Syntactic Theory: Its Goals and Tasks

Size: px
Start display at page:

Download "Syntactic Theory: Its Goals and Tasks"

Transcription

1 Syntactic Theory: Its Goals and Tasks Overview Introduction... 1 Preliminaries... 3 Main Goals and Tasks of Syntactic Theory Constituent Structure Syntactic Categories Syntactic Relations Structural Ambiguity Constituents and Categories Constituency Tests... 19

2 Introduction Identify Syntax Syntax: a. syntactic knowledge of speakers, a module of the mental grammar of speakers; b. a theory of the syntactic knowledge of speakers, a component of grammatical theory Distinguish syntactic knowledge from other aspects of the knowledge of L Distinguish syntactic facts from other facts of L Identify the area syntax covers distinguish it from other areas of language, covered by other components of the grammar, e.g., phonology. Identify the content of the adjective syntactic and distinguish it from others, e.g., semantic, pragmatic, phonological Distinguish syntactic phenomena & categories & rules from other phenomena & categories & rules of language. Introduction 1 Kinds of Acceptability In how many different ways things can go wrong, i.e., linguistic expressions be unacceptable. Grammatical (morphological & syntactic) (1) The smart girl has taught the little boy to read. (Acceptable, well-formed) (2) * Smart girl the have to taught read littles the boy. (Ungrammatical) Syntactically and morphologically ill-formed: Words in the wrong syntactic positions, -s verb-inflection combines with the wrong category (A: little). Semantic (3) % Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. (Anomalous) Semantically ill-formed, but grammatical: syntactically & morphologically OK. Pragmatic (communicative) (4) a. Could you tell me the time, please? b. It s 27 minutes to 8. (OK) c. $ Of course I could! (Inappropriate) Violates the Cooperative Principle and the Maxim of Relevance, but grammatical and semantically well-formed. Introduction 2

3 Preliminaries What is the constituent structure of this sentence? (5). Which of the following is the correct structural representation of the sentence? (6) (7) Preliminaries 3 (8) (9) (10) Preliminaries 4

4 (11) Preliminaries 5 What is the syntactic category of each constituent? (12) S Subject Predicate Operator/Aux Predicataion (13) S Subject Predicate Verb Phrase Object Adverbial Preliminaries 6

5 (14) S NP Aux VP (15) IP DP I' I VP Preliminaries 7 If the student of English from UMB is a constituent of the sentence, what is the internal constituent structure of this constituent? (16) (17) The student of English from UMB (18) The student of English from UMB The student of English from UMB Preliminaries 8

6 (19) The student of English from UMB What is the internal constituent structure of the rest of the sentence? (20) (21) will meet the Dean at six (22) will meet the Dean at six will meet the Dean at six Preliminaries 9 Main Goals and Tasks of Syntactic Theory General goals 1. Construct grammars of Ls that generate all and only the acceptable sentences of L. (observational adequacy). 2. Construct grammars of Ls that represent the linguistic knowledge (competence) of speakers of L. (descriptive adequacy). 3. Construct a Universal Grammar of NL. (explanatory adequacy, account of language acquisition). Specific tasks 1. Determine syntactic categories 2. Determine rules and principles for constructing syntactic structure 3. Determine constituent structure 4. Determine syntactic relations Main Goals and Tasks of Syntactic Theory 10

7 Constituent Structure Constituents of sentences Constituents may contain constituents hierarchic structure Structural restrictions structural unacceptability Different kinds of acceptability (structural, semantic, etc.) Structural ambiguity For example: Structural unacceptability: (23) a. John took Mary to the cinema. b. * Took John Mary to the cinema. Structural ambiguity: (24) a. Odd Year Book b. [Odd Year] Book c. Odd [Year Book] (25) a. a Hungarian history teacher b. a [Hungarian [history teacher]] c. a [[Hungarian history] teacher] Constituent Structure 11 Syntactic Categories Sentences are composed of syntactic categories, not words. (1) a. The boy invited his sister. b. * The boy sistered his invite. Evidence: Speakers of English never say sentences like (1b). Why not? Speakers of E know something that prevents them from saying (1b): o -ed is a Verb Inflection: Combines only with Verbs (not with Nouns). o sister is a Noun, invite is a Verb. o Nouns occur in (Object) Noun Phrases (Verbs do not). So (combinatory rules and restrictions): o [V+V-inflection] (invited) OK; *[N+V-inflection] (*sistered) Bad. o N in NP (his sister) OK; V in NP (*his invite) Bad. V, V-inflection, N, NP are syntactic categories. Syntactic Categories 12

8 Syntactic Relations What structural relations hold between the constituents of sentences? Examples: (1) [loves Mary] loves is the head of the VP loves Mary (2) [loves Mary] Mary is the complement of the verb love (3) John is proud of himself. An antecedent binds an anaphor. (4) The dog wants some food. Subject Verb agreement (Nr and Prsn) (5) vettél lisztet vs. megvetted a könyvet: V Object agreement. (Def/Indef) Syntactic Relations 13 Structural Ambiguity (6) Flying planes can be dangerous. structurally ambiguous Its two readings are: (7) a. Planes that fly can be dangerous. ( Flying planes are dangerous.) b. For people to fly planes can be dangerous. ( Flying planes is dangerous.) The two readings of (6) two different structures (assigned to flying planes): (7a): Planes fly planes is subject of fly (7b): People fly planes planes is object of fly, people is understood subject (6) surface form two different (homonymous) sentences ( two in one ) Syntactic theory must account for structural ambiguity descriptive adequacy Structural Ambiguity 14

