Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Figures
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Zones, and types of order
- 3 Semantic explanation of unmarked order across the zones
- 4 Syntactic explanation of unmarked order across the zones
- 5 Unmarked order within the Classifier zone
- 6 Free order
- 7 Marked order
- 8 Historical explanation of premodifier order
- 9 Supporting explanations of premodifier order
- 10 Discussion
- 11 Conclusion
- References
- Index
6 - Free order
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 October 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Figures
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Zones, and types of order
- 3 Semantic explanation of unmarked order across the zones
- 4 Syntactic explanation of unmarked order across the zones
- 5 Unmarked order within the Classifier zone
- 6 Free order
- 7 Marked order
- 8 Historical explanation of premodifier order
- 9 Supporting explanations of premodifier order
- 10 Discussion
- 11 Conclusion
- References
- Index
Summary
Introduction
This chapter explains free order (order within one zone), complementing the previous three chapters, which explain unmarked order (grammatically set order across zones). It starts from two points made in chapter 2: order within a zone is not bound by grammatical rule, and multiple premodifiers within one zone are co-ordinated (phonologically, or by commas or conjunctions such as and and but).
Premodifiers within the same zone are sequential in utterance, but not sequential in syntactic structure: they modify the group made up of words in later zones and the head; they do not modify later words in the same zone (§2.2.1.2). They are structured paratactically, not hypotactically. The phrase, ‘its full-bodied, soft, sweet lingering dark cherry flavours’, can be represented in Figure 6.1, which has arrows added to the bracketed analysis of constituency, to make the modification structure more explicit.The lack of structural sequence gives the speaker freedom to vary ‘full-bodied, soft, sweet…’ to ‘soft, sweet, full-bodied…’, or ‘sweet, soft, full-bodied…’. This chapter examines that freedom.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Premodifiers in EnglishTheir Structure and Significance, pp. 146 - 154Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011