Syntax Part 1 TRED 256

George Washington University

TRED 256: LINGUISTIC APPLICATIONS

Syntax Part 1 Class 8

Student Presentation - Emily & Natalie | Handout

Syntax: a speaker's knowdge of sentences and their structures

Sequences of words that conform to the rules of syntax are well-formed or grammatical.
Those that violate the rules are ill-formed or ungrammatical.

Ambiguity: Multiple meanings of a string (phrase)

Ambiguity can be resolved through knowledge of the heirarchical structure of the string
Structural ambiguity: results from different possible structures (represented by different phrase structure trees)