Morphology and Syntax

1、Morphology and Syntax: Demarcation and Interaction Contents 1. Demarcation of Morphology and Syntax 1.1 Definitions of Morphology and Syntax 1.2 Words and Phrases 2. Interaction between Morphology and Syntax 2.1 Predicate Argument Structure (PAS) 2.2 Nominative-Accusative system & Absolutive-Ergativ

2、e system 2.3 Passivization 2.4 Noun incorporation 2.5 Causativization 2.6 Constructional Idioms 3. Summary 1.Demarcation of Morphology and Syntax 1.1Definitions of Morphology and Syntax Morphology: 1. Morphology is the study of the internal structure of word. For instance, the word “rainbow” is form

3、ed by “rain” and “bow”. 2. Morphology studies the syntactical relationship of word. For instance, in the word “teacher”, “teach” and “-er” form the subject-predicate relation. While “-er” is the subject, and “teach” is the predicate. 3. Morphology is concerned with the concept-role relationship(概念角色

4、关系). For example, in the Chinese word “肌肉男”，“男”为领主，“肌肉”为所属，故二者为领主和所属关系。 4. Morphology reveals the literal meaning and the extra meaning. For example, in the Chinese word “笋鸡”，the literal meaning of“笋”is a kind of plant or a kind of food, but the extra meaning is fresh and tender. 5. Morphology studi

5、es conceptual structure and form structure. In the word “肌肉男”，语符的字面 意义远远小于所标记的客体形成的概念范围。肌肉可以引申出强壮、经常锻炼等意义。 Syntax: a. Syntax is a branch of linguistic that studies the rules that govern the formation of sentence. (戴炜栋, 何兆雄 A New Concise Course in Linguistics for Students of English 2nd edM. 上海外语教育出版

6、社， 2013) b. Syntax is the study of the rules governing the ways different constituents are combined to form sentences in a language, or the study of the interrelationships between elements in sentence structures.( 胡壮麟 Linguistics: A Course Book 4th edM, 北 京大学出版社，2011) 1.2Words and Phrases 1.2.1 Lexi

7、cal Integrity Principle (1) Definition: The principle of Lexical Integrity has been formulated as follows: The syntax neither manipulates nor has access to the internal form of words (Anderson 1992: 84). (2) Connotations of Lexical Integrity Principle a. Lexical integrity implies that English verb p

8、article constructions such as to look up are to be considered phrasal verbs because the two parts can be separated: e.g. John looked up the information. John looked the information up b. Lexical integrity also manifests itself in the fact that syntactically governed rules of inflection do not apply

9、to the individual parts of a word. Consider the following names for kinds of cabbage in Dutch, both of the form A + N: e.g. rde A kol N “red cabbage” zur A kol N “lit. sour cabbage, sauerkraut” The first cabbage name must be a phrase, witness the fact that the adjective rod-e is inflected. The secon

10、d name is an A + N compound, not a phrase, because the adjective zuur is not inflected. c. Lexical integrity pertains to syntactic rules. In the English phrase a hard worker, for instance, the adjective hard functions as a modifier of the verbal base work in the noun worker. The phrase denotes someo

11、ne who works hard, not a worker who is hard. Thus, the rules of semantic interpretation must have access to the internal structure of this deverbal noun. 1.2.2 Formal Criteria (1) Phrases do occur as parts of words, as shown below for English compounds: e.g. special exhibitions gallery module for mo

12、dule upgrade drugs and rehabilitation centre In this example, the word sequence special exhibitions is a noun phrase of the type A + N. This is clear from its stress pattern (stress on exhibitions) and the fact that the word exhibition is used in its plural form. In the next two English examples we

13、see the phrases module for module and drugs and rehabilitation in the non-head position. (2) It is not the case that all kinds of phrases can feed word-formation. Noun phrases with a determiner as parts of complex words are impossible in English: e.g.*the the special exhibitions gallery This ungramm

14、aticality has to do with the fact that the special exhibitions with their definite determiners are referring expressions, whereas word constituents in non-head position have a modifying, classificatory function. (3) Affixes are not completely blocked from being attached to phrases, as shown in below

15、: e.g. English: do good-er, do-it-your-self-er, fast-tracker, look-upper (from Ryder 2001) Affixation of phrases is exceptional, however, and is restricted to very productive affixes such as the English nominalizing suffix -er. 2.Interaction between Morphology and Syntax 2.1Predicate Argument Struct

16、ure (PAS) Consider the English verb to hit. This verb denotes an event in which at least two participants are involved: the person who hits, and what is hit. We refer to these two crucially involved entities as the core arguments of the predicate HIT, and the Predicate Argument Structure (PAS) of th

