chapter 4_SyntaxPPT课件新版完整版.ppt

Chapter 4 Syntax Syntax = syn(together) tax(to arrange) Syntax is the study of the formations of sentences or the rules that govern word combination in a sentence ,i.e. how words are put together into meaningful combinations There are different approaches or theories to syntax. 1 The traditional approach A sentence is a sequence of words emphasis is on the study of individual words. 1.1 Number/gender/case(Ns, Vs) Number: sing. or pl Gender: actor/actress Case: Nominative (I, he, she) genitive(my, his, her) accusative (me, him, her) I gave a book to him. 1.2 Tense and aspect(体) Tense: indicating time related to the time of utterance. E.g I am reading a book. He went to the concert last night. Based on the tense system of Latin, English used to have 16 tenses. English Tenses Present: simple/progressive/perfect/perfect progressive Past: simple/progressive/perfect/perfect progressive Future: simple/progressive/perfect/perfect progressive Past Future: simple/future progressive/perfect/perfect progressive Aspect: the internal temporal structure of a verb. E.g I know. (static) *I am knowing. I sing .(durative) I am singing. 1.3 Concord and government Concord: the forms of two or more words in a syntactic relationship should agree with each other in terms of some categories. E.g a book two books John went to his Uncle’s. He speaks French. They speak English. Government: a word of a certain class governs the form of others. Usually the verb or the preposition determines the form of pronoun after it. E.g She gave him a book She gave a book to him. 2. The structural approach by F. Saussure linguistic units are interrelated in a structure or system, not as isolated bits. Later it fully developed to structuralism 2.1 Syntagmatic/paradigmatic relations Syntagmatic(组合): relationship between one item and others in a sequence or between ele