Chapter 4syntax语言学

Chapter IV. Syntax
1 . Traditional approach
number(singular and plural), gender( masculine, feminine, neuter) and case(in English, 3 cases: nominative/I,he,she, accusative/me, him, her, genitive/my, his, her)
tense and aspect
tense is time-related, it relates the time of the action, event or state of affairs referred to in the sentence to the time of utterance(the time of utterance being “now”).-past and present
aspect:has to do with whether an action was completed or not, whether it happened once or frequently, whether it occupied a point in time or a stretch of time. English has two co-existent choices of aspect, namely (1).continous denoted by the presence of –ing, I’m writing, and non-continuous, I write. (2). Perfect denoted by the presence of –en. I have written, and noe-perfect, I write.
concord and government
Concord: (agreement) or requirement that the forms of two or more words in a syntactic relationship should agree with each other in terms of some categories.
This man. These men. He speaks. They speak
Government: a type of control over the form of some words by
other words in certain syntactic constructions. She gave him the book. She gave the book to him.
2. the structural approach: started by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure in the 20th century. They regard linguistic units as interrelated with each other in a structure (or system), not as isolated bits.
syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations
syntagmatic/horizontal, chain relation组合关系：is a relation between one item and others in a sequence, or between elements which are all present. The words in a syntagmatic relation must meet some syntactic and semantic conditions. (see P120)
Structure: the sequence which a sign forms with those it is in a syntagmatic relation
paradigmatic relation / vertical, choice(聚合关系/associative): is a relation between elements replaceable with each other at a particular place in a structure, or between one element present and the others absent. .
system: the class of signs which are in a paradigmatic relation.
the ____ is smiling
Constraints:: noun, animate noun, human, in singular
(singular human nouns), such as boy, girl, man, woman, student, which are in a paradigmatic relation. They can replace each other without violating syntactic rules.
Notes: the constraints are only syntactic, not semantic. immediate constituent analysis:the analysis of a sentence in terms of its immediate constituents – word groups (or phrases), which are in turn analyzed into the immediate constituents of their own, and the process goes on until the ultimate constituents are reached. (stop at the level of word).
construction/construct: (in gerneral sense), it refers to the overall process of internal organization of a grammatical unit – how a phrase, a clause or a sentence is constructed out of a set of morphemes by following a set of rules. It can further refer to the syntagmatic result of such a process. (a relationship between constituents: endocentric construction & exocentric construction) In the analysis of a text, construction refers to a token of a constructional type. The girl is giggling is recognized as sub. + Pred. Type, which is realized in a string “ the + girl + is + giggling”. Since construction is composed of several parts (single words, groups of words. Etc.), the small units are know as its immediate constituents. Even the small units themselves can be constructuions of specific types. The girl = nominal phrase (the girl is construction of nominal
phrase), whereas the + girl are its constituent.
endocentric and exocentric constructions
A construction is a relationship between constituents, which
are divided into two types: endocentric constructions and exocentric constructions.
Endocentric construction (headed constucution):is one whose distribution is functionally equivalent, or approaching equivalent, to that of one or more of its constituents, which serves as the center, or head of the whole. (If the total construction [head + modification or modification + head] has the same distributuonal characteristics as the head constituent, it is usually called endocentric construction).
For example: they left because they were tired. They left = head. Because…=modifier.
Subordinate construction: those in which there is only one head, with the head being dominant and the other constituents dependant.
e.g. the student at the back.
A subordinating construction contains a subordinator, which is a prep. Particle, or a subordination conjunction such as in, over, to, after, because, and a dependent unit.
Coordinate construction: there are more than one head, which are of equal syntactic status, no one is dependant on the other:
e.g. boys and girls / John sings but Jack dances
A coordinate construction contains a marker or coordinator and
two or more independent units (word, phrases or even whole sentences)
Exocentric construction: /
3. The generative approach
In 1957, the American linguist Chomsky proposed the transformational-generative grammar(TG), thus providing a model for the description of human languages. The goal of TG is to find out a system of rules to account for the linguistic competence of native speakers of a language to form grammatical sentences. It is called TG because it it attempts to do two things:
to provide the rules that can be used to generate grammatical sentences
to show how basic sentences can be transformed into either synonymous phrases or more complex sentences
4.3.1 deep and surface structures
TG 产生的背景：Because of its insistence on binary divisions and failure to reveal structural ambiguities, certain problems arise in immediate constituent analysis. It is in this context that TG comes into existence.
