Syntactic categories, by dr. shadia yousef banjar.ppt [compatibility mode]

1. LANE 334 -EA: Syntax
2011 – Term 2  
By:
Dr. ShadiaY. Banjar
http://SBANJAR.kau.edu.sa/ http://wwwdrshadiabanjar.blogspot.com
Syntactic Categories
Dr. Shadia Yousef Banjar1
2

2. PHONOLOGY
MORPHOLOGY
SYNTAX
SEMANTICS
LEVELS OF LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS
Dr. Shadia Yousef Banjar2
SEMANTICS
PRAGMATICS

3. Phonology looks at and describes the sound system
of a language.
Morphologylooks at the way words are formed . Syntax describes the way words fit together to form
sentences or utterances.
Semantics
deals with meaning.
Dr. Shadia Yousef Banjar3
Semantics
deals with meaning.
Pragmaticsdeals with usage.

4. Syntax
•Syntax: is the branch of
linguistics deals with sentence
structure.
•
In order to study the structure of
•
In order to study the structure of sentences, we have to know the
grammatical rules governing the
way words are combined to form
‘well-formed’ sentences.
Dr. Shadia Yousef Banjar4

5. 1. I shot the sheriff. 2.
*the shot sheriff I.
a ‘well-formed’
sentence
Native
speaker
XXXXXXX
√√√√√√√
Dr. Shadia Yousef Banjar5
2.
*the shot sheriff I.
an ‘ill-formed’
sentence
Native
speaker

6. S
(consist of)
(sentence)
word + word + word + …….
word order
rules
Dr. Shadia Yousef Banjar6
rules

7. To understand the language in terms of syntactic r ules, we
have to know what are the SYNTACTIC CATEGORIES!
Syntactic categoryare either phrasal categories, such as
noun phraseor verb phrase, which can be decomposed into
smaller syntactic categories, or word category, such as noun
or
verb
, which cannot be further decomposed.
SYNTACTIC CATEGORIES
Dr. Shadia Yousef Banjar7 or
verb
, which cannot be further decomposed.
The three criteriaused in defining syntactic categoriesare:
1. The type of meaning it expresses.
2. The type of affixes it takes.
3. The structure in which it occurs.

8. A family of expressions that cansubstitute for one
anotherwithout loss of grammaticality is called a
syntactic category.
1. Thecat
chases the mouse.
2.
The
dog
chases the mouse
2.
The
dog
chases the mouse
3. The policema
n
chases the mouse.
4. The mother mouse
chases the mouse.
If words and phrases could not be assigned to a
small group of categories, it would be very hard to
learn or use a language.
Dr. Shadia Yousef Banjar8

9. –In the given examples: 1-4,
–every wordis a member of a category.
–a word’s category type determines the
kind of phrase it can form.
–a phrase is a word or string of words
that functions as a unit in a sentence,
built around
a head.
built around
a head.
–Every languagehas specific phrase
structure rulesdetermining how phrases
can be combined to form sentences.
Dr. Shadia Yousef Banjar9

10. WORD 
CATEGORIES
WORD CATEGORIES
Dr. Shadia Yousef Banjar10
FUNCTIONAL 
WORD 
CATEGORIES
LEXICAL 
WORD 
CATEGORIES

11. SLexical word categories are: SWords that have some sort of inherent meaning
are called lexical words (or content words).
SCategories related to such words are called
lexical categories e.g. NOUN, VERB, ADJECTIVE.
Open
-
class in the sense that new words can be
LEXICAL WORD CATEGORIES
Dr. Shadia Yousef Banjar11
S
Open
-
class in the sense that new words can be
added, and thus have a large number of class
members.

12. Morphological properties Sit can take a plural -s morpheme;
SExceptions: children, deer, mice, fish, . . .
Sit can be modifiedby a possessive(apostrophe: ’s)
S
it contains morphemes like the following
:
-
ity
,
-
ness
,
-
NOUN
Dr. Shadia Yousef Banjar12 S
it contains morphemes like the following
:
-
ity
,
-
ness
,
-
action, -er, -ion, -ment, -ance, -hood.
SThese are all NOUN-OR NOMINAL SUFFIXES e.g
friendliness, writer, government, neighborhood.

