句法的定义

? 句法的定义；句法关系；向心结构；离心结构；成分；直接成分分析法；并列结构与从属结构；句子成分；范畴（性、数、格）。

? The traditional approach传统学派 ? -The structural approach 结构主义学派

? -The generative approach 生成语法 ? -The functional approach 功能学派

? -Systemic-functional grammar 系统功能语法 ? 1. Education is no longer free as it use to be.

2. For example, the computer that is used everywhere today to increase efficiency and save the cost of labour .

3.In our country we vote for our government, the next federal election is coming again.

? 4. The river will flood again next year unless we will build a better dam.

5. Many people are dishonest with government. Although they are married, but they don?t want to declare they are married.

? 6. Three hundred dollars are what we must pay.

? 7.How do you think of my boyfriend，dad？the girl ask.

8. Winter storms that bring ice， sleet， and snow they can cause traffic problem.

9. The cake was suppose to be tasty.

? 10. If I would have trained for the race，I might have won.

? 11. Because our car was overheating， it came as no surprise that it broke down just as it began to run.

12. The moon, along with Venus, are visible in the night sky.

13. The candidate felt unusual energetic.

14. People feared that they would no longer be able to happily live in peace.

1.1 What is syntax ?

It?s a kind of micro linguistics that studies how words are combined to form sentences and the rules that govern the formation of sentences.

? Syntax is the study of the rules governing the ways different constituents are combined to form sentences in a language, or the study of the interrelationships between elements in sentence structures.

? 句法就是研究语言的不同成分组成句子的规则或句子结构成分之间的关系。 1.2 The basic units --- phrase, clause and sentence ? a nice day

? What I have read is interesting. ? I like it because it is fashionable 1.3 What is a sentence?

? It is structurally independent unit that usually comprises a number of words to form a complete statement, question or command.

? It is not subordinated to a larger linguistic form. ? It is also called a maximum free form.

--- L. Bloomfield 2. Syntactic relations

? Syntactic relations can be analyzed into three kinds:

? relations of position ? relations of substitutability ? relations of co-occurrence

2.1 Positional relation

? Positional relation, or WORD ORDER, refers to the sequential arrangement of words in a language. For example,

? The boy kicked the ball

? *Boy the ball kicked the ? *The ball kicked the boy

? Positional relations are a manifestation of one aspect of Syntagmatic Relations （横组合关系）observed by F. de Saussure.

? They are also called Horizontal Relations （横向关系）or simply Chain Relations（链状关系）.

? Word order is among the three basic ways (word order, genetic and areal classifications) to classify languages in the world:

? English belongs to SVO type.

2.2 Relation of Substitutability

? The Relation of Substitutability refers to classes or sets of words substitutable for each other grammatically in sentences with the same structure.

_ ________ will go tomorrow. She They Mary The boy

? This is also called Associative Relations （联想关系）by Saussure, and Paradigmatic Relations（纵聚合关系） by Hjemslev.

? To make it more understandable, they are called Vertical Relations or Choice Relations（纵向关系或选择关系）.

2.3 Relation of Co-occurrence

? It means that words of different sets of clauses may permit, or require, the occurrence of a word of another set or class to form a sentence or a particular part of a sentence. ? 同现关系指小句中不同集合的词语允许或要求和另一集合

或类别中的词语一起组成句子或句子的某一特定部分。 Question:

? Do the syntagmatic relation and paradigmatic relation exist at the phonological or morphological level? Key:

a. at the phonological level [seif]: [s][ei][f] [sei_]: [seif] [seiv]

b. at the morphological level careless: care + less care-: careless careful c. at the sentential level

3. Grammatical construction and its constituents

3.1 Grammatical Construction or construct can be used to mean any syntactic construct which is assigned one or more conventional functions in a language, together with whatever is linguistically conventionalized about its contribution to the meaning or use the construct contains.

语法结构或建构用来指语言中被赋予一种或多种功能的任何句法建构，包括在语言学上该建构所拥有的常规意义和用法。

3.2 Constituents and Phrase Structure

? Constituent is a part of a larger linguistic unit. Several constituents together form a construction: ? the boy (NP) ? ate the apple (VP) ? the boy ate the apple (S)

? Immediate Constituent: If two constituents are joined to form a hierarchically higher constituent, then the constituents are said to be the immediate constituents of the a hierarchically higher constituent.

Immediate constituent analysis or IC analysis（直接成分分析） This notion was proposed by the American linguist Leonard Bloomfield（布龙菲尔德） in his Language (first published in 1933).

Immediate constituent analysis is the analysis of a sentence in terms of its immediate constituents – word groups (or phrases), which are in turn analyzed into the immediate constituents of their own, and the process goes on until the ultimate (words) constituents are reached.

Any sentence can be divided into two parts (Immediate Constituents), then continue until the smallest units( ultimate constituents).

The immediate constituent analysis of a sentence may be carried out with slashes, labeled square brackets or be more easily shown with a tree diagram.

Word-level Phrasal N=noun NP=noun phrase A=adjective AP=adjective phrase V=verb VP=verb phrase P=preposition PP=preposition phrase Det=determiner S=sentence or clause Adv=adverb Conj=conjunction ? Exercises:

? Draw the appropriate tree structure for each example. ? Into the tree ? Fixed the telephone ? Full of mistakes ? A film about pollution ? Perhaps earn the money ? More towards the window

? The teacher often organized a discussion. ? The manager may offer a raise.

? That shelf will fall.

? The student always loses the debate.

The advantages of IC Analysis: Through IC analysis, the internal structure of a sentence may be demonstrated clearly, and ambiguities, if any, will be revealed. E.g. Tony is a dirty street fighter. my small child’s toy

Visiting aunts can be boring.

