SYNTAX
Seminar
handout 1
Instructor: Szécsényi, Krisztina
Email address: [email protected]
The seminar gives a survey of the major fields in the grammar of English: word classes,
syntactic constituents, construction types, clauses, as well as the principles and conditions
underlying syntactic operations. On the basis of the achievements of generative linguistics,
the course offers sound foundations for any further study in English linguistics.
The course deals with fundamental issues in the grammar and in particular the syntax of
English in the framework of modern grammatical theory. Emphasis in the latter part is placed
on arguments for and against proposals concerning grammatical structures and analyses. The
course aims at explaining what systematic regularities define language in general and English
in particular.
Grading will be based on two homeworks (30%), a midterm (30%) and and endterm paper
(40%).
Grading policy: 100%-87%: 5; 86% -75%: 4; 74% -63%: 3; 62% -51%: 2; 50%-0%: 1
Handouts downloadable from the SEAS homepage.
Textbook:
2006
Mark Newson et al, Basic English Syntax with Exercises, HEFOP, Budapest,
THE CENTRAL QUESTIONS OF LINGUISTICS
1. What is language?
Difficulties of definition. Communication? cf. animal communication
(www.nytud.hu/nyelv_es_nyelvek/) . Natural languages vs. artificial languages
2. What do we know when we know a language?
Knowledge of language versus use of language. competence vs. performance.
A native speaker, by definition, has a perfect knowledge of his/her language.
There are no primitive/superior languages (debate on LingBuzz about Piraha).
Answers to question [2] must tackle problems like:
(1) Different forms, identity of (conceptual, thematic, logical, truth-functional) meaning
a. Bill claimed Jim to have hit Jack.
b. Jim was claimed by Bill to have hit Jack
c. Jack was claimed by Bill to have been hit by Jim.
(2) Identical conceptual/thematic meanings - different quantifier scopes & logical meanings
a. Everybody in this room speaks two languages.
b. Two languages are spoken by everybody in this room.
(3) The interpretation of different pronominal forms
Binding theory: the module of the grammar regulating the interpretation of nominal
expressions.
Bertie hurt him.
Bertie hurt himself.
Bertie said that he felt rather ill./*Bertie said that himself felt rather ill.
Bertie expected him/self to feel a little better.
He expected Bertie to feel a little better.
full noun phrases: refer independently, select a referent from the universe of discourse,
referential expressions.
pronouns: select a subgroup from the wider domain of entities which we might want to talk
about. Features specified, coreference with something from context.
anaphors (reflexives, reciprocals): lack independent refernce, must be coreferent with
something, need an antecedent (a linguistic item they can be coreferent with)
Problems (1)-(3) and the like solved by relating form and meaning in sentences, over which
speakers are capable of making judgements. Operations are structure-dependent.
Sound (phonological structure) & meaning (semantic structure) are not directly relatable,
have to be encoded on different levels: intermediate (syntactic) levels.
Syntax relates form and meaning
3. How do we come to have knowledge of (some) language?
Argument from ’poverty of stimulus’: how to acquire a richly articulated system of
knowledge on the basis of the scattered, chaotic, haphazard data available to the learner
(=child)? Can the learning process be based on conditioning (Stimulus  Response)
 postulation of language faculty: an innate language acquisition device specific to the
human species located in the brain. Genetically given mental organ determining stages of
acquisition, allowing for cross-linguistic variety.
Rules vs. imitation: systematic errors in language acquisition: goed – went
The number and length of sentences is infinite → need for deductive definition instead of
enumeration (sentences)
PRINCIPLES AND PARAMETERS, UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR
Structuralist approach: languages can vary in unpredictable ways, seems to be wrong. The
central role of rule-formation, overgeneralisation as evidence for it. Genetic background:
language faculty, universal properties of language expected/predicted.
1. What does the language faculty contain?
Principles: general principles concerning language, universal: we are born with the same
capacity for language acquisition. Structure dependency, VP= V+Object, order not fixed; Whquestions
Parameters: different options given by the principles. Different parameter-settings lead to
differences between languages. OV or VO order within the VP; Wh-movement or Wh in situ
Language acquisition: choosing the right parameter. How?
Automatic, unconscious, mandatory (you cannot decide not to understand a sentence you
hear).
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Language is an independent entity, you cannot describe everything: it always changes (time,
place, social scale, attitude, topic). You can create an infinite number of sentences, sentences
themselves can be infinitely long. Recursive rules (the same rule can be applied again and
again).
 language is an open, creative system, not simply imitation. The task of the linguist is to
explain how language works. Rule-governed system vs. stimulus-response approaches.
Infinite rule-governed creativity
Generative Grammar: a set of rules with the help of which you can generate all and only
the well-formed expressions of (a) language.
Language is structure dependent: all syntactic rules in all languages operate on
structures rather than on unstructured strings of words. Humans are capable of identifying
structure-independent patterns in the context of a puzzle, but not in the context of
language learning. (No "move the third word from the left" rule)
Structure dependency seems to be one of the properties of language that can be regarded
innate (see e.g. yes/no-questions, no structure independent types of errors made by
children).
Who does the coach want to shoot?/Who does the coach wanna shoot?
→ only one of the sentences is ambiguous, wanna-contraction cancels one of the potential
interpretations. Why? Explanation in terms of traces:
Whoi does the coach want t i to shoot?/Whoi does the coach want to shoot t i?
Whoi does the coach wanna shoot t i?/second option not available after contracting want to
In general it can be stated that we know much more than could be expected based on the
quantity and quality of the input e.g. ambiguity, pronominal reference, wanna-contraction.
X-BAR THEORY: the structure-building module
A module of GB (Government and Binding Theory) containing three very simple rewrite
rules to describe the structure of the expressions of a language:
1. the specifier rule:
XP  Specifier X’
2. the complement rule:
X’  X Complement
3. the adjunct rule (optional, recursive):
XP  XP, Adjunct
A little terminology
X is the head of the phrase. It is a word level or zero level category. It projects its
properties to the phrase (XP) via the X', so that the category of X is the same as X' and XP.
X' and XP are projections of the head of different levels. X' is the first level of projection
and XP is the second. In X-bar theory it is claimed that a head projects only two levels and
hence XP is the top of the phrase (typically represented as XP). It is therefore also known as
the maximal projection. The presence of X (the head) is obligatory in XP.
Complement position: sister to the head, syntactically very close to it. A position for
certain types of complements (non-subject arguments).
Specifier position:. in English this always precedes the X' to which it is sister and as
the head is inside X', the specifier will therefore precede the head. The mother of a specifier
is XP. Arguments (both the subject and the complement(s) selected by a predicate) can appear
in this position.
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Adjunct: introduced by a recursive rule: i.e. it can keep on applying infinitely. No
linear relationship between the YP and its sister XP (indicated by the comma), the YP can
either precede or follow the XP. Structurally an adjunct is sister to an XP, daughter of an XP.
It is more distantly related to the head than the complement. When both a complement and a
(post-head) adjunct are contained in a phrase, X-bar theory predicts that the order will be
Complement – Adjunct
Specifiers, Complements, Adjuncts: phrase-sized constituents with their own internal
structure conforming to X-bar Theory.
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