SYNTAX 1

Story of Human Language

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OFFICE HOURS
Professor Isaac Gould (gould@[Link])

Office: Inmunkwan 520 (Humanities

Building)

Office Hours: Friday 3:30-4:30

SYNTAX
[ [The spider] [ate [a fly]] ]

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SYNTAX: INTRO

¢ Syntax is the study of how phrases and sentences

are constructed.

¢ We can imagine at least two different approaches to

sentence structure:

1. Words in a sentence are simply like links in a

chain or beads on string. They are ordered linearly
with no internal structure or hierarchy.

2. Word sequences in a sentence do have internal

structure: some words are more closely connected
than others. Some words might “work together” in
certain operations whereas others would not.
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SYNTAX: INTRO

We have already seen in Morphology that words

have an internal, hierarchical structure. We will
show that the same type of structure is present in
sentences.

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SYNTAX: INTRO
¢ Are words simply beads on a string?

From a linear perspective, the two sentences below look

nearly identical. So let’s see if they behave the same
way. Do groups of words work together differently in the
two examples?

Alan ran down the mountain.

Alan ran down the ball. (What does this mean?)

Q. Did Alan run?

A1. Yeah, down the mountain.
A2. Yeah, down the ball.
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SYNTAX: INTRO

¢ Are words simply beads on a string?

Alan ran down the mountain.

Alan ran down the ball.

Words that work together often “move together” in

certain constructions:

It was down the mountain that Alan ran.

It was down the ball that Alan ran.

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SYNTAX: INTRO

¢ Are words simply beads on a string?

“Down the mountain ” seems to function as a unit in a way

that “down the ball”: does not in these sentences.

The phrases “run down the mountain” and “run down the
ball” are structured differently. In the first case “down the
mountain” functions as a unit, and in the second case “ran
down” and “the ball” function as separate units.

Alan ran down the mountain Alan ran down the ball

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SYNTAX: INTRO

¢ Are words simply beads on a string?

The two sentences have different syntactic structures

even though at the lexical level they look very similar:

Alan ran down the mountain Alan ran down the ball

Our evidence for different units of words is unexpected if

there is no structure in the sentences.
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SYNTAX: INTRO

¢ Are words simply beads on a string? NO

Words are grouped into units called constituents. As

we will see in detail later on, sometimes more than
one “grouping” might be possible for a single
sequences of words.

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SYNTAX: INTRO

The butcher has smoked ham.

(possesses ham that has been
smoked)

The butcher has smoked ham.

(in cartoon world, putting ham in a
pipe and smoking it)

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SYNTAX: INTRO

¢ Sentences have internal structure. Structures are

built by grouping words together into units.

¢ These units can be infinitely extended in length.

— Joe bought a car.

— Joe bought an old car.
— Joe bought a dirty old car from the man down the street.
— Joe bought a dirty old car for forty dollars from the man
down the street.

Note that all of the underlined phrases are appropriate

answers to the question: What did Joe buy?
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SYNTAX: INTRO

¢ Related to constituency is word order. In a

language like English, order often tells you who
did what to whom.

Dog bites man

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SYNTAX: INTRO

Speakers have knowledge of word order+structure:

Word order is a part of structure building and is
constrained.

— I went to the grocery store to buy a gallon of milk.

— *Grocery gallon milk went I store buy to the to a

of.

Again, this suggests that some groupings of words

form constituents, whereas others do not.
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SYNTAX: INTRO

¢ Word order+structure matter . . . even when dealing

with sentences that don’t have any obvious/clear
meaning.

— Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. (1)

— Green furiously sleep ideas colorless. (2)

¢ Neither of these sentences has a clear meaning, but (1)

“sounds” like a sentence while (2) does not.
¢ Even without a complete meaning you can still judge
(1) as a possible sentence in English, whereas (2) is 15
not.
SYNTAX: INTRO
¢ Basic word order varies greatly across languages:

¢ English basic word order: SVO (Subject-Verb-Object)

John threw the ball
S V O

¢ Japanese basic word order: SOV

Watashi-wa hako-o ake-ta
I-Topic box-ACC open-Past
“I opened the box”

VSO
¢ Welsh basic word order:
LLaddodd y ddraig y dyn
killed the dragon the man 16
“The dragon killed the man”
SYNTAX: INTRO
¢ Basic word order varies greatly across languages:

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¢ While word order varies across languages,
the basic building blocks are the same.

¢ Sentences are built with constituents (building

blocks), and constituents are built using a small
set of categories (types of building blocks):

Nouns Verbs
Adjectives Adverbs
Conjunctions, determiners, prepositions, etc.

¢ We can talk about what speakers know about (a)

category, and (b) constituents
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SYNTAX: SYNTACTIC CATEGORY
¢ Speakers have knowledge of syntactic category, and we
can often determine syntactic category on the basis of
syntax and morphology. How do speakers do this?

¢ A word IS what it DOES.

“A noun… is simply a word that does nouny things.”

-Steven Pinker, in The Language Instinct

¢ Which words are nouns? Verbs? How do you know?

