What is syntax?
----a branch of linguistics that studies how words are combined to form sentences and the rules that govern the formation of sentences.
Categories
Category refers to a group of linguistic items which fulfill the same or similar functions in a particular language such as a sentence, a noun phrase or a verb. The most central categories to the syntactic study are the word-level categories (traditionally, parts of speech)
Phrase categories and their structures
Phrase categories----the syntactic units that are built around a certain word category are called phrase categories, such as NP(N), VP(V), AP(A), PP(P).
Phrase structure rules
The grammatical mechanism that regulates the arrangement of elements that make up a phrase is called a phrase structure rule, such as:
NP ? (Det) + N +(PP)……e.g. those people, the fish on the plate, pretty girls.
VP ? (Qual) + V + (NP)……e.g. always play games, finish assignments.
AP ? (Deg) + A + (PP)……very handsome, very pessimistic, familiar with, very close to
PP ? (Deg) + P + (NP)……on the shelf, in the boat, quite near the station.
Noun Categories
Number 數
Gender 性
Case 格
1.Number
It can be divided as singular noun and a plural noun
eg: I —— we
a book——these books
2. Gender
Among gender, there are Feminine (陰性)、Masculine (陽性)、neuter（中性）.
eg: He -----she
prince ------princess
hero-------heroine
3. Case
In English, there are nominative (主格)、accusative (賓格)、genitive (屬格). eg:
I --------me -----------my
He ----------him ---------his
Tom ---------Tom’s
Name ----------name of
Verb Category
Tense (時態)
Aspect (體態)
Voice (語態)
1. Tense
There are two kinds of tense ——
Past & present
eg： present : They talk to the teacher everyday.
past: They talked to the teacher yesterday.
2. Aspect
There are two kinds of aspect ——
perfective (完成體) & imperfective (未完成體)
eg: imperfective：We are playing a game now. (進行時)
We will play a game tomorrow. (將來時)
perfective: We have played a game already.
3. Voice
There are active voice and passive voice in all.
eg：He wrote a letter just now.
-----The letter was written (by him) just now.
The voice in different tenses & aspects
(Ask as a example)
Sentences (the S rule)
S ? NP VP
Infl realized by a tense label
Infl realized by an auxiliary
Auxiliary movement (inversion)
Inversion? Move Infl to the left of the subject NP.
Inversion (revised)? Move Infl to C.
Auxiliary movement (inversion)
Deep structure & surface structure
Consider the following pair of sentences:
John is easy to please.
John is eager to please.
Structurally similar sentences might be very different in their meanings, for they have quite different deep structures.
Deep structure & surface structure
Deep structure----formed by the XP rule in accordance with the head’s sub-categorization properties; it contains all the units and relationships that are necessary for interpreting the meaning of the sentence.
Surface structure----corresponding to the final syntactic form of the sentence which results from appropriate transformations; it is that of the sentence as it is pronounced or written.