1. In language, the ignorant have prescribed laws to the learned.
(Richard, 1830)

2. Syntax is:
A sentence is a sound
in itself on which
sounds called words
may be strung.
strung
• The study of sentence structure

3. Syntax aims
To answer the following questions:
• What are the parts that make up a sentence?
• What are the properties of these parts?
• How are these parts related to one another?
• What are the rules and principles underlying
sentence structure?

4. Syntactic Hierarchy

5. MORPHEMES
Morphemes represent the inner structure of words

6. Morpheme Categories
• Morpheme is the minimal distinctive unit of grammar
• Based on the differences between morphemes,
we can categorize them into groups:
• Bound vs. Free morphemes
1.Morphemes like the past-tense -ed and the
plural marker -s are called bound morphemes
because they cannot occur on their own in
language. Instead, they are always attached
to other morphemes inside a word.
2.But morphemes like cat are called free
because they can also occur as independent
words.

7. Morpheme Categories
• Content vs. Function
1.Morphemes like -ed and -un are
function morphemes because they
have no inherent lexical meaning (i.e.)
don’t refer to anything in the real
world.
2. In contrast, morphemes like lock and
color are content morphemes because
they
have
inherent
content
or
meaning. Such morphemes are also
called roots.

8. WORDS
Words matter to syntax because:
• Sentences are made up of words.
• A word’ category (part of speech) shows
how a word functions in a sentence.

9. Why Word Categories?
• Reason 1: A sentence can contain
an infinite number of words.
• Reason 2: Different words, same
word categories.
• If we have categories for words that can appear in
certain positions and categories for those that don’t, we
can make generalizations (scientific ones) about the
behavior of different word types. This is why we need
parts of speech in syntactic theory.

10. Categorizing Words
Three Criteria
o Semantic
o Morphological
o Syntactic

11. Semantic Criteria
Meaning-based Criteria
• Noun refers to a person, place or thing.
• Verb refers to an action.
• Adjective refers to a quality.
• Adverb refers to the manner, location,
time or frequency of an action.

12. Semantic Criteria:
Inadequate
Counterexamples:
•
•
•
•
sincerity, happiness, pain, etc.
assassination, construction, etc.
remain, appear, exist, etc.
The meaning of that in ‘She said that he
would call you’?.
• you can know the part of speech of a word
without even knowing what it means:
The yinkish dripner blorked quastofically
into the nindin with the pidibs.

13. Morphological
Criteria
• Inflectional Properties
-Different forms of the same word
cat + -s
cats
• Derivational Properties
– How words are derived from other
words sad + -ness
sadness

14. Morphological Criteria:
Not Sufficient
• Morphological criterion, though reliable in
many cases, is not a sufficient condition
for determining word categories.
• Many nouns such as information, love and pain do
not have a plural form.
• Some adjectives such as absent and circular do
not have comparative and superlative forms.

15. Syntactic Criteria
• Different categories have different distributions.
e.g.
1. They have no ____.
2.
3.
4.
5.
They can ____.
They read the ____ book.
He treats patient very____.
He walked right ____ the wall.
Only a restricted set of words
can occur in each position.

16. Syntax of Major Word Classes

17. Noun
Morphological Properties
• It can take a plural -s morpheme;
Exceptions: children, deer, mice, etc.
• It can be modified by a possessive (apostrophe: ’s)
• It contains morphemes like the following: -ity, -ness,
-action, -er, -ion, -ment, -ance, -hood.

18. Noun
Syntactic Properties
• Preceded by determiners like: a, an, the, this,
that, these, those and numerals like: one,
two, three
• Preceded by an ADJECTIVE
• Followed by a PREPOSITION
• Preceded by a PREPOSITION

19. Verb
Morphological Properties
• takes a past tense -ed; exceptions: went,
left, etc.
• third-person singular agreement -s; e.g.
writes
• takes a progressive tense morpheme -ing;
e.g. running

20. Verb
Syntactic Properties
• preceded by AUXILIARIES.
• preceded by MODAL VERBS.
• preceded by negation words
like not and never.
• preceded by an ADVERB.
• can be followed by a NOUN.

21. Adjective
Morphological Properties
• has morphemes like -ous, -y, -ish and,
sometimes, -ly. e.g. fibrous, angry, freakish,
friendly
• able to form comparatives and superlatives
with -er and -est. e.g. angrier, angriest.

22. Adjective
Syntactic Properties
•
•
can be preceded by ADVERBS.
can occur after determiners like the, a,
this, these, those and numerals and
before NOUNS.
• modifies a NOUN
• can follow VERBS.

