SYNTAX Chapter 1

Introduction
 BY THE END OF THE LECTURE,
YOU WILL BE ABLE TO:
 Explain why Language is a psychological property of humans.
 Distinguish between prescriptive and descriptive rules.
 Explain the scientific method as it applies to syntax.
 Explain the differences between the kinds of data gathering, including corpora and
linguistic judgments.
Explain the difference between competence and performance.
 Provide at least three arguments for Universal Grammar.
 Explain the logical problem of language acquisition.
 Distinguish between learning and acquisition.
 Distinguish among observational, descriptive and explanatory adequacy.
SYNTAX
 It is the level of linguistic organization that mediates between
sounds and meaning, where words are organized into phrases and
sentences.

Study of syntax tells us how we subconsciously get from sounds

and words to meaning.
LANGUAGE IS A PSYCHOLOGICAL
AND COGNITIVE PROPERTY OF
HUMANS. HOW?
If you were listening to your teacher speaks, she would be producing sound
waves by her vocal cords, tongue, and lips. On the other end of things you’d be
hearing those sound waves and translating them into speech sounds using your
auditory apparatus. The study of the acoustics and articulation of speech is
called phonetics. Once you’ve translated the waves of sound into mental
representations of speech sounds, you analyze them into syllables and pattern
them appropriately. This is part of the science called phonology. Then you take
these groups of sounds and organize them into meaningful units and words.
The study of this level of Language is called morphology. Next you organize
the words into phrases and sentences. Syntax is the cover term for studies at
this level of Language.
Language vs. language
 Language: The psychological ability of humans to produce
and understand a particular language. Also called the Human
Language Capacity by Noam Chomsky, or i-Language.
language: A language like English or French. These are the
particular instances of the human Language. Also called e-
language.
SYNTAX AS A COGNITIVE
SCIENCE.
 Cognitive Science: is a cover term for a group of disciplines that all have the same
goal: describing and explaining human beings’ ability to think about abstract notions.

Why syntax is considered as a cognitive science?

Language plays an important role in how we think about abstract notions, or, at the
very least, Language appears to be structured in such a way that it allows us to
express abstract notions. The discipline of linguistics is thus one of the important
subdisciplines of cognitive science. Sentences are how we get at expressing abstract
thought processes, so the study of syntax is an important foundation stone for
understanding how we communicate and interact with each other as humans.
GENERATIVE GRAMMAR
 It is one of the dominant theories in Syntax by Noam
Chomsky.
There are some theories of syntax have branched off of
GG. For example, Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG) and
Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG).
 GG is a theory of linguistics in which grammar is viewed
as a cognitive faculty. Language is generated by a set of
rules or procedures. The version of generative grammar we
are looking at is the Principles and Parameters approach
(P&P) touching occasionally on Minimalism.
SYNTAX AS A SCIENCE
(SCIENTIFIC

METHOD):
Science refers to a particular
methodology for study (scientific
method). Gather and
 What is Scientific Method? observe data
 Hypotheses are only useful to the
extent that they make predictions.
 It is must be falsifiable.
Make
Develop
generalization
hypotheses
s
TWO WAYS OF WRITING
GRAMMATICAL RULES:
 Perspective rules tell people how they should speak. For example, “never
end a sentence with a preposition”.
Descriptive rules explain how people actually speak whether or not they
are speaking “correctly”.

Which type of these two is more scientific and telling us how our minds
use language?
EXAMPLE OF THE SCIENTIFIC
METHOD AS APPLIED TO SYNTAX:
a) Bill kissed himself.
b) *Bill kissed herself.
c) Sally kissed herself.
d) *Sally kissed himself.
e) *Kiss himself.

