In each of these alternative forms, a combination of words from the original sentence which one might intuitively put together in a single unit also occurs together as a unit, and this can be taken as evidence that they are in fact constituents. Using square brackets to group the words in constituents together, the constituent structure of The shaft of a passing cab brushed against his shoulder may be represented as in (4) (‘S’ stands for ‘sentence’.)
(4)[S [NP The [N shaft]] [P of NP[ a [Adj passing] [N cab]]VP [V brushed] [AdvP against][NP [P his] [N shoulder]]
1.4 Tests for phrases
Consider the following sentence:
The rich brown atmosphere was peculiar to back rooms in the mansion of a Forsyte. [59]All speakers of English would agree that in this sentence, some of the words go together with each other more closely than others. For example, the words the rich brown atmosphere seem to go together more closely than, say atmosphere was peculiar. Likewise in the mansion seems to go together as a unit (often referred to as a constituent), more than the mansion of.
For our native language we could rely on intuition to decide about phrases. But that is not going to work if we have to describe a language which we don’t know very well.
What sorts of formal tests can we find to decide whether something is a phrase or not?
One of the simplest tests for phrases is what is called the substitution test. If we can substitute a set of words with a single other word, without changing the overall meaning, then we can say that those words form a phrase.
For example, looking back at the earlier sentence, we can substitute various of the phrases for single words:
The rich brown atmosphere was peculiar to back rooms in the mansion of a Forsyte
It was peculiar to back rooms in the mansion of a Forsyte that it was the rich brown atmosphere.
The rich brown atmosphere was peculiar to back rooms in the mansion of a Forsyte
The rich brown atmosphere was peculiar there.
We can see from this that the words the rich brown atmosphere form a phrase, as do the words back rooms, the mansion and in the mansion.
Substitution also can be seen with what is called anaphora, where a single item substitutes for an earlier mentioned item, in question and answer sequences or in long sentences. For example, we could have a question and answer sequence:
"There's no money in that," he said. ‘Yes, he went bankrupt," replied Nicholas.[59, p.66]In the second sentence here, the word bankrupt has replaced no money, showing us that no money must be a phrase.
While substitution usually works on the basis of a single word, it is also possible to substitute using the phrase do so or so do. We can see this sort of substitution in:
Old Jolyon's hand trembled in its thin lavender glove, and so did his son’s.[59, p.45]So the words hand trembled in our original sentence form a phrase.
As well as substitution, another test we can use to see if something is a phrase is what is called the clefting. Cleft sentences have the form
It is/was/will be ____ that/who ____
The important thing for a cleft test is to take the original sentence, and try putting it into this frame, without changing it in any way except for taking one part of it out and putting it in the first slot, and putting the rest of the sentence in the second slot. For example:
The rich brown atmosphere was peculiar to back rooms in the mansion of a Forsyte
It was the rich brown atmosphere that was peculiar to back rooms in the mansion of a Forsyte
Old Jolyon's hand trembled in its thin lavender glove.[59.p.23]
It was Old Jolyon's hand that trembled in its thin lavender glove.
When applying the cleft test, it is important not to change anything about the sentence, except for taking one part out and putting it between it is/was/will be and that/who.
If it is possible to cleft a sentence, then the part of the sentence which occurs between it is/was/will be and that/who forms a phrase. Note that if it is possible to cleft a group of words, then that group of words forms a phrase; but just because you can’t cleft something, that doesn’t mean that it isn’t a phrase. For example, we know that in our original sentence the words the rich brown atmosphere form a phrase, but we can’t cleft it:
It was peculiar to back rooms in the mansion of a Forsyte that the rich brown atmosphere.
Phrases often behave as units for various movement operations, with the entire phrase moving together. For example, we could move the phrase on that shelf in our original sentence:
The rich brown atmosphere was peculiar to back rooms in the mansion of a Forsyte.
To back rooms in the mansion of a Forsyte was peculiar the rich brown atmosphere.
A specific case of movement is the formation of a passive sentences. As we can see the set of words the key and the words in the lock in our sentence must each be a phrase because each set of words moves together under passivization:
Old Jolyon turned the key softly in the lock[59,p.58] (active sentence)
The key was softly turned in the lock[59] (passive sentence)
Noting the nesting of constituents within constituents in this sentence, e.g. the NP the lock is a constituent of the PP in the lock which is a constituent of the VP turned in the lock. At the beginning of this section it was noted that the two aspects of syntactic structure, relational structure and constituent structure, are ‘distinct yet interrelated’, and it is possible now to see how this is the case. For example, a VP was described as being composed of a verb and the following NP, but it could alternatively be characterized as involving the verb and its direct object. Similarly, a PP is composed of a preposition and its object. NPs, on the other hand, involve modifiers, and accordingly the relation between the and lock could be described as one of modifier–modified.
