Languages & Linguistics
Syntactic Structures
Syntactic structures refer to the arrangement of words and phrases to form grammatically correct sentences in a language. This concept is central to understanding how different languages organize and convey meaning through their grammar and syntax. By analyzing syntactic structures, linguists can gain insights into the underlying principles that govern language and communication.
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12 Key excerpts on "Syntactic Structures"
eBook - PDFUnderstanding Language
A Study of Theories of Language in Linguistics and in Philosophy
- (Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
In short, syntactic structure tells us what the truth-value bearing elements of a language are, how we can form compounds of these, what kinds of meanings can be assigned to elements given that a lim-ited number of syntactic categories will be available, and how one can form complex subsentential expressions that also require semantic interpretation. Thus though we can talk of the semantic content of a language - what truths can be expressed in it, what meanings can be assigned to certain elements - one cannot talk about a semantic structure or representation apart from all syn-tactic analyses: SOME syntactic structure must be assumed by all characterisations of semantic content. It is possible that those who talk about semantic representation mean to include syntax, but only semantically motivated syntax. An example of such a syntax is the one Quine introduces to de-scribe the language of logic. This grammar is designed with no other thought than to facilitate the tracing of truth conditions (Quine 1970:35-36). One might call the combination of this syn-tax with a semantic interpretation a semantic representation provided that the role of syntax is recognised. Just what the link is between such a system and an empirically motivated syntax for a natural language will be discussed in subsequent sections. But this much should be noted in any case; even if one restricts one's motives to what Quine refers to in the quotation, this leaves us with a wide range of alternatives. For example, philosophers have given divergent logical grammars for singular terms and for elements in opaque contexts (i.e. intensional contexts in which extensional substitutivity, or existential inference breaks down).
- Alex Barber, Robert J Stainton(Authors)
- 2010(Publication Date)
- Elsevier Science(Publisher)
(syntactic) structure. The responsibility of linguistics is to describe the full range of such facts, not just for English, but for all human languages. Then, in virtue of its scientific pretensions, it has to (attempt to) explain why these facts rather than any others are the ones that occur – again both in English and in other languages. To do justice to the richness of what we know, it is necessary to distinguish not just the lexicon and the computational system, but to differ-entiate among syntax, semantics, morphology, pho-nology and phonetics, and to relate this knowledge to pragmatics – how we interpret utterances in context. Take our knowledge of morphology, the internal structure of words. We know that thick, thicker, thickest, and thicken are all words of English, but that there is no thinnen to accompany thin, thinner, thinnest . We know that thick relates to thicken and that rich relates to enrich , whereas richen is slightly odd, and enthick is impossible. This knowledge can’t just be a result of our never having heard thinnen or enthick before, you may never have heard texted before, as in ‘‘I’ve just texted an urgent message to Fred’’, but you know that that is possible. As linguists, we may also know that some languages, such as Vietnamese, have almost no morphology: words in this language have none of the internal structure characteristic of affix-rich items such as indecisive-ness or rearranged . On the other hand, some (poly-synthetic) languages, such as Inuktitut (Eskimo) or Mohawk pile one affix on top of another so that words are often strikingly complex, and correspond to whole sentences in English. Baker (2001: 87) gives the Mohawk example in (15) with the meaning ‘‘He made the thing that one puts on one’s body ugly for her’’: (15) Washakotya’tawitsherahetkvhta’se’ Our knowledge of phonology, the sound structure of language, is equally rich.
