Ch.

2 Syntax: The
Sentence Patterns of
Language

An Introduction to Language (9e, 2009)

by Victoria Fromkin, Robert Rodman
and Nina Hyams
 Syntax
• Any speaker of any human language can produce
and understand an infinite number of possible
sentences

• Thus, we can’t possibly have a mental dictionary

of all the possible sentences

• Rather, we have the rules for forming sentences

stored in our brains

– Syntax is the part of grammar that pertains to a

speaker’s knowledge of sentences and their structures
 What the Syntax Rules
Do
• The rules of syntax combine words into phrases and
phrases into sentences

• They also specify the correct word order for a language

– For example, English is a Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) language

• The President nominated a new Supreme Court justice
• *President the new Supreme justice Court a nominated

• They also describe the relationship between the

meaning of a group of words and the arrangement of
the words

– I mean what I say vs. I say what I mean

 What the Syntax Rules
Do
• The rules of syntax also specify the grammatical relations of a
sentence, such as the subject and the direct object

– Your dog chased my cat vs. My cat chased your dog

• Syntax rules specify constraints on sentences based on the

verb of the sentence

*The boy found *Disa slept the baby

*The boy found in the house Disa slept
The boy found the ball Disa slept soundly

Zack believes Robert to be a gentleman

*Zack believes to be a gentleman
Zack tries to be a gentleman
*Zack tries Robert to be a gentleman
 What the Syntax Rules
Do
• Syntax rules also tell us how words form groups and are
hierarchically ordered in a sentence
“The captain ordered the old men and women off the ship”

• This sentence has two possible meanings:

– 1. The captain ordered the old men and the old women off the ship
– 2. The captain ordered the old men and the women of any age off
the ship

• The meanings depend on how the words in the sentence are

grouped (specifically, to which words is the adjective ‘old’
applied?)

– 1. The captain ordered the [old [men and women]] off the ship
– 2. The captain ordered the [old men] and [women] off the ship
 What the Syntax Rules
Do
• These groupings can be shown hierarchically in a tree

• These trees reveal the structural ambiguity in the phrase “old men and
women”

– Each structure corresponds to a different meaning

• Structurally ambiguous sentences can often be humorous:

– Catcher: “Watch out for this guy, he’s a great fastball hitter.”
– Pitcher: “No problem. There’s no way I’ve got a great fastball.”
 What Grammaticality
Is Not Based On
• People can judge grammaticality without ever having heard
the sentence before

“Enormous crickets in pink socks danced at the prom.”

• Grammaticality is not based on meaningfulness

“Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.”

“A verb crumpled the milk.”

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe

• Grammaticality is not based on truthfulness

 Sentence Structure
• We could say that the sentence “The child
found the puppy” is based on the template
Det—N—V—Det—N

– But this would imply that sentences are just

strings of words without internal structure

– This sentence can actually be separated into

several groups:

• [the child] [found a puppy]

• [the child] [found [a puppy]]
• [[the] [child]] [[found] [[a] [puppy]]
 Sentence Structure
• A tree diagram can be used to show
the hierarchy of the sentence:

The child found a

puppy
 Constituents and
Constituency Tests
• Constituents are the natural groupings in a sentence

• Tests for constituency include:

– 1. “stand alone test”: if a group of words can stand alone, they form a
constituent

• A: “What did you find?”

• B: “A puppy.”

– 2. “replacement by a pronoun”: pronouns can replace constituents

• A: “Where did you find a puppy?”

• B: “I found him in the park.”

– 3. “move as a unit” test: If a group of words can be moved together, they

are a constituent

• A: “The child found a puppy.”  “A puppy was found by the child.”

 Constituents and
Constituency Tests
• Experimental evidence shows that people
perceive sentences in groupings
corresponding to constituents

• Every sentence has at least one constituent

structure

– If a sentence has more than one constituent

structure, then it is ambiguous and each
constituent structure corresponds to a different
meaning
 Syntactic Categories
• A syntactic category is a family of expressions that can substitute
for one another without loss of grammaticality

The child found a puppy. The child found a puppy.

