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Morphology & SyntaxDr. Monira Al-Mohizea

+Introduction to syntaxWhat is SYNTAX?

Grammar: Words (and Phrases)

Introducing word class

Problems in definitions of word classes

+What is Syntax??

Definition: The word syntax derives from the Greek word syntaxis, which means arrangement. 

Morphology deals with word formation out of morphemes; syntax deals with phrase and sentence formation out of words.

Syntax is the grammar, structure, or order of the elements in a language statement.

+Word class

Any piece of language, written text or a spoken piece of dialogue, consists of words.

But.. how many kinds of words are there?

What do ‘words’ make up?

DISCUSS??

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There are 11 word classes — commonly known as 'parts of speech’).

'word-chunks’ form larger units — phrases — syntax matters.

We will now consider 4 of the 11 word classes, — nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs (NAVA) words.

+NAVA ‘content words’

Consider the following:

Word classes Examples

Noun girl, water, beauty

Adjective good, watery, calm

Verb (full verb) sing, walk, become

Adverb now, safely, here

+Answers

Word classes Examples

Noun girl, water, beauty

Adjective good, watery, calm

Verb (full verb) sing, walk, become

Adverb now, safely,here

+Importance of NAVA

words(1)They are crucial to convey information (e.g.

when we add one word from each of the four classes to make a sentence, we get a clear picture of something going on in the real world, with each word making its own contribution to that picture.

E.g. Young ( ?) cheetahs ( ?) mature (? ) quickly (? )

This is why words of these classes are often called 'content words'.

+Importance of NAVA

words(2)NAVA words have derivational morphology:

We can form nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs by adding suffixes, e.g., teach+er, wonder+ful, class+ify, sober+ly.

These classes have a large number of members: English has thousands of nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs.

In comparison to this, other word classes have a very small membership, of 50 or less.

+In real life- experiment

English has thousands of nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. In comparison to this, other word classes have a very small proportion, of 50 or less.

Any Dictionary of English would include almost near 100% are NAVA words as headwords.

Now, take a random paragraph or two of a text, e.g. a novel, and count the number of running words that are NAVA words, and the number that are not, what do you find ? (corpus??)

about 35 % to 60 % of the words are ???? words.

+Conclusion..

The conclusion we can draw is that words which are not NAVA words, although small in number, tend to occur more frequently.

Words like the, of, it, and tend to appear on almost every line of text, whereas words such as, young, cheetahs, mature and quickly occur much more rarely.

The 'non-content' words are called function words, because their usefulness does not lie in the information content they convey, but in signaling grammatical function and grammatical structure.

The other seven word classes, apart from the content are: ???

+Consider and label the following:Word classes Examples

Determiner the, a, this, some, all Auxiliary (verb) can, will, may, be, do Pronoun 1, she, all, him, anyone Numeral* one, two, 15, fifth, 10th Preposition of, in, on, at, horn, to, as Discourse oh, well, yes, okay, Conjunction and, or, but if, when, as Marker* gee, right, heck, wow

+'Function word' classes Word classes Examples

Determiner the, a, this, some, all Auxiliary (verb) can, will, may, be, do Pronoun 1, she, all, him, anyone Numeral* one, two, 15, fifth, 10th Preposition of, in, on, at, horn, to, as Discourse markers oh, well, yes, okay, Conjunction and, or, but if, when, as Marker* gee, right, heck, wow

*In some ways numerals and discourse markers are like content classes, but for

now we place them among the function classes.

+Consider the following sentences:

Make a list, in four columns, of the italicized words which are : (i) nouns, (ii) adjectives, (iii) verbs, and (iv) Adverbs, ignoring other words

1. New cars are very expensive nowadays.

2. I understand that even Dracula hates werewolves.

3. I have won more rounds of Golf than you have had hot dinners.

Mention the reason behind your classification, and think about a definition of each word class:

+NAVA ‘Content words’

‘A noun is a naming word: it refers to a thing, person, substance, etc.’

‘An adjective is a word that describes something about a noun: it denotes a quality.’

‘A verb is a doing word: it refers to an action.’

‘An adverb is a word that says something about other types of words, such as verbs, adjectives and adverbs.’

Such definitions are largely semantic, i.e. they rely on properties related to meaning of the word.

+Problems of ‘semantic definitions’ (1)They are problematic because:

(1) they are sometime vague and

(2) they maybe wrong,

e.g. I have won more rounds of Golf than you have had hot dinners.

Most typical members of the class of nouns are words as Karen, chairs, dogs => i.e, referring to people , animal, things, or substance that we can see and touch.

Anything that we can see and touch are called ‘concert nouns’

+Problems of ‘semantic definitions’ (2)

The verb definition as ‘doing word’ applies to went looked, and won, but not easily to are, hate and understand.

The definition can be improved if we specify that it denotes states and actions. However, difficulty still applies as these words are also vague

E.g. the girls seemed hungry. What does ‘seem’ here refer to?

Hungry fits ‘state’ word more than ‘seem’.

This definition fails to keep word classes apart. ??

+Conclusion

Compare the following:

hates in Dracula hates werewolves

with

hatred in Dracula's hatred of werewolves

What can you conclude?

+Defining word classes: form, function & meaning

We can not just rely on meaning when recognizing word classes.

Therefore, instead of only relying on ‘a single-line definition’.

E.g. 'a verb is a doing word', it is best to consider the definition of a word class combining three elements: form, function and meaning.

+(1) Form…

We can tell the class of a word partly from its form, made up of (1) stems and (2) affixes: Derivational suffixes are characteristic of certain

word classes: e.g., electric-ity (N); electr-ify (V); electric-al (ADJ). Inflectional suffixes can be added to change the

form of a word: E.g. box => box-es (N); work => work-ed (V); tall => tall-er (ADJ). These grammatical endings can be simply called inflections, and compared to some European languages (e.g., German), English has only a few of them.

In some cases, English words have inflections which involve change in the form of a word, (e.g. a change of vowel, man => men), or a complete change in the word (e.g. go => went).

+(2) Function…

We can tell the class of a word by the way it occurs in certain positions or structural contexts. i.e., words have certain functions or roles in the structure of a sentence.

E.g. Consider the following:

The cook (?) does not actually cook (?) the meal.

How can we differentiate between cook

Obviously there is no clear difference of form to help us, so it most be the position of the word in relation to other words that tells us its class, i.e. context.

+(3) Meaning…

Meaning is a less reliable criterion as discussed, but it is not entirely useless.

Recognizing certain semantic types of word (i.e., word types classified according to their meaning), such as action verbs, state verbs, abstract nouns, etc., as it can help to check the purely structural criteria (those of form and function).

+Definitions

In English there are verbs that are not normally used in the Continuous Tense, because they describe state rather than an action. They are called state verb (or non-progressive verbs). E.g. like, love, hate, prefer, remember, forget, believe, etc.  

The verbs that can be used in the Continuous Tense are called action verbs (or dynamic verbs). E.g. read.

N.B. a few verbs can be both state and action verbs depending on their meaning. I think you made a mistake. (think = believe ) VS. I am thinking about my mum now. (think = mental process).

An abstract noun refers to something with which a person cannot physically interact (e.g. love). A concrete noun is a person, place or thing (e.g. Mohammad, Riyadh, chair).

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Thank You..