Chapter Four From Word to Text

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Chapter FourFrom Word to Text
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• Syntax is the study of the rules governing the
  ways different constituents are combined to form
  sentences in a language, or the study of the
  interrelationships between elements in sentence
  structures.

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1. Syntactic relations

• Syntactic relations can be analysed into three
  kinds
• relations of position
• relations of substitutability
• relations of co-occurrence

syntactic relations
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1.1 Relations of Position

• For language to fulfill its communicative
  function, it must have a way to mark the
  grammatical roles of the various phrases that can
  occur in a clause.
• The boy kicked the ball
• NP1 NP2
• Subject Object

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• Positional relation, or WORD ORDER, refers to the
  sequential arrangement of words in a language.
• If the words in a sentence fail to occur in a
  fixed order required by the convention of a
  language, one tends to produce an utterance
  either ungrammatical or nonsensical at all.
• For example,

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• The boy kicked the ball
• Boy the ball kicked the
• The ball kicked the boy
• The teacher saw the students
• The students saw the teacher

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• Positional relations are a manifestation of one
  aspect of Syntagmatic Relations observed by F. de
  Saussure.
• They are also called Horizontal Relations or
  simply Chain Relations.

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• Word order is among the three basic ways (word
  order, genetic and areal classifications) to
  classify languages in the world
• SVO, VSO, SOV, OVS, OSV, and VOS.
• English belongs to SVO type, though this does not
  mean that SVO is the only possible word order.

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1.2 Relation of Substitutability

• The Relation of Substitutability refers to
  classes or sets of words substitutable for each
  other grammatically in sentences with the same
  structure.
• The ______ smiles. 
• man
• boy
• girl

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• It also refers to groups of more than one word
  which may be jointly substitutable grammatically
  for a single word of a particular set.
• strong man
• The tallest boy smiles.
• pretty girl
• yesterday.
• He went there last week.
• the day before.

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• This is also called Associative Relations by
  Saussure, and Paradigmatic Relations by Hjemslev.
  
• To make it more understandable, they are called
  Vertical Relations or Choice Relations.

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1.3 Relation of Co-occurrence

• It means that words of different sets of clauses
  may permit, or require, the occurrence of a word
  of another set or class to form a sentence or a
  particular part of a sentence.
• For instance, a nominal phrase can be preceded by
  a determiner and adjective(s) and followed by a
  verbal phrase.

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• Relations of co-occurrence partly belong to
  syntagmatic relations, partly to paradigmatic
  relations.

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2. Grammatical construction and its constituents

• 2.1 Grammatical Construction
• Any syntactic string of words ranging from
  sentences over phrasal structures to certain
  complex lexemes.
• an apple
• ate an apple
• Mary ate an apple

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2.2 Constituents and Phrase Structure

• Constituent is a part of a larger linguistic
  unit. Several constituents together form a
  construction
• the girl (NP)
• ate the apple (VP)
• the girl ate the apple (S)

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Immediate Constituent Analysis(IC Analysis)

• The girl ate the apple

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Phrase StructureTree diagram
S NP VP Det
N V NP Det
N The girl ate the apple
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Bracketing

• Bracketing is not as common in use, but it is an
  economic notation in representing the
  constituent/phrase structure of a grammatical
  unit.
• (((The) (girl)) ((ate) ((the) (apple))))
• SNPDet TheN girlVPV ateNPDet theN
  apple

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2.3 Endocentric and Exocentric Constructions

• Endocentric construction is one whose
  distribution is functionally equivalent to that
  of one or more of its constituents, i.e., a word
  or a group of words, which serves as a definable
  centre or head.
• Usually noun phrases, verb phrases and adjective
  phrases belong to endocentric types because the
  constituent items are subordinate to the Head.

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• Exocentric construction refers to a group of
  syntactically related words where none of the
  words is functionally equivalent to the group as
  a whole, that is, there is no definable Centre
  or Head inside the group, usually including
• the basic sentence,
• the prepositional phrase,
• the predicate (verb object) construction, and
• the connective (be complement) construction.

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• The boy smiled. (Neither constituent can
  substitute for the sentence structure as a
  whole.)
• He hid behind the door. (Neither constituent can
  function as an adverbial.)
• He kicked the ball. (Neither constituent stands
  for the verb-object sequence.)
• John seemed angry. (After division, the
  connective construction no longer exists.)

