REVIEWER

ABEL 2nd Year 1st Sem.

Abstract
Reviewer for the Second Semester for ABEL

Syntax
 LEGEND

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Car

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 Syntax

Content Lexical Categories Adjectives

refer to parts of speech that convey the main meaning in Adjectives describe qualities or characteristics of nouns

sentences, such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs Types of Adjectives

Main Content Lexical Categories • Descriptive Adjectives: Adjectives that describe

qualities of a noun
• Nouns: Represent people, places, things, or ideas
• Quantitative Adjectives: Adjectives that describe
• Verbs: Express actions or states
the quantity of something
• Adjectives: Describe or modify nouns
• Demonstrative Adjectives: Adjectives that point
• Adverbs: Modify verbs, adjectives, or other
out specific things
adverbs
• Comparative and Superlative Adjectives:
Noun Adjectives that compare two or more things
Nouns are words that name entities like people, places, and
Adverbs
abstract concepts
Adverbs provide more detail about verbs, adjectives, or other
Types of nouns adverbs, often indicating manner, time, or degree
• Proper Nouns: These refer to specific names of
people, places, or organizations Types of Adverb

• Common Nouns: General names for things, • Manner Adverbs: Describe how something is
people, or places done
• Countable Nouns: Nouns that can be counted • Time Adverbs: Indicate when something happens
• Uncountable Nouns: Nouns that cannot be • Place Adverbs: Indicate where something happens
counted • Degree Adverbs: Indicate the intensity or degree
• Concrete Nouns: Nouns that represent tangible of something
objects
Content Words
• Abstract Nouns: Nouns that represent intangible
• Open-Class Nature
concepts or ideas
• Content words are open class, meaning new words
Verb are regularly added as language evolves to reflect
Verbs express actions, events, or states of being new concepts, technologies, and trends
• Content lexical categories provide the core
Types of Verb
meaning of our communication. They allow us to
• Action Verbs: Verbs that express physical or
express complex ideas, actions, and descriptions
mental actions
• Stative Verbs: Verbs that express a state of being
or condition
• Transitive Verbs: Verbs that require a direct object
to complete their meaning
• Intransitive Verbs: Verbs that do not take a direct
object

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 Function Lexical Categories • Preposition of Direction: use to refer to the
direction which something moves or travels
• Function Words - words that don't have an o He went into the tunnel
inherent meaning
• They signal the structural relationships that words Conjunctions
have to one another and are the glue that holds A conjunction is a word that is used to connect words,
sentences together. phrases, and clauses.
• Inherently tends to be Closed-Class.
Basic types of Conjunctions:
Types of Function Lexical Categories • Coordinating Conjunctions - a type of
• Articles conjunction that is used to connect words, phrases,
• Preposition clauses, and sentences together.
• Conjunction o My sister likes the summer, but I prefer
the winter
• Pronouns
o For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, So
Articles • Subordinating Conjunctions - a conjunction that
is used to link a subordinate clause, also called a
• An article is a word used to modify a noun, which dependent clause, to an independent clause
is a person, place, object, or idea. o Whenever it rains, we stay inside and
• They modify nouns by pointing out or referring to watch movies.
the noun itself. o Because, after, before, since, although,
than, that, unless, until, when
The Three Articles
• Correlative Conjunctions - are pairs of
• a conjunctions that work together.
• an o You were both strong and fast in that
• the match.
o Both … and, either … or, neither … nor,
Types of Articles and rather … than
• Definite Articles: “The”, is the only definite
article. It is used to refer to a specific noun or Pronoun
group of nouns
A pronoun is a word that can replace a noun in a sentence.
• Indefinite Articles: is an article that refers to a The noun that is replaced by a pronoun is called an
noun without specifying it or refers to a noun to antecedent.
introduce it for the first time. “a & an”
Examples
Prepositions
• He
are words that show the relationship between elements in a • It
sentence. They can express relationships of place, time, • You
direction, and other abstract or logical connections. • I
• They
Examples
• We
• In • Who
• On • Him
• At • Them
• Since • Whoever
• Under • Anyone
• Above • Something
Types of Prepositions Singular Pronouns
• Preposition of Location: use to explain where Singular pronouns refer to a single person or thing. Like
something is located. singular nouns, singular pronouns must use singular verbs.
o I live in New York
• Prepositions of time: use to say when something • I, he, she, it, one, this, someone, something,
is happening. anyone, nobody
o The ghost comes out during the night o Somebody is standing next to the
window

