This document forms a detailed summary of the first part of the course Syntax 1. It contains one period of seven lectures. The most important information from the book is explained and some additional information. The summary also contains clear pictures used in the lectures.
Syntax 1 Lectures
Lecture 1 Introduction
Linguistics look at the grammatical knowledge that resides in the head of the speaker. This they try to
describe and then explain.
Boring rules
There are certain rules in language, such as:
1. Do not split infinitives (Don’t say ‘to boldly go’)
2. Double negatives semantically mean a positive: I didn’t see nobody
3. The hun-hebben-disease: It should be zij hebben
These are 3 examples of rules everyone is aware of. Linguistically, this is boring. They are made up by
someone who thinks they have the authority to tell you what to do. However, these are just arbitrary
rules. The split infinitives or double negations, for example, will be used anyway, if the authority
wants it or not.
In France, they do use a double negation. They say Je n’aime pas. ‘Ne’ and ‘pas’ both indicate the
negative meaning. The fact that this is possible in French means that the rules are illogical.
The hun-hebben-disease is also illogical. There are 5 pronouns which can both function as object and
subject: ze, jullie, u, het, and je. Someone has said that hun hebben is not a pretty sentence.
However, using the other five is no problem at all.
These kinds of rules are the ones we are not going to talk about in this course. We will talk about
what linguistics talks about.
What we are going to do…
There’s a given that words do not start with rts or lps. Linguistics would ten make generalizations
about the start of words. They make generalizations about the facts.
- Rts- and lps- are hard to pronounce
- They do occur in other positions in words: helps
A syntactic example:
A1: John said that his girlfriend called _____
B1: Who did John say that his girlfriend called ____
A2: John cried when his girlfriend called _____?
B2: Who did John cry when his girlfriend called ____? Ungrammatical
The linguist wants to know what is going on here. Can we make generalisations about this? Then it’s
important to explain those generalisations.
When we add a wh-word to the sentence, there are restrictions apparently. The B2 example is
ungrammatical in every language.
Now a more prominent question is why don’t human languages do this? Regulations are universal.
, Another example:
A1: John is happy
B1: Is John happy? The first two words are reversed to make a question
A2: The man is happy The subject now consists of two words
B2: Man the is happy? The rule to reverse two words to make a question does not hold up
anymore. This also counts for other languages.
Children also try to make generalisations. They don’t, however, always get it right. The wrong rule
would be attained before the right rule. There are certain mistakes that a child doesn’t make. You
will never hear a child say “Man the is happy?”. So linguists question why they do not try certain
things out. How does a child know what to do and what not to do? Other questions are why human
language never does this or that.
They do agree on one thing. That these kinds of restrictions tell us something about our brain. So the
child not trying out something means that the brain is telling it it’s wrong. We think that by studying
language, we can look through a window into our brain. It’s a cognitive science.
During this course, we will try to make a theory that tells us why sentences are grammatical or
ungrammatical. And we try to generalise restrictions. We try to come to the best possible
generalisations of English.
An extreme abstraction of English grammar
1. Merge This is an extreme abstraction that tells us why certain things
2. F > vF grammatical or ungrammatical.
The goal is to say something about the human brain. The complicated grammar comes down to these
two principles.
Lecture 2 Word categories and their features
Syntax is in the head of a native speaker. But what is syntax exactly? It is a module that allows you to
take smaller chunks and make bigger chunks out of that. It is a mechanism to build sentences.
During this course we will make a machine that:
1. Builds sentences
2. Says whether something is grammatical or ungrammatical.
What does syntax care about?
But what is it that syntax combines to build these sentences? The internet or someone else might say
words. A word could be defined as the arbitrary relationship between meaning and a thing.
Syntax is not interested in meaning. Syntax doesn’t care that “John eats a car” is odd, semantically.
This is grammatically and, thus, syntactically fine. Syntax does not care about what you convey, it
cares about how you convey it.
If syntax does not care about meaning, then that leaves the sound part of a word. Syntax doesn’t
care about this either. Syntax does not care about what you call things. There’s nothing about an
apple that needs it to be called an apple. A fact syntax cares about is that you can combine “an
apple” with the word “eat”.
The conclusion is that syntax does not care about words, but what can be combines with what.
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