Grammar

The process of describing the structure of phrases and sentences in such a way that we account for all the grammatical sequences in a language and rule out all the ungrammatical sequences is one way of defining
The terms “article,” “adjective” and “noun” that we used to label the grammatical categories of the words in the phrase the lucky boys come from traditional grammar.
- has its origins in the description of languages such as Latin and Greek. Since there were well-established grammatical descriptions of these languages

The parts of speech

the lucky boys found a bag in the park and they opened it carefully
- Nouns
  - words used to refer to (things)people,objects,creatures,places,qualities,phenomena,abstract ideas
- Articles
  - are words (a, an, the) used with nouns to form noun phrases classifying those “things” (You can have a banana or an apple) or identifying them as already known (I’ll take the apple).
- Adjectives
  - words used, typically with nouns, to provide more information about the things referred to
- Verbs
  - words used to refer to various kinds of actions , states involving people and things in events
- Adverbs
  - arewords used, typically with verbs, to provide more information about actions, states and events
  - Someadverbs (really, very)
    are also used with adjectives to modify information about things (Really large,very strange)
- Prepositions
  - are words (at, in, on, near, with, without) used with nouns in phrases providing information about time,place and other connections involving actions and things.
- Pronouns
  - are words (she, herself, they, it, you) used in place of noun phrases, typically referring to people and things already known
- Conjunctions
  - are words (and, but, because, when) used to make connections and indicate relationships between events

Agreement

-the grammatical connection between two parts of a sentence, as in the connection between a subject (Cathy) and the form of a verb (loves chocolate)
-traditional grammatical analysis has also given us a number of other categories, including “number,” “person,” “tense,” “voice” and “gender.”

Cathy loves her dog
- Cathy
  - category of number {whether the noun is singular or plural}.
  - category of person [1st per_speaker_ ,2nd per_hearer_, 3rd per_any others_]
    - diff forms of en pronouns can be described in terms of person and number
      - I => 1st person singular, you => 2nd person singular, He she it => 3rd person singular
    - Cathy: 3rd person singular person we use ‘loves’ to agree w/ the noun
  - category of gender [Cathy-> her. he,his. it,its]
- loves
  - form of the v must be described in terms of tense category
    - it’s present tense ‘loves’
- the sentence
  - is in active voice: Cathy performs the action of the v.
  - not passive: the action of v happens to Cathy => cathy is loved

Grammatical Gender

The type of biological distinction used in English is quite different from the more common distinction found in languages that use grammatical gender.
Natural Gender -> Based on sex(male/female), Grammatical gender-> Based on the type of noun (masculine/feminine) not tied to sex.
spanish (el sol, la luna), german(die sonne,der mond, neuter das Feuer)
- corresponds to diffs in the class of the nouns
le livre book , das madchen girl

Traditional analysis

1st/2nd/3rd person singular/plural
Each of the Latin verb forms is different, according to the categories of person and number, yet the English verb forms are (with one exception) mostly the same.

The prescriptive approach

The view of grammar as a set of rules for the “proper” use of a language is still to be found today
one thing to adopt the grammatical labels of latin (noun,verb)
it’s another thing to go on n claim that the structure of en sentences === latin’s
- a number of influential grammarians 18th cen,England, set rules for proper use of English (prescriptive approach)
  - You must not split an infinitive
  - you must not end the sentence with a preposition
- and in proper English writing, one should never start a sentence with and
“linguistic etiquette” for the proper use of the language. otherwise social judgments would say u r poorly educated
- however let’s see if these rules are appropriately applied to the English language
You must not split an infinitive !!!!
- Captain kirk’s infinitive
  - televised captain kirk (to boldly go[ira audacter]) ,teacher : baldly to go baldly
  - inf in english to+v / in latin single words ira
  - latin inf can’t be split
  - there are structures in English that differ from those found in Latin
  - rather than think of the English forms as “bad” because they are breaking a rule of Latin grammar.

