Syntax 2 - Trees: Crash Course Linguistics #4 - Free Educational videos for Students in K-12

Syntax 2 - Trees: Crash Course Linguistics #4 - By CrashCourse

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00:0-1	Hi , I'm Taylor and welcome to crash course linguistics
00:02	. In episode three , we learned about how to
00:04	test which parts of a sentence , our constituents or
00:07	closely-related sub groups of words . So in the sentence
00:10	Taylor sees the rabbit , we know the rabbit is
00:12	one such constituent because we can substitute it for a
00:15	single word or pronoun like Gavin guy or then and
00:18	sees the rabbit is another slightly larger constituent because we
00:22	can move the whole thing up to the beginning of
00:23	the sentence in a cleft construction . It's seeing the
00:27	rabbit that taylor does . Now we want to take
00:29	it a step deeper . Let's figure out a way
00:32	to keep track of these groupings and extract some rules
00:34	that could help us find patterns between lots of different
00:37	sentences . Yeah , A simple way to keep track
00:50	of different parts of sentences is by drawing connections between
00:53	the words . For example , we could draw circles
00:55	around each constituent but circles get really big really quickly
00:59	as our sentences get longer . Or we could draw
01:01	brackets around each of the constituents brackets are nice and
01:04	compact , but they can be hard to easily scan
01:06	and understand at a glance . So instead linguists often
01:09	represent the structural relationships between words using a tree structure
01:13	diagram , sort of like a family tree with nodes
01:16	and branches . Tree diagram strike a nice balance between
01:19	being understandable and taking up a reasonable amount of space
01:22	. The nodes represent links between constituents , so it's
01:25	useful to label them . That helps us compare the
01:27	tree diagrams across various sentences and track the different phrases
01:31	in the sentence . Two phrases a constituent that's sort
01:34	of mid sized , it's less than a full sentence
01:36	, but often more than a single word . In
01:38	this video , we're going to meet some of the
01:40	common phrases that are the basis of english grammar .
01:42	For example , the difference between the phrases sees the
01:45	rabbit and just the rabbit is that sees the rabbit
01:48	has a verb in it so we can call sees
01:51	the Rabbit a verb phrase using the substitution tests we
01:54	talked about in the previous video , we can swap
01:56	the positions of taylor and the rabbit in the sentence
01:59	so they should both be the same kind of phrase
02:01	since both of these phrases have a noun in them
02:04	will call them noun phrases . The words , by
02:06	the way , is part of a class of words
02:08	that linguists call determine ear's , which also includes words
02:11	like uh this my one and every determiner is help
02:15	us figure out which specific instance of a specific .
02:18	Now we're talking about there's one theory of syntax that
02:21	actually argues there are determiner phrases as well as noun
02:24	phrases . Either way , these small words do a
02:27	big job . So let's label our tree with the
02:28	phrases and word classes to keep track of all of
02:31	this information . And the whole thing as we already
02:33	know is a sentence writing out noun phrase and verb
02:36	phrase every time gets kind of tedious . So linguists
02:39	generally abbreviate these as N . P . And VP
02:43	. And the same goes with N . For noun
02:45	, V . For verb and S . For sentence
02:47	plus debt for determiner tree diagrams . Let us see
02:50	the product relationship we talked about in the last episode
02:53	. The verb and object noun phrase are both together
02:56	within the VP . Even in languages that put their
02:58	words in a different order , the verb in the
03:00	objects still have this closer relationship . Let's take japanese
03:03	. For example , in japanese , the verb comes
03:05	at the end of the sentence . The verb is
03:07	still in the same phrase , the verb phrase as
03:10	the object so we can represent this in the tree
03:12	structure diagram by just giving the VP note a little
03:15	twist going back to english . Now here's another sentence
03:18	. Gavin Guy ate my cake . This new sentence
03:21	has completely different words from the first one , but
03:23	it has the exact same structure . So it's tree
03:26	structure diagram looks the same . We can make a
03:28	lot of sentences from just a few basic bits of
03:30	structure and this leads us to an interesting puzzle .
