Tallerman: Chapter 1
What is Syntax?
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Syntax
•  How words group together to make phrases and
sentences.
•  The study of the syntactic properties of languages.
•  Word classes; word order; constituent structure;
syntactic constructions
–  The cook will cook dinner now.
–  the red shirt (English) - la chemise rouge (French)
–  Competent women and men will get the best jobs.
–  The truck hit the car. - The car was hit by the truck
–  It was the truck that hit the car.
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Morphology, Semantics, Phonology
•  Morphemes: smallest meaningful units: free vs.
bound morphemes, inflectional vs. derivational
morphemes, clitics.
•  Semantics: the study of meaning: morphemes,
words, phrases, clauses, sentences.
•  Phonology: prosody interacts with syntax: e.g.
intonation.
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Language Acquisition
•  Children can acquire one or more languages
(simultaneously), with no effort and with
minimum linguistic exposure.
•  Children can produce very complex utterances that
they never heard before.
•  Many syntacticians believe that the language
faculty is innate and is grounded in the biology of
human cognition.
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•  http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=_JmA2ClUvUY
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Grammar: study of the organizing
principles of language in general
–  Not prescriptive grammar of English
•  To boldly go where no man has ever gone before.
•  Are there some prepositions that you should never end a
sentence with?
–  Not supposed logical properties of standard dialects:
•  Is that all the faster you can run? (Minnesota English)
•  Is that the fastest you can run?
•  I didn’t do nothing wrong.
•  Je ne mange jamais de viande (French)
I NEG eat never of meat
‘I never eat meat.’
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–  Interested in rules of mental grammar of native
speakers, not just rules in teaching grammars:
• 
• 
• 
• 
Who did you say John saw __?
Who did you say that John saw __?
Who did you say __ saw John?
*Who did you say that __ saw John?
–  Interested in language universals and language
typology:
•  Qui avez-vous dit que Jean voyait __? (French)
Who have you said that John saw
‘Who did you say that John saw?’
•  *Qui avez-vous dit que __ voyait Jean?
•  Qui avez-vous dit qui __ voyait Jean?
Who have-you said who saw John
‘Who did you say saw John?’
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Grammaticality Judgments
•  Our primary source of data in syntax: grammaticality
judgments. •  A sentence is “grammatical" if it sounds natural to a native
speaker. (Descriptive, not prescriptive!)
•  How do we code grammaticality judgments? A star (*)
before a phrase/sentence indicates that it is ungrammatical
for a native speaker of the language. This could mean:
–  “Word salad/gibberish” (*Linguistics doctor the green drive.) –  Meaning OK but syntax not (*Who does Bill wonder why John
loves?) –  Particular meaning not available (*Johni likes himi.)
–  Syntactic (*) vs. semantic (#) ill-formedness (#The table tried to
tell a story.) vs. dialectal variant (% I aren’t coming.)
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Language change can interfere with
grammaticality judgments
• Standard English:
–  less wheat, less boredom, less milk, less difficulty (mass nouns)
–  fewer students, fewer sheep, fewer people, fewer difficulties
(count nouns)
•  Nonstandard English, spreading change:
–  Less students, less sheep, less people, less difficulties
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•  Other grammatical indications of count-mass distinction:
MASS:
How much_____ do you want? COUNT:
How many _____ do you want?
How do the following come out? Why?
rice, beans, peas
•  Universal Grinder: There was dog all over the road.
Universal Packager: I’ll take three coffees.
Universal Sorter: The health food store sells six flours.
• Do languages like Chinese only have mass nouns?
English: three cups of coffee, three books
Chinese: san
bēi
kafe, san
běn
shu
three cup coffee, three volume book
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Language change can interfere with
grammaticality judgments
–  If any candidate hasn’t got a form, they need to get one from the
office.
–  A controversy has emerged in the media concerning two students
who submitted identical papers in an undergraduate education
course. The instructor gave both students a failing grade for the
assignment. One student admitted the work was not their own
and accepted the failing grade, the second student appealed the
failing grade that was given for "submitting identical work”. (SFU
VP-Academic, 1/29/03, email announcement to faculty)
–  God send every one their heart’s desire. (Shakespeare, Much Ado
About Nothing.)