The descriptive approach

It may be that using a well-established grammatical description of Latin is a useful guide for some European languages (e.g. Italian or Spanish), is less useful for others (e.g. English),
the descriptive approach
- Analysts collected samples of the language they were interested in and attempted to describe the regular structures of the language as it was used, not according to some view of how it should be used.

Structural Analysis

a type of descriptive approach
its main concern is to investigate the distribution of forms in a language
the The method involves the use of “test-frames” that can be sentences with empty slots in them. For example
- The …… makes a lot of noise. (car,dog,child,donkey,radio)
  I heard a ……… yesterday.
we can propose that because all these forms fit in the same test-frame, they are likely to be examples of the same grammatical category (label==noun)
noun phrase (an old car, the prof with the Scotish accent)

Constituent analysis

The technique employed in this approach is designed to show how small constituents (or components) in sentences go together to form larger constituents.
- An old man brought a shotgun to the wedding.

Using this kind of diagramwe can determine the types of forms that can be substituted for each other at different levels of constituent structure.
One advantage of this type of analysis is that it shows rather clearly that proper nouns or names (Gwen, Kingston) and pronouns (I, him, her), though they are single words, can be used as noun phrases and fill the same constituent space as longer phrases (e.g. an old man).

Labeled and bracketed sentences

put brackets (one on each side) round each constituent, and then more brackets round each combination of constituents.
- different constituents at the words level [dog] [the], phrase level [the girl], [loved the girl] , sentence level [all sentence]
abbreviated grammatical terms
- Art (= article) V (= verb)
  N (= noun) VP (= verb phrase)
  NP (= noun phrase) S (= sentence)

we have not only labeled all the constituents, we have revealed the hierarchical organization of those constituents.
(NP) is higher than and contains the noun (N).
A Gaelic sentence
- Chunnaic an gille an cu dubh
  saw the boy the dog black

Syntax

When we concentrate on the structure and ordering of components within a sentence
The word “syntax” comes originally from Greek and literally means “a putting together” or “arrangement.”
we try to adhere to the “all and only” criterion.
- a prepositional phrase in English consists of a preposition followed by a noun phrase (not just a noun). near London/tree/dog
another syntax goal
- to have a small and finite (i.e. limited) set of rules(generative grammar) that will be capable of producing a large and potentially infinite (i.e. unlimited) number of well-formed structures.
generative grammar
- reveals the basis of two other phenomena
  - how some superficially different sentences are closely related
    - Charlie broke the window/The window was broken by Charlie.
      - they’re different in surface structure but related or even identical in deep structure.
        
        deep: It was Charlie who broke the window.
    - Surface structure: the different syntactic forms they have as individual English sentences.
    - Deep structure: This other “underlying” level, where the basic components (NP+V+NP) shared by the two sentences can be represented
      - an abstract level of structural organization in which all the elements determining structural interpretation are represented.
  - how some superficially similar sentences are in fact different

Structural ambiguity

Structural Ambiguity
sentence that has two distinct underlying interpretations that have to be represented differently in deep structure.
example
- 2distinct deep struct
  - expresses the idea that “Annie had an umbrella and she bumped into a man with it.”
  - expresses the idea that “Annie bumped into a man and the man happened to be carrying an umbrella.”
- can be expressed in the same surface structure
  - Annie bumped into a man with an umbrella
other example (Animal Crackers)
- “I once shot an elephant in my pajamas”, How he got into my pajamas I’ll never know
  - the non-funny underlying structure might be
    - “I shot an elephant (while I was) in my pajamas.”
  - the funny underlying structure interpretation
    - “I shot an elephant (which was) in my pajamas.”
- two different underlying structures with the same surface structure.
small boys and girls
- small boys and (small) girls
- small boys and (all) girls

