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Chapter Seven From Word to Text 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. 1. Syntactic relations Syntactic relations can be analyzed into three kinds: relations of position relations of substitutability relations of co-occurrence 1.1 Positional Relations 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. 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. Word order is one of the basic ways to classify languages in the world: SVO, VSO, SOV, OVS, OSV, and VOS. According to this, we can say there are six types of language in the world. English belongs to SVO type, though this does not mean that SVO is the only possible word order. 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 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. 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. Relations of co-occurrence partly belong to syntagmatic relations, partly to paradigmatic relations. 2. Grammatical construction and its constituents 2.1 Grammatical Construction Any syntactic string of words ranging from sentences over phrasal structures to words. Mary ate an apple Mary ate an apple 2.2 Immediate Constituents Constituent is a part of a larger linguistic unit. Several constituents together form a construction: The girl ate the apple the girl ate the apple Immediate Constituent Analysis (IC Analysis) Immediate constituents are constituents immediately, directly, below the level of a construction, which may be a sentence or a word group or a word. For example, in the sentence, the girl ate the apple, the girl and ate the apple are immediate constituents of the sentence, then in turn, the and girl are the immediate constituents of the nominal phrase while ate and the apple are the immediate constituents of the verbal phrase. Immediate constituent analysis, IC analysis for short, refers to the analysis of a sentence in terms of its immediate constituents – word groups, which are in turn analyzed into the immediate constituents of their own, and the process goes on until the constructions can be not be further analyzed. The IC analysis of a sentence may be carried out with brackets or shown with a tree diagram. Tree diagram S NP Det VP N V NP Det N The girl ate the apple 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)))) 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. 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. 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.) 2.4 Coordination and Subordination Endocentric constructions fall into two main types, depending on the relation between constituents: 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. Coordination of NPs: Coordination of VPs: [PP down the stairs] and [PP out the door ] Coordination of APs: [VP go to the library] and [VP read a book ] Coordination of PPs: [NP the lady] or [NP the tiger] [AP quite expensive] and [AP very beautiful] Coordination of Ss: [S John loves Mary] and [S Mary loves John too]. 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. two dogs Head (My brother) can drink (wine). Head Swimming in the lake (is fun). Head (The pepper was) hot beyond endurance. Head 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 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) 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. 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) In English, the subject of a sentence is often said to be the doer of the action, while the object is the person or thing acted upon by the doer. The semantic roles of subject and object can be identified as agent (施事) and patient (受事). But, this definition does not seem to work for sentences in passive voice. To solve the problem, we use “grammatical subject” and “logical subject”. Another traditional definition of the subject is “what the sentence is about” (i.e., topic). Again, this seems to work for many sentences, e.g., Bill is a very crafty fellow. but in some sentences, the topics are not subject, e.g., (Jack is pretty reliable, but) Bill I don’t trust. As for Bill, I wouldn’t take his promises very seriously. What characteristics do subjects have in English? 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Word order (subject+verb) Pro-forms (the pronouns are in the nominative case) Agreement with verb Content questions Tag question 3.2 Predicate Predicate: refers to a major constituent in a binary analysis of sentence structure, predicate include all constituents (such as verb, object, complement) other than the subject. It usually expresses actions, processes, and states that refer to the subject. predicator (谓词) is the word for verb or verbs in a predicate. 3.3 Object Object traditionally refers to the “receiver” or “goal” of an action, and it is further classified into Direct Object and Indirect Object. In some inflecting languages, object is marked by case labels: the accusative case (宾格)for direct object, and the dative case (与格)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). Modern linguists suggest that object refers to such an item that it can become subject in a passive transformation. Although there are nominal phrases in the following, they are by no means objects because they cannot be transformed into passive voice. 试比较: 下列各句中的名词短语的句法功能有什么不 同? He broke the window. He died last week. He changed trains at Fengtai. 3.4 Relation between classes & functions Classes and functions determine each other, but not in any one-to-one relation. A class item can perform several functions. A function can be fulfilled by several classes. 4. Category The term category refers to the defining properties of the general linguistic units such as noun and verb. For example, the categories of the noun include number, gender, case and countability and the categories of the verb include tense, aspect, voice, etc. 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. 4.2 Gender Gender display the contrast between “masculine : feminine : neuter” for the analysis of word classes. Natural gender vs. grammatical gender Arbitrary assignment of gender 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 In French, gender is manifested also both in adjectives and articles. 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) 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. 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 (teacher’s) following a preposition (to a man) word order (Peter kicked John) 4.4 Agreement When two or more words stand in specific syntactic relationship with one another, the forms of these words are required to be characterized by the same category. 当一些 词处于特定的句法关系之中时,它们具有相 同的范畴特征。 For example, English nouns and verbs, which function as subject and predicate, should be in agreement in number. Agreement of number between nouns and verbs: This man runs. These men run. The bird flies. These birds fly. 5. Phrase, Clause and Sentence Sentence Clause Phrase Word Sentence: traditional approach simple Sentence complex non-simple compound Sentence: functional approach Yes/no Interrogative Indicative whDeclarative Sentence Jussive Imperative Optative 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) Basic sentence types: Quirk SVC SVA SV SVO SVOC SVOA SVOO Mary is kind. a nurse. Mary is here. in the house. The child is laughing. Somebody caught the ball. We have proved him wrong. a fool. I put the plate on the table. She gives me expensive presents. 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? 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 … John’s sister John’s sister’s husband John’s sister’s husband’s uncle John’s sister’s husband’s uncle’s 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 6.1 Conjoining Conjoining: coordination. Conjunctions: and, but, and or. 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 don’t know whether Professor Li needs this book. Adverbial clause: If you listened to me, you wouldn't make mistakes. 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. 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. 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.