CS224N: Introduction to Syntax

We want to know how meaning is mapped onto what language structures. Commonly in English in ways
like this:

[Thing The dog] is [Place in the garden]

[Thing The dog] is [Property fierce]
[Action [Thing The dog] is chasing [Thing the cat]]
[State [Thing The dog] was sitting [Place in the garden] [Time yesterday]]
[Action [Thing We] ran [Path out into the water]]
[Action [Thing The dog] barked [Property/Manner loudly]]
[Action [Thing The dog] barked [Property/Amount nonstop for five hours]]

There are considerable difference in other languages.

Warlpiri exx.

Alopiji nga-rnu kapiyali-rli

ellops eat-PAST gavial-ERG
‘the gavial ate the ellops’

Alopiji wirijarlu pali-ja ngapa-ngka

ellops enormous die-PAST water-LOC
‘the big ellops died in the water’

Categories, grammatical relations and semantic roles

1a. Word categories: ‘Traditional parts of speech’

Noun Names of things: boy, cat, truth Verb Action or state: become, hit
Pronoun Used for noun: I, you, we Adverb Modifies V, Adj, Adv: sadly, very
Adjective Modifies noun: happy, clever Conjunction Joins things: and, but, while
Preposition Relation of N: to, from, into Interjection An outcry: ouch, oh, alas, psst

Modern linguistics is based on these, but there are some differences, as linguists attempt to identify parts
of speech consistently on the basis of form, by looking at grammatical properties of distribution and
selection. There are certain changes from traditional grammatical classifications, e.g.:

· a class of determiners is recognized (which includes the traditional article)

· the class of prepositions is expanded (gathering some of what were adverbs and conjunctions)
· for computational work, there are also a lot of practical details, like numbers, punctuation

1b. Phrasal categories:

Sentences have parts, some of which appear to have subparts. These groupings of words that go toether
we will call constituents (how do we know they go together? – see further below).

I hit the man with a cleaver: I hit [the man with a cleaver] / I hit [the man] with a cleaver
You could not go to her party: You [could not] go to her party / You could [not go] to her party
For constituents, we usually name them as phrases based on the word that heads the constituent:

the man from Iron Bark is a Noun Phrase (NP) because the head man is a noun
extremely clever is an Adjective Phrase (AP) because the head clever is an adjective
down the river is a Prepositional Phrase (PP) because the head down is a preposition
killed the rabbit is a Verb Phrase (VP) because the head killed is a verb

Note that a word is a constituent (if a little one). Sometimes words also act as phrases. In:

Joe grew potatoes

Joe and potatoes are both nouns and noun phrases. Compare:

The man from Iron Bark grew beautiful russet potatoes.

We say Joe counts as a noun phrase because it appears in a place that a larger noun phrase could have
been.

2. Grammatical function/relation:

In: Joe’s young cousin carried the huntsman out of the house

Joe’s young cousin is the SUBJECT of the verb carried [roughly, doer that precedes verb]
the huntsman is the OBJECT of the verb carried [roughly, undergoer that follows verb]
Joe is the POSSESSOR of the noun cousin [the owner of a noun]
young is a MODIFIER of the noun cousin [expresses an attribute of a head]

3. Semantic role:

In the same sentence,

Joe’s young cousin is the Agent/Actor (the one who does the action)
the huntsman is the Theme/Undergoer (the thing that undergoes a change of state or motion)
out of the house is a Locative (place where something happens)

4. Pragmatic functions:

Consider the following discourse. In it we can observe various pragmatic functions.

There was a river containing an ellops and a gavial. The gavial liked basking on the beach. It had
a large appetite. As for the ellops, it liked swimming. Backstroke was the way it swam.

Topic-Comment: it refers to the expected topic (about which a comment is made);

as for is used as a switch topic construction
Focus-Presupposition: Backstroke is focussed with the rest of the sentence a presupposition.
Presentational focus: There was introduces a river with presentational focus.