 The hypothesis (rule) we can make about the previous sentences is that “an
anaphor must have an antecedent and agree in gender”.
LET’S TEST THE PREVIOUS
HYPOTHESIS AGAINST MORE
DATA!
a) The robot kissed itself.
b) *She knocked himself on the head with a zucchini.
c) The snake flattened itself against the rock.
d) ?The snake flattened himself/herself against the rock.
e) The Joneses think themselves the best family on the block.
f) *The Joneses think himself the most wealthy guy on the block.
g) *Gary and Kevin ran himself into exhaustion.
 The previous hypothesis needs revision < “an anaphor must agree in gender and
number with its antecedent”.
TESTING THE HYPOTHESIS
AGAINST MORE DATA!
a) People from Tucson think very highly of themselves.
b) *I gave yourself the bucket of ice cream.
c) I gave myself the bucket of ice cream.
d) *She hit myself with a hammer.
e) She hit herself with a hammer.
ONCE AGAIN WE REVISE OUR
HYPOTHESIS (RULE):
 An anaphor must agree in person, gender and number
with its antecedent.
SOURCE OF DATA.
 Corpus (pl. Corpora): A collection of real-world language data.
 The information in corpora do not only contain grammatical sentences, but also
contain ungrammatical sentences or two similar sentences with different meaning.
1-
a) Sara blew the building up.
b) Sara blew up the building.
2-
a) Sara blew it up.
b) Sara blew up it.
SOURCE OF DATA.
 Linguistics judgment.
Sometimes we have to rely on our knowledge of our native language
(subconscious knowledge).
The psychological experiment used to get this subconscious knowledge is
called the grammaticality judgment task. The judgment task involves asking a
native speaker to read a sentence, and judge whether it is well-formed
(grammatical), or ill-formed (unacceptable or ungrammatical).
a) #The toothbrush is pregnant.
b) *Toothbrush the is blue.
 PERFORMANCE VS.
COMPETENCE
 Performance: refers to the kinds of language that are actually produced and heard.
Competence: refers to what we know about our language.
A) Who did Bill say Frank claimed that Mary seems to have been likely to
have kissed?
A sentence which is very hard to understand and process is called a garden path
sentence.
Center embedding: a sentence in which a relative clause consisting of a subject and a
verb is placed between the main clause subject and verb. E.g., The house [Bill built]
leans to the left.
WHERE DO THE RULES COME
FROM?
The book is asking about how we as humans get the subconscious
knowledge of syntactic rules
 to answer this question we need to look at how children acquire their rules
and their way in developing knowledge is important in cognitive science.
The type of knowledge we are talking here is the subconscious knowledge.
When producing a sentence you don’t consciously think about where to put
the subject and where to put the verb but, your subconscious language facility
in your mind does this for you .
LEARNING VS ACQUISITION
• The gathering of
-This explain why classes in the formal
conscious knowledge grammar of a foreign language fail to
(like linguistics or train people to speak those languages,
Learning chemistry, The rules However.
of algebra )
- Living in the environment of the
foreign language Where you can
Subconsciously acquire a language Is
• The gathering of much more effective
subconscious
information (like how
Acquisiti to speak or the ability
on to visually identify
discrete objects )
LANGUAGE
LANGUAGEAS
ASAN
AN INSTINCT
INSTINCT
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own which means that walking is an instinct .
According to Noam Chomsky “language is also an instinct”. many parts of language are built in
innate.
or According to Noam
Obviously, Chomsky
Particular “language
Languages areisnot
also an instinct”. many parts of language are
innate.
built in or innate. Obviously, Particular Languages are not innate.
Example: When a child of a French parents Lives in The UK and never spoking to in French
Example:
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growing up . He is going to speak English or any other language that is spoken around him .
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in the brain is innate . we call this facility universal grammar or UG
THE LOGICAL PROBLEM OF
LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
Here we have an argument that The productive system like the rules of language probably
could not be learned or acquired .
Infinite system are in principal ,given certain Assumption, both unlearnable and can't
acquirable since we all have such an invent system in our heads, we shouldn't have been able
to acquire it. so it follows that it is built in.
This argument Is on unpublished paper by Alec Marantz, along with Noam Chomsky 1965 .
A sketch of the proof that use a classical form of an argument by modus ponens:
Premise (i): syntax is a productive , recursive and infinite system .
Premise (ii): Rule-governed infinite system are unlearnable .
Conclusion : syntax is unlearnable system . Since we have it , it follows that at least parts of
syntax are innate .
PREMISE (I): SYNTAX IS A PRODUCTIVE ,
RECURSIVE AND INFINITE SYSTEM
Language is a productive system that is you can produce and understand sentences you have never
heard before .
To illustrate :
 The dancing chorus-line of elephants broke my television set.
in syntax you can generate forms that have never been produced before .
Another example that support the idea of syntax is productive lays in what is called recursion
Rosie loves magazine ads (here the sentence is utter )
I think [Rosie loves magazine ads] Putting one sentence in another
Drew believes [I think[ Rosie loves magazine ads]] and so on ad infintum
According to the past examples which proves that language is a productive and probably
invented system. there are no limits on what we can talk about.
 other examples of this productivity of syntax can be seen in the fact that you can infinitely
repeat adverbs and you can infinitely add coordinated nouns to a noun phrase.
_ Adverb example :
a)a very big house.
b) a very very big house .
c) a very very very big house . etc
_noun example :
a)Dave left.
b)Dave and Alina left.
c) Dave, Aaron and Alina left. etc
 An algebraic treatment of a linguistic example :

