A Student's Introduction to English Grammar

A Student's Introduction to English Grammar Thi s groundbreaking undergraduate textbook on

modem

Standard

English grammar is the first to be based on the revolutionary advances of the authors' previous work, The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (2002), winner of the 2004 Leonard Bloomfield Book Award of the Linguistic Society of America. The analyses defended there are out lined here more briefly, in an engagingly accessible and informal style. Errors of the older tradition of English grammar are noted and corrected, and the excesses of prescriptive usage manuals are firmly rebutted in spe cially highlighted notes that explain what older authorities have called 'incorrect' and show why those authorities are mistaken. This book is intended for students in colleges or universities who have little or no previous background i n grammar, and presupposes no linguis tics. It contains exercises and a wealth of other features, and will provide a basis for introductions to grammar and courses on the structure of English not only in linguistics departments but also in English language and literature departments and schools of education. Students will achieve an accurate understanding of grammar that will both enhance their lan guage skills and provide a solid grounding for further linguistic study.

Student's Introduction to English Grammar A

RODNEY HUDDLESTON Ullil'ersity of Queensland

GEOFFREY K. PULLUM Ulliversity ()f Caliji)mia, Santa Cru�

"CAMBRIDGE :>

UNIVERSITY PRESS

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge, CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780S21612883

© Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum 2005 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2005 Reprinted with corrections 2006 Third printing 2007 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

catalogue recordfor this publication is available from the British Library

ISBN-13 978-0-521-84837-4 hardback ISBN-13 978-0-521-61288-3 paperback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Contents

Notational conventions Preface

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Introduction A rapid overview Verbs, tense, aspect, and mood Clause structure, complements, and adjuncts Nouns and noun phrases Adjectives and adverbs Prepositions and preposition phrases Negation and related phenomena Clause type: asking, exclaiming, and directing Subordination and content clauses Relative clauses Grade and comparison Non-finite clauses and clauses without verbs Coordination and more Information packaging i n the clause Morphology : words and lexemes

Further reading Glossary Index

page vi vii

11 29 63 82 1 12 1 27 1 49 1 59 1 74 1 83 1 95 204 225 238 264 29 1 295 309

Notational conventions

Abbreviations of grammatical terms Adj

Adjective

AdjP

Adjective Phrase

AdvP

Adverb Phrase

C, Comp

Complement

Determinative Phrase

Noun

Nom

Nominal

NP 0 Od

Noun Phrase Object

0; P PC PP Pred Comp Prep S, Subj V VP

Indirect Object Predicator Predicative Complement Preposition Phrase Predicative Complement Preposition Subject Verb Verb Phrase

Direct Object

Presentation of examples Italics are always used for citing examples (and for no other purpose). Bold italics are used for lexemes (as explained on p. 15). "Double quotation marks" enclose meanings. Underlining (single or double) and square brackets serve to highlight part of an example. The symbol '.' marks a morphological division within a word or a component part of a word, as in 'work· er·s ' or 'the suffix ·s ' . The following symbols indicate the status of examples (in the interpretation under consideration): *ungrammatical .) of questionable acceptability ! non-standard %grammatical in some dialects only

*Know you the answer? The floor began to be swept by Max. I I done it myself. %Have you enough money ? ?

Additional conventions Boldface is used for technical terms when first introduced and sometimes for later occurrences too. SMA L L

C A P I T A L S are used for emphasis and contrast.

Preface

This book is an introductory textbook on modern Standard English grammar, intended mainly for undergraduates, in English departments and schools of educa tion as well as linguistics departments. (See www.cambridge.org/0521612888 for a link to the associated web site, where additional information can be found.) Though it takes note of developments in linguistics over the past few decades, and assumes a thorough knowledge of English, it does not presuppose any previous study of gram mar or other aspects of linguistics. We believe that every educated person in the English-speaking world should know something about the details of the grammar of English. There are a number of reasons. There are hardly any professions in which an ability to write and speak crisply and effectively without grammatical mistakes is not a requirement on some occasions. Although a knowledge of grammar will not on its own create writing skills, there is good reason to think that understanding the structure of sentences helps to increase sensitivity to some of the important factors that distinguish good writing from bad. Anyone who aims to improve their writing on the basis of another person's tech nical criticism needs to grasp enough of the technical terms of grammatical description to make sure the criticism can be understood and implemented. It is widely agreed that the foremost prerequisite for computer programming is the ability to express thoughts clearly and grammatically in one's native language. In many professions (the law being a particularly clear example) it is a vital part of the content of the work to be able to say with confidence what meanings a par ticular sentence or paragraph will or won't support under standard conceptions of English grammar. Discussions in a number of academic fields often depend on linguistic analysis of English: not only linguistics, but also philosophy, literature, and cognitive science. Industrial research and development areas like information retrieval, search engines, document summary, text databases, lexicography, speech analysis and synthesis, dialogue design, and word processing technology increasingly regard a good knowledge of basic linguistics, especially English grammar, as a prerequi site. vii

viii

Preface Knowing the grammar of your native language is an enormous help for anyone embarking on the study of another language, even if it has rather different gram matical principles; the contrasts as well as the parallels aid understanding.

This book isn't the last word on the facts of Standard English, or about grammar more generally, but we believe it will make a very good foundation. It is based on a much bigger one, The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (CGEL), written between 1990 and 2002 in collaboration with an international team of other linguists. That book often contains much fuller discussion of the analysis we give here, together with careful argumentation concerning the alternative analyses that have sometimes been advocated, and why they are less successful. The process of writing this book, and The Cambridge Grammar before it, was continually surprising, intriguing, and intellectually exciting for us. Some think the study of English grammar is as dry as dust, probably because they think it is virtu ally completed, in the sense that nothing important in the field remains to be dis covered. But it doesn't seem that way to us. When working in our offices and meet ing for lunchtime discussions we usually found that we would have at least one entirely new discovery to talk about over sandwiches. At the level of small but fas cinating details, there are thousands of new discoveries to be made about modern English. And even at the level of the broad framework of grammatical principles, we have frequently found that pronouncements unchallenged for 200 years are in fact flagrantly false. We are pleased that we were again able to work with Kate Brett of Cambridge University Press, the same senior acquisitions editor who saw CGEL through to completion, and with Leigh Mueller, our invaluable copy-editor.

We have con

stantly drawn on the expertise that was provided to CGEL by the other contributors: Peter Collins, David Lee, Peter Peterson, and Lesley Stirling in Australia; Ted Briscoe, David Denison, Frank Palmer, and John Payne in England; Betty Birner, Geoff Nunberg, and Gregory Ward in the United States; Laurie Bauer in New Zealand; and Anita Mittwoch in Israel. There are many topics covered in CGEL that we couldn't have tackled without their help, and this shorter presentation of some of those topics is indebted to them at various points. The School of English, Media Studies and Art History at the University of Queensland generously continued to provide an academic and electronic home for Rodney Huddleston while he worked full-time on this project. Professor Junko ItD, Chair of the Department of Linguistics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, helped a lot by arranging Geoff Pullum's teaching schedule in ways that facilitated his participation in completing this book. And most importantly, we would like to thank our families, who have been extraordinarily tolerant and supportive despite the neglect of domestic concerns that is inevitable when finishing a book. Vivienne Huddleston and Barbara Scholz, in particular, have seen less of us than (we hope) they would have liked, and taken on more work than was their proper share in all sorts of ways, and we are grateful.

Introduction

I Standard English 2 Descriptive and prescriptive approaches to grammar 3 Grammatical terms and definitions 5

Standard English English is probably the most widely used language in the world, with

around 400 million native speakers and a similar number of bilingual speakers in several dozen partially English-speaking countries, and hundreds of millions more users in other countries where English is widely known and used in business, gov ernment, or media. It is used for government communications in India; a daily newspaper in Cairo; and the speeches in the parliament of Papua New Guinea. You may hear it when a hotel receptionist greets an Iranian guest in Helsinki; when a German professor talks to a Japanese graduate student in Amsterdam; or when a Korean scientist lectures to Hungarian and Nigerian colleagues at a conference in Bangkok. A language so widely distributed naturally has many varieties. These are known

as dialects. I That word doesn't apply just to rural or uneducated forms of speech;

the way we use it here, everyone speaks a dialect. And naturally, this book doesn't try to describe all the different dialects of English there are. It concentrates on one central dialect that is particularly important: the one that we call Standard English. We can't give a brief definition of Standard English; in a sense, the point of this whole book is precisely to provide that definition. But we can make a few remarks about its special status. The many varieties of English spoken around the world differ mainly in pronunci ation (or 'accent'), and to a lesser extent in vocabulary, and those aspects of language (which are mentioned but not covered in detail in this book) do tend to give indications of the speaker's geographical and social links. But things are very different with

grammar, which deals with the form of sentences and smaller units: clauses, phrases and words. The grammar of Standard English is much more stable and uniform than

We use boldface for technical terms when they are first introduced. Sometimes later occurrences are also boldfaced to remind you that the expression is a technical term or to highlight it in a context where the discussion contributes to an understanding of the c�tegQry or function concerned.

Chapter I Introduction

its pronunciation or word stock: there is remarkably little dispute about what is gram

matical (in compliance with the rules of grammar) and what isn't. Of course, the small number of controversial points that there are - trouble spots like who versus whom - get all the public discussion in language columns and let ters to the editor, so it may seem as if there is much turmoil; but the passions evinced over such problematic points should not obscure the fact that for the vast majority of questions about what's allowed in Standard English, the answers are clear? Moreover, in its written form, Standard English is regarded worldwide as an uncontroversial choice for something like an editorial on a serious subject in any English-language newspaper, whether in Britain, the USA, Australia, Africa, or India. It is true that a very few minor points of difference can be found between the American English (AmE) and British English (BrE) forms of Standard English; for example, BrE speakers will often use She may have done where an AmE speaker would say She may have; but for the most part using Standard English doesn't even identify which side of the Atlantic the user comes from, let alone indicate member ship in some regional, ethnic, or social group. Alongside Standard English there are many robust local, regional, and social dialects of English that are clearly and uncontroversially non-standard. They are in many cases familiar to Standard English speakers from plays and films and songs and daily conversations in a diverse community. In [1] we contrast two non-standard expressions with Standard English equivalents, using an exclamation mark () to indicate that a sentence belongs to a non-standard dialect, not the standard one. [1]

NON -STANDARD

STANDARD a. [did it myself. ii a. [haven 't told anybody anything.

b. ![done it myself.

b. ![ain 't told nobody nothing.

We should note at this point that elsewhere we use a per cent sign to mark a Stan dard English form used by some speakers but not all (thus we write "left mayn 't hap

pen because some Standard English speakers use mayn 't and some don't). And when our focus is entirely on Standard English, as it is throughout most of the book, we use an asterisk to mark sequences that are not grammatical (e.g., *Ran the away

dog), ignoring the issue of whether that sequence of words might occur in some non-standard dialects. In [1], though, we're specifically talking about the sentences of a non-standard dialect.

Done in [ib] is a widespread non-standard 'past tense' form of the verb do, cor in the standard dialect done is what is called a 'past participle', used after have (I have done it) or be (It was done yesterday). 3 responding to Standard English did

For example, try writing down the four words the, dog, ran, away in all twenty-four possible orders. You will find that just three orders turn out to be grammatical, and there can be no serious disagree ment among speakers as to which they are. Throughout this book we use bold italics to represent items from the dictionary independently of the various forms they have when used in sentences: did is one of the forms of the item listed in diction aries as do (the others are does, done, and doing); and was is one of the forms of the item listed as be.

§ 1 Standard English

In [ii] there are two differences between the standard and non-standard versions. First, ain 't is a well-known non-standard form (here meaning "haven't"); and second, [iib] exhibits multiple marking of negation: the clause is marked three times as negative (in ain 't, nobody, and nothing), whereas in [iia] it is marked just once (in haven 't). Features of this sort would not be used in something like a TV news bulletin or a newspaper editorial because they are generally agreed to be non-standard. That doesn't mean dialects exhibiting such features are deficient, or illogical, or intrinsi cally inferior to the standard dialect. Indeed, as we point out in our discussion of negation in Ch. 8, many standard languages (they include French, Italian, Polish, and Russian) show multiple marking of negation similar to that in [ l ii] . It's a special grammatical fact about Standard English that it happens to lack multiple negation marking of this kind.

Formal and informal style The distinction between standard and non-standard dialects of English is quite dif ferent from the distinction between formal and informal style, which we illustrate in [2] : [2]

FORMAL II

a. He was the one with whom she worked. a. She must be taller than I.

INFORMAL b. He was the one she worked with. b. She must be taller than me.

In these pairs, BOTH versions belong to the standard dialect, so there is no call for the exclamation mark notation. Standard English allows for plenty of variation in style depending on the context in which the language is being used. The [a] ver sions would generally be used only in quite formal contexts. In casual conversa tion they would very probably be regarded as pedantic or pompous. In most con texts, therefore, it is the [b] version, the informal one, that would be preferred. The informal Standard English sentences in [b] occur side by side with the formal variants; they aren 't non-standard, and they aren 't inferior to the formal counter parts in [a] . Informal style is by no means restricted to speech. Informal style is now quite common in newspapers and magazines. They generally use a mixture of styles: a little more informal for some topics, a little more formal for others. And informal style is also becoming more common in printed books on academic subjects. We've chosen to write this book in a fairly informal style. If we hadn't, we wouldn't be using we 've or hadn't, we'd be using we have and had not. Perhaps the key difference between style and dialect is that switching between styles within your native dialect is a normal ability that everyone has, while switch ing between dialects is a special ability that only some people have. Every speaker of a language with style levels knows how to use their native language more for mally (and maybe sound more pompous) or talk informally (and sound more friendly and casual). But to snap into a different dialect is not something that

Chapter I Introduction

everyone can do. If you weren' t raised speaking two dialects, you have to be some thing of an actor to do it, or else something of a linguist. Either way you have to actually become acquainted with the rules of the other dialect. Some people are much better than others at this. It isn't something that is expected of everyone. Many (probably most) Standard English speakers will be entirely unable to do a convincing London working-class, or African American vernacular, or Scottish highlands dialect. Yet all of them know how to recognise the difference in style between the [a] sentences and the [b] sentences in [2] , and they know when to use which.

Descriptive and prescriptive approaches to grammar

There is an important distinction to be drawn between two kinds of books on English grammar: a book may have either a descriptive or a prescriptive goal. Descriptive books try to describe the grammatical system that underlies the way people actually speak and write the language. That's what our book aims to do: we want to describe what Standard English is like. Prescriptive books aim to tell people how they should speak and write - to give advice on how to use the language. They typically take the form of usage manuals, though school textbook treatments of grammar also tend to be prescriptive. In principle you could imagine descriptive and prescriptive approaches not being in conflict at all: the descriptive grammar books would explain what the language is like, and the prescriptive ones would tell you how to avoid mistakes when using it. Not making mistakes would mean using the language in a way that agreed with the descriptive account. The two kinds of book could agree on the facts. And indeed there are some very good usage books based on thorough descriptive research into how Standard English is spoken and written. But there is also a long tradition of pre scriptive works that are deeply flawed: they simply don' t represent things correctly or coherently, and some of their advice is bad advice. Perhaps the most important failing of the bad usage books is that they fre quently do not make the distinction we just made between STANDARD VS NON STANDARD DIALECTS on the one hand and FORMAL VS INFORM A L STYLE on the other. They apply the term ' incorrect' not only to non-standard usage like the [b] forms in [ 1 ] but also to informal constructions like the [b] forms in [2] . But it isn ' t sensible to call a construction grammatically incorrect when people whose status as fully competent speakers of the standard language is unassail able use it nearly all the time. Yet that's what (in effect) many prescriptive man uals do. Often they acknowledge that what we are calling informal constructions are widely used, but they choose to describe them as incorrect all the same. Here's a fairly typical passage, dealing with another construction where the issue is the

§3 Grammatical terms and definitions choice between I and me (and corresponding forms of other pronouns): [3]

Such common expressions as it 's me and was it them ? are incorrect, because the verb to be cannot take the accusative: the correct expressions are it 's I and was it they ? But general usage has led to their acceptance, and even to gentle ridicule of the correct version. 4

By 'take the accusative' the author means occur followed by accusative pronoun forms like me, them, us, etc., as opposed to the nominative forms I, they, we, etc. (see Ch. 5, § 8.2). The book we quote in [3] is saying that there is a rule of English grammar requiring a nominative form where a pronoun is 'complement' of the verb be (see Ch. 4, §4. 1 ). But there isn't any such rule. A rule saying that would fail to allow for a construction we all use most of the time: just about everyone says It 's me. There will be no ridicule of It is I in this book; but we will point out the simple fact that it represents an unusually formal style of speech. What we're saying is that when there is a conflict between a proposed rule of grammar and the stable usage of millions of experienced speakers who say what they mean and mean what they say, it's got to be the proposed rule that's wrong, not the usage. Certainly, people do make mistakes - more in speech than in writing, and more when they're tired, stressed, or drunk. But if I ' m outside on your doorstep and I call out It 's me, that isn't an accidental slip on my part. It's the normal Standard English way to confirm my identity to someone who knows me but can't see me. Calling it a mistake would be quite unwarranted. Grammar rules must ultimately be based on facts about how people speak and write. If they don't have that basis, they have no basis at all. The rules are supposed to reflect the language the way it is, and the people who know it and use it are the final authority on that. And where the people who speak the language distinguish between formal and informal ways of saying the same thing, the rules must describe that variation too. This book is descriptive in its approach, and insofar as space permits we cover informal as well as formal style. But we also include a number of boxes headed 'Prescriptive grammar note' , containing warnings about parts of the language where prescriptive manuals often get things wrong, using the label 'incorrect' (or 'not strictly correct' ) for usage that is perfectly grammatical, though perhaps informal in style.

Grammatical terms and definitions

Describing complex systems of any kind (car engines, legal codes, sym phonies, languages) calls for theoretical concepts and technical terms ( 'gasket' , 'tort' , 'crescendo' , 'adverb'). We introduce a fair amount of grammatical terminol ogy in this book. To start with, we will often need to employ the standard terms for 4

From B.

Phythian, A Concise Dictionary of Correct English (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1979).

Chapter I Introduction

three different areas within the study of language. Two of them have to do with the grammatical form of sentences: syntax is the study of the principles governing how words can be assembled into sentences (Ifound an unopened bottle of wine is admissible but *1 found a bottle unopened of wine is not); and morphology deals with the internal form of words (unopened has the parts un', open, and ·ed, and those parts cannot be combined in any other order).5 But in addition to their form, expressions in natural languages also have meaning, and that is the province of the third area of study: semantics. This deals with the principles by which sentences are associated with their literal meanings. So the fact that unopened is the opposite of opened, and the fact that we correctly use the phrase an unopened bottle of wine only for a bottle that contains wine and has not been opened, are semantic facts about that expression. We will need a lot of more specific terms too. You may already know terms like noun, verb, pronoun, subject, object, tense, and so on; but we do not ASSUME any understanding of these terms, and will devote just as much attention to explaining them as to other terms that you are less likely to have encountered before. One rea son for this is that the definitions of grammatical terms given in dictionaries and textbooks are often highly unsatisfactory. This is worth illustrating in detail, so let's look at the definitions for two specific examples: the term past tense and the term imperative.

Past tense The term 'past tense' refers to a grammatical category associated with verbs: likes is a present tense form and liked is a past tense form. The usual definition found in grammar books and dictionaries says simply that the past tense expresses or indi cates a time that is in the past. But things are nothing like as straightforward as that. The relation between the GRAMMATICAL category of past tense and the SEMANTIC property of making reference to past time is much more subtle. Let's look at the following examples (the verbs we need to compare are underlined): [4]

DEFINITION WORKS

a. The course started last week. ii a. If he said that, he was wrong. I I I a. I ottended the Smiths.

DEFINITION FAILS

b. I thought the course started next week. b. If he said that, she wouldn 't believe him. b. I regret offending the Smiths.

The usual definition works for the [a] examples, but it completely fails for the [b] ones. In [i] the past tense started in the [a] case does locate the starting in past time, but in [b] the same past tense form indicates a (possible) starting time in the future. So not every past tense involves a past time reference. 5

The decimal point of un· and ·ed is used to mark an element smaller than a full word.

§3 Grammatical tenns and definitions In [ii] we again have a contrast between past time in [a] and future time in Cb] . In [a] it's a matter of whether or not he said something in the past. In Cb] it's a matter of his possibly saying it in the future: we're supposing or imagining that he says it at some future time; again, past tense, but no past time. In [iii] we see a different kind of contrast between the [a] and Cb] examples. The event of my offending the Smiths is located in past time in both cases, but whereas in [a] offended is a past tense form, in Cb] offending is not. This shows that not every past time reference involves a past tense. So if we used the usual definition to decide whether or not the underlined verbs were past tense forms we would get the wrong answers for the [b] examples: we would conclude that started in rib] and said in [iib] are NOT past tense fonns and that offending in [iiib] IS a past tense fonn. Those are not correct conclusions. It is important to note that we aren't dredging up strange or anomalous examples here. The examples in the Cb] column are perfectly ordinary. You don' t have to search for hours to find counterexamples to the traditional definition: they come up all the time. They are so common that you might well wonder how it is that the def inition of a past tense as one expressing past time has been passed down from one generation to the next for over a hundred years and repeated in countless books. Part of the explanation for this strange state of affairs is that 'past tense ' , like most of the grammatical tenns we' ll use in this book, is not unique to the grammar of English but is applicable to a good number of languages. It follows that there are two aspects to the definition or explanation of such tenns: At one level we need to identify what is common to the fonns that qualify as past tense in different languages. We call this the general level. At a second level we need to show, for any particular language, how we decide whether a given fonn belongs to the past tense category. This is the language particular level (and for our purposes here, the particular language we are con cerned with is English). What we've shown in [4] is that the traditional definition fails badly at the language particular level: we'll be constantly getting wrong results if we try to use it as a way of identifying past tense forms in English. But it is on the right lines as far as the general level is concerned. What we need to do is to introduce a qualification to allow for the fact that there is no one-to-one correlation between grammatical form and meaning. At the general level we will define a past tense as one whose PRIMARY or CHARACTERISTIC use is to indicate past time. The examples in the right-hand column of [4] belong to quite nonnal and everyday constructions, but it is nevertheless possible to say that the ones in the left-hand column represent the primary or characteristic use of this fonn. That's why it is legitimate to call it a past tense. But by putting in a qualification like 'primary' or 'characteristic' we're acknowl edging that we can't detennine whether some arbitrary verb in English is a past tense

Chapter 1 Introduction

form simply by asking whether it indicates past time. At the language-particular level we need to investigate the range of constructions, such as [4ib/iib], where the forms used are the same as those indicating past time in the [a] construction - and the conditions under which a different form, such as offending in [iiib], can be associated with past time.

