Syntax: The Sentence
Patterns of the
Language
Learning
Goals
• Hierarchical
sentence
structure
• Word
categories
• X-‐bar
• Ambiguity
• Recursion
• Transforma=ons
Syntax
• Any speaker of any human language can produce
and understand an infinite number of possible
sentences
• Thus, we can't possibly have a mental dictionary
of all the possible sentences
• Rather, we have the rules for forming sentences
stored in our brains
– Syntax is the part of grammar that pertains to a
speaker's knowledge of sentences and their structures
What the Syntax Rules Do
• The rules of syntax combine words into phrases
and phrases into sentences
• They specify the correct word order for a language
– For example, English is a Subject-Verb-Object (SVO)
language
• The President nominated a new Supreme Court justice
• *President the new Supreme justice Court a nominated
• They also describe the relationship between the
meaning of a group of words and the arrangement
of the words
– I mean what I say vs. I say what I mean
What the Syntax Rules Do
• The rules of syntax also specify the grammatical relations of
a sentence, such as the subject and the direct object
– Your dog chased my cat vs. My cat chased your dog
• Syntax rules specify constraints on sentences based on the
verb of the sentence
*The boy found *Disa slept the baby
*The boy found in the house Disa slept.
The boy found the ball Disa slept soundly
Zack believes Robert to be a gentleman
*Zack believes to be a gentleman
Zack tries to be a gentleman
*Zack tries Robert to be a gentleman
What the Syntax Rules Do
• Syntax rules also tell us how words form groups and are
hierarchically ordered in a sentence
“The captain ordered the old men and women off the ship”
• This sentence has two possible meanings:
– 1. The captain ordered the old men and the old women off the ship
– 2. The captain ordered the old men and the women of any age off the
ship
• The meanings depend on how the words in the sentence are
grouped (specifically, to which words is the adjective ‘old’
applied?)
– 1. The captain ordered the [old [men and women]] off the ship
– 2. The captain ordered the [old men] and [women] off the ship
What the Syntax Rules Do
• These groupings can be shown hierarchically in a tree
• These trees reveal the structural ambiguity in the phrase “old men
and women”
– Each structure corresponds to a different meaning
• Structurally ambiguous sentences can often be humorous:
– Catcher: “Watch out for this guy, he's a great fastball hitter.”
– Pitcher: “No problem. There’s no way I've got a great fastball.”
What Grammaticality
Is Not Based On
• Grammaticality is not based on prior
exposure to a sentence
• Grammaticality is not based on
meaningfulness
• Grammaticality is not based on
truthfulness
Sentence Structure
• We could say that the sentence “The child
found the puppy” is based on the
template:
Det—N—V—Det—N
– But this would imply that sentences are just
strings of words without internal structure
– This sentence can actually be separated into
several groups:
• [the child] [found a puppy]
• [the child] [found [a puppy]]
• [[the] [child]] [[found] [[a] [puppy]]
Sentence Structure
• A tree diagram can be used to show
the hierarchy of the sentence:
The child found a puppy
Constituents and
Constituency Tests
• Constituents are the natural groupings in a
sentence
• Tests for constituency include:
– 1. “stand alone test”: if a group of words can
stand alone, they form a constituent
• A: “What did you find?”
• B: “A puppy.”
– 2. “replacement by a pronoun”: pronouns can
replace constituents
• A: “Where did you find a puppy?”
• B: “I found him in the park.”
Constituents and
Constituency Tests
– 3. “move as a unit” test: If a group of
words can be moved together, they are a
constituent
• A: “The child found a puppy.” ! “A puppy
was found by the child.”
Constituents and
Constituency Tests
• Experimental evidence shows that people
perceive sentences in groupings
corresponding to constituents
• Every sentence has at least one constituent
structure
– If a sentence has more than one constituent
structure, then it is ambiguous and each
constituent structure corresponds to a different
meaning
Syntactic Categories
• A syntactic category is a family of expressions that can substitute
for one another without loss of grammaticality
The child found a puppy. The child found a puppy.
A police officer found a puppy. The child ate the cake.
Your neighbor found a puppy. The child slept.