1.5 Lexical categories
In the discussion of the constituents of sentences, reference has been made to nouns and noun phrases, verbs and verb phrases, and prepositions and prepositional phrases. Nouns, verbs and prepositions are traditionally referred to as ‘parts of speech’ or ‘word classes’; in contemporary linguistics they are termed lexical categories. The most important lexical categories are noun, verb, adjective, adverb and adposition, which subsumes prepositions and postpositions. In traditional grammar, lexical categories are given notional definitions, i.e. they are characterized in terms of their semantic content [9,pp.25-67].
For example, noun is defined as ‘the name of a person, place or thing’, verb is defined as an ‘action word’, and adjective is defined as ‘a word expressing a property or attribute’. In modern linguistics, however, they are defined morphosyntactically in terms of their grammatical properties.
Nouns may be classified in a number of ways. There is a fundamental contrast between nouns that refer uniquely to particular entities or individuals and those that do not; the best example of the first kind of noun is a proper name, e.g. Sam, Elizabeth, Paris or London, and nouns of this type are referred to as proper nouns.
Nouns which do not refer to unique individuals or entities are called common nouns, e.g. dog, table, fish, car, pencil, water. One of the important differences between proper and common nouns in a language like English is that common nouns normally take an article, while proper nouns do not, e.g. : The boy left versus *The Sam left (cf. *Boy left versus Sam left). Common nouns may be divided into mass nouns and count nouns. Count nouns, as the name implies, denote countable entities, e.g. seven chairs, six pencils, three dogs, many cars. Mass nouns, on the other hand, are not readily countable in their primary senses, e.g. *two waters, *four butters, *six snows. In order to make them countable, it is necessary to add what is sometimes called a ‘measure word’, which delimits a specific amount of the substance, e.g. two glasses/bottles/drops of water, four pats/sticks of butter, six shovelfuls of snow. Measure words can be used with count nouns only when they are plural, e.g. *six boxes of pencil versus six boxes of pencils, *two cups of peanut versus three jars of peanuts. Pronouns are closely related to nouns, as they both function as NPs. Pronouns are traditionally characterized as ‘substitutes’ for nouns or as ‘standing for’ nouns, e.g. John went to the store, and he bought some milk, in which he substitutes or stands for John in the second clause. This, however, is true only of third-person pronouns like he, she, it, or they; it is not true of first-person pronouns like I or second-person pronouns like you. First- and second-person pronouns refer to or index the speaker and addressee in a speech event and do not replace or stand for a noun.
Verbs can likewise be categorized along a number of dimensions, such as:
person, number( in Modern English there are but few form indicating them in the synthetic forms of the verb. These are (1).the 3rd person singular Present Indefinite Indicative; (2) the Future Indefinite tense; (3) the suppletive forms of the verb to be for different persons of singular and plural), aspect (perfect and progressive), voice (active and passive), mood (indicative, imperative and subjunctive) and tense (there are four groups of tenses: Indefinite, Continuous, Perfect and Perfect Continuous; each of these forms includes four tenses: Present, Past, Future and Futute-in-the-Past. Thus there are 16 tenses in English.)
Conclusions to Part I
1 .Syntax is the branch of grammar dealing with the ways in which words, with or without appropriate inflections, are arranged to show connections of meaning within the sentence.
2. The main object of syntax is sentence construction.
3. One of the most obvious yet important ways in which languages differ is the order of the main elements in a sentence.
4. The basic word order in English clauses is subject–verb–object, articles precede the noun they modify, and auxiliary verbs precede the main verb. These are English-specific syntactic rules.
5. The connection between the words in a sentence is realized through the changes in their forms and these changes in the form of the words to indicate their function in the sentence are called ‘inflections’, and the study of the formation of words and how they may change their form is called morphology.
6. Syntax investigates simple sentences, as well as their combinations called complex sentences.
7. A central part of the description of what speakers do is characterizing the grammatical (or well-formed) sentences of a language and distinguishing them from ungrammatical or (ill-formed) sentences.
8. Two interrelated aspects of syntax: relational structure and constituent structure.
9. Words organization into phrases. Types of phrases.
10. In order to check if word combination is a phrase, the tests for phrases are to be done.
11. Lexical categories. Their semantic content.
Part II. English Verb. Verb Phrases
2.1 Peculiarities of the Verb
The term “verb” is used in two senses:
1. the verb is one of the elements used in the clause structure, like the subject and the object.
2. a verb is a member of a word class, like a noun, and an adjective.
The two senses are related in this way: a verb phrase consists of one or more verbs (sense 2) e.g. linked, is making, can believe, might be leaving in the sentences below; the verb phrase operates as the verb (sense 1) in the clause, e.g.:
They linked hands. He is making a noise.
I can believe you. She will be leaving soon.
Verbs are the very large lexical word class in English, and were traditionally called ‘doing’ words when taught to young children. The lexical verb class is more inclusive than the label implies as there are verbs (for example have, be) which do not describe doing, but being, or states, rather than processes and still others that describe events with no intentional action behind them (for example die, fall).
