An Introduction to the Grammar of English: Syntactic arguments and socio-historical background Elly van Gelderen John Benjamins Publishing Company An Introduction to the Grammar of English An Introduction to the Grammar of English Syntactic arguments and socio-historical background Elly van Gelderen Arizona State University John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam/Philadelphia TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American 8 National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gelderen, Elly van. An introduction to the grammar of English : syntactic arguments and socio-historical background / Elly van Gelderen. Includes bibliographical references and index.
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Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands John Benjamins North America · P. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa Table of contents Preface ix List of tables xiii Glossary xv 1 Introduction 1 1. Examples of linguistic knowledge 1 2. How do we know so much? 5 3.
Examples of social or non-linguistic knowledge 6 4. What new words and loanwords tell us 21 5. Phrases in the sentence 40 3. Coordination of phrases 41 4.
Conclusion 46 Review Chapters 1–3 57 vi Table of contents 4 Functions in the sentence 61 1. The different functions and how they are realized 61 2. Verbs and functions 66 3. Conclusion 69 5 More functions, of prepositions and particles 79 1.
Phrasal prepositional verbs (Optional) 85 5. Objects and adverbials 86 6. Conclusion 88 6 The structure of the Verb Group in the VP 97 1. The order of auxiliaries and affix hop 103 3.
Conclusion 107 Review Chapters 4–6 113 7 Finite clauses: Embedded and coordinated 119 1. Sentences and clauses 119 2. The functions of clauses 120 3. Conclusion 125 8 Non-finite clauses 135 1.
Non-finite clauses 135 2. The functions of non-finites 136 3. Coordinating non-finites 139 5. Conclusion 140 Table of contents vii Review of Chapters 7 and 8 147 9 The structure of the NP, AdjP, AdvP, and PP 149 1.
The structure and function of AdjP, AdvP, and PP 149 2. The structure of the NP and functions inside it 151 3. Arguments for distinguishing complements from modifiers 154 4. Conclusion 156 10 Clauses as parts of NPs and AdjPs 167 1.
NPs and AdjPs as compared to PPs and AdvPs 167 2. NPs: Modifier (Relative) and complement clauses 168 3. More on RCs 172 4. AdjPs: Complement clauses 173 5.
Conclusion 174 11 Special sentences 181 1. Topicalization, passive, cleft, and pseudo-cleft 183 4. Conclusion 184 Review Chapters 9–11 189 Further reading 195 References 199 Preface To the student You don’t have to read long novels in this course — no Middlemarch or War and Peace. There isn’t much memorization either.
It should be enough if you become familiar with the keywords at the end of each chapter (use the glossary, but don’t overemphasize the importance of terminology). The focus is on arguments, exercises, and tree drawing. You need to do this from the first week on, however, and you may also have to read a chapter more than once. The course is not particularly difficult but once you get lost, go for help! The book is divided in four parts, with review sections after each.
Chapter 1 is the introduction; skip the ‘justification’ if you want. Justification and thanks This grammar is in the tradition of the Quirk family of grammars, such as the work of Huddleston, Burton-Roberts, Aarts & Wekker. Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, and Svartvik’s work in turn is based on a long tradition of grammarians such as Jespersen, Kruisinga, Poutsma, and Zandvoort. While following the traditional distinction between function (subject, object, etc.
Its focus on structure can be seen in the treatment of the VP as consisting of the verb and its complements. Abstract discussions such as what a constituent is are largely avoided (in fact, the term constituent is since it is a stumbling block in my experience), and the structure of the NP and AP is brought in line with that of the VP: NPs and APs have complements as well as modifiers. x An Introduction to the Grammar of English A clear distinction is made between lexical and functional (here called grammatical) categories. Lexical categories project to phrases and these phrases have functions at sentence level (subject, predicate, object).
As in traditional grammar, but unlike in generative grammar, functional categories (determiner, auxiliary, coordinator, and complementizer) do not project to phrases and have no function at sentence level (they function exclusively inside a phrase and connect clauses and phrases). Hence, determiner, auxiliary, coordinator and complementizer express realization as well as function. This distinction is of course not always clearcut, e. adverbs, pronouns, and some prepositions are in between.
I do bring this up. On occasion, I do not give a definitive solution to a problem because there isn’t any. This lack of explanation can be caused either by an analysis remaining controversial, as in the case of ditransitive verbs and coordinates, or by the continual changes taking place in English (or any other language for that matter). Instead of giving one solution, I discuss some options.
I have found that students become frustrated if, for instance, they can reasonably argue that a verb is prepositional in contexts where ‘the book says’ it is an intransitive verb. Therefore, the emphasis in this book is on the argumentation, and not on pre- senting ‘the’ solution. The chapter where I have been quite conservative in my analysis is Chapter 6. The reason is that to provide the argumentation for a non- flat structure involves theta-theory and quantifier-float and this leads too far afield.
