Linguistics 001: Structures

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Linguistics 001 Structures

• Syntax I
• 2-9-2009

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Plagiarism at Harvard

• Last year, a Harvard student accused of
  plagiarism of a teen novel
• Sabrina was the brainy Angel. Yet another example
  of how every girl had to be one or the other
  Pretty or smart
• Moneypenny was the brainy female character. Yet
  another example of how every girl had to be one
  or the other Smart or pretty.
• The infinity of syntax gives a strong hint

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Infinity of syntax

• Try typing in Google (in quotes) the first one,
  two, three, four words in todays paper.
• A movement hopes to save from demolition hundreds
  of buildings built by the Works Progress
  Administration. (from NYTimes.com)
• Virtually every sentence you hear is new!

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Syntax Combinatorics

• Source of infinity infinite use of finite
  means
• Syntax as compression (ZIP files)
• Recursion
• Source of structures
• Phrases, constituents, ambiguity
• Cf. Features, consonants, vowels, onsets,
  syllables, words, morphemes,

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Words and Categories

• Syntax is putting words together?
• The cat meows
• The dog barks
• Cannot memorize all the word combinations (see
  Google search)
• Different combinations of words but same
  combinations of different words
• Article Noun Verb
• Structures again

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Structure Review

• As we saw in our discussion of phonology and
  morphology, the structure is crucially involved
  in the function
• un lock able /k/ /ae/ /t/

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What kind of structures

• AB, ABAB, ABABAB, ABABABAB .
• AB, AABB, AAABBB, AAAABBBB .
• Which group of patterns is more complex?
• Cognitive science was pretty much launched by
  this kind of studies! (AB as linguistic units)

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(AB)n vs. AnBn syntax is not flat
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Syntax

• Structure is critical in syntax we will examine
  two major points this week
• The notion of phrase why do some sequences of
  words go together more than others?
• Movement (Wed) how do we understand the object
  of the verb in the following sentences
• John ate several apples.
• What did John eat ___?

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Structure of Questions

• At a first glance, question formation in English
  appears to involve a rule like move the
  auxiliary to the front of the sentence
• The cat is on the balcony.
• Is the cat __ on the balcony?

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Questions, cont.

• This rule is not adequate. In cases with more
  than one auxiliary, we have to know which one is
  affected
• The cat that is on the balcony is chasing the
  mouse
• Is the cat that is on the balcony __ chasing the
  mouse?
• Is the cat that __ on the balcony is chasing the
  mouse?

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Complex structures

• In examples of this type, the point was that the
  auxiliary cannot be one that is inside a
  complex subject. What does this mean? Consider
  the following sentences
• John is in the garden.
• The boy is in the garden.
• The woman with the red hat is in the garden.
• The woman with the red hat that John was talking
  to yesterday when he went to the store to buy
  some batteries for his camera is in the garden
• ? The subject can be arbitrarily long, and it
  cannot be broken apart in question formation

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Subjects, cont.

• The subjects in the sentences above are all
  different from each other
• However, for the purposes of question formation,
  they behave in exactly the same way
• The rule for questions of this type ignores
  subjects and their internal structure, treating
  them all the same
• Thus the rule cannot be stated linearly it has
  to be stated in terms of a complex organization
  of the sentence

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Phrases

• Consider again the subjects from the examples
  above
• John
• The boy
• The woman with the red hat
• The woman with the red hat that John was talking
  to yesterday when he went to buy some batteries
  for his camera
• In terms of sentence structure, each of these
  behaves in the same way. They are grouped under
  the heading NP for Noun Phrase
• The idea here is that they are phrases that have
  properties of the head (John, boy, woman, woman),
  independently of other things that might be there

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All about the cat

• The head of a phrase defines its aboutness
• The big cat
• The cat that made a mess
• The cat in the hat
• The hat-wearing cat
• The cat that came back
• The cat that came back in a hat

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Phrases, cont.

