Syntax and Sentence Structure Flashcards
7 cards from real CALT practice questions. Tap to flip, then mark Knew It or Still Learning — missed cards come back until you master them.
Read the first 7 Syntax and Sentence Structure flashcards as text
In transformational grammar, what is the deep structure of a sentence?
Answer: The abstract underlying representation that captures basic grammatical relations
Deep structure represents the abstract level of syntactic organization that underlies the surface form and captures core semantic relationships.
Which construction is an example of right-branching syntax?
Answer: The man saw the dog that chased the cat that caught the mouse.
Right-branching structures embed successive clauses to the right and are generally easier to process than center-embedded structures.
What does the term 'argument structure' refer to in syntax?
Answer: The number and type of noun phrase arguments a verb requires
Argument structure specifies how many participants a predicate requires (its arity) and what semantic roles those participants bear.
A child produces: 'Him goed to school.' Which two syntactic errors are present?
Answer: Incorrect pronoun case and irregular past tense overgeneralization
The child uses objective case 'him' instead of nominative 'he' and overgeneralizes the regular past tense -ed to the irregular verb 'go.'
What is a 'center-embedded' clause, and why is it difficult to process?
Answer: A relative clause inserted within the main clause, creating nested dependencies
Center-embedded clauses interrupt the main clause mid-sentence, overloading working memory because verb arguments must be held across the embedded material.
Which structural property distinguishes a phrasal verb from a prepositional verb in English?
Answer: The particle in a phrasal verb can be separated from the verb by its object
Phrasal verb particles are movable (e.g., 'turn off the light' / 'turn the light off'), while prepositional verbs require the preposition to remain attached to the verb.
In systemic functional linguistics, which metafunction describes how clauses express actions, events, and participants?
Answer: Experiential (ideational) metafunction
The experiential metafunction of Halliday's systemic functional grammar concerns how language encodes processes, participants, and circumstances in clausal structure.