Syntax Study Guide

📖 Core Concepts Syntax – study of how words/morphemes combine into phrases & sentences. Central concerns – word order, grammatical relations, hierarchy, agreement, cross‑linguistic variation, form‑meaning link. Grammatical relations – roles such as subject (controls verb agreement) and object (receives the action). Constituency – words group into a constituent (phrase) that functions as a single unit; can be moved together. Dependency grammar – treats the finite verb as the root; links are directed dependencies rather than phrase‑structure nodes. Generative syntax – defines a set of rules that generate all and only well‑formed sentences; assumes autonomy of syntax (meaning follows from structure). Key operations – Merge (combine two objects), Movement (displace constituents), C‑command (node dominates sister of another). Agreement & Case – matching of features (number, gender, person) & morphological marking of syntactic function. --- 📌 Must Remember >85 % of languages are S‑first (S‑V‑O or S‑O‑V). Subjecthood criteria vary across languages → affect relative‑clause reference. Head‑dependent marking (or agreement) signals grammatical relations. Finite verb = root in dependency grammar. Merge is the sole basic syntactic operation in Minimalist syntax. Autonomy of Syntax: structure, not meaning, drives grammaticality. Constituents move as whole units (e.g., wh‑movement, topicalization). Adjuncts are optional; complements are required by the head. --- 🔄 Key Processes Merge Input: two syntactic objects α and β. Output: set {α, β} → a new syntactic object. Wh‑movement (question/relative clause) Identify wh‑element → apply Move → place at clause‑initial spec‑CP. Passivization Identify transitive verb → promote object to subject position → demote original subject (often to an adjunct or by‑phrase). Dependency tree construction Locate finite verb → make it root → draw directed arcs to its dependents (subject, objects, adjuncts). C‑command check Node A c‑commands node B if the minimal node dominating A also dominates B and A ≠ B. --- 🔍 Key Comparisons Constituency vs. Dependency Constituency: groups words into phrases; movement treats whole phrases as units. Dependency: focuses on binary head‑dependent links; verb is the clause root. Subject vs. Object Subject: controls verb agreement, often nominative case, typically precedes verb in S‑first languages. Object: receives the action, often accusative case, can become subject in passive. Adjunct vs. Complement Adjunct: optional, adds circumstantial info (time, manner). Complement: obligatory to complete the head’s meaning (e.g., eat → eat food). Head‑Dependent Marking vs. Agreement Head‑Dependent: overt morphology on head (e.g., verb agreement). Agreement: feature matching between head and dependent (person, number, gender). --- ⚠️ Common Misunderstandings “Word order = meaning” – order often reflects semantics but is not the sole determinant; morphology and agreement can override it. All languages have subjects – some languages lack a clear subject (e.g., ergative systems) and use different subjecthood criteria. Constituents are always contiguous – many languages allow discontinuous phrases. Adjuncts are unimportant – they can affect meaning, scope, and grammaticality (e.g., island constraints). --- 🧠 Mental Models / Intuition Tree‑as‑family – think of a clause as a family: the finite verb is the parent; subjects and objects are its children; adjuncts are cousins that hang off the tree but don’t affect inheritance (agreement). Puzzle pieces – constituents are puzzle pieces that can be moved as whole blocks; you can’t split a piece mid‑move. Blueprint vs. furniture – generative rules are the blueprint (how to build any sentence); the actual sentence is the furniture assembled from that plan. --- 🚩 Exceptions & Edge Cases Discontinuous phrases – constituent members may be split by intervening material (e.g., topicalization with fronted object). Non‑S‑first languages – V‑S‑O, O‑V‑S, etc., exist; subject‑first is a strong but not universal tendency. Ergative alignment – subjecthood criteria differ; the “subject” of an intransitive aligns with the object of a transitive. Head‑dependent marking – some languages mark relations on the dependent rather than the head (e.g., case on nouns). --- 📍 When to Use Which Choose Constituency analysis when you need to model movement and phrase‑structure phenomena (e.g., wh‑questions, subordination). Choose Dependency analysis for languages with rich head‑dependent morphology or when focusing on verb‑centered structures. Apply Passivization to highlight the patient (object) as the syntactic subject, especially in discourse where the agent is unknown or less important. Use Merge as the default operation in Minimalist derivations; invoke additional operations only when a language exhibits overt movement or agreement that cannot be derived from Merge alone. --- 👀 Patterns to Recognize S‑first → high probability of S‑V‑O or S‑O‑V in typological surveys. Wh‑movement + C‑command → the wh‑element must c‑command its trace; violations often signal island constraints. Adjunct‑only islands – multiple adjuncts stacked can block extraction. Agreement cascade – subject agreement triggers downstream morphological changes (e.g., verb inflection). --- 🗂️ Exam Traps Distractor: “Word order alone determines grammatical relations.” – Wrong; morphology, agreement, and case also signal relations. Distractor: “All constituents are contiguous.” – Incorrect; languages with discontinuous phrases break this assumption. Distractor: “Passive always deletes the original subject.” – In many languages the original subject can appear as an adjunct or in a by‑phrase. Distractor: “Adjuncts are optional and never affect grammaticality.” – They can trigger island violations or affect scope, making them crucial in some test items. Distractor: “Dependency trees have no hierarchical depth.” – They are hierarchical; dependencies are directed and can nest.