Applied English Syntax Terms: Quiz 1
A. In syntax, what do these abbreviations mean and are these lexical or non-lexical categories? Use may use your own example or choose from this list: hamburger, discuss, at, quietly, have, and, tall, a, very
| Meaning | Lexical | Non-lexical (Nonlexical) |
Example | ||
| 1 | N | noun | x | hamburger | |
| 2 | Deg | ||||
| 3 | Con | ||||
| 4 | Adv | ||||
| 5 | P | ||||
| 6 | Adj | ||||
| 7 | Aux | ||||
| 8 | Det | ||||
| 9 | V |
B. Fill in the blanks with the best answer. Use each word only once.
| head | merge |
| specifiers | phrase |
| specifier | syntax |
| complement |
1. ___________________ is (a) the analysis of sentence structure, (b) the study of how we combine words into sentences, and (c) the rules and categories that create sentences in human language.
2. A ___________________ is a syntactic unit of one or more words. It's a unit of sentence structure between a word and a sentence.
3. A phrase must have a ___________________, which is obligatory (necessary). It may have a ___________________, and it may have a ___________________.
4. Determiners, adverbs and degree words are all ___________________. They make the meaning of the head more precise and clearer. They mark phrasal boundaries.
5. ___________________ is a syntactic operation that combines elements to create phrases and sentence. The word means "join together".
C. Make the best matches.
| ___ 1 | PP | a | for example: for, and, or, and but |
| ___ 2 | substitution | b | a specifier of a noun |
| ___ 3 | complement | c | these specify an adjective or a preposition; for example, very, quite, and really |
| ___ 4 | AP | d | describes a system of organization with levels |
| ___ 5 | hierarchical | e | a syntactic constituent that gives information that is implied or expected by the head; it is usually another phrase |
| ___ 6 | determiners | f | these help make the meaning of a head more precise and clearer |
| ___ 7 | degree words | g | for example: the, an, those |
| ___ 8 | specifiers | h | replacing one thing with another; in syntax, replacing a single expression for a group of words to test for phrase structure |
| ___ 9 | conjunctions | i | adjective phrase |
| ___ 10 | determiner | j | prepositional phrase |
D. What kinds of phrases are these? UNDERLINE the head of the phrase.
phrase |
NP | AP | VP |
PP
|
|
| Ex. | these students | x | |||
| 1 | at Willamette University | ||||
| 2 | over the bridge | ||||
| 3 | wait to study | ||||
| 4 | linguistics | ||||
| 5 | a trip to Seattle | ||||
| 6 | in Lausanne Hall | ||||
| 7 | very happy with the test results | ||||
| 8 | often sings during class | ||||
| 9 | almost in the van | ||||
| 10 | a story about the yearbook |