- Patrick Colm Hogan(Author)
- 2010(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
Syntagmatic principles of structure are represented in var- ious ways, but all such representations reflect another basic principle, the hierarchical organization of the structure of utterances. Sentences are organized in a hierarchical struc- ture, representing groupings of words at different levels. So The cat sat on the mat is not just a string of roles that contrast syntagmatically, as in [Determiner Noun Copula Preposition Determiner Noun]. Instead, it is a set of nested groupings of words: [[Determiner Noun] [Copula] [Preposition [Determiner Noun]]]. The nested groupings are frequently represented in a variety of ways, such as the syntactic trees of phrase (constitu- ent) structure analysis. They can also be represented as depen- dency diagrams (for example, the determiner is related to the noun as its modifier, which in turn is related to the copula as its subject), and representations combining constituency and dependency also exist. The structure of a construction often appears to be motivated, though not entirely predicted, by the structure of the meaning that it is intended to convey. For example, the syntactic group- ings in [[ The cat] is [ on [ the mat]]] are motivated semantically; the in the cat modifies cat semantically as well as syntactically (indicating that the cat’s identity is known to both speaker and hearer). The (partial) motivation of syntactic structure by its meaning is captured by general principles in different theories. These principles can be described as variants of the broader principle of diagrammatic iconicity (Peirce 1932 ): roughly, that the abstract structure of the linguistic expression parallels the abstract structure of the meaning intended, to a great extent. It is difficult to evaluate the structure of meaning indepen- dently of the structure of linguistic form.
eBook - PDFLanguage and Reality
Selected Writings of Sydney Lamb
- Sydney Lamb, Jonathan J. Webster(Authors)
- 2004(Publication Date)
- Continuum(Publisher)
The use you make of the notion of syntactic is very different from that in traditional grammar. Yes, that is probably the next thing I need to explain. Part of what I was Figure 8.1 Figure 8.2 LANGUAGE AS A NETWORK OF RELATIONSHIPS Figure 8.3 criticizing earlier in other linguistic theories is their mono-stratal or single-level conception. One aspect of that is that they only have one syntax. From my point of view we see that a language has several syntaxes, in particular every stratum has its own. This idea is not original with me. It goes back to the neo-Bloomfieldian days where in some branches, including that of Hockett and that of Bloch, it was recognized that there is a syntax of the phonemic level in addition to the traditional syntax. At this point Hockett decided to use the term tactics, which has the same Greek root as the term syntax, referring to arrangements; he said that we could use the term tactics to refer to that part of the structure which is concerned with arrangements at whatever level. To be more specific we can use the term phonotactics for the syntax of phonemes and morphotactics for the syntax of morphemes. In stratificational linguistics, after I realized that it doesn't suffice to recognize only one stratum of content, I recognized another level above the morphemic, namely the sememic, and it appeared that that level too has a syntax; so we called it semotactics. Later as it became apparent that these levels were also not sufficient, there was another added in 1963, the lexemic; this lexemic level intervenes 147 THE STRUCTURE OF LANGUAGE between the morphemic and sememic level. So this gives us phonotactics, morphotactics, lexotactics and semotactics. Recently, however, it has become apparent that the lower portions of morphotactics and lexotactics merge, somewhat like branches of a river.
- Arthur S. Abramson(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
An absolutely basic presupposition of the linguist is that a sentence has internal structure, and most of the work of the psycholinguist can be regarded as constituting an exploration of the ways in which such internal structure affects various performances. But the internal structure of an item, where that item is a sentence, is just what most if not all present day models of human memory do not and cannot cope with. Consider, as a test case, the ex-cellent recent book Models of human memory whose editor, D. A. Norman (1970), justly claims that it contains 'a reasonably complete sample of current work on models of human memory', but who is also constrained to point out that these models 'do not attempt to describe performance with material that has been or-ganized by the subject. . . and it is quite clear that linguistic performance depends upon the application of rules to the syntactic and semantic structure of language, rather than simple associations among previously encountered items'. One or two of the contributors do see some relevance of their work to linguistic performance. Thus Morton, who is seeking to develop a model for word recognition, mentions that some 'tentative extensions to more complex language behavior can be found elsewhere'. Kintsch claims that the central problem for any model of recall is how organization of the learning material affects recall, asserts further that 'meaning SYNTACTIC FACTORS IN MEMORY 1279 provides the most important principle of organization in memory', and does make some attempts to indicate how one might proceed in trying to describe the organi-zation of verbal material in long term memory. But his concern is with the (semantic) relations obtaining among individual words, and this has been the principal concern too of people like Bower et al. (1969) and Mandler (1970) who have shown how category relations obtaining among discrete words may be important factors in recall.
