4 syntax

The criteria on which categories are determined Meaning Inflection Distribution Note: The most reliable criterion of determining a word’s category is its distribution.
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 languages. There are likely to be universal constraints on the ways linguistic elements are combined Chomsky proposed that the grammars of all human languages share a common framework (Universal Grammar).
Complements
---- Complements themselves can be a phrase, they provide information abut entities and locations whose existence is implied by the meaning of the head, e.g. a story about a sentimental girl; There can be no complement, one complement, or more than one complement in a phrase, e.g. appear, break, put…; a sentencesentence-like construction may also function as a complement such as in “I believed that she was innocent. I doubt if she will come. They are keen for you to show up.” That/if /for are complementizers, the clauses introduced by complementizers are complement clause.
Auxiliary movement (inversion) Inversion Move Infl to the left of the Inversion subject NP. Inversion (revised) Move Infl to C. (revised)
Auxiliary movement (inversion) Do insertion Do insertion---- Insert interrogative do into insertion---an empty Infl position. Deep structure & surface structure Consider the following pair of sentences: John is easy to please. John is eager to please.
Phrase elements Specifier Head complement
Specifiers ---- Semantically, specifiers make more precise the meaning of the head; syntactically, they typically mark a phrase boundary. Specifiers can be determiners as in NP, qulifiers as in VP and degree words as in AP.
Chapter 4 Syntax
Joanna
What is syntax? ----a branch of linguistics that studies ----a how words are combined to form sentences and the rules that govern the formation of sentences.
Categories
Category refers to a group of linguistic items which fulfill the same or similar functions in a particular language such as a sentence, a noun phrase or a verb. The most central categories to the syntactic study are the wordwordlevel categories (traditionally, parts of speech) WordWord-level categories Major lexical categories: N, V, Adj, Prep. Minor Lexical categories: Det, Deg, Qual, Auxi, Conj.
The XP rule X’ Theory XP (Specifier)X’ X’ X(complement)
Coordination rule
Coordination structures-----the structures that are structures-----the formed by joining two or more elements of the same type with the help of a conjunction such as and, or, etc. ----Coordination ----Coordination has four important properties: no limit on the number of coordinated categories before the conjunction; a category at any level can be coordinated; the categories must be of the same type; the category type of the coordinate phrase is identical to the category type of the elements being conjoined.
Transformations
Auxiliary movement (inversion) Do insertion Deep structure & surface structure Wh-moon transformations
Phrase categories and their structures
Phrase categories----the syntactic units that are built around a certain word categories----the category are called phrase categories, such as NP(N), VP(V), AP(A), PP(P). The structure: specifier + head + complement Head---- the word around which a phrase is formed Head--- Specifier---- the words on the left side of the heads Specifier--- Complement---- the words on the right side of the heads Complement---Phrase structure rules The grammatical mechanism that regulates the arrangement of elements that make up a phrase is called a phrase structure rule, such as: NP (Det) + N +(PP)……e.g. those people, the fish on the plate, pretty girls. VP (Qual) + V + (NP)……e.g. always play games, finish assignments. AP (Deg) + A + (PP)……very handsome, very pessimistic, familiar with, very close to PP (Deg) + P + (NP)……on the shelf, in the boat, quite near the station.