ENGLISH SYNTAX AND ARGUMENTATION MODERN LINGUISTICS SERIES Series Editor Professor Maggie Tallerman Newcastle University, UK Each textbook in the Modern Linguistics series is designed to provide a carefully graded introduction to a topic in contemporary linguistics and allied disciplines, presented in a man- ner that is accessible and attractive to readers with no previous experience of the topic, but leading them to some understanding of current issues. The texts are designed to engage the active participation of the reader, favouring a problem-solving approach and including liberal and varied exercise material. Titles published in the series English Syntax and Argumentation (5th Edition) Bas Aarts Phonology (2nd Edition) Philip Carr and Jean-Pierre Montreuil Pragmatics Siobhan Chapman Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition Vivian Cook Sociolinguistics: A Reader and Coursebook Nikolas Coupland and Adam Jaworski Morphology (2nd Edition) Francis Katamba and John Stonham Semantics (2nd Edition) Kate Kearns Syntactic Theory (2nd Edition) Geoffrey Poole Contact Languages: Pidgins and Creoles Mark Sebba Further titles in preparation Introduction to Bilingualism Christina Schelletter Language Development Kathy Conklin English Syntax and Argumentation Fifth Edition BasAarts Professor ofEnglish Linguistics, UCL © Bas Aarts 1997, 2001, 2008, 2013, 2018 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First edition 1997 Second edition 2001 Third edition 2008 Fourth edition 2013 Fifth edition published 2018 by PALGRAVE Palgrave in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of 4 Crinan Street, London N1 9XW.
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To my family and friends Also by Bas Aarts: Small Clauses in English (1992, Mouton de Gruyter) The Verb in Contemporary English (1995, edited with Charles F. Meyer, CUP) Investigating Natural Language (2002, with Gerald Nelson and Sean Wallis, Benjamins) Fuzzy Grammar (2004, edited with David Denison, Evelien Keizer and Gergana Popova, OUP) The Handbook ofEnglish Linguistics (2006, edited with April McMahon, Wiley) Syntactic Gradience (2007, OUP) Oxford Modern English Grammar (2011, OUP) The English Verb Phrase (2013, edited with J. Wallis, CUP) Oxford Dictionary ofEnglish Grammar (2nd edition 2014, with Sylvia Chalker and Edmund Weiner, OUP) Oxford Handbook ofEnglish Grammar (2018, with Jill Bowie and Gergana Popova, OUP) Contents Preface to the First Edition xvi Preface to the Second Edition xvii Preface to the Third Edition xvm Preface to the Fourth Edition xix Preface to the Fifth Edition xx Part I Function and Form 1 Introduction 3 Key Concepts 7 2 Function 8 2.1 Subject and Predicate 8 2.5 Adjunct 20 Key Concepts 21 Exercises 22 Further Reading 23 3 Form: Words, Word Classes and Phrases 24 3.1 The notion 'word' 24 3.2 Nouns and determinatives 25 3.8 Interjections 47 Key Concepts 47 Exercises 48 Further Reading 50 4 More on Form: Clauses and Sentences 52 4.1 Clauses and clause hierarchies 52 4.2 The rank scale 55 4.3 Imperative clauses 59 ix X CONTENTS 4.5 The pragmatics of the clause types 60 4.4 More on tree diagrams 61 Key Concepts 65 Exercises 66 Further Reading 68 5 The Function-Form Interface 69 5.1 Function-form relationships 69 5.2 Realisations of the Subject 70 5.1 NPs functioni ng as Subject 70 5.2 PPs functioning as Subject 71 5.3 Finite clauses functioning as Subject 71 5.4 Nonfinite clauses functioning as Subject 71 5.1 To-infinitive clauses functioning as Subject 72 5.2 -ing participle clauses functioning as Subject 72 5.3 Small clauses functioning as Subject 73 5.3 Realisation of the Predicate and Predicator 73 5.4 Realisations of the Direct Object 73 5.1 NPs functioning as Direct Object 74 5.2 PPs functioning as Direct Object 74 5.3 Finite clauses functioning as Direct Object 74 5.1 That-clauses