21. 12. 2006 Syntax ( Parts of speech categories and subcategories)

Learner's diary

After a short overview over today's lecture, Prof. Gibbon today explained the meaning of syntax, which is the grammar of a sentence.

Further we were introduced into the main differences between structural relations and semiotic relations. Structural relations consist of syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations while semiotic structure means the realisation and interpretatuin of signs.

Paradigmatic relations are the relations of choice, which means that you can for example choose between different nouns in one sentence and the sentence would still be grammatically correct ( although there is sometimes no sense in it anylonger).

Syntagmatic relations are the relations of glue, which sticks consonants and vowels together as syllables, lexical morphemes and affixes together as words, stems together as compound words, and stems and inflection into words. In syntag nouns and verbs are glued together into sentences.

In the second part of today's lecture we were introduced to the different parts of speech and their subcategories, in the second part we spoke about the different constitutive relations  in a sentence.

We all already knew the different parts of speech, which are determiners. nouns, verbs, adjectives, pronounce, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions and last but not least interjections, but the differentiation between several subcategories was completely new for me and interesting aswell.

The lecture was well structured, the slides helped me to follow the lecture and were also good to revise it at home.  

Syntax

• In linguistics, syntax is the study of the rules, or "patterned relations", that govern the way words combine to form phrases and phrases combine to form sentences. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntax , 22.12.06)

• Syntax allows you to express everything -> infinite number of sentences/ situations

Overview of today's topics

• structural relations

• sentence structure

Language Structure

• structural relations

• syntagmatic relations: combinatory relations which create larger signs (and their realisations and interpretations) from smaller signs (and their realisations and interpretations)

• paradigmatic relations: classificatory relations of similarity and difference between signs.

• Semiotic relations

• realisation: the visual appearance or acoustic representation of signs (other senses may also be involved).

• interpretation: the assignment of meaning to a sign.

Structural relations: Paradigmatic Relations

• relations of “choice”

• classificatory relations of similarity and difference between signs.

• similarity and difference of

• internal structure: simple vs. complex stems

• external structure: functions in different word orders / positions

• meaning: synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy, ...

• appearance: shared and different distinctive features

Task

• How many items in total in the left, mid, and right sets?

• How many items in the sentence set shown?

• How many of these actually exist, and how many do not?

{the, this, that, ...} - {girl, boy, ape, ...} - {swims, walks, ...}

• left set: finite/ closed/ limited set ( you cannot invent new arcticles, determiners

• mid set: infinite number ( you can invent new nouns)

• right set: you can invent new verbs -> infinite number

• The girl swims (exists)

• The girl walks (e)

• The boy swims (e)

• The boy walks (e)

• The ape swims (does not exist)

• The ape walks (exists)

• This girl swims (e)

• This girl walks (e)

• This boy swims (e)

• This boy walks (e)

• This ape swims (ne)

• This ape walks (e)

• That girl swims (e)

• That girl walks (e)

• That boy swims (e)

• That boy walks (e)

• That ape swims (ne)

• That ape walks (e)

Grammatically, all these sentences would be correct but as apes cannot swim ( as far as I know), the sentence does not exist

Syntagmatic relations

• linguistic “glue”: combinatory relations: create larger signs (& their realisations & interpretations) from smaller signs (& their realisations & interpretations)

• Examples:

• Phonology:

• Consonants and Vowels are glued together as core and periphery of syllables.

• Morphology:

• lexical morphemes & affixes are glued together into derived stems.

• stems are glued together into compound stems.

• stems and inflections are glued together into words.

• Syntax:

• nouns and verbs are glued together as the subjects and predicates of sentences.

Pradigmatic relations in Syntax

Syntactic Categories
Lexical categories						Glue categories
Nominals				Verbals		Pre po si tion	Con junc tion	inter jec tion
Nouns	Adjec tives	Deter min ers	Pro noun s	Main verbs	Aux ili ary verb s

Syntagmatic relations in syntax

sentence
Subject			Predicate
			Verbal		Object
The	Loud	Smoker	Is	Being	A	nuisance

Words, context, external structure

• Parsing: the analysis of sentences into parts

Task:

• Identify the part of speech of each word in this text

• Group the words into larger units

Inquests into the deaths of four women who were killed in Suffolk have been

opened and adjourned. The hearing at Ipswich Coroner's Court found no

clear cause of death for Tania Nicol and Annette Nicholls. Anneli Alderton

was asphyxiated and Paula Clennell died from compression of the neck,

coroner Dr Peter Dean said.The inquest into the death of another victim,

Gemma Adams, was opened last week.

