戴炜栋语言学第四讲.ppt

Lecture Four Syntax Definition It’s a kind of micro linguistics that studies how words are combined to form sentences and the rules that govern the formation of sentences. (Transformational syntax to be introduced in the book.) Word-level categories Category refers to a group of linguistic items which fulfill the same or similar functions in a particular language. Traditionally, category is termed as “parts of speech”. Major lexical categories and minor lexical categories Examples of some lexical categories A word’s distributional facts together with information about its meaning and inflectional capability help identify its syntactic category. Meaning: John, pen, book, pretty lady, left quietly Inflection: plural affixes, tenses, degrees Distribution: the girl, a card, should stay, will help Phrase categories Definition: Categories which are built around a certain word category. Types: Noun phrase (NP): the pretty girl Verb phrase (VP): often dream Adjective phrase (AP): very pessimistic Prepositional phrase (PP): in the house Adverbial phrase (ADVP): very quickly (Wen, p. 118) Head, specifier and complement Phrase structure rule Introduction: NP (Det) N (PP) … VP (Qual) V (NP) … AP (Deg) A (PP) … PP (Deg) P (NP) … (Note: “ ” means “consist of”; ( ) means “can be omitted”; “…” means other complement options are available) XP rule The XP rule: XP (specifier) X (complement) X ˉ Theory a. XP (specifier) X ˉ b. X ˉ X (complement) Coordination rule X X * Con X Phrase elements Specifier: specify the meaning of head, top level of phrase structures, syntactic category may be different Comp