CAU TRUC TIENG ANH

A SHORT OVERVIEW OF ENGLISH SYNTAX 1 SENTENCE AND CLAUSE We distinguish two main types of sentence: a clausal sentence, which has the form of a single clause, and a compound sentence, which has the form of two or more coordinated clauses, usually joined by a coordinator (such as and, or, but): [1] i Sue went to London last week. [clausal sentence] ii Sue went to London last week and her father went with her. [compound sentence] Note that such an example as We stayed at the hotel which you recommended is also a clausal sentence even though it contains two clauses. This is because one clause, which you recommended, is part of the other, rather than separate from it (more specifically, the which you recommended is part of the noun phrase the hotel which you recommended); the larger clause is thus We stayed at the hotel which you recommended, and this does constitute the whole sentence, like that in [i]. The fact that the two types of sentence are distinguished in terms of clauses implies that we take the clause to be a more basic unit than the sentence, which reflects the fact that in speech it tends to be more difficult to determine the boundaries between sentences than the boundaries between clauses. For most of this overview we will focus on clauses: we return to coordination in Section14. 2 CANONICAL AND NON-CANONICAL CLAUSES We can describe the structure of clauses most economically if we distinguish between the most basic and elementary kinds of clause, which we call canonical clauses, and the rest. The idea is that we can present the analysis more clearly if we begin with canonical clauses, describing them directly, and then deal in turn with the various kinds of non-canonical clause, describing these indirectly, in terms of how they differ from canonical clauses. The following paired examples will give some idea of what is involved in this distinction: [2] Canonical Non-canonical i a. She has read your article. b. She hasn't read your article. ii a. Sue is coming for dinner. b. Is Sue coming for dinner? iii a. They knew the victim. b. She said that they knew the victim. iv a. He missed the train. b. Either he missed the train or it is late. v a. The secretary took the key. b. The key was taken by the secretary. These illustrate the following properties of canonical clauses: o They are positive; negative clauses like [ib] are non-canonical. o They are declarative; interrogatives like [iib] are non-canonical, as are the other clause types: imperatives (e.g. Please stand up) and exclamatives (What a fool I've been). o They are main clauses; the underlined clause in [iiib] is subordinate and hence non-canonical. o They are non-coordinate; the two underlined clauses in [ivb] are coordinated and hence each of them is non-canonical. o They are active; passive clauses like [vb] are non-canonical. This is a matter of information packaging and we can say, more generally, that canonical clauses package the information in the grammatically most basic way. Thus I have now read most of them is canonical but Most of them I have now read is not. There are two further points that should be made at this point. (a) In all the above examples the non-canonical clauses differ in their structure from canonical clauses, but this is not always so. In [iiib] the subordinate clause is introduced by that but we could omit this, giving She said they knew the victim, where the underlined clause is identical with [iiia]; nevertheless it is still subordinate and hence non-canonical. It is subordinate by virtue of being Complement of the verb said, but the subordination happens not to be marked in the internal grammatical structure of the clause itself. (b) A clause is non-canonical if it lacks at least one of the above properties. It may of course lack more than one of them. Thus Wasn't the key taken by the secretary? has three non-canonical properties: it is negative, interrogative and passive. In the discussion below we will take the non-canonical properties in turn with the understanding that they can combine. 3 INITIAL LISTING OF THE PARTS OF SPEECH We distinguish nine primary word classes, or parts of speech, to use the traditional term. In this overview we needn't worry about interjections (wow, ah, hello, and the like), which leaves us with eight classes. They are named and exemplified in [3]: [3] i Verb He is ill. She left early. We want to help. ii Noun The dog barked. Sue won easily. I love you. iii Adjective He's very young. I've got a sore knee. It looks easy. iv Adverb She spoke clearly. You're extremely fit. He works very hard v Determinative The dog barked. I've got a sore knee. We need some milk. vi Preposition He's in the garden. It's from your uncle. We went to Paris. vii Coordinator We saw Kim and Pat. Hurry or we'll be late. It's cheap but good. viii Subordinator I know that it's true. Ask whether it's true. I wonder if it's true. Note that we use `determinative' as the name of a class and `Determiner' as the name of a