03:33	Let's try to figure out all of the possible structures
03:36	for sentences in english . In other words , let's
03:39	try to make a grammar of english grammar is a
03:41	description of how sentences go together . In a language
03:44	we could use a grammar to start to teach machines
03:47	to understand english or to compare the rules of english
03:49	to those of another language . Grammar isn't necessarily what's
03:52	actually going on in your head when you're saying a
03:54	sentence . That's still an open question that linguists are
03:57	researching and while we'll be focusing on a grammar of
04:00	english here , every language has one . Making a
04:02	grammar is actually a pretty big challenge . Let's start
04:05	out with a few sentences and figure out how to
04:07	describe their structures . Taylor sees the rabbit , the
04:10	rabbit ate cake and Gavin guy hopped . First we
04:13	notice that we can split each sentence into two pieces
04:15	and we can mix and match the front half in
04:17	the back half . We have taylor , the rabbit
04:20	and gather guy on one side and sees the rabbit
04:24	ate cake and hopped on the other . This structure
04:26	predicts that Taylor hopped and taylor ate cake and Gavin
04:29	Guy sees the rabbit should be okay sentences even though
04:33	they're not on our original list , based on my
04:34	linguistic intuitions as an english speaker , that's a good
04:38	prediction . And as part of our grammar , we've
04:39	established that sentences contain two parts . So what if
04:42	we split those sentences up like this instead ? This
04:45	predicts that the sentences Gavin guy ate rabbit ate cake
04:49	and the my cake should be possible and we know
04:52	as english speakers that they're not . We'd expect some
04:55	groupings to fail like this in any language we try
04:58	. So in our grammar of english so far ,
05:00	these sentences contain two parts , but it also matters
05:03	what those two parts are . Let's go back to
05:05	our list that works and highlight the noun verbs and
05:08	determine ear's in different colours . So for taylor sees
05:11	the rabbit will make taylor and the rabbit red for
05:13	noun sees blue for verb and the green for determiner
05:17	. Based on this , we could write a couple
05:19	of rules for english grammar . First we can say
05:21	that a sentence in english is made up of two
05:23	parts . A noun phrase plus a verb phrase .
05:26	A noun phrase is made up of a determiner plus
05:29	a noun and a verb phrase is made up of
05:31	a verb plus a noun phrase . But even though
05:33	those rules are a good start , they still need
05:35	a few tweaks . Not all over noun phrases have
05:38	a determiner in them . Sometimes it's the rabbit ,
05:42	but other times it's just cake and some of our
05:44	verb phrases don't have a noun phrase in them either
05:47	. Sometimes it sees the rabbit or ate cake ,
05:50	but other times it's just hopped , so we need
05:53	to indicate that certain parts of these rules are optional
05:56	, which we can do using parentheses . It has
05:58	a nice effect . The only thing that's absolutely required
06:01	in a noun phrase is a noun and the only
06:04	thing that's required in a verb phrase is a verb
06:06	. We call the required piece the part that the
06:08	phrase is named after the head and the less important
06:11	additions , the compliment . There are plenty more things
06:14	that we can add to a sentence which starts to
06:16	make a grammar even more complicated . For instance ,
06:19	take these ones the rabbit with a scarf hopped and
06:23	Gavin guy ate cake on the moon . You've added
06:25	two new phrases with a scarf and on the moon
06:29	. These phrases contain a determiner and announce , but
06:32	they also contain a proposition , a word that shows
06:34	the relationship of the noun phrase to the rest of
06:36	the sentence . So now we can make a rule
06:38	for a prepositional phrase which contains a proposition as the
06:41	head and a noun phrases , the compliment . We
06:43	also need to refine our rules for noun phrases and
06:46	verb phrases to allow for optional prepositional phrases so far
06:49	are grammar contains just four rules , but it's already
06:52	really powerful to find out how . Let's get into
06:55	the thought bubble . Hey look , Gavin I are
06:58	inside a thought bubble . Let's go into another thought
07:01	bubble . Cool . We're inside a thought bubble inside
07:03	a thought bubble . Let's go deeper . Now we're
07:06	inside a thought bubble inside a thought bubble . Inside
07:09	a thought bubble . We could just keep going .
