Introduction to Contemporary Linguistics October 21, 1998 Syntax 1: the structure of sentences OVERVIEW: 1. The existence of syntax 2. Syntactic categories 3. Phrase structure 4. Syntax in the lexicon 5. Summary so far ============================================================= 1. The existence of syntax >Do all languages have syntax? Many Chinese don't think so: "English syntax may be very complex, but Chinese has no syntax at all. You just say the words right out in the order that you think of them." -- a Chinese student I met in the US >One proof that even Chinese has syntax: the word order is not the same as other languages! >Here is a sentence in a children's book that was translated into Chinese: Original: Is he as dumb as he looks? Chinese translation: ³o´N¬O¹³¥L¥~»ª¬Ý¨Ó¨º»ò´hªº´h¤p¤l¶Ü¡H Back into "English": This really is seems he appearance looks so stupid DE(?!) stupid guy? >Another proof: you can construct "logical" sentences that just sound bad. They are unacceptable by native speakers not because they are meaningless, but because they are ungrammatical: they violate the speakers' mental grammar. (1) a. §Ú¶R¤F¨º¥»®Ñ¡C b. §Ú¶R¤F¤@¥»®Ñ¡C c. §Ú¶R¤F®Ñ¡C (2) a. ¨º¥»®Ñ§Ú¶R¤F¡C b. ¤@¥»®Ñ§Ú¶R¤F¡C c. ®Ñ§Ú¶R¤F¡C 2. Syntactic categories >Syntactic categories: noun (N), verb (V), adjective (Adj), adverb (Adv), conjunction (Conj), determiner (Det), preposition (P), ... >In school, teachers usually define these terms using semantics: "A noun is a person, place or thing." >But since these are syntactic categories, they must be defined using syntax, that is, by where they can appear in a sentence: >What is the syntactic category of "however" and "but"? They mean almost exactly the same thing! (3) I hate linguistics. However, I must teach it. (4) I hate linguistics, but I must teach it. (5) I must, however, teach linguistics. (6) *I must, but, teach linguistics. >"but" is a conjunction: it must appear between two phrases or sentences. >"however" is an adverb: it can appear in many places in a sentence; it cannot link two sentences. >Is µ¹ a preposition or a verb in these sentences? (7) ¦Ñ±iµ¹§Ú¿ú¡C (8) ¦Ñ±iµ¹§Ú­Ë¯ù¡C (9) ¦Ñ±i°Ûºqµ¹§ÚÅ¥¡C >Such words in Chinese are often called coverbs: some are more like real verbs (e.g. ¥Î), while others are more like prepositions (e.g. ³Q). >Are Chinese adjectives really different from verbs? >Last week we said "yes", since words like °®²b and °Q½× show different reduplication patterns. >However, Chinese adjectives can also get the same suffixes as verbs: (10) ¦Ñ§õ¨Ó¤F¡C (11) ¦Ñ§õ¦n¤F¡C >Also, notice that some Chinese adjectives have verbs inside them: ¦³¦W¡B¦n¬Ý >...and unlike Chinese nouns, Chinese adjectives can appear without ¬O, which implies that they are "verby" enough to create a complete sentence: (12) a. ¦Ñ§õ¬O¦Ñ®v¡C b. *¦Ñ§õ¦Ñ®v¡C (13) a. ¦Ñ§õ¦n¤F¡C b. *¦Ñ§õ¬O¦n¤F¡C >Lesson: syntactic categories are defined by morphology and syntax, NOT BY SEMANTICS (meaning)! 3. Phrase structure >A sentence has structure: it is not just a list of words. >Example: where can you use ªº? >Possessive marker: right after a noun: ¨º­Ó¾Ç¥Íªº¦Ñ®v >Adjectival marker: right after an adjective: ¨º­ÓÁo©úªº¦Ñ®v >Relative clause marker: right after ... what? (14) ¨º­Ó¦³«Ü¦h¾Ç¥Íªº¦Ñ®v (15) ¨º­Ó»¡±o¤Ó§Öªº¦Ñ®v (16) ¨º­Ó¨C­Ó¾Ç¥Í³£³ßÅwªº¦Ñ®v (17) ¨º­Ó¡]¨C­Ó¾Ç¥Í³£³ßÅw¡^ªº ¦Ñ®v >A relative clause is a "little sentence" that goes next to a noun, describing the noun more fully >Syntactic constituent: a syntactic unit containing one or more words acting together: >Noun Phrase (NP): the nice teacher >Verb phrase (VP): loves Chinese food >Clause, or sentence (S): The nice teacher loves Chinese food. >The structure of such phrases can be shown in many ways (OVERHEAD). >Of course, the most familiar way is to use phrase structure trees: S VP NP NP Det Adj N V Adj N The nice teacher loves Chinese food. >Another example: Chinese relative clauses [OVERHEAD] >One piece of evidence for phrase structure comes from structural ambiguity: a sentence is structurally ambiguous if it has two (or more) different meanings depending on what its phrase structure is like. [OVERHEAD] (18) the stupid teachers and students [ambiguous] (19) the stupid teachers and the students [NOT ambiguous] >Phrase structure is described in the grammar with phrase structure rules: >Some simple phrase structure rules in English: (A) NP -> (Det) (Adj) N teachers the teachers the stupid teachers NP -> NP Conj NP the teachers and thestudents N -> N Conj N teachers and students (B) NP -> NP that S the teachers that I like (C) VP -> V NP eats hamburgers (D) S -> NP VP She likes him >Some simple phrase structure rules in Mandarin: (A) NP -> (Det) (Adj) N ¦Ñ®v ¨º­Ó¦Ñ®v ¨º­ÓÁo©úªº¦Ñ®v (B) NP -> (Det) S ªº N ¨º­Ó§Ú³ßÅwªº¦Ñ®v (C) VP -> V NP ¦Y¶º (D) S -> NP VP ¦o³ßÅw¥L >Rule (D) looks very similar in both languages. This divides the sentence into subject (NP) and predicate (VP). >Remember that these are syntactic ideas, and so they must be defined syntactically, not semantically. The subject is not "what the sentence is about," but rather just "the NP in rule (D)". >Here's an example of how we Americans are taught this incorrectly ("The Tale of Mr. Morton", a song from a TV cartoon when I was a kid): [CD & HANDOUT] >Chinese is different from English in its use of rule (D). In Chinese, often the sentence is not "about" the subject, but instead "about" a different kind of syntactic unit called the topic, which cannot be derived by rule (D). We will look at topics more carefully next week: Subject Topic (20) ¨º¥»®Ñ¡A§Ú³Ì³ßÅw¡C §Ú ¨º¥»®Ñ (21) ¶H¡A»ó¤l«Üªø¡C »ó¤l ¶H (22) ³o­Ó¬O¤°»ò¡H ³o­Ó ³o­Ó >Another difference between English and Chinese subjects: >English absolutely always requires a subject no matter what, even if it's meaningless: (23) It is raining. (*Is raining.) (24) There is a guest at my house. (*Is a guest....) >Chinese does not require a subject if you can guess what it is from context; in fact, it can drop any pronoun (she, it, he, they, etc): (25) ¡]§Ú¡^«Ü²Ö¡C (26) ¡]§A¡^¤S¦b¬Ý¹qµø¡I REVISED RULE (D) FOR CHINESE: S ® (NP) VP >Chinese is thus called a pro-drop language, as is Japanese, Italian, and many other languages. >But there's something between the subject and predicate: >English marks a lot of grammatical information with inflection (remember last week?), and a lot of this information is put into a special syntactic constituent called Aux (for "auxiliary"). (27) She is working. 3person-singular-present (28) I am working. 1p-sg-pres (29) They are working. 3p-plural-pres (30) It doesn't work. 3p-sg-negative-pres (31) It will work. future >Chinese also has Aux, but it's not as obvious as English: (32) ¦o·|¹L¨Ó¡C >Even very weird languages have Aux: >Tohono O'odham (Uto-Aztecan, southwest USA and Mexico) (33) aan an cikpan I 1p work "I am working" >Taiwan Sign Language (34) THAT FEMALE 3p-SEE-1p NOT-LIKE "She doesn't like me" >Is this a universal? Does the human brain like to put inflectional information in between the subject and the predicate? Is there a logical reason for it or not??? 4. Syntax in the lexicon >Most words have unpredictable, arbitrary syntactic properties, and so this information must be stored in the lexicon. >Some verbs are transitive: they can take an object NP: (again "object" must be defined by syntax, not semantics) (35) John is eating. (36) John is eating rice. >Other verbs are intransitive: they cannot take an object: (37) *John is sleeping rice. >Still other verbs are ditransitive: they take two objects: (38) John gave his mother a present. >This information is called a word's subcategorization (i.e. the set of other syntactic categories that go "under" [sub] the word): >eat: V, __ (NP) >give: V, __ (NP) NP >sleep: V, __ >Mandarin has a similar distinction, but don't forget that it is also a pro-drop language, where "understood" pronouns are optional: >¦Y: V, __ (NP) §Ú¤£¦Y¶º¡C [I won't eat anything.] §Ú¤£¦Y¡C [I won't eat "it", e.g. ¦Ñ®v¦Û¤v°µªº¤¤À\ ] >Chinese speakers have a special kind of trouble with English subcategorization when it involves adjectives. >Since Chinese adjectives are "really" verbs, Chinese can put all kinds of adjectives into the predicate: (39) §A«Ü¥i¼¦¡C (40) ¦b¨º¸ÌÆ[¥ú«È«Ü¦h¡C >However, in English, some adjectives are subcategorized to be used only inside an NP, (almost) never in a predicate: NP only both NP and predicate poor (¥i¼¦ ) unfortunate many numerous (41) a. You poor guy! b. *You are very poor (¥i¼¦ ). (42) a. Many tourists are there. b. *The tourists there are many. >So the hardest thing about learning the syntax of a foreign language is learning the subcategorization. That's because subcategorization is in the lexicon: it's arbitrary and unpredictable: __ __ NP __ NP NP say * OK * tell * OK OK talk OK * * ask * OK OK sing OK OK OK shout OK OK * 5. Summary so far [these tables are messed up in this format! sorry!] >A morphological comparison of English and Mandarin: English Mandarin Derivation mostly affixation; some compounds mostly compounds; some affixation Inflection some (less than French, Japanese, Tsou, etc...) very little, e.g.: ¦bV, V¹L, V¤F, N­Ì¡H >A syntactic comparison of English and Mandarin: English Mandarin basic phrase structure rules S ® NP VP VP ® V (NP) NP ® (Det) (Adj) N S ® (NP) VP VP ® V (NP) NP ® (Det)(Adj( ªº)) N relative clauses NP ® (Det) N S NP ® (Det) S ªº N pro-drop no yes