INTRODUCTION TO SYNTAX

Morphosyntax

Overview
Sentences are not formed by simply stringing words.
They have hierarchical design in which words are
grouped together into successively larger structural
unit.
To analyze the sentences, it is easier to divide a
language into separate components.
A sentence consists of words.
S word+word+word+
The sentence consist of words that can only appear in
word order or in certain combinations to make it
grammatical.
The study of syntax aims to discover the grammatical
sentences, to describe, and analyze language in terms
of these rules.
The girl likes the apple vs The apple likes the girl.

Definition of Syntax

The structure and ordering components

within a sentence.
The study of the rules whereby words or
other elements of sentence structure are
combined to form grammatical sentences.
The study of the rules for the formation of
grammatical sentences in a language.
The study of the patterns of formation of
sentences and phrases from words.
Based on Etymology, It is taken from
French syntaxe, from Late Latin syntaxis,
from Greek suntaxis, from suntassein, to
put in order : sun-, syn- + tassein , tag-, to
arrange

Syntax & Grammar

Language can be divided into three major areas

Grammar (& Syntax)
Morphology deals with form of words
Syntax deals with the arrangement of words to form
sentences
Phonology
deals with the sound system (involving sound, stress,
and intonation)
Lexicon
provides information about individual items of the
vocabulary (words and idioms)
Thus, syntax or syntactic analysis may be defined as;
a. determining the relevant component parts of a sentence
b. describing these parts grammatically
Syntax involves two closely related task of
a. breaking down the sentences into its constituents,
stating what type of constituents it is, and
b. what grammatical function it has.

Immediate Constituents
Constituents are like building block which
pattern in certain ways to form larger &larger
units.
Each constituent (except the smallest) can be
broken down into its component parts.
Immediate Constituents (IC) analysis can be
done in morphology level (word & morpheme)
and syntactic level (word, phrase, and clause)
Some language experts, including Chomsky,
felt that IC analysis cannot show exactly the
relation between the component parts.
Chomsky brought up ideas that the
grammatical rules in producing sentence
should contain three major rules. Those are (1)
Phrase Structure rules (PS Rules) which
describe the parts and the relationship in
simple declarative sentence (kernel sentence),
(2) Transformational rules (T rules), and (3)
morphophonemic rules.

Phrase Structure Rules

A rule which state that a phrase of a specific category may
have one or more constituents, each in turn of a specific
category
A phrase is any grouping of words that act as a constituent.
A sentence is a group of words which consists of a noun
phrase (NP) Subject, followed by verb phrase (VP)
Predicate.
e.g NP (Subject) / VP (Predicate)
The monkey / saw a leopard
Jerry
/ fell asleep on the couch
1. S
NP VP
2. NP Art N
3. VP V
NP
The rules are called phrase structure rules because they
show how phrases, or a group of words are structured.

Noun & Verb Phrase [1]

A sentence consists of subject and a predicate.

The NP is the subject
e.g. That girl chase a dog
The rest of the sentence is the predicate
e.g. This girl likes the dog
subject predicate
A Noun Phrase consists of a noun and all the words and word
groups that belong with a noun and the cluster around it. The
noun itself is called headword or head. The other words and
word groups are modifiers.
e.g. The yellow tulips
M
H
Most sentence positions that are occupied by nouns can also
be occupied by Noun Phrase.
e.g. Boys often build dams in the spring
Small boys who are not in the school often buils dams in
the spring.

Noun & Verb Phrase [2]

A verb phrase consists of a verb and all the words and word
groups that belong with the verb and cluster around it.
The verb itself is called headword or head and the other
words are auxiliaries, modifiers, and complements of the
verb.
Complements is the generic term for the complements of
the verb.
e.g. soon arrived
arrived late
arrived just as the plane came in
Many English sentence can be derived into two parts, one
consisting of a NP ans the other is VP
The VP is called the predicate.