Chapter 4 From Word to Text.ppt

1、Chapter 4 From Word to Text,Course: Linguistics,Table of Content,4.1 Syntactic Relations 4.1.1 Positional Relation 4.1.2 Relation of Substitutability 4.1.3 Relation of Co-occurrence 4.2 Grammatical Construction and Its Constituents 4.2.1 Grammatical Construction 4.2.2 Immediate Constituent 4.2.3 End

2、ocentric and Exocentric Constructions 4.2.4 Coordination and Subordination 4.2.4.1 Coordination 4.2.4.2 Subordination,Table of Content,4.3 Syntactic Function 4.3.1 Subject 4.3.2 Predicate 4.3.3 Object 4.3.4 The Relation between Classes and Functions 4.4 Category 4.4.1 Number 4.4.2 Gender 4.4.3 Case

3、4.4.4 Agreement,Table of Content,4.5 Phrase, Clause and Sentence 4.5.1 Phrase 4.5.2 Clause 4.5.3 Sentence 4.6 Recursiveness 4.6.1 Conjoining 4.6.2 Embedding 4.7 Beyond the Sentence 4.7.1 Sentential Connection 4.7.2 Cohesion,Q: What is “syntax”? Syn-(together) + -tax(to arrange) arrangement SYNTAX: t

4、he study of the rules governing the way words are combined to form sentences in a language, or simply, the study of the formation of sentences,4.1 Syntactic Relations,4.1.1 Positional relations 4.1.2 Relations of substitutability 4.1.3 Relations of co-occurrence,4.1.1 Positional Relation,Q: How to i

5、ndicate subject as well as object? Ex. The boy kicked the ball. A: Positional relation (word order) and affixation,Positional relation (Word order): the sequential arrangement of words Ex. 4-1 a. The boy kicked the ball. b. * Boy the ball kicked the. c. * The ball kicked the boy.,Syntagmatic relatio

6、ns(组合关系，horizontal relations, chain relations): relations between one item and others in a sequence, or between elements which are all present (Both syntactic and semantic) NOTE: Syntagmatic relations vs. associative relations (Saussure) NOTE: possible types: SVO, VSO, SOV, OVS, OSV, VOS; English (S

7、VO),4.1.2 Relation of Substitutability,Relation of substitutability 1) classes or set of words substitutable for each other grammatically in sentences with the same structure Ex. The _ is smiling. man, lady, boy 2) groups of more than one word which may be jointly substitutable grammatically for a s

8、ingle word of a particular set Ex. The young man, old lady, little boy is smiling.,NOTE: Associative relations(Saussure) / paradigmatic relations (Hjemslev)/ vertical relations/ choice relations: relations between elements replaceable with each other at a particular place in a structure, or between

9、one element present and the others absent,4.1.3 Relation of Co-occurrence,RELATIONS OF CO-OCCURRENCE: words of different sets of clauses may require the occurrence of a word of another set or class to form a sentence or a particular part of a sentence Ex. (preceded by) NP (followed by) The youngest

10、man smiles The old lady sings A little boy cries NOTE: The relations of co-occurrence are partly syntagmatic and partly paradigmatic.,4.2 Grammatical Construction and Its Constituents,4.2.1 Grammatical Construction Grammatical Construction or Construct: any syntactic structure which is assigned one

11、or more conventional functions in a language,External syntax of a construction: the properties of the construction as a whole, e.g., clausal type, phrasal type Internal syntax: a description of the constructions “make-up”, with the terms such as “subject, predicate, object, determiner, noun”, etc. E

12、x. Subject + Verb + Object (Clausal type) Peter loves poems Determiner + Noun (phrasal type) this summer,4.2.2 Immediate Constituent,Constituent: a part of a larger linguistic unit A (Sentence) B C The boy kicked the ball IMMEDIATE CONSTITUENTS (直接成分): constituents immediately, directly, below the l

