语言学精品课幻灯片-05syntax语法.ppt

Topic 5
Syntax
Pre-reading questions: Study the following sentences and pick out those incorrect sentences.
1. The boy found the ball.
2. The boy found quickly.
3. The boy found in the house.
4. The boy found the ball in the house.
6. Zack believes Robert to be a gentleman.
7. Zack believes to be a gentleman.
8. Zack wants Robert to be a gentleman.
Definition of Syntax
Syntax is a subfield that studies the sentence structure of language.
1. Syntax as a system of rules
the syntactic rules
Functions of Syntactic Rules
1) the grammaticality of sentences
The green colorless cloud sleeps furiously.
I don’t look TV.
2) word order
The boy milk spilt the.
The boy spilt the milk.
The table is on the cat. And The cat is on the table.
She got married and became pregnant.
She became pregnant and got married.
吃啥有啥。
有啥吃啥。
3) structural ambiguity
Synthetic buffalo’s hides
Synthetic buffalo’s hides
4) grammatical relations
subject-predicate
5) whether different sentences have different meanings or the same meanings
CF: The dog caught the fox.
The fox was caught by the dog.
6) the creative aspect of language
2. Sentence structure
Example: John likes linguistics.

Subject Predicate