Syntax I Constituents and Structure Gareth Price Duke

Syntax I: Constituents and Structure Gareth Price – Duke University

Rules for Lectures in Syntax ? ? ! Ǿ √ ? ! now later

Structural Analysis • The ______ is very noisy. • I heard a ______ yesterday. camel seven radio people big dog bottle always run sing quiet love baby wheel yellow word white car siren play

Structural Analysis • The ______ is very noisy. • I heard a ______ yesterday. Gareth Professor Price an airplane my dog this lecture four bags of wheat the man with the red face a butterfly a change of scenery his words Barak Obama

Structural Analysis • ______ is very noisy. • I heard ______ yesterday. Gareth Professor Price an airplane my dog this lecture four bags of wheat the man with the red face a butterfly a change of scenery his words Barak Obama

What does Structural Analysis tell us? Substitution – what can we remove / re-combin re-work from a sentence ‘structure’? àWords: Nouns, Verbs Adjectives etc. à Larger units? àPhrases? àNPs, APs etc. Goal: to analyse not just words but their recombination into larger units within the sentence

Immediate Constituent Analysis What are the components of these sentences? The cat saw the mouse under the table The big cat saw the little mouse under the big table [the] [big] [cat] [saw] [the] [little] [mouse] [under] [the] [big] [table]

Immediate Constituent Analysis If components are merely words, then are these OK? *cat the saw big mouse the table under big little the * big little big the big mouse table cat the big What are the ‘immediate constituents’ here? E. g the cat / *table cat saw the mouse / *saw table big

her father brought a shotgun to the wedding the cat saw the dog in his tree dogs ate peaches off a platter John turned off the gas at his rental property

Phrase Structure Where the HEAD is the most important word in the phrase. . . ! [the cat] NP [the dog] NP [his tree] NP [saw the dog] VP [in his tree] PP [[ [ the cat ] saw [the dog] ] [in [his tree]]]

her father brought a shotgun to the wedding the cat saw the dog in his tree dogs ate peaches off a platter John turned off the gas at his rental property

Re-write Rules • • • NP = Ns / PN / ‘N’ / det + N VP = V NP PP = P NP N = (cat, dog, tree) Ns = (cat. S, dog. S, tree. S) ‘N’ = proper noun (Gareth, John, Grandpa) PN = pronoun (I, he, she, it, etc. ) V = saw, brought, heard P = (in, on, through, up, under)

Hierarchy THREE MEN ATE SANDWICHES IN A CAR • • NP VP NP PP NP My cat brought a mouse to my desk

Embededness