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2.4 Coordination and Subordination

• Endocentric constructions fall into two main
  types, depending on the relation between
  constituents

Coordination Subordination
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Coordination

• Coordination is a common syntactic pattern in
  English and other languages formed by grouping
  together two or more categories of the same type
  with the help of a conjunction such as and, but
  and or .
• These two or more words or phrases or clauses
  have equivalent syntactic status, each of the
  separate constituents can stand for the original
  construction functionally.

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• Coordination of NPs
• NP the lady or NP the tiger
• Coordination of VPs
• VP go to the library and VP read a book
• Coordination of PPs
• PP down the stairs and PP out the door
• Coordination of APs
• AP quite expensive and AP very beautiful
• Coordination of Ss
• S John loves Mary and S Mary loves John too.

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Subordination

• Subordination refers to the process or result of
  linking linguistic units so that they have
  different syntactic status, one being dependent
  upon the other, and usually a constituent of the
  other.
• The subordinate constituents are words which
  modify the head. Consequently, they can be called
  modifiers.

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• two  dogs
•           Head
• (My brother) can drink (wine).
• Head
• Swimming in the lake (is fun).
• Head
• (The pepper was) hot beyond endurance.
• Head

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Subordinate clauses

• Clauses can be used as subordinate constituents.
  There are three basic types of subordinate
  clauses
• complement clauses
• adjunct (or adverbial) clauses
• relative clauses

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• John believes that the airplane was invented by
  an Irishman. (complement clause)
• Elizabeth opened her presents before John
  finished his dinner. (adverbial clause)
• The woman that I love is moving to the south.
  (relative clause)

subordinate clause
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3. Syntactic Function

• The syntactic function shows the relationship
  between a linguistic form and other parts of the
  linguistic pattern in which it is used.
• Names of functions are expressed in terms of
  subjects, objects, predicators, modifiers,
  complements, etc.

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3.1 Subject

• In some languages, subject refers to one of the
  nouns in the nominative case.
• The typical example can be found in Latin, where
  subject is always in nominative case, such as
  pater and filius in the following examples.
• pater filium amat (the father loves the son)
• patrum filius amat (the son loves the father)

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• In English, the subject of a sentence is often
  said to be the agent, or the doer of the action,
  while the object is the person or thing acted
  upon by the agent.
• This definition seems to work for these
  sentences
• Mary slapped John. A dog bit Bill.

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• but is clearly wrong in the following examples
• John was bitten by a dog.
• John underwent major heart surgery.
• In order to account for the case of subject in
  passive voice, we have two other terms
  grammatical subject (John) and logical
  subject (a dog).

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• Another traditional definition of the subject is
  what the sentence is about (i.e., topic).
• Again, this seems to work for many sentences,
  such as
• Bill is a very crafty fellow.
• but fails in others, such as
• (Jack is pretty reliable, but) Bill I dont
  trust.
• As for Bill, I wouldnt take his promises very
  seriously.

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• All three sentences seem to be about Bill thus
  we could say that Bill is the topic of all three
  sentences.
• The above sentences make it clear that the topic
  is not always the grammatical subject.
• What characteristics do subjects have?

subject
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Word order

• Subject ordinarily precedes the verb in the
  statement
• Sally collects stamps.
• Collects Sally stamps.

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Pro-forms

• The first and third person pronouns in English
  appear in a special form when the pronoun is a
  subject, which is not used when the pronoun
  occurs in other positions
• He loves me.
• I love him.
• We threw stones at them.
• They threw stones at us.

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Agreement with the verb

• In the simple present tense, an -s is added to
  the verb when a third person subject is singular,
  but the number and person of the object or any
  other element in the sentence have no effect at
  all on the form of the verb
• She angers him.
• They anger him.   
• She angers them.

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Content questions

• If the subject is replaced by a question word
  (who or what), the rest of the sentence remains
  unchanged, as in
• John stole the Queens picture from the British
  Council.
• Who stole the Queens picture from the British
  council?

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• When any other element of the sentence is
  replaced by a question word, an auxiliary verb
  must appear before the subject.

• What would John steal, if he had the chance?
• What did John steal from the British Council?
• Where did John steal the Queens picture from?

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Tag question

• A tag question is used to seek confirmation of a
  statement. It always contains a pronoun which
  refers back to the subject, and never to any
  other element in the sentence.
• John loves Mary, doesnt he?
• Mary loves John, doesnt she?
• John loves Mary, doesnt she?

