11.) Syntax 1

What is syntax?

How can we describe what grammar is?

name all word classes!

synonyms for word classes?

How do we decide which word class a word belongs to?

3 criteria for classification

Semantic criteria

Problems?

Morphological criteria

Problems with classification according to morphological criteria:

Syntactic criteria

Problems with classification according to syntactic criteria:

What should we do now?

[The] rain started to pour.

Sandra [slowly] opened the door.

Was it the cat who [knocked] the glass [on] the floor?

My aunt [lives] in [Paris.]

You have to walk [fast], otherwise you will miss [your] bus!

What is a phrase?

What different kinds of phrases do we have?

What is the head of a phrase?

The happy child ate the very tasty cake rather quickly.

What is a clause?

Two types of clause:

Examples of main clauses:

Examples of subordinate clauses:

A sentence can be...

1) Identify the clauses in the following sentences. How many are there?
2) Is the sentence simple, compound, or complex?

If you speak to me like that one more time, I’ll get really angry.

1) Identify the clauses in the following sentences. How many are there?
2) Is the sentence simple, compound, or complex?

I couldn’t think of a better sentence for this task.

1) Identify the clauses in the following sentences. How many are there?
2) Is the sentence simple, compound, or complex?

Some people find linguistic analysis easy, but it is more difficult for others.

1) Identify the clauses in the following sentences. How many are there?
2) Is the sentence simple, compound, or complex?

The woman smiled, rubbing her hands together deviously

1) Identify the clauses in the following sentences. How many are there?
2) Is the sentence simple, compound, or complex?

The acting chairman of both the board of directors and the electoral committee was a man of great ambition and determination, yet also of arrogance and sometimes recklessness.

What are constituents?

How can we identify the constituents of a sentence?

What constituency tests do you know?

What's a pro-form?

Pronominalisation:

eg. [The child] ate the ice-cream.

Movement

eg. with child

Coordination

Gapping

eg. with: The child has eaten the ice-cream.

Sentence fragment

eg. The child ate the ice cream.

Ordering of elements
We tend to order elements in a way within phrases.

Noun Phrase?

Ordering of elements

Verb Phrase?

We can put phrases together to make larger phrases.

How is that called?

example?

Clause: Robert likes the tree in the garden.

how merged?

Make a tree diagram for

The man drank the water.

How can we display ambiguity?

Example: The Italian food critic

What is recursivity?