Syntax: A Generative Introduction
4th edition
Table of contents
Table of contents 1
Planning 3
Chapter 1: Generative Grammar 4
1.0 Preliminaries 4
1.1 Syntax as science - The scientific method 4
1.2 Syntax as a cognitive science 5
1.3 Models of syntax 5
1.4 Competence vs. Performance 5
1.5 A clarification on the word “language” 6
1.6 Where do the rules come from 6
1.7 Choosing among theories about syntax 7
1.8 The scientific method and the structure of this textbook 8
1.9 Conclusion 8
Chapter 2: Parts of speech 9
2.0 Words and why they matter to syntax 9
2.1 Determining parts of speech 9
2.2 The major parts of speech: N, V, Adj and Adv 9
2.3 Open vs. Closed lexical vs. Functional 10
2.4 Subcategories and features 10
Chapter 3: constituency, trees, and rules 12
3.0 Introduction 12
3.1 Rules and trees 12
3.2 How to draw a tree 12
3.3 Modification and ambiguity 13
3.4 Constituency Tests 14
3.5 Constituency in other languages 14
Chapter 4: Structural Relations 15
4.0 Introduction 15
4.1 The parts of a tree 15
4.2 Dominance 15
4.3 Precedence 16
4.4 C-command 16
4.5 Grammatical relations 16
Chapter 5: Binding Theory 17
5.0 Introduction 17
5.1 The Notions Coindex and Antecedent 17
5.2 Binding 17
, 5.3 Locality Conditions on the Binding of Anaphors 17
5.4 The Distribution of pronouns 17
5.5 The Distribution of R-expressions 17
5.6 Why Does Binding Theory Matter to Syntacticians 18
Chapter 6: X-bar theory 19
6.1 Bar level projections 19
6.2 Generalizing the rules: the x-bar schema 19
6.3 Complements, Adjuncts, and Specifiers 20
6.4 Some definitional housekeeping 21
6.5 Parameters of word order 21
6.6 Drawing trees in X-bar notation 21
Chapter 7: Extending X-bar to Functional Categories 22
7.0 Introduction 22
7.1 Determiner Phrases (DPs) 22
7.2 A Descriptive Tangent into Clause Types 23
7.3 Complementizer Phrases (CPs) 24
7.4 Tense, Perfect, Progressive, and Voice Phrases 24
Chapter 8: Constraining X-bar: Theta theory 26
8.0 Introduction 26
8.1 Some basic terminology 26
8. 2 Thematic relations and theta roles 26
8.3 The lexicon 28
8.4 Expletives and the extended projection principle 28
Chapter 10: Head-to-Head Movement 29
10.0 Introduction 29
10.1 Verb Movement (V → T) 30
10.2 T Movement (T→C) 32
10.3 Do-support 33
Appendix: Determining if a language has main verb V→T 33
Chapter 11: DP Movement 34
11.0 Introduction 34
11.1 A Puzzle for the theory of Theta Roles 34
11.2 Passives 36
11.3 Case 38
11.4 Raising: Reprise 40
11.5 Passive: Reprise 41
11.6 Inherently Passive Verbs: Unaccusatives 41
11.7 DP Movement in SVO vs. VSO Languages 43
11.8 Conclusion 44
Chapter 12: Wh-movement and Locality Constraints 45
12.0 Introduction 45
,Chapter 1: Generative Grammar
1.0 Preliminaries
Syntax: The study of how sentences are structured. It is the level that mediates between
sounds that someone produces (organized into words) and what they intend to say. Looks at
language as a psychological or cognitive property of humans.
1.1 Syntax as science - The scientific method
Scientific method (applied to syntax):
- Gather and observe data about the language they are studying.
- Making generalizations about patterns in the data.
- Generating a hypothesis.
- Test the hypothesis against more syntactic data.
- Revise the hypotheses to account for any new data and test again. Basically start
over.
Hypotheses: are only useful to the extent that they make predictions. They must be
falsifiable.
Grammar: In syntax, hypotheses are called rules. Grammar is the group of hypotheses that
describe a language’s syntax.
Prescriptive rules: rules that tell people how they should speak.
Descriptive rules: rules that describe how people actually speak, whether or not they are
speaking “correctly”.
Anaphora: words or phrases that refer to a word or phrase used earlier in a text and replace
it.
Antecedent: A word, phrase, or clause, usually a substantive, that is replaced by a pronoun
or other substitute later, or occasionally earlier, in the same or in another, usually
subsequent, sentence.