Imperative The typical definition of 'imperative' is that it is a form or construction used to issue a command. To begin with, notice that 'command' is in fact far too narrow a term for the meaning usually associated with imperatives: we use lots of imperatives in talk ing to friends and family and co-workers, but not (mostly) as commands. The broader term directive is more suitable; it covers commands (Get out!), offers (Have a pear), requests (Please pass riie the salt), invitations (Come to dinner), advice (Get your doctor to look at it), instructions (To see the picture click here), and so on. Even with this change from 'command' to 'directive' , though, the definition runs into the same kind of problems as the usual definitions of past tense. It works for some examples and fails for others : [5]

DEFINITION WORKS II

a. Go to bed. a. Please pass me the salt.

DEFINITION FAILS b. Sleep well. b. Could you pass me the salt ?

In [i] both examples are imperatives, but while [a] is a directive, [b] is not. When I say [ib] I'm not directing you to sleep well, I ' m just wishing you a peaceful night. In [ii] we have the opposite kind of failure. Both examples are directives, but while [a] is imperative, [b] is not. In terms of grammatical structure, [b] is an interrogative (as seen in questions like A re you hungry?, or Have you seen Sue ?, or Could you fmd any tea ?). But it is not being used to ask a question: if I say [iib] , I ' m not asking for an answer, I ' m asking for the salt. So directives can be issued in other ways than by use of an imperative. Again the textbook definition is along the right lines for a general definition but, as before, we need to add an essential qualification. An imperative can be defined at the general level as a construction whose PRIMARY or CHARACTERISTIC use is to issue directives. At the language-particular level, to tie down the imperatives in English, we need to say how the grammatical structure of imperatives differs from that of related constructions. Compare, for example: [6]

DECLARATIVE

i a. You are very tactful. ii a. They help me prepare lunch.

IMPERATIVE b. Be very tactful. b. Help me prepare lunch.

The examples on the left are declaratives. The characteristic use of a declarative is to make statements. The two most important grammatical differences between imperatives and declaratives are illustrated in [i] :

Exercises The imperative [ib] has a different form of the verb, be as opposed to are in [ia] . (With other verbs the forms are not overtly distinct, as evident in [ii] , but the fact that there is an overt difference in [i] is a clear distinguishing feature.) While you is overtly present in [ia], it is merely implicit or 'understood' in [ib] . You is called the subject. It's a major difference between the constructions that subjects are normally obligatory in declaratives but are usually omitted in imperatives. There's a good deal more to be said about the structure of imperatives (see Ch. 9), but here we just want to make the point that the definition found in textbooks and dictionaries is of very limited value in helping to understand what an imperative is in English. A definition or explanation for English must specify the grammatical properties that enable us to determine whether or not some expression is imperative. And the same applies to all the other grammatical terms we will be making use of in this book. In dismissing the two meaning-based definitions we just discussed, we don't mean to imply that meaning will be ignored in what follows. We' ll be very much concerned with the relation between grammatical form and meaning. But we can only describe that relation if the categories of grammatical form are clearly defined in the first place, and defined separately from the kinds of meaning that they may or may not sometimes express.

Exercises 1 . Footnote I pointed out that only three orderings of the words the, dog, ran, away are grammatical. Which are the three grammatical orders of those words? Discuss any possible grounds for doubt or disagreement that you see. 2. Consider features of the following sen tences that mark them as belonging to non-standard dialects of English. Rewrite them in Standard English, keeping the meaning as close as possible to the original. i It ain 't what you do, it's the way how you do it. ii She don't pay the rent regular. iii Anyone wants this stuff can have it. iv This criteria is totally useless. v Me and her brother were late. 3. Consider what features of the following sentences mark them as belonging to formal style in Standard English. Rewrite them in informal or neutral style, keeping the meaning as close as possible to the original.

i To whom am I speaking ? ii It would be a pity ifhe were to give up now. iii We hid the documents, lest they be confiscated. iv That which but twenty years ago was a mystery now seems entirely straightfor ward. v One should always try to do one's best. 4. For each of the following statements, say whether it is a morphological, syntactic, or semantic fact about English. i Wherever I saw a host of yellow daffodils is true, I saw some yellow flowers is also true. ii The string of words *He it saw can be made grammatical by placing the word it after the word saw. iii Nobody could truly say they believe that he saw it if they didn't also believe that it was seen by him. iv The verb hospitalise is formed from hospital by adding ·ise.

Chapter I Introduction

v A witness who truthfully asserted I saw a host of yellow daffodils would have to answer No if asked Was everything blue ? VI Fall doesn't take the ·ed suffix: fell occurs, not *falled. vii You can't insert every in the sentence A man 's got to do what a man 's got to do and get a grammatical result. viii When someone says I was going to walk but I decided not to, the sense is the same as if they had said I was going to walk but I decided not to walk. ix Of can be the last word of a Standard English sentence. x A completed grammatical sentence of Standard English that begins 'I believe that we . . . ' must continue in a way that includes at least one verb. 5. Explain briefly in your own words, in the way you would explain it to someone who had not seen this book, what the difference

is between a descriptive grammar book and a prescriptive one. Choose one or two grammars (of any language) from those accessible to you, and use them as exam ples, saying whether you think they are descriptive or prescriptive. 6. A significant number of newspapers in English are published in mainly non-English speaking countries, and many of them have web editions - examples include The TImes of India (India; timesofindia. indiatimes.com); Cairo TImes (Egypt; www.cairotimes.com); Straits TImes (Singapore; straitstimes.asia l .com.sg); New Straits TImes (Malaysia; www.nst.com.my); Jamaica Gleaner (www. jamaica gleaner.com); etc. Collect some articles from several of these, sticking to subjects that minimise give-away local references, and see if native speakers of English can identify the country of origin purely from the grammar or other aspects of the language.

�

rapid overview

I Two kinds of sentence 12 2 Clause, word and phrase 12

3 Subject and predicate

4 Two theoretical di stinctions

5 Word and lexeme categories: the parts of speech 6 The structure of phrases 22 7 Canonical and non-canonical clauses 24 8 Word structure 27

The primary topic of this book is the way words combine to form sentences in Stan dard English. Sentences are made up from words in regular ways, and it is possible to describe the regularities involved by giving general statements or rules that hold for all the sentences in the language. To explain the rules for English we will need a number of technical terms. The purpose of this chapter is to introduce most of those (or at least the most important ones). We do it by taking a high-speed reconnais sance flight over the whole terrain covered in the book. What we mean by calling a word a technical term is simply that you can ' t guess how to use it on the basis of the way you may have used it so far; it needs an expla nation, because its use in the description of a language has a special definition. We may give that explanation just before we first use the term, or immediately fol lowing it, or you may need to set the term aside for a few paragraphs until we can get to a full explanation of it. This happens fairly often, because the vocabulary of grammar can ' t all be explained at once, and the meanings of grammatical terms are very tightly connected to each other; sometimes neither member of a pair of terms can be properly understood unless you also understand the other, which makes it impossible to define every term before it first appears, no matter what order is chosen. The account we give in this chapter is filled out and made more exact in the chap ters that follow. This chapter provides a short overview of the grammar that will enable you to see where the detailed discussions of particular categories and constructions fit into the overall organisation. We'll rely heavily on qualifications like 'usually' , 'nor mally' , 'in the most basic cases' , and so on, because we're giving an outline, and there are details, refinements, and exceptions to be explained later in the relevant chapter. Here and there in this chapter we take the opportunity to draw attention to some of the contrasts between our analysis and that of a long tradition of English II

Chapter 2 A rapid overview

grammatical description going back to the late sixteenth century. By the eighteenth century this traditional line of work on grammar was quite well developed and began to harden into a body of dogma that then changed very little in the nine teenth and twentieth centuries. Yet many aspects of this widely accepted system are clearly mistaken. We do not want to simply present once again what so many ear lier books have uncritically repeated. There are many revisions to the description of English that we think greatly enhance the coherence and accuracy of the description, many of them stemming from research in linguistics since the middle of the twentieth century, and we will offer brief comparative comments on some of them.

Two kinds of sentence

The syntactically most straightforward sentences have the form of a sin gle clause or else of a sequence of two or more coordinated clauses, joined by a coordinator (e.g., and, or, but). We illustrate in [ 1 ] : CLAUSAL SENTENCES (having the form of a clause) I

[I]

a. Kim is an actor. b. Pat is a teacher. c. Sam is an architect.

COMPOUND SENTENCES (having the form of a coordination of clauses) a. Kim is an actor; but Pat is a teacher. b. Kim is an actor; Pat is a teacher; and Sam is an architect.

The distinction between the two kinds of sentence is drawn in terms of clauses (one versus more than one), which means we're taking the idea of a clause to be descriptively more basic than the idea of a sentence. Example sentences cited in the rest of this chapter and in the following eleven chapters will almost invariably have the form of a clause; we return to sentences having the form of a coordination of clauses when we discuss coordination more generally, in Ch. 14.

Clause, word and phrase

The most basic kind of clause consists of a subject followed by a pred icate. In the simplest case, the subject (Subj) is a noun and the predicate (Pred) is a verb: [2]

Subj

Pred

Things

change.

Subj

Pred

Subj

I IL_K_im_-,--_Ie_ fi_t'--l1 I People

Pred complained.

In traditional grammar the examples in [i] are called ' simple sentences', but we don't use this term; it covers only a subset of what we call clausal sentences.

§3 Subject and predicate

More often, the subject and/or the predicate consist of more than one word while still having a noun and verb as their most important component: Subj

[3]

Pred

Subj Pred

I All things I change. I I Kim I left early. I

Subj

Pred

Some people complained about it.

Expressions such as all things and some people are called noun phrases phrases with a noun as their head. The head of a phrase is, roughly, the most impor tant element in the phrase, the one that defines what sort of phrase it is. The other elements are dependents. Similarly, left early and complained about it are verb phrases, phrases with a verb as head. Again, early and about it are dependents of the verb. Traditional grammars and dictionaries define a phrase as containing more than one word. But it's actually more convenient to drop this requirement, and generalise the category 'noun phrase' so that it covers things, Kim and people in [2], as well as all things and some people in [3] . There are lots of places besides the subject posi tion where all these expressions can occur: compare We need clients and We need some clients or This is good for clients and This is goodfor some clients, and so on. It would be tedious to have to talk about 'nouns or noun phrases' in all such cases. So we prefer to say that a noun phrase (henceforth NP) normally consists of a noun with or without various dependents. (In other words, the head is accompanied by ZERO OR MORE dependents.) It's much the same with other categories of phrase, e.g., verb phrases. Com plained in [2] , just like complained about it in [3], can be regarded as a verb phrase (VP). And the same general point will hold for the rest of the categories we intro duce below: although they CAN contain more, they sometimes contain just a head and nothing else. -

Subject and predicate

Basic clauses can be analysed as a construction consisting of subject plus predicate, as in [2] and [3] . The predicate typically describes a property of the person or thing referred to by the subject, or describes a situation in which this per son or thing plays some role. In elementary clauses describing an action, the subject normally indicates the actor, the person or thing performing the action, while the predicate describes the action, as in Kim left and People complained in [2] . But this is rather vague: meaning doesn't give much guidance in distinguishing the subject from the predicate. Syntactically, however, the subject is quite sharply distinguished from other ele ments by (among others) the following properties: It usually has the form of an NP. Its default position is before the verb.

Chapter 2 A rapid overview

In interrogative clauses it typically occupies a distinctive position just after the verb. The last two of these points are illustrated by contrasts of the following kind: [4]

BASIC Jl 1Il

a. The clock has stopped. a. Kim is downstairs. a. Some customers complained.

INTERROGATIVE b. Has the clock stopped? b. Is Kim downstairs ?

b. Did some customers complain ?

Here the [a] version represents the basic form while the [b] version is interrogative (a type of clause characteristically used to ask questions). The constructions differ with respect to the position of the subject: it precedes the verb in [a] , but follows it in [b] . In [iii] the interrogative differs also in that it contains the verb do, which is absent from [a] . This do is often added to form interrogatives, but the general point is nonetheless clear: the subject precedes the verb in the basic version and follows it in the interrogative. One useful test for finding the subject of a clause, therefore, is to turn the clause into an interrogative and see which expression ends up after the (first or only) verb.

Two theoretical distinctions

Before we continue with our survey we pause to introduce two theoreti cal distinctions frequently needed in the rest of the book. One (§4. 1 ) is the distinc tion between functions and categories, which is implicit in the elementary descrip tion of the clause that has already been given. The second (§4.2) is a clarification of two senses of the term 'word' .

4. 1

Functions and categories

In our example Some people complained about it we have said that some people is subject and that it is an NP. These are two quite different kinds of concept. Subject is a function, while NP is a category. Function is a relational concept: when we say that some people is subject we are describing the relation between it and com plained, or between it and the whole clause. It is THE SUBJECT OF THE CLAUSE, not simply a subject. A category, by contrast, is a class of expressions which are grammatically alike. An NP is (setting aside a narrow range of exceptions) simply a phrase with a noun as head (it's not the NP of anything, it's just an NP). The class of NPs thus includes an indefinitely large set of expressions like the following (where underlining marks the head noun): some people, all things, Kim, people (as used in People complained), the people next door, the way home, and so on. The reason we need to distinguish so carefully between functions and categories is that the correspondence between them is often subtle and complex. Even though there are clear tendencies (like that the subject of a clause is very often an NP), a

§4.2 Words and lexemes single function may be filled b y expressions belonging to different categories, and expressions belonging to a single category may occur in different functions. We can see this in the following examples: ONE FUNCTION, DIFFERENT CATEGORIES

[5]

a. His guilt was obvious.

ii a. That he was guilty was obvious.

ONE CATEGORY, DIFFERENT FUNCTIONS b. Some customers complained. b. Kim insulted some customers.

In the left-hand column the underlined expressions both function as subject: they stand in the same relation to the predicate was obvious. But while his guilt is an NP (having the noun guilt as head), that he was guilty isn't - it's a clause, with its own subject (he) and its own predicate (was guilty). In the right-hand column some customers is in both cases an NP, but it has dif ferent functions. It is subject in [ib] , but in [iib] it has the function of 'object' , which we explain in §6 below.

4.2

Words and lexemes

The term 'word' is commonly used in two slightly different senses. The difference can be seen if we ask how many DI FFERENT words there are in a sentence such as: [6]

They had two cats and a dIlg; one cat kept attacking the dIlg.

Focus on the four we've underlined. The second and fourth are obviously instances of the same word, but what about the first and third? Are these instances of the same word, or of different words? The answer depends on which sense of 'word' is intended. In one sense they are clearly different: the first contains an s at the end. But there is a second sense in which they're merely different FORMS OF THE SAME WORD.

In this book we restrict word to the first sense and introduce a new term, lexeme, for the second sense. The 'lex' component of 'Iexeme' is taken from 'lexicon' , which has more or less the same meaning as 'dictionary ' - and 'lexicography' has to do with writing dictionaries. Cat and cats are different words, but forms of the same Iexeme. The idea is that they are the same as far as the dictionary is concerned: the difference is purely grammatical. They are covered under a single dictionary entry, and in most dictionaries there is no explicit mention of cats. The difference between the various forms of a lexeme is a matter of inflection. Cat and cats, then, are different inflectional forms of the same Iexeme - the singu lar and plural forms respectively. In order to distinguish the lexeme as a whole from its various forms we represent it in boldface: cat and cats are inflectional forms of the lexeme cat. Similarly, take, takes, took, taking, taken are inflectional forms of the verb lexeme take. And big, bigger, biggest are inflectional forms of the adjective lexeme big.

Chapter 2 A rapid overview

Not all lexemes show inflectional variation of this kind. For those that don't, the distinction between word and lexeme is unimportant, and we will represent them in ordinary italics, as with the, and, very and so on.

Word and lexeme categories: the parts of speech

The traditional term 'parts of speech' applies to what we call categories of words and lexemes. Leaving aside the minor category of interjections (covering words like oh, hello, wow, ouch, etc., about which there really isn't anything inter esting for a grammar to say), we recognise eight such categories: [7]

ii iii iv v vi vii viii

NOUN VERB ADJECTIVE DETERMINATIVE ADVERB PREPOSITION COORDINATOR SUBORDINATOR

The dQg barked. The dog barked. He 's very old. The dog barked. She spoke clearly. It's in the car. I got up and left. It 's odd that they were late.

That is Sue. It iJ. impossible. It looks Q11Jl1Y.. I need some nails. He 's ffa old. I gave it to Sam. Ed or la took it. I wonder whether it 's still available.

We saw �. I have a headache. I've got a new car. All things change. I almost died. Here 's a list Q,[ them. It's cheap but strong. They don 't know if you 're serious.

This scheme has much in common with the traditional one, but there are also some important differences that we will point out in the brief survey below. The two largest and most important categories are the noun and the verb, the two that we have already introduced. The most basic kind of clause contains at least one noun and one verb and, as as we have seen in [2] above, may contain just a noun and verb. The first six categories in list [7] can function as the head of corresponding phrases (noun phrase, verb phrase, adjective phrase, etc.). The other two can't. The very small coordinator and subordinator classes do not function as head but serve as markers of coordination and subordination (we'll explain those terms below). An NP with a coordinator added to it (such as or la) is still a kind of NP; and when you add a subordinator to a clause (as with that they were late), you get a kind of clause. There are no such things as 'coordinator phrases' or 'subordinator phrases' .

5.1

Nouns

In any language, the nouns make up by far the largest category in terms of number of dictionary entries, and in texts we find more nouns than words of any other category (about 37 per cent of the words in almost any text).

(a) Meaning Noun is the category containing words denoting all kinds of physical objects, such as persons, animals and inanimate objects: cat, tiger, man, woman, flower, diamond,

§S.2 Verbs car, computer, etc. There are also innumerable abstract nouns such as absence, man liness, fact, idea, sensitivity, computation, etc.

(b) Inflection The majority of nouns, though certainly not all, have an inflectional form contrast between singular and plural forms: cat - cats, tiger - tigers, man - men, woman women, etc.

(c) Function Nouns generally function as head of NPs, and NPs in turn have a range of functions, including that of subject, as in [2] and [3].

(d) Differences from traditional grammar Our noun category covers common nouns (illustrated in (a) above), proper nouns (Kim, Sue, Washington, Europe, etc.) and pronouns (I, you, he, she, who, etc.). In traditional grammar the pronoun is treated as a distinct part of speech rather than a subclass of noun. This, however, ignores the very considerable syntactic similarity between pronouns and common or proper nouns. Most importantly, pronouns are like common and proper nouns in their function: they occur as heads of NPs. They therefore occur in essentially the same range of positions in sentences as common and proper nouns - and this is why traditional grammars are constantly having to make reference to 'nouns or pronouns' .

5.2

Verbs (a) Meaning

We use the term situation for whatever is expressed in a clause, and the verb is the chief determinant of what kind of situation it is: an action (I opened the door), some other event (The building collapse{[), a state (They know the rules), and so on.

(b) Inflection The most distinctive grammatical property of verbs is their inflection. In particular, they have an inflectional contrast of tense between past and present. A past tense that is marked by inflection is called a preterite. In the present tense there are two forms, depending on properties of the subject (primarily whether it is singular or plural) : [8]

PRETERITE

She worked in Paris. He knew the answer.

PRESENT

She works in Paris. He knows the answer.

They work in Paris. They know the answer.

The singular subject she and he occur here with the present tense forms works and knows while plural they occurs with work and know. Verbs have other inflectional

Chapter 2 A rapid overview

fonns too, such as the one marked by the ending ·ing seen in They are working in Paris.

(c) Fu nction Verbs characteristically occur as head of VPs that themselves function as predicate in a clause. As head of the VP, the verb largely detennines what other elements are permitted in the VP. Thus English allows She !&f1. the airport but not * She arrived the airport; it allows He seemed mature but not *He knew mature ; and so on. 2

(d) Subclasses There is a very important distinction between a small class of auxiliary verbs and the rest, called lexical verbs. The auxiliary verbs have a number of special properties. One is that they can sometimes precede the subject. This occurs in interrogatives: LEXICAL VERB

AUXILIARY VERB

[9]

a. Can you speak French ?

b. * Speak you French ?

Although [b] is ungrammatical, there is a way of forming an interrogative corre sponding to the clause You speak French : the auxiliary verb do is added, so the inter rogative clause has an extra word: Do you speak French ? Auxiliaries are usually followed (perhaps not immediately) by another verb, as can and do in the foregoing examples are followed by speak. Notice also It will rain; They are working in Paris; She has gone home. The words will, are, and has are all auxiliary verbs.

Adjectives

5.3

(a) Meaning Adjectives characteristically express properties of people or of concrete or abstract things. Thus when they combine with the verb be the clause generally describes a state: The soup is hot, Max was jealous, etc.