eBook - PDFLanguage in Education
Social Implications
- Rita Elaine Silver, Soe Marlar Lwin(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Bloomsbury Academic(Publisher)
We also looked at the ways in which phrases take on different syntactic functions in a sentence. SEMANTICS We have seen how sounds make up words which in turn make up phrases and sentences. Phonetics, morphology and syntax are the study of structures whereas our final topic, semantics, which is the study of meaning, is quite different. Interestingly, individual speech sounds have no meaning, so we can’t ask what each of the sounds, /p/, / ɪ /, /t/ or /s/ means, TABLE 2.4 Pronoun case Subjective form Objective form I me he him she her we us they them [The students] [have submitted] [their assignments]. [They (*Them)] [have submitted] [their assignments]. Subject Verb Object The students submitted their assignments [to the teacher]. The students submitted their assignments [to her *(she)]. WHAT IS THE STRUCTURE OF LANGUAGE? 37 but when we combine them in specific ways, the sounds form words that have meaning, for example /p ɪ ts/, /sp ɪ t/. Words in turn, as we have seen, combine to form phrases, which in turn form sentences. Semantics can be explored at different levels – we can examine meaning at the word-level, sentence-level or even at the text-level. To give you a quick insight into some of the ways meaning can be studied, we will examine three basic topics in semantics: synonyms, ambiguity and meaning connection between sentences (see also Chapter 3). Synonyms Within the vocabulary, or what is more technically called the lexicon of a language, word meanings are interrelated in a variety of ways. As a simple example, consider the meaning relation between joy, happiness, sorrow and emotion . Joy and happiness have basically the same meaning; while joy and sorrow have opposite meanings; joy and sorrow are types of emotion . Semanticists have studied these and other types of meaning relations between words. Let us take a closer look at the meaning relation between the two words joy and happiness .
eBook - PDF- János Zsilka(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
The underlying relationships characterizing particular patterns (cases, paradigms) remain unknown. A gener-ally supported view is that different forms of words THE IDEA OF THE SYSTEM OF LANGUAGE 49 can be classified only into logical sets of a static nature (e.g., paradigms). 3. Both the Syntactic Structures and Aspects models leave doubt as to whether any linguistic system exists at all that is connected with the structure of reality in a spe-cific way. Some of the associations between linguistic structures and reality (more exactly: facts) are evident in the notion of what is a natural representation. But according to this notion, such a connection can only be established in the base, in the configurations of the base categories. This again means, since the relationships in the base are of a logical nature, that language is capable of reflecting the structure of reality within the scope of a logical system. Thus according to the Aspects model, linguistic patterns can only indirectly be projected onto actually occurring rela-tionships of reality through the underlying structures of the base. But this is, however, only one side—though an extremely significant one—of the truth, even if it is somewhat modified. As we shall see, linguistic structures have a structure of their own that is congruent with the structure of reality—able to be grasped even at the level of everyday experience. This type of linguistic structure lies between that of the base and that of reality; the base expresses the generalization of this specific linguistic structure. It follows that it is only a dispo-sition for the base that we are born with; we must then actu-ally abstract the relationships of the base from linguistic pat-terns. 3. FRENCH STRUCTURALIST THEORY ACCORDING TO TESNIfiRE 3.1. RELATIONSHIPS (= RELATIONS), NODES (= NOEUDS) Words form relationships (connections) within sentences. A re-lationship can be defined as a dependency relation.
