Discussion Questions: Syntax
   
  1. Word chain (= finite state) devices
  2. Hierarchical structure
  3. Grammatical categories
  4. Using a Phrase Structure Grammar for syntactic trees
  5. Meaningful vs. grammatical
  6. Recursion I
  7. Recursion II
  8. Word order typology
1. Word chain devices: A model for the structure of sentences might be a device where you choose a word, which then leads to a limited set of choices for the next word and so on until you end up with a string of words that makes a sentence. Below is a word chain device that would yield a number of English sentences. The bracketed items mean that you can choose either the top one or the bottom one.

a. Use this word chain device to create at least one GRAMMATICAL sentence of English.

You can form a sentence by following the arrows from one word to the next. Below is one GRAMMATICAL sentence formed in this way. (CLICK ON THE SENTENCE TO GO TO A MOVIE SHOWING HOW THE SENTENCE BUILDS UP.) (Your web browser will need a QuickTime plugin to see the tree images.)
b. Using the words in this word chain device, make up at least one UNGRAMMATICAL sentence of English that the structure of this device would PREVENT you from creating.

The word chain device would not produce the sentence below. The structure of this word chain device assures that if you choose "I", the verb will be "am", but if you choose "you", the verb will be "are". (CLICK ON THE SENTENCE TO GO TO A MOVIE SHOWING HOW THE WORD CHAIN DEVICE PREVENTS FORMATION OF THIS SENTENCE.) (Your web browser will need a QuickTime plugin to see the tree images.)
c. Use this word chain device to create at least one UNGRAMMATICAL sentence of English. Explain why your sentence demonstrates the shortcoming of a word chain device as a model for sentence construction in natural human languages.

The word chain device will produce the sentence below. "Either" must pair with "or" and "if" must pair with "then", but the word chain has no way to assure this because once you reace the place where you have to choose the path to "then" or "or", there is no way to know how the sentence started. This is the problem of "long range dependencies" that allowed the word chain device on page 25 of the APS reader to produce a sentence like "the lizards on the rock is eating flies", where lizards would require are, but once the choice between is vs. are is reached, there is no way to know whether the sentence started with singular or plural. (CLICK ON THE SENTENCE TO GO TO A MOVIE SHOWING HOW THE SENTENCE BUILDS UP.) (Your web browser will need a QuickTime plugin to see the tree images.)
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2. Hierarchical structure: Below are some headlines (in capitals), some phrases, and a cartoon. In each case there is an ambiguity that involves grouping the words in different ways. For each item, draw two tree structures showing the different word groupings. For this question, don't try to label the trees with NP, VP, etc.

The first "headline" and the cartoon are given as examples. See if you can do the others yourself.

ENRAGED COW INJURES FARMER WITH AX
KILLER SENTENCED TO DIE FOR 2ND TIME
the design has big squares and circles
they said she would go yesterday

CLICK ON EITHER OF THE TREES BELOW TO GO TO A MOVIE THAT SHOWS THE TREES BUILDING, WORD GROUP BY WORD GROUP. (Your web browser will need a QuickTime plugin to see the tree images.)
"The cow uses and axe to injure the farmer." "The cow injures a farmer who has an axe."

This is slightly tricky, and there are probably more than two interpretations. The two that seem most obvious are given below. (Click on either of the trees to see movies that build the trees, group by group.) (Your web browser will need a QuickTime plugin to see the tree images.)
(The original meaning) "test ban" describes a type of "treaty", and that treaty is "comprehensive". (Skyler's meaning) "comprehensive tests" are what the "ban" is on, and Skyler subscribes to the treaty for doing that.
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3. Grammatical categories: Below are some headlines and phrases where there is an ambiguity that involves interpreting a word as belonging to either of two grammatical categories. Identify the word and the two categories that it allows.

JUVENILE COURT TO TRY SHOOTING DEFENDANT
smoking grass can be nauseating
the horse looked very fast

Here are possible structures for the first "headline". Note that the structure of the TREES is the same. The two meanings result from the differences in the circled categories. (We would have to modify the little phrase structure grammar on page 27 to account for the trees, e.g. we would have to add "Adjective" into the NP rule and we would need to have VP as something that can follow a V.
Someone is a victim of a shooting (shooting is a modifier of victim), and they are going to try that person. The court is going to try to do some, namely to shoot someone described as a victim. The victim will be the object of the court's shooting.

Here are some further examples that involve a combination of grouping and grammatical category ambiguity. Analyze the ambiguities as in the above examples.

SQUAD HELPS DOG BITE VICTIM
TEACHER STRIKES IDLE KIDS
SERBIAN FORCES FLYING UNAUTHORIZED FLIGHTS (from the Bruin about flights over Bosnia after the UN peace forces went in)
REQUEST TO BAR STUDENT DENIED (from the Bruin about an attempt to keep a student out of the UC Davis medical school)
BLOCK HEADS BACK ON CAMPAIGN TRAIL (from the LA Times referring to the late Sherman Block running for Sherrif again)