• All the underlined groups constitute a syntactic category known as a
noun phrase (NP)
– NPs may be a subject or an object of a sentence, may contain a
determiner, proper name, pronoun, or may be a noun alone
• All the bolded groups constitute a syntactic category known as a
verb phrase (VP)
– VPs must always contain a verb but may also contain other constituents
such as a noun phrase or a prepositional phrase (PP)
Syntactic Categories
• Phrasal categories: NP, VP, PP, AdjP, AdvP
• Lexical categories:
– Noun: puppy, girl, soup, happiness, pillow
– Verb: find, run, sleep, realize, see, want
– Preposition: up, down, across, into, from, with
– Adjective: red, big, candid, lucky, large
– Adverb: again, carefully, luckily, very, fairly
• Functional categories:
– Auxiliary: verbs such as have, and be, and modals such as may,
can, will, shall, must
– Determiners: the, a, this, that, those, each, every
Phrase Structure Trees
• The
core
of
every
phrase
is
its
head
– In
the
VP
walk
the
pugs,
the
verb
walk
is
the
head
• The
phrasal
category
that
may
occur
next
to
a
head
and
elaborates
on
the
meaning
of
the
head
is
a
complement
– In
the
PP
over
the
river,
the
NP
the
river
is
the
complement
• Elements
preceding
the
head
are
specifiers
– In
the
NP
the
fish,
the
determiner
the
is
the
specifier
Phrase Structure Trees
• The internal structure of phrasal
categories can be captured using the
X-bar schema:
examples
The subject will later in
Spec-T
This should be A
Phrase Structure Trees
Phrase structure (PS) trees show the
internal structure of a sentence along with
syntactic category information:
Phrase Structure Trees
• In
a
PS
tree,
every
higher
node
dominates
all
the
categories
beneath
it
– S
dominates
everything
• A
node
immediately
dominates
the
categories
directly
below
it
• Sisters
are
categories
that
are
immediately
dominated
by
the
same
node
– The
V
and
the
NP
are
sisters
Phrase Structure Trees:
Selection
• Some heads require a certain type of complement
and some don’t
– The verb find requires an NP: Alex found the ball.
– The verb put requires both an NP and a PP: Alex put the
ball in the toy box.
– The verb sleep cannot take a complement: Alex slept.
– The noun belief optionally selects a PP: the belief in
freedom of speech.
– The adjective proud optionally selects a PP: proud of
herself
• C-selection or subcategorization refers to the
information about what types of complements a
head can or must take
Phrase Structure Trees:
Selection
• Verbs also select subjects and complements based
on semantic properties (S-selection)
– The verb murder requires a human subject and object
!The beer murdered the lamp.
– The verb drink requires its subject to be animate and its optional
complement object to be liquid
!The beer drank the lamp.
• For a sentence to be well-formed, it must conform
to the structural constraints of PS rules and must
also obey the syntactic (C-selection) and semantic
(S-selection) requirements of the head of each
phrase
Building Phrase Structure Trees
• Phrase structure rules specify the
well-formed structures of a sentence
– A tree must match the phrase structure
rules to be grammatical
Building Phrase Structure Trees
The majority of the senate became afraid of the vice
president.
(9)
Corrections to the
textbook typos are in
red.
Building Phrase Structure Trees
The majority of the senate became afraid of the vice
president.
The Infinity of Language:
Recursive Rules
• Recursive rules are rules in which a phrasal category can contain
itself
• Recursive rules allow a grammar to generate an infinite number of
sentences
–the kindhearted, intelligent,
handsome, … boy
What Heads the Sentence
• All sentences contain information about tense—
when a certain event or state of affairs occurred, so
we can say that Tense is the head of a sentence
– So sentences are TPs, with T representing tense markers
and modals
What Heads the Sentence
The girl may cry. The child ate.
Structural Ambiguities
• The following sentence has two meanings:
The boy saw the man with the telescope.
• The meanings are:
– 1. The boy used the telescope to see the man
– 2. The boy saw the man who had a telescope
• Each of these meanings can be represented by a different
phrase structure tree
– The two interpretations are possible because the PS rules allow
more than one structure for the same string of words
Structural Ambiguities
• The boy saw the man
• The boy used a who had a telescope
telescope to see the
man
More Structures
• Adverbs
are
modifiers
that
can
specify
how
(quickly,
slowly)
and
when
(yesterday,
oNen)
an
event
happens
17.
V
!
AdvP
V
16.
V
!
V
AdvP
Transformational Analysis
• Recognizing that some sentences are related to each other is
another part of our syntactic competence
The boy is sleeping. Is the boy sleeping?
• The first sentence is a declarative sentence, meaning that it
asserts that a particular situation exists
• The second sentence is a yes-no question, meaning that
asks for confirmation of a situation
• The difference in meaning is indicated by different word
orders, which means that certain structural differences
correspond to certain meaning differences
– For these sentences, the difference lies in where the auxiliary
occurs in the sentence
Transformational Rules
• Yes-no questions are generated in
two steps:
– 1. The PS rules generate a declarative
sentence which represents the basic
structure, or deep structure (d-
structure) of the sentence
– 2. A transformational rule then moves
the auxiliary before the subject to create
the surface structure (s-structure)
Transformational Rules
• Other sentence pairs that involve
transformational rules are:
– Active to passive
• The cat chased the mouse. ! The mouse was chased
by the cat.
– there sentences
• There was a man on the roof. ! A man was on the
roof.