eBook - PDF- Robert Audi(Author)
- 0(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
Among authors outside Spain who used his ideas are Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Voltaire, and Rousseau. J.J.E.G. grammar, a system of rules specifying a language. The term has often been used synonymously with ‘syntax’, the principles governing the construc- tion of sentences from words (perhaps also including the systems of word derivation and inflection – case markings, verbal tense markers, etc.). In modern linguistic usage the term more often encompasses other components of the lan- guage system such as phonology and semantics as well as syntax. Traditional grammars that we may have encountered in our school days, e.g. the grammars of Latin or English, were typically fragmentary and often prescriptive – basically a selective catalog of forms and sentence patterns, together with constructions to be avoided. Contemporary linguistic grammars, on the other hand, aim to be descriptive, and even explanatory, i.e. embedded within a general theory that offers principled reasons for why natural languages are the way they are. This is in accord with the generally accepted view of linguistics as a science that regards human language as a natural phenomenon to be under- stood, just as physicists attempt to make sense of the world of physical objects. Since the publication of Syntactic Structures (1957) and Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1965) by Chomsky, grammars have been almost universally conceived of as generative devices, i.e. precisely formulated deductive systems – commonly called generative grammars – specify- ing all and only the well-formed sentences of a language together with a specification of their relevant structural properties. On this view, a grammar of English has the character of a theory of the English language, with the grammatical sentences (and their structures) as its theorems and the grammar rules playing the role of the rules of inference.
eBook - PDF- Ralph W. Fasold, Jeff Connor-Linton(Authors)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
’ ph o ˇ m rúucàg khruu I know teacher. ‘ I know a teacher. ’ ‘ I know teachers. ’ ph o ˇ m rúucàg khruu khon s ɔ ˇ ɔ ŋ I know teacher Clf. two ‘ I know two teachers. ’ ph o ˇ m h e ˇ n mêeg k ɔ ˇ ɔ n s ɔ ˇ ɔ ŋ I see cloud Clf. two ‘ I see two clouds. ’ 140 Ruth Kramer, Ralph Fasold, and David Lightfoot These categories are called genders in European languages, and we have used the term for the categories in Swahili and Thai to emphasize what they have in common. Gender has an effect on the syntax of the languages that have gender, but these effects are quite different from one type of language to another. CHAPTER SUMMARY Perhaps the most startling thing about the structure of sentences is not about structure at all, but the fact that much of grammatical structure does not have to be learned. People “ know ” a lot about what is or isn ’ t a possible grammatical structure without having been taught, or even having had the right kind of experience to have learned it. Instead, there appears to be a language organ that encompasses a person ’ s language ability, with its own intrinsic properties. These properties determine much of what the ultimate structure of someone ’ s grammar will be, independently of their experience. This line of reasoning is called the poverty-of-the-stimulus argument. One principle of the structure of sentences is compositionality ; the fact that sentences are composed of clauses and phrases, which in turn are made up of smaller clauses and phrases or words. Rules of phrase structure can capture the generalizations about what types of phrases can appear where in sentences, and what kinds of phrases and words can appear within other phrases. The same task is achieved in modern syntactic theory by projection of simple phrases from words from the mental lexicon. Some phrases have complement and/or speci fi er branches which merge with phrases that have been projected from other words.
eBook - PDF- Myrna Gopnik(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
3 Syntactic Structures IN TEXTS 1.0 DEFINITION OF CRITERIA FOR STRUCTURE In this chapter we will discuss certain patterns of syntactic struc-tures which appeared in the scientific texts with which we were dealing, and, since we assume our sample to be a representative sample, which are typical patterns of scientific texts. There are three different aspects of syntactic patterns which could be studied. The first of these is a study of which transformations actually did occur in the empirical data, but since any sentence which is gram-matical may appear in some text, every structure found in any sentence must occur in some text. From the point of view of designing real programs to handle real texts, however, such a study would not be without its value. It may be that certain transformations which are necessary for a total grammar of English may not occur in scientific texts, and may therefore not be necessary for an adequate grammar of scientific English. Eliminat-ing such superfluous transformations would simplify the grammar and perhaps eliminate some ambiguous structures. However we will not deal here with any such data. A second aspect of the concept of syntactic patterns in texts is the influence such structures have on one another. We have discuss-ed certain instances of such intersentential dependencies in the previous chapter and will discuss certain other such dependencies in this chapter. However, the explication and resolution of this type of dependency is only a necessary preliminary to the real study. In order to describe the general syntactic patterns of texts Syntactic Structures IN TEXTS 47 it is first necessary to assign a syntactic description to each of the texts individually.
