Syntax

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Syntax

Chapter 8

How do you interpret the following sentence?

Ingrid saw the martian with a telescope.

What this sentence can mean:

1.  There is a martian, it has a telescope and Ingrid is seeing it.

2. Ingrid has a telescope and she is using it to look at the martian.

Ingrid saw the martian with a telescope.

What this sentence can mean:

1. There is a martian, it has a telescope and Ingrid is seeing it.

2. Ingrid has a telescope and she is using it to look at the martian.

What do we call it when a sentence has multiple possible interpretations?

What is the main goal of generative grammar?

1. To describe all possible sentences in a language
2. To generate sentence structures and not just describe them
3. To classify words into categories
4. To explain the historical evolution of a language

According to generative grammar, which of the following best describes "deep structure"?

1. The actual spoken or written sentence
2. The underlying syntactic representation of a sentence
3. The meaning of individual words in a sentence
4. A collection of words without grammatical rules

Deep structure is the underlying meaning or idea behind a sentence. It’s like the blueprint of a house—it determines how everything fits together before you actually build it.

What does "surface structure" refer to in generative grammar?

1. The actual phonological (sound) construction of a sentence
2. The deep meaning of a sentence before transformations occur
3. The way a sentence is understood regardless of word order
4. The phonetic pronunciation of words in a sentence

Surface structure is the actual sentence you say or write. It’s like the finished house—it may look different depending on how it was built, but it comes from the same blueprint.

Can you come up with a sentence that has one surface structure and multiple deep structures?

N (noun)

V (verb)

Adj (adjective)

Art (article)

NP (noun phrase)

VP (verb phrase)

Syntactic analysis is used to reveal the underlying structure of a sentence by identifying its components:

Fill in the blank:

One effective way to visualize sentence structures is through _______. These show how different elements in a sentence are connected hierarchically

How to read a tree diagram:

Start from the top (S = sentence).

Move down through branches to identify phrases.

Break down each phrase into its components (articles, nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.).

We can use the symbols that were shown earlier to label parts of the tree when we create a representation of how each part fits into the underlying structure of phrases. 

1.

2.

1.

2.

3.

1. Ingrid uses the telescope
2. The martian has the telescope