(b) Function Most adjectives can occur in either of two major functions, attributive and pred icative: ATTRIBUTIVE

[ 1 0] II

a. some hot soup a. a jealous husband

PREDICATIVE b. The soup is hot. b. He became jealous.

In the attributive use the adjective functions as modifier to a following noun in NP structure. In the predicative use it generally occurs after the verb be or one of a small subclass of similar verbs such as become,feel, seem, etc . . 2

Throughout this book we use an asterisk (*) to mark the beginning of a string of words that is a sentence of Standard English. That's the only thing asterisks will be used for.

NOT

§S.S Adverbs

(c) Gradability and inflection The most central adjectives are gradable that is, they denote properties that can be possessed in varying degrees, properties like those expressed by big, good, hot, jealous, old, etc. The degree can be indicated by a modifier, as in fairly big, sur prisingly good, very hot, extremely jealous, three years old and can be questioned by how: How big is it?, etc. One special case of marking degree is by comparison, and with short adjectives this can be expressed by inflection of the adjective: -

[1 1]

PLAIN

COMPARATIVE

SUPERLATIVE

Kim is old.

Kim is older than Pat.

Kim is the oldest of them all.

This inflectional system is called grade: old is the plain form, older the compara tive form, and oldest the superlative form. Gradability, however, is less distinctive for adjectives than the functional property (b) above, as it is not only adjectives that can be gradable.

5 .4

Determinatives (a) Definiteness

There is a class of words called determinatives. The two most common members are the words the and a. These function as determiner in NP structure. They mark the NP as definite (in the case of the) and indefinite (in the case of a). I use a definite NP when I assume you will be able to identify the referent. I say Where 's the dog ?, for example, only if I ' m assuming you know which dog I ' m referring to. There's no such assumption made with an indefinite NP, as in I could hear a dog barking.

(b) Determinative vs determ iner Notice that determinative is the name of a category (a class of words), while deter miner is the name of a function. There are other determinatives besides the and a: examples include this, that, some, any, many, few, one, two, three, etc . They can likewise function as determiner, but that isn't their only function. In It wasn 't that bad, for example, the determinative that is modifier of the adjective bad.

(c) Differences from traditional grammar Traditional grammars generally don't use the term 'determinative' . The words in that class are treated as a subclass of the adjectives. But in fact words such as the and a are very different in grammar and meaning from adjectives like those illustrated in §S.3 above, so we put them in a distinct primary category.

5 .5

Adverbs (a) Relation to adjectives

The most obvious adverbs are those derived from adjectives by adding ·ly:

Chapter 2 A rapid overview

[ 1 2] ii

ADJECTIVE ADVERB

careful carefully

certain certainly

fortunate fortunately

obvious obviously

rapid rapidly

usual usually

Words like those in [ii] constitute the majority of the adverb class, though there are also a fair number of adverbs that do not have this form, some of them quite com mon: they include almost, always, not, often, quite, rather, soon, too, and very.

(b) Fu nction It is mainly function that distinguishes adverbs from adjectives. The two main func tions of adjectives exemplified in [ 1 0] are attributive and predicative, but adverbs do not occur in similar structures: compare *a jealously husband and *He became jealously. Instead adverbs mostly function as modifiers of verbs (or VPs), adjec tives, or other adverbs. In the following examples the modifying adverb is marked by single underlining and the element it modifies by double underlining: [ 1 3]

11 1Il

5.6

MODIFYING A VERB OR VP MODIFYING AN ADJECTIVE MODIFYING AN ADVERB

She spoke clearlv. a remarkably good idea She spoke quite clearly.

I often see them. It 's � expensive. It 'll end quite soon.

Prepositions (a) Meaning

The most central members of the preposition category have primary meanings expressing various relations of space or time: across the road in the box

[ 1 4]

after lunch

Qj[ the platform

at the corner on the roof

before Easter under the bridge

(b) Function Prepositions occur as head of preposition phrases (PPs), and these in turn function as dependents of a range of elements, especially verbs (or VPs), nouns and adjec tives. In the following examples we use single underlining for the preposition, brack ets for the PP, and double underlining for the element on which the PP is dependent: [ 1 5] ii

iii

DEPENDENT ON A VERB OR VP DEPENDENT ON A NOUN DEPENDENT ON AN ADJECTIVE

I sat [lz.v the door]. the man [ill the moon] keen [on go lf]

I saw her [after lunch]. the @ [before that] superior [to the others]

(c) Differences from traditional grammar In traditional grammar the class of prepositions only contains words that combine with nouns (actually, in our terms, NPs). The examples of prepositions in [ 1 4] and [ 1 5] above all comply with that, and we' ll continue to limit our choice of preposi tion examples the same way in the early chapters. But in Ch. 7, §2, we drop this restriction and extend the membership of the preposition category. We' ll show that there are very good reasons for doing this.

§5.8 Subordinators

5.7

Coordinators

The central members of the coordinator category are and, or, and but in traditional grammar they are called 'coordinating conjunctions' . Their function is to mark the coordination of two or more expressions, where coordination is a rela tion between elements of equal syntactic status. This syntactic equality is typically reflected in the ability of any one element to stand in place of the whole coordina tion, as in:

[ 1 6]

We need a long table and at least eight chairs. b. We need at least eight chairs.

ii a. We need a long table.

In [i] we have a coordination of a long table and at least eight chairs, each of which can occur in place of the whole, as evident from the two examples in [ii] . Precisely because the elements are of equal status, neither is head: coordination is not a head + dependent construction.

5.8

Subordinators (a) Function

The most central members of the subordinator category are that, whether, and one use of if- the one that is generally interchangeable with whether (as in I don 't know whether/if it 's possible) . These words serve to mark a clause as subordinate. Compare, for example: [ 1 7]

MAIN CLAUSE

a. He did his best.

SUBORDINATE CLAUSE b. I realise [that he did his best].

He did his best in [a] is a main clause, one which, in this example, forms a sentence by itself. Addition of the subordinator that changes it into a subordinate clause. Subordinate clauses characteristically function as a dependent element within the structure of a larger clause. In [b] that he did his best is a dependent of the verb realise, and hence is part of the larger clause I realise that he did his best. That is often optional: in I realise he did his best the clause he did his best is still subordi nate, but it is not overtly marked as such in its own structure.

(b) Differences from traditional grammar One minor difference is that we follow most work in modern linguistics in taking subordinators and coordinators as distinct primary categories, rather than sub classes of a larger class of 'conjunctions ' . More importantly, we will argue in Ch. 7, §2. 1 , for a redrawing of the boundaries between subordinators and prepositions - but again we will in the meantime confine our examples to those where our analysis matches the traditional one in respect of the division between the two categories.

Chapter 2 A rapid overview

5.9

The concept of prototype

The brief survey we've just given shows something important. Cate gories like noun, verb and adjective have not just one property distinguishing them from each other and from other categories: they have a cluster of distinctive proper ties. But while there are lots of words that have the full set of properties associated with their category, there are others which do not. Take equipment, for example. It's undoubtedly a noun, but it doesn't have a plural form the way nouns generally do. We use the term prototypical for the central or core members of a category that do have the full set of distinctive properties. Cat and dog are examples of prototypical nouns, but equipment is a non prototypical noun. Go, know, and tell (and thousands of others) are prototypical verbs, but must is non-prototypical, because (for example) it has no preterite form (*1 musted work late yesterday is ungrammatical), and it can't occur after to (compare 1 don 't want to gQ with *1 don 't want to must work late). Big, old, and happy are prototypical adjectives, while asleep is non-prototypical because it can't be used attributively ( *an asleep child).

We introduce the concept of prototype here because the parts of speech provide such clear examples of it, but it applies throughout the grammar. It applies to sub jects, for instance. The NP his guilt, as in the clause His guilt was obvious, is a pro totypical subject, whereas in That he was guilty was obvious the subordinate clause that he was guilty is a non-prototypical subject. It differs from his guilt in that it can't invert with an auxiliary verb to form an interrogative (that is, we don't find * Was that he was guilty obvious ?).

The structure of phrases

A phrase normally consists of a head, alone or accompanied by one or more dependents. The category of the phrase depends on that of the head: a phrase with a noun as head is a noun phrase, and so on. We distinguish several different kinds of dependent, the most important of which are introduced in the following subsections.

6. 1

Complement and modifier

The most general distinction is between complements and modifiers, as illustrated for VPs and NPs in [ 1 8] , where complements are marked by double underl ining, modifiers by single underlining: [ 1 8]

I VP ii NP

He [kept her letters for years]. She regularly gives us [very useful advice on financial matters],

§6.3 Determiner Complements are related more closely to the head than modifiers. In the clearest cases, complements are obligatory: we cannot, for example, omit her letters from [i] . In [ii] the complement is optional, but its close relation to the head is seen in the fact that the particular preposition on which introduces it is selected by advice: advice takes on, fear takes of, interest takes in, and so on. A more general account of the distinction between complements and modifiers will be introduced when we come to look at clause structure in Ch. 4.

6.2

Object and predicative complement

The next distinction applies primarily within the VP. Two important subtypes of complement are the object and the predicative complement, illus trated in [ 1 9] : [ 1 9]

OBJECT

a. / met a friend of vours. 1 1 a. Sam appointed a real idiot. iii a. [very friendly can't be an object]

PREDlCA TIVE COMPLEMENT b. She was a friend o[y.ours. b. / felt a real idiot.

b. They seemed very friendlv.

Objects are found with a great number of verbs, while predicative complements occur with a quite limited number of verbs, with be by far the most frequent. The constructions differ in both meaning and syntax. A prototypical object refers to a person or other entity involved in the situation. In [ia] there was a meeting between two people, referred to by the subject and object, while in [iia] we have a situation involving Sam and a person described as a real idiot. A predicative complement, by contrast, typically expresses a property ascribed to the person or other entity referred to by the subject. In [ib] a friend of yours gives a property of the person referred to as she, while in [iib] a real idiot doesn't refer to a separate person but describes how I felt. The most important syntactic difference is that a predicative complement can have the form of an adjective (or AdjP), as in [iiib] , whereas an object cannot. Thus we cannot have, say, */ met very friendly or * Sam appointed very friendly.

6.3

Determiner

This type of dependent is found only in the structure of NPs, where it serves to mark the NP as definite or indefinite. Certain kinds of singular noun usu ally require the presence of a determiner. In The dog barked or / need Q. key, for example, the determiners the and a are obligatory. The determiner function is usually filled by determinatives (see §5.4 above), but it can also have the form of a genitive NP, as in Fido 's bone or the dog 's owner, where 's is the marker of the genitive.

Chapter 2 A rapid overview

Canonical and non-canonical clauses

There is a vast range of different clause structures, but we can greatly sim plify the description if we confine our attention initially to canonical clauses, those which are syntactically the most basic or elementary. The others, non-canonical clauses, can then be described derivatively, in terms of how they differ from the canonical ones. Canonical clauses consist of a subject followed by a predicate, as illustrated in [2] and [3]. The subject is usually (but not invariably) an NP, while the predicate is always - in canonical clauses - a VP. Non-canonical clauses contrast with canonical ones on one or more of the dimen sions reviewed in § § 7 . 1-7.5. below.

Polarity

7. 1

Polarity is the name of the system contrasting positive and negative clauses. [20]

POSITIVE

a. He is very careful.

NEGATIVE (non-canonical) b. He isn 't very careful.

Canonical clauses are positive, while negative clauses are non-canonical. The gram mar will have a special section describing how negation is expressed. In [b] the negation is marked on the verb; it can also be marked by not (He is not very careful) or by some other negative word (Nobodv liked it).

7.2

Clause type

Canonical clauses are declarative. Clauses belonging to any other clause type are non-canonical. We illustrate here two of these other clause types, interrogative and imperative.

(a) Interrogative [2 1 ]

DECLARATIVE a. She can mend it.

INTERROGATIVE (non-canonical) b. Can she mend it?

Declaratives are characteristically used to make statements, while interrogatives are associated with questions. Syntactically, the subject she of interrogative [b] follows the verb instead of occupying the default position before the verb (see §3 above).

(b) Imperative [22]

DECLARATIVE a. You are patient.

IMPERATIVE (non-canonical) b. Be patient.

Imperatives are characteristically used to issue what we call directives, a term covering requests, commands, instructions, etc.

§7.4 Coordination Syntactically, the most important difference between imperatives and declara tives is that they usually contain no subject, though there is a covert subject understood: [b] is interpreted as "You be patient". There is also a difference in the inflectional form of the verb: are in [a] is a pres ent tense form, but be in [b] is not.

7.3

Subordination

The distinction between subordinate and main clauses has already been introduced in connection with our discussion of subordinators as a word cate gory. All canonical clauses are main clauses. Subordinate clauses characteristically function as a dependent within a larger clause, and very often they differ in their internal structure from main clauses, as in the following examples: [23]

SUBORDINATE (non-canonical)

MAIN

a. She 's ill. ii a. We invited the Smiths. iii a. Some guy wrote the editorial.

b. I know that she 's ill. b. Inviting the Smiths was a mistake. b. He 's [the guy who wrote the editorial].

In [ib] the subordinate clause is complement of the verb know. It is marked by the subordinator that, though in this context this is optional: in I know she 's ill the subordinate clause does not differ in form from a main clause. In [iib] the subordinate clause is subject of the larger clause. Its structure differs more radically from that of a main clause: the subject is missing and the verb has a different inflectional form. The subordinate clause in [iiib] is called a relative clause. The most straightfor ward type of relative clause functions as modifier within the structure of an NP and begins with a distinctive word such as who, which, when, where, etc., that 'relates' to the head of the NP who in our example relates to guy. -

7.4

Coordination

One clause may be coordinated with another, the relation usually being marked by means of a coordinator such as and or or. Again, canonical clauses are non-coordinate, with coordinate clauses described in terms of the structural effects of coordination. Compare: [24]

NON-COORDINATE

COORDINATE (non-canonical)

That 's Bill. I'm blind.

That 's Bill or I 'm blind.

Here the coordination is marked by or in the second clause. In this example there is no marking in the first clause: coordinate clauses do not necessarily differ from non coordinate ones, just as subordinate clauses do not necessarily differ from main ones.

Chapter 2 A rapid overview

7.5

Information packaging

The grammar makes it possible, in many cases, to say essentially the same thing by means of syntactically different constructions. It allows us to present or package - the information in a variety of ways. Canonical clauses always present the information in the syntactically most elementary way. In Ch. 1 5 we review a fair number of constructions which differ from canonical clauses on this dimension; here we illustrate with just three: passive, preposing, and extraposition.

(a) Passive clauses [25]

ACTIVE

a. The dog bit me.

PASSIVE (non-canonical) b. I was bitten by the dog.

These have the same meaning; they describe the same situation and if used in the same context it would be impossible for one to be true while the other was false. The terms active and passive reflect the fact that in clauses describing an action the subject of the active version (in [a] the dog) denotes the active participant, the performer of the action, while the subject of the passive version (in [b] l) denotes the passive participant, the undergoer of the action. Syntactically the passive version is clearly more complex than the active by virtue of containing extra elements: the auxiliary verb was and the preposition by. It is for this reason that we take the passive as a non-canonical construction.

(b) Preposing [26]

BASIC ORDER

a. I gave the others to Kim.

PREPOSING (non-canonical) b. The others I gave to Kim.

Here the two versions differ simply in the order of elements - more precisely, in the position of the object the others . In [a] the object occupies its default position after the verb. In [b] it is preposed, placed at the beginning of the clause, before the subject. Canonical clauses have their elements in the basic order, with departures from this order being handled in our account of various types of non-canonical clause, such as the preposed complement construction in [b] .

EXTRAPOSITION (non-canonical)

BASIC (no extraposition) a. That I overslept was unfortunate.

b. 11 was unfortunate that I overslept.

In [a] the subject is a subordinate clause occupying the usual subject position. In [b] the subject position is occupied by the pronoun it and the subordinate clause appears at the end: it is called an extraposed subject. -

In pairs like this, the version with extraposition is much more frequent than the basic one, but we still regard version [a] as syntactically more basic. The extraposition

§8 Word structure construction is virtually restricted to cases where the basic subject is a subordinate clause. It's the [a] version that matches the canonical structure of clauses with NPs as subject, e.g., The delay was unfortunate. And [b] is (slightly) more complex in struc ture: it contains the extra word it.

7.6

Combinations of non-canonical features

Non-canonical clause categories can combine, so that a clause may dif fer from a canonical one in a number of different ways at once: [28]

CANONICAL a. Sue can swim. ii a. Kim took the car.

NON-CANONICAL b. He says that Sue can 't swim. b. J wonder whether the car was taken bv Kim.

The underlined clause in [ib] is both subordinate and negative. The one in [iib] is interrogative and passive as well as subordinate. (In subordinate clauses, an inter rogative clause of this type is marked by the subordinator whether, not by putting the subject after the verb.)

Word structure

We have space for very little material on word structure here, but we need to point out that words are made up of elements of two kinds: bases and affixes. For the most part, bases can stand alone as whole words whereas affixes can't. Here are some examples, with the units separated by a decimal point, bases double-underlined, and affixes single-underlined: [29]

en·danger slow·lJ. un·lliJ1. work·il1g blackbird·s. un·gentle·man·lJ.

The bases danger, slow, and just, for example, can form whole words. But the affixes can't: there are no words *en, * ly , *un. Every word contains at least one or more bases; and a word may or may not contain affixes in addition. Affixes are subdivided into prefixes, which precede the base to which they attach, and suffixes, which follow. When citing them individually, we indicate their status by putting · after prefixes ( en· , un· ) and before suffixes ( · ly, ·ing).

Exercises I . Divide the main clauses of the following examples into subject and predicate. Underline the subject and double-underline the predicate. (For example: This is the

house that Jack built.) i I think it 's a disgrace.

ii The guy in that house over there works

for the city.

iii Most of the mistakes he made were very

minor.

iv The thing that puzzles me is why no one

called the police.

Chapter 2 A rapid overview

v One of her daughters is training to be a pilot. 2. The underlined expressions in the following examples are all NPs. State the function of each one (either subject or direct object or predicative complement).

i I've just seen your father. ii The old lady lived alone. iii Sue wrote that editorial. iv She 's the editor ofthe local paper. v It sounds a promising idea to me. 3. Assign each word in the following examples to one of the part-of-speech categories: noun (N), verb (V), adjective (Adj), determina tive (D), adverb (Adv), preposition (Prep), subordinator (Sub), coordinator (Co). i She lives in Moscow. ii The dog was barking. iii Sue and Ed walked to the park. iv I met some friends of the new boss. v We know that these things are extremely expensive. 4. Construct a plausible-sounding, grammati cal sentence that uses at least one word

from each of the eight categories listed in the previous exercise (and in [7] in the text of this chapter). 5. Is it possible to make up an eight-word sentence that contains exactly ONE word of each category? If it is, do it; if not, explain why. 6. Classify the underlined clauses below as canonical or non-canonical. For the non canonical ones, say which non-canonical clause category or categories they belong to. i Most Q,f us enjoyed it very much. ii Have you seen Tom recently? iii He tends to exag"rate. iv Who said she was ill? v I 've never seen anything like it. vi They invited me, but I couldn 't go. vii This house was built by my grandfather. viii It's a pity you live so far away. ix I'm sure she likes you. x Tell me what you want.

.::

Verbs, tense, aspect, and mood

Verb inflection

2 Finite and non-finite clauses

36 3 Auxiliary verbs 37 4 Perfective and imperfective interpretations 5 Primary tense 44 6 The perfect 4 8 7 Progressive aspect 5 1 8 Mood 53

Verb inflection

Verbs are variable lexemes. That is, they have a number of different inflectional forms that are required or permitted in various grammatical contexts. For example, the lexemefty has a form flown that is required in a context like [ l a] , where i t follows the verb have, and a form flew that is · permitted i n a context like [ l b] , where it is the only verb in a canonical clause: [1]

a. Kim has flown home.

b. Kim flew home.

Notice that we said that flown is REQUIRED in contexts like [ l a] , but that flew is in contexts like [b] . This is because in [b] we could have flies instead of flew. And there is of course a difference in meaning between Kim flew home and Kim flies home: the former locates the situation in past time, while the latter locates it in present or future time. We see from this that there are two kinds of inflection: in some cases an inflec tional contrast serves to convey a meaning distinction, while in others (like the flown of [ l a] ) the occurrence of a particular inflectional form is simply determined by a grammatical rule. PERMITTED

1.1

The verb paradigm

The set of inflectional forms of a variable lexeme (together with their grammatical labels) is called its paradigm. In some languages the verb paradigms are extremely complex, but in English they are fairly simple. The great majority of verbs in English have paradigms consisting of six inflectional forms. As illustration, 29

Chapter 3 Verbs, tense, aspect, and mood

we give in [2] the paradigm for the verb walk, with sample sentences exemplifying how the forms are used: PARADIGM

[2]

PRIMARY FORMS

SECONDARY FORMS

EXAMPLE SENTENCE

preterite 3rd singular present plain present

walked walks walk

She walked home. She walks home. They walk home.

plain form gerund-participle past participle

walk walking walked

She should walk home. She is walking home. She has walked home.

Inflectional form vs shape We explain below the various grammatical terms used to classify and label the inflectional forms. But first we must note that walked and walk each appear twice in the paradigm. To cater for this we need to draw a distinction between an inflectional form and its shape. By shape we mean spelling or pronunciation: spelling if we're talking about writ ten English, pronunciation if we're talking about spoken English. The preterite and the past participle are different inflectional forms but they have the same shape walked. Similarly for the plain present and the plain form, which share the shape walk. In the case of the preterite and the past participle there is a very obvious reason for recognising distinct inflectional forms even though the shape is the same: many common verbs have DIFFERENT shapes for these inflectional forms. One is jly, as shown in [ 1 ] : its preterite form has the shape jiew , while its past participle has the shape jiown. The reason for distinguishing the plain present from the plain form is less obvi ous. We take up the issue in § 1 .2 below.