Recursion

The rules of the grammar will also need the crucial property of recursion
Recursive(“repeatable any number of times”) rules have the capacity to be applied more than once in generating a structure.
The gunwas on the table near the window in the bedroom,
- we must be able to repeat the rule that creates a prepositional phrase over and over again.
John believed that Cathy knew that Mary helped George.
- there is no end to the recursion that would produce ever longer versions of complex sentences with this structure
We should note that recursion of this type is not only a feature of grammar,
- but can also be an essential part of a theory of cosmic structure,
  - as in the role of turtles in one little old lady’s view of the universe

Tree diagrams

One of the most common ways to create a visual representation of syntactic structure

If we start at the top of the tree diagram, we begin with a sentence (S)
and divide it into two constituents (NP and VP).
In turn, the NP constituent is divided into two other constituents (Art and N).
Finally, one word is selected that fits the label Art (the) and another that fits N (girl).

Symbols used in syntactic analysis

besides the previous symbols
- “PP” (= prepositional phrase),
- “Pro” (for pronoun)
- “PN” (for proper noun)
- → (= Consists of , rewrites as) i.e. NP → Art N
- () a pair of round brackets => (optional constituent) .i.e. NP → Art (Adj) N
- { } curly brackets => only one of the elements enclosed within the curly brackets must be selected
  - NP → {Art N, Pro, PN}
summary
- S sentence NP noun phrase PN proper noun
  N noun VP verb phrase Adv adverb
  V verb Adj adjective Prep preposition
  Art article Pro pronoun PP prepositional phrase
  * ungrammatical sentence Aux auxiliary verb

Phrase Structure rules

2diff ways of thinking of the tree diagram
1. treat it as a static representation of sentences
  - we’ll consequently propose that for every single sentence in English, a tree diagram of this type could be drawn.
2. treat it as a dynamic format
  - represents a way of generating not only that one sentence, but a very large number of other sentences with similar structures.
the 2nd approach is more appealing
- enable us to generate a very large number of sentences with what look like a very small number of rules (phrase structure rules)
Phrase structure rules
- Rules state that the structure of a phrase of a specific type will consist of one or more constituents in a particular order.
- ie
  - S → NP VP
    NP → {Art (Adj) N, Pro, PN}
    VP → V NP (PP) (Adv)
    PP → Prep NP

Lexical Rules

specify which words can be used when we rewrite constituents such as N
PN → {Mary, George}
N → {girl, dog, boy}
Art → {a, the}
Pro → {it, you}
V → {followed, helped, saw}
(1) A dog followed the boy. (7) *Dog followed boy.
(2) Mary helped George. (8) *The helped you boy.
(3) George saw the dog. (9) *George Mary dog.
(4) The boy helped you. (10) *Helped George the dog.
(5) It followed Mary. (11) *You it saw.
(6) You saw it. (12) *Mary George helped.

Movement rules

S → NP Aux VP
- That is convenient for creating declarative forms (You will help Mary),
- but not for making interrogative forms, as used in questions (Will you help Mary?).
- In making the question, we move one part of the structure to a different position.
- This process is based on a movement rule.
a movement rule to allow us to create a basic question would be
- NP Aux VP ⇒ Aux NP VP | Will you help Marry?
Using this simple rule, we can also generate these other questions:
- Can you see the dog? /Should George follow you?
  Could the boy see it? / Would Mary help George?

Back to recursion

John believed that [Cathy knew that [Mary helped George]].

A compliment Phrase
- that-> complementizer
  - The role of that as a complementizer is to introduce a complement phrase (CP)
  - CP → C S. “a complement phrase rewrites as a complementizer and a sentence,”
- how recursion built in grammer
  - S → NP VP
    VP → V CP
    CP → C S
  - We begin with S on the left and, as we rewrite symbols, we eventually have S on the right, allowing us to go back to the beginning and go through the set of rules again
    - endless sentence

Semantics

pragmatics

discourse analysis

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Linguistics Vol 3