Class notes

Review of LING371 Syntax Material

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Course
Syntax (LING371)

Institution
McGill University (Mcgillu)

This is a complete summary of all LING 371 notes, including all the concepts for the problem sets, midterm and final exam. It is a good study guide and provides concept explanations and definitions for various syntax topics.

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Uploaded on October 8, 2021
Number of pages 12
Written in 2020/2021
Type Class notes
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final
review
syntax
definitions
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linguistics
grammar
language
midterm
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Syntax Review - LING 371
Introduction:
- Linguistics = The formal study of a language as a system, linguistics study language as a
concept.
- Competence = The inherent knowledge all speakers of a language have about the rules of
their language.
- *The student walk tomorrow.
- Performance = The actual realization of language, including speech errors, memory
lapses, etc.
- Sally sells seashells by the seashore.
- Grammaticality = The property of being a well-formed part of a language, including the
selectionality of words.
- Grammar can be prescriptive (formality ‘rules’ that you might learn in school) or
descriptive (spontaneous grammar studied by linguists).
- Syntax = rules that determine the ways that words and phrases are combined
meaningfully into larger phrases.
- Grammar is determined through data observation, hypotheses, testing, etc.
- Language is not explicitly taught or learned, the theory of a universal grammar suggests
human capacity of language acquisition is innate.
- Speech is divided into open (allowing new words) and closed (not allowing new words)
classes.
- E.g. Noun, verb, adjective, etc are open, but pronouns, prepositions, etc are
closed.
- Similar to lexical (semantically contentful) and functional (semantically empty)
categories.
- Functional → prepositions, determiners, complementizers, conjunctions,
tense markers, negation.
Parts of Speech:
- Noun (N)
- Morphological distribution → Derivational suffixes (-ment, -ness, -ty, -ation,
-ship, -acy, -hood, etc). Inflectional suffixes (-s, -es, -en, -ren, etc).
- Syntactic distribution → After determiners (these, the, those) and adjectives.
Follow prepositions (in, under, etc). Subject or direct object of a sentence. In the
position of possessor (‘s). Negated by no.
- Verb (V)
- Morphological distribution → Derivational suffixes (-ate, -ize, ise). Inflectional
suffixes - past tense (-ed), present tense 3rd person singular (-s), progressive
(-ing), perfective (-en) and possessive (-ed, -en).

, - Syntactic distribution → Follow auxiliaries, modals and the special infinitive
marker to. Can follow subjects and adverbs (often and frequently). Can be negated
by not.
- Adjective (A)
- Morphological distribution → Derivational suffixes (-ing, -ive, -able, -al, -ate,
-ish, -some, -an, -ful, -ly). Inflectional suffixes - negation (un-), comparative (-er,
more), superlative (-est, most).
- Syntactic distribution → Between determiners and nouns. Follow auxiliary
(am/is/are/was/were/be/been/being), overlaps with verbs. Modified by adverbs
like very, overlaps with adverbs.
- Adverbs (Ad)
- Morphological distribution → Derivational suffixes usually end in -ly. Inflectional
suffixes are rare, but can be used comparatively (e.g. more quickly)
- Syntactic distribution → Cannot appear between a determiner and a noun. Appear
in many positions in a sentence. Can be modified by the adverb very.

Constituencies, Trees and X-Bar Theory
- Sentences have internal structures grouped into constituents (a functioning unit).
Constituent can be an X’ or XP.
- Principle of Modification - If an XP modifies some head Y, then XP must be a daughter
of YP.
- A node X is a daughter of node Y if Y immediately dominates X.
- NPs can be modified by APs or PPs
- E.g. ‘the big book’ or ‘the book on the table’
- VPs can be modified by AdvPs or PPs
- E.g. ‘slowly run’ or ‘sing in the shower’
- X’ theory = There must be an intermediate projection within an XP between the maximal
projection (XP) and the head (X).
- Proposes an X’ that is a constituent, but functions from within the XP.
Constituency tests:
- Substitute NPs with pronouns → “The child in the blue pants will buy the big red book.”
- She will buy the big red book.
- The child in the blue pants will buy it.
- *She in the blue pants will buy the big red book.
- Substitute PPs with ‘here’ or ‘there’ (sometimes) → “She will buy the book in
Montreal.”
- She will buy the book here.
- Clefting for NPs and PPs with the template “it was [1] that [2…[1]...].” → “It was a big
red book that the child bought.”
- The child bought a big red book.

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