A police officer found a puppy. The child ate the cake.
Your neighbor found a puppy. The child slept.

• All the underlined groups constitute a syntactic category known as a

noun phrase (NP)

– NPs may be a subject or an object of a sentence, may contain a

determiner, proper name, pronoun, or may be a noun alone

• All the bolded groups constitute a syntactic category known as a

verb phrase (VP)

– VPs must always contain a verb but may also contain other constituents
such as a noun phrase or a prepositional phrase (PP)
 Syntactic Categories
• Phrasal categories: NP, VP, PP, AdjP, AdvP

• Lexical categories:

– Noun: puppy, girl, soup, happiness, pillow

– Verb: find, run, sleep, realize, see, want
– Preposition: up, down, across, into, from, with
– Adjective: red, big, candid, lucky, large
– Adverb: again, carefully, luckily, very, fairly

• Functional categories:

– Auxiliary: verbs such as have, and be, and modals such as

may, can, will, shall, must
– Determiners: the, a, this, that, those, each, every
Phrase Structure Trees and
Rules
• A phrase structure (PS) tree (or
constituent structure tree) is a tree
diagram with syntactic category
information:
Phrase Structure Trees and
Rules
• In a PS tree, every higher node dominates all the categories
beneath it

– S dominates everything

• A node immediately dominates

the categories directly below it

– The VP immediately dominates the

V and the NP

• Sisters are categories that are immediately dominated by

the same node

– The V and the NP are sisters

Phrase Structure Trees and
Rules
• Phrase structure rules specify the well-
formed structures of a sentence
– A tree must match the phrase structure
rules to be grammatical
• This tree is formed using the following
rules:

S  NP VP
NP  Det N
VP  V NP
Phrase Structure Trees and
Rules
• But, a VP could also contain:
– A verb only: The woman laughed.
– A PP: The woman laughed in the garden.
– A CP: The man said that the woman laughed.

• We therefore have to account for these possible

sentences in our phrase structure rules and need
the following rules so far:
Phrase Structure Trees and
Rules
• Phrase structure rules are used as a guide for
building trees

• To build a tree you expand every phrasal category

until only the lexical categories remain

• By following the guidelines in the phrase

structure rules, we can generate all the possible
grammatical sentences in a language

– Any tree that violates the phrase structure rules will

represent an ungrammatical sentence
 The Infinity of Language:
Recursive Rules
• Recursive rules are rules in which a phrasal category can contain
itself

– Such as an NP containing another NP…

• NP  NP PP allows for the sentence: I saw the man with the telescope in a box.

– …or a VP containing a VP…

• VP  VP PP allows for a sentence like: The girl walked down the street in the
rain.

– …or a CP containing a S…

• CP  C S allows for embedding sentences inside sentences such as: The

children hope that the teacher knows that they are good students.

• Recursive rules allow a grammar to generate an infinite number of

sentences (in this case by adding PPs indefinitely)
 The Infinity of Language:
Recursive Rules
• The recursive phrase structure rule VP  VP PP
allows the following tree:
 Recursive Adjectives and
Possessives
• The case of multiple adjectives leads us to
revise our PS rules:

– The kindhearted, intelligent,

handsome boy had many
girlfriends leads us to create
the PS rule NP  Adj NP

– However, this rule would allow

an adjective to come before
a determiner, which is not
possible in English
 Recursive Adjectives and
Possessives
• The problem is that determiners and adjectives function differently

– They both modify a noun

– But, while an NP can have multiple adjectives, it can only have one determiner
– Also, an adjective directly modifies a noun whereas a determiner modifies the chunk
of Adj + N

• Therefore the determiner must be

the sister of the group [Adj + N]

• So, we need to add one more level

of structure between the NP and the
N which is called N’

• Now we have the necessary sisterhood

requirements and we must revise our
phrase structure rules to account for N’

NP  Det N’
N’  Adj N
N’  N
 Recursive Adjectives and
Possessives
• Possessor NPs such as in the girl’s shoes function as a
determiner with the ‘s representing possession (poss)

• So, we need to add another

PS rule to our inventory:
Det  NP poss

• This new rule forms a

recursive set with the
rule NP  Det N’

• The recursive nature of PS rules

is common to all languages
Heads and Complements
• Phrase structure trees also show the relationships among the
elements in a sentence

– The NP immediately dominated by the S is the subject

– The NP immediately dominated by the VP is the direct object

• Another relationship is between the head of a phrase and its sisters

– The head of a phrase names the phrase (e.g. the noun is the head of a
noun phrase, a verb is the head of a verb phrase, etc.)

