INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS - EMPTY CATEGORY

INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS - EMPTY CATEGORY

NPs can be overtly and non-overtly present in a sentence. Overt NPs are physically present and phonetically pronounced while non-overt NPs are not physically present and pronounced at the surface structure. Anaphor, pronominal and referential expressions are three types of overt NPs and their behavioral features in a sentence is regulated by binding mechanisms. Empty category is a cover term for PRO, pro, NP-trace and Wh-trace. All these are non-overt NPs and except PRO rest of the three empty categories share behavioral features with their overt counterparts. Pro behaves like pronominal, NP-trace has the same behavioral features as that of an anaphor and wh-trace behaves like referential expressions. Out of these four empty categories, PRO and pro are base generated and the other two are movement generated. PRO is the non-overt subject occurring at the subject position of non-finite clauses that is an ungoverned position. In English, it is also a case less position. PRO can have either controlled or arbitrary reference. A control PRO can either have a reference controlled by the subject of the matrix clause, known as subject control or it can be controlled by the object of the main clause, therefore the term, object control. Arbitrary PRO has a generic reference. Small pro is the non-overt subject pronoun occurring at the subject position of finite clauses in Pro-drop languages. The presence and absence of pro at the subject position of finite clause in a language is determined by the pro-drop parameter. English is not a pro-drop language. Traces are results of movement rule move-ɑ.When an element in syntactic structure moves from one syntactic position to the other through move-ɑ, it leaves behind traces. Traces can be of two types namely, NP-trace and Wh-trace. NP-trace is a result of DP-movement from one argument position to another. The trace that is left after that movement is called NP-trace. Wh-traces are results of wh-movement i.e. movement of wh- words to the spec of CP, that is movement of a maximal projection to a non-argument position. Wh- movements leave behind Wh-trace. Empty Category Principle governs two of the empty categories namely, NP-trace and Wh-trace. According to ECP, empty categories especially traces must be properly governed. This sums up empty categories.

 
INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS - EMPTY CATEGORY

INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS - LINGUISTICS ONTOGENY AND PHYLOGENY

INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS - LINGUISTICS ONTOGENY AND PHYLOGENY

A popular approach points to the similarities between the ontogeny and phylogeny of language. The ontogeny and phylogeny argument has force only if the parallels between primate and child language are genuine. Traditionally, children's language is believed to include abstract linguistic representations and processes even though their speech output may be constrained by nonlinguistic factors, such as working memory limitations.

INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS - LINGUISTICS ONTOGENY AND PHYLOGENY

INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS - WH- Movement

INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS - WH- Movement

In linguistic there are various types of movement which affects either heads or maximal projections. Wh-movement is an important phenomenon in a language. It is based on government and binding theory. This is a transformational approach of the theory of universal grammar which was developed by Noam Chomsky in 1980s. It is also called as Principles and Parameters theory as it accepts that all languages have universal structural principles together with various parameters on a language-specific basis. According to this theory Universal grammar has two components that are levels of representation and system of constrains. A language can be represented by different levels. First one is mental lexicon which stores different words then predicates which encode their semantic relationship by assigning theta-roles. The lexical items are arranged at D-structure. X-bar theory regulates the position of specifiers adjuncts and complements around a head X within a phrase XP.

The term Wh-movement originates from early Generative Grammar of 1960s and 1970s and used as reference to the transformational analysis. The Wh-expression appeared in its canonical position at deep structure and then moved leftward out of that position to land its derived position at the front of the sentence/clause at surface structure.

 
INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS - WH- Movement

INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS - APPLICATION OF VARIOUS SYNTACTIC RULES

INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS - APPLICATION OF VARIOUS
SYNTACTIC RULES

Thus we see that syntactic rules do not apply alike to all languages. While the principles may be at the core and apply as a common feature in all language; parameters are more language-specific and apply differently to different languages of the world. Therefore when the child learns to speak, the core principles are already innately encoded. These principles are absolute and form the common basis of the human language. And depending on the parameters of the languages that the child is exposed to, the child acquires the variations in the structures of those particular languages. When the linguist attempts to understand the syntactic rules, he tries to draw the structural similarities to derive the principles and analyses the variations across different languages to describe the parameters. All in all the application of these syntactic rules helps the child acquire the implicit knowledge of the grammar and also aid the linguist in extracting the explicit knowledge of the grammar of the human language.

 

INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS - APPLICATION OF VARIOUS SYNTACTIC RULES

INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS - PREDICATE AND ARGUMENT STRUCTURES

INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS - PREDICATE AND ARGUMENT STRUCTURES

To sum up, the concept of the theta theory answered several question remained unanswered in earlier grammars. The notion of θ-criterion provides us a base to generate well formed sentences. The number of underlying theta role is the same in all languages but as languages differ in regard to their capacity of theta absorption, the surface manifestation of NPs with theta role may differ from language to language. Thus the theta theory/theta criterion accounts for all types of verbs and their possible arguments more adequately than the traditional division of verbs into intransitive and transitive does. Theta absorption states that an argument may not be in the surface structure of a sentence and still it is grammatical. It suggests that the omitted argument has been θ-absorbed. Such θ-absorbed argument can be recovered by analyzing the predicate itself.

 
INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS - PREDICATE AND ARGUMENT STRUCTURES

INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS - X-BAR THEORY

INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS - X-BAR THEORY

X-Bar theory represented by X-Bar Schema does exactly that. It allows formulation of several levels of complex relationships between any category and the lexical item contained in it by avoiding redundancy, improving representational adequacy for all constituents and allowing for the appropriate accommodation of all kinds of complex relationships between catch constituent of a phrase, clause or a sentence. In addition, the implementation of X-Bar theory also allows proper solutions for a lot of computational needs that demands the representation of the structural complexity of human language for the purpose of dealing with Natural Language Processing and automation of sentence generation, parsing and several significant breakthroughs.

 
INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS - X-BAR THEORY