Sentence
structure:
Categories
Instructor: Ta Le Minh Phuoc
LEXICAL CATEGORIES: single words
• Nouns (N): proper nouns (PN), common nouns and pronouns (PRO).
• Verbs (V): go, eat, walk, etc.
• Adjectives (A): good, beautiful, short, etc.
• Adverbs (ADV): luckily, approximately, etc.
• Prepositions (P): on, about, at, etc.
• Determiners (DET): articles, possessives, demonstratives and quantifiers.
• Auxiliaries (AUX): be (passive voice, progressive tenses), do, have.
• Modals (M): can-could, will-would, etc.
• Complementizers (C): that, if, etc. (To introduce a SUBORDINATE clause)
• Conjunctions (CONJ): and, or, but, etc.
LEXICAL CATEGORIES: single words
• Determiners (DET):
+ Articles (ART): a/an, the.
+ Possessives (POSS): my, your, his, her, their, its.
+ Demonstratives (DEM): this, that, these, those.
+ Quantifiers (Q): any, no, every, either, etc.
Exercise 1: Identify the category of each word in the
following sentences.
1/ The sand at the beach is contaminated.
2/ That speech would touch anyone who heard it.
3/ And you should know that he will never change his
mind.
4/ Some boats must have sunk in the storm.
5/ I wonder if he will marry Jane soon.
DISTRIBUTION
“By assigning a word to a particular category, we
make a general statement about its distribution.”
For example: ‘Man’ is assigned as a noun.
We can predict its distribution:
+ ‘Man’ should be preceded by an article à a man,
the man.
+ ‘Man’ can be modified by an adjective that
precedes it à a handsome man.
LET’S CHANT 3 TIMES…
“WORDS THAT HAVE THE SAME DISTRIBUTION
FALL INTO THE SAME CATEGORY”
For example:
A handsome MAN
A handsome BOY
à ‘MAN’ and ‘BOY’ belong to the same lexical
category, which are ‘nouns’.
COMPLEMENTARY DISTRIBUTION
“Two elements of the same category cannot appear at
the same time.”
For example:
(1) The dog
(2) My dog
(3) *The my dog
“The” and “My” is in complementary distribution.
COMPLEMENTARY DISTRIBUTION
“Two elements in complementary distribution should
belong to the same category.”
For example:
(1) I can swim.
(2) I will swim.
(3) *I can will swim.
‘Can’ and ‘will’ is in complementary distribution à they
should belong to the same category, which is ‘modals’.
COMPLEMENTARY DISTRIBUTION
“Two elements of the same category can co-occur if
there is a conjunction between them.”
For example:
(1) He is kind.
(2) He is handsome.
(3) *He is kind handsome.
(4) He is kind and handsome.
REMEMBER
There is only ONE slot for the
position of DETERMINER.
COMPLEMENTARY DISTRIBUTION
“Auxiliaries also have the same behavior like
adjectives before a noun. More than two auxiliaries
can co-occur in the same structure.”
For example:
(1) The meal has been cooked.
(2) The meal has been being cooked.
Challenge 2
Numerals: one, two, three, etc.
Ordinals: first, second, last, etc.
In some materials, numerals and ordinals are
classified as ‘determiners’ . Do you agree or
disagree? Explain your answer.
PHRASAL CATEGORIES
• Noun phrases (NP)
• Verb phrases (VP)
• Adjective phrases (AP)
• Adverbial phrases (ADVP)
• Prepositional phrases (PP)
à Phrases of the same category have the same positions
in the structure and the same range of functions.
LET’S CHANT THREE TIMES…
“ TREES REPRESENT ‘CATEGORIES’,
NOT ‘FUNCTIONS’ ”
“Next week” functions
as an ADVP but its
category is a NP.
Therefore, when we
draw the syntactic tree,
the label for “next week”
should be a “NP”, not an
“ADVP”.
ADJECTIVE PHRASES
ADVERBIAL PHRASES
PREPOSITIONAL PHRASES
• A PP requires a single
NP as its complement.
• The NP is the sister of
the head P.
PREPOSITIONAL PHRASES
• A complex PP has more
than one preposition in
the structure.
PREPOSITIONAL PHRASES
• There is another type of
prepositions that requires no NP
complement after it.
Ex: now (= at the moment)
there (= on the table)
upstairs, downstairs
-wards ending: downwards,
onwards, etc.
CO-ORDINATE PHRASES
“ Any constituent, of any category, can consist a
coordination of constituents of THE SAME
CATEGORY.”
CO-ORDINATE PHRASES
Coordinate NPs has as many heads as there are
nouns coordinated in them.
Exercise 2: Draw phrase markers for the following phrases.
Use a triangle for the structures you have not learned.
1/ the man or the woman.
2/ quite beautiful but too selfish.
3/ very generous and warm-hearted.
4/ beside the beach and next to a tree.
5/ upstairs or downstairs.
