UNIT 3 - LINGUISTICS

WHAT IS SYNTAX?

-          DEFINITION: establishes the set of rules that capture regularities and specify which combinations of words constitute grammatical strings and which not, as well as how different combinations carry different meaning. A SENTENCE is a sequence of words which is made up of individual groups of words which from patterns. Spoken and written units don’t overlap because follow a linear order. A MESSAGE depends not only on the meaning but also on syntactic structure. There are three important concepts:

    -          RANK: is a quality measured in terms of the higher or lower position in importance of the six meaningful units: TEXT, SENTENCE, CLAUSE, GROUP or PHRASE, WORD, and MORPHEMES.

    -          CONSTITUENCY: is the relationship among units to make up bigger units. It is indicated by bracketing or by drawing a tree diagram.

    -          CLASS: is divided into lexical, phrasal and casual categories:

    -          LEXICAL CATEGORIES: are the parts of speech divided into two groups:

    o   CONTENT WORDS: are open lexical categories because new words are added to them all the time:

-          NOUNS: refer to things, substances, people, places, actions and events. They can be counted, occur with articles and demonstratives, and be modified by adjectives.

-          VERBS: refer to actions, events, processes and states of being. They can express time and work with auxiliaries. There are four types: simple (make), prepositional (look after), phrasal (turn it down) and phrasal-prepositional verbs (run out of).

-          ADJETIVES: describe the things and ideas that nouns refer to. They can have comparative and superlative, be used with the verb to be, and be modified by adverbs.

-          ADVERBS: express manner, describe the speaker’s attitude and indicate temporal frequency. They can be modified and modify adjectives, verbs, other adverbs, and entire sentences.

    o   FUNCTION WORDS: are closed categories that don’t allow new members:

-          DETERMINERS: express definiteness, indefiniteness, possession and quantity. PREPOSITIONS: include instrument, possessor, and spatial and temporal relations.

-          AUXILIARY VERBS: express notions of time, necessity, possibility and so on.

-          PRONOUNS: refer to particular nouns or noun phrases.

-          CONJUNCTIONS: link together different elements within a phrase or sentence.

    -          PHRASAL CATEGORIES: describe how words can combine in units smaller than clauses and sentences. There are five phrases: NOMINAL (NP), VERBAL (VP), ADJECTIVAL (ADJP), ADVERBIAL (ADVP) and PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE (PP can include simple or complex prepositions). The main elements are the HEAD and the MODIFIERS, which can be pre-modifiers (specifiers) and post-modifiers/qualifiers (complements).

    -          CAUSAL CATEGORIES: contain a subject and a predicate. Clauses are of two types:

    o   INDEPENDENT CLAUSE: can stand alone and it is a finite clause. It is a SIMPLE sentence when it consists of one independent clause; and a COMPOUND sentence when it consists of more than one independent clause.

    o   DEPENDENT or SUBORDINATE CLAUSE: occurs in conjunction with an independent clause. It is non-finite clause that can be an infinite, a -ing, or a past participle clause. It is a COMPLEX sentence when it contains one or more dependent clauses.

    -          SENTENCE STRUCTURE: Syntax specifies what functions their constituents have in sentence structure. The simple sentence has two main CONSTITUENTS:

    o   SUBJECTS (syntactically obligatory in English)

    o   VERBS/PREDICATORS (syntactically and semantically obligatory in the Predicate). Some verbs change meaning depending on other OBLIGATORY ELEMENTS:

-          OBJECTS: refer to the participants; there is no concordance with the subject but they can become subjects; can be realized and substituted by pronouns; and are of three types: DIRECT O (Do), INDIRECT O (Io) and PREPOSITIONAL O (Po).

-          COMPLEMENTS: predicate something and it is the contrary to objects. They are of three types: SUBJECT C (Cs: the fish smells bad), OBJECT C (Co: I painted the door red) and PREDICATOR C (Cp: they crept into the cave, Sam married Susan, the jar contains nails)

    o   ADVERVERBIALS (no obligatory elements): modify verbs and are made up of an adverb, an adverb phrase, a noun phrase or a prepositional phrase. There are three types: ADJUNCT (last year), CONJUNCT (therefore) and DISJUNCT (unfortunately).

    -          APPROACHES TO SYNTAX: Syntactic analysis differs greatly from one school to another:

o   GENERATIVE/TRANSFORMATIVE VIEW: typological studies and disagreement with abstractness.

o   COGNITIVE and FUNCTIONAL VIEWS: communicative functions and usage-based approaches.