3. Syntax, Types of Grammar and Sentences PDF

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3. Syntax: Types of Grammar and Sentences

Prescriptive grammar (wie ist es grammatikalisch richtig)

• an attempt to tell the users of the language how to use it in order to speak correctly" • "I didn't do nothing" is bad English grammar,"Sie ist am schlafen" —>stigmatized in German grammar

Descriptive grammar (wie wird es tatsächlich umgesetzt)

• an attempt to describe the language as it is being used, regardless of whether it is considered correct or not. In many dialects, people do in fact say things like "I didn’t do nothing" or "er ist am schlafen"; a descriptive grammar of such varieties would accordingly treat that sentence as grammatical and provide rules that account for it

Teaching grammar

• a combination of prescriptive and descriptive approaches with the aim of teaching a language to children and foreigners" • often necessary to simplify in order to achieve success" - mainly the traditional approach

Traditional Grammar

- focuses on explicitly teaching students about structuring sentences and the different parts of speech" - Sentence is interpreted as consisting of several interlinked functional units (Subject, Predicate….)" - very eurocentric" - e.g. regular school grammars " - based on descriptions of Latin and Greek language" - based on Latinate and Greek categories " - labelling of pos (parts of speech)" - nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, interjections etc. " - word order: SVO, OVS, etc.

Phrase Structure grammar

- Noam Chomsky" - Interprets the sentence as consisting of different so called constituents / phrases and terminals / lexemes." • Models sentences as recursive trees consisting of constituents" • In traditional linguistics, this is the dominant grammar model used." - Idea: a mathematical, formal model of language" Transformation rules defining constituents:" S → NP VP" NP → n | det n | det AdjP n | …" VP → v | v NP | v NP NP | v NP NP PP | …" AdjP → adj | AdvP" adjAdvP → adv | AdvP adv

Dependency Grammar

Dependency Grammar - Can be traced back to 12th century grammarian IbnMada’" • Grammar: one-to-one relations between words which constitute a hierarchy." - Comparably efficient to compute → dominant grammarmodel in computational linguistics

Construction Grammar

- Ansatz" - geht von einem engen Zusammenhang zwischen Grammatik und Kognition aus. "

- Sprache besteht aus symbolischen Strukturen, die eine Form- und eine Bedeutungsseite haben —> Konstruktionen " - erlaubt weiterhin präzisere Beschreibung der Zwischenstadien des Spracherwerbs, weil sie auch diejenigen Konstruktionen der Lernersprache erfasst, die in unterschiedlicher Intensität von den zielsprachlichen Konstruktionen abweichen —> descriptive Generative grammar

• A generative grammar for a particular language specifies, for each string of words, whether or not that string constitutes a grammatical sentence in that language. It does not provide a set of rules for constructing or parsing sentences." - specifying how language is generated based on an inventory of rules % - seek to provide a model of how the cognitive process of generating natural language might work % - formal models of language generation % - Can be implemented in computational natural language processing systems

TTG

- staunch criticsm of Skinner’s behaviouristic views of language % - idea that humans have specific language acquisition capacities % - in a nutshell: what do we know when we “know” language % - i-language (internal lg; mentally represented knowledge) and e- language (externalized lg)! % - concepts of competence and performance % - what enables language acquisition and processing? % - what is it that all languages have in common? questions of universal grammar " Example: Passive transformation " a. John hit the ball.% b. The ball was hit by John. " !Postulate: only one structure is needed to generate these two sentences " T-Passive: " SC:X + NP2 + Y + be + V + by + NP1 + Z " - one single DEEP STRUCTURE, i.e. the structure before any transformations have been applied and " - two different SURFACE STRUCTURES which are the result of a transformation " - theory: Universal Grammar; grammar is innate, Theoretical aspects" method: deductive, introspective (rationalist)

Competence

- unconscious knowledge of the system of rules and principles which " underlies a speaker’s capacity to speak and understand her native language