function;[2] we need to invoke the class vs function distinction here to cater for the construction illustrated in the doctor's car. Here the doctor's has the same function, Determiner, as the in the car, but it is not a word and hence not a determinative: as far as its class is concerned it's a noun phrase. The above scheme differs from that of traditional grammar in three respects: o We take pronouns to be a subclass of nouns, not a distinct primary class. o Traditional grammars generally take our determinatives to be a subclass of adjectives, though some recognise a class of articles consisting of the and a. Our determinative class is much larger, containing not just the and a, but also words like some, any, all, each, every, no, etc.; these are very different from words like those underlined in [iii]. o We have coordinator and subordinator as distinct primary classes, whereas traditional grammar has a primary class of conjunctions subdivided into coordinating and subordinating conjunctions. 4 PHRASES For each of the first six of the word classes in [3] there is a corresponding class of phrases whose Head belongs to that class. In the following examples, the phrase is enclosed in brackets and the Head underlined: [4] i Verb phrase She [wrote some letters]. He [is still in London]. ii Noun phrase [The new lodger] is here. [The boss] wants to see [you]. iii Adjective phrase It's getting [rather late]. I'm [glad you could come]. iv Adverb phrase I spoke [too soon]. It's [quite extraordinarily] good. v Determinative phrase I saw [almost every] card. We've [very little] money left. vi Preposition phrase They're [in the garden]. He wrote a book [on sharks]. 5 THE STRUCTURE OF CANONICAL CLAUSES 5.1 Subject and Predicate A canonical clause consists of a Subject followed by a Predicate. The Predicate is realised by a verb phrase; the Subject is mostly realised by a noun phrase, but there are other possibilities too, most importantly a subordinate clause: [5] Subject Predicate i One of his friends | called a doctor. [noun phrase as Subject] ii That he was lying | was obvious. [subordinate clause as Subject] In canonical clauses describing an action the Subject will be associated with the semantic role of actor, or agent, as in [5i]. But many clauses don't express actions: we heard an explosion, for example, describes a sensory experience, and here the Subject is associated with the role of experiencer. There are numerous different kinds of semantic role that can be associated with the Subject: what the role is in a particular instance will depend on the meaning of the clause, especially of the verb. Meaning therefore does not provide a reliable way of identifying the Subject. But this function has a good few distinctive grammatical properties which together generally make it easy to identify. Here are some of them. (a) Position. Its default position - the one it occupies unless there are special reasons for placing it elsewhere - is before the Predicate. (b) Formation of interrogatives. You can generally change a declarative clause into an interrogative by inverting the Subject with the first auxiliary verb; if there is no auxiliary in the declarative you need to insert the appropriate form of do.[3] In either case the Subject ends up following the auxiliary verb: [6] Declarative Interrogative i a. The boss is in her office. b. Is the boss in her office? ii a. Everyone signed the petition. b. Did everyone sign the petition? (c) Interrogative tags. To seek confirmation of a statement you can add an interrogative tag, consisting of an auxiliary verb and a personal pronoun Subject which relates back to the Subject of the clause to which the tag is attached: The boss is in her office, isn't she?; Everyone signed the petition, didn't they? (d) Subject-verb agreement, Where the verb has person-number properties (in the present tense and the past tense of be), they are normally determined by agreement with the Subject: [7] a. Her son plays the piano. b. Her sons play the piano. 5.2 Predicator, Complements and Adjuncts At the next layer of structure below the Predicate we distinguish three functions. The Predicator is the function filled by the verb. The verb is the Head of the verb phrase, and Predicator is the special term used for the Head of the verb phrase forming the Predicate of a clause. Thus in [7b] play the piano is a verb phrase functioning as Predicate while play is a verb functioning as Predicator. Complement and Adjunct are different kinds of Dependent, distinguished by the licensing condition. Complements can occur only if they are licensed by the Head verb: the verb must belong to a subclass that permits (or requires) a Complement of the type in question. Adjuncts are not subject to this restriction. Compare: [8] I mowed the lawn before it started to rain. Here the lawn is admissible because the verb mow (unlike disappear, for example) allows a Dependent of this kind, so the lawn is a Complement. But a Dependent indicating time can occur