Syntax by Fany Lorena Alvarenga Rivera

Syntax

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Syntax is the grammatical rules that help words function to form sentences in a language. Syntax helps the organization of words to give meaning to sentences, it is the fundamental part of the grammar of a language and is essential to stay communicated.

Examples:

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The basic order of a simple sentence is: subject-verb-object (SVO).
Example: "The child (subject) learned (verb) English (object)."
Subject-verb agreement: In English the verbs must be related to the subject being spoken, that is, first or third persons.
Example: "He (singular subject) does (singular verb) the tasks."

Question 1:

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1- What was the original literal meaning of syntax in Greek?

"The word “syntax” comes originally from Greek and literally means “a putting together” or “arrangement.”

Syntactic rules

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Syntactic rules are the fundamental rules for organizing sentences in any language. They give rules about how the different elements that make up a sentence should be combined.

Some examples:

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Word order: each language has its own way of organizing them, in English it is subject-verb-object (SVO)

The girl plays the piano.

Agreement: There must be agreement between the different parts of a sentence. (verb and person number)

Some examples:

She has a cell phone

They have cell phones

A Generative Grammar

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Is a theoretical framework whose mission is to describe the structure of all sentences in a language and generate all possible sentences giving the necessary rules for their correct use. In fact, the potential number is unlimited.

Question 3:

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What kind of generative rule is this:

N → {girl, dog, boy}?

Answer: A lexical rule.

Deep and Surface Structure

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Deep structure represents the underlying meaning of a sentence, better known as the active voice where the action falls to the subject; while the surface structure represents the passive voice where the fact realized by the subject is expressed.

Question 2:

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Do phrase structure rules represent deep structure or surface structure?

Deep structure

Examples:

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Juan made a table

The table was made by Juan

Structural Ambiguity

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This is when a sentence is not clear and can be interpreted in several ways. This is possible because the structure of the sentence can be analyzed in several ways that are valid.

Examples:

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"I shot an elephant in my pajamas."

This famous example from Groucho Marx can be interpreted as:

I (subject) shot (verb) an elephant (direct object) while he was in his pajamas.

I (subject) shot (verb) an elephant (direct object) that was wearing pajamas.

Question 4:

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Which of the following expressions are structurally ambiguous and in what way?

(a) These are designed for small boys and girls.

(b) The parents of the bride and groom were waiting outside.

(d) We met an English history teacher.

(e) Flying planes can be dangerous.

(f) The students complained to everyone that they couldn’t understand.

Answer:

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(a) This sentence is structurally ambiguous because it is not clear whether "little" applies only to "boys" or to both "boys and girls."

(b) This phrase is structurally ambiguous because it is not understood if the parents of the bride and groom are absent or only the parents of one of them.

(c) This phrase is structurally ambiguous due to the words used, since it is not understood whether it is about human body parts or furniture bases.

(d) This phrase is not clear because it is not known if it means that he met an English history teacher OR a person from England who teaches history.}

(e) This phrase is not ambiguous, it is understood that “the act of flying airplanes can be dangerous.”

(f) This sentence is not ambiguous, it just means that the students complained to everyone they could not understand.

Syntactic Analysis

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Also known as parsing, it refers to the action of analyzing the structure of sentences, dividing them into all their parts and identifying their relationship with each other.

Example:

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Question 7:

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How many noun phrases are there in the following sentence?

George saw a small dog in the park near the fountain and it followed him when he left the park.

There are 8 noun phrases: George, small dog , the park, the fountain, it, him , he , the

park.

Phrase Structure Rules

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They are rules that determine the structure of a sentence.

The first rule is a general one of English sentence structure: “a sentence (S) is rewritten as a noun phrase (NP) and a verb phrase (VP).” The second rule states that “a

The noun phrase is rewritten as an article plus an optional adjective plus a noun, or as a

pronoun or a proper name.” In the third rule, a verb phrase is rewritten as a verb plus a noun phrase. (Yule, George, 2017)

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Question 8:

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What is wrong with the following rule of English syntactic structure?

“A prepositional phrase rewrites as a preposition followed by a noun.”

This rule is simple and does not provide the range of various structural responses ("with Fernanda") as ungrammatical structures ("with woman"), which is undesirable in terms of the "all and only" criterion. Other elements can be included in sentences to have variation and make them flexible, such as adjectives, adverbs and gerunds.

Lexical Rules

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Are part of the formal grammatical structure of a language. These rules include part of the structure of words, (morphology, inflectional patterns and syntactic properties.)

Example:

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Question 6:

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Which of the following expressions would be generated by this phrase structure rule: NP

→ {Art (Adj) N, Pro, PN}?

(a) a lady (c) her (e) the widow

(b) the little girl (d) Annie (f) she’s an old woman

Answer:

(a), (b), (c), (d), (e), but not (f) because it is a sentence, not just a noun phrase.

Tree Diagrams

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Also known as parse trees, it is the graphic structure that allows sentences to be represented in a hierarchical form related between phrases and words, allowing analysis.

Example:

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Tree Diagrams of English Sentences

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Question 10

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Question 9:

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Which part of the following sentence is the VP?

None of the people in the building supported the proposed rent increase.

"supported the proposed rent increase"

Just Scratching the Surface

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At the bottom of all the trees are surface structure variations of a single underlying deep structure, revealing the generative power of the phrase structure rules involved. There are other phrase structure rules involved in the composition of more complex sentences. (Yule, George, 2017)

Question 5:

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What part of speech is lovely in the following sentence?

We saw a lovely rainbow yesterday.

Lovely is an adjective

Answer:

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Bibliography

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- OSU School of Writing Literature, 2023, "What Is Syntax in Grammar": Oregon State Guide to Grammar,[ video], YouTube https://youtu.be/reWewSrHH4s?si=35JTfNDjiEJG7ZZ5

- Ling Vids, 2015, "Structural Ambiguity - Syntax Video #3", [ video], YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djK1t1eiPnc

- Tel-MrsAyala, 2021, "A simple syntactic Tree Diagram" [ video], YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3W1PghsstfU&t=12s

- Yule, George (2017), The Study of Language, Sixth Edition U.K: Cambridge University