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Language change can interfere with
grammaticality judgments
•  Negation in English: Middle English vs. Modern English –  I say not this by wyves that been wyse.
–  I do not say this for wives that are wise. verb < negation
•  Inversion in English questions: Middle English vs. Modern English –  Say you no? –  Do you say no?
subject and verb are inverted
“do-support" in Qs •  But notice that subject-verb inversion still happens with auxiliary
verbs:
–  He will leave. Will he leave?
–  He left. Did he leave? “subject-aux inversion”
“do-support”
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Dialect differences can interfere with
grammaticality judgments
•  Positive “anymore” in Standard English vs.
Nonstandard English dialects –  I *(don't) watch that show anymore. –  She *(never) dances anymore.
–  %He's been reading a lot of books anymore. •  Double modal auxiliary verbs in Nonstandard
English dialects:
–  I can read that. –  *I will can read that. *I will should read that.
–  %I might could read that. %I might should read that.
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Dialect differences can interfere with
grammaticality judgments
•  Colloquial Canadian English: “be done X”
construction (Jennifer Hinnell, MA thesis,
SFU, 2012)
–  I am done my homework.
–  I am done with my homework.
–  My homework is done.
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Discourse factors can interfere with
grammaticality judgments
–  Topicalization:
•  The tea Kim drank.
•  The tea, Kim drank __, but the homemade beer, she really
hated __.
•  Q: Which languages besides English do you know, and how
well do you know them?
•  A: Spanish, Italian, French, and Latin. Spanish and French I
can read __ well and understand __ verbally, but my speaking
is slow. Italian I understand __, but I don’t read it. I speak it
less well than Spanish and French. Latin I read __ pretty well,
and can write it quite well.
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All Languages have Structure
–  Embedded sentences
– 
– 
– 
– 
[I wonder [if Lee will arrive late] ].
[The claim [that she doesn’t like Kim] is very convincing].
[ [Whenever Kim and Lee arrive] we’ll set off].
[ [That we’ve no coffee left] isn’t my fault].
–  Recursion
–  Kim couldn’t swim.
–  Lee thought that Kim couldn’t swim.
–  I said that Lee thought that Kim couldn’t swim.
•  No longest sentence in any language.
•  All languages have an infinite number of sentences.
•  (Recent controversy: Daniel L. Everett, Language: the Cultural Tool, 2012:
Pirahã (Brazil) has no recursion.)
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Basic Word Order
•  Languages can be typologically distinguished on the basis of how they
(usually) order the Subject (S), the Object (O), and the Verb (V). •  Kim drank the tea.
SVO
*Kim the tea drank. SOV *Drank Kim the tea. VSO *Drank the tea Kim. VOS *The tea drank Kim. OVS The tea Kim drank. OSV
•  SVO, SOV, and VSO are the most common basic word orders VOS: Malagasy (Madagascar).
OVS, OSV are rare, but found in the Carib family of the Amazon.
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Basic Word Order
•  We can determine an unmarked (basic, most
common) word order for most languages. •  But some (e.g. Warlpiri, Australia) are
argued to be “free word order" languages. •  Languages differ in the variants they permit,
and what those orders are used for.
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When do we use marked word orders in
English?
–  Heavy NP shift (e.g. SVOx  SVxO)
•  Mary sent a letter to John. •  Mary sent to John a letter. (Better with a comma
after “John”.)
•  Mary sent to John [a letter which described all the
wonderful meals she ate while she was vacationing
in Hawaii].
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When do we use marked word orders in
English?
•  Promotion and demotion processes, e.g. passive –  And he is unsettled by what he hears from his other son, Neil, a
lieutenant in the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force. [The Times
Picayune, 3/25/03] –  Active version: What he hears from his other son Neil, a lieutenant
in the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, unsettles him.
–  (a) object is promoted to subject position.
–  (b) subject is demoted to by-phrase (or deleted). –  (c) verb changes form.
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Structure Dependence
•  The syntactic rules of all languages are structure-dependent, not just based
on linear order.
•  Phrasal verbs vs. Prepositional phrases.
–  I ran up the bill.
