Week 2 - Morphology, Grammar Basics and Word S Monday, September 10, 2018 1:00 PM Grammar basics Semantic composition of sentences - Sentence: a string of words that expresses a proposition - Proposition: A state, event or action involving one or more participants - A sentence minimally contains a predicate and its arguments - Predicate: describes what is happening; a state, event or action - Argument: Describe the participants in the state, event or action. The children(argumentsubject) found(predicate) a kitten(argumentobject). Sentence qualifiers - Sentences can also contain expressions that provide further information about the on Called sentence qualifiers - Time, place, manner, instrument, source/goal Arguments - Three kinds of argument roles: Subject, direct object, indirect object - Subject: describes the 'doer' - Direct object: describes the person/thing receiving the action - Indirect object: describes the person/thing being acted upon Predicates - Predicates vary with respect to valency(the number of arguments they take) - Intransitive predicates: one participant. The children laughed - Transitive predicates: two arguments. The children found a kitten - Ditransitive predicate: 3 arguments. The children gave the kitten to Sue. "Find" is an example of transitive predicate (two arguments): person who is finding + thing "Gave" is an example of ditransitive predicate (three arguments): person giving, thing being Identifying major constituents Steps 1. Identify predicate 2. Identify the argument(s) a The richinnt
ructure ing state/action/event. ng found ven, person receiving.
b. The direct object(if any) c. The indirect object(if any) 3. Identify any sentence qualifiers(if any) Practice 1. The bus stopped Subj Pred 2. ( I hate broccoli Sub dir.obj fred 3. They arrived at noon. Subj Pred sent qual (time) Syntactic Composition of Sentences - The actual units from which sentences are built, namely words and phrases, belong to d The man laughed. Determiner Noun Subject: Noun phrase Predicate: Verb phrase