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3.2 Predicate

• Predicate refers to a major constituent of
  sentence structure in a binary analysis in which
  all obligatory constituents other than the
  subject were considered together.
• It usually expresses actions, processes, and
  states that refer to the subject.
• The boy is running. (process)
• Peter broke the glass. (action)
• Jane must be mad! (state)
• The word predicator is suggested for verb or
  verbs included in a predicate.

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3.3 Object

• Object is also a term hard to define. Since,
  traditionally, subject can be defined as the doer
  of the action, object may refer to the receiver
  or goal of an action, and it is further
  classified into Direct Object and Indirect
  Object.
• Mother bought a doll.
• Mother gave my sister  a doll.
• IO   DO

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• In some inflecting languages, object is marked by
  case labels the accusative case for direct
  object, and the dative case for indirect object.
• In English, object is recognized by tracing its
  relation to word order (after the verb and
  preposition) and by inflections (of pronouns).
• Mother gave a doll to my sister.
• John kicked me.

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• Modern linguists suggest that object refers to
  such an item that it can become subject in a
  passive transformation.
• John broke the glass. ? The glass was broken by
  John.
• Peter saw Jane. ? Jane was seen by Peter.

object
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• Although there are nominal phrases in the
  following, they are by no means objects because
  they cannot be transformed into passive voice.
• He died last week.
• The match lasted three hours.
• He changed trains at Manchester. (Trains were
  changed by him at Manchester.)

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4. Category

• The term category refers to the defining
  properties of these general units
• Categories of the noun number, gender, case and
  countability
• Categories of the verb tense, aspect, voice

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4.1 Number

• Number is a grammatical category used for the
  analysis of word classes displaying such
  contrasts as singular, dual, plural, etc.
• In English, number is mainly observed in nouns,
  and there are only two forms singular and
  plural, such as dog dogs.
• Number is also reflected in the inflections of
  pronouns and verbs, such as He laughs They
  laugh, this man these men.

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• In other languages, for example, French, the
  manifestation of number can also be found in
  adjectives and articles.
• le cheval royal (the royal horse)
• les chevaux royaux (the royal horses)

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4.2 Gender

• Such contrasts as masculine feminine
  neuter, animate inanimate, etc. for the
  analysis of word classes.
• Though there is a correlation between natural
  gender and grammatical gender, the assignment may
  seem quite arbitrary in many cases.
• For instance, in Latin, ignis fire is
  masculine, while flamma flame is feminine.

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• English gender contrast can only be observed in
  pronouns and a small number of nouns, and, they
  are mainly of the natural gender type.
• he she it
• prince princess
• author authoress

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• In French, gender is manifested also both in
  adjectives and articles.
• beau cadeau (fine gift)
• belle maison (fine house)
• Le cadeau est beau. (The gift is good.)
• La maison est belle. (The house is beautiful.)

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• Sometimes gender changes the lexical meaning as
  well, for example, in French
• le poele (the stove)
• la poele (the frying pan)
• le pendule (the pendulum)
• la pendule (the clock)

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4.3 Case

• The case category is used in the analysis of word
  classes to identify the syntactic relationship
  between words in a sentence.
• In Latin grammar, cases are based on variations
  in the morphological forms of the word, and are
  given the terms accusative, nominative,
  dative, etc.
• There are five cases in ancient Greek and eight
  in Sanskrit. Finnish has as many as fifteen
  formally distinct cases in nouns, each with its
  own syntactic function.

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• In English, case is a special form of the noun
  which frequently corresponds to a combination of
  preposition and noun, and it is realized in three
  channels
• inflection
• following a preposition
• word order
• as manifested in
• teacher teachers
• with to a man
• John kicked Peter Peter kicked John

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4.4 Agreement

• Agreement (or concord) may be defined as the
  requirement that the forms of two or more words
  of specific word classes that stand in specific
  syntactic relationship with one another shall
  also, be characterized by the same
  paradigmatically marked category (or categories).

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• This syntactic relationship may be anaphoric, as
  when a pronoun agrees with its antecedent,
• Whose is this pen? --Oh, its the one I lost.
• or it may involve a relation between a head and
  its dependent, as when a verb agrees with its
  subject and object
• Each person may have one coin.

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• Agreement of number between nouns and verbs
• This man runs.   The bird flies. 
• These men run.      These birds fly.