9 Some other examples of structurally ambiguous expressions (8) a. [Odd Year] Book (a year book published in odd-numbered years) b. Odd [Year Book] (a strange year book, published annually) (9) a. a [Hungarian [history professor]] a professor of history who is Hungarian by nationality b. a [[Hungarian history] professor] a professor of Hungarian history (of unspecified nationality) (10) a. an [English [language teacher]] a teacher of some unspecified language who is English by nationality b. an [[English language] teacher] a teacher of English (of unspecified nationality) Structural Ambiguity 15 Constituents and Categories How to determine constituents and their category? (Constituency tests) Restrictions and Constraints Severe restrictions apply to combinations of lexical items Severe constraints apply to structural configurations of lexical items. Syntactic operations are structure-dependent. May be exploited in constructing constituency tests! Constituents and Categories 16

10 Selectional Restrictions: C-selection C-selection (Categorial Selection) (1) Lexical items c-select for the category of their complements. (2) a. John waited for Mary. b. * John waited Mary. (3) a. John awaited Mary. b. * John awaited for Mary. Wait c-selects for a for-pp complement. Await c-selects for a DP complement. Constituents and Categories 17 Constraints on Syntactic Structure Since English is an SVO language, subjects must precede verbs, and complements must (immediately) follow their heads. (1) a. John took Mary to the cinema. b. * Took John Mary to the cinema. c. * John took to the cinema Mary. d. * John Mary took to the cinema. (2) a. John looked under the bed. b. * John looked the bed under. Constituents and Categories 18

11 Constituency Tests Insertion Certain optional elements, like the adverb apparently, may be inserted in sentences in specific positions only. The positions out of which they are excluded may be hypothesized to be constituent-internal positions. Thus, the adverb apparently may be inserted between two constituents, but it cannot split a constituent apart. Therefore, the permissible positions may be taken to be constituent boundaries. Example (3) a. The teacher has lost his temper. b. Apparently, the teacher has lost his temper. c. The teacher apparently has lost his temper. d. The teacher has apparently lost his temper. e. The teacher has lost his temper, apparently. f. * The teacher has lost apparently his temper. g. * The teacher has lost his apparently temper. etc. Constituency Tests 19 Substitution Principles (1) Syntactic equivalence Strings of words that may mutually and regularly replace each other in sentences are syntactically equivalent. (Only syntactically equivalent expressions may replace each other.) (2) Immediate constituents The immediate constituents of an expression E are maximally long substrings X of E that may be replaced by an (ideally monomorphemic) equivalent expression Y shorter than X. X may itself be monomorphemic. Constituency Tests 20

12 Example (3) [The young linguist] will meet his friend in the local gallery after lunch. He [The young linguist] is a constituent of the sentence. the young linguist and he belong to the same syntactic category: NP. (4) The young linguist [will meet his friend in the local gallery after lunch]... lies / is dead [will meet his friend after lunch] is a constituent of the sentence. will meet his friend after lunch, lies, and is dead belong to the same syntactic category: (wait). (5) a. The young linguist will meet his friend in the local gallery. b. * The young linguist meet his friend in the local gallery. Will meet (Aux + V) is not a constituent. (6) The young linguist will [meet his friend in the local gallery after lunch]. lie / be dead meet his friend, lie, be dead belong to the same syntactic category: VP. will is not part of the VP. Constituency Tests 21 Movement (various types of movement) Principle (1) a. Movements move only constituents. b. Whatever expression may move in such movements is a constituent. 1 VP Fronting (2) a. He will [ VP meet his friend in the local gallery after lunch]. b. Meet his friend in the local gallery after lunch, he will. c. meet his friend in the local gallery after lunch is a VP. (3) a. John will never [ VP criticize himself]. b. Criticize himself, John never will. c. * Will criticize himself, John never. d. criticize himself is a VP. e. Aux + V (will criticize) do not constitute a VP. Constituency Tests 22

13 2 Pseudo-clefting Principle (1) a. Only a constituent may occur in the focus of a pseudo-cleft. b. Whatever occurs in the focus of a pseudo-cleft is a constituent. (2) a. John will want [some coffee]. b. What John will want is some coffee. some coffee is a constituent. Constituency Tests 23 Case Study What is the constituent structure of this sentence (and similar sentences)? (3) The Committee would prefer for the Chairman to resign. Alternative hypotheses a. The Committee would [ VP prefer [ PP for the Chairman] [ INFINITIVE to resign]] VP V PP Infinitive prefer for the chairman to resign for the Chairman is a PP to resign is part of the VP headed by prefer and is sister to the PP prefer takes two complements: a PP and an Infinitive for the Chairman and to resign do not form a constituent Constituency Tests 24

14 b. The Committee would [ VP prefer [ PP for the Chairman]] [ INFINITIVE to resign]] VP V PP Infinitive prefer for the chairman to resign for the Chairman is a PP, a constituent of the VP to resign is not a constituent of the VP headed by prefer prefer takes a PP complement for the Chairman and to resign do not form a constituent Constituency Tests 25 c. The Committee would [ VP prefer [for [the Chairman [ INFINITIVE to resign]]]] VP V Clause for Sentence NP Infinitive prefer the chairman to resign for the Chairman is not a PP not even a constituent the Chairman and to resign do form a constituent (a sentence) for combines not with the chairman, but with [the chairman to resign] [for the Chairman to resign] is a constituent of the VP Constituency Tests 26

15 Pseudo-clefting (4) * What the Committee would prefer for the Chairman is to resign. [to resign] cannot be pseudo-clefted. (5) What the Committee would prefer is for the Chairman to resign. [for the Chairman to resign] can be pseudo-clefted. for the Chairman and to resign are not separate constituents. for the Chairman is not a PP it is not a separate constituent. (The first two alternatives are out.) for the Chairman to resign is an (unbroken) constituent. The correct structure is the third, in which for the Chairman to resign forms a sentence-like constituent a special kind of clause. Constituency Tests 27

ENGBG1 ENGBL1 Campus Linguistics. Meeting 2. Chapter 7 (Morphology) and chapter 9 (Syntax) Pia Sundqvist

