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--- # Syntax: How sentences are built ### Will Styler - LIGN 101 --- ### Today's Plan - Grammatical Relations - Why do we need Syntax? - Constituency and Constituency Testing - Syntactic Hierarchy - Syntax Trees --- ### "Jony chased Dieter"
--- ## "How do we know who did what to whom?" --- ### Grammatical Relations How a language marks who did what to whom --- ### Grammatical Relations is kind of crucial - If you don't know who did what to whom, you've got problems --- ### Languages have different strategies - Sometimes, you can guess - "[ate] [Will] [veggie burger]" - Many languages use inflectional morphology - "This morpheme marks the Subject (do-er), and this marks the Object (do-ee) - But often, this is accomplished with word order! --- ### English uses word order to mark grammatical relations. * "Will ate the veggie burger." * "Jony chased Dieter" * "Dieter chased Jony" * "Andres waved to Kati" * "Will insulted Michael Bay" --- ### English uses word order to mark grammatical relations. - "Will ate the veggie burger" - "The veggie burger was eaten by Will" - "It was the Veggie burgers that Will was eating" - "And what did Will consume on that dark, dark night? A VEGGIE BURGER!" --- ### ... so it's clearly more than just word order - Because you can change the ordering and it still makes sense. --- ### ... yet word order clearly matters - *Ate Will the Veggie Burger - *Jony Dieter Chased - *Will Burger Veggie Ate --- ### ... and then things move around - "Will ate the veggie burger" - "Will ate it" - "Will ate what?" - "What did Will eat?" - *"What did Will eat it?" --- ### ... and things get ambiguous - "Will likes ambiguity more than most people" - "Will likes ambiguity more than most people do" - "Will likes ambiguity more than he likes most people" --- ### Clearly, it's complicated - ... and this is why we have... --- # Syntax! --- ### Syntax is the study of the structure of sentences and utterances - "What determines the order and arrangement of words in sentences?" - "What orderings and arrangements are grammatical in a language?" - "How do we identify the meaning of words given their ordering?" - "How does the ordering within a sentence change in contexts?" --- ### Syntax is a *huge* subfield in Linguistics - Very popular - Very broad - Very, *very* deep - ... and very much not Will's area - Sorry about that! --- ### Let's start from the basics --- # Constituency --- ### Syntactic Constituent A group of words which 'go together' in the structure of the sentence - *Constituents are always a continuous string of words* - No skipping words, these are continuous chunks! --- ### Constituents are chunks that, when split off, make sense --- ### We have intuitions about how things can be split
--- ### We know what breaks are "good"
--- ### ... and we know that even if other breaks are possible... --- ### They shouldn't always be done
--- ### Let's break me off a piece of that syntactic structure! --- ### Let's check our intuitions! ---
### Which of the following is a complete constituent in the sentence "Will tracked the wild veggie burgers through the forest." A. [burgers through the] B. [tracked the wild] C. [the wild veggie] D. [wild veggie burgers] E. [Will tracked the] ---
### Which of the following is a *not* complete constituent in the sentence "Will tracked the wild veggie burgers through the forest." A. [Will] B. [tracked the wild veggie burgers through the forest] C. [the wild veggie burgers] D. [through the forest] E. [veggie burgers through the forest] --- ## Constituency Testing --- ### Constituency Testing Using grammatical tests and manipulations to determine whether something is a valid constituent - "Can a syntactic operation apply to this chunk?" --- ### Three Main Constituency Tests we'll use - Substitution - Standalone answers - Movement --- ## Constituency Test #1: Substitution - Can you replace that element of the sentence with a placeholder? - Any time you can replace a chunk of sentence with something else, it's a constituent --- ### Good substitution testing words - Wh-words (who, what, where, when, how, why) - She never climbed [the tallest mountain in Africa] [in 2018]. - Pronouns (he, it, her, them, they, that) - [Your instructor Will] has no desire to meet [the director of those awful modern transformers movies] - Adverbs of Place and Time (then, there) - I grew up [just south of Denver, Colorado in a boring suburb near a reservoir] - "Do so" - Jessica [ordered fried ice cream at the restaurant], and I [did so] too. --- ### The indignant kitten eyed my veggie burger with disgust yesterday at dinner - **He** eyed **it** - The indignant kitten **did so**. - The indignant kitten eyed **what** with digust **when**? - The kitten eyed my veggie burger **how** yesterday at dinner? - The **obligate carnivore** eyed my **dinner** with disgust **then** - *There are other chunks we can't isolate like this* - [The indignant kitten eyed my] --- ### Your intrepid and syntax-loving TA saw the Great Horned Owl that Will had mentioned in passing while they were standing in the hallway last week before class last night shortly before leaving campus to go to Red Robin to nerd out about trees and eat french fries. - **She** saw **it** **then**. - **She** saw the Great Horned Owl that Will had mentioned **then** shortly before **that**. - (... and many more) --- ### If you can replace something with a placeholder, it's a constituent - ... and