Brackets and subscript labels
[E] Some categories
Syntactic categories: refer to a word or a phrase that performs a particular grammatical function, such as the subject or the predicate
Lexical categories: (parts of speech)
Major lexical categories (open categories):
N. V. Adj. Adv.
Minor lexical categories (closed categories):
Det. Aux. Prep. Pron. Conj. Int.
Phrasal categories: NP, VP, PP, AP
[F] Grammatical Relations
The structural and logical functional relations of constituents
It concerns the way each noun phrase in the sentence relates to the verb
Subject of and direct object of
Structural subject, structural object
Logical subject (the doer of the action), the logical object (the recipient of the action)
These two groups of subjects and objects may have different positions
[G] Combinational rules
Are small in numberà Yield all the possible sentences
Rule out the impossible ones
① phrase structure rules (rewrite rules)
Sà NP VP
(A sentence consists of, or is rewritten as, a noun phrase and a verb phrase)
NPà (Det.) (Adj.) N (PP) (S)
An optional determiner….and obligatory noun,
VPà V (NP) (POP) (S)
APà A (PP) (S)
PPà P NP
② the recursiveness of phrase structure rules
Significantly, the above rules can generate an infinite number of sentences, and sentences with infinite length, due to their recursive properties.
③ X- bar theory
Headà an obligatory word that givers the phrase its name

XP or X-phrase
XPà (Specifier) X (complement)

Formula:
X”à Spec X’
                  X-bar theory (X-bar schema)
X’à X compl
Tree diagram
X”

Specifier       X’

              X      complement
[H] Syntactic movement and movement rules
Syntactic movement: occurs when a constituent in a sentence moves out of its original place to a new place
Transformational rules
① NP-movement and WH-movement
NP-movement: active voice à passive voice
Postposing, preposing
WH-movement: affirmativeà interrogative
Leftward matter to the sentence initial-position
② Other types of movement
Aux-movement: the movement of an auxiliary to the sentence-initial position
③ D-structure and S-structure
Two levels of syntactic representation of a sentence structure:
One that exists before movement takes place
The other that occurs after movement takes place
Formal linguistic exploration:
D-structure: phrase structure rules + lexicon
Sentence at the level of D-structure
The application of syntactic movement rules transforms a sentence from
D-structure level to S-structure level
Transformational-generative line of analysis
④ Move α– a general movement rule
Move any constituent to any place
Certain constituents can move to only certain positions
[I] Universal Grammar (UG)
Principles-and-parameters theory:
UG is a system of linguistic knowledge and a human species-specific gift which exits in the mind or brain of a normal human being and which consists of some general principles and parameters about natural languages.
① general principles of UG
Case condition principle: a noun phrase must have case and case is assigned by V or P to the object position or by Aux to the subject position
Adjacency condition or Case assignment: a case assignor and a case recipient should stay adjacency to each other.
It is strictly observed in English well-formed sentences, not other languages (no other phrasal category can intervene between a verb and its direct object)
The Adjacency condition must be subject to parametric variation in order to explain the apparent adjacency violations such as in French.
② The parameters of UG
Parameters are syntactic options of UG that allow general principles to operate in one way or another and contribute to significant linguistic variations between and among natural languages.

[+strict adjacency]
Adjacency parameter
[-strict adjacency]

[Rightward directionality]
The Directionality Parameter  à involves word order
[Leftward directionality]
En: VP word order    VPà V NP
Jp: VP word order    VPà NP V
Natural languages are viewed to vary according to parameters set on UG principles to particular values.

Chapter 7  Semantics
[A] The definition of semantics
Definition: the study of meaning from the linguistic point of view
[B] Some views concerning the study of meaning
① the naming theory: The linguistic forms or symbols, in other words, the words used in a language are taken to be labels of the objects they stand for; words are just names or labels for things.
② the conceptualist view: There’s no direct link between a linguistic form and what it refers to (i.e. between language and the real world); rather, in the interpretation of meaning, they are linked through the mediation of concepts in the mind.
Thought/reference à concept

Symbol/Form (words)                          Referent à(real object)
Proposed by Ogden & Richards
③ contextualism: John Firth
The situational context: in a particular spatiotemporal situation
Linguistic context (co-text): the probability of a word’s co-occurrence or collocation with another word
④ behaviorism à Bloomfield  based on contextualist view
Behaviorists define meaning of a language form as the situation in which the speaker utters it and the response it calls forth in the hearer
S: stimulus          r: response
Jill          Jack
S---------r………s---------R
(the small letters r, sàspeech)(the capitalized letter R, Sàpractical events)
[C] Sense and reference
Sense: is concerned with the inherent meaning of the linguistic form, abstract and de-contextualized.
Reference: means what a linguistic form refers to in the real, physical world; it deals with the relationship between the linguistic element and the non-linguistic world of experience
Moving star        I once was bitten by a dog.
Morning star       Mind you. There is a dog over there.
[D] Major sense relations
① synonymyà the sameness or close similarity of meaning
a. dialectal synonyms——synonyms used in different regional dialects
b. stylistic synonyms——synonyms differing in style
c. synonyms that differ in their emotive or evaluative meaning
d. collocational synonyms
e. semantically different synonyms
② polysemy——one word that has more than one related meaning
③ homonymy
Homophones: when two words are identical in sound
Homographs: when two words are identical in spelling
Complete homonyms: when two words are identical both in spelling and in
Sound
Etymology
④ hyponymy—— inclusiveness
The word which is more general in meaning is called the superordinator.
The word which is more specific in meaning is called hyponym.
Co-hyponym
⑤ antonymy——oppositeness
Gradable antonyms
Complementary antonyms
Relational opposites: pairs of words that exhibit the reversal of a relationship between items
⑥ metonymy
Meaning based on a close connection in everyday experience, of which can be based on a container-contents relation, a whole-part relation, or a representative-symbol relationship