1、语言学第四章预习资料Syntax: The Sentence Structure of Language4.1 What is syntax?The word “syntax” is from the Ancient Greek sntaxis, which literally means “arrangement” or “setting out together”. In linguistics, syntax is the study of how words combine to form sentences and the rules which govern the formati
2、on of sentences. Most languages have a finite number of basic words, but these words can be put together to make an infinite number of sentences. This is because there are rules and patterns that can be used in a recursive way to create new sentences. Syntax studies these rules governing the way wor
3、ds are combined to form sentences in a language. Generally, there are four major approaches to syntax, namely, the traditional approach, the structural approach, the transformational-generative approach, and the functional approach. What is the relationship between syntax and grammar? According to L
4、yons (1968), the term “grammar” goes back (through French and Latin) to a Greek word which may be translated as “the art of writing”. Quite early in the history of Greek scholarship this word acquired a much wider sense and came to embrace the whole study of language. More recently, the term “gramma
5、r” has developed a narrower interpretation: it tends to be restricted to that part of the analysis of language which was handled in classical grammar under the headings of inflexion and syntax. According to the traditional distinction, inflexion deals with the internal structure of words, and syntax
6、 accounts for the way in which words combine to form sentences. Thus, in a restricted sense, grammar refers to a level of structural organization which can be studied independently of phonology and semantics, and generally divided into the branches of syntax and morphology. In this sense, grammar is
7、 the study of the way words, and their component parts, combine to form sentences. This is the usual popular interpretation of the term “grammar”, which is contrasted with a general conception of the subject, where grammar is seen as the entire system of structural relationships in a language, and t
8、hus subsumes phonology and semantics as well as syntax.4.2 Sentence structure4.2.1 Definition of sentenceMost syntactic studies have focused on sentence structure, for this is where the most important grammatical relations are expressed.In the traditional and popular view, a sentence is “a series of
9、 words in connected speech or writing, forming the grammatically complete expression of a single thought” (Matthews, 1981). Modern syntax avoids this semantic definition based on thoughts or ideas, because of the difficulties involved in saying what “thoughts” are. For example, an apple can express
10、a thought, but it would not be considered as a complete sentence; He came late, because he overslept is one sentence, but it could easily be analyzed as two thoughts.Most linguistic definitions of the sentence show the influence of American structuralism: a sentence is the largest structural unit to
11、 which syntactic rules apply. That is, a sentence is the maximal unit of syntax, “an independent linguistic form, not included by virtue of any grammatical construction in any larger linguistic form” (Bloomfield, 1933). This definition also has its problems. In particular, it does not allow for elli
12、ptical sentences such as To town as the answer to Where are you going? and minor sentences such as Yes, All aboard!, Happy Birthday! In reaction to the problem concerning the notion of completeness, some linguists classify sentences into two types: complete and incomplete. Other linguists propose to
13、 make a systematic distinction between sentence and utterance: sentence is a theoretical unit, defined by a grammar, while utterance is a physical unit, a matter of speech production, or performance. In this view, utterances can be analyzed in terms of sentence, but utterances do not “consist of” se
14、ntences.Most analysts agree on the need to recognize a functional classification of sentences into statement, question, command and exclamatory types. Although sentences may be incomplete, normally a sentence consists of at least one subject and its predicate. Most analyses also recognize the classi
15、fication of “sentence patterns” into simple versus complex or compound types, i.e. consisting of one subjectpredicate unit, as opposed to more than one.4.2.2 The linear structure of sentence The linear structure of sentence is concerned with the word order of sentences: the sequence in which grammat
16、ical elements such as subject, verb, and object occur in sentences. Sentences are not just strings of words which occur in a random order. As Fromkin & Rodman (1983) put it, sentences are more than merely words placed one after another like beads on a string. There are syntactic rules determining th
17、e correct order of words in a sentence. These syntactic rules account for how different parts of a sentence are related, that is, “who” does “what” to “whom”. These are grammatical relations of a sentence and they reveal how each part of the sentence functions grammatically, or syntactically. Gramma
