Syntactic hierarchy
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Syntactics, or syntax, is concerned with the way sentences are constructed from smaller parts, such as words and phrases. Two steps can be distinguished in the study of syntactics. The first step is to identify different types of units in the stream of speech and writing. In natural languages, such units include sentences, phrases, and words. The second step is to analyze how these units build up larger patterns, and in particular to find general rules that govern the construction of sentences.[1]
This can be broken down into constituents, which are a group of words that are organized as a unit, and the organization of those constituents. They are organized in a hierarchical structure, by embedding inside one another to form larger constituents.[1]
History
Noam Chomsky
In Chomsky’s view, humans are born with innate knowledge of certain principles that guide them in developing the grammar of their language. In other words, Chomsky’s theory is that language learning is facilitated by a predisposition that our brains have for certain structures of language.[1] This implies in turn that all languages have a common structural basis: the set of rules known as "universal grammar".[2]
For example:
The sentence "Robert book reads the" is immediately perceived as ungrammatical in English , even though it may appear comprehensible. Conversely, we recognize that a sentence such as “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.” is grammatically correct English, even though it is nonsense.
Ferdinand de Saussure
Regarded as the "Founder of Structural Linguistics", which reflects the concept of structuralism, de Saussure stated the ways in which human culture requires an overarching structure to relate to in order to communicate.[3] He defines language to be different than human speech, which is fundamental and essential to language. While speech is a combination of several disciplines (i.e. physical, psychological, etc.) and is part of an individual and their society, language is a system of classification of its own entity. [4]
In written language, words are chained together in sequence on the chain of speaking, and therefore gain relations based on the linear nature of language. [4]
The Levels of Syntactic Hierarchy
Groups of sentences (text):
Separate sentences can combine together to create one sentence. For example, the sentence “The boy chased the ball” and “He didn’t catch it” can be combined together. You can do this in many ways including stringing one sentence after the other or joining the sentences with conjunctions. [5]
1. “The boy chased the ball, he didn’t catch it.”
2. “The boy chased the ball, but he didn’t catch it.”
3. “The boy chased the ball, and he didn’t catch it.”
Phrases combined to form sentences. The phrase “the girl” combines with the phrase “ran away” to form the sentence: “The girl ran away.” [5]
Words combine to form phrases. The word “the” combines with “girl” to form the phrase: “The girl” [5]
Morphemes combine to form words. Morphemes belong to categories that determine how they combine. For example, the word 'national' is made of two morphemes 'nation' which is a noun and 'al' which is an adjective, these categories tell the morphemes how to combine so they form the word 'national.' [6]
Smallest meaningful unit in a word. For example, “boys” has two morphemes “boy” and “-s” [6]
A unit of sound such as individual consonants and vowels of a language for example, /p/, /t/ and /æ/ are phonemes in English. [6]
Phonetic form:
A subset of sounds which demonstrates the different variations of a phoneme. Diacritics can be used to represent this, for example aspiration can be added to the /p/ in the word /pʰɪt/. [6]
Unsegmented Speech:
Refers to ambiguous streams of words with spaces in between. For instance, this represents how an infant may hear human speech. [6]
Analysis of Syntactic Hierarchy Levels
Sentence
Sentences are the hierarchal structure of combined phrases. When constructing a sentence, two types of phrases are always necessary: Noun Phrase (NP) and Verb Phrase (VP), forming the simplest possible sentence.[8] What determines whether a sentence is grammatically constructed (i.e. the sentence makes sense to a native speaker of the language), is its adherence to the language's phrase structure rules, allowing a language to generate large numbers of sentences.[8] Languages cross-linguistically differ in their phrase structure rules, resulting in the difference of order of the NP and VP, and other phrases included in a sentence.
For example:
Phrase
The idea that words combine to form phrases. For example, the word “the” combines with word “dog” to form the phrase “the dog” [5]. A is a sequence of words or a group of words arranged in a grammatical way to combine and form a sentence. There are five commonly occurring types of phrases; Noun phrases (NP), Adjective phrases (AdjP), Verb phrases (VP), Adverb Phrases (AdvP), and Prepositional Phrases (PP).The idea that words combine to form phrases. For example, the word “the” combines with word “dog” to form the phrase “the dog” .
Noun phrase
A noun phrase refers to a phrase that is built upon a noun. For example, “ The dog” or “the girl” in the sentence “the dog loved the girl” act as noun phrases.
Verb phrase
Verb phrase refers to a phrase that is composed of at least one main verb and one or more helping/auxiliary verb (every sentence needs at least one main verb). For example, the word “loved the girl” in the sentence “the dog loved the girl” acts as a verb phrase.
Word
The subdomain that deals with words is morphology, which states that words are made up of morphemes which combine in a regular and rule-governed fashion. [6]
For example, the word 'national' is made of two morphemes 'nation' which is a noun and 'al' which is a suffix meaning “pertaining to; of the kind of”, these categories aid in arranging the morphemes so they can combine in a way that will form the word 'national,’ an adjective.
Morphology states that words come in categories, and the morphemes that join together to create the word assign the category.[6] The two main categories are Open class, where new words can be created and closed class where there is a limited number of members.[6] Within both of these categories there are further sub-categories. Open class includes: nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, and closed class includes: prepositions, determiners, numerals, complementizers, Auxiliaries, modals, coordinators, and negation/affirmation.[6] These sub categories can be further broken down for example, verbs can be either transitive or intransitive. These categories can be identified with semantic criteria about what a word means, for example nouns are said to be people, places, or things while verbs are actions. Words are all placed in these categories and depending on their category they follow specific rules that determine their word order. [6]
Artificial language
In artificial languages, lexemes, tokens, and formulas are usually found among the basic units.[1]
See also
Further reading
- Moles, Robert N. Legal Theory lecture Ronald Stamper and Norm based systems on the Networked Knowledge web site.
- ^ a b c Carnie, Andrew (2013) Syntax: A Generative Introduction. 3rd edition. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
- ^ "Tool Module: Chomsky's Universal Grammar". thebrain.mcgill.ca. Retrieved 2017-12-06.
- ^ 1944-, Blackburn, Simon, (2008). The Oxford dictionary of philosophy (2nd ed., rev ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199541430. OCLC 191929574.
{{cite book}}:|last=has numeric name (help)CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ a b de Saussure, Ferdinand (1915). Bally, Charles; Sechehaye, Albert (eds.). Course in General Linguistics. Translated by Baskin, Wade. McGraw-Hill Book Company. pp. 15, 123.
- ^ a b c d Burton, Strang; Dechaine, Rose-Marie; Vatikiotis-Bateson, Eric (2012). Linguistics for dummies. Ontario: Juha Wiley & Sona Canada, Ltd.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j Sportiche, Dominique; Koopman, Hilda; Stabler, Edward (2014). An Introduction to Syntactic Analysis and Theory. Singapore: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. pp. 9–11. ISBN 978-1-4051-0016-8.
- ^ Yule, George (2015). The Study of Language. United Kingdom: Cambridge University: Cambridge. p. 87. ISBN 9781107658172.
- ^ a b Yule, George (2015). The Study of Language. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. p. 87. ISBN 9781107658172.
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