Syntax

Syntax

1. The study of the rules or other elements of sentence structure which are combined to form grammatical sentences.

   • Deep structure: it's an abstract level of structural organization, and it can be the source of many other surface structures.
   • Surface structure: the different syntactic forms that an individual sentence can have.

2. Structural ambiguity: it's the different interpretations a sentence can have. Example: I hit a man with an umbrella.

3. Recursion: a sentence can have another sentence inside it or that a phrase can be repeated as often as required.

4. Tree diagrams: the visual representation of a syntactic structure.

5. Symbols: S - Sentence; N- Noun; V- Verb; Art- Article; NP noun phrase; VP- verb phrase; Adj- Adjective; Pro- Pronoun; PN- proper noun; Adv- adverb; Prep- Preposition; PP- Prepositional Phrase.

6. Phrase structure rules: the structure of a phrase will consist of one or more constituents in a particular order. Example: S -> NP VP

7. Lexical rules: they specify which words can be used when we rewrite them as constituents. Example: PN -> {Mary, George}

8. Movement rules: when making questions we move one part of the structure to a different position, and we employ an auxiliary verb. Example: NP Aux VP -> Aux NP VP

9. Complement phrases: We use a complementizer (C) to introduce a complement phrase (CP). Example: He knew that I was there.