Grammatical Gender: a specific form of a noun class system, where nouns are assigned to
gender categories that are often not related to the real-world qualities of the entities denoted
by those nouns.
Number: The quantity of individuals involved in the sentence (singular, plural).
Person: The perspective of the speaker with respect to the other participants in the speech
act.
- First person: The speaker.
- Second person: The addressee.
- Third person: People being discussed that aren’t participating in the conversation.
Case:
- Nominative: The case form pronouns take when in subject position.
- Accusative: The form pronouns take when in object positions.
, Corpora: collections of either spoken or written texts.
Acceptability judgment task: the psychological experiment used to get subconscious
knowledge about the subject's native language. It involves asking a native speaker to read a
sentence, and judge whether it is well-formed, marginally well-formed, or ill-formed.
- Semantic ill-formedness: the meaning of the sentence is strange, but the form of
the sentence is okay. This is marked with a #.
- Syntactic ill-formedness: the meaning of a sentence seems reasonable, but the
form is strange/incorrect. This is marked with a *.
1.2 Syntax as a cognitive science
Cognitive science: a group of disciplines that all have the same goal which is to describe
and explain human beings’ ability to think.
1.3 Models of syntax
Generative Grammar (Chomsky):
- A theory also known as Transformational Grammar (TG), Transformational
Generative Grammar, Standard Theory, Extended Standard Theory, Government and
Binding Theory (GB), Principles and Parameters approach (P&P) and Minimalism
(MP).
- Its underlying thesis of generative grammar is that sentences are generated by a
subconscious set of procedures (like computer programs).
- The goal of syntactic theory is to model these procedures.
- In other words, we are trying to figure out what we subconsciously know about the
syntax of our language.
- In generative grammar, the means for modeling these procedures is through a set of
formal grammatical rules.
1.4 Competence vs. Performance
Garden path sentence: a grammatically correct sentence that starts in such a way that a
reader's most likely interpretation will be incorrect; the reader is lured into a parse that turns
out to be a dead end or yields a clearly unintended meaning.
Center embedding: the process of embedding a phrase in the middle of another phrase of
the same type. This often leads to difficulty with parsing which would be difficult to explain on
grammatical grounds alone. The most frequently used example involves embedding a
relative clause inside another one.
4th edition
Table of contents
Table of contents 1
Planning 3
Chapter 1: Generative Grammar 4
1.0 Preliminaries 4
1.1 Syntax as science - The scientific method 4
1.2 Syntax as a cognitive science 5
1.3 Models of syntax 5
1.4 Competence vs. Performance 5
1.5 A clarification on the word “language” 6
1.6 Where do the rules come from 6
1.7 Choosing among theories about syntax 7
1.8 The scientific method and the structure of this textbook 8
1.9 Conclusion 8
Chapter 2: Parts of speech 9
2.0 Words and why they matter to syntax 9
2.1 Determining parts of speech 9
2.2 The major parts of speech: N, V, Adj and Adv 9
2.3 Open vs. Closed lexical vs. Functional 10
2.4 Subcategories and features 10
Chapter 3: constituency, trees, and rules 12
3.0 Introduction 12
3.1 Rules and trees 12
3.2 How to draw a tree 12
3.3 Modification and ambiguity 13
3.4 Constituency Tests 14
3.5 Constituency in other languages 14
Chapter 4: Structural Relations 15
4.0 Introduction 15
4.1 The parts of a tree 15
4.2 Dominance 15
4.3 Precedence 16
4.4 C-command 16
4.5 Grammatical relations 16
Chapter 5: Binding Theory 17
5.0 Introduction 17
5.1 The Notions Coindex and Antecedent 17
5.2 Binding 17
, 5.3 Locality Conditions on the Binding of Anaphors 17
5.4 The Distribution of pronouns 17
5.5 The Distribution of R-expressions 17
5.6 Why Does Binding Theory Matter to Syntacticians 18
Chapter 6: X-bar theory 19
6.1 Bar level projections 19
6.2 Generalizing the rules: the x-bar schema 19
6.3 Complements, Adjuncts, and Specifiers 20
6.4 Some definitional housekeeping 21
6.5 Parameters of word order 21
6.6 Drawing trees in X-bar notation 21
Chapter 7: Extending X-bar to Functional Categories 22
7.0 Introduction 22
7.1 Determiner Phrases (DPs) 22
7.2 A Descriptive Tangent into Clause Types 23
7.3 Complementizer Phrases (CPs) 24
7.4 Tense, Perfect, Progressive, and Voice Phrases 24
Chapter 8: Constraining X-bar: Theta theory 26
8.0 Introduction 26
8.1 Some basic terminology 26
8. 2 Thematic relations and theta roles 26
8.3 The lexicon 28
8.4 Expletives and the extended projection principle 28
Chapter 10: Head-to-Head Movement 29
10.0 Introduction 29
10.1 Verb Movement (V → T) 30
10.2 T Movement (T→C) 32
10.3 Do-support 33
Appendix: Determining if a language has main verb V→T 33
Chapter 11: DP Movement 34
11.0 Introduction 34
11.1 A Puzzle for the theory of Theta Roles 34
11.2 Passives 36
11.3 Case 38
11.4 Raising: Reprise 40
11.5 Passive: Reprise 41
11.6 Inherently Passive Verbs: Unaccusatives 41
11.7 DP Movement in SVO vs. VSO Languages 43
11.8 Conclusion 44
Chapter 12: Wh-movement and Locality Constraints 45
12.0 Introduction 45
,Chapter 1: Generative Grammar
1.0 Preliminaries
Syntax: The study of how sentences are structured. It is the level that mediates between
sounds that someone produces (organized into words) and what they intend to say. Looks at
language as a psychological or cognitive property of humans.