ENGBG1 ENGBL1 Campus Linguistics. Meeting 2. Chapter 7 (Morphology) and chapter 9 (Syntax) Pia Sundqvist Meeting 2 Chapter 7 (Morphology) and chapter 9 (Syntax) Today s agenda Repetition of meeting 1 Mini-lecture on morphology Seminar on chapter 7, worksheet Mini-lecture on syntax Seminar on chapter 9, worksheet

More information

1/20 idea. We ll spend an extra hour on 1/21. based on assigned readings. so you ll be ready to discuss them in class

1/20 idea. We ll spend an extra hour on 1/21. based on assigned readings. so you ll be ready to discuss them in class If we cancel class 1/20 idea We ll spend an extra hour on 1/21 I ll give you a brief writing problem for 1/21 based on assigned readings Jot down your thoughts based on your reading so you ll be ready

More information

Theoretical Syntax Winter Answers to practice problems

Theoretical Syntax Winter Answers to practice problems Linguistics 325 Sturman Theoretical Syntax Winter 2017 Answers to practice problems 1. Draw trees for the following English sentences. a. I have not been running in the mornings. 1 b. Joel frequently sings

More information

Constraining X-Bar: Theta Theory

Constraining X-Bar: Theta Theory Constraining X-Bar: Theta Theory Carnie, 2013, chapter 8 Kofi K. Saah 1 Learning objectives Distinguish between thematic relation and theta role. Identify the thematic relations agent, theme, goal, source,

More information

CS 598 Natural Language Processing

CS 598 Natural Language Processing CS 598 Natural Language Processing Natural language is everywhere Natural language is everywhere Natural language is everywhere Natural language is everywhere!"#$%&'&()*+,-./012 34*5665756638/9:;< =>?@ABCDEFGHIJ5KL@

More information

Syntax Parsing 1. Grammars and parsing 2. Top-down and bottom-up parsing 3. Chart parsers 4. Bottom-up chart parsing 5. The Earley Algorithm

Syntax Parsing 1. Grammars and parsing 2. Top-down and bottom-up parsing 3. Chart parsers 4. Bottom-up chart parsing 5. The Earley Algorithm Syntax Parsing 1. Grammars and parsing 2. Top-down and bottom-up parsing 3. Chart parsers 4. Bottom-up chart parsing 5. The Earley Algorithm syntax: from the Greek syntaxis, meaning setting out together

More information

Approaches to control phenomena handout Obligatory control and morphological case: Icelandic and Basque

Approaches to control phenomena handout Obligatory control and morphological case: Icelandic and Basque Approaches to control phenomena handout 6 5.4 Obligatory control and morphological case: Icelandic and Basque Icelandinc quirky case (displaying properties of both structural and inherent case: lexically

More information

Minimalism is the name of the predominant approach in generative linguistics today. It was first

Minimalism is the name of the predominant approach in generative linguistics today. It was first Minimalism Minimalism is the name of the predominant approach in generative linguistics today. It was first introduced by Chomsky in his work The Minimalist Program (1995) and has seen several developments

More information

Informatics 2A: Language Complexity and the. Inf2A: Chomsky Hierarchy

Informatics 2A: Language Complexity and the. Inf2A: Chomsky Hierarchy Informatics 2A: Language Complexity and the Chomsky Hierarchy September 28, 2010 Starter 1 Is there a finite state machine that recognises all those strings s from the alphabet {a, b} where the difference

More information

A Minimalist Approach to Code-Switching. In the field of linguistics, the topic of bilingualism is a broad one. There are many

A Minimalist Approach to Code-Switching. In the field of linguistics, the topic of bilingualism is a broad one. There are many Schmidt 1 Eric Schmidt Prof. Suzanne Flynn Linguistic Study of Bilingualism December 13, 2013 A Minimalist Approach to Code-Switching In the field of linguistics, the topic of bilingualism is a broad one.

More information

Case government vs Case agreement: modelling Modern Greek case attraction phenomena in LFG

Case government vs Case agreement: modelling Modern Greek case attraction phenomena in LFG Case government vs Case agreement: modelling Modern Greek case attraction phenomena in LFG Dr. Kakia Chatsiou, University of Essex achats at essex.ac.uk Explorations in Syntactic Government and Subcategorisation,

More information

Universal Grammar 2. Universal Grammar 1. Forms and functions 1. Universal Grammar 3. Conceptual and surface structure of complex clauses

Universal Grammar 2. Universal Grammar 1. Forms and functions 1. Universal Grammar 3. Conceptual and surface structure of complex clauses Universal Grammar 1 evidence : 1. crosslinguistic investigation of properties of languages 2. evidence from language acquisition 3. general cognitive abilities 1. Properties can be reflected in a.) structural

More information

Construction Grammar. University of Jena.

Construction Grammar. University of Jena. Construction Grammar Holger Diessel University of Jena holger.diessel@uni-jena.de http://www.holger-diessel.de/ Words seem to have a prototype structure; but language does not only consist of words. What

More information

Inleiding Taalkunde. Docent: Paola Monachesi. Blok 4, 2001/ Syntax 2. 2 Phrases and constituent structure 2. 3 A minigrammar of Italian 3

Inleiding Taalkunde. Docent: Paola Monachesi. Blok 4, 2001/ Syntax 2. 2 Phrases and constituent structure 2. 3 A minigrammar of Italian 3 Inleiding Taalkunde Docent: Paola Monachesi Blok 4, 2001/2002 Contents 1 Syntax 2 2 Phrases and constituent structure 2 3 A minigrammar of Italian 3 4 Trees 3 5 Developing an Italian lexicon 4 6 S(emantic)-selection

More information

Basic Syntax. Doug Arnold We review some basic grammatical ideas and terminology, and look at some common constructions in English.

Basic Syntax. Doug Arnold We review some basic grammatical ideas and terminology, and look at some common constructions in English. Basic Syntax Doug Arnold doug@essex.ac.uk We review some basic grammatical ideas and terminology, and look at some common constructions in English. 1 Categories 1.1 Word level (lexical and functional)

More information

Ch VI- SENTENCE PATTERNS.

