I just wanted to say thank you for this series. I've just returned to study from a long break and this has been an excellent refresher for me. This series has also been brilliant for solidifying concepts I have struggled with in past - I'm a slow learner and being able to go over something repeatedly helps immensely. ❤️
So very interesting in regards to the "can be", "is", "are" matter. It is interesting to see how our meanings can be easily misconstrued by having poor syntax in our sentence structure. We may not be aware that our "ambiguous" meanings exist. I am starting to understand just how important syntax is in terms of effective communication. Thank you again for your wonderful presentations. I am looking forward to learning how to improve my grammar.
Hello professor, thank you very much for the course! And I have some questions as follows: First, the substitution test shows that the preposional phrase is a constituecy, and it semantically refers to the location, time, manner, etc. But how can we tell that the preposition is the head? It seems like we can't check it by removing the components and leave the preposition alone, as sentences like *The book is on are ungrammatical too. And, checking the shared properties sounds great, but what property of the preposition can be shared with the phrase? Then, a related question is that, in some Asian languages like Japanese and Mongolian, the phrase that corresponds to a PP in English is generally formed with a noun (phrase) followed by a clitic which is conventionally considered the dative/locative case mark. A difference between that clitic and prepositions in European languages is that, it doesn't convey any spatial variations, such as what the words in, out, under, above do. (Instead, the spatial information is encoded with an additional noun, such as 'surface', 'bottom' combined with the kernal noun). In other words, there is even no typical preposition in such languages. Then, how should we deal with the structures of the PP-like phrases of them?
Thank you very much. That was very well presented and informative as usual. Constituents are really vital for understanding sentence structure and theories like The X-bar Schema. I wonder why this was published after the lessons on X-bar Schema. I can't complain though, wonderful work really. The lesson helped clear some points, and the examples that showed cross-linguistic variations were very nice. Substitution and other diagnostic 'tests' for constituency are somewhat simple, and they can be very helpful. However, what confuses me most of the time is using what we call exhaustive dominance to test whether a certain combination of words form a constituent or not. Anyhow, thanks very much for these videos; they are really informative and accessible.
Thanks Prof. Caroline. Keep up the good work. I've really enjoyed listening to your series. Can you please throw more light on prepositions not ending sentences? How about the statement "The little girl just threw up? Is the statement alright because it ends in a phrasal verb? Thanks
At 17:00, when it is said that "so" can only be used that way when the adjective is used predicatively, I find that odd. How about something like "An ill person is not so for lack of money." ?
Are these verb phrases or adj-phrases? Resurrected Christ, given law, fallen angel? I assume the verbs are acting as adjectives, so they are adj phrases, right?
Hello. I am spanish and we call "atributives" the phrases you've called predicatives. It was confusing to me because we actually call "atributo" to the adjective that is in the position of the ones she called predicatives. Does anyone have an aswer?
Even though 'so' can't be used to replace attributive adjective phrases, 'such' can, can't it? 'I saw a very tall man and she saw such a woman' It sounds a bit contrived, but to my South African English ears it seems perfectly grammatical and sensible
In your examples of substitution, you replace the entire phrases, but you also change the sentences around them, usually changing the meaning of the sentence completely. Is this allowed? Because if it is, then we can also claim on the same grounds that in a sentence "The girl read the book.", the sequence "girl read the" is a constituent (obviously nonsense), because it could be replaced with a single word, for example "old", to make a perfectly valid sentence "The old book." :P This breaks the test. Why? Because the meaning of the sentence has changed. That's why I think this shouldn't be allowed when performing those tests.
You can maintain the meaning with some context, say, "The girl read [the book]." > "Yeah, the girl read [it]." But you cannot say something like '(what) the book' refering to the same meaning.
I just wanted to say thank you for this series. I've just returned to study from a long break and this has been an excellent refresher for me. This series has also been brilliant for solidifying concepts I have struggled with in past - I'm a slow learner and being able to go over something repeatedly helps immensely. ❤️
I absolutely love the way this video was made.
Thank you the lecture is really helpful and easy to understand . Your style is really show how much knowledge you have. Thanks again
Absolutely fantastic . You are brilliant . Thank you for the explanations .