1.1 Syntax as science - The scientific method
Scientific method (applied to syntax):
- Gather and observe data about the language they are studying.
- Making generalizations about patterns in the data.
- Generating a hypothesis.
- Test the hypothesis against more syntactic data.
- Revise the hypotheses to account for any new data and test again. Basically start
over.
Hypotheses: are only useful to the extent that they make predictions. They must be
falsifiable.
Grammar: In syntax, hypotheses are called rules. Grammar is the group of hypotheses that
describe a language’s syntax.
Prescriptive rules: rules that tell people how they should speak.
Descriptive rules: rules that describe how people actually speak, whether or not they are
speaking “correctly”.
Anaphora: words or phrases that refer to a word or phrase used earlier in a text and replace
it.
Antecedent: A word, phrase, or clause, usually a substantive, that is replaced by a pronoun
or other substitute later, or occasionally earlier, in the same or in another, usually
subsequent, sentence.
Grammatical Gender: a specific form of a noun class system, where nouns are assigned to
gender categories that are often not related to the real-world qualities of the entities denoted
by those nouns.
Number: The quantity of individuals involved in the sentence (singular, plural).
Person: The perspective of the speaker with respect to the other participants in the speech
act.
- First person: The speaker.
- Second person: The addressee.
- Third person: People being discussed that aren’t participating in the conversation.
Case:
- Nominative: The case form pronouns take when in subject position.
- Accusative: The form pronouns take when in object positions.
, Corpora: collections of either spoken or written texts.
Acceptability judgment task: the psychological experiment used to get subconscious
knowledge about the subject's native language. It involves asking a native speaker to read a
sentence, and judge whether it is well-formed, marginally well-formed, or ill-formed.
- Semantic ill-formedness: the meaning of the sentence is strange, but the form of
the sentence is okay. This is marked with a #.
- Syntactic ill-formedness: the meaning of a sentence seems reasonable, but the
form is strange/incorrect. This is marked with a *.
1.2 Syntax as a cognitive science
Cognitive science: a group of disciplines that all have the same goal which is to describe
and explain human beings’ ability to think.
1.3 Models of syntax
Generative Grammar (Chomsky):
- A theory also known as Transformational Grammar (TG), Transformational
Generative Grammar, Standard Theory, Extended Standard Theory, Government and
Binding Theory (GB), Principles and Parameters approach (P&P) and Minimalism
(MP).
- Its underlying thesis of generative grammar is that sentences are generated by a
subconscious set of procedures (like computer programs).
- The goal of syntactic theory is to model these procedures.
- In other words, we are trying to figure out what we subconsciously know about the
syntax of our language.
- In generative grammar, the means for modeling these procedures is through a set of
formal grammatical rules.
1.4 Competence vs. Performance
Garden path sentence: a grammatically correct sentence that starts in such a way that a
reader's most likely interpretation will be incorrect; the reader is lured into a parse that turns
out to be a dead end or yields a clearly unintended meaning.
Center embedding: the process of embedding a phrase in the middle of another phrase of
the same type. This often leads to difficulty with parsing which would be difficult to explain on
grammatical grounds alone. The most frequently used example involves embedding a
relative clause inside another one.