Primary vs secondary forms With one isolated exception that we take up in §8.4, primary forms show inflec tional distinctions of tense (preterite vs present) and can occur as the sole verb in a canonical clause. Secondary forms have no tense inflection and cannot occur as the head of a canonical clause.

Preterite The term preterite is used for an infiectionally marked past tense. That is, the past tense is marked by a specific inflectional form of the verb rather than by means of a separate auxiliary verb. By a past tense we mean one whose most cen tral use is to indicate past time. The preterite of take is took, and when I say I took them to school I am referring to some time in the past. The relation between tense and time in English, however, is by no means straightforward, as we saw in Ch. 1 , §3, and it is important to be aware that preterite tense does not always signal past

§ 1 . 1 The verb paradigm time. For example, i n the more complex construction It would be better if I took them to school next week we have the same preterite form took, but here the time is future. We' ll look into this a bit more in §5.2 below. Right now we simply want to point out that although making a reference to past time is the central use of the preterite (which is why we call it a past tense), a preterite doesn' t ALWAYS signal past time.

Present tense The central use of present tense forms is to indicate present time. For example, The door opens inwards describes a state of affairs that obtains now, at the moment of speaking. This explains why the present tense forms are so called, but here too it must be emphasised that they are not invariably used for referring to present time. In The exhibition opens next week, for example, we again have the same verb-form, but here the exhibition is claimed to open at some time in the future.

3rd singular present vs plain present Almost all verbs have two present tense forms, such as walks and walk in [2] . The choice between them depends on the subject of the clause: the verb agrees with the subject. The 3rd person singular form occurs with a 3rd person singular subject (e.g. She walks home), and the plain present tense form occurs with any other kind of subject (e.g. They walk home). The agreement involves the categories of person and number, which apply in the first instance to NPs and hence are discussed more fully in Ch. 5, § §2, 8.2. Number, contrasting singular and plural, needs no further commentary at this point. Person contrasts 1 st person (I and we), 2nd person (you) and 3rd person (all other NPs). Thus the 3rd person singular present form occurs with 3rd person singular subjects and the plain form with any other subject - whether plural (My parents walk home), 1 st person (l walk home) or 2nd person ( You walk home). We call this walk the 'plain' present tense (in preference to the cumbersome 'non3rd person singular' ) because it is identical with the lexical base of the lexeme. The lexical base is the starting-point for the rules of morphology which describe how the various inflectional forms are derived. The 3rd person singular present tense walks is formed from the lexical base by adding 's, the gerund-participle is formed by adding ' ing, while the plain present tense involves no such operation on the lexical base.

The plain form The plain form is likewise identical with the lexical base of the verb. But it is not a present tense form, so we call it simply 'plain form' in contrast to 'plain present' . The distinction between these two inflectional forms is discussed in § 1 .2 below. The plain form is used in three syntactically distinct clause constructions: imperative, SUbjunctive, and infinitival. Infinitival clauses have two subtypes, the to-infinitival and the bare infinitival. These constructions are illustrated in [3] with the plain form of keep :

Chapter 3 Verbs, tense, aspect, and mood

[3]

IMPERATIVE

ii SUBJUNCTIVE iii INFINITIVAL

{ a.

TO-INFINITIVAL

b. BARE INFINITIVAL

Keep us informed tonight. It's essential [that he keep us informed]. It's essential [(for him) to keep us informed]. He should [keep us informed].

Imperatives are normally main clauses, and are typically used as directives - the term we have given for various ways of getting people to do things, such as requests, orders, instructions and so on. They usually have the subject you under stood rather than overtly expressed. Subjunctives occur as main clauses only in a few more or less fixed expressions, as in God bless you, Long live the Emperor, etc. Their most common use is as subordinate clauses of the kind shown in [ii]. Structurally these differ only in the verb inflection from subordinate clauses with a primary verb-form - and many speakers would here use a present tense in preference to the slightly more formal subjunctive: It 's essential that he keeps us informed. To-infinitivals, as the name indicates, are marked by to. The subject is optional, and usually omitted. If present it is preceded by for, and if a pronoun such as I, he, she, etc., it appears in a different inflectional form from that used for sub jects in canonical clauses and also in subjunctives: compare him in [iiia] with he in [ii ] . Bare infinitivals lack the to marker and almost always have n o subject. They mostly occur after various auxiliary verbs such as should, can, may, will, etc.

The gerund-participle Traditionally (for example, in the grammar of Latin), a gerund is a verb-form that is functionally similar to a noun, whereas a participle is one that is functionally similar to an adjective. English verb-forms like walking are used in both ways, and no verb has different forms corresponding to the two uses, so we have only a sin gle inflectional form with the shape walking in our paradigm, and we call it the gerund-participle. These examples show what we mean about its two main kinds of function: b. She argued against [any further purchases]. a. People [earning $50,000 a year] don 't qualify

[gerund-participle] [noun] [gerund-participle]

b. [Moderately aUluent] people don 't qualify for

[adjective]

a. She argued against [buying any more of them].

[4] II

for the rebate. the rebate.

In the [i] examples the bracketed parts function as complement to the preposition against. In [ia] the bracketed part is a clause, with the verb buying as its head; in [ib] the bracketed part is an NP with the noun purchases as head. The similarity between the verb-form buying and the noun purchases is simply this: they head expressions with the same function.

§ 1 .2 Verb-fonns and shape sharing In the [ii] examples the bracketed parts are alike in that they both modify the head noun people. In [iia] the brackets surround a clause with the verb earning as head; in [iib] we have an adjective phrase with the adjective affluent as head. Again, earning and affluent are thus functionally similar in that each heads an expression modifying a noun.

The past participle There is a second inflectional fonn of the verb that contains the tenn 'participle' as part of its name: the past participle. It occurs in two major constructions, perfect and passive, illustrated here with the past participle of the verb fly : [5] 11

a. She has flown from Dallas. b. She may have flown to Brussels. a. The Brussels-Dallas route is flown by only two airlines. b. A route [flown by only two airlines] is bound to be expensive.

} }

[ perfec t] [ p assive ]

The perfect is usually marked by the auxiliary have with a following past partici ple, as in [i] . The passive is a non-canonical clause construction (introduced in Ch. 2, §7.5). The most central type is illustrated in [iia] , which corresponds to the active clause Only two airlines jly the Brussels-Dallas route. The bracketed sequence in [iib] is a subordinate passive clause with no subject and without the auxiliary verb be that appears in [iia] . The 'participle' component of the name is based on the use of the fonn in con structions like [5iib] , which is comparable to [4iia] above. Flown in [5iib] is the head of a subordinate clause modifying the noun route, which makes it functionally similar to an adjective, such as unpopular in A [very unpopular] route is bound to be expensive. There is, however, nothing adjective-like about the use ofjlown in the perfect [i] , or indeed in the central passive construction [iia] . The 'past' component of the name, on the other hand, derives from its use in the perfect construction. The perfect is a kind of past tense, and in [5i] , for example, the flying is located in past time. But there is no past time meaning associated with flown in passive clauses like those in [5ii] .

1 .2

Verb-fonns and shape sharing

We have seen that different inflectional fonns of a verb may share the same shape. In our example paradigm for walk given in [2] , this applies to the preterite and the past participle (both walked) and to the plain present and the plain fonn (both walk). We look further at these two major cases of shape sharing in this section; there are also certain minor cases that will be left to Ch. 16, where we pres ent a systematic description of English inflectional morphology.

(a) Shape sharing between preterite and past participle Walk is an example of a regular verb, i.e. one whose inflectional forms are all predictable by general rule. An irregular verb, by contrast, is one where the shape

Chapter 3 Verbs, tense, aspect, and mood

of at least one inflectional form has to be specified for that particular verb. Show, for example, has an irregular past participle: a dictionary needs to tell us that it has the shape shown . And for fly, both preterite (flew) and past participle (flown) are irregular. All regular verbs have identical shapes for the preterite and the past participle, and so indeed do most of the 200 or so irregular verbs. Nevertheless, there are a good number like fly which have distinct shapes. We can set out the paradigms for walk andfly in chart form, with lines indicating distinctions in shape (the order of presenting the forms is chosen purely to make it easy to represent where shape-sharing occurs): [6]

Irregular verbs like fly

Regular verbs like walk SECONDARY

PRIMARY

SECONDARY

PRIMARY

3rd sing present

gerund-participle

3rd sing present

gerund-participle

walks

walking

flies

flying

plain present

plain form

plain present

plain form

fly

walk walked preterite

past participle

flew

flown

preterite

past participle

When preterite and past participle share the same shape, we can tell which one we have in any given sentence by a substitution test: we select a verb in which preterite and past participle are distinct and substitute it in the example to see which shape is required. The following examples will illustrate the idea: EXAMPLES WITH walk a. She usually walked there. 11 a. It would be better if we

walked more.

[8]

a. She has walked a lot. ii a. We were walked to the door.

fly SUBSTITUTED FOR walk b. She usually flew there. b. It would be better if we

flew more.

b. She has flown a lot. b. We were flown to

New York.

) )

[preterite]

[past participle]

We can see that the walked of [7] is a preterite form, because the experiment of substituting fly in these constructions requires flew. Flown would be quite impossible here : *She usually flown the re and * It would be better if we flown more . Notice that in [ii] we have again chosen a construction where the preterite does not indicate past time. You can ' t decide whether a form is preterite or not by asking whether it refers to past time : the matter has to be determined grammatically.

§ 1 .2 Verb-forms and shape sharing

Similarly, we can see that the walked of [8] is a past participle, since in these con structions (the perfect in [i] and the passive in [ii]) the form jiown is required. The [b] examples would be ungrammatical with jiew : *She hasjiew a lot, * We werejiew to New York.

(b) Shape sharing between plain present and plain form Almost all verbs have a present tense form that is identical in shape with the plain form. The only verb with a plain form distinct from all its present tense forms is be: it has three present tense forms (am, is, and are), all different in shape from its plain form, be. We can therefore use a substitution test involving be to distinguish plain present forms and plain forms of other verbs. Consider, for example, the following forms of the verb write: EXAMPLES WITH write

[9]

a. They write to her.

11 1Il

a. Write to her. a. It 's vital that he write to her.

a. It 's better to write to her. v a. He must write to her.

be SUBSTITUTED FOR write b. They are kind to her. b. Be kind to her. b. It 's vital that he be kind

to her.

b. It 's better to be kind to her. b. He must be kind to her.

[present tense]

}

[plain form]

The underlined verbs in [i] are present tense forms, while those in [ii-v] are plain forms. It is this contrast between are in rib] and be in the other [b] examples that provides the main justification for saying that there are two inflectional forms with the shape write, not just one. Note, however, that even with be, we have the same form in all of [9ii-v] (that is, in the imperative, the subjunctive, the to-infinitival, and the bare infinitival). The dif ference between these constructions is purely syntactic: they are different kinds of clause, but they all require the same inflectional form of the verb. The present tense forms in [9i] contrast in the tense system with preterite forms, and show agreement with the subject, as we see in [ 1 0] : [ 1 0]

a. They wrote to her.

ii a. He writes to her.

b. They were kind to her. b. He 1£ kind to her.

[preterite] [3rd sing present]

No such contrasts apply to the plain form verbs in [9ii-v] . For example, the con struction in [9iv] doesn' t allow either the preterite or the 3rd singular present: [I l]

a. *It 's better to wrote to her. ii a. *It 's better to writes to her.

b. *It 's better to was kind to her. b. *It 's better to 1£ kind to her.

The plain present tense and the plain form thus enter into quite different sets uf contrast within the verb paradigm. And this is the basis for the different names we have given to the forms: the write of [9ia] is a present tense form, but that of [9iia-va] is not.

Chapter 3 Verbs, tense, aspect, and mood

Finite and non-finite clauses

There is an important distinction between two kinds of clause, related to the distinction between main and subordinate clauses. Clauses may be either finite or non-finite. Finite clauses may be either main or subordinate; non-finite clauses are always subordinate. Traditional grammars classify V ERBS as finite or non-finite, and then classify CLAUSES according to whether or not they contain a finite verb. But historical change has reduced the number of inflectionally distinct verb-forms in such a way that the distinction between finite and non-finite clauses can no longer be satisfactorily defined purely in terms of verb inflection. There is one verb-form, the plain form, that occurs in both finite and non-finite clauses, while the other forms are restricted to just one or other of the two classes of clause. In Present-day English the relation between clause finiteness and verb inflection can be stated as follows: [ 1 2]

ii III

If the verb is a primary form, the clause is finite. If the verb is a gerund-participle or a past participle, the clause is non-finite. If the verb is a plain form, the clause may be finite or non-finite; specifically: a. Imperative and subjunctive clauses are finite. b. Infinitival clauses are non-finite.

That gives us a partial fit between finiteness and verb inflection that looks like this: [ 1 3] VERB-FORM

CONSTRUCTION

SUBJUNCTIVE:

yo_u_r_o_w_n_fi_ g_ ri_ n_ o_ od_. _ B_ ______ We insist [that she bring her own food].

INFINITIVAL:

It 's rare [for her to bring her own food].

IMPERATIVE:

FINITENESS

She brings her own food.

PRIMARY FORMS

iii

EXAMPLE

PLAIN FORM

{

R� U: N� CI::P.::. LE::...________ br=in=g=i= RT�I� A:. ts�[= he:..:r�o�w:::.n�fi� ng� o� od::::. S V=�G:.::E: ]. �h:e:..:r,:.: . D-�P.: eg�r,.:.e: This is the food [bro u ght by my sister] . V I PAST PARTICIPLE

FINITE

) )

NON-FINITE

The structure of non-finite subordinate clauses differs more radically from that of main clauses than does that of finite subordinate clauses. That is why we draw the line between finite and non-finite after [iii] in [ 1 3] rather than after [i] . Imperatives belong in the finite category because they occur as main clauses: the non-finite constructions in [iv-vi] are always subordinate. Subjunctives occur predominantly as subordinate clauses (in main clauses they are restricted to more or less fixed expressions like God bless you, etc.,

§ 3 . 1 Distinctive properties of auxiliary verbs mentioned above). Nevertheless, subordinate subjunctives like [iii] are struc turally very like subordinate clauses with primary verb-forms: compare We insist [that she brings her own food with her] (and, as we noted in § 1 . 1 above, many speakers use this instead of [iii]). The subordinate clauses in [iv-vi] , however, differ quite markedly in their structure from clauses with primary verb-forms. In [iv] the clause is introduced by for rather than that, and the subject pronoun appears in the form her rather than she. And in [v-vi] there is no subject.

Auxiliary verbs

We turn now to an important division within the category of verbs between roughly a dozen auxiliary verbs and all the rest, which we call lexical verbs. The auxiliary verbs (or more briefly, auxiliaries) differ sharply in gram matical behaviour from lexical verbs, and figure crucially in a number of common constructions. Within the auxiliaries there are also major differences between the special sub class known as modal auxiliaries and the rest of the class, which we will call non-modal; the significance of the term 'modal' will be explained in § 8 , when we consider the meanings expressed by these verbs. The classification is like this : [ 1 4]

(miliary \

modal

non-modal -

VERB

lexical

________

can, may, must, will, shall, ought, need, dare

be, have, do allow, bring, come, drink, eat,find, go, hold, invite ,jostle , know, learn , meet, navigate . . .

The forms could, might, would, should are the preterite forms of the modals can , may , will, and shall, respectively. They differ very considerably in their uses from ordinary preterites, however, and thus may not at first appear to be preterites (see § 8 . 3 ) . We begin b y looking a t some o f the most important grammatical properties dis tinguishing auxiliaries from lexical verbs. We then turn in §3.2 to the distinctive properties of the modal auxiliaries. There is some overlap between auxiliary and lexical verbs and in §3.3 we examine four such cases: need, dare, have and do. Finally, §3.4 gives a general definition of auxiliary verb.

3. 1

Distinctive properties of auxiliary verbs

Auxiliary verbs behave differently from lexical verbs in a number of ways. The two most important ways involve subject-auxiliary inversion and negation.

Chapter 3 Verbs, tense, aspect, and mood

(a) Subject-auxiliary inversion We have seen that interrogative clauses differ from declaratives in the position of the subject. In interrogatives the subject follows a primary verb-form, instead of preced ing the verb as it always does in canonical clauses. This inversion of positions between subject and verb is permitted only with auxiliary verbs. It is referred to as subject-auxiliary inversion. Compare: [ 1 5]

LEXICAL VERB

AUXILIARY VERB

a. She has taken the money. ii a. Has she taken the money ?

b. She takes the money. b. *Takes she the money ?

[ declarati ve ] [interrogative]

Interrogative clauses with lexical verbs have to be constructed in a different way. To form the interrogative of She takes the money we add the auxiliary verb do . This has no meaning of its own - it simply permits compliance with the grammatical requirement that this kind of interrogative clause should contain an auxiliary verb. We refer to it therefore as the dummy auxiliary do . It cannot be used in combination with another auxiliary verb, so the [b) example in [ 1 6] is ungrammatical . The present tense in [a] is marked on do ; take is a plain form. DUMMY do + LEXICAL VERB a. Does she take the money ?

[ 1 6]

DUMMY do + AUXILIARY VERB

b. *Does she have taken the money ?

(b) Negation There are two ways in which auxiliaries differ from lexical verbs with respect to negation. In the first place, the simplest type of negative clause construction, where the negation is associated with a primary verb-form, is permitted with auxiliary verbs, but not with lexical verbs: [ 1 7]

LEXICAL VERB

AUXILIARY

a. She has taken the money. ii a. She has not taken the money.

b. She takes the money. b. * She takes not the money.

[positive] [negative]

To form the negative of She takes the money we have to add dummy do, just as we did to form the interrogative, and again this do cannot combine with another auxil iary verb: DUMMY do + LEXICAL VERB a. She does not take the money.

[ 1 8]

DUMMY do + AUXILIARY VERB b. * She does not have taken the money.

In the second place, auxiliaries have negative inflectional forms. They all end in n 't, and are found in the preterite and present tense: [ 1 9] 11

PRETERITE PRESENT

He couldn 't swim. He can 't swim.

She wouldn 't help us. She won 't help us.

They hadn 't finished. They haven 't finished.

No lexical verb has forms of this kind: *tookn 't, *taken 't, etc., are completely impos sible. Historically the negative forms arose through contraction, with could + not

§3.2 Modal auxiliaries

being reduced to couldn 't, and so on. But in Present-day English they are best regarded as inflectional forms, for two reasons. Some of them are quite irregular. There is, for example, no general rule of con traction that would yield won 't from will + not: we simply have to note that won 't is an irregular negative form, just as would is an irregular preterite form. Similarly for can 't and shan 't. In subject-auxiliary inversion constructions they occur in positions where verb + not would generally be impossible. We have, for example, Isn 't it ready ?, but not *ls not it ready ?

Modal auxiliaries

3.2

There are two inflectional properties that distinguish the modal auxil iaries from all other verbs. They also share a purely syntactic property that distin guishes the prototypical ones from nearly all other verbs.

(a) Lack of secondary inflectional forms Modals have only primary forms and hence simply cannot occur in constructions requiring a secondary form - a plain form, gerund-participle or past participle. We can see this clearly when we contrast the modal auxiliary must with have, which can have a very similar meaning but is not a modal auxiliary: [20]

NOT MODAL AUXILIARY

MODAL AUXILIARY

a. 11 a. 111 a. iv a.

I must work late tonight. *1 will must work late. *1 am musting work late. * I 've often must work late.

b. b. b. b.

I have to work late tonight. I will have to work late. I am having to work late. I've often had to work late.

[primary form] [plain form] [gerund-participle] [past participle]

(b) No distinct 3rd singular agreement form in the present tense The modal auxiliaries show no agreement with the subject, having a single present tense form. There are no special 3rd singular forms (*cans, *mays, *musts, *wills, etc.). Note again, then, the contrasting behaviour of must and have: [2 1 ] 11

a. I must leave now. a. She must leave now.

b. I have to leave now. b. She has to leave now.

[I st singUlar subject] [3rd singular subject]

(c) Bare infinitival complement The prototypical modal auxiliaries take a single complement with the form of a bare infinitival clause. Nearly all other verbs that select infinitival complements take the to-infinitival kind: here again we can note the contrast between must and have in [20-2 1 ] . There are some verbs that take bare infinitivals (one is help, as in We helped wash up), but very few. There is also one verb that qualifies as a

Chapter 3 Verbs, tense, aspect, and mood

modal auxiliary by criteria (a)-(b) but takes (for most speakers) an infinitival with to. This is ought, as in You ought to be more careful.

Dually-classified verbs

3.3

A few verbs belong to both auxiliary and lexical verb classes, exhibiting auxiliary behaviour under certain circ*mstances and lexical verb behaviour else where. The main ones are do, have, need and dare.

(a) Do Dummy do is an auxiliary, but in other uses - e.g. in She did her best, etc. - do is a lexical verb. This is evident from the fact that to form the interrogative or negative in such cases we use dummy do, just as with other lexical verbs: [22]

WITHOUT DUMMY do a. * Does she her best?

WITH DUMMY do b. Does she do her best?

(b) Have Have is always an auxiliary when it marks perfect tense (where it normally occurs with a following past participle). When it occurs in clauses describing states, expressing such meanings as posses sion (He has enough money) or obligation ( You have to sign both forms), usage is divided. Most speakers treat it as a lexical verb, but some treat it as an auxil iary, especially in the present tense. Those speakers accept %Has he enough money ? and similar examples. We refer to this use as 'static have ' . 1 'Dynamic have ' , by contrast, occurs in clauses describing events, like He had a fit. Dynamic have is a lexical verb for all speakers. These facts are illustrated in [23 ] : LEXICAL VERB USAGE

AUXILIARY USAGE

[23]

a. 11 a. iii a. iv a.