Ch VI- SENTENCE PATTERNS. Ch VI- SENTENCE PATTERNS faizrisd@gmail.com www.pakfaizal.com It is a common fact that in the making of well-formed sentences we badly need several syntactic devices used to link together words by means

More information

Control and Boundedness

Control and Boundedness Control and Boundedness Having eliminated rules, we would expect constructions to follow from the lexical categories (of heads and specifiers of syntactic constructions) alone. Combinatory syntax simply

More information

Introduction to HPSG. Introduction. Historical Overview. The HPSG architecture. Signature. Linguistic Objects. Descriptions.

Introduction to HPSG. Introduction. Historical Overview. The HPSG architecture. Signature. Linguistic Objects. Descriptions. to as a linguistic theory to to a member of the family of linguistic frameworks that are called generative grammars a grammar which is formalized to a high degree and thus makes exact predictions about

More information

Derivational: Inflectional: In a fit of rage the soldiers attacked them both that week, but lost the fight.

Derivational: Inflectional: In a fit of rage the soldiers attacked them both that week, but lost the fight. Final Exam (120 points) Click on the yellow balloons below to see the answers I. Short Answer (32pts) 1. (6) The sentence The kinder teachers made sure that the students comprehended the testable material

More information

Grammars & Parsing, Part 1:

Grammars & Parsing, Part 1: Grammars & Parsing, Part 1: Rules, representations, and transformations- oh my! Sentence VP The teacher Verb gave the lecture 2015-02-12 CS 562/662: Natural Language Processing Game plan for today: Review

More information

Natural Language Processing. George Konidaris

Natural Language Processing. George Konidaris Natural Language Processing George Konidaris gdk@cs.brown.edu Fall 2017 Natural Language Processing Understanding spoken/written sentences in a natural language. Major area of research in AI. Why? Humans

More information

LING 329 : MORPHOLOGY

LING 329 : MORPHOLOGY LING 329 : MORPHOLOGY TTh 10:30 11:50 AM, Physics 121 Course Syllabus Spring 2013 Matt Pearson Office: Vollum 313 Email: pearsonm@reed.edu Phone: 7618 (off campus: 503-517-7618) Office hrs: Mon 1:30 2:30,

More information

Underlying and Surface Grammatical Relations in Greek consider

Underlying and Surface Grammatical Relations in Greek consider 0 Underlying and Surface Grammatical Relations in Greek consider Sentences Brian D. Joseph The Ohio State University Abbreviated Title Grammatical Relations in Greek consider Sentences Brian D. Joseph

More information

Multiple case assignment and the English pseudo-passive *

Multiple case assignment and the English pseudo-passive * Multiple case assignment and the English pseudo-passive * Norvin Richards Massachusetts Institute of Technology Previous literature on pseudo-passives (see van Riemsdijk 1978, Chomsky 1981, Hornstein &

More information

Words come in categories

Words come in categories Nouns Words come in categories D: A grammatical category is a class of expressions which share a common set of grammatical properties (a.k.a. word class or part of speech). Words come in categories Open

More information

Chapter 4: Valence & Agreement CSLI Publications

Chapter 4: Valence & Agreement CSLI Publications Chapter 4: Valence & Agreement Reminder: Where We Are Simple CFG doesn t allow us to cross-classify categories, e.g., verbs can be grouped by transitivity (deny vs. disappear) or by number (deny vs. denies).

More information

The presence of interpretable but ungrammatical sentences corresponds to mismatches between interpretive and productive parsing.

The presence of interpretable but ungrammatical sentences corresponds to mismatches between interpretive and productive parsing. Lecture 4: OT Syntax Sources: Kager 1999, Section 8; Legendre et al. 1998; Grimshaw 1997; Barbosa et al. 1998, Introduction; Bresnan 1998; Fanselow et al. 1999; Gibson & Broihier 1998. OT is not a theory

More information

California Department of Education English Language Development Standards for Grade 8

California Department of Education English Language Development Standards for Grade 8 Section 1: Goal, Critical Principles, and Overview Goal: English learners read, analyze, interpret, and create a variety of literary and informational text types. They develop an understanding of how language

More information

LNGT0101 Introduction to Linguistics

LNGT0101 Introduction to Linguistics LNGT0101 Introduction to Linguistics Lecture #11 Oct 15 th, 2014 Announcements HW3 is now posted. It s due Wed Oct 22 by 5pm. Today is a sociolinguistics talk by Toni Cook at 4:30 at Hillcrest 103. Extra

More information

Intra-talker Variation: Audience Design Factors Affecting Lexical Selections

Intra-talker Variation: Audience Design Factors Affecting Lexical Selections Tyler Perrachione LING 451-0 Proseminar in Sound Structure Prof. A. Bradlow 17 March 2006 Intra-talker Variation: Audience Design Factors Affecting Lexical Selections Abstract Although the acoustic and

More information

Language acquisition: acquiring some aspects of syntax.

Language acquisition: acquiring some aspects of syntax. Language acquisition: acquiring some aspects of syntax. Anne Christophe and Jeff Lidz Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique Language: a productive system the unit of meaning is the word

More information

Pseudo-Passives as Adjectival Passives

Pseudo-Passives as Adjectival Passives Pseudo-Passives as Adjectival Passives Kwang-sup Kim Hankuk University of Foreign Studies English Department 81 Oedae-lo Cheoin-Gu Yongin-City 449-791 Republic of Korea kwangsup@hufs.ac.kr Abstract The

More information

The Structure of Relative Clauses in Maay Maay By Elly Zimmer

The Structure of Relative Clauses in Maay Maay By Elly Zimmer I Introduction A. Goals of this study The Structure of Relative Clauses in Maay Maay By Elly Zimmer 1. Provide a basic documentation of Maay Maay relative clauses First time this structure has ever been

More information

Chapter 3: Semi-lexical categories. nor truly functional. As Corver and van Riemsdijk rightly point out, There is more

