Basic Syntactic Notions
S Y N T A X
LECTURE 6 BASIC SYNTACTIC NOTIONS
1. Some approaches to the study of syntactic units. The central role of syntax within theoretical linguistics became clear only in the 20th century, which some scholars call the "century of syntactic theory" as far as linguistics is concerned. Nowadays theoretical approaches to the discipline of syntax are numerous and extremely diverse. One school of thought treats syntax as a branch of biology, since it conceives of syntax as the study of linguistic knowledge as embodied in the human mind. Other linguists regard syntax to be the study of an abstract formal system. Yet others consider syntax to be a taxonomical device to reach broad generalizations across languages. One more school of thought approaches syntactic phenomena from the philosophical point of view proceeding from the idea that reality consists of things, their qualities and relationships. Hence, the subdivision of words by the parts of speech and the treatment of syntactic problems as philisophic processes. The hypothesis of generative grammar is that language is a structure of the human mind. The goal of generative grammar is to make a complete model of this inner language (known as i-language). This model could be used to describe all human language and to predict the grammaticality of any given utterance (that is, to predict whether the utterance would sound correct to native speakers of the language). This approach to language was pioneered by Noam Comsky. Most generative theories (although not all of them) assume that syntax is based upon the constituent structure of sentences. Generative grammars are among the theories that focus primarily on the form of a sentence, rather than its communicative function.
Among the many generative theories of linguistics, the Chomskyan theories are: Transformational Grammar (TG) (Original theory of generative syntax laid out by Chomsky in Syntactic Structures in 1957 ;
LECTURE 6 BASIC SYNTACTIC NOTIONS
1. Some approaches to the study of syntactic units. The central role of syntax within theoretical linguistics became clear only in the 20th century, which some scholars call the "century of syntactic theory" as far as linguistics is concerned. Nowadays theoretical approaches to the discipline of syntax are numerous and extremely diverse. One school of thought treats syntax as a branch of biology, since it conceives of syntax as the study of linguistic knowledge as embodied in the human mind. Other linguists regard syntax to be the study of an abstract formal system. Yet others consider syntax to be a taxonomical device to reach broad generalizations across languages. One more school of thought approaches syntactic phenomena from the philosophical point of view proceeding from the idea that reality consists of things, their qualities and relationships. Hence, the subdivision of words by the parts of speech and the treatment of syntactic problems as philisophic processes. The hypothesis of generative grammar is that language is a structure of the human mind. The goal of generative grammar is to make a complete model of this inner language (known as i-language). This model could be used to describe all human language and to predict the grammaticality of any given utterance (that is, to predict whether the utterance would sound correct to native speakers of the language). This approach to language was pioneered by Noam Comsky. Most generative theories (although not all of them) assume that syntax is based upon the constituent structure of sentences. Generative grammars are among the theories that focus primarily on the form of a sentence, rather than its communicative function.
Among the many generative theories of linguistics, the Chomskyan theories are: Transformational Grammar (TG) (Original theory of generative syntax laid out by Chomsky in Syntactic Structures in 1957 ;