Tema 9 – The content of lexeme 2: syntactic information.
This is the feature structure for the SYN box in entries:
*Main attribute is syntax; CAT is another attribute with a number of attributes (MAJOR; GENDER; NUMBER; PEROSN; COUNT; AUX)
It contains two main feature structure:
- CAT refers to categorial values and C-SELECTION refers to the number and type of complements the lexeme selects.
Examples:
- The water boils 1 complement (S-> subject)
- He likes music 2 complements (S / O -> object)
- He gave me a book 3 complements (S, O1, O2)
*Verbs typically contain objects.
In CAT,
- MAJOR: refers to the main word class (V, N, A, etc.)
*Note that we include here open and closed word classes (see Murphy 14-15)
Categorial features are linked to the MAJOR value:
- For example, GENDER is only applicable if MAJOR is a N (noun).
In English, only pronouns have grammatical gender (as a linguistic property). Grammatical gender is not relevant in English but for the pronouns in English.
Nouns such as “king” or “queen”, do they express linguistic grammatical gender? NO, they denote female or male entity, BUT we are not talking about the denotation but the grammatical gender meaning. There is no system of marcas, esa denotación es parte del significado de las palabras.
Grammatical gender typically involves suffixes to indicate items in sentences. One of its function is to indicate that two units or items should be together and analyse together. For example: it is a kind of agreement between “casas” and “bonitas”. IN this case, “bonita” modify “casas” -> so, y grammatical gender helps the processing of languages with its function.
**Solo activamos la casilla de genero si analizamos un PRONOMBRE (si vemos king no la marcamos ahi, porque que sea masculino es parte de su definición y no de la casilla de genero)
More attributes:
- AUXliary is only applicable if MAJOR is a V. Only some verbs can function as Auxiliaries.
- COUNTable is only applicable if MAJOR is a N, but NUMBER and PERSON apply to both N and V.
Let’s see an example: “organize”
As this is a verb, we remove the attributes which are only relevant to other categories (GENDER, COUNT)
*Note that, since this is an infinitive, we also removed the attributes PERSON and NUMBER.
But, if we were to represent the item “organizes”, then PERSON and NUMBER would be relevant:
And we coy even add [TENSE: prs]
Consider now the entry of the pronoun “he”. As it is N, GNEDER and COUNT are relevant:
However, GENDER is only relevant in the pronominal system.
- In nouns we activate COUNT but he cannot be pluralised.
Let us now consider the C-SELECTION attribute:
Lexical items can take complements. For example, verbs tale at least one complement -> the Subject.
- Water (complement of the subject of boils) boils (boils takes one complement)
- John walks
But many also take an Object:
- The man is riding a horse.
- The water flooded the village. (The village is the second complement which is the object of the sentence and the other object is the subject)
And some can take two Objects:
- He gave me a book
- My brother explained the problem to me
Note that other categories can take complements too: (we tend to believe that only verbs can take complements, but there are other like nouns, prepositions…)
- In the kitchen (preposition (in) + the complement of the preposition (the kitchen)
- On the table (the table -> we need to specify that something is or someone is ON the table not just ON)
- At the gate
- The invention of automobile
- the king of England (the king of some place : prepositional phrases (complements of the nouns) responsible for the situation (if you are responsible, you have to be responsible for sth)
- Similar to mine.
We have to be alert because a few nouns and adjectives can take complements BUT not always.
Let us continue with our example “organize”
This verb takes 2 complements:
–Example: The president organised the World Summit (one is the subject Complement.1 and the other is the object Complement.2)
- The Subject is realised as a Noun Phrase (NP)
- The Objet is realised as a Noun Phrase (NP)
*Note that in your handout you have variables for Major categories (X, Y)
So, the entry of “organize” continues as follows:
*The verb is transitive because it takes 2 complements.
Consider now the entry for Locative “in”:
*We have to indicate that in is a preposition and it does not have a NUMBER, GNENDER… so we can eliminate them.
In the case the noun “king”:
- We can see in the definition that the gender is marked, so this prevents the possibility to denote “king” a woman.
- “King” is a noun that can take complements (if someone is a king, it is because he is a king of a certain place).
- You cannot say he is the king at or on England. It can only be the preposition “of”. So, to indicate that the prepositional phrase is just of (headed by prepositional).
- The complement of the word “king” is a prepositional phrase that its main preposition is “of”.
Note that the same item may select different types of complements:
John wants to come (O = Infinitival clause)
John wants a coffee (O = NP)
*John wans that Peter comes (*O = that clause)
C-SELECT: [COMPL (1): NP]
[COMPL (2): NP / Clause <to>]
The slash / indicates alternative values
Note that the same item may select a different number of complements:
John is eating an apple
John is eating
C-SELECT: [COMPL (1): NP]
[COMPL (2): ( NP )]
Parentheses ( ) indicate optionality