BAB I

INTRODUCTION

1.1. The Background of Study

Based on the experts, Syntax is a central component of human language.

Language has often been characterized as a systematic correlation between certain

types of gestures and meaning. It is not the case that every possible meaning that can

be expressed is correlated with a unique, unanalyzable gesture, be it oral or manual.

Rather, each language has stock of meaning-bearing elements and different ways of

combining them to express different meaning, and these ways of combining them are

themselves meaningful.(Robert and Valin, 2001). Syntax can thus be given the

following characterization, taken from Matthews (1982:1) the term syntax is from

the Ancient Greek syntaxis, a verbal noun which literally means arrangement or

setting out together. Traditionally, it refers to the branch of grammar dealing with

the ways in which words, with or without appropriate inflections, are arranged to

show connections of meaning within the sentence. Similar to the explanation of

Matthew, Robert and Van Valin (2001) expresses the essence of itself as the

following syntax: First and foremost, syntax deals with how sentences are

constructed, and users of human language employ a striking variety of possible

arrangements of the element in sentences.

Syntax is the study of the principles and processes by which sentences are

constructed in particular languages. Syntactic investigation of a given language has

as its goal the construction of a grammar that can be viewed as a device of some sort

for producing the sentences of the language under analysis. (Chomsky, 2002)
The study of syntax is the study of how words combine to from phrases and

ultimately sentences in languages. Because it consists of phrases that are put together

in a particular way, a sentences has a structure. The structure consists of way in

which the words are organized into phrases and the phrases are organized into larger

phrases. The study of phrases and sentences structure is sometimes called grammar.

(Tserdanelis and Wong, 2004)

The syntax of a language is the set of properties which determine the

construction of sentences in that language. If a sentence is constructed according to

those properties it is well formed or grammatical. If a sentence is constructed in

violation of those properties it is ill-formed or ungrammatical. The study of syntax

involves uncovering those properties of language which are involved in the

construction of grammatical sentence in particular languages. (Hawkins, 2001)

Syntax is the system of rules and categories that allows words to be combined to the

form of sentence. The data that linguists use to study syntax consists primarily of

judgments about grammaticality of individual sentence. Roughly speaking, a

sentence is considered grammatical if speakers judge it to be a possible sentence of

their language. (Ogrady, at all.,1989)

Syntax is that part of our linguistics knowledge which concerns the

structure of sentences. Knowing a language also means being able to put words

together to form sentences to express our thoughts. (Fromkin and Rodman,1983)

From the experts explanation above we can conclude that syntax is the

study of internal structure of sentences. In this case, it explains how words are

arranged become phrases and clauses for constructing sentence. It is commonly we

call structure. Structure manages how words can be combined with another for

creating good sentence.

1.2. The Problem of Study

Based on the explaination above, we can conclude the problem of this as

follow :

1. What is introduction to syntax ?

2. What is syntactic structure ?
3. How about the grammatical and non grammatical sentence
4. What is phrase structure rule ?
5. What is transformer rules ?
 BAB II

THE DISCUSSION

2.1. Introduction to Syntax

Introduction to Syntax1 (Manuela Schnenberger, University of Oldenburg)

Introduction Linguistic theory has the following three main objectives:

1. to determine the set of rules (knowledge) which generate (i.e. enumerate

explicitly by means of rules) the grammatical utterances of a native speaker,

2. to determine the common properties pertaining to the different languages of

the world.
3. to gain some insight into how the human brain works by studying language.

The concepts of competence and performance are central to linguistic theory:

1. Competence refers to the implicit knowledge a speaker has of his mother

tongue. This knowledge is mostly unconscious, and more or less complete by

the age of 6. The concept of competence is similar to Saussure's concept of

langue.
2. Performance refers to the actual use of this linguistic knowledge. Language

production may be affected by one's psychological state, e.g. tiredness,

drunkenness, stress. Performancein contrast to competenceis not perfect

and errors can occur, as, e.g. in slips of the tongue or incomplete sentences. In

other words, these errors belong to the domain of linguistic performance, and

are independent of the linguistic competence. The concept of performance

more or less corresponds to Saussure's concept of parole.

Syntax is one of the core domains of linguistics. Other core domains are

morphology, semantics, pragmatics, phonetics, and phonology. While morphology

investigates the internal structure of words, syntax concentrates on how words are

arranged in a sentence. It is concerned with the structure of sentences and the smaller

parts which make up sentences. It studies the rules which govern word order and

sentence structure. Some of the aspects discussed in syntax are :

- Word order: there are variations in word order between languages spoken

nowadays (e.g. English (1) vs. German (2)) as well as within a language from

a diachronic point of view (e.g. Old English vs. present-day English (3)).

