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6247 results in Grammar and Syntax

Page 108 of 313

English Nouns
  • The Ecology of Nominalization
  • Rochelle Lieber
  • Published online:
    11 October 2016
    Print publication:
    26 September 2016
  • Using extensive data from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (Davies, 2008), this groundbreaking book shows that the syntactic patterns in which English nominalizations can be found and the range of possible readings they can express are very different from what has been claimed in past theoretical treatments, and therefore that previous treatments cannot be correct. Lieber argues that the relationship between form and meaning in the nominalization processes of English is virtually never one-to-one, but rather forms a complex web that can be likened to a derivational ecosystem. Using the Lexical Semantic Framework (LSF), she develops an analysis that captures the interrelatedness and context dependence of nominal readings, and suggests that the key to the behavior of nominalizations is that their underlying semantic representations are underspecified in specific ways and that their ultimate interpretation must be fixed in context using processes available within the LSF.

  • 4 - Null constituents

  • Andrew Radford
  • Book:
    Analysing English Sentences
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    04 August 2016, pp 172-244

  • Summary

    Overview

    So far, our discussion of syntactic structure has tacitly assumed that all constituents in a given structure are overt (in the sense that they have audible phonetic features, as well as carrying grammatical and semantic features). However, in this chapter we will see that syntactic structures may also contain null constituents (also known as empty categories) – i.e. constituents which have grammatical and semantic features but lack audible phonetic features (and so are ‘silent’, ‘inaudible’ or ‘unpronounced’).

    Null subjects

    We are already familiar with one kind of null constituent from the discussion of the Null Subject Parameter in §1.7. There, we saw that alongside finite clauses like that produced by Speaker A in the dialogue in (1) below with an overt subject like Maria, Italian also has finite clauses like that produced by Speaker B, with a null subject pronoun conventionally designated as pro (and referred to affectionately as ‘little pro’):

    (1)

    SPEAKER A:Maria è3.Sg tornataF.Sg?

    Maria is returned?

    ‘Has Maria returned?’

    SPEAKER B:Sì, pro è3.Sg tornataF.Sg

    Yes, pro is returned

    ‘Yes, she has returned’

    (The subscripts in the glosses mark the following properties: 3 = third person; Sg = singular number; F = feminine gender.) One reason for positing pro in 1B) is that it captures the intuition that the sentence has an ‘understood’ subject (as is clear from the fact that its English translation contains the subject pronoun she). A second reason relates to the agreement morphology carried by the auxiliary è ‘is’ and the participle tornata ‘returned’ in (1). Just as the form of the (third person singular) auxiliary è ‘is’ and the (feminine singular) participle tornata ‘returned’ is determined via agreement with the overt (third person feminine singular) subject Maria in (1A), so too the auxiliary and participle agree in exactly the same way with the null pro subject in (1B), since pro (as used here) is third person feminine singular by virtue of referring to Maria. If the sentence in (1B) were subjectless, it is not obvious how we could account for the relevant agreement facts. Since pro is found in all types of finite clause in Italian (e.g. both indicative and subjunctive clauses), we can refer to it as a finite null subject.

  • 1 - Grammar

  • Andrew Radford
  • Book:
    Analysing English Sentences
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    04 August 2016, pp 1-59

  • Summary

    Overview

    In broad terms, this book is concerned with syntax in general, and with the syntax of English in particular. Syntax is one of the two key areas of what is traditionally called ‘grammar’ – the other being morphology. Morphology is the study of how words are formed out of smaller units (called morphemes) and so addresses questions such as ‘What are the component morphemes of a word like antidisestablishmentarianism, and what is the nature of the operations by which they are combined together to form the overall word?’ Syntax is the study of the way in which phrases and sentences are structured out of words, and so addresses questions like ‘What is the structure of a sentence like Where's the president going? and what is the nature of the grammatical operations by which its component words are combined together to form the overall sentence structure?’ This chapter begins (in §1.2) by looking at a range of approaches to the study of grammar, before going on (in §1.3) to look at how syntax was studied in traditional grammar: this also provides an opportunity to introduce some useful grammatical terminology. In the remainder of the chapter, we look at the approach to syntax adopted within the theory of Universal Grammar/UGdeveloped by Chomsky over the past six decades. (Note that a convention used throughout the book is that key technical terms are in bold print when first introduced in a given chapter; such terms are generally given an entry in the Glossary at the end of the book if they are used in several different sections of the book, though not if they occur in only one section of the book and are glossed there.)

    Approaches to grammar

    A fundamental question that needs to be resolved at the outset concerns what kind of approach to adopt in studying grammar. There are two diametrically opposed answers to this question found in work on grammar. One sees the role of grammar as being essentially prescriptive (i.e. prescribing norms for grammatical correctness, linguistic purity and literary excellence); the other sees the role of grammar as being inherently descriptive (i.e describing the way people speak or write their native language).

  • 5 - Head Movement

  • Andrew Radford
  • Book:
    Analysing English Sentences
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    04 August 2016, pp 245-316

  • Summary

    Overview

    So far, we have examined a range of syntactic structures which are derived by a series of Merge operations. In the next three chapters, we go on to look at structures whose derivation involves not only Merge but also a range of different types of movement operation. In this chapter, we focus on a specific type of movement operation called Head Movement whereby the head of one phrase moves to become the head of the phrase immediately above it. We focus mainly on two specific types of Head Movement operation – one which affects auxiliaries in present-day English, and another which affected main verbs in earlier stages of English. In addition, we also look briefly at how Head Movement can apply to nouns.

    Auxiliary Inversion

    English has a number of structures (illustrated below) in which we find a phenomenon which is widely referred to as Subject-Auxiliary Inversion/SAI:

    (1)

  • (a)What time will the guests arrive at the hotel?

  • (b)Under no circumstances would the president accept a bribe

  • (c)So quickly have the flames spread that the firefighters are losing control of the fire

    • In each of these examples, in front of the (underlined) subject we find a (bold-printed) auxiliary, and in front of the auxiliary is an italicised constituent which is an interrogative phrase (what time) in (1a), a negative phrase (under no circumstances) in (1b), and a degree phrase (so quickly) in (1c). What is unusual about this is that subjects are normally positioned in spec-TP and auxiliaries in T (as we saw in Chapter 3), and hence an (underlined) subject would normally precede an associated (bold-printed) auxiliary, as in:

    (2)

  • (a) The guests will arrive at the hotel

  • (b) The president would not accept a bribe under any circumstances

  • (c) The flames have spread so quickly that the firefighters are losing control of the fire

    • If we make the reasonable assumption that the underlined subjects in (1) are in the same spec-TP position as they occupy in (2), this means that both the bold-printed auxiliary in (1) and the italicised interrogative or negative phrase preceding it must be contained in some projection positioned above TP.

Page 108 of 313