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Plural Pronouns Grammatical Categories
Refers to multiple people or things
are features or properties of words that affect how they
• Plural pronouns must use plural verbs function in a sentence
• we, they, us, them, ourselves, themselves, those,
these, many, several, others Gender
o We go to school every weekdays. It is a specific form of a noun class system, where nouns are
Types of Pronouns assigned to gender categories.
• Possessive Pronouns is a pronoun that expresses Masculine
possession, ownership, origin, relationship, etc. • refers to male beings or objects that are
o mine, yours, his, hers, ours,
grammatically considered male.
• Personal Pronouns - are pronouns that we use to
refer to people and, sometimes, animals. Feminine
o I, you, she, he, it, we, they, me, us • refers to female beings or objects that are
• Relative Pronouns - connect dependent clauses to grammatically considered female.
independent clauses
o who, whom, which, what Neuter
• Reflexive Pronouns - is a pronoun used as an • refers to objects, animals or concepts that are not
object of a verb that refers to the same person or specifically male or female
thing as the subject of the verb.
o myself, yourself, itself, herself, himself, Number
ourselves, themselves
• Demonstrative Pronouns - are used to point to • refers to the distinction between singular and
specific things plural forms of nouns, pronouns, and verbs.
o this, that, these, those • It indicates how many entities are involved.
• Interrogative Pronouns - are pronouns used to ask • Singular - refers to one person, animal or thing
questions about unknown people or things • Plural - refers to more than one person, animal or
o who, whom, what, which, whose thing
• Indefinite Pronouns - is a pronoun that doesn’t
Person
specifically identify who or what it is referring to.
o some, somebody, anyone, anywhere, • refers to the perspective or point of view from
nothing, everybody which a sentence is written or spoken.
• It determines the relationship between the speaker,
the listener, and the subject of the sentence.
• refers to the person who is speaking
• First person
o Singular : I, me, my, mine
o Plural : we, us, our, ours
• Second person
o Singular and Plural: you, your, yours
• Third person
o Singular: he, him, his, she, her, hers, it,
its
o Plural: they, them, their, theirs

Definiteness
It is a grammatical category that indicates whether a noun
refers to a specific, identifiable entity or to a general,
nonspecific one.

Definite noun
Refers to a specific entity that both the speaker and listener
can identify.

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Indefinite noun • Subjunctive Mood - used to express wishes or
Refers to non-specific entity. actions that are contrary to fact. It can also express
requests or demands.
Case
Voice
grammatical category that marks the relationship between a
noun (or pronoun) and other elements in a sentence. refers to the relationship between the action of a verb and
the participants in the sentence (subject and object).
Nominative case
This case marks the subject of a sentence, the entity • Active voice - the subject of the sentence performs
performing the action. the action expressed by the verb
• Passive voice - the subject of the sentence is the
Accusative case receiver of the action, and the doer of the action
It marks the direct object of a verb, the entity directly may or may not be mentioned.
affected by the action.

Genitive case
Challenges To Categorization
It marks possession or association.
Categorization refers to the systematic classification of
Dative case
words into distinct groups based on their grammatical
This case marks the indirect object, often the recipient of properties and functions within sentences.
something
Lexical Category
Instrumental case • A lexical category is a syntactic category for
It indicates the means or tool used to accomplish an action. elements that are part of the lexicon of a language.
Ablative case Content Lexical Categories
It denotes movement away from something or indicates the
• Nouns: cat, love, Kilicao
cause or instrument tense expresses time with reference to
the moment tense of speaking or writing. • Verbs: write, know, be
• Adjectives: happy, taller, fastest
Tense • Adverbs: quickly, very, always

• Present tense - refers to actions or states that Challenges in Categorizing Lexical Categories
occurred at a specific time in the past
• Past tense - refers to actions or states that will Category Shift (Conversion) - also known as zero
happen. derivation, refers to the process by which a word shifts from
• Future tense - refers to actions or states happening one lexical category to another
at the moment of speaking or general truths. • “I received an email from my professor.”
o In this sentence, “email” functions as a
Aspect
noun.
A grammatical category that expresses how an action, event, • "I will email the report to you by noon.
or state unfolds over time. o Here, "email" functions as a verb.

• Simple aspect Polysemy - refers to the phenomenon where a single word

• Progressive aspect has multiple related meanings.
• Perfect aspect
• The word “head“ has numerous related meanings,
• Perfect progressive aspect
both literal and metaphorical, across different
Mood contexts
o Head as Anatomical Body Part
a category that expresses the speaker's attitude toward the o Head as Person in Charge
action or state described by the verb. o Head as Front or Leading Position
o Head as Mental Capacity
• Indicative Mood - used to make factual
o Head as Sexual Act
statements, ask questions or express opinion.
• Imperative Mood - used to give commands,
requests or instructions.