Chapter 3: Semi-lexical categories. nor truly functional. As Corver and van Riemsdijk rightly point out, There is more Chapter 3: Semi-lexical categories 0 Introduction While lexical and functional categories are central to current approaches to syntax, it has been noticed that not all categories fit perfectly into this

More information

Derivational and Inflectional Morphemes in Pak-Pak Language

Derivational and Inflectional Morphemes in Pak-Pak Language Derivational and Inflectional Morphemes in Pak-Pak Language Agustina Situmorang and Tima Mariany Arifin ABSTRACT The objectives of this study are to find out the derivational and inflectional morphemes

More information

Aspectual Classes of Verb Phrases

Aspectual Classes of Verb Phrases Aspectual Classes of Verb Phrases Current understanding of verb meanings (from Predicate Logic): verbs combine with their arguments to yield the truth conditions of a sentence. With such an understanding

More information

A Computational Evaluation of Case-Assignment Algorithms

A Computational Evaluation of Case-Assignment Algorithms A Computational Evaluation of Case-Assignment Algorithms Miles Calabresi Advisors: Bob Frank and Jim Wood Submitted to the faculty of the Department of Linguistics in partial fulfillment of the requirements

More information

An Introduction to the Minimalist Program

An Introduction to the Minimalist Program An Introduction to the Minimalist Program Luke Smith University of Arizona Summer 2016 Some findings of traditional syntax Human languages vary greatly, but digging deeper, they all have distinct commonalities:

More information

Argument structure and theta roles

Argument structure and theta roles Argument structure and theta roles Introduction to Syntax, EGG Summer School 2017 András Bárány ab155@soas.ac.uk 26 July 2017 Overview Where we left off Arguments and theta roles Some consequences of theta

More information

Som and Optimality Theory

Som and Optimality Theory Som and Optimality Theory This article argues that the difference between English and Norwegian with respect to the presence of a complementizer in embedded subject questions is attributable to a larger

More information

Context Free Grammars. Many slides from Michael Collins

Context Free Grammars. Many slides from Michael Collins Context Free Grammars Many slides from Michael Collins Overview I An introduction to the parsing problem I Context free grammars I A brief(!) sketch of the syntax of English I Examples of ambiguous structures

More information

Advanced Grammar in Use

Advanced Grammar in Use Advanced Grammar in Use A self-study reference and practice book for advanced learners of English Third Edition with answers and CD-ROM cambridge university press cambridge, new york, melbourne, madrid,

More information

Enhancing Unlexicalized Parsing Performance using a Wide Coverage Lexicon, Fuzzy Tag-set Mapping, and EM-HMM-based Lexical Probabilities

Enhancing Unlexicalized Parsing Performance using a Wide Coverage Lexicon, Fuzzy Tag-set Mapping, and EM-HMM-based Lexical Probabilities Enhancing Unlexicalized Parsing Performance using a Wide Coverage Lexicon, Fuzzy Tag-set Mapping, and EM-HMM-based Lexical Probabilities Yoav Goldberg Reut Tsarfaty Meni Adler Michael Elhadad Ben Gurion

More information

Chapter 9 Banked gap-filling

Chapter 9 Banked gap-filling Chapter 9 Banked gap-filling This testing technique is known as banked gap-filling, because you have to choose the appropriate word from a bank of alternatives. In a banked gap-filling task, similarly

More information

Parsing of part-of-speech tagged Assamese Texts

Parsing of part-of-speech tagged Assamese Texts IJCSI International Journal of Computer Science Issues, Vol. 6, No. 1, 2009 ISSN (Online): 1694-0784 ISSN (Print): 1694-0814 28 Parsing of part-of-speech tagged Assamese Texts Mirzanur Rahman 1, Sufal

More information

Tibor Kiss Reconstituting Grammar: Hagit Borer's Exoskeletal Syntax 1

Tibor Kiss Reconstituting Grammar: Hagit Borer's Exoskeletal Syntax 1 Tibor Kiss Reconstituting Grammar: Hagit Borer's Exoskeletal Syntax 1 1 Introduction Lexicalism is pervasive in modern syntactic theory, and so is the driving force behind lexicalism, projectionism. Syntactic

More information

THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMANITIES & SOCIAL STUDIES

THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMANITIES & SOCIAL STUDIES THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMANITIES & SOCIAL STUDIES PRO and Control in Lexical Functional Grammar: Lexical or Theory Motivated? Evidence from Kikuyu Njuguna Githitu Bernard Ph.D. Student, University

More information

Proof Theory for Syntacticians

Proof Theory for Syntacticians Department of Linguistics Ohio State University Syntax 2 (Linguistics 602.02) January 5, 2012 Logics for Linguistics Many different kinds of logic are directly applicable to formalizing theories in syntax

More information

How to analyze visual narratives: A tutorial in Visual Narrative Grammar

How to analyze visual narratives: A tutorial in Visual Narrative Grammar How to analyze visual narratives: A tutorial in Visual Narrative Grammar Neil Cohn 2015 neilcohn@visuallanguagelab.com www.visuallanguagelab.com Abstract Recent work has argued that narrative sequential

More information

Adjectives tell you more about a noun (for example: the red dress ).

