INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS

SYNTAX: THE STUDY OF SENTENCE STRUCTURE

Lecturer :
Khoirul Hasyim, M.Pd.

Members :
Findy Mia Ameilia (177055)
Zumrotus Sholikhah (177060)
Riza Alfian (177064)

SEKOLAH TINGGI KEGURUAN DAN ILMU PENDIDIKAN

PERSATUAN GURU REPUBLIK INDONESIA

2018
 PREFACE

First of all, the writer wants to express his thanks to Allah SWT, because of His
bless and grace, the paper of Syntax: The Study Of Sentence Structure can be
finished on time.

This paper is a requirement to fulfill the assignment from Mr. Khoirul Hasyim
M.pd., the English lecturer of Introduction of Linguistics. The writer also thanks to him
for all the guidance to complete it.

In completing this paper, the writer faced many problems, but with the help of
many people, all the problems could be passed. May Allah SWT give the blessing for
them.

I really hope this paper can be useful to increase our insight and knowledge
about teaching listening as foreign language. We realize that there are still many
mistakes in the preparation of this paper, so that we really expect constructive criticism
and suggestion from all readers to be used as evaluation.

So what can we write, hopefully the reader can benefit from this paper.

Jombang, 27 October 2018

Members

2
 CONTENTS

COVER..............................................................................................................................1

PREFACE..........................................................................................................................2

CONTENT ........................................................................................................................3

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background..................................................................................................................4
1.2 Problem Formulation...................................................................................................4
1.3 Purpose........................................................................................................................4

CHAPTER 2 DISSCUSION

2.1 Some Background Concept of Syntax........................................................................5

2.2 An Informal Theory of Syntax....................................................................................

2.3 A More Formal Account of Early Transformational Theory......................................

CHAPTER 3 CLOSING

3.1 Conclusion.................................................................................................................

REFERENCES ....................................................................................................................

3
 CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of study

A theory of the structure of phrases and sentences is a vital component of
the competence model. All language have the unit ‘sentence’ in which words
are structured in certain ways,it means sentence have structure. A theory
that can capture how words combine, how phrases combine, and can
describe the relationship between the two is used to describe syntactic
structure. In our study of syntax we will first examine the concept of
syntactic structure. Having determined some central aspects of the concept
of structure, we will examine certain properties of syntactic rules. Not only
will the rules and principles that we discover from our study be part of the
grammar of English, they will also be of a general type found in many other
languages. We will not attempt to discuss a wide range of structures or rules;
rather, we will focus on a small number of structures and rules in English, in
order to get a feel for how syntactic analysis is carried out.

1.2 Problem formulation

1. What is the concept of syntax?
2. What are the informal theory of syntax?
3. What are the formal account of early transformational theory?

1.3 Purpose

1. To find out what the concept of syntax

2. Knowing the informal theory of syntax
3. Knowing the formal account of early transformational theory

4
 CHAPTER 2

DISCUSSION

2.1 Background Concept of Syntax

Syntax is a set rules in a language. It dictates how words from different parts of
speech are put together in order to convey a complete thought. A theory of the structure
of phrases and sentences is a vital component of the competence model.

Considering a sentence that you have never heard before:

“You may want to consider washing your hands before eating that green muffin.”

As native speakers of English you understand the sentence, because you recognize
familiar units (words) that are combined in appropiate way.

Native speakers of a language couldn’t possibly have memorized all the phrasesand
sentencesof the language. In principle, impossible to memoriza all the sentences of
one’s language.

Some simple examples will suffice to show this.

 Create simple sentences: Tim is a Tiny Toy

 Create longer sentences by embedding a sentence within a large sentence:

Nicholas thinks that tim is a tiny toy.

 Sentence can be embedded, yielding an even larger sentence: Joseph knows that
Nicholas thinks that Tim is a Tiny Toy.

 There is in principle no limit on this embedding process: Mark heard that Joseph
knows that Nicholas thinks that Tim is a Tiny Toy.

 Conjoin two sentences to make one: Mark heard that Joseph knows that
Nicholas thinks that Tim is a Tiny Toy and Mary likes small dog

Obviously, we do not utter infinitely long sentences due to memory limitations.

5
The concept of structure

All language have the unit ‘sentence’ in which words are structured in certain ways,it
means sentence have structure. A theory that can capture how words combine, how
phrases combine, and can describe the relationship between the two is used to describe
syntactic structure.

To begin to find such a definition, adopt the strategy assume that sentences are merely
unstructured strings of words, example :

the dog chased the cat means something quite different from the cat chased the dog.
even though the very same words are used in both.

Structural Ambiguity: Motivation for Syntactic Structure

Consider the following sentence:

The mother of the boy and the girl will arrive soon.

Sentence is either about one person (the mother) or about two people (the mother in
addition to the girl). It is said to be ambiguous. These two possibilities clearly emerge in
sentences , which contain the verb is, the verb are, or a tag.

Tag Questions

a. The mother of the boy and girl will arrive soon, won’t she?

b. The mother of the boy and girl will arrive soon, won’t they?

