]
monkey] [[VP
VP scratched
scratched [[NP
NP a
a boy]
boy] [[PP
PP on
on Monday]]].
Monday]]].

• Grammatical Functions
[[S
S [[SUBJ
SUBJ The
The monkey]
monkey] [[PRED
PRED scratched
scratched [[OBJ
OBJ aa boy]
boy] [[MOD
MOD on Monday]]]..
on Monday]]]

• Semantic Roles
[[S
S [[agt
agt The
The monkey]
monkey] [[pred
pred scratched
scratched [[pat
pat aa boy]
boy] [[loc
loc on Monday]]]..
on Monday]]]