13、evel of a construction, which may be a sentence or a word group Node,Immediate constituent analysis (IC analysis) AP, VP, NP, S (a) Tree diagram (b) Bracketing Ex. (the) (boy) (hit) (the) (ball),4.2.3 Endocentric and Exocentric Constructions,4.2.3.1 Endocentric ENDOCENTRIC CONSTRUCTION (向心结构): a con

14、struction whose distribution is functionally equivalent, or approaching equivalence, to one of its constituents, which serves as the center, or head, of the whole. A headed construction. Ex. noun phrases (NP), e.g., the three small children; verb phrases (VP), e.g., will leave; adjective phrases (AP

15、), e.g., really very late.,4.2.3.2 Exocentric,EXOCENTRIC CONTRUCTION (离心结构): the construction whose distribution is not functionally equivalent to any of its constituents. No head. E.g., basic sentence, prepositional phrase, predicate (verb + object) construction, connective (be + complement) constr

16、uction Ex. on the shelf,4.2.4 Coordination and Subordination,4.2.4.1 Coordination COORDINATION: a common syntactic pattern formed by grouping together two or more categories of the same type with the help of a conjunction Ex. boys or girls, beauty and beast, up and down Note: the constructions with

17、more than one head; equal syntactic status; no limited number of coordinated categories; recursiveness,4.2.4.2 Subordination,SUBORDINATION: the process or result of linking linguistic units so that they have different syntactic status, one being dependent upon the other, and usually a constituent of

18、 the other NOTE: only one head, with the head being dominant and the other constituents dependent Ex. a. cute babies b. Swimming in the lake (is fun).,NOTE: three subordinate constituents: complementary clauses, adjunct (or adverbial) clauses, relative clauses Ex. a. The boy insisted that he paid fo

19、r the candy bars. (complementary clauses) b. He is the man whom I saw. (relative clause) Q: Is verb + object (e.g. read the book) exocentric or endocentric? How about the gerund (e.g. reading the book)?,4.3 Syntactic Function,Syntactic function: the relationship between a linguistic form and other p

20、arts of the linguistic pattern in which it is used,4.3.1 Subject,Definitions of subject 1) nouns in the nominative case (Latin) Ex. a. Pater filium amat. b. Pattrem filius amat.,2) agent (the doer of the action) Ex. a. A dog bit John. b. John was bit by a dog. c. John underwent major heart surgery.

21、Grammatical subject: the object noun phrase which occupies the grammatical space before a verb Logical subject: semantically the doer of the action,3) topic (what the sentence is about) Ex. a. Bill is a very crafty fellow. b. (Jack is pretty reliable, but) Bill I dont trust. c. As for Bill, I wouldn

22、t take his promises very seriously.,Properties of English subjects 1) word order: Subject precedes the verb Ex. a. Tom loves chocolates. b. *Loves Tom chocolates. 2) Pro-forms: the nominative case of the first and third person pronouns Ex. a. He takes dinner. b. They shouted at us.,3) Agreement with

23、 verb Ex. a. He loves dog. 4) Content questions: Ex. a. Who told you the story? b. What did he tell you? 5) Tag question: the pronoun refers back to the subject Ex. a. John loves Mary, doesnt he? b. *John loves Mary, doesnt she?,4.3.2 Predicate,Predicate: a major constituent of sentence structure in

24、 which all obligatory constituents other than the subject were considered together NOTE: express actions, processes and the state which relates to the subject Ex. a. The boy is running. b. Mary is hungry. Predicator: verb or verbs included in a predicate,4.3.3 Object,Direct object and indirect objec

25、t Ex. He gave me a book. Accusative case (direct object) and dative case (indirect object) Ex. a. Inominative saw himaccusative. b. I gave a book to himdative.,Properties of English objects Word order and inflection Ex. He wrote a letter to me. subject in a passive transformation Ex. a. Henry found

26、the boy. (The boy was found by Henry.) b. The rain lasted three days. (* Three days were lasted by the rain.),4.3.4 The Relation between Classes and Functions,No one-to-one correspondence One class multiple functions Ex. a. The best-seller is a fantastic book. (subject, object) b. the winter vocatio

