Syntax: Intro to Linguistics
True/False: The lexicon tells us which syntactic category a given lexical expression belongs to as well as how the expressions can combine with one another to form larger expressions.
False
True/False: A phrase structure tree is a visual representation of how phrases are constructed within a descriptive grammar, given the lexicon and the phrase structure rules.
True
True/False: A verb phrase is the name of the syntactic category that consists of all the expressions that, if combined with a noun phrase, will result in a sentence. In English, the noun phrase precedes the verb phrase.
True
True/False: Adjectives can be classified as noun adjuncts.
True
True/False: Agreement is the phenomenon by which certain expressions in a sentence must be inflectionally marked for the same person, number, gender, etc.
True
True/False: An argument is a linguistic expression that occurs in a sentence if some other expression occurs in that sentence as well. If expression X requires the occurrence of the expression of Y, then Y is the argument of X.
True
True/False: Co-occurrence is another property of syntactic well-formedness because it also dictates the structure of the rest of the sentence, as some expressions require certain other expressions to co-occur.
True
True/False: If a string of words does not form a sentence in a given language, it is classified as ungrammatical.
True
True/False: Semantics is the subfield of linguistics concerned with linguistic meaning.
True
True/False: Syntactic properties are properties of linguistics expressions that dictate how they can syntactically combine with other expressions, namely word order and co-occurrence properties.
True
True/False: When a phrasal expression is constructed in accordance with the syntactic rules of a particular language, it is called grammatical.
True
Syntactic Categories are a group of expressions that have similar syntactic properties and more or less the same syntactic distribution. Which of the following is an example of a syntactic category in English?
1. Adjectives 2. Noun Phrase 3. Determiners (All of the above)
Structural Ambiguity is the phenomenon where a single string of words or morphemes is the form of more than one distinct phrasal expression. Which of the following is an example of a structurally ambiguous phrase in English?
1. He said she would be here two days ago. 2. I know you like the back of my hand. 3. Call me a cab! (All of the above)
Syntax is a component of mental grammar that deals with constructing phrasal expressions out of smaller expressions. As a subfield of linguistics, syntax studies...
1. How expressions can combine to form larger expressions. 2. How languages differ in terms of sentence construction. 3. Which combination of words are sentences and which are not. (All of the above)
Syntactic Constituents are a group of linguistic expressions that function as a syntactic unit within some larger expression. Which of the following is an example of a syntactic constituent in English?
1. I devoured a peach. 2. He visited me in October. 3. I went to Chicago last week. (All of the above)
Another type of verb phrase adjunct is a prepositional phrase, which consist of a preposition and a noun phrase. Which of the following is an example of a prepositional phrase in English?
1. I did my homework at the desk. 2. I completed my homework with my lab partner. 3. I left my homework on the table. (All of the above)
Which of the following is an example of a verb phrase in English?
1. I walked to the store. 2. I walked to the store yesterday afternoon. 3. I walked to the store yesterday afternoon to buy some snacks. (All of the above)
Verbs that require a noun phrase compliment are called transitive verbs, and verbs that require two noun phrase compliments are called ditransitive verbs. Which of the following is an example of a ditransitive verb in English?
1. She gave him a letter. 2. She sent her a book. 3. She gives them the homework. (All of the above)
An adjunct is a linguistic expression whose occurrence in a sentence is optional. Which of the following is an adjunct in English?
1. She has a cute dog. 2. I left yesterday, around 3pm. 3. He went on vacation six months ago. (All of the above)
Count nouns are defined as being able to be counted, whereas mass nouns are unable to be counted and cannot usually be pluralized. Which of the following is an example of a mass noun?
Advice
True/False: The phrase structure trees of an English sentence and its translation into Arabic would have the exact same shape.
False
True/False: Intransitive verbs do require a compliment.
False (They do NOT)
The Principle of Compositionality is the notion that the meaning of a phrasal expression is predictable from the meanings of the expressions it contains and how they are syntactically combined. What does this tell us about the construction of sentences?
Even though languages have finite lexicons, there is an infinite number of meaningful sentences that can be created through different syntactic combinations.
True/False: A determiner is any expression that can be combined with a noun to create an expression which is a noun phrase. In English, determiners occur before the noun.
False
True/False: A grammaticality judgement is based on conscious knowledge of the prescriptive rules of a language.
False
True/False: Count nouns cannot co-occur with a determiner such as the.
False
True/False: Even if a phrase is structurally ambiguous, this does not affect the shape of the phrase structure tree: in other words, every interpretation of the phrase would have an identical tree.
False
True/False: For a sentence to be well-formed, all the expressions it contains must have all necessary arguments, but additional arguments can add more detail to the meaning.
False
True/False: In languages that exhibit gender agreement, expressions that refer to the same thing will always be assigned the same gender class across languages.
False
True/False: Knowing the semantic class that an expression belongs to is necessary for understanding its syntactic properties.
False
True/False: Linguistic forms cannot correspond to more than one distinct expression.
False
True/False: Morphology and syntax are only loosely related in terms of components of grammar.
False
Phrase structure rules describe how to syntactically combine expressions of certain syntactic categories, and along with the lexicon these rules make up the descriptive grammar of language. Which of the following is a phrase structure rule in English?
S → NP VP
Word order is one of the key aspects of syntactic well-formedness in any language because it determines the overall structure of a phrase. Which of the following word orders is the most common across languages?
SOV (Subject-Object-Verb)
True/False: A noun phrase is the name of the syntactic category that consists of proper names, pronouns, and all other expressions with the same syntactic distribution.
True
Sentential Complement Verbs are verbs which require a sentence as its complement. Which of the following is an example of a sentential complement verb in English?
She expected that they would submit their homework on time
Why is there a need to study syntax and semantics independently of one another?
Syntactic combinations have consequences for the meanings that sentences express, but meanings do not determine the syntactic properties of expression.
A linguistic expression is a piece of language that has form, meaning, and some syntactic property. How do linguistic expressions relate to syntax?
Syntax studies how linguistic expressions combine and the limitations to these combinations.
Which of the following is an example of a noun phrase in English?
The dog was sleeping on the bed.
Verb phrase adjuncts are a kind of adjunct that combines with an expression of syntactic category verb phrase with the resulting expression also being in the verb phrase category. Why are adverbs considered verb phrase adjuncts?
Verb phrases with or without adverbs have the same distribution, making adverbs verb phrase adjuncts.