Adjectives tell you more about a noun (for example: the red dress ). Curriculum Jargon busters Grammar glossary Key: Words in bold are examples. Words underlined are terms you can look up in this glossary. Words in italics are important to the definition. Term Adjective

More information

ELD CELDT 5 EDGE Level C Curriculum Guide LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT VOCABULARY COMMON WRITING PROJECT. ToolKit

ELD CELDT 5 EDGE Level C Curriculum Guide LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT VOCABULARY COMMON WRITING PROJECT. ToolKit Unit 1 Language Development Express Ideas and Opinions Ask for and Give Information Engage in Discussion ELD CELDT 5 EDGE Level C Curriculum Guide 20132014 Sentences Reflective Essay August 12 th September

More information

Today we examine the distribution of infinitival clauses, which can be

Today we examine the distribution of infinitival clauses, which can be Infinitival Clauses Today we examine the distribution of infinitival clauses, which can be a) the subject of a main clause (1) [to vote for oneself] is objectionable (2) It is objectionable to vote for

More information

ON THE SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS

ON THE SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS ON THE SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS OF NUMERALS IN ENGLISH Masaru Honda O. In his 1977 monograph, an extensive study of X syntax, Jackendoff attempts to accomplish cross-category generalizations by proposing a

More information

Some Principles of Automated Natural Language Information Extraction

Some Principles of Automated Natural Language Information Extraction Some Principles of Automated Natural Language Information Extraction Gregers Koch Department of Computer Science, Copenhagen University DIKU, Universitetsparken 1, DK-2100 Copenhagen, Denmark Abstract

More information

Authors note Chapter One Why Simpler Syntax? 1.1. Different notions of simplicity

Authors note Chapter One Why Simpler Syntax? 1.1. Different notions of simplicity Authors note: This document is an uncorrected prepublication version of the manuscript of Simpler Syntax, by Peter W. Culicover and Ray Jackendoff (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2005). The actual published

More information

Developing a TT-MCTAG for German with an RCG-based Parser

Developing a TT-MCTAG for German with an RCG-based Parser Developing a TT-MCTAG for German with an RCG-based Parser Laura Kallmeyer, Timm Lichte, Wolfgang Maier, Yannick Parmentier, Johannes Dellert University of Tübingen, Germany CNRS-LORIA, France LREC 2008,

More information

Hindi Aspectual Verb Complexes

Hindi Aspectual Verb Complexes Hindi Aspectual Verb Complexes HPSG-09 1 Introduction One of the goals of syntax is to termine how much languages do vary, in the hope to be able to make hypothesis about how much natural languages can

More information

Basic Parsing with Context-Free Grammars. Some slides adapted from Julia Hirschberg and Dan Jurafsky 1

Basic Parsing with Context-Free Grammars. Some slides adapted from Julia Hirschberg and Dan Jurafsky 1 Basic Parsing with Context-Free Grammars Some slides adapted from Julia Hirschberg and Dan Jurafsky 1 Announcements HW 2 to go out today. Next Tuesday most important for background to assignment Sign up

More information

Second Language Acquisition of Complex Structures: The Case of English Restrictive Relative Clauses

Second Language Acquisition of Complex Structures: The Case of English Restrictive Relative Clauses ISSN 1799-2591 Theory and Practice in Language Studies, Vol. 2, No. 7, pp. 1330-1340, July 2012 Manufactured in Finland. doi:10.4304/tpls.2.7.1330-1340 Second Language Acquisition of Complex Structures:

More information

Derivations (MP) and Evaluations (OT) *

Derivations (MP) and Evaluations (OT) * Derivations (MP) and Evaluations (OT) * Leiden University (LUCL) The main claim of this paper is that the minimalist framework and optimality theory adopt more or less the same architecture of grammar:

More information

NAME: East Carolina University PSYC Developmental Psychology Dr. Eppler & Dr. Ironsmith

NAME: East Carolina University PSYC Developmental Psychology Dr. Eppler & Dr. Ironsmith Module 10 1 NAME: East Carolina University PSYC 3206 -- Developmental Psychology Dr. Eppler & Dr. Ironsmith Study Questions for Chapter 10: Language and Education Sigelman & Rider (2009). Life-span human

More information

Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 154 ( 2014 )

Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 154 ( 2014 ) Available online at www.sciencedirect.com ScienceDirect Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 154 ( 2014 ) 263 267 THE XXV ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL ACADEMIC CONFERENCE, LANGUAGE AND CULTURE, 20-22 October

More information

An Interactive Intelligent Language Tutor Over The Internet

An Interactive Intelligent Language Tutor Over The Internet An Interactive Intelligent Language Tutor Over The Internet Trude Heift Linguistics Department and Language Learning Centre Simon Fraser University, B.C. Canada V5A1S6 E-mail: heift@sfu.ca Abstract: This

More information

Formulaic Language and Fluency: ESL Teaching Applications

Formulaic Language and Fluency: ESL Teaching Applications Formulaic Language and Fluency: ESL Teaching Applications Formulaic Language Terminology Formulaic sequence One such item Formulaic language Non-count noun referring to these items Phraseology The study

More information

Compositional Semantics

Compositional Semantics Compositional Semantics CMSC 723 / LING 723 / INST 725 MARINE CARPUAT marine@cs.umd.edu Words, bag of words Sequences Trees Meaning Representing Meaning An important goal of NLP/AI: convert natural language

More information

Phenomena of gender attraction in Polish *

Phenomena of gender attraction in Polish * Chiara Finocchiaro and Anna Cielicka Phenomena of gender attraction in Polish * 1. Introduction The selection and use of grammatical features - such as gender and number - in producing sentences involve

More information

11/29/2010. Statistical Parsing. Statistical Parsing. Simple PCFG for ATIS English. Syntactic Disambiguation

11/29/2010. Statistical Parsing. Statistical Parsing. Simple PCFG for ATIS English. Syntactic Disambiguation tatistical Parsing (Following slides are modified from Prof. Raymond Mooney s slides.) tatistical Parsing tatistical parsing uses a probabilistic model of syntax in order to assign probabilities to each

More information

Prediction of Maximal Projection for Semantic Role Labeling

Prediction of Maximal Projection for Semantic Role Labeling Prediction of Maximal Projection for Semantic Role Labeling Weiwei Sun, Zhifang Sui Institute of Computational Linguistics Peking University Beijing, 100871, China {ws, szf}@pku.edu.cn Haifeng Wang Toshiba

More information

The College Board Redesigned SAT Grade 12

The College Board Redesigned SAT Grade 12 A Correlation of, 2017 To the Redesigned SAT Introduction This document demonstrates how myperspectives English Language Arts meets the Reading, Writing and Language and Essay Domains of Redesigned SAT.