Performance

- a speaker’s actual use of language on particular occasions

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Observational adequacy %

- a grammar must define `well-formed sentence ' , i.e., must be able to tell whether a string belongs to the set of well-formed sentences of a language; predictions --- fully explicit = generative

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Descriptive adequacy %

- a grammar must assign a structural description to each well-formed sentence (basis for explaining native speakers’ judgements)

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Explanatory adequacy %

- the best available descriptively adequate grammar for a given language should be selected by the theory (overall theory should be as restrictive as possible in terms of descriptive apparatus while remaining compatible with the data it purports to account for)

“Behaviorism" (1920-1950)

- just a theory, not a school of grammar" - consider any model involving assumptions about the mind which cannot be easily validated through observed behaviour unobjective" - antagonist to sciences largely focused on models of cognition and the mind" - language is learnt solely from external influence and that it would be unobjective to assume any particulare innate priors which make learning language easy for humans " - They do not provide a particular grammar model. " - “infants learn oral language from other human role models through a process involving imitation, rewards, and practice." - Igor Pavlov: discovered the principle of conditioning % - B.F. Skinner: language is „Verbal Behaviour“ " - Language as behaviour that is not different from any other type of behaviour % - Therefore assumed to be learned based on the same set of principles as other types of behaviour

American Structuralism

- idea that many phenomena are part of a whole with a definite but not necessarily defined structure"

- Almost complete negligence of semantics" - Attempts to formulate a set of discovery procedures" - Grammatical categories should be defined not in terms of meaning, but in terms of distribution (constituency)"

- Two analytic steps: Segmentation, Classification" important methodological contribution: " – discovery procedures " – constituency analysis% – phrase structure analysis " – based on empirical data There are four basic sentence structures in English:"

• A simple sentence is a sentence with just one independent clause (also called a main clause):" Judy laughed." • A compound sentence contains at least two independent clauses:" Judy laughed and Jimmy cried." • A complex sentence contains an independent clause and at least one dependent clause:" Jimmy cried when Judy laughed." • A compound-complex sentence contains two or more independent clauses and at least one dependent clause:" Judy laughed and Jimmy cried when the clowns ran past their seats.

Functional parts of the sentence:

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Subject" Predicate" Object" Adjunct" Complement

1. Subject

• Complex subject:" The complex subject consists of an NP and any words, phrases or clauses that modify it:" The man who had followed us inside walked over to the telephone." • A compound subject consists of two or more noun phrases (and their modifiers - if any) joined together by a coordinating conjunction:" The man and the woman walked over to the telephone." • A subject complement can either be a predicate noun, which renames the subject (a), or a predicate adjective, which describes the subject (b):" (a) The lake was a tranquil pool.(b) The lake is tranquil." Subject complements" • Linking verbs, connect a subject complement to the subject Example: be (in all its forms)

2. Predicate

• ... that part of the sentence which makes a statement or asks aquestion." • The predicate always contains a verb. Alongside that verb it maycontain any auxiliary verbs, modifiers of the verb, and any objects orcomplements and their respective modifiers.% Mary is painting a portrait of Sue.

3. Object"

• A simple object is that part of the sentence that stands for who or what"receives the action" of a transitive verb or a verbal." • Example: object of a verb" I met her this morning." "Her" is the simple object that receives the action of being met." • A direct object is a noun or pronoun that receives the action of atransitive verb in an active sentence." It answers the questions what? or whom? about the transitive verb."

4. Adjunct

• an optional of structurally ommissible part of the phrase, clause or sentence% ◦ Single word adjunct:% She will be leaving tomorrow." ◦ Phrase adjunct:% She will be leaving in the morning." ◦ Clause adjunct:% She will be leaving after she has had her delicious breakfast.% the adjunct is usually optional

5. Complement

- Traditionally, a complement is a(constituent(of a clause, such as a noun phrase or adjective phrase, that is used to(predicate(a description of the(subject(or(object(of the clause." - In generative syntax, a complement is a phrasal or clausal category which is selected (subcategorized) by the(head(of a phrase....