Web Activity 6.2 Rules and constructions

In this activity, you’ll get a bit of a concrete feel for how to capture structural patterns in English using phrase structure rules or construction templates.

A. Using phrase structure rules to describe structure

Consider a possible set of rules for capturing the sentences we’ve discussed in the text (parentheses indicate optional elements):

1. S ͿNP + VP

2. VP Ϳ V + (NP) + (PP)

3. NP Ϳ Pro

4. NP Ϳ Name

5. NP Ϳ (Det) + N + (PP)

6. PP Ϳ P + NP

For the following sentences, try using the above rules to create tree structures in which each node of the tree shows the result of applying one of the syntactic rules (or, if you prefer, you can use labelled brackets to show the structure). If a sentence can have more than one meaning, be sure to show both possible structures, as permitted by the syntactic rules:

a. The girl with a tattoo loves me.

b. Bill snores.

c. Samantha read the book on the train.

d. A life with no love awaits Remi in the future.

e. I saw the man with the glasses from my store.

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Is that all there is to English syntax? Hardly. If you take note of sentences all around you, you’ll quickly run into examples that can’t be captured by our current set of rules. Here are a few:

f. I love the girl who has a tattoo.

g. Alisha told me that she loved her husband.

h. Weyman and Stuart drank beer for three weeks.

i. The three little pigs built their houses on the hill.

j. You believed the outlandish story that she fed you.

k. Fabian threatened to kill his rival.

You’d need to propose additional rules to build these sentences. Give it a try: suggest a specific set of rules that would produce these sentences, and provide the structure that would result. Don’t worry about how you would label the syntactic units (any sensible label will do), but do think about which clumps would form a constituent. You may find that you revise some of your ideas as you proceed further into the chapter (especially when it comes to sentences f and j, which involve what we call relative clauses.)

Can you think of a few other examples of sentences that go beyond the scope of the rules in this box? (Note: this shouldn’t be hard to do!)

 

B. Constructions

Notice that the phrase structure rules above make use of highly abstract categories, generalizing over all nouns and verbs, for example. In reality, not all lexical items in these categories participate in these rules in the same way. Proponents of rules acknowledge that speakers of a language must have knowledge about the degree to which these structures generalize to specific items. This item-specific knowledge is assumed to be somewhat independent of the general phrase structure rules.

Some linguists prefer not to make a sharp distinction between structures that apply very generally and structures that apply to only a few or moderate number of lexical items. They suggest that all a person’s knowledge of any combination of words into a phrase or sentence can be viewed as a template or construction that matches the structure to meaning—with the degree of abstractness that is described by the template varying widely.

Consider the following examples. Propose a template that characterizes the level of abstractness that is appropriate for the structure in each example. In each template, specify how general or lexically specific each component of the phrase must be. To do this, you will need to explore examples of similar structures to see how widely they generalize. Try to give an informal description of the meaning that is conveyed by that structure. You’ll notice that the more general the structure, the less specific the meaning.

a. Sarah jogged the President’s memory

b. The bug was squashed by the child

c. Frank mailed Mary a letter.

d. The child baked her sister a cake.

e. Don’t go eating the whole cake!

f. Don’t go to Toronto!

g. Jake mocked his intern out of the room.

h. You are driving me crazy.

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