The most important syntactic terms-Part one
 |
| terms in syntax |
1-Active sentence
A sentence in which the NP with the agent role is the subject
Ex: Helen painted the room.
2-Adjective (A)
A lexical category that designates a property that is applicable to the
entities named by nouns, can often take comparative and superlative endings in English, and
functions as the head of an adjective phrase
Ex: red, hearty.
3-Adverb (Adv)
A lexical category that typically names properties that can be applied to
the actions designated by verbs
Ex: quickly,fearfully.
4-Agent
The thematic role of the doer of an action
Ex: Marilyn in (Marilyn fed the dolphin).
5-Auxiliary verb (Aux)
A verb that serves as the specifier of the main verb
Ex: was in ( was talking).
6-Complement
A syntactic constituent that provides information about entities and
locations implied by the meaning of the head.
7-Complement clause
A sentence-like construction that is embedded within a larger
structure
Ex: that his car had been totalled in ( ferry told Mary that his car had been totalled).
8-Conjunction(Con)
A functional category that joins two or more categories of the
same type, forming a coordinate structure
Ex: and in (a man and his dog)
.
9-Constituent
One or more words that make up a syntactic unit
EX: the apple in (the apple fell onto the floor).
10-Coordinate structure
A phrase that is formed by joining two (or more) categories
of the same type with a conjunction such as and or or
Ex: (those men and that woman).
11-Coordinate Structure Constraint
A constraint on transformations that
does not allow an element to be removed from a coordinate structure.
12-Coordination test
A test used to determine if a group of words is a constituent by
joining it to another group of words with a conjunction such as and or or.
13-Deep structure
The structure generated by the phrase structure rules in accordance
with the subcategorization properties of the heads.
14-Degree Word (Deg)
A functional category that serves as a specifier of a
preposition or an adjective
Ex: quite in (quite tired), very in ( very near the house).
15-Determiner (Det)
A functional category that serves as a specifier of a noun
Ex: (a,the,these).
16-Direct object
The NP complement of a verb
Ex: a fish in (fady caught a fish).
17-Head (of a phrase)
The lexical category around which a phrasal category is built
Ex: (V is head of VP, N is head of NP, A of AP, P of PP).
18-Head (of a word)
The morpheme that determines the category of the entire word
Ex: bird in( blackbird).
19-Inversion
A transformation that moves Aux from its position within the VP to a position
in front of the subject, formulated as:Move Aux to C.
20-Island
A constituent that does not permit extraction of a component part
Ex: a coordinated phrase like ferry and Pam).
21-Lexical category
The word-level syntactic categories noun (N), verb (V), adjective
(A), and preposition (P).
نسعد بتعليقك ونؤمن دائما بالنقد البناء