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Ambiguity or Context Dependence - occurs when a word, Immediate Constituent Analysis
phrase, or sentence has more than one possible meaning
based on its context a system of grammatical analysis that divides sentences into
successive layers, or constituents, until, in the final layer,
• "Bank" as a Financial Institution each constituent consists of only a word or meaningful part
o “He went to the bank to withdraw of a word.
money.”
• "Bank" as the Side of a River First introduced by Leonard Bloomfield and developed
o "We had a picnic on the riverbank.” further by Rulon Wells.
• "Bank" as a Collective Noun
o "A bank of clouds moved in from the Importance in the Study of Syntax
west." • Understanding Syntactic Relationships
• The context in which the word is used allows us o It shows how different parts of a
to resolve this ambiguity and determine the correct sentence relate to each other, like the
meaning. subject and the verb
• Analyzing Sentence Ambiguity
Function Lexical Categories
o It allows us to understand how different
• Pronouns: he, myself, who sentence structures can lead to different
• Conjunctions: and, because, either...or meanings.
• Prepositions: in, on, at • Influencing Linguistic Theory
• Determiners: the, those, your o IC Analysis has shaped various
grammatical frameworks, including
Grammatical Categories transformational and phrase structure
grammars, contributing significantly to
Refers to specific properties of a word that can cause that
modern linguistic theory and research.
word and/or a related word to change in form for
grammatical reasons Binary Segmentation
• Number Cutting the sentence into two natural divisions, and each
• Case of these is again cut into two and this process is repeated
• Tense until the smallest meaningful units, the morphemes are
• Gender reached

Challenges in Categorizing Grammatical Categories Example (Phrase Structure Tree):

Syncretism - can be found in the present tense verb

morphology of English, particularly with regular verbs. This
can blur the boundaries between grammatical categories of
S (Sentence)
person, number, and tenses.
(The boy kicked the ball)
• In English, the base form of regular verbs like
"run" does not change for most person and number
combinations in the present tense, except for the NP (Noun VP (Verb
third person singular. Phrase) Phrase)
• SINGULAR The Boy kicked the ball
o I run
• PLURAL NP (Noun
o We run Phrase)
(the ball)
Grammaticalization - is a linguistic phenomenon in which
words or phrases evolve from a more concrete lexical
DET (Determiner) N (Noun) V (Verb) DET (Determiner) N (Noun)
meaning to a more abstract grammatical function. The
The Boy kicked Ball
• The transition of the English word "will" from a
lexical verb meaning "to want" to a future tense
marker. One challenge arises from the ambiguity
in categorizing "will". Linguists must determine
whether to classify "will" as a full verb, an
auxiliary verb, or a future tense marker.

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Sentence (S) o Constructional Ambiguity - when the
grammatical structure of a sentence
A group of words that usually contains a subject and verb, allows for multiple interpretations
with a complete thought. o Derivational Ambiguity - when the
same constituents can be combined in
Noun Phrase (NP)
different ways, leading to different
Contains noun and other associated words which modifies meanings
noun • Problem of Discontinuity - arises when elements
that logically belong together are separated within
Verb Phrase (VP) the sentence structure
Group of main verb and helping verbs within a sentence • Problem of Embedding - arises when a sentence
contains another sentence within it
Adjective Phrase (AP) • Problem of Conjoining - arises when elements are
joined together using conjunctions, such as
one or more words work together to give more information "and," "or," "but,"
about the adjective • Problem of Overlapping ICS - arises when a
sentence contains multiple grammatical
Adverbial Phrase (Adv. P)
constructions that share elements, making it
one or more words work together to give more information difficult to determine the precise boundaries of
about the adverb each constituent

Prepositional Phrase (PP)

one or more words work together to give more information
about the preposition

Construction
any given unit which is to be divided into two component
units

Constituents
• The individual parts of a sentence that can
function as a single unit within a hierarchical
structure
• can be words or group of words that form phrases

Immediate Constituent
This is the two component of the construction, it is found in
the second layer of the tree diagram

Ultimate Constituent
are units at the last level which cannot be further divided
without tampering the meaning

Steps in IC Analysis
1. Identifying Major Constituents Using Binary
Segmentation
2. Breaking down into ultimate constituents
3. Constructing Bracketing or Tree Diagrams

Limitations Of IC Analysis
• Problems of Ambiguity
o Lexical Ambiguity - when a word has
multiple meanings

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