– Every phrase has a head, but may or may not take a complement, or
sister category

• For example, a VP will have a head (a verb) and may take a complement such
as an NP or a CP
 Heads and
Complements: Selection
• Some heads require a certain type of complement and
some don’t

– The verb find requires an NP: Alex found the ball.

– The verb put requires both an NP and a PP: Alex put the ball
in the toy box.
– The verb sleep cannot take a complement: Alex slept.
– The noun belief optionally selects a PP: the belief in freedom
of speech.
– The adjective proud optionally selects a PP: proud of herself

• C-selection or subcategorization refers to the

information about what types of complements a head
can or must take
 Heads and
Complements: Selection
• Verbs also select subjects and complements based on
semantic properties (S-selection)

– The verb murder requires a human subject and object

!The beer murdered the lamp.

– The verb drink requires its subject to be animate and its

optional complement object to be liquid

!The beer drank the lamp.

• For a sentence to be well-formed, it must conform to the

structural constraints of PS rules and must also obey the
syntactic (C-selection) and semantic (S-selection)
requirements of the head of each phrase
 What Heads the
Sentence
• The category of Auxiliary verbs (such as will, has, is, and
may as well as modals might, could, would, and can)
heads a sentence because a sentence is about a
situation of state of affairs that happens at some point in
time

• Particular kinds of auxiliaries go with certain kinds of VPs

– be selects the progressive form of the verb

• The baby is eating.
– have selects the past participle form of the verb
• The baby has eaten.
– The modals select the infinitival form of the verb
• The baby must eat.
 What Heads the
Sentence
• Many linguists use the symbols
T (tense) and TP (tense phrase)
instead of Aux and S, with the
TP having an intermediate T’
category

• X-bar theory is the theory

that all XPs have three
levels of structure

– 1. the XP
– 2. the specifier (modifier)
– 3. X’ with head X and a
complement
 What Heads the
Sentence
• We can now add the rule VP  Aux VP into our PS rules

• However, not all sentences seem to have auxiliaries

– Sam kicked the soccer ball.

• But, this sentence does have

the past tense morpheme –ed,
and in sentences without an
auxiliary, the tense is the head
of the S
– Instead of having a word under Aux,
there is a tense specification
– The tense specification must match the inflection on the verb
 Structural Ambiguities
• The following sentence has two meanings:

The boy saw the man with the telescope

• The meanings are:

– 1. The boy used the telescope to see the man

– 2. The boy saw the man who had a telescope

• Each of these meanings can be represented by a different

phrase structure tree

– The two interpretations are possible because the PS rules allow

more than one structure for the same string of words
 Structural Ambiguities

• The boy used a telescope

to see the man • The boy saw the man
who had a telescope
 Other Structures
• Thus far we have
fourteen phrase
structure rules in our
inventory

• However, this set is not

complete and cannot
account for sentences
such as:

– 1. The dog completely

destroyed the house.
– 2. The cat and the dog are
friends.
– 3. The cat is coy.
 Other Structures
• Adverbs are modifiers that can specify how
(quickly, slowly) and when (yesterday, often) an
event happens

• Adverbs are sisters to phrasal categories and can

go to the right or left of the phrasal categories VP
and S
VP  Adv VP VP  VP Adv S
Adv S
 Other Structures
• A coordinate structure is formed when
two constituents of the same category are
joined with a conjunction such as and or or
– In a coordinate structure, the second element
of the coordination (NP2) forms a constituent
with and (see “move as a unit” test)

• Sentences can also have the verb be

followed by an adjective
– In these cases the main verb be acts like the
auxiliaries be and have
 Sentence Relatedness
• Recognizing that some sentences are related to each other is
another part of our syntactic competence

The boy is sleeping. Is the boy sleeping?