Have you told her? %Has he enough money ? %Have I to sign both forms ? *Has he a fit when you do that?

b. b. b. b.

*Do you have told her? Does he have enough money. Do I have to sign both forms ? Does he have a fit when you do that?

[ perfect ]

}

[ static ] [dynamic]

(c) Need Need behaves as an auxiliary (a modal auxiliary) when it has a bare infinitival com plement (overt or understood). Elsewhere, it is a lexical verb. Auxiliary need has only present tense forms, and occurs only in non-affirmative contexts - i.e. in neg atives, interrogatives and related constructions: J

Static have as an auxiliary is used more by older than by younger speakers, and is more characteris tic of BrE than AmE.

§3.4 The general concept of auxiliary verb [24]

LEXICAL VERB USAGE

AUXILIARY USAGE

a. Need we tell anyone ? ii a. She needn 't go. iii a. *Need she any help ?

b. Do we need to tell anyone ? b. She doesn 't need to go. b. Does she need any help ?

Note that i n [i-ii] auxiliary need takes a bare infinitival complement (tell anyone and go), whereas lexical need takes a to-infinitival.

(d) Dare Auxiliary dare (again, a modal) is very much like auxiliary need, in that it occurs only in non-affirmative contexts and takes a bare infinitival complement. Lexical dare mostly occurs in non-affirmative contexts too, but is not restricted to them. [25]

LEXICAL VERB USAGE

AUXILIARY USAGE

a. I daren 't tell anyone. ii a. Dare they accept her challenge ? iii a. [no auxiliary counterpart]

b. I didn 't dare to tell anyone. b. Do they dare to accept her challenge ? b. She had dared to contradict him.

There is no auxiliary counterpart to [iiib], for two reasons. In the first place, dared is a past participle whereas modal auxiliaries have only primary forms. Secondly, this is not a non-affirmative context.

3 .4

The general concept of auxiliary verb

The grammatical properties outlined in § 3 . 1 serve to distinguish auxil iary verbs from lexical verbs in English. There are many languages, however, that have auxiliary verbs, so we need to shift focus at this stage and consider what is meant by auxiliary verb as a general term. A general definition of auxiliary verb can be given along the following lines. Auxiliary verbs form a small subclass of verbs whose members are characteristi cally used to mark tense, aspect, mood or voice. These categories are also often marked in languages by inflection, so auxiliary verbs tend to convey meanings which elsewhere are expressed by inflection of the verb. The subclass of verbs in English with the distinctive properties concerning inver sion and negation clearly satisfies this general definition. Most members of the class do serve to mark tense, aspect, mood or voice, as shown in [26] : [26]

AUXILIARY VERB

CATEGORY MARKED

EXAMPLE

have ii be iii may, can, must, etc. iv be

perfect tense progressive aspect

Sue has written the preface. Sue is writing the preface. Sue may write the preface. The preface was written by Sue.

mood

passive voice

What is meant by the general terms tense, aspect, mood and voice will be explained as we describe these categories for English. The full set of verbs for [iii] comprises the modal auxiliaries listed in [ 1 4] : 'modal' is the adjective corresponding to the cat egory 'mood' .

Chapter 3 Verbs, tense, aspect, and mood

It is worth emphasising again, however, that a general definition of a category does not provide criteria for deciding which expressions in English belong to that category: it provides a principled basis for naming a category that has grammati cally distinctive properties in a range of languages (see Ch. I , §3). To determine which verbs in English are auxiliaries we need to apply the grammatical criteria relating to subject-auxiliary inversion and negation. In the first place this excludes verbs like begin , continue, keep, stop even though in constructions like They beganlcontinuedlkeptlstopped interrupting her the mean ing belongs in the same family as that of progressive be in They were interrupting her and indeed a good number of traditional grammars do analyse these verbs as auxiliaries of aspect. Conversely, be qualifies as an auxiliary verb not just when it is marking progres sive aspect or passive voice, but also when it is the only verb in the clause, taking a complement with the form of an AdjP, NP, etc. Its behaviour with respect to inver sion and negation is the same in this construction as in those where it is marking progressive aspect or passive voice. This is shown in [27], where this use of be is compared with the one marking progressive aspect: 2 -

[27] II 1Il

be AS ASPECT MARKER a. He is acting strangely. a. Is he acting strangely ? a. He isn 't acting strangely.

be AS ONLY VERB b. He is insane. b. Is he insane ? b. He isn 't insane.

Perfective and imperfective interpretations

In the remainder of this chapter we examine the meaning and use of four sys tems associated with the verb that are marked by the formal devices described above - by inflection or by auxiliary verbs. There are two systems of tense to consider: a 'primary' one marked by the inflectional contrast between preterite and present tense, and a 'sec ondary' one marked by the the perfect auxiliary have. The other two systems we shall be dealing with are progressive aspect, marked by the progressive auxiliary be, and mood, marked by the modal auxiliaries. 3 The four systems are shown with examples in [28] : SYSTEM Primary tense

[28]

Secondary tense

iii Aspect iv Mood 2

TERMS Preterite Present Perfect Non-perfect

EXAMPLE MARKING preterite inflection went present tense inflection goes have with past participle has gone goes [no special marking] Progressive be with gerund-participle is going Non -progressive [ no special marking ] goes Modal modal with plain form can go goes Non-modal [no special marking]

Traditional grammar does not analyse the be of the [b I examples as an auxiliary, but since it does not provide syntactic criteria for determining what verbs are auxiliaries in English, membership of the class is ill defined and varies from one grammar to another. The use of auxiliary be in It was written by Kim is not covered in this chapter. It marks passive voice. The passive is one of the constructions described in the chapter on information packaging (see Ch. 15, §2).

§4 Perfective and imperfective interpretations

The preterite and the perfect are different kinds of past tense: note that both She went home and She has gone home locate her going home in past time. Before we begin our survey of the four systems listed in [28] we need to intro duce an important semantic distinction that is relevant to all of them. We use situa tion as a cover term for the kinds of things that are described by a clause - actions like publishing a novel, processes like growing tall, states like being a student, etc. and we distinguish two kinds of clause interpretation that look at situations in different ways. When a clause describes a situation in a way that considers it as a whole, in its totality, without reference to any internal temporal structure or subdivision it might have, we say that the clause has a perfective interpretation. When a clause describes a situation in a way that makes reference to its internal temporal structure or subdivisions, we say that the clause has an imperfective interpretation. The following examples illustrate the distinction: [29] 11

PERFECTIVE a. She wrote a novel. a. She spent last summer with her parents.

IMPERFECTIVE b. She was writing a novel. b. She still lived with her parents.

The natural interpretation of [ia] is perfective: it simply describes an event that took place in the past. Example rib] , by contrast, has an imperfective interpreta tion: we are not concerned with the total event of her writing a novel, but with just part of it, some part in the middle during the process of its composition. Note that it does not follow from [ib] that she ever actually completed the novel. This clause has progressive aspect, and clauses with this form are almost always interpreted imperfective I y. But imperfective interpretations are not confined to progressive clauses. While [iia] is perfective - it talks about the summer as a whole - [iib] has an imperfec tive interpretation (despite not being in the progressive aspect). In [iib] , just as in rib] , we are not concerned with any situation in its totality. The situation of her living with her parents obtained at the time in the past that is being talked about, and the still indicates that it had also obtained at an earlier time, and there is noth ing to say that it ended. She might still live with her parents now, at the time of speaking.

Perfective vs perfect It is important to distinguish the term 'perfective' from 'perfect' , which we intro duced earlier in the chapter. Perfect is the name of a grammatical category, a type of past tense; Perfective applies, as far as English is concerned, to a kind of semantic interpre tation.

Chapter 3 Verbs, tense, aspect, and mood

The potentially confusing similarity between the terms reflects the fact that both are derived from a Latin word meaning "complete". There are, however, two entirely different kinds of completeness involved. With the perfect the key concept is that of past time. In examples like She has written a novel, the novel-writing is a completed event in the past. With the perfective it is a matter of viewing the situation as a com plete whole, but it need not be in the past. In She will write a novel, for example, the novel-writing situation is still perfective, but it is in future time, not the past. It is best to think of the two terms as quite independent, with the similarity between them being based on their historical origin rather than being indicative of any close cor relation between them.

Primary tense

The primary tense system contrasts the preterite, an inflection ally marked past tense, with the present tense: PRETERITE a. She was in Bonn.

[30]

PRESENT TENSE b. She U in Bonn.

A tense system is a system associated with the verb where the basic contrasts in meaning have to do with the location in time of the situation, or the part of it under consideration. This clearly applies to the system illustrated in [30] . The clauses are interpreted imperfectively, and the preterite in [i] indicates that the state in question obtained at a time in the past, while the present tense in [ii] indicates that it obtains in the present. Past and present time are relational concepts. Usually past time is understood as time preceding the time of speaking and present time is time simulta neous with the time of speaking. The examples in [30] illustrate the most central use of the two primary tenses, but both have a range of other uses too: the relation between tense and time in English is not at all straightforward. We' ll show this for each of the two tenses in the primary system.

The present tense

5.1

(a) Present time The most basic use of the present tense is to indicate present time - more specifi cally, time that coincides with the time of utterance, as in [30b] . But the time of utterance is of course very short. It often takes only a second or two to utter a sentence. So naturally there are severe restrictions on the use of the present tense in clauses with perfective interpretations. Compare these two examples : I promise to be back for lunch.

[3 1 ] 11

Sue mows the lawn.

[ perfective]

[imperfective]

§S. l The present tense

The salient interpretation of [i] is perfective: there is a single act of promising which is perfonned by uttering the sentence. The act of promising and the utter ing of the sentence thus occupy the same brief period of time (two or three seconds). But [ii] cannot under any normal circ*mstances be interpreted in tenns of a sin gle act of mowing the lawn at the time of speaking. It takes much longer to mow a lawn than to utter a sentence, so the present time cannot be the time of the situation considered as a totality. The natural interpretation, then, is an imperfective one: we take the sentence to describe a state of affairs where Sue regularly or habitually mows the lawn. This state - like that in [30b] - holds at the time of speaking, but began before then and will (presumably) continue after it. To talk about a single act of mowing the lawn while it is going on we would nonnally use the progressive aspect version: Sue is mowing the lawn. Here the progressive picks out a point within the total duration of the act, which means the interpretation is an imperfective one.

(b) Futu re time, I : the futurate The present tense is often used for situations located in future time. In main clauses this is restricted to cases where it can be assumed that we have present knowledge of a future event, as in: [32]

The next high tide iJ. at 4 o 'clock. The sun rises tomorrow at 6. 1 0. ii Exams start next week. We a rrive home two days before Easter.

This construction is called the futurate. The future time is usually specified by a time adjunct, marked here by double underlining. The two most common cases involve: recurrent events in nature whose time can be calculated scientifically (as in [i)); events that are arranged or scheduled in advance (as in [ii) ).

(c) Future time, 1 1 : subordinate clauses The present tense is used with future time reference without the above restrictions in certain types of subordinate clause. Three cases of this kind are illustrated in [33] : [33]

1Il

Please bring the washing in if [it rains]. I'll give it to you before [I leave]. I hope [you are feeling better soon].

The underlined verbs are present tense but clearly make future time references. In [i] the subordinate clause is complement within a conditional adjunct; In [ii] it is complement within a temporal adjunct; In [iii] it is complement of the verb hope.

Chapter 3 Verbs, tense, aspect, and mood

(d) Past time: the historic present In certain types of narrative, especially in informal style, the present tense is used instead of the preterite for past time events, even in discourses that have begun in the preterite: [34]

I was waiting at the bus-stop when this guy drives up and otters me a lift in his BMW, so I ill)'. 'Well, I don 't know, ' and he says 'You can trust me, I'm a grammarian, ' so I gg1 in, and off we gQ.

5.2

The preterite (a) Past time

The central use of the preterite is to locate the situation, or the part of it under con sideration, in past time. Compare the present tense examples in [3 1 ] with their preterite counterparts: [35]

i I promised to be back for lunch. ii Sue mowed the lawn.

[perfective] [imperfective or perfective]

Here [i] again has a perfective interpretation: it reports a promise made in the past. Example [ii] , however, can be interpreted either imperfectively or perfectively. In the former case it is the past time analogue of [3 l ii] , with Sue habitually or regularly mowing the lawn. This state of affairs held at the time that's being referred to. We noted above that perfective interpretations of present tense clauses with pres ent time reference are restricted to situations of very short duration, since they have to be co-extensive with the act of utterance. No comparable constraint applies with the preterite, however, and thus [35ii], unlike [3 1 ii], can readily be used perfectively to denote a single act of mowing the lawn located as a whole in past time.

(b) Modal remoteness: the modal preterite There is a second important use of the preterite where the meaning has to do not with time but with modality. We call this the modal preterite use. Modality is a type of meaning that is characteristically associated with mood rather than tense and is explained further in §8. At this point it's enough to say that it covers various kinds of case where the situation described in a clause is not presented as factual. The modal preterite is used to present the situation as, in varying degrees, modally remote. What this means can best be understood by comparing the modal preterite with the present tense in such examples as those in [36] , where in each pair the time is the same in [b] as in [a] . [36]

PRESENT TENSE

a. 1 1 a. 1 1 l a. iv a.

I'm glad they live nearby. I hope she arrives tomorrow. If he loves her, he 'll change his job. If you leave now, you 'll miss the rush-hour traffic.

MODAL PRETERITE b. I wish they lived nearby. b. I 'd rather she arrived tomorrow. b. Ifhe loved her, he 'd change his job.

b. If you !&.f1. now, you 'd miss the rush-hour traffic.

§ 5 . 2 The preterite

Because of the contrasting meanings of glad and wish, we understand from [ia] that they do in fact live nearby, and from [ib] that they don't. In [ib] they lived nearby is thus interpreted counterfactually, i.e. as contrary to fact, or false: this is the highest degree of modal remoteness. A lesser degree of modal remoteness is seen in [iib] : this doesn't imply that she definitely won't arrive tomorrow, but it suggests that it may well be that she won't (perhaps I ' m proposing a change to current arrangements where she's arriving at some other time). In these two examples the modal preterite is gram matically obligatory, for wish requires a preterite form of the verb in a finite com plement, and so does the idiom would rather. In [iii-iv], we find something different again: here there is a choice between pres ent tense and preterite. These examples illustrate an important distinction between two kinds of conditional construction, open, as in [iiiaJiva] , vs remote, as in [iiib/ivb ] . The open type characteristically leaves i t open a s to whether the condition is or will be fulfilled: he may love her or he may not; you may leave now or you may' not. The remote type, by contrast, generally presents the fulfilment of the condi tion as a more remote possibility. So [iiib] suggests a readiness to believe that he doesn't love her; this is the version I'd use, for example, in a context where he's not planning to change his job and I ' m arguing from this that he doesn't love her. Similarly, [ivb] presents your leaving now as somewhat less likely than in the case of [iva] : it would generally be preferred, for example, in a con text where your current plans or inclinations are to leave later.

(c) Backshift A third use of the preterite shows up in indirect reported speech. Notice the contrast between has and had in this pair: [37]

i Kim has blue eyes. ii I told Stacy that Kim had blue eyes.

[original utterance: present tense] [indirect report: preterite]

If I say [i] to Stacy, I can use [ii] as an indirect report to tell you what I said to Stacy. I ' m repeating the content of what I said to Stacy, but not the exact wording. My utterance to Stacy contained the present tense form has, but my report of it contains preterite had. Nonetheless, my report is entirely accurate. This kind of change in tense is referred to as backshift. The most obvious cases of backshift are with verbs of reporting that are in the preterite, like told or said. It would not occur with present tense verbs of saying; in the present tense, my report would have been I tell Stacy that Kim has blue eyes. In fact, even with preterite reporting verbs backshift is often optional: you can keep the original present tense instead of backshifting it. Instead of [37ii], therefore, we can have: [38]

I told Stacy that Kim has blue eyes.

Chapter 3 Verbs, tense, aspect, and mood

Although indirect reported speech represents the most obvious case, backshift also happens quite generally in constructions where one clause is embedded within a larger one containing a preterite verb: [39]

i Stacy didn 't know that Kim had blue eyes. ii I wondered at the time whether they were genuine. iii I wish I knew if these paintings were genuine.

All the underlined verbs have backshifted tense. Notice in particular that the knew of [iii] is actually a modal preterite, and doesn't refer to past time at all; but it still pro vides a context in which backshift can take place. So backshift can't be understood at all on the basis of some simple idea about preterite tenses referring to past time; it's a special grammatical principle about the use of the preterite tense inflection.

The perfect

The perfect is a past tense that is marked by means of an auxiliary verb rather than by inflection, like the preterite. The auxiliary is have, which is followed by a past participle. Examples are given in [40] along with their non-perfect counterparts: [40] u

III

PERFECT a. She has been ill.

NON-PERFECT

a. She had left town. a. She is said to have spoken fluent Greek.

b. She iJ. ill. b. She !&.f1 town. b. She is said to speak fluent Greek.

In [ia] and [iia] the auxiliary have is itself inflected for primary tense, has being a present tense form, had a preterite. These constructions thus have compound tense: [ia] is a present perfect, [iia] a preterite perfect. In [iiia] have is in the plain form, so this time there is no primary tense, no compound tense. In all three cases the perfect encodes past time meaning. This is very obvious in [i] and [iii] where the [a] examples refer to past time and the [b] ones to present time but we will see below that it also holds for [ii] . The present perfect is the most frequent of the constructions in [40] , and we will begin with this even though the combination of present and past tenses makes it the most complex of the three.

6. 1

The present perfect

The present perfect, like the simple preterite (the non-perfect preterite) in its central use, locates the situation, or part of it, in past time: [4 1 ]

PRESENT PERFECT

a. She has read your letter.

SIMPLE PRETERITE b. She read your letter.

The difference in meaning results from the fact that the present perfect is a com pound tense combining past and present, whereas the simple preterite is purely a

§6. 1 The present perfect past tense. The fonner includes explicit reference to the present as well as the past, whereas the latter does not. We can see the significance of the present tense compo nent in two ways.

(a) Time adjuncts Under certain conditions the present perfect allows time adjuncts referring to the present. The preterite does not. And conversely, the present perfect more or less excludes time adjuncts referring to the past, since they divorce the situation from present time. So we have these contrasts: [42]

b. * We by now finished most of it. b. She finished her thesis last week.

a. We have by now finished most of it. ii a. * She has finished her thesis last week.

(b) Current relevance With the present perfect the past time situation is conceived of as having some kind of current relevance, relevance to the present, whereas the preterite does not express any such relationship. Compare: [43]

a. She has lived in Paris for ten years. ii a. She has met the President. iii a. The premier has resigned. iv a. You 've put on some weight.

b. b. b. b.

She lived in Paris for ten years. She met the President. The premier resigned. You put on some weight.

In [ia] the connection with the present is that she is still living in Paris. In [ib] , by contrast, the period of her living in Paris is located wholly in the past. In [iia] , a natural interpretation would be that we are concerned with her past experience as it affects her status now: some past experience of hers at some indefinite time puts her in the present state of being among the relatively small class of people who have met the President. If I use [iib] , on the other hand, I ' m simply reporting a past event, and i t will typically b e clear from the context what time period I am talking about. In [iiia] we see an example of the present perfect as used to report hot news. Examples like [iiia] are very common in radio and TV news broadcasts (and, of course, not at all common in history books). Example [iva] illustrates the common use of the present perfect where the con cern is with present results of past events. The salient context is one where you are now somewhat heavier than you were before. In [ivb] there is no such con nection with the present: it simply describes a past event, and it could well be that the extra weight was subsequently lost. 4 4

On the last point, colloquial AmE differs somewhat from BrE. The adjunct already calls attention to the early occurrence and present results of an event; but American speakers will often say I did that already where a BrE speaker would say I 've already done that. AmE speakers understand the use of the perfect in such contexts, but use it less frequently.

Chapter 3 Verbs, tense, aspect, and mood

The preterite perfect

6.2

In §5.2 we distinguished three main uses of the preterite, and all three of them are found in the preterite perfect, i.e., the construction where the perfect aux iliary is in the preterite form had: [44]

She had gone to bed. ii It would have been better if she had gone to bed. iii You said she had gone to bed.

[past time] [modal remoteness] [backs hi ft]

The central use of the preterite is to indicate past time, and when the preterite combines with the perfect we then have two components of past time. So in [i] her going to bed is located in the past relative to some other past time - such as the time of our arrival in She had already gone to bed when we arrived. In [44ii] the preterite indicates not past time but modal remoteness. In this exam ple the conditional has a counterfactual interpretation: she didn't go to bed. Because the preterite is marking modal remoteness, it can't also indicate past time, so the perfect has to be used for this purpose. (Compare the non-perfect It would be better if she went to bed, where the time is the immediate future, not the past.) For [44iii], a natural context would be to report you as having said She went to bed or She has gone to bed. Here the preterite or the present perfect of the orig inal utterance is backshifted to a preterite perfect.

6.3

The perfect in clauses without primary tense

The third case to consider is where auxiliary have appears in a second ary form, so that there is no primary (inflectional) tense. The perfect in this case serves to locate the situation in past time, just like the preterite in clauses that do have primary tense. Compare the following pairs: [45]

PRIMARY TENSE: PRETERITE

a. We believe that she was in Bonn at the time. a. As we reached agreement yesterday, we don 't need to meet today.

NO PRIMARY TENSE: PERFECT b. We believe her to have been in Bonn

at the time.

b. Having reached agreement yesterday,

we don 't need to meet today.