PREMISE here we have a child which had been giving a task to determine
the rules by which her language is constructed . ( the child has too
(II): RULE- much up situations in the real world with you trances she hears .
So upon hearing the utterances the cat spot the kissing fishes, she
GOVERNE identifies it with an appropriate situation in the context around her .

D Generative grammar gets around this logical puzzle by claiming

that the child acquiring English, Irish, or Yoruba has some help: a
INFINITE flexible blueprint to use in constructing her knowledge of language
called Universal Grammar. Universal Grammar restricts the number
SYSTEM of possible functions that map between situations and utterances,
thus making language learnable.
ARE
UNLEARN
ABLE
 There are Many other arguments that supports the hypothesis
that at least a certain amount of language built in.
An argument that is related to the logical problem of
language acquisition discussed that we know things about the
grammar of our language we couldn't possibly have learned .

OTHER for example :

ARGUME A)Who do you think that Ciaran will ask ______first ?

B)who do you think Ciaran will question ______
NTS FOR first ?

UG. C)who do you think

first?
_______ will question Seamus

The child make a distribution of the word that in English

sentences . one conclusion consistent with these observed data
is that the word that in English is optional . You can either have
it or not
Unfortunately, this conclusion is not accurate. Consider to the fourth sentence.
This sentence is the same as (28c) but with a that:
d) *Who do you think that _____ will question Seamus first?
it appears as if that is only optional when the question word who starts in object
position .
There is nothing in the input a child hears that would lead them to the conclusion
that (28d) is ungrammatical, yet every English-speaking child knows it is. One
solution to this conundrum is that we are born with the knowledge that sentences
like (28d) are ungrammatical.
This kind of argument is often called the underdetermination of the data argument
for UG.
 LANGUAGE VARIATION
The evidence for UG seems to be very strong. However, we are still left with the problem
that languages differ from one another.
Analog to language :
In 1962, Marler and Tamura observed dialect variation among the songs of
white-crowned sparrows. The ability and motivation for these birds to
vocalize is widely assumed to be innate, but the particular song they sing is
dependent upon the input they hear.
 One way in which languages differ is
in terms of the words used in the
LANGUAG language

E The different words of different

languages clearly have to be learned
VARIATIO or memorized and are not innate.
N Other differences between languages
must also be acquired.
FOR EXAMPLE : WORD ORDER
most languages put the elements in a sentence in one of the following word orders:
a) Subject Verb Object (SVO) (e.g., English)
b) Subject Object Verb (SOV) (e.g., Turkish)
c) Verb Subject Object (VSO) (e.g., Irish)
A few languages use
d) Verb Object Subject (VOS) (e.g., Malagasy)
 Chomsky

(1965) proposed that we can evaluate how good theories of syntax are
using what are called the levels of adequacy. Chomsky claimed that
there are three stages that a grammar can attain in terms of adequacy.

SYNTAX THEORIES
 SYNTAX THEORIES

observationally descriptively Explanatorily

adequate adequate grammar adequate grammar
• when that theory • a theory that's • A theory that
accounts for the accounts for both accounts for how
data in a corpus corpora and children acquire
and nothing more native speaker their language
judgments about
well-formedness
THANK YOU FOR LISTENING

This presentation has been

done by :
Hessah
Rahaf ALdossary
Alothman