ASSIGNMENT

SYNTAX

SUBMITTED BY
KHAWAR MEHMOOD
Roll No:502

SUBMITTED TO
Dr. Muhammad qasim
 Assignment No.1

Identify word categories in the following passage.

Noun:
Implacability mat snow snowfall wind branches
Cedars hills mansions snowflakes tress decrepit
Verb:
Began drove wove settle hurling loomed
Adverb:
Inland steadily still out
Adjective:
Fragrant gentle green sporadic steep Victorian
Preposition:
Against beyond on of with
Conjunction:
And
Pronoun:
Them

Underline seven verbs in the following passage.

By two o’clock on the first afternoon of the trial, snow covered all the island roads. A car
pirouetted silently while skating on its tires, emerged from this on a transverse angle, and slid to
a stop with one headlight thrust into the door of Petersen’s Grocery, which somebody opened at
just the right moment – miraculously – so that no damage befell car or store.
 Assignment No.2

What do you understand by non-linguistic knowledge?

Non- linguistic knowledge of an idea in a way that goes beyond the use of words. As language
may not always be used to communicate, so also communication may be possible without
necessarily using spoken language. For example sign language. Deaf and dumb people have their
own non-linguistic code (gestures and hands signs) to express themselves or to communicate
with one another. The linguistic key is the tone, manner or spirit in which an act is performed.
Linguistic communication differs from non-linguistic communication. For communicating
linguistically, the whole language is available. Sometimes one can communicate in even more
than one language, whereas the choices are limited for a non-linguistic communicator, such as,
facial expressions, signs and gestures, movements of hands etc.

Explain the difference between competence and performance.

Competence:

A person’s internalized knowledge of a language. This means a person’s ability to create and
understand sentences, including sentences they have never heard before.

COMPETENCE refers to the “ideal” speaker/hearer.

COMPETENCE is a cognitive (mental) skill.

Performance:

“The actual use of language in concrete situations”

How a person actually uses his/her language knowledge in producing and understanding
utterances, including errors.

“There are rules of use without which the rules of grammar would be useless.”
What do you understand by ‘lexical categories?’ Illustrate your answer with examples.

Lexical Categories:

In grammar, a lexical category is a linguistic category of words (or more precisely lexical
items) that are usually defined by their particular syntactic or morphological behaviors. Common
linguistic categories include noun and verb, among others. Not all languages have the same
lexical categories, and lexical categories generally considered equivalent between two languages
may have different properties. For example: Spanish uses adjectives almost interchangeably as
nouns while English can’t. Japanese has two classes of adjectives whereas English has only one.
There are open word classes and closed word classes. In open word class, there are noun, verb,
adverb and adjective while in closed word class there are determiners, prepositions, pronouns,
conjunctions, and auxiliary verbs.

For example: My brother will meet a friend from college at the station. In this sentence, My
=determiner, brother = noun, will =auxiliary, meet=verb , A= Determiner, friend = Noun,
from=preposition, college=noun, at=preposition, the=determiner, station=noun.

List ten prepositions and use each of them to make a sentence.

1. Addicted to: I’m addicted to coca cola.

2. Arrived at: I arrived at the airport an hour ago.
3. Aware of: I was not aware of the problem.
4. Busy with: I’ve been very busy with work.
5. Confident of: Are you confident of passing the exam?
6. Fed up: I’m fed up with this awful weather.
7. Heard of: Have you heard of a city called Galway?
8. Laughing at: Please, stop laughing at me.
9. Looking at: What are you looking at?
10. Familiar to: Your name is familiar to me.
 Assignment No.3

1. Explain the following terms:

Phrase Marker:

Phrase marker used in transformational grammar. The tree diagram, or phrase marker, may now
be considered as a structural description of the sentence “The man hit the ball.” It is a description
of the constituent structure, or phrase structure, of the sentence, and it is assigned by the rules
that generate the sentence.
Immediate Domination:

Subcase of Dominance, where the two nodes are connected by a single branch without any
intervening nodes.

Node A immediately dominates node B if there is no intervening node G which is dominated by

A, but dominates B (in other words, A is the first node that dominates B).

A
/\
/ \
B C
/\ /\
D E FG
A dominates B,C,D,E,F,G but A immediately dominates only B,C.

Lexical Entry:

In lexicography, a lexical item (or lexical entry) is a single word, a part of a word, or a chain of
words that forms the basic elements of a language's lexicon (≈ vocabulary). Examples are cat,
traffic light, take care of, by the way, and it's raining cats and dogs. Lexical items can be
generally understood to convey a single meaning, much as a lexeme, but are not limited to single
words. Lexical items are like seems in that they are "natural units" translating between
languages, or in learning a new language. In this last sense, it is sometimes said that language
consists of grammaticalized lexis, and not lexicalized grammar. The entire store of lexical items
in a language is called its lexis.
Generate the following sentences using tree diagrams:

NP VP

V N

David killed Goliath

NP Aux VP

Det N v NP

The president can rule the

country.
 S

NP Aux VP

pro v np

Det N

I may visit the governor

NP

N Adj N

Students’ own cars