Subject-Verb agreement

a. The mother of the boy and girl is arriving soon.

b. The mother of the boy and girl are arriving soon.

The ambiguity cannot be attributed to the ambiguity of any words in the sentence.

6
If the source of ambiguity is the multiple of a word, then we’d have lexical ambiguity:

 I got a mouse today.

 She can’t bear children

 They went to the bank

 He stepped on a bat

 She read the book in two days

Source of ambiguity of the [The mother of the boy and girl will arrive soon] is not
lexical, but still ambiguous(structurally ambiguous). The sentence consists of a single
set of unambiguous words, those words can in fact be grouped in two different ways:

a. The mother (of the boy and the girl) will arrive soon.

b. (The mother of the boy) and the girl will arrive soon.

When of the boy and and the girl are grouped together, the sentence is interpreted to
mean that only the mother will arrive. When of the boy is instead grouped with the
mother, the sentence is interpreted to mean that both the mother and the girl will arrive.
Thus, depending on how the words are grouped (how they are structured), one
interpretation rather than the other is represented.

2.2 Informal Theory Of Syntax

2.3 Formal Account Of Early Transformational Theory

1. Phrase Structure Grammar

In the initial standard transformation phrase generated from phrase structure

rules or ( PS rules ) of the following types :

1. S ( sentence ) => NP ( noun phrase ), Aux ( auxalary ), VP ( verb phrase ).

2. NP ( noun phrase ) => (Art), article N ( noun ), (PP) prepotional phrase.

7
 3. VP ( verb phrase ) => V ( verb ), (NP) noun phrase.
4. PP ( prepotional phrase ) => P ( preposition ), NP ( noun phrase ).

These rules express in a clear way important dependencies that must be captured in
any theory of syntax. Each rule is essentially a formula, or specification, for how the
constituent represented by a certain symbol—the symbol on the left of the arrow—can
be constituted in a tree diagram. For example, S (sentence) consists of, or can be
expanded as, the sequence NP Aux VP.

Aux
NP VP
S

S = sentence

NP = Noun Phrase

Aux = Auxalary

VP = Verb phrase

The rules also tell us that NP (noun phrase) can be expanded as Art N, Art N PP, N
PP, or simply N (Art and PP are optional constituents of NP; optional constituents are
enclosed in parentheses).

NP => Art, N

S Aux
VP => V, NP => Art, N

e.g : The rain will wet the plant

Art N Aux V Art N

VP (verb phrase) can be expanded as V NP or V (NP is optional), and PP

(prepositional phrase) can be expanded as P NP.

8
 NP => N ,Ray
S Aux ,will
VP => V ,enjoy

To find out what words should be included in the structure. We will assume that part
of our grammar consists of a lexicon, that is, a list of words of a language. In the
lexicon, words are listed with their parts of speech: for example, the is listed as an
article, rain is listed as a noun, will is listed as an auxiliary verb, wet is listed as a verb,
and so on. we can insert the word the under the node Art, the word rain under the node
N, the word will under the node Aux, the word wet under the node V, and so on.

In particular the rules for NP, VP, and PP. Notice that an NP must consist at least of
an N, which forms the head of the NP; a VP must consist at least of a V, which forms
the head of the VP; and PP must contain a P, which forms the head of the PP. A noun
phrase is called a noun phrase because it has a noun as its head; a verb phrase is called a
verb phrase because it has a verb as its head; and a prepositional phrase is called a
prepositional phrase because it has a preposition as its head.

2. Transformational Grammar

In the early days of the development of generative grammars, transformational rules

were formalized to express relations between pairs of phrase markers.

Illustrate :

Particle Movement transformation

Structural description (SD): X– Verb– Particle–NP– Y

1 2 3 4 5

Structural change (SC): 1 2 - 4+3 5

A transformational rule consisted, first, of an input: a structural description (SD),

which is an instruction to analyze a phrase marker into a sequence of constituents (in
this case, Verb followed by Particle followed by NP). The variables X and Y indicate

9
that the constituents to the left of the verb and to the right of the NP (should there be
any) are irrelevant to this transformation—they can represent anything at all. In order
for a transformation to be applied, the analysis of a phrase marker must satisfy the SD
of the particular transformation.

NP => N , Mary 1

s Aux , will
VP => V, NP
V => verb , cut 2
particle , down 3
NP => , the tree 4

That is, can be cut up into chunks—in a way that matches exactly the sequence of
constituents listed in the SD of the Particle Movement transformation. Hence, this
phrase marker satisfies the SD of the rule.

The second part of a transformational rule was the output: a structural change (SC),
which in the case of Particle Movement is an instruction to modify the SD by shifting
term 3 (the particle) immediately to the right of term 4 (NP),

NP => N , Mary 1

s Aux
VP => V, NP
, will

V => verb , cut 2

NP => , the tree
particle , down
4+3

10
 CHAPTER 3

CLOSING

3.1 CONCLUSION

REFERENCES

11