if you are unable to, it's not a constituent! --- ## Constituency Test #2: Standalone Answers - A string of words that can be the answer to a WH question is a constituent --- ### Robert the Enchiladaholic thoughtlessly purchased a $1000 gift card to Chiquita's Mexican Restaurant last week. - "Who bought the gift card?" - "What did he buy?" - "Where was the gift card to?" - "When did he buy it?" - "What did Robert do?" - "How did he buy it?" --- ### If a chunk can serve as the standalone answer to a question, it's a constituent - "What can a chunk that's a constitutent do?" --- ## Constituency Test 3: Moving items together - If you can move a string of words together, they're a constituent - The resulting sentence needs to be grammatical - Try Trolls Nice! --- ### Eugene sold his watch collection to the Pine Thugs - His watch collection is what Eugene sold to the Pine Thugs. - To the Pine Thugs, Eugene's watch collection was sold. - Sold his watch collection to the Pine Thugs, Eugene did. - Pine thugs are who Eugene sold his watch collection to. --- ### If you can move a chunk together, it's a constituent --- ### So, that's how we evaluate constituency - Let's test it out ---
### Which is *not* a constituent in "Michael and Karla founded an innovative new dermatology company last month"? a. [Michael and Karla] b. [founded an innovative new dermatology company] c. [an innovative new dermatology company] d. [an innovative new] e. [last month] --- ### Which is *not* a constituent in "Michael and Karla founded an innovative new dermatology company last month"? a. [Michael and Karla] b. [founded an innovative new dermatology company] c. [an innovative new dermatology company] d.
[an innovative new]
e. [last month] ---
### Which is *not* a constituent in "Lil' Bub won every cat show in Indiana."? a. [every cat show in Indiana] b. [Lil' Bub] c. [Bub won every] d. [every cat show] e. [cat show] --- ### Which is *not* a constituent in "Lil' Bub won every cat show in Indiana."? a. [every cat show in Indiana] b. [Lil' Bub] c.
[Bub won every]
d. [every cat show] e. [cat show] --- ### What do we call these constituents? - We name them after the *head* of the phrase --- ### The angry squirrel stole the mixed nuts from Walmart - [The angry squirrel] - **'Noun Phrase' (NP)**, headed by a noun - [stole the mixed nuts from Walmart] - **'Verb Phrase' (VP)**, headed by a verb - [from Walmart] - **'Prepositional Phrase' (PP)**, headed by a preposition. - [The angry squirrel stole the mixed nuts from Walmart] - The **Sentence (S)** --- ### ... and then we label individual words with their lexical types - Nouns (N), Verbs (V), Prepositions (P), Determiners (DET), --- ### Constituency is *really* important - We seem to 'understand' it as language speakers - Syntactic rules make constant reference to constituents - We're pretty sure that whatever syntax is in the mind, constituency is a part of it - So, thinking about constituency is going to be constant --- "OK, OK. We get it. Constituency is a thing." - ### ... but where the heck does it come from?! --- ### Language is hierarchical - Words combine into phrases/constituents - Phrases combine to form bigger phrases. - Phrases combine to form sentences. - Phrase structure rules show how words/phrases combine to form larger phrases/sentences. --- ### We can't treat sentences as 'flat' and find constituency
--- ### But if we think about it hierarchically...
- ### BOOM! Constituency. --- ### We need to go deeper...
--- ### Syntax Trees A representation of the hierarchical structure of sentences, capturing constituency. --- ### I ate.
--- ### I see you.
--- ### The dog chased the cat
--- ### I saw the big, sweet dogs from La Jolla with fleas
--- ### Trees express syntactic structure independent of specific words
--- ### Trees express syntactic structure independent of specific words
--- ## Constituency is important for meaning! --- ### "We need more honest politicians" - "We need **more politicians** who are honest" - "We need to exchange our policitians with ones who are **more honest**" --- ### There are two ways to break the sentence up - We need [more honest] politicians - We need more [honest politicians] - The meaning changes based on how you break the sentence up --- ### Different structures can imply different meanings --- ### I [saw the man] [with the telescope]
--- ### I saw [the man with the telescope]
--- ### Were the nuts from Walmart?
--- ### Or was Walmart the scene of the crime?
--- ### The bear ate the hiker with ketchup
---
--- ### John slapped his friend with the smelly fish
--- ###
There are hundreds of ways to draw a syntax tree
- If you just google "Syntax Tree Drawing", you'll find many theories intermixed - The best approach is a subject of *huge* theoretical debate - We're teaching you a small sub-set that's pretty uncontroversial - You will not find much consistency on the internet - You can leave some things off, specify things more or less... - **Use the materials we're providing you with, please!** --- ### Wrapping up - We know that languages can use word order to code grammatical relations - We know that there's more to it than ordering - We know that constituents of sentences are a thing - ... and that they're derived from hierarchy in sentences - We can read tree diagrams to understand the nature of that hierarchy --- ### Next time - We'll learn how to create syntax trees! - ... and we'll talk about the rules that govern that process ---
Thank you!