– PP preposing
• The astronomer saw the quasar with the telescope. !
With the telescope, the astronomer saw the quasar.
The Structural Dependency of Rules
• Transformations are structure-dependent, which
means they act on phrase structures without caring
what words are in the structures
– The Move rule can be applied to any PP as long as it is an
adjunct to V.
– Subject-verb agreement stretches across all structures
between the subject and the verb:
Yes/No
• The
forma=on
of
yes-‐no
ques=ons
comes
from
the
transforma=on
Move
reloca=ng
the
T
from
the
corresponding
declara=ve
sentence:
• The
boy
will
sleep
will
the
boy
___
sleep
C
takes
TP
• C
takes
TP
as
its
complement,
C
can
have
Q
feature,
but
not
always
Embedded
CP’s
• CP’s
are
needed
not
just
for
ques=ons:
– belief
that
iron
floats
(NP
complement)
– wonders
if
iron
floats
(VP
complement)
– happy
that
iron
floats
(AP
complement)
– about
whether
iron
will
sink
(PP
complement)
Examples
of
embedded
CP
Yes/No
ques=ons
T-‐>C
Wh Questions
Example:
What
will
Max
chase?
• This
Wh
ques=on
is
formed
in
three
steps:
– 1.
The
PS
rules
generate
a
basic
declara=ve
word
order:
Max
will
chase
what?
– 2.
Move
shiNs
the
word
what
to
the
beginning
of
the
sentence:
What
Max
will
chase?
– 3.
Move
shiNs
the
modal
will
to
occur
before
the
subject
NP:
What
will
Max
chase?
Wh-‐deriva=on
Wh-‐movement
Do-‐inser=on
• Which
toys
does
Pete
like
Modals/
Auxiliaries
1.
Spot
has
chased
a
squirrel.
2.
Nellie
is
snoring.
•Like
the
modals,
the
auxiliaries
have
and
be
move
to
the
posi=on
preceding
the
subject
in
both
yes-‐no
ques=ons
and
wh
ques=ons.
3.
Has
Spot
____
chased
a
squirrel?
4.
Is
Nellie
____
snoring?
5.
What
has
Spot
____
chased
____?
•The
ques=on
is:
where
do
have
and
be
originate
in
the
d-‐structure?
•Note
that
have
and
be
can
occur
in
the
same
sentence
with
a
modal:
– Nellie
may
be
snoring.
– Spot
must
have
found
a
squirrel.
recursive
v
• Our
analysis
leads
us
to
conclude
that
have/
be
originate
under
V
in
a
recursive
Vd
structure,as
follows.
Tense/Modal
• When
there
is
no
modal,
T
is
occupied
by
a
tense
feature,
which
is
realized
on
have/be,
as
would
be
the
case
for
other
verbs
like
snore:
Movement
from
V-‐>T-‐>C
• What
has
Spot
chased?
• Here
is
the
d-‐structure
(from
the
X-‐bar
derived
phrase
structure
rules):
V-‐>T
T-‐>C
Wh-‐move
• We
see
that
V-‐>T
feeds
T-‐>C,
which
allows
wh
move.
PS
rules
–
Warning,
these
are
textbook
PS
rules.
For
ones
recommended
by
me
see
my
addi=onal
text
• 1.
S
→
NP
VP
• 11.
AP
→
Ad
• 2.
NP
→
Det
Nd
• 12.
Ad
→
A
• 3.
Nd
→
N
• 13.
Ad
→
A
PP
• 4.
VP
→
Vd
• 14.
Nd
→
A
Nd
• 5.
Vd
→
V
NP
• 15.
Ad
→
Int
Ad
• 6.
Vd→
V
PP
• 16.
Vd
→
Vd
PP
• 7.
Vd
→
V
AP
• 17.
Nd
→
Nd
PP
• 8.
Nd
→
N
PP
• 18.
Vd
→
AdvP
Vd
• 9.
PP
→
Pd
• 19.
Vd
→
Vd
Adv
• 10.
Pd
→
P
NP
• P20.
Vd
→
V
VP
UG Principles and Parameters
• Universal Grammar (UG) provides the basic
design for all languages, and each language
has its own parameters, or variations on
the basic plan
– All languages have structures that conform to X-
bar schema
– All phrases consist of specifiers, heads, and
complements
– All sentences are headed by T
– All languages seem to have movement rules
– However, languages have different word orders
within phrases and sentences, so heads and
complements may be present in different orders
across languages
Sign Language Syntax
• The syntax of sign languages also follow
the principles of UG and has:
– Auxiliaries
– Transformations such as topicalization, which
moves the direct object to the beginning of a
sentence for emphasis, and wh movement
– Constraints on transformations
• That UG is present in signed languages and
spoken languages shows that the human
brain is designed to learn language, not just
speech.