27、n (modifier) c. They changed trains. (comp.) One function multiple class Ex. a. The kitchen is always kept clean. (Nominal) b. We are happy to celebrate the Spring Festival. (Pronoun) c. To celebrate the lunar new year is a Chinese tradition. (Verbal),4.4 Category,Category: classes and functions in

28、narrow sense, e.g., noun, verb, subject, predicate, NP, VP, etc. Category: the defining properties of the general units, e.g., number, gender, and case , countability of noun; tense, aspect, voice of verb,4.4.1 Number,NUMBER: a grammatical category used for the analysis of word classes displaying co

29、ntrasts such as singular, dual, plural, etc. English, French: singular, plural Classical Greek, Arabic: singular, plural, dual Fijian: trial Ex. a. dish: dishes (Noun) b. eat: eats (Verb) c. he: they (Pronoun) d. le livre rouge: les livres rouges (Article, adjective) Q: Does the Chinese have any num

30、ber? “们”?,4.4.2 Gender,GENDER: “masculine: feminine: neuter”, “animate: inanimate” Natural gender: the gender distinctions in the real world Ex. a. he: she: it (Pronoun) b. actor: actress; hero: heroine (Noun),Grammatical gender: the gender distinctions which have nothing to do with the real-world e

31、ntities; All the nouns have gender distinctions whether they refer to animate entities or not. Ex. a. un acteur: une femme acteur b. le bureau: la table c. le roman (长篇) “accusative, nominative, dative” English: case of nouns and pronouns English pronouns: three cases of nominative (e.g., he), accus

32、ative (e.g., him) and genitive (e.g., his) Ex. Inominative saw himaccusative. English nouns: two cases of general (e.g., John) and genitive (e.g., Johns),Realization of case Ex. a. Mary: Marys (inflection) b. with/to him (preposition) c. He kicked the ball. (word order),4.4.4 Agreement,CONCORD(一致关系)

33、/AGREEMENT(协同关系): the requirement that the forms of two or more words in a syntactic relationship should agree with each other in terms of some categories Ex. a. Whose is this pen? Its the one I lost. (Anaphoric, pronoun and its precedent) b. a few questions (head and its dependent) c. He looks fine

34、. (verb and subject) Agreement of head: gender, number and case,4.5 Phrase, Clause and Sentence,4.5.1 Phrase PHRASE: a single element of structure containing more than one word, and lacking the subject-predicate structure typical of clauses 1) a group of words which form a constitute; 2) lower on th

35、e grammatical hierarchy Ex. a. Seven Dwarfs (nominal phrase) b. have been done (verbal phrase) c. terribly hot (adjective phrase) d. to the door (prepositional phrase),c.f. phrase phrases dont have to be word groups Ex. orange cat = noun phrase/word group cat = noun phrase/word the cat: word group/d

36、eterminer phrase/noun phrase,4.5.2 Clause,Clause: a constituent with its subject and predicate which is included in a larger sentence c.f. Finite and non-finite clauses,Finite clause a grammatical subject (except for imperatives like Listen to this, which have a second-person subject) a full verb ma

37、rked for tense and often for number and person Ex.a. Marvin owns a posh heath club. (independent clause) b. She stands for several principles that I dont agree with. (subordinate clause) c. When you decide to move to the new apartment, you can stay with me until youre settled. (subordinate clause),N

38、on-finite clause No grammatical subject Incomplete verb, i.e., it does not carry markings for tense, number, or person. Ex. a. Garys greatest ambition is to walk backwards without actually moving, like the singer Michael Jackson. (infinitive clause) b. Stunned by his criticism, she quit her job and

39、moved to Tibet. (participle clause) c. Melinda, raising her voice over the crowd, called for order. (participle clause),4.5.3 Sentence,Traditional grammar: the minimal part of language that express a complete thought Bloomfield (1935): “one not included by virtue of any grammatical construction in any larger linguistic form” Traditional approach Functional approach,4.6 Recursiveness,Recursiveness: a phrasal constituent can be embedded within another constituent having the same category (narrow sense); coordination, subordination, conjoining, e