functioning as Direct Object 74 5.2 Finite wh-clauses functioning as Direct Object 75 5.4 Nonfinite clauses functioning as Direct Object 75 5.1 To-infinitive clauses functioning as Direct Object 75 5.2 Bare infinitive clauses functioning as Direct Object 76 5.3 -ing participle clauses functioning as Direct Object 76 5.4 -ed participle clauses functioning as Direct Object 77 5.5 Small clauses functioning as Direct Object 77 5.5 Realisations of the Indirect Object 77 5.1 NPs functioning as Indirect Object 77 5.2 Wh-clauses functioning as Indirect Object 78 5.6 Realisations of Adjuncts 78 5.1 AdvPs functioning as Adjunct 78 5.2 PPs functioning as Adjunct 78 5.3 NPs functioning as Adjunct 78 5.4 Finite clauses functioning as Adjunct 79 5.5 Nonfinite clauses functioning as Adjunct 80 5.1 To-infinitive clauses functioning as Adjunct 80 5.2 Bare infinitive clauses functioning as Adjunct 80 CONTENTS xi 5.3 -ing participle clauses functioning as Adjunct 81 5.4 -ed participle clauses functioning as Adjunct 81 5.5 Small clauses functioning as Adjunct 82 5.7 Motivating the analyses in this chapter 82 Key Concepts 84 Exercises 84 Further Reading 86 Part II Elaboration 6 Predicates, Arguments and Thematic Roles 89 6.1 Predicates and arguments 89 6.3 Grammatical functions and thematic roles 94 6.5 Three levels of description 96 Key Concepts 97 Exercises 97 Further Reading 99 7 Cross-categorial Generalisations: X-bar Syntax 100 7.1 Heads, Complements and Specifiers 100 7.3 Cross-categorial generalisations 115 7.1 Subcategorisation versus argument/thematic structure 119 Key Concepts 120 Exercises 120 Further Reading 123 8 More on Clauses 124 8.1 Clauses functioning as Direct Object, Subject and Adjunct 128 8.2 Clauses functioning as Complement within phrases 131 8.3 Clauses functioning as Adjuncts within NPs 132 Key Concepts 133 Exercises 133 Further Reading 134 9 Movement 136 9.1 Verb Movement: aspectual auxiliaries 136 9.2 NP-Movement: passive 142 9.3 NP-Movement: Subject-to-Subject Raising 148 9.4 Movement in interrogative sentences: Subject-Auxiliary Inversion 150 xii CONTENTS 9.6 The structure of sentences containing one or more auxiliaries 156 Key Concepts 158 Exercises 158 Further Reading 160 10 Tense, Aspect and Mood 161 10.1 Time and tense 161 10.1 The present tense 161 10.1 Uses of the present tense 162 10.2 The past tense 163 10.1 Uses of the past tense 163 10.3 Ways of referring to future time 164 10.2 Aspectuality and aspect 165 10.1 The progressive construction 165 10.2 Uses of the progressive 166 10.1 The perfect construction 166 10.2 Uses of the present perfect 167 10.3 Modality and mood 168 10.1 Different types of modality 168 10.2 The core modals 169 10.1 The morphosyntactic characteristics of the core modals 169 10.2 Meanings expressed by the core modals 170 10.3 Other ways of expressing modality 171 Key Concepts 172 Exercises 172 Further Reading 173 Part III Argumentation 11 Syntactic Argumentation 177 11.1 The art of argumentation 177 11.2 Economy of description: Linguistically Significant Generalisations and Occam's Razor 180 11.1 Linguistically Significant Generalisations 180 11.1 Verb-preposition constructions 183 11.2 Achieving economy in the domain of functional terminology 187 11.3 Further constraints on description: elegance and independent justifications 189 11.1 Elegance of description 189 11.4 Evaluating analyses 194 CONTENTS xiii Key Concepts 195 Exercises 195 Further Reading 197 12 Constituency: Movement and Substitution 199 12.1 The Movement Test 200 12.1 Movements to the left 201 12 .2 Movements to the right 208 12.1 Heavy NP Shift (HNPS) 208 12.2 Extraposition of Subject clauses 209 12.3 Extraposition from NP 209 12.1 Substitution of nominal projections: NP and N' 211 12.2 Substitution of verbal projections: VP and V' 217 Key Concepts 222 Exercises 222 Further Reading 226 13 Constituency: Some Additional Tests 227 13.1 The Coordination Test 227 13.2 The Cleft and Pseudocleft Test 230 13.3 The Insertion Test 232 13.4 The Constituent Response Test 233 13.5 The Somewhere Else Test 234 13.6 The Meaning Test 236 13.7 A case study: the naked pizza eating construction 236 13.8 Some caveats regarding the tests 240 Key Concepts 241 Exercises 241 Further Reading 243 14 Predicates and Arguments Revisited 244 14.2 Dummy elements and idiom chunks 247 14.2 Two further types of verb +NP+ to-infinitive construction: persuade and want 249 14.3 Concluding remarks 254 Key Concepts 254 Exercises 254 Further Reading 256 xiv CONTENTS Part IV Application 15 Information Packaging 259 15.2 Postposing of heavy constituents 262 15.3 The presentational construction 270 15.6 The passive construction 271 Key Concepts 273 Exercises 273 Further Reading 273 16 Grammatical Indeterminacy 274 16.1 Category boundaries and gradience 274 16.1 Word classes: adjective or adverb? 278 16.2 Word classes: verb or noun? 279 16.3 Phrases: adjective phrase or prepositional phrase? 280 16.4 Concluding remarks 282 Key Concepts 283 Exercises 283 Further Reading 284 17 Case Studies 285 17.1 Negated modal auxiliaries 285 17.2 Noun phrase structure 289 17.1 A lot of books 289 17.2 A giant ofa man 293 17.1 Pattern 1: V + to-infinitive 300 CONTENTS xv 17.2 Pattern 2: V + NP + to-infinitive constructions involving allow 304 17.3 Pattern 3: V + NP + {NP, AP, PP} 308 17.4 Subordinating conjunctions and prepositions 311 17.5 Concluding remarks 313 Key Concepts 313 Exercises 313 Further Reading 314 Glossary 315 Reference Works: Dictionaries, Encyclopedias, Grammars and Other Publications on the English Language 327 Bibliography 333 Answer Key for the Exercises 337 Index 392 Preface to the First Edition This book grew out of a need for an introductory text that teaches students not only English syntax but also the basics of argumentation. It is inspired by current Chomskyan theory, but it is not an introduction to it.
However, having worked their way through this book, students should be able to progress to a more advanced study ofsyntax, descriptive or theoretical. I would like to thank the following people for having read an earlier version of the book or parts of it: Flor Aarts (who also helped correcting proofs), Valerie Adams, Judith Broadbent, Dick Hudson, Gunther Kaltenbock, Andrew Spencer, and the students who took part in the Modern English Language seminar at University College London. Special thanks are due to Noel Burton-Roberts for his advice, extensive comments and support. Naturally, all blunders, bloopers and other blemishes are entirely due to me.
xvi Preface to the Second Edition This new edition is a completely revised and corrected version of the first edition. The most obvious change is that Chapter 7 of the first edition (on X-bar syntax) has been split into two, giving more prominence to clauses in a new Chapter 8 (entitled 'More on clauses'). In addition, the book contains many new exercises, which are now graded in terms of level of difficulty. I am grateful to colleagues and students who used the first edition of this book, and gave me very valuable feedback preparing the present edition.
In particu- lar, I would like to thank Kersti Borjars, Ilse Depraetere, Nik Gisborne, Sebastian Hoffman, Hans-Martin Lehmann, Magnus Ljung, Gergana Popova, Mariangela Spinillo and Gunnel Tottie, as well as students at UCL, the Universidad de La Laguna, the University of Sofia and the University of Zurich. xvii Preface to the Third Edition This new edition incorporates a number of corrections and changes in terminology. For example, I now use determinative as a form label, rather than determiner. I have added a new chapter on grammatical indetermin- acy, which has been informed by my research on syntactic gradience (Aarts 2007).
