英语专业语言学课件unit 4.ppt

Chapter 4 Syntax What is syntax? ----a branch of linguistics that studies how words are combined to form sentences and the rules that govern the formation of sentences. Transformational Generative Grammar (TG) Norm. Chomsky, the most influential linguist in 20th century, some important works: (1957) Syntactic Structure; (1965) Aspects of the Theory of Syntax; (1981) Lectures on Government and Binding; (1986) Barriers (1993) A Minimalist Program for Linguistic Theory; (1995) The Minimalist Program; (1998) The Minimalist Inquiry…… Criteria on good grammar Observational adequacy Descriptive adequacy Explanatory adequacy The ultimate goal for any theory is to explain. TG differs from traditional grammar in that it not only aims at language description, but also its explanation. Chomsky is much more interested in the similarities (language universals) between languages rather than their differences. Linguists should attempt to find a grammatical framework which will be suitable for all languages; Linguists should concentrate on the elements and constructions that are available to all languages rather than on elements that actually occur in all languages. There are likely to be universal constraints on the ways linguistic elements are combined Chomsky proposed that the grammars of all human languages share a common framework (Universal Grammar). Categories Category refers to a group of linguistic items which fulfill the same or similar functions in a particular language such as a sentence, a noun phrase or a verb. The most central categories to the syntactic study are the word-level categories (traditionally, parts of speech/word class.) Word-level categories Traditional and non-traditional classification Major lexical categories: N, V, Adj, Prep. (serving as heads: NP, VP, AP, PP.) Minor Lexical categories: Det, Deg, Qual, Aux, Conj. (modifying major categories.) The criteria on which categories are determined Meaning (n.: entity, V.: action, A.: propert