Research log for chapter 9

In this chapter is explained the term syntax, a Greek word which means “arrangement”. Specific grammar rules are used to form a sentence; these precise rules are called generative grammar. This grammar has limited number of rules which can form an infinite number of sentences. There are shown two types of different sentences in the book. One sentence is active and the other sentence is passive, and the difference in those two sentences is in the surface structure. The deep structure is the basic components in the both of the sentences. Recursive rules are the rules that can be applied more than once in producing a structure. Some of the symbols that are used in syntactic analysis are N for noun, V for verb, NP for noun phrase, VP for verb phrase. Other symbols that are used are an arrow (→) for “rewrites as”, pair of round brackets (), for an optional constituent and the curly brackets {}. Very interesting and helpful is the tree diagram. The tree diagram is used to show the grammatical information for a whole sentence. At the top of every tree diagram is the letter S, for sentence, then at lower level the noun phrase-NP and verb phrase VP, then the NP is divided into article –A and noun-N. Other rules that are explained in this chapter are the phrase structure rules. The first rule in this set of rules is: “a sentence rewrites as a noun phrase and a verb phrase”. The second rule is: “a noun phrase rewrites as either an article, an optional adjective and a noun or a pronoun or a proper noun”. The lexical rules are used to specify which words can be used when we turn structures into recognizable English. The word “that” used in sentences is called a complementizer (C), and it is used to introduce a complement phrase (CP). The transformational rules are used to change or move constituents in the structures.