with any verb, so before it started to rain is an Adjunct. We will look further at Complements in the next subsection. As for Adjuncts, they are usually realised by adverb phrases, preposition phrases, subordinate clauses, or a very narrow range of noun phrases. They can be divided into various semantic subtypes, such as Adjuncts of time, place, manner, etc., as illustrated in [9]: [9] i She spoke very clearly. [adverb phrase as Adjunct of manner] ii As a result of his action, he was fired. [prep phrase as Adjunct of reason] iii We cycle to work to save the busfare. [subordinate clause as Adjunct of purpose] iv They left the country last week. [noun phrase as Adjunct of time] 5.3 Object and Predicative Complement Two important subtypes of Complement are the Object and the Predicative Complement: [10] a. Object: Ed blamed the minister. b. Predicative Comp: Ed was a minister.. While thousands of verbs license an Object, only a fairly small number license a Predicative Complement, and of these be is by far the most common: others include become, remain, appear, seem, etc. The term `Predicative Complement' is most easily understood by reference to the construction with be: the verb has little meaning here (it is often called just a `linking verb'), so that the main semantic content of the Predicate is expressed by the Complement. There are several grammatical properties that distinguish Objects from Predicative Complements, of which the two most important ones are illustrated in [11]: [11] i a. Ed blamed the minister. [Object] b. The minister was blamed by Ed. ii a. Ed was a minister. [Pred Comp] b. *A minister was been by Ed. iii a. Ed was innocent. [Pred Comp] b. *Ed blamed innocent. o The Object of an active clause can usually become the Subject of a corresponding passive clause, but a Predicative Complement never can. Thus the Object of active [ia] corresponds to the Subject of passive [ib], whereas [iib] is not a possible passive version of [iia]. (Here and below the asterisk indicates that what follows is ungrammatical.) o A Predicative Complement can be realised not only by a noun phrase, as in [iia], but also by an adjective phrase, as in [iiia], whereas an Object cannot be realised by an adjective phrase, as evident from the ungrammaticality of [iiib]. 5.4 Direct and Indirect Object A clause may contain two Objects, distinguished as Direct and Indirect. In canonical clauses, the Indirect Object always precedes the Direct Object, and typically (but not invariably) is associated with the semantic role of recipient or beneficiary: [12] i He gave the prisoner some water. [Indirect Object (recipient) + Direct Object] ii She baked me a cake. [Indirect Object (beneficiary) + Direct Object] 5.5 Subjective and Objective Predicative Complements The Predicative Complements in [10b] and [11iia/iiia] are related to the Subject, but it is also possible for a Predicative Complement to be related to the Object: we accordingly distinguish two subtypes, Subjective and Objective. Compare: [13] Subjective Pred Comp Objective Pred Comp i a. He became angry. b. This made him angry. ii a. He was a charlatan. b. They considered him a charlatan. 5.6 Five canonical clause structures On the basis of the presence or absence of the Complement types considered so far we can distinguish the following canonical clause structures: [14] Example Structure Name i They disappeared. S-P (Ordinary) intransitive ii They were ecstatic. S-P-PCs Complex-intransitive iii They bought a house. S-P-Od (Ordinary) monotransitive iv They kept it warm. S-P-Od-PCo Complex-transitive v They sent her some flowers. S-P-Oi-Od Ditransitive In the representations of the structures, S stands for Subject, P for Predicator, PCs for Subjective Predicative Complement, Od for Direct Object, PCo for Objective Predicative Complement, and Oi for Indirect Object. The names reflect the fact that there are two dimensions of contrast: o One has to do with Objects: an intransitive clause has no Object, a monotransitive clause has a single Object, and a ditransitive clause has two Objects. o The other has to with Predicative Complements: if a clause contains a Predicative Complement it is complex, otherwise ordinary, though the latter term is often omitted (as it is in [v], since there is no possibility of adding a Predicative Complement to a ditransitive clause). The names apply in the first instance to the clause constructions, and then derivatively to the verbs that appear in these constructions. Thus disappear is an (ordinary) intransitive verb, be a complex-intransitive one, and so on. But it must be borne in mind that the majority of verbs can appear in more than one of them, and hence belong to more than one class. Find, for example, commonly appears in [iii] (We found the key), [iv] (We found her co-operative), and [v] (We found her a job). 