In each pair, there is reference to past time in both [a] and [b] . The past time is expressed by the preterite in [a] and the perfect in [b] . Examples like these show why we refer to the preterite as the primary past tense and the perfect as the secondary one. The preterite represents the most common, or default, way of locating the situation in past time, but it can't be used in clauses without inflectional tense, such as the non-finite clauses in [45ib/iib] : the perfect is then called into service to perform the job that in the [a] examples is performed by the preterite. The same point applies to examples like [44ii] above. As we noted, this

§7 Progressive aspect i s a conditional construction with the preterite expressing modal remoteness: this means that the preterite can't also serve to locate the situation in past time, so this has to be done by the perfect.

The continuative perfect

6.4

One difference between the perfect and the preterite is that we can use the perfect to indicate that the situation lasted over a period starting before a certain time and continuing up to that time. We call this the continuative use of the perfect, as opposed to the non-continuative use: [46]

CONTINUATIVE PERFECT

NON-CONTINUATIVE PERFECT 11

a. She has already gone to bed. a. She had already gone to bed when

we arrived.

b. She has been in bed for two hours. b. She had been in bed for two hours

when we arrived.

In the [a] examples the perfect simply locates her going to bed in the past - rela tive to the time of speaking in the present perfect [ia] and to the time of our arrival in the preterite perfect [iia] . In the [b] examples, however, her being in bed continued over a period of time: in rib] it began two hours before the time of speaking, lasting until now, while in [iib] this period began two hours before we arrived, lasting until then. The con tinuative interpretation is imperfective, so there is no implication in [ib/iib] that the situation of her being in bed ended at the time of utterance or when we arrived. (Similarly for [43ia] , which is also continuative.) The continuative use of the perfect is much less common than the non-continua tive one, and is usually marked explicitly by a duration expression giving the length of the period in question, such as for two hours in [46] .

Progressive aspect

The progressive is formed by means of auxiliary be followed by a gerund-participle. Compare: [47]

PROGRESSIVE a. She was writing a novel.

NON-PROGRESSIVE b. She wrote a novel.

The concept of aspect A grammatical form or construction qualifies as an aspect if its main use is to indi cate how the speaker views the situation described in the clause with respect not to its location in time but to its temporal structure or properties. Thus in [47] the time referred to is past in both [a] and [b] , but the situation is viewed in different ways. In [b] it is considered in its totality, as a complete event,

Chapter 3 Verbs, tense, aspect, and mood

whereas in [a] the situation is presented as being in progress at a certain time. The two clauses have the same tense - the preterite - but they differ in aspect.

The progressive and imperfectivity Clauses with progressive form usually have imperfective interpretations. We have j ust noted, for example, that while [47b] is concerned with her writing a novel as a whole, [47a] is not: the former has a perfective interpretation, the latter an imperfective one. Not all clauses with imperfective interpretations, however, have progressive form - cf. the discussion of [29] in §4. The characteristic mean ing of progressive aspect involves a specific kind of imperfectivity - it presents the situation as being in progress. This implies that the situation has the following two properties: it has duration, rather than being instantaneous, or 'punctual' ; it i s dynamic, rather than static: states don't progress, they simply hold or obtain. Clauses describing punctual or static situations thus generally appear in the non progressive: [48]

a. I finally found my key. ii a. She has blue eyes.

b. At last it has stopped raining. b. This jug holds two pints.

[punctual] [static]

Finding one's key (as opposed to searching for it) is punctual, and one wouldn't say * I was finally finding my key. Having blue eyes is a state - hence the striking pecu liarity of *She is ha v ing blue eyes. It's the same with the other examples.

Contrasts between non-progressive and progressive The basic meaning of the progressive is to present the situation as being in progress, but this general meaning tends to interact with features relating to the kind of situation being described to yield a more specific interpretation, a more specific difference between a progressive clause and its non-progressive counter part. Writing a novel, for example, is a situation with a determinate endpoint (when the novel is completed), and thus while [47b] entails that the novel was indeed completed, [47a] does not: she may or may not have gone on to complete it. But there is no such sharp difference in the pair They watched TV and They were watch ing TV. Watching TV (as opposed to watching a particular programme) does not have a determinate endpoint, and so we find that if They were watching TV is true, so is They watched TV. Here are four contrasting pairs of examples where the grammatical difference is purely that one is non-progressive and the other is progressive: [49]

PROGRESSIVE

NON-PROGRESSIVE

a. He nodded. ii a. He is very tactful. iii a. She lives with her parents. iv a. She reads the 'New Scientist '.

b. b. b. b.

He was nodding. He is being very tactful. She is living with her parents. She is reading the 'New Scientist '.

§ 8 Mood A salient interpretation of [ia] is that there was just one nod. But a nod is punc tual, so [ib] cannot normally involve a single nod: it conveys the idea of a sequence of nods. The default interpretation of [iia] is as a state: we take it to describe his charac ter/personality. The progressive requires a dynamic component of meaning, and we interpret [iib] in terms of behaviour rather than character: "He is behaving very tactfully". Non-progressive [iiia] again describes a state, while the progressive [iiib] conveys that the situation is a relatively temporary one - it is progressing towards its end. The usual interpretation of [iva] is as a state, with regular, habitual reading of the 'New Scientist' : reading it takes too long to permit an interpretation with a single reading in present time. The most salient interpretation of [ivb] (though not the only one) is then of a single reading in progress at the present moment.

The progressive futurate There are certain cases where clauses with progressive form do not have the usual "in progress" meaning. The most important involves the futurate construction (see §S. l ): [5 0]

a. I see my broker today.

b. I'm seeing my broker today.

In both clauses we are concerned with a future act of seeing someone. Version [ia] is an ordinary futurate use of the present tense, and conveys that an appointment has been set up or is regularly scheduled, whereas [ib] may suggest simply that I intend to go and see my broker today.

Mood

Mood is a grammatical category associated with the semantic dimen sion of modality. Mood is to modality as tense is to time: tense and mood are cate gories of grammatical form, while time and modality are the associated categories of meaning. Modality deals mainly with two related contrasts: factual vs non-factual, and asserted vs non-asserted. The meaning differences seen in [S l i] and [S l ii] are dif ferences in modality. [5 1 ]

NON-MODAL a. She saw him.

ii a. He leaves today.

MODAL b. She must have seen him. b. He must leave today.

c. She may have seen him. c. He can/may leave today.

In [i] the [a] version presents her seeing him as a matter of fact, whereas in [b] it is an inference and in [cl simply a possibility. In [ii] the [a] version has the force of an assertion, whereas [b] can be used as a kind of directive, imposing an obligation, and [cl can be used to give permission.

Chapter 3 Verbs, tense, aspect, and mood

Modality can be expressed by a great variety of formal means. The possibility meaning of [5 l ic], for example, could also be expressed by means of an adverb (Perhaps she saw him), an adjective (It 's possible that she saw him), a noun (There 's a possibility that she saw him), and so on. But for English at least the term 'mood' is restricted to grammatical systems associated with the verb. In §8. 1 we look at the kinds of meaning expressed by the modal auxiliaries. Then in §8.2 we take up the issue of the relation between modality and future time in the context of an examination of the auxiliary will . In §8.3 we look at the preterite forms of the modals. The final section, §8.4, deals with the use of were in constructions like I wish she were here - a relic of an earlier system of mood marked by inflection, rather than by auxiliaries.

8. 1

Uses of the modal auxiliaries

There are three main families of meanings that the modal auxiliaries express : epistemic, deontic and dynamic. The first two, illustrated in [5 1 i-ii] respectively, are the most central ones, and we will take these two together in order to bring out the important contrast between them. We will then conclude the section with a discussion of dynamic modality.

The epistemic vs deontic contrast Epistemic modality expresses meanings relating primarily to what is necessary or possible given what we know (or believe): the term derives from the Greek word for "knowledge". Deontic modality expresses meanings relating primarily to what's required or permitted: this term derives from the Greek word for "obligation". The two kinds of meaning are illustrated in the following pairs: [52]

EPISTEMIC 11 111

a. He must have overslept. a. She may be ill. a. The storm should be over soon.

DEONTIC b. He must apologise. b. She may take as many as she needs. b. We should call the police.

In the [a] examples the modals are interpreted epistemically: the varying degrees of non-factuality that they convey reflect limitations on the speaker's knowledge. In [ia] , I may not know that he overslept, but I ' m inferring that he did. In [ib] , I don't know that she's ill, but I also don' t know that she isn't, and am counte nancing it as a possibility. In [ic], I don't know how long the storm will last, but the probability or expectation is that it will be over soon. The [b] examples are interpreted deontically: the meanings have to do with obli gation or permission of various kinds. More specifically, the operative notion in [ib] is obligation, in [iib] permission, and in [iiib] a milder kind of obligation where it is a matter of what is the right thing to do. These notions all have to do with authority and judgement rather than knowledge and belief. Very often

§8. 1 Uses of the modal auxiliaries declarative clauses with deontic meanings of modals are used to try and influence what happens rather than simply to make assertions. The link between the two families of meanings is that the concepts of necessity and possibility - the key concepts in modal logic - apply to both. But with epistemic modality, necessity and possibility relate to whether or not something is the case, is true, whereas with deontic modality they relate to whether or not something hap pens, or is done. In [52i], for example, I ' m saying in [a] that it is necessarily the case that he overslept, and in [b] that it is necessary for him to apologise: in neither do I countenance any other possibility. Epistemic and deontic meanings are not in general associated with different expressions. Many examples are ambiguous, allowing either kind of interpretation for the modal: You must be very tactful.

[53]

[epistemic or deonti c ]

There is an epistemic interpretation of this under which it means I have evidence that leads me to believe you're very tactful. And there is also a deontic one that I might use to tell you there is an obligation or need for you to be very tactful (and perhaps thus to tell you to behave with tact).

Dynamic interpretations Some of the modals have uses concerned with properties or dispositions of per sons or other entities involved in the situation : [54]

She can speak five languages.

ii I've asked him to help us but he won 't. iii I daren 't tell you any more.

These are called dynamic interpretations, and are somewhat peripheral to the con cept of modality. In [i], can is used to describe an ABILITY of hers; in [ii] , the nega tive form of will talks about VOLITION (his unwillingness to help us); in [iii] , dare says something about whether my COURAGE is sufficient for me to tell you any more. (Dare is unique among the modals in that it has ONLY a dynamic use.) With can we find clear cases of ambiguity between a dynamic and either an epis temic or a deontic interpretation: [55] II

You can 't be serious. She can drive.

[epistemic or dynamic] [deontic or dynamic]

The epistemic interpretation of [i] denies the possibility that you are being seri ous: it suggests a context where you have said something that I take to be absurd. The dynamic interpretation says something about your personality: you are inca pable of being serious. In [ii] the deontic reading is that she has permission to drive, while the dynamic one attributes an ability to her - she knows how to drive.

Chapter 3 Verbs, tense, aspect, and mood

Prescri ptive g ra m m a r n ote Some people insist that can is not to be used in a deontic sense - that pennission should be expressed by may instead. There is absolutely no truth to this claim about can, which is used frequently in all of the three types of meaning we have distinguished, and has been for cen turies. No evidence whatever supports the view that the deontic use is in some way incorrect.

Futurity, modality, and will

8.2

In this section we treat a special feature of the meaning of one modal, will. There are some languages that have a three-term tense system contrasting past, present and future. Contrary to what is traditionally assumed, English is not one of them: it has no future tense. It does have several ways of talking about future time, and the most basic one does involve the auxiliary will. Nonetheless, will belongs grammatically and semantically with the auxiliaries that mark mood rather than with the various markers of tense. There is an intrinsic connection between future time and modality: we don't have the same kind of knowledge about the future as we do about the past and the present, so it isn't possible to be fully factual about future events or situations. It shouldn't be too surprising, then, that a modal auxiliary might be used for talking about the future. The close association between will and modality may be illustrated with the fol lowing sets of contrasts: a. She beat him in under an hour. 11

a. He likes you.

b. She will beat him in under an hour. b. He will like you.

a. She left Paris yesterday. a. That is the plumber.

b. She will have left Paris yesterday. b. That will be the plumber.

a. Australia meets Sweden in the Davis Cup final in December.

b. Australia will meet Sweden in the

[56] [57]

[58]

Davis Cup final in December.

The examples in [56] illustrate the difference that is commonly found between statements about the past or present and those about the future: [ia] and [iia] will be construed as statements of fact, whereas [ib] and [iib] have more of the char acter of predictions. In [57], will is used in the [b] versions with situations located in past and present time, and the difference between them and the [a] versions is clearly one of modality, not time. The [a] versions are presented as statements of fact, the [b] ones as inferences. Both versions of [58] locate the situation in future time, so again the difference between them is one of modality, not time reference. The [a] version is more assured, and appropriate only in a context where the finalists have been deter mined; the [b] version could be used to make a prediction earlier in the competi tion (when it isn't clear who will survive until December without being knocked out of the tournament).

§8.3 The preterite fonns of the modals

In all three cases, the version without a modal is more assured than the one that has will. The differences are related to the speaker's knowledge. The meanings con tributed by will therefore belong in the epistemic family.5

The preterite fonns of the modals

8.3

Four of the modal auxiliaries, can, may, will and shall have preterite fonns could, might, would and should respectively. It is quite clear that they are preterites, but it must also be stressed that they are highly exceptional in their behav iour. We' ll look briefly at both the similarities and the differences between the preterites of the modals and other preterites. -

(a) Similarities with ordinary preterites Could and would can be used with past time meaning and in the subordinate part of a remote conditional, and all four preterites are found in backshift:

[59] 11 1lI

I asked him to help me, but he couldn 't/wouldn 'to We 'd save a lot o/money if you could/would cycle to work. I thought I could/would/%should/might see her yesterday, but I had to work late at the office.

[past time] [remote conditional] [backshift]

Note that backshift is obligatory in the context of [iii], so that it would be ungram matical to replace the preterite fonns by present tense can/willfA'shall/may. 6

(b) Differences from other preterites With other verbs the modal remoteness use of the preterite is restricted to a few sub ordinate constructions, but with the modals it occurs freely in main clauses, in examples like these: I could/wouldfA'should/might do it if they offered to pay me.

[60]

ii You could/might have been killed! You should apologise. iv Could/Would you help me move these boxes ?

III

Example [i] is a remote conditional construction (the open counterpart being I can/willfA' shall/may do it if they offer to pay me). Both the modal auxiliary and offered are modal preterites, but while any modal preterite can occur in the sub ordinate clause, only a modal auxiliary can occur in the main clause. 5

With some predictions there isn't much doubt - e.g., when I say She 'll be two tomorrow on the day before a child's birthday. But there's no grammatical distinction between cases like this and cases like the ones in [56] . In some varieties of English, especially BrE, shall is used with I st person subjects as an alternant of will for future time situations, so we get %1 shall be glad when it 's all over. This use is epistemic. But the most common use of shall is in interrogative clauses like Shall 1 pick you up at six? This shall is deontic because I ' m asking you to tell me what to do. Actually, some speakers do allow may here, which shows that for them the two forms have become separated might is no longer the preterite form of lTUly for these speakers, so it isn't substituted for may in backshifting. -

Chapter 3 Verbs, tense, aspect, and mood

The salient interpretation of [ii] is that you have done something reckless, putting you at risk of being killed - but in fact you weren't killed. In [iii] you owe someone an apology: the right thing for you to do is to apologise. In Present-day English, this use of preterite should is not perceived as semanti cally related to present tense shall: neither BrE nor AmE speakers normally say % You shall apologise.

In [iv] , interrogative clauses are used as directives: I ' m asking for your help (cf. Ch. 9, §4.4). The preterites here sound more polite and diffident than present tense can and will.

8.4

Irrealis

were

English once had an inflectional mood system applying, like tense, to all verbs. Over the centuries this has been almost entirely lost. The meaning distinc tions are now conveyed by tense. We noted earlier the difference in meaning con trasts between preterite and present in [6 1 i] and [6 1 ii ] : [6 1 ]

PRESENT TENSE

PRETERITE TENSE a. He loved her. ii a. If he loved her he 'd change his job.

b. He loves her. b. If he loves her he 'll change his job.

In [i] the contrast is straightforwardly one of time: [ia] refers to past time, [ib] to present time. In [ii], however, the contrast is one of modality: [iia] presents his lov ing her as a somewhat more remote possibility than [iib] . It is for this reason that we refer to loved in [iia] as a modal preterite a use of the preterite where the mean ing has to do with modality, not time. Now consider what happens when the verb concerned is be, and the subject is 1 st or 3rd person singular. One possibility is that we have a set of relationships just like those in [6 1 ] : -

[62]

PRETERITE TENSE

a. He was in love with her. ii a. If he was in love with her he 'd go.

PRESENT TENSE b. He is in love with her. b. If he is in love with her he 'Il go.

Was in [ia] has the central preterite meaning of past time; was in [iia] is a modal preterite. It is also possible, however, to have the form we re in place of was in [iia] but not [ia] . In this case the temporal and modal meanings are not different meanings of a single form: they are meanings of different forms. Was is a tense form, but this were is a mood form. We call it irrealis, indicating that it conveys varying degrees of remoteness from factuality: [63]

IRREALIS MOOD

a. If he were in love with her he 'd change his job.

PRESENT TENSE b. If he is in love with her he 'Il change his job.

§ 8 .4 Irrealis were

The difference between [63a] and [62iia] is one of style level: were is here somewhat more formal than was. This use of were is highly exceptional : there is no other verb in the language where the modal remoteness meaning is expressed by a different inflectional form from the past time meaning. The irrealis mood form is unique to be, and limited to the 1 st and 3rd person singular. It is an untidy relic of an earlier system, and some speakers usually, if not always, use preterite was instead. Be is also unique in having three different present tense forms (instead of the usual two) and two different preterite forms (instead of one). This is by far the most irregular verb in the entire English vocabulary. Here is its full paradigm: [ 64 ]

PRIMARY FORMS

NEGATIVE

NEUTRAL

Present

1 st sg

3rd sg

Other

1 st sg

3rd sg

Other

are

aren 'P

isn 't

aren 't

Preterite

was

Irrealis

were

were -

weren 't

wasn 't we ren 't

SECONDARY FORMS

PLAIN FORM

PAST PARTICIPLE

GERUND-PARTICIPLE

been

being

We include the irrealis forms among the primary forms, because there is a negative irrealis form, and also because of the close relation with preterite was and wasn 't. This is why we distinguish the two major subsets of inflectional forms as 'primary' vs 'secondary' rather than by the more transparent (and more usual) terms 'tensed' and 'non-tensed' . 8

Aren 't appears with I st person singular subjects only in clauses where it precedes the subject: we get A ren 't I? but not 'I aren 't. The form %amn 't is restricted to certain regional British dialects, and 'ain 't is definitely (notoriously) non-standard, so there isn't a standard 'n 't form of be for the I st person sin gular present when the subject precedes. However, I 'm not is available, using the reduced 'm form of am with the separate word not instead of a negative form of be. The non-negative forms in [64] are labelled 'neutral' rather than 'positive' because they occur in both positive and negative clauses (e.g. That iJ. true and That iJ. not true). Traditional grammar calls our irrealis a 'past subjunctive ' , contrasting with 'present subjunctive' be. But there are no grounds for analysing this were as a past tense counterpart of the be that we find in constructions like It's vital that he be kind to her. We don't use 'subjunctive' as a term for an inflectional category, but for a syntactic construction employing the plain form of the verb (cf. § I . I ).

Chapter 3 Verbs, tense, aspect, and mood Exercises

1 . For some but not all of the following verb lexernes, the preterite and past participle fonns have distinct shapes. Say for each whether the shapes are the same or different, and make up examples to show that you are right. vi forget burn ii buy vii hold viii ride iii draw ix run iv drink x sing v fall 2. The underlined verbs below are fonns of lexemes whose preterite and past participie have the same shape. Use the substitution test to detennine which fonn occurs in these instances, citing the evidence you use. I don 't think they found anything suspicious. ii That 's not the edition I recommended. iii She wasn 't one of those arrested. iv Do you think we 'll get charged? v Haven 't you seen the mess they made ? vi Get it repaired without delay. vii Who said it was mine ? viii I don 't want anyone hurt. ix I met him on a Monday. x I don 't believe we 've met. 3. Detennine whether the underlined verbs below are plain forms or plain present tense fonns. Again, present the evidence on which you base your decision. i The twins, he says, seem quite distraught. ii It would be best not to my. anything about it. iii He thinks they didn 't like him. iv They wouldn 't help me change the tyre. v Let 's gQ to the movies. VI We have written to the editor. vii They appreciate what you 're doing for them. viii Tell me what you want. ix I doubt whether you really know her. x Do you know what time it is ? 4. The verb beware (as in Beware of the dog) is highly exceptional in its inflection.

Construct example sentences containing the following kinds of clause with a fonn of beware as verb, marking the ones that turn out to be ungrammatical with *. a clause with 3rd person singular subject and present tense verb; ii a clause with plural subject and present tense verb; iii an imperative clause; iv a subjunctive clause; v an infinitival clause; vi a gerund-participial clause; vii a past-participial clause. On the basis of your data give a paradigm for beware, leaving blank any position where the inflectional fonn is missing for this verb. 5. Classify the underlined clauses below as finite or non-finite. Everyone arrested at the demonstration has now been released. ii It is essential that he cOll1/l.lete the course. iii I think thO'. ma)! not have read the instructions. iv Having been through a similar experience m)!selt I sympathise. v I'd advise you not to take it too seriousl)!. vi Hurry up. or we 'll be late. 6. Change the following declarative clauses into interrogatives, write out the result, and say on this basis whether the underlined verbs are auxiliaries or lexical verbs. They were informed of the change. ii She would rather we met later. iii They ought to accept the offer. iv They used to live together. v We have to keep them informed. vi They need to replace the cartridge. vii I should inform the police. viii They had it repaired. ix You usually help clear up. x They keep telling her that. 7. Use the two negation tests to determine the status of the underlined verbs as auxiliaries or lexical verbs. Cite the evidence on which you base your answer.