1) a. [Hedwig smiled gleefully].

b. Harry noticed that [Hedwig smiled gleefully].

2) a. [Hedwig lachte berglcklich].

b. Harry beobachtete, dass [Hedwig berglcklich lachte].

3) a. God him worhte oa reaf of fellum God them wrought then garments

of skins "Then God made garments of skin for them."

b. Ct he Saul ne dorste ofslean that he Saul not dared murder "that

he didn't dare to murder Saul"

2.2.1. Word Categories

a. Lexical Categories

A basic distinction is drawn between lexical categories and functional

categories. Section 2.1 discusses lexical categories, and Section 2.2 functional

categories. In English there are five lexical categories: N(ouns), Adj(ectives),

Adv(erbs), V(erbs) and P(repositions).3 Lexical categories are open-class categories,

i.e. new members can easily be added to the list of nouns, verbs, etc., and they have a

rich semantic content.

 1. Nouns (Ns)

The words in (10) are nouns. You may simply know this, but how can you

actually support this intuition? There are basically two tests we can use to show that

the words in (10) are nouns. The first concerns morphology, the second distribution.

Ex : cat, frog, lynx, ox

Morphology

Morphology studies the internal structure of words. In English, nouns can

usually be inflected for plural, i.e., they bear an overt morphological mark for plural.

The regular form is -s (pronounced as [r], [z], or [Iz], which are allomorphs of the

morpheme {plural}), as in (11a-c), but there are also less productive forms, as in

(11d) and (11e).

a. a cat cats

b. a frog frogs

c. a lynx lynxes

d. an ox oxen

e. a mouse mice

2. Adjectives (As)

These words are adjectives. We can again use the two criteria discussed

above, i.e. morphology and distribution, to show that adjectives are different from

nouns, etc. Example : red, happy, handsome

English adjectives do not inflect for pluralas opposed to German: das alte

Haus vs. die alten Huserbut there is morphological marking for comparative and
superlative forms. Comparative and superlative may be realised as bound morphs (-

er, -est), as in (16a) and (16b), or appear as free morphs (more, the most).

a. red, redder, the reddest

b. happy, happier, the happiest

c. handsome, more handsome, the most handsome.

3. Adverbs (Advs)

Adverbs are often (but not always) derived from adjectives by suffixation of

ly. They are basically invariant, but some may occur with comparative morphology

(er, est). Example : happily, softly, carefully, quickly, mildly, fast, often.

As to their distribution, like adjectives they can be modified by degree

adverbs. Unlike adjectives, however, they cannot appear in the environment of a

noun (the asterisk * which precedes an example indicates that it is ungrammatical).

They can, however, appear with verbs.

1. a. very happily

b. rather fast

c. quite cunningly

2. a.* a happily cat

b.* the cunningly answer

3. a. purr happily

b. run fast

c. hunt cunningly

2.2. Syntactic Structure

2.2.1. The Independence Of Grammar

 First, what basis do we actually go about separating grammatical sequences

from ungrammatical sequences? I shall not attempt to give a complete answer to this

question here (cf. 55 6,7), but I would like to point out that several answers that

immediately suggest themselves could not be correct. First, it is obvious that the set

of grammatical sentences cannot be identified with any particular corpus of

utterances obtained by the linguist in his field work. Any - grammar of a language

will project the finite and somewhat accidental corpus of observed utterances to a set

(presumably infinite) of grammatical utterances. In this respect, a grammar mirrors

the behavior of the speaker who, on the basis of a finite and accidental experience

with language, can produce or understand an indefinite' . . number of new sentences.

Indeed, any explication of the notion "grammatical in L" (i.e., any characterization of

"grammatical in L" in terms of "observed utterance of L,") can be thought of as

offering an explanation for this fundamental aspect of linguistic behavior.

Second, the notion "grammatical" .cannot be identified with '.'mea'ningful"or

"significant" in any semantic sense. Sentences (1) .and (2) are equally nonsensical,

but any speaker of English will recognize that only the former is grammatical. , . 2

(1) Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. (2) Furiously sleep ideas green colorless.