5.7 Prepositional and clausal Complements. The Complements considered so far have been noun phrases or adjective phrases, but these are not the only possibilities. Complements often have the form of preposition phrases or subordinate clauses: [15] i a. She went to Paris. b. She took him to Paris. ii a. She relied on her instinct. b. He congratulated her on her promotion. iii a. He said he was sorry. b. He told her he was sorry. iv a. We intend to leave on Tuesday. b. I advise you to leave on Tuesday. In the [a] examples here the underlined preposition phrase ([i-ii]) or subordinate clause ([iii-iv]) is the only Complement, while in the [b] ones it follows an Object. We look at different kinds of subordinate clause in Section13, but there is one point to be made here about the prepositional constructions. In [i] to contrasts with other prepositions such as over, from, via, beyond, etc., but in [ii] on is selected by the verb: any adequate dictionary will tell you (if only by example) that rely takes a Complement with on, consist with of, refer with to, and so on. Verbs like these that take as Complement a preposition phrase headed by some specified preposition are called `prepositional verbs'. Most ditransitive verbs also belong to this latter class by virtue of licensing a preposition phrase with to or for instead of the Indirect Object: compare He gave some water to the prisoner and She baked a cake for me with [12] above. 6 VERBS 6.1 Verb inflection The most distinctive property of verbs is their inflection: they have a number of inflectional forms that are permitted or required in various grammatical constructions. The present tense form takes, for example, can occur as the verb of a canonical clause, whereas the past participle taken cannot: She takes care, but not *She taken care. The great majority of verb lexemes have six inflectional forms, as illustrated in [16]: [16] i Preterite checked She checked the figures herself. ii 3rd singular present checks She checks the figures herself. iii Plain present check They check the figures themselves. iv Plain form check She may check the figures herself. v Gerund-participle checking She is checking the figures herself. vi Past participle checked She had checked the figures herself. It will be noticed that although we have distinguished six different inflectional forms, there are only four different shapes: checked, checks, check and checking. By `shape' we mean the spelling or pronunciation. Thus the preterite and past participle of the lexeme check have the same shape, as do the plain present tense and the plain form. The same applies to all other regular verbs, i.e. verbs whose inflectional forms are determined by general rules. But there are a good number of irregular verbs where the preterite and past participle do not have the same shape: take, for example, has took as its preterite and taken as its past participle. This means that it is very easy to decide whether any particular instance of the shape check is a preterite form or a past participle. What you need to do is ask which form of a verb like take would be needed in the construction in question. Consider, then, the following examples: [17] i She may have checked the figures herself. ii I'm not sure whether she checked the figures herself or not. If we substitute take for check in [i] the form we need is the past participle taken: She may have taken a break. So this checked is likewise a past participle. And if we make the substitution in [ii] we need the preterite form took: I'm not sure whether she took a break or not. So the checked of [ii] is the preterite form. Note that when making the substitution you need to keep constant what precedes the verb (e.g. She may have in [i]) since this is what determines the inflection that is required: what follows the verb is irrelevant and hence can be changed to suit the verb you are substituting. Let us now briefly review the six forms. (a) Preterite. This is a type of past tense: the type where the past tense is marked inflectionally rather than by means of an auxiliary verb. Many grammars use the more general term `past tense': we prefer the more specific term to distinguish it from the construction where the auxiliary have marks the other kind of past tense, as in She has checked the proofs. (b)-(c) The present tense forms. There are two present tense forms, one which occurs with a 3rd person singular subject, and one which occurs with any other subject: 1st person (I check), 2nd person (you check) or plural (they check). We could call this latter form `non-3rd person singular', but `plain present' is simpler. `Plain' indicates that it is identical with the morphological base of the lexeme, i.e. the starting-point for the rules that produce the various inflectional forms by adding a suffix, changing the vowel, and so on. (d) The plain form. This is also identical with the base, but it is not a present tense form. It is used in three constructions: [18] i Imperative Check the figures yourself! ii Infinitival It's better to check the figures oneself. I will check them myself. iii Subjunctive It's essential that she check the figures herself.