Exercises You must get involved. It iJ. going to rain. They tend to disagree. She would like to see them. I saw them leave. He wants to tell her. He might have told her. I'm going to solve it. IX They can sardines to preserve them. X They can preserve sardines. 8 . In the uses illustrated in the following examples, the three underlined verbs bear some semantic and/or syntactic similarity to the modal auxiliaries, though syntacti cally they're not similar enough to modals to be included in the class. i You are to report for duty at 8 a.m. ii We have to ask what's bestfor the child. iii They don 't like it. Take the three verbs in turn and deter mine which, if any, of the three modal aux iliary properties described in this chapter apply to them. Construct examples where necessary, and explain your reasoning. 9. Determine whether the underlined verb forms in the following examples are instances of the auxiliary lexemes have, need and dare or instances of the corre sponding lexical verbs. They had better hurry or they 'll miss it. ii They had their house burgled. iii They had to call the police. iv I had the staff do a thorough search. v I have an idea about that. vi I doubt whether we needed to see it. vii We need more time to finish the work. viii I don 't think you need have any worries. IX Did anyone dare remind him of his promise ? x Not one ofthem dare voice any criticism. 1 0. During a 1 954 Senate committee hearing, US Army attorney Joseph Welch addressed to US Senator Joseph McCarthy a famous pair of rhetorical questions: Have you no shame ? and Have you no shred of decency ? What does the syntax of these interrogative clauses tell you about American English of that period? ii iii iv v vi vii viii

1 1 . Which of the following allow a perfective interpretation? Consider just the main clauses, ignoring any subordinate ones embedded within them. I think it 's a disgrace. ii I suggest you give up the idea. iii I now add a sprinkling ofpepper. iv I want to get out of here. v I do my own shopping. 1 2. We have seen in this chapter that subordi nate clauses functioning as complement of before, if and hope can have a future time interpretation. For example, if it rains in We 'll postpone the match if it rains doesn't mean "if it is raining now " , it means "if rain falls at some future time " . For each of the following five prepositions and five verbs, construct an example to show whether or not it permits a future time interpretation of a present tense in its complement.

PREPOSITIONS

VERBS

after vi bet vii expect II although viii realise III because ix regret iv unless x wish v until (You should avoid examples with a futu rate interpretation like I know that we leave for Berlin next Tuesday. For these, subordi nation is irrelevant: the interpretation is the same as for the main clause We leave for Berlin next Tuesday. Thus futurate examples don't provide relevant evidence.) 1 3. Classify the following conditional con structions as open or remote. For the open ones, give their remote counterparts, and conversely for the remote ones give their open counterparts. It won 't matter if I'm a little late. ii He could easily get a job ifhe wanted one. iii It would be disastrous ifthey saw the files. iv lfyou don 't pay up they 'll call the police. v You can stay here if you 're stuck. (Note that some open conditionals lack remote counterparts, and some remote conditionals lack open counterparts. Here

1 4.

15.

1 6.

17.

Chapter 3 Verbs, tense, aspect, and mood we are considering only cases where the two constructions are in contrast.) For each of the following statements, imagine that someone called Jill made that statement yesterday. Write reports of the speech events in question, in the form Jill said that . . . For each one give a back shifted report, and in those cases where backshift is optional give a non-back shifted report too. (For example, given It's too late you would supply Jill said it was too late and Jill said it's too late.) i My father has a weak heart. ii Ed is arriving this evening. iii I have a terrible headache iv I 'm moving to Florida this month. v Everyone thinks I 'm overreacting. For the following examples, give counter parts in which the clause with the under lined verb has been put in the perfect tense. i I hope to finish soon. ii You should 1dJ. her the truth. iii They mislaid the file. iv He admined being an alcoholic. v She i! very helpful. Describe, as carefully as you can, the dif ference in meaning or use between the [a] and [b] members of the following pairs. a. I've been in the army for two years. b. I was in the army for two years. ii a. Have you seen Jill? b. Did you see Jill? iii a. It was the best meal I've had all week. b. It was the best meal I had all that week. iv a. She has gone to Moscow. b. She went to Moscow. v a. I've got the milk. b. I got the milk. As in Exercise 1 3, classify the following conditionals as open or remote, and give the counterpart of the opposite category. These examples differ from the earlier ones in that they all involve the perfect construction. i If she hadn 't sold her shares she would be very rich.

ii If the secretary hadn 't called the police someone else would have. iii If Ed has gone on holiday you can stay in his room. iv If Jill didn 't report the fault, Max may have. v Ifyou hadfinished your work yesterclay, you could come with us tomorrow. 1 8 . Give progressive aspect counterparts to the following examples. She lived in Berlin. ii He may regret his impulsiveness. iii They neglect their children. iv I have read the newspaper. v He didn 't pay any attention. 1 9. Discuss the difference in meaning or use between the [a] and [b] members of the following pairs. a. I cycle to work. b. I 'm cycling to work. ii a. When Tom called she phoned me. b. When Tom called she was phoning me. iii a. The train arrived. b. The train was arriving. iv a. You annoy me. b. You 're annoying me. v a. He wrote an editorial. b. He was writing an editorial. 20. Discuss the interpretation of the following examples with respect to the distinction between epistemic, deontic, and dynamic modality, bearing in mind that some of them are ambiguous. i You needn 't bother to answer. ii It must surely rain soon. iii They should be in Paris by now. iv She can 't live with her parents. v It may easily be shown that this isfalse. vi These animals can be dangerous. vii It needn 't have been Jill that wrote the note. viii Bill is one of those people who must always have the last word. ix There could be some other reason. x Could I have another beer, please ?

Clause structure, complements and adjuncts

I Introduction

2 The subject 67 3 The object

4 Predicative complements

73 5 Five canonical clause structures 6 Adjuncts 78

In this chapter we investigate the structure of canonical clauses, the syntactically most elementary type of clause. Various kinds of non-canonical clause will be intro duced from time to time, but solely for the purpose of illuminating the structure of canonical clauses. Very often the best evidence for analysing one construction is provided by a comparison between it and a different but related construction. Canonical clauses have the potential to stand alone as sentences, and we therefore follow the standard convention of citing examples with the punctuation of sen tences, i.e. with an initial capital letter and final full stop.

Introduction

Every canonical clause has a head element with the form of a verb phrase (VP). Every VP in turn has as its head a verb (V). Thus a canonical clause always contains a V which is the head of a VP which is the head of the clause. The verb is the most important element in determining what the rest of the clause is like. From now on we' ll refer to the verb as the head word of the clause.

Predicates and predicators The term 'head' was not introduced into grammatical theory until the latter half of the twentieth century, and in talking about clause structure we will generally use the traditional, long-established terminology where the two major elements in the clause are called subject and predicate. In Cats like water, the NP cats is subject and the VP like water is predicate. The idea is that in elementary examples like this the predicate represents what is 'predicated of' - i.e. said about - the referent of the subject. 'Predicate' , therefore, is a more specific term than 'head' when the con struction concerned is a clause. Similarly, predicator is used for the head of the VP, i.e. for the verb like in this example. 63

Chapter 4 Clause structure, complements and adjuncts

Diagramming clause structure The structure of a clause like Cats like wate r can be represented in diagram form as shown in [ 1 ] . [1]

Clause

� Subject: NP

Predicate: VP

� Predicator: V

cats

Object: NP

D water

This diagram expresses in graphic form information about the function and cate gory of the various units or constituents (i.e. words, phrases, clauses, etc.): cats like water belongs to the category 'clause' ; the clause is divided into two constituents functioning as subject and predicate; the subject precedes the predicate; the subject takes the form of a noun phrase (NP), and the predicate is a VP; the VP contains a predicator and an object; the predicator precedes the object; the predicator is a v and the object is an NP.

No function is assigned to the clause itself because it is not part of any larger con struction; the other units, however, are given two labels: the first indicates their function in the construction containing them, the second gives their category. The diagram omits, deliberately, some information that is irrelevant here: it does not show anything about the internal structure of the two NPs. The parts of the dia gram under the NP labels are just shown as triangles, which indicates that the details of the internal structure (like what is the head of the NP) have been left out to sim plify things since it is not the focus of interest and we have not yet covered the struc ture of NPs (that is done in Ch. 5). In this chapter we are interested merely in how phrases combine to make clauses.

Predicators select key content of clauses What can occur in a clause is very largely determined by the predicator. For exam ple, it is a crucial property of the verb like that it permits occurrence of an object (indeed, it normally requires one in canonical clauses). A large percentage of the verbs in English allow or require an object. Some do not: examples include elapse, Jall, lie, mew, vanish, etc. Thus * Cats mew water is not a grammatical clause, though Cats mew is.

§ 1 Introduction

Some verbs allow or require not only an object but also some other phrase. For example, give allows an object and a preposition phrase (PP) with the preposition to as head, so we have clauses like Lucy gave the key to the landlord, where the NP the key is an object and the PP to the landlord is also included in the VP. We show the structure of that clause in [2], again without bothering to show details of the inter nal structure of the NPs or the PP. Clause

[2]

Predicate: VP

Subject: NP

Lucy

Predicator: V

Object: NP

gave

D the key

Complement: PP

� to the landlord

The important point to note is that in order to tell whether some object or comple ment is allowed in a clause, you have to know what specific verb is serving as the predicator of the clause.

Complements and adjuncts The dependents of the predicator in the VP are of two main kinds: complements and adjuncts. The admissibility of a complement depends on the predicator belong ing to a particular subclass of verbs. The term we use for this is licensing: comple ments have to be licensed by their head. The object is one kind of complement, and we can illustrate the concept of licens ing by considering the occurrence of an object with the three verbs shown in [3] : [3]

a. Sue used the cheese. ii a. Sue ate the cheese. 111 a. * Sue disappe ared the cheese.

b. * Sue used. b. Sue ate. b. Sue disappeared.

[object obligatory] [object optional] [object excluded]

An object such as the cheese is admissible with, hence licensed by, the verbs use and eat, but not disappear: [iiia] is ungrammatical, as is any other clause with dis appear as head and an object as dependent. There is a further difference between use and eat. With eat the object is optional whereas with use it is obligatory: [iib] is grammatical, but rib] is not. The status of a dependent as a complement is most obvious when it is obligatory for at least some heads. But this is not essential : the crucial feature of licensing is that the admissibility of the element depends on the presence of an appropriate head. The occurrence of adjuncts is not restricted in this way. They occur more freely, essentially without regard to what the predicator is.

Chapter 4 Clause structure, complements and adjuncts

The examples in [4] illustrate the difference between complements (marked by double underlining) and adjuncts (single underlining). [4]

The box was useless because it had a hole in it. your father this morning. They still think they were right.

ii I saw

iii

In [i], useless (an adjective phrase, or AdjP) is a complement, since it has to be licensed by the predicator. Again this can be shown by replacing be with a verb such as leak, which gives us the ungrammatical * The box leaked useless because it had a hole in it. On the other hand, because it had a hole in it is an adjunct in [i] . We cannot find two different subclasses of verb that differ in whether they accept a because phrase as dependent. The box leaked because it had a hole in it, for example, is just as grammatical as [4i]. It doesn' t make sense, of course, to say #She spoke excellent French because it had a hole in it, but that is due to the semantic con tent of this particular because phrase. She spoke excellent French because she had spent a year in Paris as a student is clearly impeccable. Licensing is a matter of grammar, and when we test by making replacements we have to be prepared to make adjustments of this kind to the semantic content. There are no verbs that exclude because phrases in general. In [ii] , your father is a complement licensed by see. If see were replaced by fall, say, we would have an ungrammatical sentence. This morning in [ii] , by contrast, is an adjunct; a temporal NP of this kind is compatible with any verb. In [iii], still is an adjunct, again because it is compatible with any verb. But the subordinate clause they were right is a complement, licensed by think. Again it is easy to find verbs like alter or lose or work that are incompatible with a sub ordinate clause of this kind, whatever its particular semantic content.

The subject as a kind of complement We have shown that the object is a kind of complement since it satisfies the licens ing requirement. The subject is rather different: all canonical clauses contain a sub ject, so in a sense subjects are compatible with any verb. However, certain syntactic kinds of subject are restricted to occurrence with particular kinds of verb, so the concept of licensing applies here too. Take, for example, the subject of [Si] : [5]

Whether we will finish on time depends primarily on the weather. * Whether we will finish on time ruined the afternoon.

The underlined expression in [Si] is a subordinate clause functioning as subject of the larger clause that forms the whole sentence. It is, more specifically, a subordi nate interrogative clause: the main clause counterpart is Will we finish on time ? A subject of this syntactic form has to be licensed by the verb (or VP). It is admissi ble with depend, but there are innumerable other verbs such as ruin , see, think, yearn, etc., that do not accept subjects of this form; so [Sii] , for example, is ungrammatical.

§2. 1 Distinctive syntactic properties of the subject in English Subjects do satisfy the condition for being complements, therefore. But they are different from other types of complement in an obvious way: they are positioned out side the VP. We will refer to the subject as an external complement. The other com plements that are internal to the VP will be referred to as internal complements.

The subject Distinctive syntactic properties of the subject in English

2. 1

It is typical for the subject of a clause to be an NP. The only other form of subject common enough to merit mention here is a subordinate clause, as illus trated in [Si] . The subject is sharply distinguished from other elements in clause structure by the combination of a number of syntactic properties. The following survey covers four particularly important ones.

(a) Basic position before the verb The basic position of the subject - the position it occupies in canonical clauses - is before the V (and the whole VP). This is the most obvious feature that distinguishes the subject from the object in English: b. Max loved Sue.

a. Sue loved Max.

[6]

Only the conventional English order of elements tells us that Sue is subject in [a], while Max is subject in [b] - and thus that in [a] we are talking about Sue's feelings, and in [b] we are talking about Max's. There are non-canonical constructions where the subject does not occur in this position but, overall, location before the verb is the major overt property that picks out the subject.

(b) Case For just a handful of NPs, there is an inflectional distinction of case that separates subjects from most non-subjects. The NPs concerned are mainly those consisting of the pronouns listed in [7] . [7] 11

NOMINATIVE ACCUSATIVE

he him

she her

we us

they them

As subjects of finite clauses, these pronouns have to appear in the nominative case form, while in object function they appear in the accusative case-form: [8]

a. She loved him.

b. He loved her.

She and he are marked as subjects by having nominative form, while accusative him and her are objects. With NPs that don't themselves have a contrast between nominative and accusa tive forms, we can generally use the case property indirectly by asking which form

Chapter 4 Clause structure, complements and adjuncts

is required when we substitute one of the pronouns in [7] . In The dogs barked at the visitors, for example, the dogs could be replaced by nominative they and the visitors by accusative them. This shows that the subject is the dogs, not the visitors.

(c) Verb agreement As explained in Ch. 3, § 1 . 1 , all verbs other than the modal auxiliaries agree with the subject in the present tense, while be also shows agreement in the preterite: i a. Sue loves the children. ii a. Sue was fond of the children.

[9]

b. The children love Sue. b. The children were fond of Sue.

This property of determining the form of the verb is another key property of the sub ject. The inflectional form of the doubly underlined verbs shows that Sue (3rd per son singular) is subject of the [a] examples, while the children (3rd person plural) is subject of the [b] ones. In clauses where the verb does not show agreement, we can again use the test indirectly by changing to a construction where the verb does agree. Kim must sign both forms, for example, where the modal auxiliary must is invariable, can be changed to Kim has signed both forms, where has agrees with the subject Kim.

(d) Subject-auxiliary inversion In a number of constructions, including most kinds of interrogatives, the subject appears after rather than before the verb, which has to be an auxiliary. This enables us to confirm that Sue is subject of the [a] examples in [9], and the children is subject of the [b] ones. We just compare these clauses with their interrogative counterparts: [ 1 0]

i a. Does Sue love the children ? ii a. Was Sue fond of the children ?

b. Do the children love Sue ? b. Were the children fond of Sue ?

In [ii] we have simply inverted the subject and the auxiliary verb be, whereas in [i], where the declarative contains no auxiliary verb, we have inserted do and this is inverted with the subject (see Ch. 3 , § 3 . 1 ). In either case, the subject ends up in the distinctive post-auxiliary position.

2.2

Traditional errors in defining the subject

There are two semantic observations that can be made about subjects. They are sound enough in themselves, but they have been used as the basis for def initions of the subject that suffer from the shortcomings we discussed in Ch. 1 , §3. The two observations are these: In canonical clauses that describe an action, the subject of the clause normally corresponds semantically to the performer of the action. For example, when we say Oswald assassinated Kennedy, the subject is Oswald, and the person it refers to (Lee Harvey Oswald) is the actor, the alleged performer of the assassination.

§2.2 Traditional errors in defining the subject The subject NP commonly (but by no means invariably) identifies a topic for the clause, i.e. what the clause is primarily about, and the predicate makes some sort of comment about that topic. For example, Paris is lovely in the spring has Paris as the subject, and it is likely to be interpreted as saying something about Paris; Spring is a great time to visit Paris has spring as the subject, and it is likely to be interpreted as saying something about spring. Many definitions of the subject given in grammars and dictionaries represent a mas sive overgeneralisation of the first point: the subject is simply defined as the performer of the action expressed in the verb. Less commonly, it is defined as the topic of the sentence, the part that identifies what the sentence is about - a similarly massive over generalisation of the second point. There is something in both of these that is relevant to a definition of the subject at the general level: many languages have a function in the clause that is often associated with the semantic role of actor or with the topic and that shows other signs of primary syntactic importance in the clause (though some languages seem to be organised rather differently). But the correlation in English between subject and actor or topic is far too complex for the above definitions to work at the language-particular level. Let us examine the two definitions in turn.

(a) Subject and actor The old-fashioned definition of the subject as the performer of the action expressed in the verb works well enough with a sentence like We wandered down the street; but it fails completely with examples like those in [ 1 1 ] : [1 1]

i She knows him well. ii Ernie suffered a heart attack. iii My mother was attacked by the neighbour's dog.

She is the subject of [i], but knowing isn't an action. Notice that [i] can't be used in answer to a do question (such as What does she do ?), so nothing in [i] talks about anyone performing an action. If we took the old-fashioned definition seri ously we would have to say that there is no subject here. But she has all four of the syntactic properties that are the relevant ones for English: it's before the verb, it's in nominative case, the verb agrees with it, and it follows the auxiliary in the corresponding interrogative (Does she know him well ?). In [ii] we do have a description of an event (rather than a state, as in [iD, but that still doesn't mean there is a performer of an action. Suffering isn't an action that Ernie performed on the heart attack. Again, then, the referent of the syntactic subject doesn't have the semantic role of actor. Example [iii] does describe an action, but it's a passive clause (the corresponding active clause would be The neighbour 's dog attacked my mother), and the actor role is associated not with the subject, my mother, but with the complement of the preposition by, namely the NP the neighbour 's dog.

So the subject of an English clause certainly cannot be identified on the basis of semantic role: it can be associated with a range of roles, depending on the kind of situation described and whether the clause is active or passive.

Chapter 4 Clause structure, complements and adjuncts

(b) Subject and topic In Paris is lovely in the spring it is natural to take the subject as expressing the topic, and in Spring is a great time to visit Paris we would be inclined to say that spring is the topic; but it is easy to find examples where it would be completely implausible to take the subject to be a topic: [ 1 2]

i Something is wrong with this disk drive. ii In space, nobody can hear you scream. I iii Il s time these kids were in bed.

In [i], the subject NP is something, but it would be nonsensical to suggest that something tells us what the topic is. The topic is obviously the disk drive, and the comment is that it has a fault. In [ii], the topic is obviously not expressed by the subject nobody. The clause is about what it's like in the airless void of space, and if any phrase identifies that topic it's the preposed adjunct in space. And in [iii], the subject it is a dummy pronoun with no identifiable meaning. It can't possibly pick out a topic. In fact this kind of main clause isn't properly described in terms of a distinction between a topic and a comment at all. Not all clauses have topic phrases. English does not indicate the topic of a clause by any grammatical marker (though some languages do), and it certainly does not always make topics subjects. There is very often no clear-cut single answer to the question of what the topic of a clause is: it will depend very much on the context. In English, then, there is nothing like a one-to-one relation either between subject and actor or between subject and topic. The lesson is that, at the language-particu lar level, we cannot define the syntactic term 'subject' in terms of the partially cor related semantic concepts 'performer of the action' or 'topic of the clause' .

The object Distinctive syntactic properties of the object in English

3. 1

The object in a clause almost always has the form of an NP. Unlike the subject, it is normally located within the VP, and is not so sharply distinguished from other dependents as is the subject. Nevertheless, there are a number of syntac tic properties that make it fairly easy to identify in all but a small minority of cases. We summarise them in [ 1 3] : [ 1 3] 11

An object is a special case of a complement, so it must be licensed by the verb. With some verbs, the object is obligatory.

This may look familiar: it's a famous film slogan, from the posters for Alien ( 1 979).

§3.2 Direct and indirect objects The object typically corresponds to the subject of an associated PASSIVE clause. IV The object can nonnally take the fonn of a PRONOUN (which must be in accusative if it is one of those listed in [7] ). v The basic object position is IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE VERB.