• Each of these phrases has a head, where the head
  is the important lexical category that determines
  the properties of the phrase
• Sample VP kick the ball
• Sample AP proud of his daughter
• Sample PP in the garden

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Phrases and other phrases

• Phrases can contain other phrases this is the
  property of language that allows us to start with
  words etc and assemble them into larger and
  larger objects
• Example Verb Phrase kick the ball
• This VP is headed by the V(erb) kick
• Along with the V kick, we have the NP the ball
• VP
• V NP
• kick the ball

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Quiz Pick out the phrases

• in front of the mirror
• be patient
• drink plenty of
• Peter likes
• the big bad wolf
• kick up a notch

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When in doubt

• Vertigo(NP) The third man (NP)
• Kill Bill (VP) On golden pond (PP)
• Bend it like Beckham (VP)
• Mr. Smith goes to Washington (S(entence))
• One flew over (PP)
• When Harry met (VP)
• Its a wonderful (NP)

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Even toddlers know that!
Possible truncations
for cookies all gone that truck like sleeping.
The warm milk is for cookies The apple juice is
all gone This one is crappy. I want that
truck Kitties like sleeping
Impossible truncations
Cookie Monster has cookies for supper Daddys
gone all the time I dont want a truck that
small You are sleeping like a pig
cookies for. gone all. truck that sleeping
like.
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Secrets of baby talk
The milk is for cookies The juice is all
gone I want that truck Kitties like
sleeping Cookie Monster has cookies for
supper (why cant I?) Daddys gone all the
time I dont want a truck that small You
are sleeping like a pig
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Tests for adults

• The organization of words and phrases into larger
  units involves the notion of constituent (a unit)
• There are reasons for grouping some units
  together but not others
• Lets look at some of these reasons

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Test 1 Substitution

• The substitution test can be used for other cases
  as well take the prepositional phrases
• Ok
• He put it on the table.
• He put it there.
• Not Ok
• He put it on the table thats by the door.
• He put it there thats by the door.
• The PP in the second example is on the table
  thats by the door. Thus there cannot be
  substituted for the subpart on the table

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Test 2 Movement

• In the next lecture we will look at movement in
  detail. For right now, note that movement is
  another way of diagnosing constituent structure
• Ok
• I like these apples.
• These apples, I like __
• Not Ok
• I like the apples that John bought.
• The apples I like that John
  bought.
• Ok
• The apples that John bought, I like ________

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Putting it together

• To this point, we have concentrated on
  establishing that words are assembled into
  phrases
• Larger units like clauses and sentences involve
  hierarchical structures as well
• They involve the arrangement of these phrases
  with respect to one another

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A simple sentence

• Consider
• The boy kicked the ball
• We have three lexical categories here the nouns
  boy, ball, and the verb kick
• This gives us three phrases
• Determining how these phrases are organized into
  the sentence involves the same reasoning we
  applied above

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Possible structures

• In principle, the three phrases could be arranged
  in two ways this is exactly parallel to what we
  did with words before (Im using S here as the
  label for sentence)
• Structure 1 Structure 2
• S S
• VP VP
• NP V NP NP V
  NP
• the boy kicked the ball the boy kicked
  the ball

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The options

• The different structures take different positions
  on the status of the VP is it
• The object and verb that form a VP, or
• The subject and verb that form a VP?
• We can use the diagnostics above to give us an
  answer
• Recall the Dear Old Queen vs. Queer Old Dean
  example

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Tests

• Substitution
• John ate an apple.
• Mary did too.
• Did ltate an applegt
• ??? an apple?
• Verb Object behaves like a constituent
• Movement
• Mary said she would fix the car with a wrench
• and fix the car with a wrench she did
• ? Tests indicate that Verb Object behave like a
  constituent (structure 1)

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Recursion

• A concept from math self-reproducing/defining
• 2 in an even number
• If X is an even number, so is X-2
• A phrase can include another phrase of the same
  type (or the very same phrase)
• the cat in the hat from the store beside the
  street at the heart of the city

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Recursion Toddlers vs. Teens

• This is the dog that worried the cat that chased
  the rat that ate the cheese that lay in the house
  that Jack built
• There is a rumor going around that she told me
  that you told her that I saw you kissing Jim that
  he told you not to.

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Recursion in Harry Potter

• http//youtube.com/watch?vjsiF_G78aLs
• Ronald would like me to tell you that Seamus
  told him that Dean was told by Parvati that
  Hagrid ís looking for you .

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Confused?

• This is the cheese that lay in the house.
• This is the cheese that the rat ate that lay in
  the house.
• This is the cheese that the rat that the cat
  chased ate that lay in the house.
• This is the cheese that the rat that the cat that
  the dog worried chased ate that lay in the house.
• (more when we talk about language processing in
  the brain)