ChapterSyntax.ppt

Chapter 4 Syntax I. What is syntax? Syntax is a branch of linguistics that studies the internal structure of sentences and the relationships among the internal parts (their component parts). To be more specific, it studies how words are combined to form sentences and the rules that govern the formation of sentences. II. Categories A. Word-level categories 1. What is category? Category refers to a group of linguistic items that fulfill the same or similar functions in a particular language such as a sentence, a noun phrase or a verb. It is also called grammatical category. 2. What are syntactic categories? Words can be grouped together into a relatively small number of classes, which are called syntactic categories. For example: (1) the type of meaning that words express; e.g. work (verb) → give instruction to sb (2) the type of affixes they take; e.g. -er → teacher; -able → teachable (3) the type of structures in which they occur; e.g. children →The children sleep peacefully. * The sleep peacefully children. 3. What are word-level categories? Word-level categories are the syntactic categories at the word level; they refer to words having the same grammatical limitations and the same potential for occurrence.They are the most important categories to the syntactic study and are traditionally referred to as parts of speech. For example: The children sleep peacefully. → That man wrote slowly. Those dogs barked angrily. Two types of word level categories: a. Major lexical categories: Noun (N), Verb (V), Adjective (A), Preposition (P). b. Minor lexical categories: Determiner (Det), Degree word (Deg), Qualifier (Qual), Auxiliary (Aux), Conjunction (Con). 4. Three criteria for determining a word’s category a. The first criterion to determine a word