07:11	We might get bored or run out of space on
07:12	the screen or get cut off by Youtube's time limits
07:15	. But in theory we could just keep embedding thought
07:18	bubbles inside of thought bubbles forever . Uh Let's pop
07:21	a few of these thought bubbles and get some more
07:23	breathing room . Okay , leave thought bubble and leave
07:27	thought bubble . Okay , now we're back in a
07:29	normal single bubble . Thought bubbles have the property of
07:32	Rikers asian . We can embed thought bubbles inside of
07:35	thought bubbles forever . Languages also recursive . Let's take
07:38	the phrase inside a thought bubble . Inside is a
07:41	proposition . So this is a prepositional phrase and a
07:44	thought bubble is a noun phrase . But inside this
07:47	noun phrase , a thought bubble . We can add
07:49	another prepositional phrase , let's say . It's also inside
07:53	a thought bubble and we can keep going . In
07:55	fact , we already did when we were describing the
07:57	recursive thought bubbles in the first place , we don't
08:00	always have to embed the exact same words recruiting just
08:02	means we can build structures inside of other structures .
08:05	For instance , the rabbit on the moon in the
08:08	solar system , in the Milky Way in the Universe
08:10	on friday hot . Their God goes thanks ! Thought
08:14	bubble and thought bubble and thought bubble are simplified .
08:18	Little set of four grammar rules is powerful enough for
08:20	Riker version but there's also some things missing adjectives like
08:24	big or purple adverbs like quickly pronounced like you or
08:29	me , sadly this video does not actually contain infinite
08:32	reclusive space but now that we're thinking like linguists we
08:35	can use our knowledge of language to continue to build
08:37	up a more complete set of rules . This is
08:40	just the start . But even with just four rules
08:42	, we can see that sometimes completely different words have
08:45	the same linguistic structure . Other times the same words
08:48	have different linguistic structures . We can see the similarities
08:50	and differences by looking at language from the perspective of
08:53	syntax , let's take these two sentences . Time flies
08:57	like an arrow means that the concept of time is
08:59	fast , like an arrow is fast . Fruit flies
09:02	like a banana means that these small insects are fond
09:05	of fruit . Both of these sentences have flies and
09:07	like in them . But these words have different structural
09:10	relationships with the rest of the sentence . In this
09:13	first treat flies is the verb and like as a
09:15	proposition in the second , tree flies as part of
09:19	the mountain phrase and like is the verb . We
09:21	can represent that difference by drawing diagrams . Don't stress
09:24	about the triangles . Linguists use triangles within a tree
09:27	to save space and represent constituents that are not the
09:30	focus of what we're talking about , But we can
09:32	see how these shared words occupy different parts of each
09:35	tree , or take the song about the mythical one
09:37	eyed , one horned , flying purple people eater .
09:40	This could mean a song about a creature that eats
09:42	any kind of people and has won I won horn
09:45	flies in his purple . Or it could be about
09:48	a creature that eats one eyed , one horned flying
09:51	purple people or something in between . Maybe a one
09:53	eyed , one horned creature that eats flying purple people
09:57	. Some of these beasts are a lot more dangerous
09:59	than others . Throughout this episode we've been using rules
10:02	and tree diagrams as a fairly simple way of representing
10:05	the structure of sentences . But there are lots of
10:07	other ways of representing the same sentences . There are
10:10	many theories of syntax which have different ways of representing
10:13	grammatical structures , each with their advantages and limitations ,
10:17	and there are some grammatical structures that thin tacticians haven't
10:20	even figured out how to represent yet . So far
10:22	, we've seen sentences with absurd meanings , but reasonable
10:25	grammar . Next time on crash course linguistics we'll go
10:28	deeper into meaning itself . Thanks for watching this episode
10:31	of Crash course linguistics . If you want to help
10:33	keep crash course free for everybody forever , you can
10:36	join our community on Patreon .

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