More information

A Framework for Customizable Generation of Hypertext Presentations

A Framework for Customizable Generation of Hypertext Presentations A Framework for Customizable Generation of Hypertext Presentations Benoit Lavoie and Owen Rambow CoGenTex, Inc. 840 Hanshaw Road, Ithaca, NY 14850, USA benoit, owen~cogentex, com Abstract In this paper,

More information

Intensive English Program Southwest College

Intensive English Program Southwest College Intensive English Program Southwest College ESOL 0352 Advanced Intermediate Grammar for Foreign Speakers CRN 55661-- Summer 2015 Gulfton Center Room 114 11:00 2:45 Mon. Fri. 3 hours lecture / 2 hours lab

More information

Dear Teacher: Welcome to Reading Rods! Reading Rods offer many outstanding features! Read on to discover how to put Reading Rods to work today!

Dear Teacher: Welcome to Reading Rods! Reading Rods offer many outstanding features! Read on to discover how to put Reading Rods to work today! Dear Teacher: Welcome to Reading Rods! Your Sentence Building Reading Rod Set contains 156 interlocking plastic Rods printed with words representing different parts of speech and punctuation marks. Students

More information

Language Acquisition Fall 2010/Winter Lexical Categories. Afra Alishahi, Heiner Drenhaus

Language Acquisition Fall 2010/Winter Lexical Categories. Afra Alishahi, Heiner Drenhaus Language Acquisition Fall 2010/Winter 2011 Lexical Categories Afra Alishahi, Heiner Drenhaus Computational Linguistics and Phonetics Saarland University Children s Sensitivity to Lexical Categories Look,

More information

L1 and L2 acquisition. Holger Diessel

L1 and L2 acquisition. Holger Diessel L1 and L2 acquisition Holger Diessel Schedule Comparing L1 and L2 acquisition The role of the native language in L2 acquisition The critical period hypothesis [student presentation] Non-linguistic factors

More information

Intension, Attitude, and Tense Annotation in a High-Fidelity Semantic Representation

Intension, Attitude, and Tense Annotation in a High-Fidelity Semantic Representation Intension, Attitude, and Tense Annotation in a High-Fidelity Semantic Representation Gene Kim and Lenhart Schubert Presented by: Gene Kim April 2017 Project Overview Project: Annotate a large, topically

More information

Campus Academic Resource Program An Object of a Preposition: A Prepositional Phrase: noun adjective

Campus Academic Resource Program  An Object of a Preposition: A Prepositional Phrase: noun adjective This handout will: Explain what prepositions are and how to use them List some of the most common prepositions Define important concepts related to prepositions with examples Clarify preposition rules

More information

Developing Grammar in Context

Developing Grammar in Context Developing Grammar in Context intermediate with answers Mark Nettle and Diana Hopkins PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United

More information

The Internet as a Normative Corpus: Grammar Checking with a Search Engine

The Internet as a Normative Corpus: Grammar Checking with a Search Engine The Internet as a Normative Corpus: Grammar Checking with a Search Engine Jonas Sjöbergh KTH Nada SE-100 44 Stockholm, Sweden jsh@nada.kth.se Abstract In this paper some methods using the Internet as a

More information

A First-Pass Approach for Evaluating Machine Translation Systems

A First-Pass Approach for Evaluating Machine Translation Systems [Proceedings of the Evaluators Forum, April 21st 24th, 1991, Les Rasses, Vaud, Switzerland; ed. Kirsten Falkedal (Geneva: ISSCO).] A First-Pass Approach for Evaluating Machine Translation Systems Pamela

More information

The optimal placement of up and ab A comparison 1

The optimal placement of up and ab A comparison 1 The optimal placement of up and ab A comparison 1 Nicole Dehé Humboldt-University, Berlin December 2002 1 Introduction This paper presents an optimality theoretic approach to the transitive particle verb

More information

Update on Soar-based language processing

Update on Soar-based language processing Update on Soar-based language processing Deryle Lonsdale (and the rest of the BYU NL-Soar Research Group) BYU Linguistics lonz@byu.edu Soar 2006 1 NL-Soar Soar 2006 2 NL-Soar developments Discourse/robotic

More information

AN EXPERIMENTAL APPROACH TO NEW AND OLD INFORMATION IN TURKISH LOCATIVES AND EXISTENTIALS

AN EXPERIMENTAL APPROACH TO NEW AND OLD INFORMATION IN TURKISH LOCATIVES AND EXISTENTIALS AN EXPERIMENTAL APPROACH TO NEW AND OLD INFORMATION IN TURKISH LOCATIVES AND EXISTENTIALS Engin ARIK 1, Pınar ÖZTOP 2, and Esen BÜYÜKSÖKMEN 1 Doguş University, 2 Plymouth University enginarik@enginarik.com

More information

CAAP. Content Analysis Report. Sample College. Institution Code: 9011 Institution Type: 4-Year Subgroup: none Test Date: Spring 2011

CAAP. Content Analysis Report. Sample College. Institution Code: 9011 Institution Type: 4-Year Subgroup: none Test Date: Spring 2011 CAAP Content Analysis Report Institution Code: 911 Institution Type: 4-Year Normative Group: 4-year Colleges Introduction This report provides information intended to help postsecondary institutions better

More information

a) analyse sentences, so you know what s going on and how to use that information to help you find the answer.

a) analyse sentences, so you know what s going on and how to use that information to help you find the answer. Tip Sheet I m going to show you how to deal with ten of the most typical aspects of English grammar that are tested on the CAE Use of English paper, part 4. Of course, there are many other grammar points

More information

Frequency and pragmatically unmarked word order *

Frequency and pragmatically unmarked word order * Frequency and pragmatically unmarked word order * Matthew S. Dryer SUNY at Buffalo 1. Introduction Discussions of word order in languages with flexible word order in which different word orders are grammatical