Similarly; 'there is no semantic reason to prefer (3) to (5) or (4) to (6), but only (3)

and (4) are grammatical sentences of English., (3) have you a book on modern

music? (4) the book seems interesting. . (5) read you a book on modern music? (6)

the child seems sleeping. Such examples suggest that any search for a semantically

based definition of "grammaticalness" will be futile. We shall see, in fact, in 5 7, that

there are deep structural reasons for distinguishing (3) and (4) from (5) and (6); but
before we are able to find an explanation for such facts 'as these we shall have to

carry the theory of syntactic structure a good deal beyond its familiar limits.

Third, the notion "grammatical in English" cannot be identi-fied in any way

with the notion "high order of statistical approximation to English." It is fair to

assume that neither sentence (1) nor (2) (nor indeed any part of these sentences) has

ever occurred in an English discourse. Hence, in any statistical model for

gtammaticalness, these sentences will be ruled out on identical grounds as equally

'remote' from English. Yet (I), though nonsensical, is grammatical, while (2) is not.

Presented with these sentences, a speaker of English will read (1) with a normal

sentence intonation, but he will read (2) with a falling intonation on each word; in

fact, with just the intonation pattern given to any sequence of unrelated words. He

treats each word in (2) as a separate phrase. Similarly, he will be able to recall (1)

much more easily than (2), to learn it much more quickly, etc. Yet he may never have

heard or seen any pair of words from these sentences joined in actual discourse. To

choose another example, in the context "I saw a .fragile-," the words "whale" and

"of" may have equal (i.e., zero) frequency in the past linguistic experience of a

speaker who will immediately recognize that one of these substitutions, but not the

other, gives a grammatical sentence. We cannot, of course, appeal to the fact that

sentences such as (1) 'might' be uttered in some sufficiently far-fetched context,

while(2) would never be, since the basis for this differentiation between (1) and (2) is

precisely what we are interestedin determining. Evidently, one's ability to produce

and recognize grammatical utterances is not based on notions of statistical

approximation and the like. The custom of calling grammatical sentences those that
"can occur", or those that are "possible", has been responsible for some confusion

here. It is natural to understand "possible" as meaning "highly probable" and to

assume that the linguist's sharp distinction between grammatical and ungrammatical2

is motivated by a feeling that since the 'reality7 of language is too complex to be

described completely, he must content himself with a schematized version replacing

"zero probability, and all extremely low probabilities, by impossible, and all higher

probabilities by pos~ible."~ We see, however, that this idea is quite incorrect, and

that a structural analysis cannot be understood as a schematic summary developed by

sharpening the blurred edges in the full statistical picture. If we rank the sequences of

a given length in order of statistical approximation to English, we will find both

grammatical and ungrammatical sequences scattered throughout the list; there

appears to be no particular relation between order of approximation and

grammaticalness. Despite the undeniable interest and importance of semantic and

statistical studies of language, they appear to have no direct relevance to the problem

of determining or characterizing the set of grammatical utterances. I think that we are

forced to conclude that grammar is autonomous and independent of meaning, and

that probabilistic models give no particular insight into some of the basic problems of

syntactic structure.

2.3. Grammatical And Non Grammatical Sentence

 A grammatical English sentence can be generated by this grammar might be

"A nice girl is eating a cake on the bus". How about a grammatical English sentence

that CAN'T be generated by this grammar? Is "Walking down the street is a poor

widow" a case? I've learned that "sentences that are impossible because the words are

in the wrong order with respect to one another are called ungrammatical" for

example "the cat on is the mat" or "the cat on the mat is".

If a sentence is ungrammatical just based on its words' order, so how can be

an ungrammatical sentence generated by the above grammar? If I say "Boy jumps",

is this an ungrammatical sentence? (the singular noun must have a determiner to be

grammatical). If it is, I can create an ungrammatical sentence that can be generated

by the grammar above.

A string of words is grammatical if it follows the principles of grammar of a

language, ungrammatical if it does not. For instance, in English the sentence "John

did ran" is ungrammatical, and "John ran" is grammatical. According to Chomsky,

grammatical sentences should be judged as appropriate sentences of a language by

native speakers of the language. Whether the principles of grammar are innate and

whether they are explicitly represented in the brain are matters of debate.

2.3.1. Differences between grammatical andungrammatical structure in english

language

In English Language, grammaticality of a sentence is not only focus on the

structure of the sentences, but it is also determine by the meaning of the sentences.

