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| -rw-r--r-- | linguistics/syntax.md | 80 |
1 files changed, 48 insertions, 32 deletions
diff --git a/linguistics/syntax.md b/linguistics/syntax.md index 6590911..9c61f48 100644 --- a/linguistics/syntax.md +++ b/linguistics/syntax.md @@ -11,13 +11,12 @@ Specifically, both morphology and syntax focus on **structure**. The distinction between syntax and morphology varies cross-linguistically.<br> They can be considered to form an overarching **morphosyntactic** theory. -## summary - These notes are ordered in a way that I feel builds upon itself the best. This is not the order in which topics were covered in my syntax class, nor in my textbook. My syntax class covered Agree before Move, and my textbook deeply intertwined Merge with X'-theory and Move with Agree: and I think the both of them suffered a little bit pedagogically for that. -Certainly, all of syntax cannot be taught at once. Yet the desire to generalize and apply what one has learned to real-world examples is strong, and it is extraordinarily difficult to teach syntax in a way that builds upon itself naturally. This is my best attempt, but it will fall flat in places: when it does, I do recommend either skipping ahead or being content with temporarily (hopefully) not knowing what's going on. +Certainly, all of syntax cannot be taught at once. Yet the desire to generalize and apply what one has learned to real-world examples is strong, and it is extraordinarily difficult to teach syntax in a way that builds upon itself naturally. This is my best attempt, but it will fall flat in places: when it does, I do recommend either skipping ahead or being content with temporarily (hopefully temporarily) not knowing what's going on. -Be warned! These notes are incomplete and almost certainly somewhat inaccurate. Proceed at your own risk. +<details markdown="block"> +<summary>Table of Contents</summary> - History of Syntax - A wrong approach: Phrase Structure Rules @@ -25,20 +24,20 @@ Be warned! These notes are incomplete and almost certainly somewhat inaccurate. - Syntactic Categories [SKS 2.1] - Compositionality [SKS 2.3] - Headedness [SKS 2.4] - - Features -- Basic Ideas +- Merge, Part I - Constituency [SKS 3] + - Constituency Tests [SKS 3] - Heads, Specifiers and Complements - - Minimalism [n/a] + - Silent Heads - Notation - X'-theory [SKS 6] - Bare Phrase Structure [n/a] - Lexical Entries [SKS 6.8] -- Merge +- Minimalism [n/a] +- Merge, Part II - Projection [SKS 5] - Selection - Small Clauses - - Silent Heads - Move [SKS 8] - Head Movement (affix hopping) [SKS 8.3] - Questions @@ -49,8 +48,13 @@ Be warned! These notes are incomplete and almost certainly somewhat inaccurate. - Binding (Principles A, B, C) [SKS 7] - Small Clauses [SKS 7.4] - Raising & Control [SKS 9] +- Advanced Syntax - References +</details> + +> Be warned! These notes are incomplete and almost certainly somewhat inaccurate. Proceed at your own risk. + ## history ### a wrong approach: phrase structure rules @@ -63,12 +67,43 @@ Be warned! These notes are incomplete and almost certainly somewhat inaccurate. ### headedness -## basic ideas +## Merge, Part I + +We concluded the following from our excursion into morphology: +- words are composed of morphemes +- morphemes come in categories +- morphemes combine in a regular fashion +- morphemes can be silent + +Surprisingly (or unsurprisingly), we shall see that these ideas generalize to sentence structure as a whole. ### constituency ### heads, specifiers, and complements +### silent heads + +Why are proper names Ds? Why is it possible to say either *I moved the couches* and *I moved couches*, but only possible to say *I moved the couch* and not *I moved couch*? Why is the infinitive form of a verb identical to the present, in some cases? + +These inconsistencies can be all addressed by one (controversial) concept: the idea of *silent morphemes*, invisible in writing and unpronounceable in speech. We represent such morphemes as ∅, and so may write the earlier strange sentence as *I moved ∅-couches*. + +... + +p-features | f-features +-----------|----------- +the | $D_{N}$ +a | $D_{N (-plural)}$ +∅ | $D_{N (+plural)}$ + +p-features | f-features | s-features +-----------|------------|----------- +will | $T_{D,V}$ | future +-ed | $T_{D,V}$ | past +∅ | $T_{D,V}$ | present +to | $T_{D,V} (-tense)$ | infinitive + +These tables are using notation and language formally introduced at the end of the next section. Ignore them for now. + ## notation So far, we've been discussing syntax and giving examples using somewhat informal notation. We now formalize this notation. @@ -195,7 +230,7 @@ As with most Chomskyan theories: Minimalism has a *strong* focus on natural lang Modern Minimalism considers into three *basic operations*: <span style="font-variant: small-caps;">Merge</span>, <span style="font-variant: small-caps;">Move</span>, and <span style="font-variant: small-caps;">Agree</span>. All that we will discuss can fall into one of these basic camps. -## Merge +## Merge, Part II <span style="font-variant: small-caps;">Merge</span>(α, β) is a function that takes in two arguments of type α and β and outputs a single node of either type α or β. @@ -205,27 +240,6 @@ Merge is *the* fundamental underlying aspect of syntax and arguably language as ### selection -### silent heads - -Why are proper names Ds? Why is it possible to say either *I moved the couches* and *I moved couches*, but only possible to say *I moved the couch* and not *I moved couch*? Why is the infinitive form of a verb identical to the present, in some cases? - -These inconsistencies can be all addressed by one (controversial) concept: the idea of *silent morphemes*, invisible in writing and unpronounceable in speech. We represent such morphemes as ∅, and so may write the earlier strange sentence as *I moved ∅-couches*. - -... - -p-features | f-features ------------|----------- -the | $D_{N}$ -a | $D_{N (-plural)}$ -∅ | $D_{N (+plural)}$ - -p-features | f-features | s-features ------------|------------|----------- -will | $T_{D,V}$ | future --ed | $T_{D,V}$ | past -∅ | $T_{D,V}$ | present -to | $T_{D,V}$ (-tense) | infinitive - ## Move ### head movement @@ -259,6 +273,8 @@ Our principles imply various things. Principle A implies that: ### raising and control +## Advanced Syntax + ## References - ✨ [An Introduction to Syntactic Analysis and Theory](https://annas-archive.org/md5/11bbf70ff9259025bc6985ba3fa4083b) |