Search results
The Meaning-Text correspondence is described by a formal device which simulates the linguistic activity of the native speaker—a Meaning-Text Model. A Meaning-Text Model [= MTM] must be able to produce, for any given representation of meaning, all synonymous texts (= paraphrases) which implement it, and, conversely, to extract,
The goal of Meaning-Text theory (MTT) is to write systems of explicit rules that express the correspondence between meaning and text (or sound) in various languages. Apart from the use of dependency rather constituency, MTT can be characterized by
The Academic Phrasebank is a general resource for academic writers. It makes explicit the more common phraseological ‘nuts and bolts’ of academic writing. Academic Phrasebank. A compendium of commonly used phrasal elements in academic English in PDF format. 2014b edition. Dr John Morley. PDF Download version . ©2014 The University of Manchester.
- Learning Goals
- Syntax
- What the Syntax Rules Do
- What Grammaticality Is Not Based On
- Sentence Structure
- Constituents and Constituency Tests
- Syntactic Categories
- Phrase Structure Trees
- Phrase Structure Trees
- Phrase Structure Trees: Selection
- Building Phrase Structure Trees
- The Infinity of Language: Recursive Rules
- What Heads the Sentence
- Transformational Analysis
- Transformational Rules
- The Structural Dependency of Rules
- Yes/No
- C takes TP
- Embedded CP’s
- Modals/ Auxiliaries
- Tense/Modal
- Movement from V-‐>T-‐>C
- Wh-‐move
- UG Principles and Parameters
- Sign Language Syntax
Hierarchical sentence structure Word categories X-‐bar Ambiguity Recursion Transformaons
Any speaker of any human language can produce and understand an infinite number of possible sentences Thus, we can’t possibly have a mental dictionary of all the possible sentences Rather, we have the rules for forming sentences stored in our brains Syntax is the part of grammar that pertains to a speaker’s knowledge of sentences and their structur...
The rules of syntax combine words into phrases and phrases into sentences They specify the correct word order for a language For example, English is a Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) language The President nominated a new Supreme Court justice *President the new Supreme justice Court a nominated They also describe the relationship between the meaning of ...
Grammaticality is not based on prior exposure to a sentence Grammaticality is not based on meaningfulness Grammaticality is not based on truthfulness
We could say that the sentence “The child found the puppy” is based on the template: Det—N—V—Det—N But this would imply that sentences are just strings of words without internal structure This sentence can actually be separated into several groups: [the child] [found a puppy] [the child] [found [a puppy]] [[the] [child]] [[found] [[a] [puppy]] Sent...
3. “move as a unit” test: If a group of words can be moved together, they are a constituent A: “The child found a puppy.” was found by the child.” “A puppy Constituents and Constituency Tests Experimental evidence shows that people perceive sentences in groupings corresponding to constituents Every sentence has at least one constituent structure If...
A syntactic category is a family of expressions that can substitute for one another without loss of grammaticality The child found a puppy. A police oficer found a puppy. Your neighbor found a puppy. The child found a puppy. The child ate the cake. The child slept. All the underlined groups constitute a syntactic category known as a noun phrase (NP...
The core of every phrase is its head In the VP walk the pugs, the verb walk is the head The phrasal category that may occur next to a head and elaborates on the meaning of the head is a complement In the PP over the river, the NP the river is the complement Elements preceding the head are s...
• The internal structure of phrasal categories can be captured using the X-bar schema: examples The subject will later in Spec-T This should be A Phrase Structure Trees Phrase structure (PS) trees show the internal structure of a sentence along with syntactic category information: Phrase Structure Trees In a PS tree, every higher node domin...
Some heads require a certain type of complement and some don’t The verb find requires an NP: Alex found the ball. The verb put requires both an NP and a PP: Alex put the ball in the toy box. The verb sleep cannot take a complement: Alex slept. The noun belief optionally selects a PP: the belief in freedom of speech. The adjective proud optionally s...
Phrase structure rules specify the well-formed structures of a sentence A tree must match the phrase structure rules to be grammatical Building Phrase Structure Trees The majority of the senate became afraid of the vice president. Corrections to the textbook typos are in red. Building Phrase Structure Trees The majority of the senate became afra...
Recursive rules are rules in which a phrasal category can contain itself Recursive rules allow a grammar to generate an infinite number of sentences the kindhearted, intelligent, handsome, ... boy
All sentences contain information about tense— when a certain event or state of afairs occurred, so we can say that Tense is the head of a sentence So sentences are TPs, with T representing tense markers and modals What Heads the Sentence The girl may cry. The child ate.
Recognizing that some sentences are related to each other is another part of our syntactic competence The boy is sleeping. Is the boy sleeping? The first sentence is a declarative sentence, meaning that it asserts that a particular situation exists The second sentence is a yes-no question, meaning that asks for confirmation of a situation The difer...
Yes-no questions are generated in two steps: 1. The PS rules generate a declarative sentence which represents the basic structure, or deep structure (d-structure) of the sentence 2. A transformational rule then moves the auxiliary before the subject to create the surface structure (s-structure) Transformational Rules Other sentence pairs that invol...
Transformations are structure-dependent, which means they act on phrase structures without caring what words are in the structures The Move rule can be applied to any PP as long as it is an adjunct to V. Subject-verb agreement stretches across all structures between the subject and the verb:
The formaon of yes-‐no quesons comes from the transformaon Move relocang the T from the corresponding declarave sentence: The boy will sleep will the boy ___ sleep
• C takes TP as its complement, C can have Q feature, but not always
CP’s are needed not just for quesons: belief that iron floats (NP complement) wonders if iron floats (VP complement) happy that iron floats (AP complement) about whether iron will sink (PP complement) Examples of embedded CP
Spot has chased a squirrel. Nellie is snoring. Like the modals, the auxiliaries have and be move to the posion preceding the subject in both yes-‐no quesons and wh quesons. Has Spot ____ chased a squirrel? Is Nellie ____ snoring? What has Spot ____ chased ____? The queson is: where do have and...
• When there is no modal, T is occupied by a tense feature, which is realized on have/be, as would be the case for other verbs like snore:
What has Spot chased? Here is the d-‐structure (from the X-‐bar derived phrase structure rules): V-‐>T
• We see that V-‐>T feeds T-‐>C, which allows wh move.
Universal Grammar (UG) provides the basic design for all languages, and each language has its own parameters, or variations on the basic plan All languages have structures that conform to X-bar schema All phrases consist of specifiers, heads, and complements All sentences are headed by T All languages seem to have movement rules However, languages ...
The syntax of sign languages also follow the principles of UG and has: Auxiliaries Transformations such as topicalization, which moves the direct object to the beginning of a sentence for emphasis, and wh movement Constraints on transformations That UG is present in signed languages and spoken languages shows that the human brain is designed to lea...
- 934KB
- 54
Academic writing is built upon three truths that aren’t self-evident: – Writing is Thinking: While “writing” is traditionally understood as the expression of thought, we’ll redefine “writing” as the thought process itself. Writing is not what you do with thought. Writing is thinking.
When discussing large numbers in text, it is fine to use k/m/bn as shorter ways of spelling out 1,000/1,000,000/1,000,000,000 (or writing out ‘one thousand’/‘one million’/‘one billion’), as long as you are consistent throughout
People also ask
Is an MTM a meaning-text correspondence?
What is a Meaning-Text Model?
What is Meaning-Text Theory?
What is a text?
What is DSyntR in MTM?
This chapter contributes a review of theoretical perspectives and selected empirical studies on how and why writing can be a site for language learning.
