2011-10-18

Constituents and Word Categories I

CONSTITUENTS revision: What is grammar? Its place in llinguistics form vs meaning Ambiguous sentences = sentences with two or more meanings e.g. a) They chased two dogs in their pyjamas. b) They talked about the disaster on the train. c) Cat carrying basket urgently required d) Wanted: modern house with three bedrooms and garage for schoolmaster a) in dogs or they? b) what does the prepositional phrase go with talking or disaster? what goes with what in a sentence (=internal structure)? syntax: linear arrangement of words, hierarchical arrangement (=what comes with what? structure) Constituent structure That man standing over there hates my dog. [that] [man standing over] [there hates my] [dog]. [that man standing over there] [hates] [my dog]. correct [that man] [standing over] [there hates] [my dog]. Handout p. 10 1) Our vicar [likes [fast cars]] ( 8 constituents): our vicar likes fast cars our vicar fast cars likes fast cars phrase = string of words that behaves like a unit constituent = word or string of words, which behave as a unit in a larger construction immediate constituents = immediately make up a unit Immediate constituents: What are the immediate building blocks of a unit? Our vicar likes fast cars. [Our vicar] [likes fast cars] cf. (2), p. 10
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What do constituents do? A constituent analyses the sentence into its component parts, gives a detailed structure Tests to prove if its a constituent: substitution test if a constituent consists of more than one word it is possible to substitute a single word for it (pronoun); e.g. instead of our vicar he fast cars them likes fast cars does movement test If sth. is a constituent, we can move it around in the sentence. cf. (4), p. 10 (4b) = it-cleft-sentence Fast cars are liked by our vicar (passive structure) Sentence fragment test Who likes fast cars? (our vicar = unit of sense) What is it that our vicar does? (like fast cars) Other tests co-ordination, insertion, syntactic argumentation = its not always clear cut examples: Ive put on 10 kilos. NOT a constituent Ive put there/where on 10 kilos Ive put What have you put? on 10 kilos Nobody liked the books about NY that she bought Nobody liked them. The books about NY nobody liked. It was the books about NY that she bought that nobody liked. What didnt they like? The books about ambiguous examples: They talked about the disaster on the train. [the disaster on the train] e.g. It was the disaster on the train they talked about., It was the disaster on the train that was talked about. [the disaster] [on the train] e.g. they talked about it on the train, they talked about the disaster there. They chased two dogs in their pyjamas. (=HOMEWORK, like previous example) [two dogs in their pyjamas] [two dogs] [in their pyjamas]
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Representing constituency structure Brackets: [ ]

Tree diagrammes: (nodes /mother nodes/ daughter nodes (=connecting points))

2 types of description of the nodes: we can label every constituent structure by syntactic classes POS (parts of speech) = what the constituents are depends on the properties they share syntactic functions function = is what the constituents do in a structure to parse = analyse the structure of a sentence WORD CATEGORIES 1 Terminology Find the differences (p. 11, (10)) Pronouns nouns Interjection discourse particles, yuck, shit, ok not really part of grammar Determiner articles, demonstratives, (determiner = determinative) 2 classes: open class: we can easily add/invent new words, e.g. to google, to skype, closed class: have a fixed membership, new words cant be invented HOMEWORK: collect one new word from the last decade from each of the open class Classification of Parts of Speech a the food tastes of ancient romans b scouts help dog bite victim c flying planes can be dangerous a) tastes = verb, noun b) bite = verb, noun c) flying = verb, adjective = multiple class membership: one word can belong to various classes Word classes share certain properties. 1.) meaning (semantic) Nouns: people, places or things brother, car, David, house, London
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Verbs: some kind of action cook, drive, eat, run, shout, walk problem: e.g. time, imagination, repetition,, be, seem, 2.) form (morphological) Nouns: book/s, action, helpfulness, fulfilment, gambler Adjectives: acceptable, fearful, comical, childless Verbs: walks, walked, walking, codify, finalise, problem: e.g. naked, 3.) Position/use (syntactic) Mary bought a round table. (=adjective) The car went round the corner. (=adverb) The yacht will round the buoy soon. (=verb) NOUNS syntactic: - are premodified by determiner

like to be subjects like to function as objects

Subclasses: proper nouns always start with a capital letter: days of the week, names, pronouns (stand in for an noun) personal, possessive, reflexive, reciprocal, demonstrative, interrogative, relative, indefinite, common nouns (normal category, largest cat.) count vs mass collective vs non-collective Anaphoric reference, Antecedent (goes before = beautiful princess) Once upon a time ther lived a beautiful princess. She anaphoric reference = refer backwards 16a) we need a new manager who is flexible in THEIR approach. or his/her the book is mine (pronoun) my book = determiner, NOT a pronoun, (when a noun follows: determiner!!) each other = informal, more common one another = more formal number agreement/concord cactus cacti (cactuses)

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Language Analysis

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Summation Plural the news is corpus HW

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Language Analysis

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