17、is verb can be represented as: HIT, x, y The PAS is an abstraction from the information contained in the Lexical Conceptual Structure (LCS) of a word. The arguments of PAS are represented as variables such as x and y, which will receive a particular value in each concrete sentence. In the sentence J

18、ohn hit the ball, the value of x = John, and the value of y = the ball. We can also add labels for particular semantic roles to these variables, for instance Agent and Patient. The notion Agent refers to the entity that is in control of the event expressed by the verb. The Patient is involved in the

19、 event, but is not in control. This relationship between the PAS of a verb and its syntactic realization can be expressed as in below by linking the grammatical functions subject (SUBJ) and object (OBJ) to the arguments of PAS. The verb to hit is specified here as appearing with both a subject and a

20、n object. This means that it is a transitive verb. 2.2 Nominative-Accusative system & Absolutive-Ergative system In Indo-European languages with morphological case systems the distinction between grammatical subject and grammatical object is marked by means of the opposition between nominative and a

21、ccusative case. If there is only one argument (the case of intransitive clauses), it is case-marked as a nominative. When there are two arguments, the subject is marked as nominative and the object as accusative. This system is called the Nominative-Accusative system. An alternative case-marking sys

22、tem is the Absolutive-Ergative system used in, among others, many Australian languages. Usually, the symbols S, A, and O are used for the characterization of these two systems (Dixon 1994: 6): S = intransitive subject, A = transitive subject, O = transitive object S is the subject in intransitive se

23、ntences, and O stands for the object in transitive sentences. (Instead of O the symbol P (for Patient) is also used.) These two systems for marking the grammatical functions can now be characterized as below. In the Nominative-Accusative system A and S receive the same case marking, whereas in the A

24、bsolutive-Ergative system this applies to O and S. 2.3 Passivization In a clause with passive voice, the grammaticalsubject e xpresses the theme or patient of the main verb that is, t he person or thing that undergoes the action or has its sta te changed. This contrasts with active voice, in which t

25、h e subject has the agent role. For example, in the passive sentence The tree was pulled down, the subject (the tre e) denotes the patient rather than the agent of the action. In contrast, the sentences Someone pulled down the tre e and The tree is down are active sentences. Typically, in passive cl

26、auses, what would otherwise be expresse d by the object (or sometimes another argument) of the verb co mes to be expressed by the subject, while what would otherwis e be expressed by the subject is either not expressed at all, or is indicated by some adjunct of the clause. Thus transforming an a cti

27、ve verb into a passive verb is a valencedecreasing process (d etransitivizing process), because it transforms transitive verbs i nto intransitive verbs. 2.4 Noun incorporation Another way of changing transitive verbs into intransitive ones is noun incorporation. What happens mostly in noun incorpora

28、tion is that an argument of the verb is not expressed by a separate NP, but as part of a verbal compound. The verbal compound then functions as an intransitive verb. The phenomenon of noun incorporation has led some linguists to propose that some kinds of word-formation can be accounted for by synta

29、ctic operations. In such a syntactic approach, the incorporated noun is represented as an independent NP at the underlying syntactic level. The noun is then adjoined to the V, resulting in a verbal compound. For instance, the fictive English verbal compound to bed-buy would be derived as follows (wi

30、th some simplification of the syntactic structure). This is represented below. 2.5 Causativization The same debate as to the choice of a morphological or a syntactic analysis of word-formation plays a role in the analysis of causatives. Causative verbs are verbs in which the A has the role of the ca

31、user of an event in which one or two entities play a role. The classic example of a simplex causative verb in English is to kill, with the meaning “cause to die”. More precisely, the semantic structure of this predicate can be represented as follows: CAUSE (x, (DIE, y) Many languages have causative

32、affixes that turn non-causative verbs into causative ones. Causativization has the effect of increasing the valency of words. This applies to adjectives, nouns and verbs. The following examples are from Diyari, an Australian language (Austin 1981: 168). e.g. muka “sleep” (noun) muka-anka “to put to

33、sleep” kidi “clever” (adj.) kidi-anka “to teach = to make clever” 2.6 Constructional Idioms In a number of languages, progressive aspect is expressed by a periphrastic form of the verb to be + prepositional phrase, as illustrated by the following examples from Dutch: (a) Jan is aanP het Det fiets-en

34、NNPPP John is at the cycle-INF “John is cycling” (b) Jan is de aardappels aan het schillen John is the potatoes at the peel-INF “John is peeling the potatoes” The unity of this aan het V-inf-construction as the periphrastic progressive form of the verb is quite clear in sentence (b): the direct obje

35、ct de aardappels“the potatoes” is not located right before the verb, as is normally the case for objects in Dutch embedded clauses. Instead, the object precedes the word sequence aan het “at the” that signals the progressive aspect. Constructional idioms are multi-word expressions that are idiomatic in nature but not completely fixed because some positions