synatx
Phrases
A sentence is a sequence of words starting with a capital letter and ending with a full stop. But, there are different understandings of what a sentence is, and what the components that make it are. To understand the sentence, one must study syntax which is the branch of linguistic that deals with the structure of the sentence. Any sentence has two different structures: deep structure and surface structure, and each structure have a different meaning.
Why do the structures differ?
The structures differ because the words are grouped into different phrases, and there are two ways to discover phrases:
1. The replacement.
2. The movement of sequences of words.
Meaning and Phrase Structure
If a person observed the following sentence carefully, he/she will find that it has two different interpretations.
1) I was reading the letter to John.
The first prospect: there was a letter that may be addressed to john, and you were reading it perhaps to yourself.
The second prospect: there was a letter that may be addressed to you, and you were reading to John.
This sentence is called ambiguous, because it has two different meanings.
How does this sentence produce two different meaning?
The sequences of words do not by itself produce a meaning, but there is a hidden organization of words which gives them their meaning.
Replacement and Phrase Structure
Because a sentence has a syntactic structure which is hidden from the view, there are various tests that a person can apply to revel some phrases in the sentence.
First test: Replacement by it:
If a sequence of words can be replaced by the word it without significantly changing the meaning, then that sequence of words is a phrase. If one applied this test to the previous sentence, it would simplify the revelation of the phrases.
I was reading the letter to John.
I was reading it.
The sequence of words “the letter to John” is replaced by it, and this indicates that "the letter to john" is one phrase which is NP. However, in the sentence I was reading it to him, the sequence of words (the letter) is replaced by it and this indicates that it is one phrase which is NP, and the sequence of words (to John) is replaced by "him", and this indicates another phrase which is PP> to John .Therefore, when a sequence of words {the letter to john} is replaced by it, then it means that it is a phrase.
Second Test: Movement and Phrase Structure
If a sequence of words can be moved together, then that sequence of words is a phrase. In the sentence: I was reading the letter to John, we know that it contains either one phrase (the letter to John) or two phrases (the letter) and (to John). Hence, we can prove our points by the movement test.
1) The letter to john was being read
2) The letter was being read to john
Applying the Test
A phrase containing several words can be sometimes substituted by a phrase of the same kind containing a single word, while maintaining a related meaning. Look at this example to understand.
John seems to be very happy with his new bathroom.
John seems to be happy.
The sequences of words (very happy with his new bathroom) are substituted by the word (happy), because both are the same kind of phrase; both are adjective phrases. Thus, (very happy with his new bathroom) is an adjective phrase.
A Phrase Can Contain another Phrase
A sentence is a sequence of words which are organized into phrases. There is a big phrase that contains other phrases.
Ungrammaticality
When a sentence fails a test, we learn something from it.
e.g. we might move very happy with to the beginning of the sentence to see if the words stick together as a phrase.
* Very happy with John seems to be his new bathroom.
This sentence is ungrammatical because the rules of the language do not permit this sentence to exist. But, the unacceptable sentence may occur for this reason:
1. It breaks some invented rules of “PROPER LANGUAGE”, such as the rule invented for English that a sentence should not end on a preposition. And these invented rules are called prescriptive rules.
Word Class and Phrase Class
Word class
Each word belongs to a word class (we can also call it category, part of speech) which determines its position, such as: noun, verb, adjective, article........etc. In addition, there is a list of word classes:
The Order of Words Depends on Phrase Structure
Observe these two sentences:
1) I saw the white house.
2) * I saw the house white.
Why is the second sentence ungrammatical? Before you answer it, look at the following sentences:
3) He read the new book.
4) * he read the book new.
5) We fed some hungry dogs.
6) * we fed some dogs hungry.
You notice that when the words (white, new, hungry) which are adjectives come after the words (house, book, and dog) which are nouns, the sentence will be ungrammatical. So, you can make a generalization:
An adjective can't immediately follow a noun.
A generalization is a statement which remains true for lots of examples. One of the useful consequences of a generalization is to make a prediction which can then be tested, and if the prediction turns to be wrong, then the generalization can be improved. So, the generalization above makes a prediction which turns out to be wrong. Look at this sentence to understand. I painted the house white.
The adjective "white" which appears after the noun "house", doesn't make the sentence ungrammatical, because the grammaticality of a sentence depends not on the sequence of words, but on how the words are combined into phrases. In the sentence: I saw the white house,
The sequence of words (the white house) is substituted by the pronoun "it". This indicates that (the white house) is a phrase> I saw it.
In contrast, in the sentence (I painted the house white), the adjective "white" and the noun "the house" are in different phrases. The noun phrase is just the house and the adjective white follows the noun phrase because it is not inside the noun phrase> I painted it white. Therefore, our generalization rewrites it again: an adjective can't immediately follow a noun when they are both in the same noun phrase. However, in another language like (Welsh): an adjective can't immediately precede a noun when they are both in the same noun phrase.
What about the word "the"? This word is a member of a very small word class, the class article. In English, an article must come at the beginning of a noun phrase. e.g. I saw the white house.
* I saw house the white (this is an ungrammatical sentence).
Nevertheless, in the language like (Fon), an article must come at the end of a noun phrase.
How to Identify a Noun, Article and Adjective?
We start with articles: these are easy to identify because there are just two of them, the, a and its alternative an. These words must come at the beginning of a noun phrase. Then, we can identify nouns by morphological tests: if a word can be made plural, it is a noun. This usually involves adding the suffix –s but can also involve a change of shape, such as man> men. However, an adjective can be comparative by adding the suffix -er and by putting the word very in front of them.
e.g. The adjective happy can be made into happier and it is also possible to say very happy.
Tree structure
The constituent structure of a phrase is conventionally represented in one of two ways:
1. Tree Structure
2. Bracketed Structure
[ [ [ the][ boy]][ [ eats][ [ an][ apple]]]]
More Classes of Phrase:
Adjective Phrases, Adverbial Phrases and Prepositional Phrases
The Phrase and its Head
e.g. the book > noun phrase. In the previous example, the word which would best capture its meaning would most likely be the noun. And other constituents of the phrase are serving the phrase. A phrase and its head share the same category; hence a noun is the head of a noun phrase.
Adjective Phrase
An adjective is the head of an adjective phrase. When the noun phrase contains an adjective, then that adjective is in an adjective phrase rather than being just a bare adjective inside the noun phrase. e.g. an old man
The word (quite) belongs to the word class degree modifier. Just as the article "the" is positioned relative to a noun phrase irrespective of the surrounding words, a degree modifier is a positioned relative to an adjective irrespective of the surrounding words. The degree modifier must comes before AP. e.g. the quite blue pen.
* The blue quite pen.
* The quite pen.
Adverb Phrase Vs. Adjective Phrase
The degree modifier quite can appear inside an adjective phrase such as (very happy) and it can appear inside an adverb phrase, such as (very quickly). Hence, the internal structure of adjective phrase is much like the internal structure of adverb phrases. How can we differentiate between adjective phrase and adverb phrase? We can't differentiate between them by saying that the adverbs end by -ly, simply because some adjectives end with -ly. However, we can differentiate between them by the different position of each one. Adjective phrase can come inside the noun phrase, but the adverb phrase can't.
Also, the adverb phrase can roam freely in the sentence and without having very major effects on the meaning of the sentence. But, it can't roam in the noun phrase.
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