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Review before the Syntax Test

• One person, the "leader" in each group of 3-4 student will read the questions.
• Group members will agree on an answer.
• If the answer is correct, the "leader" will affirm the answer.
• If the answer is incorrect, the leader will encourage another attempt.

1. What kind of auxiliary verbs occupy the "I position"? Some examples are: should, might, and will.
Ans: Modal auxiliary verbs (or modal auxiliaries)

2. The classification of words based on their complement options is called what? I'll give you a hint, it starts with "sub".
Ans: Subcategorization

3. Specifiers for verbs are called what?
Ans: Adverbs

4. Specifiers for adjectives and prepositions are called what?
Ans: Degree words

5. In English, if a sentence does not have a modal verb, what steps must you do to create a question?
Ans: Insert the word "do" and then move it to the first position. Leave a "trace": t.

6. Explain in English the two different meanings of this sentence: "I saw Nick with the binoculars."
Possible ans:
1. I used binoculars to see Nick./I used binoculars so I could see Nick./I saw Nick by using binoculars.
2. Nick was using binoculars when I saw him./I saw Nick and he was using binoculars.

7. The part of grammar that is concerned with sentence formation and the study of rules and categories of sentences in human language is called what?
Ans: Syntax

8. What are the lexical categories? These have clearer meaning and include categories that can be inflected.
Ans: Noun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition

9. "Run" can be a verb or a noun: "I know that he will run fast." or "There will be a run on Sunday to raise money for cancer." We can tell the syntactic category of a word by its meaning, by its inflectional affixes, and by what non-lexical words it co-occurs with. Explain why we know "run" in the first sentence is a V and why "run" in the second sentence is a N.
Ans: In the first sentence "run" co-occurs with the auxiliary "will", so we know "run" is a verb. In the second sentence, "run" co-occurs with a determiner, so we know "run" is a noun.

10. There are three kinds of phrase structure tests: substitution, movement, and coordination. Explain the substitution test and give an example.
Possible ans: A group of words is a phrase if it can be substituted with a single expression and can still be grammatical. "The students studied linguistics" = "They studied linguistics". Therefore, "the students" is a NP.

11. The head of a sentence is what?
Ans: Inflection = I

12. A statement is changed to a question by an operation called what?
Ans: Move

13. Does "merge" generate the "deep structure" or the "surface structure"?
Ans: Deep structure