• The first sentence is a declarative sentence, meaning that it

asserts that a particular situation exists

• The second sentence is a yes-no question, meaning that

asks for confirmation of a situation

• The difference in meaning is indicated by different word

orders, which means that certain structural differences
correspond to certain meaning differences
– For these sentences, the difference lies in where the auxiliary
occurs in the sentence
 Transformational Rules
• Yes-no questions are generated in two steps:

– 1. The PS rules generate a declarative sentence which

represents the basic structure, or deep structure (d-
structure) of the sentence
– 2. A transformational rule then moves the auxiliary before
the subject to create the surface structure (s-structure)

• The “Move Aux” rule: Move the highest Aux to adjoin to (the root)
S.

• When the Aux is moved, this results in a gap in the tree, which is
represented by a “__”

• The gap represents the position from which a constituent has

been moved
Transformational Rules
 Transformational Rules
• Other sentence pairs that involve
transformational rules are:

– Active to passive
• The cat chased the mouse.  The mouse was chased
by the cat.

– there sentences
• There was a man on the roof.  A man was on the roof.

– PP preposing
• The astronomer saw the quasar with the telescope. 
With the telescope, the astronomer saw the quasar.
The Structural Dependency
of Rules
• Transformations are structure-dependent, which
means they act on phrase structures without
caring what words are in the structures
– PP preposing can be applied to any PP if it is immediately
dominated by a VP

– The complementizer that may be omitted when it

precedes an embedded sentence as long as the
embedded sentence does not occur in subject position
• I know that you know. I know you know
• That you know bothers me. *You know bothers me.

– Subject-verb agreement stretches across all structures

between the subject and the verb
 Wh Questions
Example: What will Max chase?

• Wh questions are formed in three steps:

– 1. The PS rules generate a CP d-structure with the
wh phrase occupying an NP position within the S
(in this case a direct object position)

– 2. The transformational rule Move Aux moves the

auxiliary (in this case will) to adjoin with the S

– 3. The transformational rule Move wh moves the

wh word (in this case what) to the beginning of the
sentence
 Wh Questions
• Deep structure for • Surface structure
What will Max for What will Max
chase? chase?
 Wh Questions
Example: Which dog did Michael feed?

• Here the auxiliary do is not a part of the d-

structure of the sentence
– The d-structure is: Michael fed which dog?

• The Move Aux rule will move the auxiliary, in

this case only the past tense

• Another rule called “do support” will then

insert a do in the Aux spot to carry the tense
 Wh Questions
• Deep structure for • Surface structure
Which dog did for Which dog did
Michael feed? Michael feed?
 UG Principles and
Parameters
• Universal Grammar (UG) provides the basic
design for all languages, and each language has
its own parameters, or variations on the basic
plan

– All languages have PS rules that generate d-structures

– All phrases consist of heads and complements
– All sentences are headed by Aux (or T)
– All languages seem to have movement rules

– However, languages have different word orders within

phrases and sentences, so heads and complements
may be present in different orders across languages
 UG Principles and
Parameters
• Not all languages have wh movement, but for those
that do:

– The question element always moves to C

• But this is done in various ways (Italian vs. English vs. German
vs. Czech)
– A wh phrase cannot move out of certain relative clauses or
clauses beginning with whether or if
– A wh phrase cannot be extracted from inside a possessive
NP

• These features of wh movement are present in all

languages that allow wh movement and are part of
the innate blueprint for language that is UG
 Sign Language Syntax
• The syntax of sign languages also follow the
principles of UG and has:
– Auxiliaries
– Transformations such as topicalization, which
moves the direct object to the beginning of a
sentence for emphasis, and wh movement
– Constraints on transformations

• That UG is present in signed languages and

spoken languages shows that the human brain
is designed to learn language, not just speech.