In order to group these words together, then, we need to identify their formal nd functional features. The inflectional morphemes can be used to modify the verb in English. These include the present-tense, third-person singular morpheme, which is written as -s in most cases; the past tense morpheme, written as -ed in all regular verbs in English; and the progressive form, which is written as -ing for all English verbs.
Many minor sentences, and many spoken ones, consist of a single word that is not necessarily a verb:
No! Natalie! Me. Singing. Slowly.
It is possible to work out likely contexts in which these words will occur as utterances in their own right. However, they must have a context in order to have a viable meaning.
With the exception of these and other minor utterance types, clauses in English need to have a verb in them. This verb may be the head of a verb phrase, but it may stand alone as a verb phrase too. The following clauses have a single verb functioning in the predicator role:
Young Jolyon looked round the room. [59, p.65]
The old face looked worn and hollow again [59, p.34]
His eyes roved from bottle to bottle.[59, p.74]
Two ladies advanced. [59, p.44]
As a word class verbs can be divided into three main categories, according to their function within the verb phrase: the open class of Full Verbs (or lexical verbs), and the very small closed classes of Primary Verbs, and Modal Auxiliary Verbs. Since the primary verbs and the modal auxiliary verbs are closed classes, we can list them in full.
Full Verbs believe, follow, like, see,…
Primary Verbs be, have, do
If there is only one verb in the verb phrase, it is the Main Verb. If there is more than one verb, the final one is the main verb, and the one or more verbs that go before it are auxiliaries. For example transmit is the main verb in this sentence, and might and be are auxiliaries:
… to whom he might transmit the money he saved,…[59, p.66]Of the three classes of verbs, the full verbs can act only as main verbs, the modal auxiliaries can act only as auxiliary verbs, and the primary verbs can act either as main verbs or as auxiliary verbs. Let us investigate the auxiliary verbs closer.
Auxiliary verbs. Auxiliaries have little or no lexical meaning. They are ‘helper’ verbs, in the sense that they help to form complex verb forms. In doing so they express either a grammatical notion (like ‘passive’, ‘progressive’ or ‘tense’) or one or more modal ideas. This is not to say that auxiliaries are devoid of meaning, but their meanings are more schematic (i.e. more ‘skeletal’, more ‘abstract’, less ‘full’) than those of lexical verbs.
Within the auxiliaries we can make a distinction between two classes: grammatical auxiliaries and modal auxiliaries. The former, which are sometimes referred to as ‘primary auxiliaries’, have a purely grammatical function:
1. the ‘tense auxiliary’ have, which is used in forming perfect tense forms;
2. the ‘aspect auxiliary’ be, which is used for building progressive verb orms;
3. the ‘voice auxiliary’ be, which is used in the passive;
4. the ‘periphrastic auxiliary’ do, which is used as a ‘dummy’ (pro-form) when a VP that does not contain an auxiliary (e. g. love her) is used in a construction that requires one (e. g. I don’t love her, Do you love her?, I do love her, etc.)
Next, there are the ‘modal auxiliaries’: can, could, may, might, must, shall, should, ought to, will, and would. These auxiliaries express special shades of meaning, such as volition, possibility, permission, necessity, intention, obligation, expectation, inference, ability, determination, etc. The modal auxiliaries differ semantically from the first group in that they add lexical meaning rather than fulfill a grammatical function. However, they still have less concrete, and hence more widely applicable, meanings than most lexical verbs. This wider applicability explains why auxiliaries form a relatively small set when compared with lexical verbs.
Because an auxiliary does not have a full lexical meaning, it cannot be used without a main (lexical) verb, except in ‘code’, where the auxiliary is used as pro-form for an entire verb phrase (as in If I do the thing, I will do it thoroughly, but I must have a free hand). In other words, an auxiliary cannot be the only or last verb form in the VP (except in ‘code’). In the following example the main verbs are italicized while the auxiliaries are underlined:[“What did he do last night?”] - “He {studied / worked / may have slept / could /had to / would}.”
Unlike lexical verbs, auxiliaries have the so-called ‘NICE-properties’. ‘NICE’ is an acronym (coined by Huddleston 1976) consisting of the initial letters of the terms negation, inversion, code and emphasis. The reference is to the four cases in which the English VP requires an auxiliary. If there is no auxiliary, the ‘periphrastic auxiliary’ do has to be added. In that case we say that the lexical verb requires ‘do-support’. In other words, the statement that ‘auxiliaries have the NICE-properties’ means that they do not combine with the periphrastic auxiliary do in clauses made negative by the use of not, in clauses involving subject-auxiliary inversion, in code and in cases of emphasis. By contrast, clauses without an auxiliary need ‘do-support’ (i.e. the insertion of do) in these four cases. Compare: