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Syntax: How sentences are built

Will Styler - LIGN 101

Today’s Plan

• Grammatical Relations

• Why do we need Syntax?

• Constituency and Constituency Testing

• Syntactic Hierarchy

• Syntax Trees

“Jony chased Dieter”

“How do we know who did what to whom?”

Grammatical Relations

How a language marks who did what to whom

Grammatical Relations is kind of crucial

• If you don’t know who did what to whom, you’ve got problems

Languages have different strategies

• Sometimes, you can guess

  • “[ate] [Will] [veggie burger]”

• Many languages use inflectional morphology

  • “This morpheme marks the Subject (do-er), and this marks the Object (do-ee)

• But often, this is accomplished with word order!

English uses word order to mark grammatical relations.

• “Will ate the veggie burger.”

• “Jony chased Dieter”

• “Dieter chased Jony”

• “Andres waved to Kati”

• “Will insulted Michael Bay”

English uses word order to mark grammatical relations.

• “Will ate the veggie burger”

• “The veggie burger was eaten by Will”

• “It was the Veggie burgers that Will was eating”

• “And what did Will consume on that dark, dark night? A VEGGIE BURGER!”

… so it’s clearly more than just word order

• Because you can change the ordering and it still makes sense.

… yet word order clearly matters

• *Ate Will the Veggie Burger

• *Jony Dieter Chased

• *Will Burger Veggie Ate

… and then things move around

• “Will ate the veggie burger”

• “Will ate it”

• “Will ate what?”

• “What did Will eat?”

• *“What did Will eat it?”

… and things get ambiguous

• “Will likes ambiguity more than most people”

  • “Will likes ambiguity more than most people do”

  • “Will likes ambiguity more than he likes most people”

Clearly, it’s complicated

• … and this is why we have…

Syntax!

Syntax is the study of the structure of sentences and utterances

• “What determines the order and arrangement of words in sentences?”

• “What orderings and arrangements are grammatical in a language?”

• “How do we identify the meaning of words given their ordering?”

• “How does the ordering within a sentence change in contexts?”

Syntax is a huge subfield in Linguistics

• Very popular

• Very broad

• Very, very deep

• … and very much not Will’s area

  • Sorry about that!

Let’s start from the basics

Constituency

Syntactic Constituent

A group of words which ‘go together’ in the structure of the sentence

• Constituents are always a continuous string of words

  • No skipping words, these are continuous chunks!

Constituents are chunks that, when split off, make sense

We have intuitions about how things can be split

We know what breaks are “good”

… and we know that even if other breaks are possible…

They shouldn’t always be done

Let’s break me off a piece of that syntactic structure!

Let’s check our intuitions!

Which of the following is a complete constituent in the sentence “Will tracked the wild veggie burgers through the forest.”

A. [burgers through the]

B. [tracked the wild]

C. [the wild veggie]

D. [wild veggie burgers]

E. [Will tracked the]

Which of the following is a not complete constituent in the sentence “Will tracked the wild veggie burgers through the forest.”

A. [Will]

B. [tracked the wild veggie burgers through the forest]

C. [the wild veggie burgers]

D. [through the forest]

E. [veggie burgers through the forest]

Constituency Testing

Constituency Testing

Using grammatical tests and manipulations to determine whether something is a valid constituent

• “Can a syntactic operation apply to this chunk?”

Three Main Constituency Tests we’ll use

• Substitution

• Standalone answers

• Movement

Constituency Test #1: Substitution

• Can you replace that element of the sentence with a placeholder?

• Any time you can replace a chunk of sentence with something else, it’s a constituent

Good substitution testing words

• Wh-words (who, what, where, when, how, why)

  • She never climbed [the tallest mountain in Africa] [in 2018].

• Pronouns (he, it, her, them, they, that)

  • [Your instructor Will] has no desire to meet [the director of those awful modern transformers movies]

• Adverbs of Place and Time (then, there)

  • I grew up [just south of Denver, Colorado in a boring suburb near a reservoir]

• “Do so”

  • Jessica [ordered fried ice cream at the restaurant], and I [did so] too.

The indignant kitten eyed my veggie burger with disgust yesterday at dinner

• He eyed it

• The indignant kitten did so.

• The indignant kitten eyed what with digust when?

• The kitten eyed my veggie burger how yesterday at dinner?

• The obligate carnivore eyed my dinner with disgust then

• There are other chunks we can’t isolate like this

  • [The indignant kitten eyed my]

Your intrepid and syntax-loving TA saw the Great Horned Owl that Will had mentioned in passing while they were standing in the hallway last week before class last night shortly before leaving campus to go to Red Robin to nerd out about trees and eat french fries.

• She saw it then.

• She saw the Great Horned Owl that Will had mentioned then shortly before that.

• (… and many more)

If you can replace something with a placeholder, it’s a constituent

• … and if you are unable to, it’s not a constituent!