SNPNPS

VPAunts who visit can be boringSS?NPVP

VPSomeone to visit aunts can be boring

The disadvantages of the IC analysis: a. Binary divisions: any constructions, at any level, will be cut into

two parts. It is not always possible, e.g. the tall man and woman

b.Constructions with discontinuous constituents will pose technical problems for tree diagrams in IC analysis. e.g. What do you do?

c. The most serious problem is that there are structural ambiguities which cannot be revealed by IC analysis, e.g. the shooting of the hunters Deep structure and surface structure

? Deep structure: By XP rule which determines the internal structure of the phrasal categories. ? E.g A boy found a book.

? Surface structure: By appropriate transformations that correspond to the final syntactic form of the sentence ? E.g . What languages can you speak ? you can speak what languages

3.3 Endocentric and exocentric constructions（向心结构和离心结构）

Endocentric construction is one construction whose distribution is functionally equivalent, or approaching equivalent, to one of its constituents, which serves as the center, or head, of the whole. Hence an endocentric construction is also known as a headed

construction （中心结构）.

Typical endocentric constructions are noun phrases, verb phrases or adjective phrases, e.g.

these popular Chinese singers us youth has been overworked really witty

remarkably

Exocentric construction is a construction whose distribution is not functionally equivalent to any of its constituents. Typical exocentric constructions are : the basic sentence, the prepositional phrase,

the predicate (verb + object) construction, and the connective (be + complement) construction in the corner when it rains The man cried. fly a kite seem angry

3.4 Coordination and Subordination 并列关系和从属关系 Endocentric constructions fall into two main types, depending on the relation between constituents:

Coordination is a common syntactic pattern in English and other languages formed by grouping together two or more categories of the same type with the help of a conjunction such as and, but and or . ? Coordination of VPs:

? [VP go to the library] and [VP read a book ]

? Subordination refers to the process or result of linking linguistic units so that they have different syntactic status, one being dependent upon the other, and usually a constituent of the other.

? The subordinate constituents are words which modify the head. Consequently, they can be called

modifiers.

? two dogs Head

? (My brother) can drink (wine). Head ? Swimming in the lake (is fun). Head

? (The pepper was) hot beyond endurance. Head

? Clauses can be used as subordinate constituents. There are three basic types of subordinate clauses: ? complement clauses

? adjunct (or adverbial) clauses ? relative clauses

4. Syntactic Function

? The syntactic function shows the relationship between a linguistic form and other parts of the linguistic pattern in which it is used.

? Names of functions are expressed in terms of subjects, objects, predicators, modifiers, complements, etc.

4.1 Subject

? In some languages, subject refers to one of the nouns in the

nominative case.

? In English, the subject of a sentence is often said to be the agent, or the doer of the action, while the object is the person or thing acted upon by the agent.

? This definition seems to work for these sentences: ? Mary slapped John. ■ A dog bit Bill.

? but is clearly wrong in the following examples:

? John was bitten by a dog.

? John underwent major heart surgery.

? In order to account for the case of subject in passive voice, we have two other terms “grammatical subject” (John) and “logical subject” (a dog).

? Another traditional definition of the subject is “what the sentence is about” (i.e. topic).

? Again, this seems to work for many sentences, such as

? Bill is a very crafty fellow. ? but fails in others, such as

? (Jack is pretty reliable, but) Bill I don’t trust. ? As for Bill, I wouldn’t take his promises very seriously.

? All three sentences seem to be “about” Bill; thus we could say that Bill is the topic of all three sentences.

? The above sentences make it clear that the topic is not always the grammatical subject. ? What characteristics do subjects have? Word order Pro-forms

Agreement with the verb Content questions Tag question 4.2 Predicate

? Predicate refers to a major constituent of sentence structure in a binary analysis in which all obligatory constituents other than the subject were considered together.

? It usually expresses actions, processes, and states that refer to the subject.

? The boy is running. (process) ? Peter broke the glass. (action) ? Jane must be mad! (state) ? The word predicator is suggested for verb or verbs included in a predicate.

4.3 Object

? Object is also a term hard to define. Since, traditionally, subject can be defined as the doer of the action, object may refer to the “receiver” or “goal” of an action, and it is further classified into Direct Object and Indirect Object. ? Mother bought a doll. ? Mother gave my sister a doll. IO DO ? Question:

What is the relation between classes and functions ? 5. Category

? Category refers to a group of linguistic items which fulfill the same or similar functions in a particular language. Traditionally, category is termed as “parts of speech”. Major lexical categories and minor lexical categories Examples of some lexical categories Major lexical categories Noun (N) Verb (V) Adjective (A) Preposition (P) Examples Harry, boy, policy, bravery arrive, discuss, dislike intelligent, tall, fond near, over, by Minor lexical categories Examples

Determiner (Det) Degree word (Deg) Qualifier (Qual) Auxiliary (Aux) Conjunction (Con)

the, a, this, those quite, very, more, so often, always, seldom, never must, should, can, might and, or, but ? The term category refers to the defining properties of these general units:

? Categories of the noun: number, gender, case and countability

? Categories of the verb: tense, aspect, voice ? 5.1 Number ? 5.2 Gender ? 5.3 Case ? 5.4 Agreement 6. Phrase, Clause and Sentence 6.1 Phrase

? the three tallest girls (nominal phrase) ? has been doing

(verbal phrase) ? extremely difficult

(adjectival phrase)

? to the door (prepositional phrase) ? very fast

(adverbial phrase)

6.2 Clause

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