We want to distinguish these notions (levels) clearly, but note that there is a great deal of redundancy
between them. For instance, the SUBJECT is normally the Agent, and similarly the SUBJECT is
normally the Topic. Linguists spend a lot of time trying to identify and explain these correlations.
Phrasal Categories – Evidence for Constituency

Why phrasal categories? They allow us to give a better description of language structure.

There is morphological evidence (phrasal affixes like ’s) and semantic evidence (The president could not
complete the review), but overwhelmingly we use distributional evidence.

A given string of elements is a constituent just in case it has one or more of the following properties:

(a) Distribution:
(b) External: it behaves distributionally as a single structural unit – i.e., it occurs as a single unit in a
variety of sentence positions, e.g., noun phrases in:
after the verb before the verb following a preposition
I saw the statue The statue fell down It is under the statue
Often this includes placement in pragmatically marked positions, such as by preposing and
postposing.
John talked to the children about drugs
John talked about drugs to the children
*John talked drugs to the children about
?To the children, John talked about drugs.
(ii) Internal: It seems to have a regular internal structure. We can test this by doing substitution and
expansion.
the red book, this red book, many red books, *red this book
(b) No intrusion: It does not permit intrusion of parenthetical elements internally (e.g., sentence adverbs
like surely or phrases indicative of speaker attitude, like I think). Intrusion is usually only at the
boundaries of major phrasal constituents
*The, I think, man went home.
The man, I think, went home.
(c) Coordination: It can be coordinated with another string (without needing huge intonational marking).
Normally but not always coordination is restricted to the same category.
The man and the horse went home
The happy and wise student always excels.
*I saw the happy and that clever student.
(d) Pro-forms: It can be replaced by a pro-form (forms like it, what, there, (do) so)
I saw the man. Who did you see? Did Mary see him?
I sat on the box. Robin sat there too.
(e) Sentence fragments: Constituents can be used as sentence fragments:
What did you eat? A loaf of bread
What are your weekend plans? Going to the library.
(f) Phrases can sometimes undergo ellipsis (i.e., be left out):
John didn’t win the monkey, but his brother might.

Example Adjective Phrases:

(He is) so very proud of his daughter

(She is) quite sure that Mary will win
(It doesn’t seem) that advantageous for us
Mapping of semantics onto syntax

Words have details of their individual meaning. That’s their lexical semantics. A verb can be thought of
semantically as a predicate which takes certain arguments. Give takes a giver, a thing given, and a
recipient while realizing a transfer event. All of these can be realised:
Jo gave Kate a donkey.
Jo gave a donkey to Kate.
But they don’t have to be (and then have assumed referents – money to charity)
Jo gave to the Salvation Army.
Jo gave blankets.
Jo gave (generously).

Even if they are all realised, there is a choice of realisation patterns (as shown above). For most verbs of
transfer, both these frames are available. But there are subtle semantic things going on. You don’t get
both frames for more idiomatic uses of give, or ones that imply affectedness:
Jo gave Kate a hairy eyeball *Jo gave a hairy eyeball to Kate
That lecturer gives me the sh**s *That lecturer gives the sh**s to me.
Kate gave her best friend the measles ??Kate gave the measles to her best friend.

A (very) simple English grammar:

S ® NP VP

VP ® V (NP (NP)) PP*

NP ® { Pron
{ PN PN*
{ ({Det/PossP}) AP* N (PP)

PossP ® NP Poss

PP ® P NP

AP ® (AdvP) A

AdvP ® (AdvP) Adv

ate V
John PN
you Pron
the Det
that Det
’s Poss
extremely Adv
quite Adv
armadillo N
corner N
green A
in P
Implicit in this has been a “two level” theory of structure. We have word classes (N, V, A, P) and we
have (maximal) phrasal classes (NP, PP, AP, Adv mP, S?). But we don’t have anything in between.