Here are two possible structures for TEACHER STRIKES IDLE KIDS. As in the examples above, the little grammar on page 27 would need some modifications to account for these structures. The main difference in categories is circled.
The teachers are on strike, which idles the kids. A teacher strikes kids who are idle.
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4. Using a Phrase Structure Grammar for syntactic trees. Using the little grammar on page 27 of the APS course book (repeated below for you reference), draw LABELED trees, i.e. trees including NP, VP, etc. for the following sentences:

a. It flies erratically.
b. He won the race through the hills easily.
c. The runner from Kenya beat the Tanzanian by inches.
d. Guards guard guards of guards of guards.
CLICK ON THE TREE TO SEE IT BUILD UP DYNAMICALLY. Note that the PP "through the hills" is attached to the NP, i.e. "through the hills" describes the race. If "through the hills" were attached to the VP, it would mean his WINNING was "through the hills". This meaning seems possible if "through the hills" were at the end ("He won the race easily through the hills."), but this meaning is difficult or impossible to get in the wording here. CLICK ON THE TREE TO SEE IT BUILD UP DYNAMICALLY.
Note that the prepositional phrase "by inches" is attached to the VP, i.e. it specifies by how much he "beat (the Tanzanian)". CLICK ON THE TREE TO SEE IT BUILD UP DYNAMICALLY. Each consecutive PP "of guards" modifies the preceding noun, "guards". CLICK ON THE TREE TO SEE IT BUILD UP DYNAMICALLY.
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5. Meaningful vs. grammatical. The following sentence is meaningful. Using the term grammatical to mean "conforming to the rules of a grammar", it is also grammatical with respect to the little grammar on page 27 of the APS course book:

Sisters are siblings of their brothers.

a. Make a change in the sentence such that it is meaningful but ungrammatical.

One possibility would be

Sisters siblings of their brothers they are.

This is comprehensible ("meaningful") as a sort of "Yoda English", but, among other problems with the sentence, there is no way that the grammar would allow two NP's to come next to each other, i.e. [Sisters] and [siblings of their brothers].


b. Make a change in the sentence such that it is meaningless but grammatical.

A possibility would be

Sisters are brothers of their siblings.

This sentence switches places of the nouns "siblings" and "brothers" from the original sentence, but otherwise it has the same structure as the original. Since the original is grammatical by our definition, this sentence must also be grammatical. However, it is nonsense ("meaningless") since "sisters" are female siblings and "brothers" are male siblings, making it impossible that "sisters" could also be "brothers".


c. Make a change in the sentence such that it is meaningless and ungrammatical.

A possibility would be

Sisters brothers of their siblings they are.

This is the "Yoda English" version of the sentence in (b). As pointed about for (a), "Yoda English" is ungrammatical by the rules of the grammar that we are referring to, and as pointed out for (b), it is meaningless to say that "a sister is a brother". Hence, the sentence is both meaningless and ungrammatical.
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6. Recursion I. Using the little grammar on page 27, create a sentence with a tree structure that involves at least two cases of recursion.

Here is one possibility. There are INFINITELY more!

Each time a circled node occurs, one must cycle back to a rule which has previously applied, resulting in recursion. CLICK ON THE TREE TO SEE IT BUILD UP DYNAMICALLY.
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7. Recursion II. Here is a panel from a "Momma" cartoon and a simplified version of the sentence in the cartoon.
Women who left their husbands to run-off with gigolos because their mothers-in-law wanted to see their sons in households with dishes that have flecks of food on them.
Make the following three modifications to the grammar on page 27, then figure out how the recursive properties of the grammar can account for the right-hand sentence, which could potentially go on infinitely. (Treat the hyphenated items as single words.)

a. Add "S" to the NP rule, as in the grammar under the "Doonesbury" cartoon on page 29.

b. Add "(to VP)" to the end of the VP rule.

c. Add "(because S)" to the end of the AdvP rule.

See if you can figure this one out on your own. I ran out of time and patience creating this page!
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8. Word order typology. Here are sentences from two languages of south Asia:

a. Using our typological categorizations of SOV, VSO, etc., what types do these languages fall into?

  • Tamil is SOV (the verb is at the end of the sentence)
  • Malay is SVO (the verb falls between the subject and the object, as in English)

 

b. Here are the phrases meaning 'on (the) rock' in the two languages. Which phrase goes with which language? How do you know?

  • The first (atas batu) goes with Malay. The PREposition is the "head" of the phrase and comes at the beginning of the P(repositional)P, just as the verb in the example above precedes the object, i.e. the "head" of the Verb Phrase comes at the head of the verb phrase.
  • The second (kalle maale) goes with Tamil. The POSTposition is the "head" of the phrase and comes at the end of the P(ostpositional)P, paralleling the order in the verb phrase, with the verb at the end.

c.Here are some further phrases in the two languages. State whether these are the orders you expect for the phrase types and why you have those expectations.

  • 'the lizard's tail': The languages have the expected order. Tamil is a "head final" language; 'tail' is the head of the phrase, and the possessive modifier precedes it. Malay is a "head initial" language, and 'tail', which is the "head" of the phrase, comes first.
  • 'big lizard': The languages have the expected order. 'Lizard' is the "head" of the phrase and comes at the end of the phrase in Tamil, a head final language, but at the beginning of the phrase in Malay, a head initial language.
  • 'two lizards': The head final language, Tamil, has the expected order--the head of the phrase, 'lizard' is at the end of the phrase. However, in Malay, which in most respects is a head initial language, the numeral modifier precedes 'lizard', which is the head of the phrase.

 

9. Explore languages you know. In a language you know other than English, think about the order of words of phrases like those in 6a-c. What is the order for each type of phrase? Is the language CONSISTENT in the way it orders HEADS and MODIFIERS in the various phrase types?

Answers will depend on the languages you look at.
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