Constituent structure Conclusion

We have introduced two concepts which are crucial for understanding the structure of sentences: constituents and categories.

Syntactic constituents are groups of words that function as a unit in terms of word order: they may replace or be replaced by a single word, occur together in various positions in a variety of sentence types, be the “focus” of a con tent question, or function as the answer to such a question. A constituent is represented in a tree diagram as a string of words that is exhaustively dominated by a single node.

Syntactic categories are classes of words (or phrases) that share certain properties. Category names appear in a tree diagram as the labels for each non-terminal node. We have said that lexical category names (the traditional names for parts of speech) are assigned on the basis of semantic factors, and that phrases share the same category as their head. However, category membership for both words and phrases must be determined on the basis of shared grammatical properties. Two of the crucial types of evidence are (i) sameness of distribution, and (ii) sameness of internal structure. For lexical categories (words), we ask: (i) what kinds of phrases does this word occur in, and what is its function within the phrase (e.g. head, modifier, complement)?; and (ii) what kinds of affixes occur on this type of word? For phrasal categories we ask: (i) where may this type of phrase occur in a sentence, and what is its function in the sentence?; and (ii) what kinds of words occur, and what is their function, within this type of phrase?

Phrase Structure trees are a popular and efficient way to represent these aspects of sentence structure. However, there are other aspects of syntactic structure that are not directly represented in simple tree diagrams of the sort we have seen thus far.

اخر الاخبار

اخبار العتبة العباسية المقدسة

سماحة السيد الصافي يكرم عددًا من عوائل الشهداء ضمن فعاليات مهرجان روح النبوة النسوي العالمي الثامن

إحدى أمهات الشهداء: نعتز بتضحيات أبنائنا ونفتخر بشهادتهم دفاعًا عن الدين والمقدسات

ضمن فعاليات مهرجان روح النبوة… عرض فيلم يوثق نشاطات الشعب النسوية في العتبة العباسية المقدسة

فعاليات مهرجان روح النبوة الثقافي تشهد تقديم أوبريت الثقلين القرآني

المزيد

الآخبار الصحية

ماذا يحدث لجسمك عند تناول الوجبات السريعة يوميا؟

لصحة عظام المرأة.. الشاي أفضل أم القهوة؟

لبناء العضلات وإنقاص الوزن.. ما أفضل توقيت لتناول البيض؟

أطعمة صحية تساعد على التعافي من "الإنفلونزا الخارقة"

المزيد

الآخبار التكنلوجية

دراسة تكشف قدرة الحيتان على سماع الأصوات منخفضة وعالية التردد من مسافة بعيدة

تجربة جديدة: الأسفلت المدعوم بالطحالب يقاوم الحفر ويقلل الانبعاثات الكربونية

تسريبات تكشف ملامح أول هاتف قابل للطي من "أبل"

رصد نوع نادر من القطط في تايلاند للمرة الأولى منذ عقود

المزيد

مواضيع ذات صلة

Case and agreement Conclusion

Case

English NP structure (continued)

Recursive rules

Adjectives and Adjective Phrases (AP)

Complements and adjuncts of N

Lexical entries and well-formed clauses Conclusion

Further notes on English Phrase Structure

Uniqueness of oblique arguments

Well-formedness conditions

Subcategorization

Selectional restrictions