第四章 句法学.ppt

Chapter Ⅱ Definition of Syntax Syntax is the study of the rules governing the ways different constituents are combined to form sentences in a language, or the study of the interrelationships between elements in sentence structures. ◆Structural approach ◆Generative approach Structural approach to syntax 4.1.1 Positional Relations ■For language to fulfill its communicative function, it must have a way to mark the grammatical roles of the various phrases that can occur in a clause. The boy kicked the ball NP1 NP2 Subject Object ■Positional relation, or WORD ORDER, refers to the sequential arrangement of words in a language. 　■If the words in a sentence fail to occur in a fixed order required by the convention of a language, one tends to produce an utterance either ungrammatical or nonsensical at all. 　■For example, 　　(a) The boy kicked the ball. 　　(b)*Boy the ball kicked the 　　(c)*The ball kicked the boy. Generative approach to syntax Transformational Generative Grammar (TG) Norm. Chomsky, the most influential linguist in 20th century, some important works: (1957) Syntactic Structure; (1965) Aspects of the Theory of Syntax; (1981) Lectures on Government and Binding; (1986) Barriers (1993) A Minimalist Program for Linguistic Theory; (1995) The Minimalist Program; (1998) The Minimalist Inquiry…… Criteria on good grammar Observational adequacy Descriptive adequacy Explanatory adequacy The ultimate goal for any theory is to explain. TG differs from traditional grammar in that it not only aims at language description, but also its explanation. Chomsky is much more interested in the similarities (language universals) between languages rather than their differences. Linguists should attempt to find a grammatical framework which will be suitable for all languages; Linguists should concentrate on the elements and constructions that are available to all languages rather than on elements that actually occur in all