13. Syntactic properties of the class of NOUN •precededby articleslike: the, demonstrative
pronounslike: this, that, these, those and
numeralslike: one, two, three.
•
preceded by
an ADJECTIVE
or
several
Dr. Shadia Yousef Banjar13 •
preceded by
an ADJECTIVE
or
several
ADJECTIVES.
•followedby a PREPOSITION.
•precededby a PREPOSITION.

14. Morphological properties •takes a past tense –ed1 form e.g.Hewalked.
•takes the –s form of the verb for third-person
singular agreement e.g. He goes to work daily.
•
takes the
–
ing
form
to express the progressive Verb
Dr. Shadia Yousef Banjar14 •
takes the
–
ing
form
to express the progressive
aspect e.g. he is running.
•takes the –ed2 form to express the perfective aspect
e.g. I have finished my work.

15. Syntactic properties of the class of VERB •precededby AUXILIARIES. These are words like
do and have e.g. has come, does like.
•precededby MODAL VERBS. These are words like
can, must, will and should e.g. can
cook, must work, will sleep , and should eat.
Dr. Shadia Yousef Banjar15 •precededby negation words like notand never
e.g. Do not cry, Never shouts .
•preceded by an ADVERB or ADVERBS e.g.
quickly run.
•can be followed by a NOUNe.g. They hateJohn.

16. Morphological properties •has morphemes like -ous, -y, -ish, e.g. furious,
angry, brownish, friendly.
•
able to form
comparatives
and
superlatives
with
-
er
ADJECTIVE
Dr. Shadia Yousef Banjar16
•
able to form
comparatives
and
superlatives
with
-
er
and -est. e.g. bigger , biggest.

17. Syntactic properties of the adjective class: •can bepreceded by ADVERBSe.g. very
angry, more hard-working.
•can occur afterdeterminers like the, a, this,
these, thoseand numeralsand before
NOUNS
e.g. the
angry
boy, those twelve
small
Dr. Shadia Yousef Banjar17 NOUNS
e.g. the
angry
boy, those twelve
small
monkeys.
•modifies a NOUN.
•cannotimmediately follow PREPOSITIONS
e.g. *in angry.
•can follow VERBS. E.g. He is angry.
XXXXXXX

18. Morphological properties •often followed by the morpheme –ly, e.g. swiftly,
quickly, angrily.
Exceptions: abroad, now, fast, often, well, also, very,
too, never, so, ...
Syntactic properties
ADVERB
Dr. Shadia Yousef Banjar18
Syntactic properties •modifies a VERB; e.g. walks quickly.
•modifies an ADJECTIVE; e.g. swiftly angry.
•modifies another ADVERB; e.g. very angrily.

19. Functional word categories are
:
SWords that don’t have (an easily detectable) inherent
meaningare called functional words because such words
perform some function in the sentence.
SFunctional word categories tend to be CLOSED-CLASS(new
words may not be added) and have a small number of class
members.
Functional word categories
Dr. Shadia Yousef Banjar19
members. Sfunctional word categories like the following:
•DETERMINERS/QUANTIFIERS
•AUXILIARIES
•CONJUNCTIONS
•COMPLEMENTIZERS

20. This is a general term for articles (a, an, the),
demonstratives (these, those, this), possessive
pronouns (his, her, their, her), some quantifiers a nd
interrogatives (how many, what, where, which, how,
why), numerals(one, two, . . . ).
Morphological properties:
Invariable; i.e. cannot
Determiners/Quantifiers
Dr. Shadia Yousef Banjar20 Morphological properties:
Invariable; i.e. cannot
take affixes
Syntactic properties:
occur before adjectives and
nouns.

21. This is a general term for the so-called “helping verbs”. These
are auxiliary verbs like: do, have, be and modal verbs like :
can, must, should, will, ought.
Morphological properties:
can be inflected for tense, voice
(active, passive), mood (subjunctive, indicative, . . . ), asp ect
(progressive, perfective). e.g. can, could, could have, was
sent, . . . .
Syntactic properties:
Auxiliaries
Dr. Shadia Yousef Banjar21 Syntactic properties:
– typically occur either immediately before the main verb o r
before an adverb modifying the main verb. e.g. can work, can
always work.
– can also occur before other auxiliary verbs. e.g. could ha ve
come.
– can undergo inversion in questions. e.g. You can speak
Spanish vs. Can you speak Spanish?

22. This refers to words like and, or, both, either,
neither...
Morphological properties:
invariable; don’t
take affixes.
Syntactic properties:
typically connect words
Conjunction
Dr. Shadia Yousef Banjar22
Syntactic properties:
typically connect words
of the same category. e.g. two or more nouns,
two or more verbs, two or more sentences, two
or more adjectives, . . .

23. This includes words like: whether, so that,
in that, because, if, since, that, . . .
Morphological properties
: invariable; don’t
take affixes.
Syntactic properties:
create embedded
Complementizer
Dr. Shadia Yousef Banjar23
Syntactic properties:
create embedded
sentences. That is, they create sentences
within sentences.
e.g.
[John likes Sue because [she is pretty]].

24. Phrasal  Categories:Just  as  words  have  word 
categories, phrases have phrasal categories.
•Phrasal  categories,  are  ultimately  much  more 
useful than just individual phrases, for the study  of 
sentence structure. A phrasal categoryis directly 
determined by the 
category of the word
which 
the 
Phrasal Categories
Dr. Shadia Yousef Banjar24
determined by the 
category of the word
which 
the 
phrase is about. Such a word is called the head of 
the phrase.

25. •How to determine a phrasal category:
The concept of a “head”:
• The headof a phrase is the main word of that phrase.
•It is essentially what the entire phrase is about.
• The category of a phrase is directly determined from the
category of its head.
To see how this works, consider the following example wit h the
phrases marked out in brackets:
[
[The tiny woman]
[
went 
[
to 
[
the store 
]
]
]
]
Dr. Shadia Yousef Banjar25
[
[The tiny woman]
[
went 
[
to 
[
the store 
]
]
]
]
Sentence (S) = The tiny woman went to the store
Phrase 1 = 
the tiny woman
:
Noun Phrase(NP, for short). 
Phrase 2 = 
went
to the store: 
Verb Phrase (VP). 
Phrase 3 =
to 
the store:
Prepositional Phrase (PP). 
Phrase 4 = 
the store
: 
Noun Phrase(NP).

26. Constituents
A constituent is a grammatical unit which
is part of a larger grammatical unit.
in example (1):
•The cat = noun phrase
•
Noun Phrase =determiner + noun
Dr. Shadia Yousef Banjar26
•
Noun Phrase =determiner + noun
•"determiner" and "noun“ are the
constituentsof the noun phrase.

27. Three aspects of a speaker’s syntactic
knowledge are explicitly represented in tree
diagrams:
1.
The linear order of the words in the
sentence,
TREE DIAGRAMS
Dr. Shadia Yousef Banjar27
sentence,
2.
the groupings of words into syntactic
categories, and
3.
the hierarchical structure of the syntactic
categories.

28. The Tree Diagram For:
Juliet loves Romeo 
S
VP
NP
Dr. Shadia Yousef Banjar28
N
V
NP
N
Juliet lovesRomeo

29. •Words can be grouped in certain patterns to form
sentences.
•In terms of forms, a sentence consists of a noun
phrase and a verb phrase.
•
In terms of function, a sentence consists of a
Form and Function
Dr. Shadia Yousef Banjar29
•
In terms of function, a sentence consists of a
subject and a predicate. A predicate must contain
a predicator which is a verb.
•The classof a constituentindicates its formand
what the form does or act as a grammatical unit
indicates its function.

30. Dr. Shadia Yousef Banjar30