This is because, there are3 types of grammaticality in English languages, which are

meaningful but ungrammatical,meaningless but grammatical and also meaningless

and ungrammatical. For example, in thecontext of a sentence that is meaningful but

ungrammatical, we can see the differences in thesentence:

Sisters siblings of their brothers they are

This is comprehensible or meaningful as a sort of "Yoda English", but, among

other problems with the sentence, there is no way that the grammar would allow two

NP's to comenext to each other, such as sisters and siblings of their

brothers.Besides that, the second type of the sentence grammaticality is meaningless

butgrammatical, where we can see it in the sentence:

Sisters are brothers of their siblings

This sentence switches places of the nouns "siblings" and "brothers" from the

originalsentence, but otherwise it has the same structure as the original. Since the

original is grammatical by our definition, this sentence must also be grammatical.

However, it is meaningless since"sisters" are female siblings and "brothers" are male

siblings, making it impossible that "sisters"could also be "brothers".The third type is

meaningless and grammatical in the sentence:

Sisters brothers of their siblings they are.

This is the "Yoda English" version of the sentence in meaningless but

grammatical. As pointed about for meaningful but ungrammatical, "Yoda English" is

ungrammatical by the rulesof the grammar that we are referring to, and as pointed out

for meaningless but grammaticanglish Language

2.4. Phrase Structure Rules

 Phrase structure rules are a type of rewrite rule used to describe a given

language's syntax, and are closely associated with the early stages of transformational

grammar, being first proposed by Noam Chomsky in 1957.[1] They are used to break

down a natural language sentence into its constituent parts, also known as syntactic

categories, including both lexical categories (parts of speech) and phrasal categories.

A grammar that uses phrase structure rules is a type of phrase structure grammar.

Phrase structure rules as they are commonly employed operate according to the

constituency relation, and a grammar that employs phrase structure rules is therefore

a constituency grammar; as such, it stands in contrast to dependency grammars,

which are based on the dependency relation.

Phrase Structure Rules Phrase Structure Rules are rules of the sort X Y Z

This rule says take the node X and expand it into the nodes Y and Z. Alternately,

going from right to left (or from below), it says if you have a Y and a Z next to each

other, you can combine them to make an X. 1 Phrase structure rules can be

categorial i.e. rules that expand categories into other categories, or they can also be

lexical i.e. rules that expand category labels by word (lexical items).

A grammar can then be thought of as a set of phrase structure rules

(categorial rules plus lexical rules). The categorial rules can be thought of as (part of)

the syntax and the lexical rules as (part of) the lexicon. Some Phrase Structure

Rules for English (7) Categorial Rules a. S NP Modal VP b. VP V AP PP c. AP

ADVP A d. ADVP ADV e. PP P NP f. NP D N (8) Lexical Rules a. N

girl b. N boy c. Adv incredibly d. A conceited e. V seem f. Modal

must g. P to h. D that i. D this Some sentences these rules will generate: (9)
a. This boy must seem incredibly conceited to that girl.

b. This boy must seem incredibly conceited to this girl.

c. This boy must seem incredibly conceited to that boy.

d. This boy must seem incredibly conceited to this boy.

e. This girl must seem incredibly conceited to that girl.

f. This girl must seem incredibly conceited to this girl.

g. This girl must seem incredibly conceited to that boy.

h. This girl must seem incredibly conceited to this boy. How many more sentences

will these rules generate? Optional constituents How do we handle cases like: (10)

This boy must seem incredibly stupid.

2.5. Transformational Rules

As mentioned in 5.2, sentence relatedness is part of speakers' syntactic

knowledge. Chomsky attempts to account for this aspect of syntax by postulating that

there are deep structures and surface structures. Deep structures are the basic

structures generated by phrase structure rules. Surface structures are derived

structures, the structures of sentences that we actually speak. Surface structures are

derived from deep structures via transformations.