Unlike Quirk et al. (1985), this grammar starts with a chapter on intuitive linguistic knowledge and provides an explanation for it based on Universal Grammar. Also different is the discussion of prescriptive rules, at the end of each chapter. In my experience, students want to know what the prescriptive rule is.
Strangely enough, they don’t want the instructor to tell them that linguistically speaking, there is nothing wrong with splitting an infinitive or using like as a complementizer. Adding those topics is a compromise to them. I have not integrated them in the chapters since I want to keep descriptive and prescriptive rules separate. The topics, obviously, cannot cover all traditional usage questions, such as the ‘correct’ past participle or subjunctive forms.
They are added to give a flavor for the kinds of prescriptive rules around. The chapters in this book cover ‘standard’ material: categories, phrases, functions, and embedded sentences. There are a few sections that I have labelled optional, since, depending on the course, they may be too complex. The last chapter could either be skipped or expanded upon, depending on whether it is appropriate to introduce S≤ or CP.
It should be possible to cover all chapters in Preface xi one semester. The students I have in mind (because of my own teaching background) are English, Humanities, Philosophy, and Education majors as well as others taking an upper level grammar course in an English department at a North American university, or those in an English department in a Europe- an country. Textbooks for such courses have ´‘grammar’ in their titles rather than ´‘syntax’, and hence the title of this book. I am assuming students using this book know basic ‘grammar’, for instance, the past tense of go, and the compara- tive of good.
Students who do not have that knowledge should consult a work such as O’Dwyer (2000). Even though I know there is a danger in giving one answer where more than one are sometimes possible, I have nevertheless provided answers to the exercises. It is done to avoid having to go over all exercises in class. I hope this makes it possible to concentrate on those exercises that are interesting or challenging.
I would like to thank my students in earlier grammar courses whose frustration with some of the inconsistencies in other books has inspired the current work. I am sure this is not the first work so begun. I am extremely grateful to Johanna Wood for long, helpful discussions which made me rethink how to present fundamental questions and for suggesting the special topics. Johanna also made extensive comments to the exercises.
I also thank Harry Bracken for his comments and encouragement, Viktorija Todorovska for major editorial comments, Tom Stroik for supportive suggestions, Barbara Fennell for detailed comments and insightful clarifications, and Anke de Looper of John Benjamins for creative solutions regarding the published version. Other suggestions on the e-text as well on the paper version and on the general project by Dhira Mahoney, Lutfi Hussein, Jeff Parker, Laura Parsons, Mariana Bahtche- vanova and Susan Miller were much appreciated. List of tables Table 2.1: Some differences between N and V 14 Table 2.2: Differences between adjectives and adverbs 16 Table 2.3: Some quantifiers and determiners 18 Table 3.1: Determining phrases 43 Table 4.1: Subject tests 62 Table 4.2: A schema of the functions of NPs, VPs, and AdjPs 70 Table 5.1: Differences among Objects, Su/Obj Predicates, and Adverbials 86 Table 5.2: Verb types 89 Table 5.3: The functions of PPs and AdvPs 89 Table 6.1: Characteristics of auxiliary verbs 98 Table 6.2: Forms of to be 101 Table 6.3: Auxiliaries and their affixes 104 Table 6.4: The relationship between finite and lexical/auxiliary verb 107 Table 10.1: Restrictive and non-restrictive RCs 169 Glossary At the end of each chapter, there is a list of key terms. These are the most relevant and should be understood.
The glossary tries to be somewhat comprehensive, and lists key terms, abbreviations, non-key terms, and some common terminology not used in this book, e. attributive adjective, but perhaps used elsewhere. Don’t attempt to memorize the glossary! Adj¢ Adjective-bar, intermediate category, see Chapter 9, Section 1. accusative case The case of the object or prepositional object, only visible on pro- nouns in English, e.
me, in He saw me, also called the objective case. See special topic to Chapter 4. active A sentence in which the doer of the action is the subject, as in I saw an elephant, see Chapter 4, Section 1. Adj = adjective, see below.
adjective A word which often describes qualities, e. proud; it modifies a noun, see Chapter 2, Section 1. adjective complement Complement to an adjective, e. of him in proud [of him], see Chap- ter 9, Section 1.
AdjP = Adjective Phrase: group of words centered around an adjective, e. very nice, see Chapter 3, Section 1. adjunct Term not used in this book; alternative for ‘adverbial’, see there. Adv = adverb, see below.
proudly; it is similar to an adjective but it modifies a verb, adjective, or other adverb, see Chapter 2, Section 1.2, whereas an adjective modifies a noun. adverbial A function at sentence level providing the background on where, when, how, and why the event described in the VP takes place, see Chapter 5, Section 1. AdvP = Adverb Phrase: group of words centered around an adverb, e. very nicely, see Chapter 3, Section 1.
affix Cannot stand on its own, e. an ending such as -ing, see Chapter 2, Section 1.1, Chapter 6, and Table 6. 1 Introduction All of us know a lot about language. Most of the time, however, we are not conscious of this knowledge.
When we actually study language, we attempt to find out what we know and how we acquire this linguistic knowledge.