More information

Guidelines for Writing an Internship Report

Guidelines for Writing an Internship Report Guidelines for Writing an Internship Report Master of Commerce (MCOM) Program Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan Table of Contents Table of Contents... 2 1. Introduction.... 3 2. The Required Components

More information

Accurate Unlexicalized Parsing for Modern Hebrew

Accurate Unlexicalized Parsing for Modern Hebrew Accurate Unlexicalized Parsing for Modern Hebrew Reut Tsarfaty and Khalil Sima an Institute for Logic, Language and Computation, University of Amsterdam Plantage Muidergracht 24, 1018TV Amsterdam, The

More information

CAS LX 522 Syntax I. Long-distance wh-movement. Long distance wh-movement. Islands. Islands. Locality. NP Sea. NP Sea

CAS LX 522 Syntax I. Long-distance wh-movement. Long distance wh-movement. Islands. Islands. Locality. NP Sea. NP Sea 19 CAS LX 522 Syntax I wh-movement and locality (9.1-9.3) Long-distance wh-movement What did Hurley say [ CP he was writing ]? This is a question: The highest C has a [Q] (=[clause-type:q]) feature and

More information

FOREWORD.. 5 THE PROPER RUSSIAN PRONUNCIATION. 8. УРОК (Unit) УРОК (Unit) УРОК (Unit) УРОК (Unit) 4 80.

FOREWORD.. 5 THE PROPER RUSSIAN PRONUNCIATION. 8. УРОК (Unit) УРОК (Unit) УРОК (Unit) УРОК (Unit) 4 80. CONTENTS FOREWORD.. 5 THE PROPER RUSSIAN PRONUNCIATION. 8 УРОК (Unit) 1 25 1.1. QUESTIONS WITH КТО AND ЧТО 27 1.2. GENDER OF NOUNS 29 1.3. PERSONAL PRONOUNS 31 УРОК (Unit) 2 38 2.1. PRESENT TENSE OF THE

More information

LQVSumm: A Corpus of Linguistic Quality Violations in Multi-Document Summarization

LQVSumm: A Corpus of Linguistic Quality Violations in Multi-Document Summarization LQVSumm: A Corpus of Linguistic Quality Violations in Multi-Document Summarization Annemarie Friedrich, Marina Valeeva and Alexis Palmer COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS SAARLAND UNIVERSITY, GERMANY

More information

IN THIS UNIT YOU LEARN HOW TO: SPEAKING 1 Work in pairs. Discuss the questions. 2 Work with a new partner. Discuss the questions.

IN THIS UNIT YOU LEARN HOW TO: SPEAKING 1 Work in pairs. Discuss the questions. 2 Work with a new partner. Discuss the questions. 6 1 IN THIS UNIT YOU LEARN HOW TO: ask and answer common questions about jobs talk about what you re doing at work at the moment talk about arrangements and appointments recognise and use collocations

More information

SOME MINIMAL NOTES ON MINIMALISM *

SOME MINIMAL NOTES ON MINIMALISM * In Linguistic Society of Hong Kong Newsletter 36, 7-10. (2000) SOME MINIMAL NOTES ON MINIMALISM * Sze-Wing Tang The Hong Kong Polytechnic University 1 Introduction Based on the framework outlined in chapter

More information

GERM 3040 GERMAN GRAMMAR AND COMPOSITION SPRING 2017

GERM 3040 GERMAN GRAMMAR AND COMPOSITION SPRING 2017 GERM 3040 GERMAN GRAMMAR AND COMPOSITION SPRING 2017 Instructor: Dr. Claudia Schwabe Class hours: TR 9:00-10:15 p.m. claudia.schwabe@usu.edu Class room: Old Main 301 Office: Old Main 002D Office hours:

More information

Syntactic types of Russian expressive suffixes

Syntactic types of Russian expressive suffixes Proc. 3rd Northwest Linguistics Conference, Victoria BC CDA, Feb. 17-19, 007 71 Syntactic types of Russian expressive suffixes Olga Steriopolo University of British Columbia olgasteriopolo@hotmail.com

More information

Dependency, licensing and the nature of grammatical relations *

Dependency, licensing and the nature of grammatical relations * UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 8 (1996) Dependency, licensing and the nature of grammatical relations * CHRISTIAN KREPS Abstract Word Grammar (Hudson 1984, 1990), in common with other dependency-based

More information

The subject of adjectives: Syntactic position and semantic interpretation

The subject of adjectives: Syntactic position and semantic interpretation The subject of adjectives: Syntactic position and semantic interpretation Aya Meltzer-ASSCHER Abstract It is widely accepted that subjects of verbs are base-generated within the (extended) verbal projection.

More information

Interfacing Phonology with LFG

Interfacing Phonology with LFG Interfacing Phonology with LFG Miriam Butt and Tracy Holloway King University of Konstanz and Xerox PARC Proceedings of the LFG98 Conference The University of Queensland, Brisbane Miriam Butt and Tracy

More information

Copyright and moral rights for this thesis are retained by the author

Copyright and moral rights for this thesis are retained by the author Zahn, Daniela (2013) The resolution of the clause that is relative? Prosody and plausibility as cues to RC attachment in English: evidence from structural priming and event related potentials. PhD thesis.

More information

Interactive Corpus Annotation of Anaphor Using NLP Algorithms

Interactive Corpus Annotation of Anaphor Using NLP Algorithms Interactive Corpus Annotation of Anaphor Using NLP Algorithms Catherine Smith 1 and Matthew Brook O Donnell 1 1. Introduction Pronouns occur with a relatively high frequency in all forms English discourse.

More information

EAGLE: an Error-Annotated Corpus of Beginning Learner German

EAGLE: an Error-Annotated Corpus of Beginning Learner German EAGLE: an Error-Annotated Corpus of Beginning Learner German Adriane Boyd Department of Linguistics The Ohio State University adriane@ling.osu.edu Abstract This paper describes the Error-Annotated German

More information