Constituency Test #2: Standalone Answers

• A string of words that can be the answer to a WH question is a constituent

Robert the Enchiladaholic thoughtlessly purchased a $1000 gift card to Chiquita’s Mexican Restaurant last week.

• “Who bought the gift card?”

• “What did he buy?”

• “Where was the gift card to?”

• “When did he buy it?”

• “What did Robert do?”

• “How did he buy it?”

If a chunk can serve as the standalone answer to a question, it’s a constituent

• “What can a chunk that’s a constitutent do?”

Constituency Test 3: Moving items together

• If you can move a string of words together, they’re a constituent

  • The resulting sentence needs to be grammatical

  • Try Trolls Nice!

Eugene sold his watch collection to the Pine Thugs

• His watch collection is what Eugene sold to the Pine Thugs.

• To the Pine Thugs, Eugene’s watch collection was sold.

• Sold his watch collection to the Pine Thugs, Eugene did.

• Pine thugs are who Eugene sold his watch collection to.

If you can move a chunk together, it’s a constituent

So, that’s how we evaluate constituency

• Let’s test it out

Which is not a constituent in “Michael and Karla founded an innovative new dermatology company last month”?

1. [Michael and Karla]

2. [founded an innovative new dermatology company]

3. [an innovative new dermatology company]

4. [an innovative new]

5. [last month]

Which is not a constituent in “Michael and Karla founded an innovative new dermatology company last month”?

1. [Michael and Karla]

2. [founded an innovative new dermatology company]

3. [an innovative new dermatology company]

4. [an innovative new]

5. [last month]

Which is not a constituent in “Lil’ Bub won every cat show in Indiana.”?

1. [every cat show in Indiana]

2. [Lil’ Bub]

3. [Bub won every]

4. [every cat show]

5. [cat show]

Which is not a constituent in “Lil’ Bub won every cat show in Indiana.”?

1. [every cat show in Indiana]

2. [Lil’ Bub]

3. [Bub won every]

4. [every cat show]

5. [cat show]

What do we call these constituents?

• We name them after the head of the phrase

The angry squirrel stole the mixed nuts from Walmart

• [The angry squirrel] - ‘Noun Phrase’ (NP), headed by a noun

• [stole the mixed nuts from Walmart] - ‘Verb Phrase’ (VP), headed by a verb

• [from Walmart] - ‘Prepositional Phrase’ (PP), headed by a preposition.

• The angry squirrel stole the mixed nuts from Walmart - The Sentence (S)

… and then we label individual words with their lexical types

• Nouns (N), Verbs (V), Prepositions (P), Determiners (DET),

Constituency is really important

• We seem to ‘understand’ it as language speakers

• Syntactic rules make constant reference to constituents

• We’re pretty sure that whatever syntax is in the mind, constituency is a part of it

  • So, thinking about constituency is going to be constant

“OK, OK. We get it. Constituency is a thing.”

• … but where the heck does it come from?!

Language is hierarchical

• Words combine into phrases/constituents

• Phrases combine to form bigger phrases.

• Phrases combine to form sentences.

• Phrase structure rules show how words/phrases combine to form larger phrases/sentences.

We can’t treat sentences as ‘flat’ and find constituency

But if we think about it hierarchically…

• BOOM! Constituency.

We need to go deeper…

Syntax Trees

A representation of the hierarchical structure of sentences, capturing constituency.

I ate.

I see you.

The dog chased the cat

I saw the big, sweet dogs from La Jolla with fleas

Trees express syntactic structure independent of specific words

### Trees express syntactic structure independent of specific words

Constituency is important for meaning!

“We need more cuddly kittens”

• “We need more kittens who are cuddly”

• “We need to exchange our kittens with ones who won’t bite you”

There are two ways to break the sentence up

• We need more [cuddly kittens]

• We need [more cuddly] kittens

• The meaning changes based on how you break the sentence up

Different structures can imply different meanings

I [saw the man] [with the telescope]

I saw [the man with the telescope]

Were the nuts from Walmart?

Or was Walmart the scene of the crime?

The bear ate the hiker with ketchup

John slapped his friend with the smelly fish

There are hundreds of ways to draw a syntax tree

• If you just google “Syntax Tree Drawing”, you’ll find many theories intermixed

• The best approach is a subject of huge theoretical debate

  • We’re teaching you a small sub-set that’s pretty uncontroversial

• You will not find much consistency on the internet

  • You can leave some things off, specify things more or less…

• Use the materials we’re providing you with, please!

Wrapping up

• We know that languages can use word order to code grammatical relations

• We know that there’s more to it than ordering

• We know that constituents of sentences are a thing

• … and that they’re derived from hierarchy in sentences

• We can read tree diagrams to understand the nature of that hierarchy

Next time

• We’ll learn how to create syntax trees!

• … and we’ll talk about the rules that govern that process

Thank you!