Skip to content

Constituents & Categories

Lexical / Functional Category

Lexical categories (实词):

  • open in membership, 实词的总量可能增减
  • do not vary greatly across languages
  • typically contentful
  • (at least) one of the syllables is frequently stressed

the study of lexical categories concentrate on 4 categories of words, divided according to their binary features [N] and [V]

  • N. 名词：[+N, -V]
  • V. 动词：[-N, +V]
  • Adj. 形容词：[+N, +V]
  • P. 介词：[-N, -V]

英语的介词和汉语的不太一样，是有实际意义的，算作实词

Functional category (虚词): including determiner (D), demonstrative, Num, mood, tense (T), aspect (Asp.), agreement (Agr.，person + gender + number), complementizer (C) ...

  • closed in membership
  • semantically abstract, denoting mostly grammatical functions
  • vary a lot across languages
  • unstressed phonologically

Diagnotics for Categories

Diagnotics 的意思是用随便什么方法，包括肉眼观察，对随便什么语料作出随便高层次还是低层次的语法上的判断。比如说判断一个成分的类别（名词短语？动词短语？……），比如说修改“病”句（中英文都用了“看病”的隐喻，真有意思）

判断类别的标准：

  • morphological criteria: inflection / derivational morphemes
  • syntactic criteria: guess the word category from the categories of its context
  • phonological criteria: 'increase', 'servey', 'record', which syllable is stressed?
  • semantic criteria: 根据语义来猜一个词是什么词类，虽然很符合直觉但不一定准，比如日语里用来表示形容语义的词类有“形容动词”这种妖孽

Constituent Structure

Tree Diagram terminologies:

  • root (根节点) / terminal (相当于数据结构上说的叶子节点) / non-terminal nodes (neither root nor terminal)
  • branch: each single line in a tree diagram
  • mother / daughter / grand daughter /sister node
  • dominance / constituency: if there exists a continuous decending path from a higher node to a lower one, then we say the higher one dominates the lower one, and the lower one is a constituent of the higher one
  • immediate dominance: no other nodes intervenes the higher and lower nodes, e.g. a pair of mother and daughter node

为了方便排版，句法树除了树形图，还可以写成这种一维的：

\[ \left[_{S}\left[_{NP1}\left[_{N1}Boris\right]\right]\left[_{VP}\left[_{V}talked\right]\left[_{PP1}\left[_{P1}to\right]\left[_{NP2}\left[_{D}the\right]\left[_{N}reporter\right]\right]\right]\left[_{PP2}\left[_{P2}about\right]\left[_{NP3}\left[_{Pronoun}himself\right]\right]\right]\right]\right] \]

It is not good to use ternary or more complex branch in tree diagrams. We will learn advanced mothods (X-bar theory) to avoid ternary branches in the future.

Constituency Test

不管以后学到什么高深的句法理论，constituency test 永远是判断短语成分的层次关系的唯一标准

  • movement (permutation): Only constituents can be moved as a single unit.
    • wh-test，英语允许用 wh- 开头的特殊疑问词对成分提问。Movement leaves a silent copy, previously called trace (t, 语迹), in the original place. e.g. To whom did the party chairman send a book t?
    • topicalization: The fronting of a sentence-internal phrase to the beginning of the sentences. e.g. The new car, Mary hopes that John will like t.
    • clefting: the permutation of the order of elements，在英语里就是用 it 形式主语来改语序
  • substitution (pronomialization): a pronoun substitutes a entire phrase. e.g. [He] has done [so] too. I 和 so 都是代词，分别代替 NP 和 VP
  • deletion (ellipsis): e.g. John can [do sth] and Mary can too.
  • conjunction: only constituents of the same type can be coordinated
  • fragments: a constituent can serve as a short answer to questions.

Failing in a test does not mean a fragment is not a constituent, but passing a test means the opposite. e.g. - What has the president done? - Has resigned. (The answer is syntactically wrong! It should be "Resigned.", but "has resigned" is a constituent.)

Recoverablity condition: substitution 和 ellipsis 的时候，要求产生的新句子在语义上可以看出什么成分被替换 / 删除了