Police are continuing to question two men about the murders. The first

suspect, Tom Stephens, 37, was arrested on Monday. A second man being

held has been named locally as 48-year-old Stephen Wright. Both are

suspected of killing all five women.

Noun categories				Verb cate gories		Glue categories
De ter min ers	Ad jec ti ves	Nou ns	Pro nou ns	Verb	Ad verb	Pre po si ti ons	Co n jun c tio ns	in ter jec tio ns
the	clear	In-ques-ts	her	Were killed	local-ly	into	And
	Four	dea-ths		Have been open ed		of
	no	wo-men		ad- jour-ned		in
	an-oth er	Suf- folk		found		At
	last	Ips- wich		Was aphy-xia- ted		from
	two	hea- ring		died		a- bout
	first	Co- ro-ner's Cou-rt		Are contin-uing		on
	se-cond	Cau se of de ath		To ques tion
	All	com- pres-sions		Was ar rest-ed
	five	neck		be ing held
		in-quest		Has be en nam-ed
		week		Are sus-pec-ted
		Po- lice
		Men
		mur-der
		sus-pect
		mon-day
		Both
		kil- ling
		wo-men

Noun categories: nouns

Proper nouns:

• names:

• personal

• place

• product

• ...

Common nouns:

• Countable nouns:

• knife, fork, spoon

• Mass nouns (uncountable nouns):

• bread (a slice of bread)

• butter (a piece of butter)

• jam (a spoonful of jam)

Task:

What happens when you count “uncountable” nouns?

• You get different kinds of bread, tea, ...

Noun categories: pronouns

Personal pronouns:

• I/me, you, he/him, she/her, we/us, they

Possessive pronouns:

• mine, yours, his, hers, its, ours, theirs

Demonstrative pronouns

• proximal: this

• distal: that, yonder (archaic)

Quantifier pronouns

• cardinal numerals: one, two, ...

• existential: some, several, few, many, ...

• dual: both

• universal: each, every, all, ...

Relative pronouns

• more like conjunctions

Verb categories: Verbs

Main verbs

• finite forms:

• person (1st, 2nd, 3^rd)

• number (singular, plural)

• tense (present, past)

non-finite forms

• infinitive

• participle:

• present

• perfect

Periphrastic verbs (auxiliary verb + non-finite main verb):

• modal: can, may, will, shall; ought, ...

• aspectual: be+prespart(continuous), have+pastpart (perfect), passive: be+pastpart

it might have been being repaired

modal perfect continuous passive mainverb

Verb categories: adverbs

Deictic:

• here, there; now, then

Time (when):

• soon, immediately, yesterday, ...

Place & direction (where):

• upwards, into, towards

Manner (how):

• slowly, quickly

• cleverly, stupidly

• nicely, nastily

• well

• ...

Degree

• better dealt with in connection with adjectives

Glue categories: prepositions

● Basically - make nominal expressions into adverbial

expressions

● Pretty much the same categories as adverbs

● Except the “all purpose preposition” of

 

Tasks

What is the meaning of “of”?

• The „Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English“, 7^th edition, distinguishes between 13 (!) different meanings for the word „of“.

Construct prepositional phrases corresponding to the types of adverbs

Conjunctions

Co-ordinating conjunctions:

• and, but

Subordinating conjunctions:

• conjunction-like relative pronouns:

• who, which, that

• make sentences (clauses) into adjective-like noun modifiers

• i.e. Basically:

• make sentence (clauses) into adverb-like verb modifiers

Task:

• find examples of conjunctions of each type and put them into sentences

Co- ordinating conjunctions

• for, nor, or, yet, so : She did not like rain, so she stayed inside.

Subordinating conjunctions

• because, if, so that, when, although, while, even though : She stayed inside because she did not like the rain

Glue categories: interjections

Interjections link parts of dialogues together:

• “Hi!”

• “er”

• “huh?”

They may also be expressions of subjective reactions:

• “Ouch!”

• “Wow!”

Task:

find examples of 5 different interjections (not the ones listed here)

Phrasal Categories

Noun Phrases – definitions

The Noun Categories form larger units:

• Adjective Phrase = (DegreeAdverb)* Adjective

• Nominal Phrase = (Adjective Phrase)* Noun

• Noun Phrase = (Determiner) Nominal Phrase (Relative Clause)

Frankly speaking, I was a bit bored because I already knew all details of today's lecture from my „How to make a dictionary“ class. In my opinion it is also not very useful to define the part of speech of 25 or even more words, one example of each might be enough as we all already know the different parts of speech.

References

• class homepage