Name: Ajis

Students number: A1D2 12 048

Introduction to syntax (SINT): Constituent structure, Syntactic categories, and

Grammatical relations
1. Goals
This chapter will help you do the following:
Use several spesific terms to describe sentences
State the two main criteria which are used to determine if a constituent belongs to
a particular category, and use these criteria yourself when analyzing data
Diagam the structure of a sentence, using either labelled brackets or trees, and
including both syntactic categories and grammatical relations
2. Constituents and constituent structure
John angered mary
It consists of three words, two nouns separated by a verb
The big dog angered the cat
(2) Contains six words, yet it seems somehow parallel to (1). Three words, the big
dog, seem to play the same role in (2) that one word, John, plays in (1).
(the big dog) angered ( the cat)
Chunks of linguistic material like those enclosed in brackets in (3) are called
constituents.
3. Syntactic Categories
There are other types of syntatic categories, not just noun phrases. The
traditional parts of speech are also syntactic categories. Every clause is a constituent,
which belongs to the syntactic category commonly called S.
There is a special way to use the word constituent which talks about the relationship
of one constituent to the next larger one that ancloses it. We can say that the, big, and dog, are
each constituents of the first NP, and the and cat are each constituents of the second NP.
Angered is a constituent of the clause.

Comparing Syntax and Morphology

Some are open classes and some are closed classes. Most syntactic categories, like N
and V, are open classes, since new nouns and verbs can be added freely to the vocabulary.
And then open classes like nouns almost always have lexical meaning. Syntactic categories
are very much like the position classes that are found in morphology.
Analyzing Classes and Categories
When analyzing a language, it is neccessary to examine the data carefully, and set up
categories based on objective characteristic that words and phrases have in common. Dont
rely on meaning except to make a first hypothesis, after that look to characteristic of form to
group elements into syntactic categories.
When grouping phrases into categories, this means putting together phrases that have
the same (internal) constituent structure. For example, one thing that NPs in english have in
common is that they all hav ehead nouns, optionally preceded by a determiner and/or an
adjective. In analyzing a particular language, if you have identified a category or class on the
basis of mutual substitutability and/or sameness of internal structure, try to find an
appropriate standard name for it if possible.
Trees
We need to define a number of terms in order to talk conviently about the parts of a
tree, the relationship between the parts, and the linguistics. Pay close attention to the example
of how the terms are used.
Every node which is not a terminal node is a nonterminal node, nonterminal nodes
always are labelled to indicate the syntatic category of the constituent underneath them.
When we talk about trees, it is sometimes useful to use terms based on geneologies. Thus, we
can talk about one node as being the mother of all the nodes immediately underneath it,
which are its daughters.
Furthermore, we recognize that all pieces are not alike. Some are verbs, some are
clauses, etc. Thus, the tree also represents this information by means of the category labels at
the nodes.

Grammatical Relations

We can further distinguish these sentences by labelling the grammatical relations

(sometimes calledgrammatical function) between the categories that make up the sentences.
Analyzing Other Languages
Example are commonly transcribed using english glosses in capital letters
to represent the individual words.
Analytical Questions

What syntactic categories are there for words and phrases?

What evidence supports your analysis?

Review Of Key Terms

The constituent structure of a sentence can be represented in two ways, with
labelled brackets and with trees. The relationships between nodes can be describe with
kinship terms, such as mother, daughter, and sister, or with terms like dominates,
immediately dominates, and exhaustively dominates.
For Further Reading
Readford 1988, covers much the same material as this chapter, although
with somewhat different assumptions about the constituent structure of english. For
brief discussion of the differences. It is especially valuable for its numerous example
of the types of syntactic evidence that can be used to establish word-level and phrasal
categories, spelling out what we have referred to here generally as sameness of
distribution.