Syntax what is syntax?

Cont.

• Annie whacked the man with an umbrella.

• Annie had an umbrella and she whacked the man with it.

• Annie whacked a man and the man happened to be carrying an umbrella.

Cont.

• Thus, the sentence is ambiguous. It has two different underlying interpretations which would be represented differently in the deep structure.

Cont.

• Also, Phrases can be also ambiguous:

• The hatred of the killers

• 2) Someone hated the killers

• 1) The killers hated someone

So, the grammar must be capable of showing how a single underling, abstract representation can become different surface structures.

• Cont. (def.)

• So, the grammar must be capable of showing how a single underling, abstract representation can become different surface structures.

Different approaches

• There are different approaches to producing a complete syntactic description of a language.

Cont.

• For others, the “meaning component” is primary.

• For some, the only relevant issues are syntactic ones, that is, how to describe structure, independently of “meaning” considerations.

Symbols used in syntactic description

• Before we look at some basic features of the original analytic approach, we need to be introduced to the symbols related to that approach.

• S

• (= sentence)

• N

• (= noun)

• Art

• (= article)

• “ consists of”

• For example :

• NP

• Art

• N