I ran up the hill
–  I ran the bill up.
*I ran the hill up.
–  *It was up the bill that I ran (not the debt). It was up the hill that I ran (not the stairs)
–  *I ran up the restaurant bill and up the phone bill too.
I ran up the hill and up the stairs too. –  I [ran up] the bill
–  I ran [up the hill]
Phrasal verb Prepositional phrase
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Structure Dependence
•  Possessive -'s in English:
–  What was that lady who brought us the cake's name.
–  I hate the guy next door's dog.
–  *What was the lady’s who brought us the cake name?
–  *I hate the guy's next door dog.
–  [the guy next door]'s –  [the lady who brought us the cake]’s
•  The possessive -s attaches at the end of a whole phrase.
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Psychological factors can interfere
with grammaticality judgments
The horse raced past the barn fell.
• We used to have two race horses. Every day, one of them was
raced by one of our jockeys all the way down the road and past
the barn. The other one was raced along the beach. But we
never got a chance to figure out which route was better,
because the day before the Kentucky Derby, the horse raced
past the barn fell.
(garden path sentences, parsing)
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Psychological factors can interfere
with grammaticality judgments
The rat the cat the dog bit chased ate the cheese. The rat ate the cheese.
Q:
Which rat?
A:
The rat the cat chased.
The rat the cat chased ate the cheese
Q:
Which cat?
A:
The cat the dog bit.
The rat the cat the dog bit chased ate the cheese
The man who the boy who the students recognized pointed out is a friend of mine.
[Chomsky, 1965, p. 11]
(Center embedding, memory limitations.)
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How to Read Linguistic
Examples
•  Three lines
–  Words from the language itself
Morpheme-by-morpheme gloss
Translation into English
–  Gloss is needed:
•  Sensei ga gakusei ni tegami o kaita
(Japanese)
‘The teacher wrote a letter to the student’
•  Sgwennodd yr athro lythyr at y myfyriwr
(Welsh)
‘The teacher wrote a letter to the student’
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•  Sensei ga gakusei ni tegami o kaita
teacher student to letter wrote
‘The teacher wrote a letter to the student’
•  Sgwennodd yr athro lythyr at y myfyriwr
wrote
the teacher letter to the student
‘The teacher wrote a letter to the student’
(Japanese)
(Welsh)
–  80% of languages are subject initial like Japanese and English
–  12% of languages are verb initial like Welsh
–  Read translation first, then examine gloss, finally look
at original.
–  Examples are not always word-for-word identical to
English:
•  E
tagi
a
te poki
NONPAST cry PROGRESSIVE the boy
‘The boy is crying.’
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(Rapa Nui)
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Lexical and Grammatical
Information
  Glosses contain LEXICAL information (ordinary type) and
GRAMMATICAL information (small capitals).
–  The
student-s ask-ed for these book-s
DEF.ART student-PL ask-PAST for DEM:PL book-PL
‘The students asked for these books.’
–  Definite article, plural, past tense, demonstrative.
–  Colon (:), dash (-), period (.)
–  Affix: suffix, prefix.
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The Categories of Person and
Number
•  Paradigm:
–  French present tense of être ‘to be’
1st
Singular
suis
Plural
sommes
2nd
es
êtes
3rd
est
sont
– Kwamera has singular, dual, trial, plural
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–  Kwamera has inclusive vs. exclusive first
person forms:
•  sa-ha-akw
1INC-PLURAL-break.up
‘We all break up’ (inclusive ‘we’)
•  ia-ha-vehe
IEXC-PLURAL-come
‘We came.’ (exclusive ‘we’)
•  ia-pkagkiari-mha
1EXC-talk-NE
‘I didn’t talk.’
–  Glosses for person and number:
•  1SG, 2SG, 3SG, 1PL, 2PL, 3PL
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Writing Systems and Glosses
  Roman alphabet is used even for languages which
use e.g., Cyrillic (Russian) or Chinese characters,
etc.
  Lexical tones are often left off (e.g. Chinese).
  Phonetic alphabet used for languages without own
writing system.   Typography is sometimes simplified.
  Glosses are sometimes simplified to include only
relevant information.
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