The Science of Language

Study guide for week 3:The goals for this week are: 1) lay the foundation for looking at syntactic phenomena in English and other languages by examining the categories of words; 2) explore some of the subcategories of words in English; 3) to examine the relationship between language and thought, in particular, how much of a role language plays in shaping thought.

Readings:
Language Files: 6.1-6.4.1; 15.3-4.
Pinker: Chapter 3

Exercises from the text:
Language Files: File 6.2, ex. 1-4; File 6.3, ex. 1-2; File 6.4, ex. 1,

**WARNING** If you feel like you understand the concept associated with a particular exercise from the text, please stop. Write “got it” and move on to the next exercise. **WARNING**

1. Each word can be assigned to a lexical category. Examine the following sentences and indicate the lexical category of each word.

a. The glass broke.
b. He ran toward the red post.
c. This tall tree gives good shade.
d. He took out the garbage.

2. Generate a list of words of each category.

a. Nouns: __________________________________________

b. Verbs: __________________________________________

c. Adjectives: ________________________________________

d. Adverbs: __________________________________________

e. Prepositions: _______________________________________

f. Conjunctions: _______________________________________

g. Articles: ___________________________________________

3. Verbs are divided into subcategories on the basis of the elements that they can or must take as neighbors in a sentence. A transitive verb such as invite must take a NP after it, represented as: +[ __ NP]. An intransitive verb such as laugh cannot take an NP after it, represented as: -[ __ NP]. Some verbs such as eat take an optional NP, represented as: +[ __ (NP)]. Determine whether each of the following verbs has the frame +[ __ NP],
-[ __ NP], or +[ __ (NP)].

a. faint
b. destroy
c. retract
d. speak
e. clean

4. In the sentences below, say what role each bracketed noun or pronoun is playing.

a. [She] loves [you].
b. [Mary] thought [he] had hidden [the money].
c. [Someone] has stolen [the president’s] papers.
d. [People] want [politicians] to tell the [truth].
e. [The FBI] doesn’t want [the CIA] interfering in [their] affairs.
f. [You] must not let [friends] pressure [you].
g. Students [who] work hard achieve the success [which] [they] deserve.

Essential concepts:

a) constituent
b) hierarchical
c) structure structural ambiguity
d) constituent test
e) tree diagram
f) major/minor lexical categories
g) phrasal categories
h) noun phrase (NP)
i) verb phrase (VP)
j) subcategory
o) intransitive verb
p) transitive verb
q) ditransitive verb
r) recursion