Microsoft Word – TUTE week 3 Basque
Syntax
Tutorial Exercises — Week 3
BASQUE IDENTIFYING WORD CLASSES
(Note: Try to do all parts of the exercise before your tutorial. This is a complex exercise
so we may focus on just some key elements in the tutorial discussion. However, the full
solutions will be uploaded after the tutorials.)
Part A. One of the following twelve sentences contains a mistake -a word in an
incorrect form.
• Study these sentences, find the regularities in their structure, and on this
basis identify the incorrect sentence.
• Correct it by modifying or replacing the incorrect word.
• Give reasons for your conclusion.
Hints/comments:
o Assume the language has fixed word order.
o Remember that sentences could be intransitive or transitive.
o Some of the words in final position of the sentences contain infixes – these are
kinds of affixes, but unlike prefixes or suffixes, they go inside the stem.
o The infixes themselves are a bit complicated. In Part B, there’s an example of an
infix inside another infix. Also, an infix with a particular function may show
different variants in different words (similar to how the English plural is often -s
but may sometimes be different like in oxen, children, etc.). Figure out what you
can by looking at how the words in final position change when earlier words in
the sentence change (this is useful for Part B too).
1. Gizona joaten da.
2. Gizonakin zaldia ikusten du.
3. Astoa atzo joaten zan.
4. Gizonak atzo joaten ziran.
5. Txakurrak joaten dira.
6. Zaldiakin gizona ikusten du.
7. Astoakin zaldiak ikusten zuen.
8. Gizonakin txakurra atzo ikusten zuen.
9. Txakurrakin astoak ikusten ditu.
10. Zaldiakin gizonak atzo ikusten zituen.
11. Txakurra joaten zan.
12. Gizonakin astoak atzo ikusten zituen.
Part B. Now consider the following additional twelve sentences from this
language. Determine what you consider to be the most probable grammatical
structure for all twenty-four sentences.
• Give a lexicon of word classes, and state the evidence for grouping their
member words together;
• State how many distinct types of sentences there are and what their
structure is (you can use Phrase Structure Rules and/or any other kind of
formula or statement to do this)
• Can you (tentatively) identify any of your word classes as particular parts of
speech (e.g. N, V)? If so, what is the evidence on which you base your
identification of these parts of speech?
• Can you guess anything about the role of what look like grammatical
morphemes?
• Hint: the sentences in blue, containing maluskatua or ikustua (e.g., 16, 17,
18, 19, 21, 22, 24) are particularly difficult. You might want to focus on the
other sentences first and then turn your attention to the ones in blue.
13. Gizonakekin astoak ikusten ditue.
14. Astoakin txakurrak maluskaten zituen.
15. Astoakekin zaldiak maluskaten zituten.
16. Gizonakekin zaldiak ikustua dira.
17. Astoakekin zaldiak maluskatua ziran.
18. Txakurrak ikustua dira.
19. Zaldiakekin txakurra atzo maluskatua zan.
20. Zaldiakekin txakurra maluskaten zuten.
21. Astoa ikustua da.
22. Gizonakin txakurra ikustua da.
23. Zaldiakekin astoa ikusten due.
24. Txakurrak atzo maluskatua ziran.
Part C. On the basis of your analysis:
• Give two additional sentences you predict will be grammatical
• Give two more you predict will be ungrammatical
• Briefly state why the ungrammatical ones are incorrect.