23. Adverb
Morphological Properties
• often followed by the morpheme -ly
e.g. swiftly, quickly, angrily.
Exceptions: abroad, now, fast, often,
well, also, very, too, never, so, etc.

24. Adverb
Syntactic Properties
• modifies a VERB; e.g. walks quickly
• modifies an ADJECTIVE; e.g. swiftly angry,
• modifies another ADVERB; e.g. very angrily

25. Preposition
Morphological Properties
• Invariable; takes no affixes
Syntactic Properties
• occurs before a noun phrase
• never occurs before an ADVERB or
an ADJECTIVE by themselves.
• can precede another PREPOSITION.

26. Determiners
• Determiners refer to articles,
demonstratives, possessives, quantifiers.
Morphological Properties
• invariable i.e. take no affixes
Syntactic properties
• occur before adjectives and nouns

27. Auxiliaries
Morphological Properties
• can be inflected for tense, voice, mood, aspect
Syntactic Properties
• occur before the main verb or before an adverb
modifying the main verb
• can occur before other auxiliary verbs
• can undergo inversion in questions

28. Conjunctions
Morphological Properties
Invariable; don’t take affixes
Syntactic Properties
Typically connect words of the same
category

29. Complementizers
Morphological Properties
• invariable; don’t take affixes.
Syntactic Properties
• create embedded sentences
e.g. I wonder if he did so.
- that, if, whether, for

30. Grammar with
word Categories
A man kicked the ball.
S
Det N V Det N
• This grammar misses a great deal of properties
that we can observe, e.g., the agreement and
ambiguity facts in examples like the following:
a. The mother of the boy and the girl is arriving soon.
b. The mother of the boy and the girl are arriving soon.

31. PHRASES

32. Constituency
• Why two different agreement patterns?
• Two different possibilities for grouping the words
a. [The mother of [the boy and the girl]] is arriving.
b. [The mother of the boy] and [the girl] are arriving.
• The grouping of words into larger units called
constituents provides the first step in understanding
the agreement facts.

33. Constituency Tests
Evidence for the existence of phrase units
• Cleft Construction
• Constituent Questions
• Pronoun Substitution
• Coordination

34. Syntax of Major
Phrase Categories

35. Phrase Structure
Rules (PS Rules)
Phrases are projected from lexical categories.
o NP: Noun Phrase
o VP: Verb Phrase
o Adj P: Adjective Phrase
o Adv P: Adverb Phrase
o PP: Preposition Phrase

36. NP: Noun Phrase
• head is noun.
__ [liked ice cream].
Options:
•
•
•
•
•
PS Rule
NP
Ahmad, I, you, students,
the students,
the tall students
the students from UMT,
the students who cam from UMT, etc.
(Det) (A) N (PP/S)

37. VP: Verb Phrase
• head is verb.
The student __.
Options:
•
•
•
•
ran, sang,
lifted heavy chair,
walked the dog through the park,
thought Izza is honest, etc.
PS Rule
VP
V (NP) (PP/S)

38. Adj P:
Adjective Phrase
• head is adjective.
He feels__.
Options:
•
•
•
•
PS Rule
Adj P
happy, sad,
proud of you,
proud to be his students,
proud that he passed the exam, etc.
Adj (PP/ VP/S)

39. Adv P:
Adverb Phrase
• head is adverb.
He behaved __.
Options:
• well, carefully
• very politely, very well, etc.
PS Rule
Adv P
(AdvP) Adv

40. PP:
Preposition Phrase
• head is preposition.
The squirrel ran right__.
Options:
• up the tree,
• into the box, etc.
PS Rule
PP
P NP

41. Grammar with
Phrases
• PS rules can generate infinite number of
grammatical sentences.
– Recursive application of PS rules
• PS rules help us to identify hierarchical
structures, and thus enable us to represent the
structural ambiguities of sentences.

42. Phrase
Representation
• Labelled Bracketing
[The woman] [went] [to the store]]
• Tree Diagram
(Phrase Marker)
S
NP
Det
VP
N
V
PP
P
NP
Det N

43. 3 Dimensions of Analysis
The monkey scratched a boy on Monday.
• Syntactic Categories
[S [NP The monkey] [VP scratched [NP a boy] [PP on Monday]]].
• Grammatical Functions
[S [SUBJ The monkey] [PRED scratched [OBJ a boy] [MOD on Monday]]].
• Semantic Roles
[S [agt The monkey] [pred scratched [pat a boy] [loc on Monday]]].