An Introduction to Linguistics(语言学概论).ppt

Chapter 4 Syntax （句法学） Syntax is the study of the part of the human linguistic system that determines how sentences are put together out of words, or, in another word, how are words put together to form a sentence? Syntax has something to do with our knowledge of grammatical function of each part of a sentence and with speaker’s ability to produce and understand an infinite set of possible sentences. Syntax is the study of how sentences are structured, formed; or in other words, it tries to state what words can be combined with others to form sentences and in what order. （句法学研究句子中词的排列，还研究词与词之间是以什么方式表现出来的，如词序或曲折变化。） 4.1 Sentence Structure How is a sentence structured? One aspect of the syntactic structure of sentences is the division of a sentence into phrases, and those phrases into further phrases, and so forth. Another aspect of the syntactic structure of a sentence is “movement” relations that hold between one syntactic position in a sentence and another. The syntactic literature dealing with the study of how sentences are structured throws us a hint that syntactic research should not only concentrate on how sentences are merged out of their parts, units, or constituents, but also on how constituents are moved according to certain rules. 4.1.1 Constituents A few concepts: immediate constituent（直接成分） a. Constituent (构成成分) ultimate constituent （最终成分） b. Immediate constituent: Can be further segmented until we obtain the smallest grammatical units. c. Ultimate constituent: The smallest grammatical unit obtained through segmentation. d. Construction (结构): It is composed of constituents and is able to be segmented. Or: It is a relationship between constituents. （词内的词素，句子内的词组合起来的过程或结果。） IC Analysis (直接成分分析法): to divide the sentence up into immediate constituents by using binary cutting until obtaining its ultimate constituents. （把句子按其组成部分/成分用两进制切分法/二分法一直划