One of the linguistic phenomena that give rise to the above postulation
is discontinuous constituents. Consider (37) and (38):
(37)John turned the machine off.
(38) John turned off the machine.
Sentences like these challenged the effectiveness of immediate constituent
analysis adopted in structural grammar. Native speakers of English all know that the
two sentences are related and that turn and off are one constituent of the verb phrase.
TG grammarians call the constituent turn and off in (37) a discontinuous constituent.
The two sentences are generated by one phrase structure rule rather than two. (37) is
derived from (38) by transformation. The word off is a verbal particle. It can be
moved according to a transformational rule calledparticle movement transformation:
If the verb is followed by verbal particle followed by a noun phrase, the particle can
be moved to the right of the noun phrase.
Particle movement transformation is a simple transformation which involves
reordering of constituents. In
addition, replacement,insertion, deletion and copying are also frequently used
transformational operations.
In deriving the surface structure of Help yourself to the cake, two transformational
rules have been applied. The phrase structure rule can generate the deep structure:

In English, there is a reflexivization rule which goes:

If there are identical NPs in the same sentence that refer to the same object or
individual, replace the second with its corresponding personal reflexive pronoun.
Applying this rule, we get the underlying structure (a structure which is the result of
transformation and in which further transformation will take place).
In English, the subject NP of an imperative sentence can be deleted. Applying this

rule, we get the surface structure:

When we turn an active sentence into a passive sentence, we do it by way

of reordering, replacement and insertion. First, switch the position of the NPs.

Second, replace the verb with the auxiliary be plus the past participle of the verb

(with be agreeing with the preceding NP in number and with the original verb in

tense). Third, insert the preposition by to the left of the NP following the past

participle. The result of the transformations can be shown by the tree diagrams:

When we turn a declarative sentence into a tag question, copying is first used.

Consider the following declarative sentences:

(39) He is not at home.

(40) They are not working.

(41) She has two brothers.

(42) We have enough time.

Turning these sentences into tag questions we must first copy the verb beor have or

the auxiliary verb to the right of the sentence, make it negative if affirmative, and

vice versa. Then we copy the subject NP to the right of the copied verb. Finally, we

add a question mark. Here are the tag questions transformed from the declarative

sentences:

(43) He is not at home, is he?

(44) They are not working, are they?

(45) She has two brothers, hasn't she?

(46) We have enough time, haven't we?

The transformations are much more complicated if more data are given. Our purpose

here is simply to illustrate copying as a transformational operation. The formulation

of transformational rules is a process of hypothesis formulation, testing, and

reformulation. Given the following sentences, we have to revise our generalization

about how to turn declarative sentences into tag questions:

(47) The boy is not at home.

(48) The girl who is singing has two brothers.

We have to revise the statement concerning the copying of verbs and the subject NP

like this:

Copy the verb be or have or auxiliary of the sentences or that of the main sentence if

there are embedded sentences. Copy the subject NP to the right of the copied verb
and replace it with its corresponding personal pronoun if the head of the NP is a

noun.

This statement is actually still not adequate, as it cannot account for the

transformation of the following sentences into tag questions:

(49) The boy studies Chinese.

(50) The boy has been sleeping the whole day.

Our revised statement falls short because in (49), there is no auxiliary verb, and

the verb is neither be nor have, and in (50) there are two auxiliary verbs. The

statement needs to be further revised to account for the data. Due to the limit of space

we will not go on to revise the statement. What is meant here is to show that

generalization of transformational rules is an ongoing process of theorizing. If

transformations do exist as a mental process there must be rules governing it.

Transformational generative grammar is a theoretical grammar (not a pedagogic

grammar) which attempts to account for this aspect of speakers' knowledge of

construction. It is therefore psychological in nature, as made clear by Chomsky

(1965).
 BAB 3

COVER

3.1. CONCLUSSIONS

Syntax is a central component of human language. Language has often been

characterized as a systematic correlation between certain types of gestures and

meaning. It is not the case that every possible meaning that can be expressed is

correlated with a unique, unanalyzable gesture, be it oral or manual. Rather, each

language has stock of meaning-bearing elements and different ways of combining

them to express different meaning, and these ways of combining them are themselves

meaningful.(Robert and Valin, 2001). Syntax can thus be given the following

characterization, taken from Matthews (1982:1) the term syntax is from the Ancient

Greek syntaxis, a verbal noun which literally means arrangement or setting out

together
 REFERENCES

Haegeman, Liliane. 1992. Introduction to Government & Binding Theory. Oxford:

Blackwell.
Haegeman, Liliane and Jacqueline Guron. 1999. English Grammar: A generative
perspective. Oxford: Blackwell.
Ouhalla, Jamal. 1994. Introducing Transformational Grammar: From Principles and
Parameters to Minimalism. London: Arnold.
Pusks, Genoveva. 2002. 'English Linguistics First Year Handout: Introduction to
Syntax'. Ms., University of Geneva.
Roberts, Ian. 1997. Comparative Syntax. London: Arnold.