TG 的内容：According to TG, human beings possess two
grammars as part of their linguistic competence.
⏹ A phrase structure grammar which consists of the rules
governing idealized sentence formation
⏹ A transformational grammar, which enables us to
manipulate(use) sentences to produce the full range of
sentence types . TG grammar
As a result , every sentence has a surface structure (post-transformational stage) and deep structure ( a pre-transformational stage).
Deep structure:
Text book: the abstract representation of the syntactic properties of a construction, i.e. the underlying level of structural relations between its different constituents, such as the relation between the underlying subject and its verb, or a verb and its object.
Tragott(1980:141): deep structure shows the basic form of a sentence with all necessary information to derive a well-formed sentence, and to give it a phonological representation and a semantic interpretation. It reveals the underlying structure of a linguistic utterance and specifies the grammatical relations and functions of the syntactic elements, as well as the linguistic meaning of the constituents.
Surface structure:
Text book: The final stage in the syntactic derivation of a construction, which closely corresponds to the structural organization of a construction people actually produce and receive.
Tragott(1980:141): actually produced structure .
Bussman (1996:465-466): it is the directly observable actual form of sentences as they are used in communication, and from the perspective of transformational grammar, surface structure is a relatively abstract sentence structure resulting from the application of base rules and transformational rules.
Relationship between SS and DS: is that of transformation (Wardhaugh’s, 1997: 118-119) cf: p113-114(杨信彰)
4.3.2 the standard theory and after （cf. P135）
In 1965, Chomsky published his second important book Aspects of the Theroy of Syntax, in which he introduced some modifications to his 1st model, that is, he added a semantic component to it.
Now the language is seen as consisting of three major parts: syntax, semantics and phonology.
The base component categories and lexicon
Contains rules with feature specification for the words to be inserted (cf.P136)
Aspects of the Theory of Syntax: more comprehensive and mature
compared with the 1st model, thus is known as the standard theory.
4.3.3 government, binding, etc.
In 1979: Lectures on Government and Binding.
A grammar is now said to have 2 systems.: a rule system(lexicon, syntax, phonetic form component, logical form component), a principle system ( bounding theory, government theory, .θ-theory, binding theory; case theory, control theory) (see figure 6, P140) C-command:refers to the relation between an element and another of the same level and under the same node in a tree diagram, and any others under the latter element as well. (see P142).
Condition: An element governs another if the two are under the same node directly, and the former is the head of the construction.
Binding theory: (see P144)
4.4 The functional approach
1. functional sentence perspective (FSP)
FSP is a theory of linguistic analysis which refers to an analysis of utterances (or texts) in terms of the information they contain. It is created to describe how information is distributed in sentences, it deals particularly with the effect of the distribution of known information and new information is discourse
Theme:that which is known or at least obvious in the given situation and from which the speaker proceeds. （the point of
departure话语的出发点）
Rheme: What the speaker states about , or in regard to, the starting point of the utterance”(the goal of discourse话语的核心).
Mathesius thought that it is natural for the speaker to start from the known to the unknown, and the theme-rheme order is the usual one in unemotional narration (objective order), in emotional narration, it may be possible to reverse the order rheme-theme order (subjective order).
Communicative Dynamism(another version of the same analysis, in short CD): The extent to which the sentence element contributes to the development of the communication.
This notion is based on the fact that linguistic communication is not a static phenomenon, but a dynamic one. CD is meant to measure the amount of information an element carries in a sentence.
2.systemic-functional grammar (has been developed by
Halliday)
Systemic part (comes from Firth): language elements form into systems.
Functional part (comes from Malinowski who attached great importance to the social function of language).
Classification of language functions:
Karl Buhler: representative, expressive, appellative
Roman Jakobson: referential, emotive, conative, metalinguistic, poetic, phatic
Halliday: ideational, interpersonal,textual, which are related to three grammatical systems: transitivity, mood and theme.。