Within noun phrases, articles, and adjectives adopting the form required to reflect the gender and number of the noun that they accompany.
Concord: agreement of nominals and verbs
Endocentric construction向心结构 Subordinate （从属结构） Coordinate （并列结构）
Exocentric construction (外向结构、离心结构）
Syntagmatic vs. Paradigmatic Relations
In Saussure’s view, language is a system of signs (i.e. words), and the value of each individual sign must be explained from its relations to others, or its position in the system. The two principle types of relations which Saussure identified are syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations.
The paradigmatic relation is a relation holding between elements replaceable with each other at a particular place in a structure, or between one element present and the others absent.
➢ There are different approaches to syntax in the linguistic field:
1. The traditional approach, 2. the structural approach 3. the generative grammar are
Government 管辖 （add)
Specific property of verbs, adjectives, prepositions, or nouns that determines the form (especially case) of dependent elements.
Pronouns in English
discussed here
The traditional approach
The traditional approach views a sentence as a sequence of words. The study of sentence formation thus involves the study of the parts of speech and grammatical functions of words, and other categories such as number, gender, case, tense, aspect, voice, concord and government.
IC Analysis 4
The word groups in a sentence are called its constituents 成分.
Constituents as parts of a bigger word group are called its immediate constituents (ICs).直接成分
– Male – Female – Dual
Case 格
Nominative 主格 – Subject
Accusative 宾格 – Direct object
Dative 与格 – Indirect object
Agreement 一致 （add)
Correspondence between two or more sentence elements in respect to their grammatical categories
Those in which there is only one head, with the head being dominant and the other constituents dependent, are subordinate constructions, for example, pretty girls.
The final cuts are known as the ultimate constituents (UCs) 最终成分.
IC Analysis 2 p.75
A sentence is viewed as made up by twopart constructions on a series of levels or layers.
The big word groups contain some smaller ones and the smaller ones may in turn contain some still smaller ones.
Most constructions are exocentric.
Prepositional phrases and subordinate clauses.
IC analysis 直接成分分析法1
Immediate constituent analysis 直接成分 分析法—a descriptive approach
Chapter Four Syntax 70
Syntax is the study of the rules governing the way words are combined to form sentences in a language.
Simply speaking, it is the study of the formation of sentences.
The Structural Approach
Syntagmatic (Horizontal, Chain) relation (Structure) (组合关系)
Paradigmatic (Vertical, Choice) relation (System)
(聚合关系)
Hierarchical structure （Relations of inclusion and domination 分级结构）
➢.
The structural approach
All the linguistic theories after Saussure are structural in that they all regard linguistic units as interrelated with each other in a structure (or system), not as isolated bits.
Coordinate constructions are those in which there are more than one head, e.g. boys and girls, in which the two content constituents, boys and girls, are of equal syntactic status, and no one is dependent on the other.
subordination)递归句 （cf. p.82)
The structural approach
➢ Started by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, the father of modern linguistics, at the beginning of the 20th century.
Sentence types
Binary division in terms of structure:
Simple Non-simple
– Complex – Compound
Extension of sentence
Conjoining (Coordination) 并列句 Embedding (Subordination)嵌入句 Recursiveness (Layers of
Endocentric constructions may be further divided into two subtypes:
subordinate constructions（从属结构）. Coordinate constructions （并列结构）.
Endocentric constructions
IC Analysis 3
Immediate Constituents Analysis is the technique of breaking up sentences into word groups by making successive binary cuttings 二分法until the level of single words is reached.
Number (add)
Singular Plural Dual
– Singular concord:either, neither – Plural concord: both
Gender (add)
Masculine Feminine Neuter ‘Covert’ gender in English
The word that can stand for the whole group is the head, and the other words are its optional modifiers.