Lecture 3 Constituents Word Order

Syntax 334Dr. Amira Kashgary2011

Word OrderGrammatical Vs. ungrammatical

Grammaticality vs. acceptability

Marked stylisticallyUnmarked

Possible word orders

General rules for sentence formation

Describing a sentence in English: Sentences are made up of units at one

level.These units are the wordsSO : a sentence consists of words OR

words are CONSTITUENTS of a sentence.

We can write it in a short way BY using S for the sentence , and an arrow , to mean consists of..

” Tests used to identify strings

such as

“at Harvard”as constituents (p. 24)

Sentence Types

FUNCTIONALWORD

CATEGORIES

LEXICALWORD

CATEGORIES

What is subordination?

It is one way of joining clauses together, by introducing a less important clause with the main clause to form one sentence.

The subordinate clause is embedded in the main clause

subordinatorsIf, when, whether, before, because, since, although, that

What is coordination?It is a way of joining clauses

together by using a coordinator such as “and”, “but”, and “or”.

All coordinated clauses are main clauses, i.e. they have equal importance.

It is possible to coordinate clauses as well as phrases.

Coordinators

And ButOrFor

S

DETERMINER + NOUN + VERB + DETERMINER + NOUN

the girl likes the dog

this + boy + eats + this + apple

that dog chased that girl

Tree DiagramsAnother way to representing that abstract structure “that

is shown before” is in diagrammatic form.

S

determiner noun verb determiner noun e.g : a dog chased that girl

Both type of formula serve two purposes:

1st : they describe sentences that we already know

(grammatical sentences of English).

2nd : they serve as a pattern or template to make more sentence with.

Phrase and Phrase Structure

Definition of a phrase:A phrase consists of one or more than one

word.

A phrase can be a unit or a constituent within a sentence

Whether Determiner + noun

OROne word ( NOUN )

ORPronoun ( He – she – it – they – you ….)

consists of one or more than one word this unit is called a PHRASE

For example:A dog chased that girl.

S

phrase A verb phrase B

chased Determiner noun

noun Determiner

A dog that girl

The dog chased that girl.

S determiner+noun + verb + determiner+noun.

(determiner + noun ) functions as a single unit.. (the pronoun ) can replaces the entire unit..

S

Phrase A verb phrase B

Determiner + noun Determiner + nounThe man the girl

Noun chased NounHenry carol

PRO PROHe her

This kind of phrase is called a NOUN PHRASE or NP as a short form.

S

NP verb NP

DET NOUN DET NOUN

a dog chased that girl

Form vs. Function•In terms of forms, a sentence consists of a

noun phrase and a verb phrase.

•In terms of function, a sentence consists of asubject and a predicate.

subject and a predicate. A predicate must containa predicator which is a verb.

Tree diagrams and phrase structure rulesA tree diagram is a notational device which is equivalent to labeled bracketing.

It provides the same information about the syntactic structure of the sentence

On a tree diagram The two way split into noun phrase NP

(SUBJECT..)And verb phrase VP ( PREDECATE )..Looks like this:

Predicate

Subject

What is meant by “phrase structure rules?”

A convention used to sum up the system of expanding one unit into other units.

It is a set of instructions called

PS rules