“The yinkish dripner blorked quastofically into the

nindin with the pidibs.” 19
SYNTAX: CATEGORIES YOU SHOULD
RECOGNIZE

N – Noun: Erin, cake, liberty, water

V – Verb: sing, walk, create

P – Preposition: to, about, with, in, without

Adj – Adjective: funny, orange, impossible

Adv – Adverb: quickly, fast, unfortunately,

sheepishly, very
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SYNTAX: SYNTACTIC CATEGORIES

Aux – Auxiliary: have, had, be, was, were

(includes modals) can, may, will, might, could,
etc.

Det – Determiner: a, an, the, those, etc.

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SYNTAX: INTRO

¢ We have seen how speakers have knowledge of

categories in their language.

¢ Another important aspect of syntax that speakers

know about is what the building
blocks/constituents are.

¢ So we will want to look at some ways of

identifying constituents.
— We will consider a variety of tests

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SYNTAX: CONSTITUENCY
¢ We’ve already begun to see how we can recognize “chunks”
of words, and group them together:

¢ Let’s look at a way that subjects can form units in English

¢ What is the subject of these two sentences?

— The small girl ate a tofu burger.

— I ate a tofu burger.

“I” is a single word while “the small girl” is a larger chunk

of words, but they play the same role in these sentences.

¢ We might think that subjects are constituents - natural

groupings within a sentence. 23
We said that both “I” and “the small girl” is a constituent or
chunk of a sentence. How can we see this directly?
— Y/N question test

I will eat a tofu burger ® will I eat a tofu burger?

To form a question from the statement above, the subject

and auxiliary verb “invert” positions. The auxiliary appears
on the left edge of the sentence.

What happens with:

The small girl will eat a tofu burger ®

Will the small girl eat a tofu burger?

“The small girl” acts as if it is a single unit, and behaves

like the single word “I”, even though we can clearly see that
it is composed of multiple words. Compare: 24

*The will small girl eat a tofu burger? / *The small will girl eat…?
SYNTAX: CONSTITUENCY
What happens in:

The small girl who has slept will eat a tofu burger ®

How does this sound?

Has the small girl who ___ slept will eat a tofu burger?

What’s wrong? We inverted the first auxiliary, but the

result is staggeringly bad.

Will the small girl who has slept eat a tofu burger?

The entire string the small girl who has slept is a

constituent: it acts as a single unit, even though it
contains quite a number of words. Note that this is implicit
knowledge that speakers have that no one ever explicitly
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teaches them!
SYNTAX: CONSTITUENCY BEYOND SUBJECTS
¢ The underlined portions in the following
sentences are constituents:

The girl ran in the rain.

The girl ran in the rain.

¢ The underlined portions in the following

sentences are not constituents:

The girl ran in the rain.

The girl ran in the rain.
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SYNTAX: CONSTITUENCY
There are multiple additional linguistic tests that
we can use to test to see whether or not a given
string of words is a constituent:

— Replacement tests
— Stand alone test
— Movement tests

You will see that it is necessary to perform

multiple tests: one failed test is not enough to
give up. But if an expression passes at least
one of the tests I give you, it is a constituent. 27
SYNTAX: CONSTITUENCY TESTS
¢ Replacement – We will look at two types of
replacement.

¢ Pronoun Replacement: targets noun phrases

Many constituents can be replaced by pronouns such as
I, he, she, them, you, we, etc. When a group of words can
be replaced by a pronoun (and preserves the meaning),
and the result is a grammatical sentence, then the group
of words which has been replaced is a constituent, and it
is a noun phrase.

¢ Successful pronoun replacement:

I found the puppy at the park. ---I found him at the park.
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Julie tickled the governor of Michigan. --- Julie tickled him.
The old blind man found a dollar. --- He found it.
SYNTAX: CONSTITUENCY TESTS

¢ Failed pronoun replacement:

I found the puppy at the park. --- *I found the him at the park.
Julie tickled the governor of Michigan. --- *Julie tickled the him .
The old blind man found a dollar. --- *The old blind man found a(n) it.

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SYNTAX: CONSTITUENCY TESTS

¢ Do Replacement -- This is very similar to replacement by

a pronoun—if a chunk can be replaced (and preserve the
meaning) by do too, did too, do so, et cetera, then the
chunk forms a constituent. Targets verb phrases.

¢ Successful do too replacement tests:

a. The old man found a dollar.
b. The old man found a dollar and I did too.

a. We went to the west coast.

b. We went to the west coast and my neighbors did too

a. Julie called the governor of Missouri.

b. Julie called the governor of Missouri and Steve did too.
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SYNTAX: CONSTITUENCY TESTS

¢ Failed do too replacement tests:

a. The old man found a dollar.
b. *The old man found a dollar and I did too dollar.

a. We went to the west coast.

b. *We went to the west coast and my neighbors did too the
west coast

a. Julie called the governor of Missouri.

b. *Julie called the governor of Missouri and Jo did too of
Missouri. (Within this sentence, we have no evidence that
“called the governor” is a verb phrase.)
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SYNTAX: CONSTITUENCY TESTS

¢ The Stand Alone Test

We often use a chunk of words from a sentence—rather
than a complete sentence—to answer questions. An
expression that can stand on its own to answer a question is
a constituent.

¢ Successful Stand Alone tests: The girl ran in the rain.

Who ran in the rain? the girl
Where did the girl run? in the rain
What did the girl do? ran in the rain

¢ Failed Stand Alone tests:

What happened in the rain? *girl ran
What did the girl do in the rain? *ran in the 32