CONTENT WORDS AND FUNCTION WORDS

CONTENT WORDS: These are words containing lexical meanings. These words also denote concepts such as objects, actions, attributes, and ideas that we can think about. PARTS OF SPEECH NOUN VERB ADJECTIVE ADVERB MORPHEME children soar anarchism purplish

Content words are sometimes called as open class words because we can regularly do add new words to these classes. Content words are classified as nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. e.g. A new word, steganography, a noun, which is the art of hiding information in electronic text, entered the English with the Internet revolution. Verbs like disrespect and download entered the language quite recently, as have nouns like byte and email, and of adjectives like lowbat and upgrade. PARTS OF SPEECH NOUN VERB ADJECTIVE ADVERB FUNCTION WORDS: e.g. MORPHEME health imagine cruel heavenliness REVISED MEANING healthy (adjective) Imagination (noun) cruelty (adverb) heavenly (adjective)

These are words that do not have clear lexical meaning or obvious concepts associated with them instead they have grammatical function.

Function words include conjunctions, prepositions, articles, and pronouns. CONJUNCTIONS PREPOSITIONS ARTICLES PRONOUNS and it / or / but / of a / an / the he - she / I - me - mine / in

Function words are sometimes called as closed class words, because it is difficult to think of new conjunctions, prepositions, articles, or pronouns that have recently entered the language. Note: These two classes of words have different functions in language. Content words have semantic content (meaning), while function words play a grammatical role; they connect the content words to the larger grammatical context

GRAMMATICAL OR UNGRAMMATICAL
In English and in every language, every sentence is a sequence of words, but not every sequence of words is a sentence. Sequences of words that conform to the rules of syntax (the rules of sentence formation and structure) are well formed or grammatical, and those that violate the syntactic rules are ill formed or ungrammatical. GRAMMAR: Language that consists of sound and sound patterns, the basic unit such as words, and the rules to combine all of these to form sentences with the desired meaning.
An introduction to Language by Fromkin, p. 14 par 3.

Sentences are not random string of words, some random string of words that we can interpret are not sentences. Ungrammatical strings can be fixed-up to make it grammatical. To be a sentence, words must conform to specific patterns determined by the syntactic rules of the language.

GRAMMATICAL Figurative Language Statements Enormous crickets in pink socks danced at the prom. Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. A verb crumpled the milk. Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; Regular Declarative Statements The boy quickly found the ball in the house. Jack and Jill ran up a hill. Zack wants to be a gentleman. Note:

UNGRAMMATICAL Figurative Language Statements Prom danced at the pinks socks in enormous crickets. Furiously sleep ideas green colorless. Milk the crumpled verb a. Toves slithy the and brilig twas Wabe the in gimble and gyre did. Regular Declarative Statements The boy quickly in the house the ball found Up a hill and Jack ran Jill. A gentleman Zack to be wants.

Grammaticality judgments are determined by rules that are shared by the speakers of a language, the syntactic rules that account for the ability to make these judgments include other constraints in addition to rules of word order. The ability to make grammaticality judgments does not depend on having heard the sentence before, but your syntactic knowledge tells you that it is grammatical. (Figurative language statement 1 of grammatical vs. ungrammatical chart) Grammaticality judgments do not depend on whether the sentence is meaningful or not. (Figurative language statement 2 of grammatical vs. ungrammatical chart) Though some sentences do not make much sense, they may be syntactically well formed. Though they may sound funny, but they differ in their funniness from the given string of words. (Figurative language statement 3 of grammatical vs. ungrammatical chart) Such nonsense poetry is amusing because the sentences comply with syntactic rules and sound like good English. Ungrammatical strings of nonsense words are not entertaining. (Figurative language statement 4 of grammatical vs. ungrammatical chart) You may understand ungrammatical sequences even though you know they are not well formed. Most English speakers could interpret, although they know that the word order is irregular, grammatical sentences may be uninterpretable if they include nonsense strings if they don not have an agreed-on meaning. (Regular declarative statements 1-3 of grammatical vs. ungrammatical chart) SENTENCE STRUCTURE

SYNTACTIC KNOWLEDGE:

Is being able to decide which strings are grammatical and which are not. It accounts for the multiple meanings, or ambiguity, of expressions.

The example illustrates that within a phrase, certain words together. Sentences have hierarchical structure as well as word order. The words in the phrase synthetic buffalo hides can be grouped in two ways. Then get the meaning of each phase. Example: Synthetic (buffalo hides) and (Synthetic buffalo) hides

Synthetic buffalo hides Synthetic buffalo hides First meaning Second Meaning The rules of syntax allow both these groupings, which is why the expression is ambiguous. Syntactic knowledge also enables us to determine the grammatical relations in a sentence, such as subject and direct object, and how they are understood. e.g. For sale: an antique desk suitable for lady with thick legs and large drawers.

The humorous reading comes from the grouping(for the lady with thick legs and large drawers) as opposed to the intended(for the lady) (with thick legs and large drawers) where the legs and the drawers belong to the desk. e.g. For sale: an antique desk with thick legs and large drawers suitable for lady.

Because these ambiguities area result of different structures, they are instances of structural ambiguity. Syntactic Knowledge also enables us to determine the grammatical relations in a sentence, such as subject and direct object, and how they are to be understood. Sentence 1 Sentence 2 Sentence 3

Mary hired Bill.

Mary is the subject and is understood to be the employer that did the hiring. Bill is the direct object and is understood to be the employee. SYNTACTIC RULES: Example:

Bill hired Mary.

Bill is the subject and Mary is the direct object, the meaning changes so that we understand Bill to be Marys employer.

Bill was hired by Mary.

The grammatical relationships are the same as in (2) but we understand it to have the same meaning as (1), despite the structural differences between (1) and (3).

Determine the order of words in a sentence, and how the words are grouped. (Tree Diagram parts and subparts of the sentence)

The child found the puppy.

a. corresponding to the subject and the predicate of the sentence (the child) (found the puppy) b. through further division (the child) (found) (the puppy) c. through individual words (the) (child) (found) (the) (puppy) The natural groupings of a sentence are called constituents: The set of words that can be used to answer a question is a constituent. e.g. (query) What did you find? (response) the puppy (not) found the

Constituents can also be relocated as in the following examples. a. It was the puppy the child found. b. The puppy was found by the child. Syntactic rules reveal the grammatical relations among the words of a sentence and tell us when structural differences result in meaning differences and when they do not. Thus the syntactic rules in a grammar account for the least: a. b. c. d. e. f. The grammaticality of the sentence Word order Hierarchical organization of sentences Grammatical relations such a s subject and object Whether different structures have differing meanings or the same meaning The creative aspect of language

A major goal of linguistics is to show clearly and explicitly how syntactic rules account for this knowledge. A theory of grammar must provide a complete characterization of what speakers implicitly know about their language.

Prepared by:

GERARD M. GAZA Phonology Submitted to: Prof. Rowena Javier-Rivero