eBook - PDFPunctuation as a Means of Medium-Dependent Presentation Structure in English
Exploring the Guide Functions of Punctuation
- Sebastian Patt(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Narr Francke Attempto(Publisher)
e.g. Halliday (1961: 251) and Quirk et al. (1985: 38–43). This characteristic is illustrated by the double arrows ( ↔ ) in the overview of the grammatical units on page 28 above. The syntagmatic re-lations of these elements then define the structure of a unit; or in Halliday’s (1961: 255) words: “A structure is thus an arrangement of elements ordered in “places.”” 30 Linguistic description, presentation structure and the status of punctuation Since part-whole relationships (‘constituency’) between the above-listed units are not always recoverable, it can be added that, for example, claus-es are in some cases coextensive with sentences. Consequentially, sentenc-es which are made up of a single independent clause are termed ‘simple sen-tences’. There is no other clause that functions as one of its elements. In A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language Quirk et al. (1985: 53, 721) list seven major clause types for simple sentences, namely ‘SV’, ‘SVO’, ‘SVC’, ‘SVA’, ‘SVOO’, ‘SVOC’, ‘SVOA’, the constituents of which can be identified as subject (‘S’), verb (‘V’), object (‘O’), complement (‘C’) and ad-verbial (‘A’). There is difference of opinion as to whether the term ‘simple sentence’ should be applied to cases in which clauses operate directly at phrase level, i.e. as embedded clauses or as postmodifications of phrases, cf. Quirk et al. (ib.: FN 719f.). In the present work, only postmodifications of phrases (by a rela-tive clause, for example) are taken as instances of simple sentences. Embedded clauses (such as nominal clauses), on the other hand, form the so-called ‘com-plex sentences’, cf. also Esser (2006: 43). Lastly, a ‘multiple sentence’ consists of at least two coordinated clauses (‘compound sentence’) or no less than one coordinated plus one subordinated clause (‘complex sentence’).
eBook - PDFMeaning in Context
Implementing Intelligent Applications of Language Studies
- Jonathan J. Webster(Author)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- Continuum(Publisher)
In addition, the complexity profiles of approaches to syntax falling within this complexity class appear to match far more closely the observed performance of humans and much of the apparent mystery of how utterances can be analysed so quickly disappears. This is the Systemic Functional Linguistics and the Notion of Linguistic Structure 45 Figure 1.3 Complexity curves for O(k a ) and O(w k j with k=6 opposite side of the coin to the discussion of systemic grammars presented in 1.3, where I suggested that it is possible to prove that no matter how simple the input, a result will notbe forthcoming in any reasonable time. It is for this reason, therefore, that I propose that we now pay far more attention, even as systemicists, to the kinds of statements being made concerning lexicogram-matical syntagmatic organization being developed in such approaches. 1.4.2 TAG In this section, I briefly and informally characterize Tree Adjoining Grammars in order to bring out precisely what it is that leads to their improved ability to analyse (and produce) the grammatical units that they describe. Whereas traditional phrase structure grammars work with rules, typically re-write rules or 'well-formedness' rules that state, for example, that a well-formed sentence is a sentence that consists of two constituents, a noun phrase and a verb phrase, TAGs work only with syntactic trees. Rather than having an S-*NP VP rule, a corresponding TAG would simply list the tree fragment corresponding to such a rule as one of its supported structures. These basic tree fragments provided by a grammar are called elementary trees. A slightly more complex example is shown to the left of Figure 1.4: this tree corre-sponds to clauses of the form 'someone [like] something'.
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