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5. Phrase, Clause and Sentence

• Sentence
• Clause
• Phrase
• Word

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• the three tallest girls (nominal phrase)
• has been doing
• (verbal phrase)
• extremely difficult
• (adjectival phrase)
• to the door (prepositional phrase)
• very fast
• (adverbial phrase)

phrase
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• The best thing would be to leave early.
• Its great for a man to be free.
• Having finished their task, they came to help us.
• John being away, Bill had to do the work.
• Filled with shame, he left the house.
• All our savings gone, we started looking for
  jobs.
• Its no use crying over spilt milk.
• Do you mind my opening the window?

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Sentence traditional approach

• simple
• Sentence complex
• non-simple
• compound

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Sentence functional approach

• Yes/no
• 
  Interrogative
• Indicative
  wh-
• 
  Declarative
• Sentence
• 
  Jussive
• Imperative
• 
  Optative

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Basic sentence types Bolinger

• Mother fell. (Nominal intransitive verbal)
• Mother is young. (Nominal copula complement)
• Mother loves Dad. (Nominal transitive verbal
  nominal).
• Mother fed Dad breakfast. (Nominal transitive
  verbal nominal nominal)
• There is time. (There existential nominal)

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Basic sentence types Quirk

• SVC    Mary is kind.
• a nurse.
• SVA    Mary is here.
• in the house.
• SV      The child is laughing.
• SVO    Somebody caught the ball.
• SVOC   We have proved him wrong.
•                                          a
  fool.
• SVOA    I put the plate on the table.
• SVOO   She gives me expensive presents.

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6. Recursiveness

• Recursiveness mainly means that a phrasal
  constituent can be embedded within another
  constituent having the same category, but it has
  become an umbrella term such important linguistic
  phenomena as coordination and subordination,
  conjoining and embedding, hypotactic and
  paratactic.
• All these are means to extend sentences.
• How long can a sentence be?

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• Theoretically, there is no limit to the embedding
  of one relative clause into another relative
  clause, so long as it does not become an obstacle
  to successful communication.
• The same holds true for nominal clauses and
  adverbial clauses.
• I met a man who had a son whose wife sold cookies
  that she had baked in her kitchen that was fully
  equipped with electrical appliances that were new
  

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• Johns sister
• Johns sisters husband
• Johns sisters husbands uncle
• Johns sisters husbands uncles daughter, etc.
• that house in Beijing
• the garden of that house in Beijing
• the tree in the garden of that house in Beijing
• a bird on the tree in the garden of that house in
  Beijing

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6.1 Conjoining

• Conjoining coordination.
• Conjunctions and, but, and or.
• John bought a hat and his wife bought a handbag.
• Give me liberty or give me death. 

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6.2 Embedding

• Embedding subordination.
• Main clauses and subordinate clauses.
• Three basic types of subordinate clauses
• Relative clause I saw the man who had visited
  you last year.
• Complement clause I dont know whether Professor
  Li needs this book.
• Adverbial clause If you listened to me, you
  wouldn't make mistakes.

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7. Text and discourse

• The development of modern linguistic science has
  helped push the study of syntax beyond the
  traditional sentence boundary.
• Linguists are now exploring the syntactic
  relation between sentences in a paragraph or
  chapter or the whole text, which leads to the
  emergence of text linguistics and discourse
  analysis. 

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7.1 Sentential Connection

• Hypotactic (subordinate clauses)
• You can phone the doctor if you like. However, I
  very much doubt whether he is in.
• We live near the sea. So we enjoy a healthy
  climate.
• Paratactic (coordinate clauses)
• In Guangzhou it is hot and humid during the
  summer. In Beijing it is hot and dry.
• He dictated the letter. She wrote it.
• The door was open. He walked in.

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7.2 Cohesion and cohesiveness

• Cohesion is a concept to do with discourse or
  text rather than with syntax. It refers to
  relations of meaning that exist within the text,
  and defines it as a text.
• Cohesiveness can be realized by employing various
  cohesive devices
• conjunction
• ellipsis
• lexical collocation
• lexical repetition
• reference
• substitution, etc.

COHESIVENESS
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• Did she get there at six?
• No, (she got there) earlier (than six).
  (Ellipsis)
• Shall we invite Bill?
• No. 1 cant stand the man. (Lexical
  collocation)
• He couldnt open the door. It was locked tight.
  (Reference)
• Why dont you use your own recorder?
• I don't have one. (Substitution)
• I wanted to help him. Unfortunately it was too
  late. (Logical connection)