11/04/2011

Syntax

1. Syntax- structure and ordering of components within a sentence.

-from Greek

• a setting out together

• arrangement

2. TG grammar- the creator of the TG grammar is Noam Chomsky

Transpormational-generative

3. Why Chomsky's grammar is called generative?

The aim of this grammar was to present an explicit system of rules specifying what combinations of elements would results in well-formed sentences. These rules had much in common with mathematical rules-the whole model is extremely mathematical.

“I will consider a language to be a set (finite or infinite) of sentences.”

It's a set of highly formalized and explicit rules.

4. Properties of the grammar

1. all-and-only: the grammar will generate well-formed syntactic structures, all the grammatical sentences and only the grammatical sentences.

2. finite-infinite: the grammar will have a finite (i.e. limited) number of rules, but will be capable of generating an infinite number of well-formed sentences.

3. recursion: the rules will have the property of recursion, that is the capacity to be applied more than once in generating a structure.

4. structural ambiguity: the grammar will have to be able to explain have some superficially distinct sentences are in fact related, and how some superficially similar sentences are in fact, distinct.

old men and women old men and women

5. Properties of the grammar

Generative grammar

all-and-only finite-infinite recursion structural ambiguity

6. Surface structure vs. Deep structure

Structural ambiguity is explained by means of two levels of analysis in TG grammar.

• Surface structure: the syntactic form taken as an actual English sentence

• Deep structure: Abstract level of structural organization where all the elements determining the interpretation are represented.

7. Different approaches

First line of criticism

• Unfortunately almost everything involved in the analysis of generative grammar remains controversial.

1. is structure more important than meaning?

2. What is a well-formed sentence?

3. It is a theoretical model applied only to ideal speaker-hearer environment?

4. Meaning is said to be objective- independent of human beings

(fairy tale- stones can speak)

5. Where is the place of metaphor in a language?

8. Symbols used in a syntactic description.

consist of

( ) optional components (constituent)

{ } only one element must be selected

S sentence

NP noun phrase

VP verb phrase

N noun

V verb

PN proper noun

9. Labelled `tree' diagrams

S

NP VP

Art Adj N Adv V PP

NP

Prep Art N

The old man slowly went to the kitchen.

These diagrams are very similar to labeled bracketed analysis but more clearly show the hierarchical organization of constituents in a sentence.

We can look at at the tree diagrams from two points of view:

• Statistics

• Dynamic

10. Phrase structure rules and lexical rules

The second view is particualry appealing because of the fact that with a relatively small number of rules we can create a very large number of sentences.

These rules are called: phrase structure rules

In addition to phrase structure rules which generate structures i.g. S NP VP we can also have lexical rules which indicate the words to be used for constitents such as N.

11. Recursion

Phrase structure rules have no recursion elements- we must be able to repeat some symbols.

12. Transformational rules

Using a phrase structure rules we can only describe a fairly fixed order of constituents. Yet people produce sentences which do not necessarily observe the fixed order of elements and move adverbs at the beginning.

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