18、tical relations are usually referred to as “subject of” and “object of”, etc. In It tastes nice the relationship of it to tastes is that of a subject to a predicator. The pronoun is the subject of the verb. The relationship of tastes to nice is that of a predicator to its complement. The adjective i
19、s the complement of the verb. This sentence can then be said to have a “subjectpredicatorcomplement” construction, whose elements (subject, predicator, complement) are successive functions established by the individual grammatical relations. Different models of analysis use different terms in charac
20、terizing the linear structure of sentence. For example, generative grammar uses “NP + VP”, and systemic-functional grammar uses terms like “actorprocessgoal”.4.2.3 The hierarchical structure of sentenceSentences demonstrate a linear structure because words of a sentence are arranged one after anothe
21、r in a sequence by means of grammatical relations. However, grammatical relations can also be considered as parts of a larger unit. For example, in It tastes nice the pronoun is the “subject of” the verb, but it can also be described as “the subject” within the clause or sentence as a whole. In the
22、same unit, the adjective is at once the “complement of” the verb (relation of part to part) and also “the complement” within the clause (relation of part to whole). The linear structure “NP + VP” can also be regarded as a larger unit made up of the smaller units NP and VP. In other words, a sentence
23、 can be analyzed into constituents. Conversely, constituents at different levels can combine to form increasingly larger units.4.3 The traditional approachTraditionally, syntax refers to the branch of grammar dealing with the ways in which words, with or without appropriate inflections, are arranged
24、 to show connections of meaning within the sentence (Matthews, 1981). Often known as traditional grammar, the traditional approach refers to the range of attitudes and methods found in the prelinguistic era of language study. Traditional grammar goes back to Greece of the fifth century before Christ
25、, and includes the work of classical Greek and Roman grammarians, Renaissance grammarians, and 18th-century prescriptive grammarians. This approach emphasizes such matters as correctness, linguistic purism, literary excellence, the use of Latin models and the priority of written language.The traditi
26、onal grammar is essentially a grammar of prescription. The term “prescriptive” is used by linguists to characterize any approach which attempts to lay down rules of correctness as to how language should be used. Using such criteria as purity, logic, history or literary excellence, prescriptivism aim
27、s to preserve imagined standards by insisting on norms of usage and criticizing violations of these norms. Prescriptive rules for English sentences, for example, mainly come from the following sources: Greek and Latin, which are regarded as models of linguistic excellence. According to the Latin sta
28、ndards, for example, you should use It is I or He runs faster than I and not It is me or He runs faster than me; You are not allowed to split an infinitive as in He wants to quickly finish the work, nor are you allowed to end a sentence with a preposition as in What did you do this for? The written
29、language, which is more careful, prestigious and permanent than speech. You should say Whom did you meet? instead of Who did you meet? Logic, which means that language should follow the principles of logic. You should say I didnt eat anything or I ate nothing and not I didnt eat nothing because doub
30、le negatives make a positive.Modern linguistics owes a large debt to traditional grammar, because many basic concepts used by modern linguists can be traced back to traditional grammar. Modern linguistics is especially indebted to traditional grammar for the following: The modern notion of sentence,
31、 which is typically defined in traditional grammar as an independent group of words expressing a complete thought. It is customary in traditional grammar to begin with notional definitions of the sentence and its components. Grammatical category, which is a class or group of items which fulfill the
32、same or similar functions or share a common set of grammatical properties in a language. Traditional grammar provided modern linguistics with a number of grammatical categories including the parts of speech, number, person, tense, voice, gender, subject and predicate. The notion of concord or agreem
33、ent, which is associated with the requirement that the forms of two or more words in a syntactic relationship should agree, or be in concord, with each other in terms of some grammatical categories. For example, in the sentence The boy speaks good English, the verb speaks agrees with the noun boy. The agreement is based on the gramma