So very interesting in regards to the "can be", "is", "are" matter. It is interesting to see how our meanings can be easily misconstrued by having poor syntax in our sentence structure. We may not be aware that our "ambiguous" meanings exist. I am starting to understand just how important syntax is in terms of effective communication. Thank you again for your wonderful presentations. I am looking forward to learning how to improve my grammar.
Really informative and easy to understand thanks. From uob
Hello professor, thank you very much for the course! And I have some questions as follows:
First, the substitution test shows that the preposional phrase is a constituecy, and it semantically refers to the location, time, manner, etc. But how can we tell that the preposition is the head? It seems like we can't check it by removing the components and leave the preposition alone, as sentences like *The book is on are ungrammatical too. And, checking the shared properties sounds great, but what property of the preposition can be shared with the phrase?
Then, a related question is that, in some Asian languages like Japanese and Mongolian, the phrase that corresponds to a PP in English is generally formed with a noun (phrase) followed by a clitic which is conventionally considered the dative/locative case mark. A difference between that clitic and prepositions in European languages is that, it doesn't convey any spatial variations, such as what the words in, out, under, above do. (Instead, the spatial information is encoded with an additional noun, such as 'surface', 'bottom' combined with the kernal noun). In other words, there is even no typical preposition in such languages. Then, how should we deal with the structures of the PP-like phrases of them?
Thank you very much. That was very well presented and informative as usual.
Constituents are really vital for understanding sentence structure and theories like The X-bar Schema. I wonder why this was published after the lessons on X-bar Schema. I can't complain though, wonderful work really.
The lesson helped clear some points, and the examples that showed cross-linguistic variations were very nice. Substitution and other diagnostic 'tests' for constituency are somewhat simple, and they can be very helpful. However, what confuses me most of the time is using what we call exhaustive dominance to test whether a certain combination of words form a constituent or not.
Anyhow, thanks very much for these videos; they are really informative and accessible.
Thnxxx my dear teacher.
I just like hearing her say predicatively.
16:49 Almost like a glitch :)
Thanks Prof. Caroline. Keep up the good work. I've really enjoyed listening to your series. Can you please throw more light on prepositions not ending sentences? How about the statement "The little girl just threw up? Is the statement alright because it ends in a phrasal verb? Thanks
Just brilliant!!!!!!!!!!
At 17:00, when it is said that "so" can only be used that way when the adjective is used predicatively, I find that odd. How about something like "An ill person is not so for lack of money." ?
Are these verb phrases or adj-phrases? Resurrected Christ, given law, fallen angel? I assume the verbs are acting as adjectives, so they are adj phrases, right?
@ 11:38 is it possible that "the girl who fed them" is referring to both the cats and John?
so, adpositions.. in English they go _before_ the things they're combined _with_ :)) not always, as we can see
Hello. I am spanish and we call "atributives" the phrases you've called predicatives. It was confusing to me because we actually call "atributo" to the adjective that is in the position of the ones she called predicatives. Does anyone have an aswer?
Even though 'so' can't be used to replace attributive adjective phrases, 'such' can, can't it? 'I saw a very tall man and she saw such a woman' It sounds a bit contrived, but to my South African English ears it seems perfectly grammatical and sensible
yea, that sounds right to me
Which book do you teach at your university?
As a foreigner speaker of English language, I wonder if all predicative adjective phrases have their attributive counterpart.
thank you so much
Incredible
What if I want to replace something in 11:50 with "it"?
It or That
many thanks Mme.
In your examples of substitution, you replace the entire phrases, but you also change the sentences around them, usually changing the meaning of the sentence completely. Is this allowed? Because if it is, then we can also claim on the same grounds that in a sentence "The girl read the book.", the sequence "girl read the" is a constituent (obviously nonsense), because it could be replaced with a single word, for example "old", to make a perfectly valid sentence "The old book." :P This breaks the test. Why? Because the meaning of the sentence has changed. That's why I think this shouldn't be allowed when performing those tests.
You can maintain the meaning with some context, say, "The girl read [the book]." > "Yeah, the girl read [it]." But you cannot say something like '(what) the book' refering to the same meaning.
For syntax and GL
Thanks
tank you