1Il

Consider how these properties distinguish the object NP in [ 1 4a] from the adjunct NP in [b] : ADJUNCT

OBJECT

[ 1 4]

I Ed I told I the manager. I

I arrived I last week. I

The object the manager is licensed by the verb tell: it could not occur with a verb like arrive (*Ed arrived the manager is ungrammatical). But every verb is com patible with the adjunct last week. With tell it is possible to omit the object (Ed won 't tell is grammatical), but some verbs have to have an object when they occur in a canonical clause: attempting to use verbs like accost, delineate, entail or force without an object always yields ungrammatical results. But no verb requires that an adjunct like last week be present in the clause. Example [ 1 4a] has an associated passive clause with the manager as subject: The manager was told (by Ed). This is not possible for [b] : *Last week was a rrived (by Ed). The manager in [a] can be replaced by an appropriate pronoun: e.g. Ed told her. No such replacement is possible for last week in [b] : * Ed arrived i1 is quite impossible. In [a] we cannot in general insert elements between the verb and its object: com pare *Ed told unexpectedly the manager. (Instead we have Ed unexpectedly told the manager or Ed told the manager unexpectedly.) There is no such restriction in [b] : Ed a rrived unexpectedly last week.

Direct and indirect objects

3.2

There are two subtypes of object: direct and indirect objects. We represent them as Od and 0; when labelling examples. The two kinds may occur together, and when they co-occur in canonical clauses, the indirect object precedes the direct object: s

[ 1 5]

Sue gave Max the photo.

s P

I bought them

I some shoes.

The traditional labels 'direct' and ' indirect' are based on the idea that in clauses describing an action the referent of the direct object is apparently more directly involved in being acted on in the situation than the referent of the indirect object. In [a], for example, it is the photo that actually changes hands and becomes one of

Chapter 4 Clause structure, complements and adjuncts

Max's possessions. And in [b] it is the shoes that are directly acted on by being pur chased and taken away. The indirect object is characteristically associated with the semantic role of recip ient, as in these examples. But it may have the role of beneficiary (the one for whom something is done), as in Do me a favour or Call me a taxi, and it may be interpreted in other ways, as seen from examples like This blunder cost us the match, or 1 envy you your goodfortune.

Alternation with prepositional construction Most (but not all) verbs that license two objects also admit a different construction where there is a direct object and a pp complement (C) headed by to or for. Compare [ 1 5] with [ 1 6] : [ 1 6]

I Sue I gave I the photo I to

Max.

We bought shoes for them.

Although the meanings are the same as in [ 1 5] , the syntactic structure is different. The PPs to Max and for them are complements (they are licensed by give and buy, respectively), but they are not objects: they don't have properties [ 1 3iii-v]. And since they are not objects, they can't be indirect objects. 2

Syntactic distinction between direct and indirect object The main syntactic property distinguishing the two kinds of object is position: when both occur within the VP - as in canonical clauses - the indirect object precedes the direct object. Compare [ 1 5] above with the ungrammatical orders *Sue gave the photos Max and *1 bought some shoes them. In addition, the direct object readily undergoes fronting in various non-canonical constructions, whereas the indirect object is quite resistant to it. Judgements about the acceptability of clauses with fronted indirect objects vary considerably, depend ing in part on the construction, in part on the verb - and in part on the speaker mak ing the judgement. But there is no doubt that in general the acceptability of fronted indirect objects is significantly lower than that of direct objects. In [ 1 7] we illustrate with four non-canonical constructions: [ 1 7]

FRONTED DIRECT OBJECT a. Everything else . she gave him. II a. What did she buy him ? iii a. He kept the gifts [which she

had given him].

a. What a lot of work he gave them!

FRONTED INDIRECT OBJECT

b. %Him. she gave everything else. b. * Who did she buy these shoes ? b. % They interviewed everyone [whom

she had given gifts].

b. * What a lot of them he gave work!

Nevertheless, traditional grammars analyse to Max and for them (or just Max and them) in [ 1 6] as indirect objects. The similarity between between these elements and the corresponding ones in [ 1 5], however, is purely semantic: there is no justification for equating them in terms of syntactic function.

§4 Predicative complements In [i] we have preposing of a complement: the canonical version is She gave him everything else. The [a] version is completely acceptable, the [b] version rare and marginal, at least for many speakers. In [ii] we have a type of interrogative clause differing from those considered so far in that it begins with an interrogative word. In [a] what is direct object (cf. She bought him some shoes), and in [b] who is indirect object (cf. She bought Tom these shoes). The difference in acceptability in this pair is very sharp. The bracketed clauses in [iii] are relative clauses. Which is direct object (cf. She had given him the gifts), while whom is indirect object (cf. She had given everyone gifts). Construction [b] is not so bad here, but still considerably less common and natural than [ a] . In [iv] we have a type of construction not encountered so far. They are exclama tive clauses, with a fronted exclamative phrase. Again the fronted phrase in [a] is direct object (cf. He gave them a lot of work) and indirect object in [b] (cf. He gave a lot of them work). This construction is one where the fronted indirect object seems particularly bad.

Predicative complements

The next kind of dependent of the verb we consider is the predicative complement (PC in labels of example displays). A predicative complement com monly has the form of an NP, and in that case it contrasts directly with an object (0 ). Look at these [a] and [b] pairs : PC

[ 1 8] a. ii a.

Stacy

was

a good s/l.eaker.

Stacy

found

Lee

became a friend o[mine.

Lee

insulted a friend o[mine.

a good s/l.eaker.

There is a sharp semantic distinction in elementary examples of this kind. The object NPs refer to PARTICIPANTS in the situation: in each of [ib] and [iib] there are two people involved. The predicative NPs, however, do not refer to participants like this. There is only a single person involved in the [a] examples, the one referred to by the subject NP. The predicative complement NP denotes a PROPERTY that is ascribed to this person. PCs are most clearly illustrated by examples like [ 1 8ia] . The verb be here has basically no semantic content. It is quite common in other languages for the verb to be completely missing in this kind of construction. The most important thing that be does in this example is to carry the preterite tense inflection that indicates reference to past time. The meaning of the clause is really just that Stacy spoke in an enter taining manner. So although a good speaker is syntactically an NP complement, it is semantically comparable to a predicate like spoke well. This is the basis for the

Chapter 4 Clause structure, complements and adjuncts

term 'predicative complement' : the complement typically represents what is predi cated of the subject-referent in a way that is similar to that in which a whole predicate does. A few verbs can take either a PC or an 0, but with obvious differences in meaning: [ 1 9]

This

proved

a �reat asset.

This

proved

my. /loint.

sounded

a decent �uy'.

sounded

the �on�.

Again, the objects denote participants but the predicative complements don't. This is perhaps made clearer by examples contrasting a reference to one person with a reference to two: [20]

i Honestly, Ifelt a fool standing there alone on the platform. ii Suddenly, Ifelt a fool pushing in front of me on the platform.

[a fool [a fool

PC] Od]

The obvious meaning of [i] involves just me, feeling foolish alone on the platform; but [ii] refers to two people: me, and the fool I could feel pushing in front of me on the platform.

4. 1

Syntactic differences between predicative complements and objects

The two functions PC and 0 are distinguished syntactically in a number of ways. Our survey covers four of them.

(a) PC can have the form of AdjP Both 0 and PC can have the form of an ordinary NP, but only PC can also have the form of an adjective phrase (AdjP): [2 1 ]

seemed

a vea nice guy'.

met

a vea nice guy'.

seemed

vea nice.

b. *He

met

vea nice.

With seem, a very nice guy is PC and hence can be replaced by the AdjP very nice. With meet, no such replacement is possible because a very nice guy is object.

(b) PC can have the form of a bare role N P A bare role NP i s a singular NP that i s 'bare' in the sense of lacking the determiner which would elsewhere be required, and that denotes some kind of role, office, or

§4. 1 Syntactic differences between predicative complements and objects position. A PC can have the form of a bare role NP, but an 0 can't: [22]

She

became

the treasurer.

She

knew

the treasurer.

She

became

treasurer.

*She

knew

treasurer.

In [i] both the [a] and [b] examples are fine because an ordinary NP like the treas urer can be either a PC or an O. In [ii], treasurer is a bare role NP, so it is permitted with become, which takes a PC, but not with know, which takes an object.

(c) PC does not correspond to the subject of a passive clause We noted earlier that a typical object in an active clause corresponds to the subject of the passive clause that has the same meaning. A PC shows no such relationship: [23]

ACTIVE a.

ii •

•

Ed insulted a friend of mine. Ed became a friend of mine.

PASSIVE b. A friend of mine was insulted by Ed. b. *A friend of mine was become by Ed.

In [ia] a friend of mine is a direct object, and accordingly can be subject in a pas sive clause with the same meaning, [ib] . But in [iia] , a friend of mine is a PC, and so there is no corresponding passive, as evident from the ungrammaticality of [iib] .

(d) PC can have the form of a nominative pronoun There is a rather formal style of English in which the pronouns listed in [7] can appear in the nominative case when functioning as PC, while objects allow only accusative case: [24]

I was I he I who said it.

They

accused

I llim. I of lying. I

The point here is not that nominative case is required on pronouns in PC function. Some older prescriptive grammars say that, but it is not true. A question like Who 's there ? is normally answered It 's me; it sounds very stiff and formal to say It is I. Many speakers of Standard English would say It was him who said it rather than [24a] . So NPs in PC function can be accusative pronouns. What separates PC from 0 , however, is that no matter whether you use nominative or accusative case on PC pronouns, nominative case is absolutely impossible for 0 pronouns. No native speaker, even in the most formal style, says * They accused I of saying it, or *Please let I in? 3

We are concerned here with clauses where the pronoun constitutes the whole of the object: when there is coordination within the object some speakers do have nominatives, as in 'k They invited Kim and I to lunch (see Ch. 5, §8.3).

Chapter 4 Clause structure, complements and adjuncts

This provides further evidence that English grammar distinguishes the PC and 0 functions - though it is not as generally applicable a test as the other three, because be is really the only verb that accepts these pronouns as predicative complement.

4.2

Subjective and objective predicative complements

In the examples given so far the predicative complement relates to the subject. Most predicative complements are of this kind, but there is also a second kind in which they relate to the object: [25 ]

SUBJECT + SUBJECTIVE PC a. Max seems highly untrustworthy.

OBJECT + OBJECTIVE PC b. I consider lim highly untrustworthy.

In [a] the PC relates to the subject, Max: the property of being highly untrustworthy is ascribed to Max. In [b] the same property is ascribed to Jim, but in this case lim is a direct object. The element to which a PC relates is called its predicand. Where the predicand is subject, the PC is said to be subjective, or to have subject orientation. Where the predicand is object, the PC is said to be objective, or to have object orientation.

4.3

Ascriptive and specifying uses of the verb be

There is an important distinction to be made between two uses of the verb be, as illustrated in [26] : [26]

ASCRIPTIVE i a. Mike was a loyal party member. ii a. What they gave me was useless.

SPECIFYING b. The last person to leave was lane. b. What they gave me was a gold pen.

In the ascriptive construction the predicative complement denotes a property that is ascribed to the referent of the predicand. In [ia] a loyal party member denotes a property that Mike is claimed to have had - it doesn't specify who Mike was, it only ascribes party membership and loyalty to him. And in [iia], useless denotes a property that I claim is possessed by their gift to me - but it doesn' t specify what the gift was. In the specifying construction there is a relation of identity between the two ele ments. In [ib] lane specifies the identity of the last person to leave, and similarly in [iib] a gold pen implicitly answers the question What did they give you ?

Ambiguities There may be ambiguity between ascriptive and specifying uses of be. Example [27] has this kind of ambiguity: [27]

I thought he was a friend of mine.

One salient context for this is where I am reporting a mistake I made. But it could be a mistake about either the PROPERTIES he has or his IDENTITY.

§5 Five canonical clause structures In the first case, a friend of mine is ascriptive. I might be talking about someone I had thought of as a friend but who let me down. The mistake was in believing he had the properties one expects of a friend. In the second case, a friend of mine is specifying. Here I might be talking about someone who looked like my oid friend Bob, so I gave him a big hug, and then realised that I was hugging a total stranger. The mistake in this case was believ ing him to be Bob.

Predicative complements with verbs other than be are ascriptive With verbs other than be, predicative complements are almost always ascriptive. Notice, for example, that such verbs as seem and become could replace be in the [a] examples of [26] , but not in the [b] ones (e.g., Mike seemed a loyal party mem ber is fine, but * The last person to leave seemed lane is not). And when we said in the discussion of [ 1 8] that predicative complements do not refer to people or other kinds of participant in a situation, we were considering only the ascriptive use: predicative complements of the specifying type can be referential, as lane in [26ib] clearly is.

Syntactic differences The semantic difference illustrated in [26] is reflected in the syntax in various ways. The most important concerns the effect of reversing the order of the expressions in subject and predicative complement position. Compare: [28]

ASCRIPTIVE

i a. The next point is more serious. ii a. More serious is the next point.

SPECIFYING b. The one they arrested was Max. b. Max was the one they arrested.

When we reverse the order in the specifying construction we change the func tions. Thus while Max is predicative complement in [ib] , that is not true in [iib] : there Max is subject. This can be demonstrated by applying the interrogative test for subjects: the interrogative of [iib] is Was Max the one they arrested?, with Max in the distinctive subject position following the auxiliary. With the ascriptive construction it is often not possible to reverse the two ele ments, but when reversal is acceptable the effect is merely to reorder them, not to change their functions . Thus more serious is predicative complement in non canonical [iia] just as it is in [ia] . Note, for example, that we cannot invert it with the auxiliary verb to form an interrogative (cf. *Is more serious the next point?).

Five canonical clause structures

As we have seen, all canonical clauses contain a subject and a predica tor, but the presence of complements of different sorts (objects and predicative com plements, for example) depends on the choice of verb. We can now distinguish five

Chapter 4 Clause structure, complements and adjuncts

major structures for canonical clauses on the basis of which internal complements are present: [29]

NAME ORDINARY INTRANSITIVE ii COMPLEX-INTRANSITIVE iii ORDINARY MONOTRANSITIVE iv COMPLEX-TRANSITIVE V DITRANSITIVE

STRUCTURE S-p S-P-PC S-p-Od S-p-Od_PC S_p_O i_Od

EXAMPLE

We hesitated. We felt happy. We sold our house. We made them happy. We gave them some food.

There are two partially independent dimensions of contrast involved here: whether there are objects (and, if so, how many), and whether there are predicative complements. The dimension that relates to the number of objects in the clause is called tran sitivity. An intransitive clause has no objects, a monotransitive clause has one object, and a ditransitive clause has two objects, indirect and direct. In canoni cal clauses an indirect object cannot occur without a following direct one, so the single object of a monotransitive is always a direct object. The other dimension concerns the presence or absence of a predicative comple ment. We give compound names to clauses containing a predicative complement: complex-intransitive for an intransitive one and complex-transitive for a tran sitive one. Those without predicative complements are ordinary intransitives and transitives, but since the compound names are used when the clause is not ordinary, we can nonnally omit the word 'ordinary ' . The labels apply to clause, verb phrase, and verb alike: We hesitated i s an intransi tive clause, hesitated is an intransitive VP, and hesitate is an intransitive verb. It should be borne in mind, however, that most verbs occur in more than one of the clause constructions. For example, make occurs in monotransitive clauses ( We made lunch) and ditransitive clauses ( We made them lunch) as well as complex transitive clauses, like [29iv] . When the tenns are used for verbs, therefore, they typically apply to particular USES of the verbs. This concludes our discussion of complements for this chapter. There are other kinds besides those we have examined - notably complements with the fonn of PPs or subordinate clauses - but these are best dealt with in the chapters dealing with those categories: see Ch. 7, §7, for complements with the fonn of PPs, Ch. 1 0 for finite subordinate clauses, and Ch. 1 3, § § 3-4, for non-finite subordinate clauses.

Adjuncts

The crucial distinction between complements and adjuncts is that the for mer have to be licensed by the particular head verb whereas adjuncts do not. Adjuncts are thus less closely dependent on the verb, and their occurrence is in gen eral less constrained by grammatical rules. There is a great range of different kinds of adjunct, and we have space here only to deal with them very summarily.

§6.3 Modifiers and supplements

Semantic kinds of adjunct

6. 1

Grammars traditionally classify adjuncts on the basis of meaning - as adjuncts of place, time, reason, and so on. Because this classification is based on meaning rather than grammatical form, it is inevitably open-ended and the bound aries between the different kinds are often quite fuzzy. There isn't really an answer to questions about exactly how many kinds of adjunct there are. In [30] we illustrate a number of the most frequent and obvious categories: [30] U

iii iv V VI VU

viii ix X

6.2

MANNER PLACE TIME DURATION FREQUENCY DEGREE PURPOSE RESULT CONDITION CONCESSION

He drove quite recklessly. They have breakfast in bed. I saw her last week. We lived in London for five Years. She telephones her mother every Sunday. We very much enjoyed your last novel. I checked all the doors to make sure they were shut. It rained all day, with the result that they couldn 't work. /f it rains the match will be postponed. Although he 's rich. he lives very simply.

The fonn of adjuncts

The adjunct function can be filled by expressions belonging to a range of different categories, as illustrated in [3 1 ] : [3 1 ]

ADVERB ( PHRASE ) ii pp iii NP iv FINITE CLAUSE V NON-FINITE CLAUSE

He thanked us profusely. We quite often have tea together. I cut it with a razor-blade. I'll help you after lunch. We saw her several times. They arrived this morning. I couldn 't do it, however hard I tried. I kept my mouth shut, to avoid giving any more o@nce.

Adverbs, or AdvPs, and PPs are found in adjuncts belonging to more or less all of the semantic types of adjunct. NPs, by contrast, occur in a very limited range of adjunct types. The semantic type depends heavily on the head noun: several times, for example, indicates fre quency, this morning indicates time. NP adjuncts cannot have the form of pro nouns: we couldn't replace those in [iii] , for example, by them and it - and we couldn't question them with what. For adjuncts with the form of subordinate clauses, see Ch. 1 0, §4.4, Ch. 1 3, §3.

6.3

Modifiers and supplements

We use the term adjunct to cover both modifiers of the verb or VP and supplements. Modifiers are tightly integrated into the structure of the clause, whereas supplements are only loosely attached. In speech the distinction is marked by intonation. Supplements are set apart intonationally from the rest of the clause: they are spoken as separate units of intonation, typically marked off by what is

Chapter 4 Clause structure, complements and adjuncts

perceived as a slight pause. Modifiers, by contrast, are intonationally unified with the verb or VP. In writing, supplements are typically set apart by punctuation - commas, or stronger marks such as dashes or parentheses. There is, however, a good deal of variation in the use of punctuation, so that the distinction between modifiers and adjuncts is not as clearly drawn in writing as in speech. The distinction is illustrated in the following examples: [32]

MODIFIER II

a. They were playing f1gppjJy. outside. a. I did it because they told me to.

SUPPLEMENT b. Happily. they were playing outside. b. I did it - because they told me to.

In [ia] happily is understood as an adjunct of manner, indicating how they were playing. In [ib], however, where it is set apart at the beginning of the clause, it doesn' t belong in any of the semantic types illustrated in [30] , but gives the speaker's evaluation of the situation. The meaning in this case is much the same as that offortunately - perhaps I was glad that they were playing outside as this enabled me to do something I didn't want them to know about. In [ii] there is no such difference in the semantic type: the because phrase indi cates reason in both. But in [i] it is presented as part of a larger item of informa tion, whereas in [ii] it is set apart as a piece of information on its own. In [iia] it could be that you already know I did it, and I ' m here simply telling you why. But in [iib] I ' m informing you that I did it, and then adding as supplementary infor mation what my reason was. We will not develop this distinction between modifiers and supplements further at this point, but there are other places where it is relevant. In particular, we will take it up again in our discussion of relative clauses in Ch. 1 1 .

Exercises 1 . Use the licensing criterion to determine whether the ten underlined expressions in the examples below are complements or adjuncts. In the case of complements, cite three verbs that license such a comple ment, and three that do not. (There are ten expressions in all; for reference, they're labelled with small roman numeral subscripts. )

They suddenlY[ij ran to the gate[iij' I wonder ifhe 'II be sate[iii j all the time. I'm keeping the dog[ivj, whatever you W[vj ' You 'd better put the cat[viJ m!!(viiJ now. It's always been easy for you[viiiJ> hasn 't it?

They swam in the sea[ixj even though it was raining[xj' 2. In the following examples, show how either case or agreement can be used to provide evidence that the underlined expression is subject. i This letter embarrassed the government. ii Sue will lend you her car. iii Everything will be OK. iv 11 must be the twins he 's referring to. v One of the twins took the car. 3 . Identify the subject in each of the exam ples below (ignoring the subordinate clause in [iv]). Present the reasoning that tells you it is the subject. Use the syntactic

Exercises

tests that are appropriate, and explain why the other tests are not appropriate. Tomorrow Pat will be backfrom skiing. ii Is today some kind of holiday ? iii Down the road ran the crazy dog. iv It isn 't the program that's at fault. v Dan got bitten on the neck by a bat. For which of the following clauses would it be implausible to say that the subject identifies the performer of an action? Give reasons for your answer. She 's very like her mother. ii The decision was made by my aunt. iii My father closed the door. iv I've just received a letterfrom the mayor. v She underwent surgery. For which of the following is it implausi ble to say that the subject identifies the topic? Give reasons for your answer. i At this time of year you 're likely to get violent thunderstorms. ii Any fool could make a better job of it than that. iii My sister has just won the marathon. iv Close tabs were kept on all the directors. v Their house is worth a million and a half. In each of the following pairs pick out the one in which the underlined expression is object. Give syntactic reasons for your answer. a. We all enjoyed that summer. b. We all worked that summer. ii a. She fasted a very lonf time. b. She wasted a very lonf time. iii a. He seemed an amazinfly bad film-maker. b. He screened an amazinfly bad film. For each of the verbs below, determine (citing relevant examples) which of the

following three structures they can occur in: (a) a structure with two NPs, like [ 1 5] ; (b) a structure with one NP and a pp headed by to; (c) a structure with one NP and a pp headed by for. vi obtain award vii owe ii borrow iii envy viii return ix send iv explain x transfer v fine 8. Determine whether the underlined expres sions below are objects or predicative complements. Give syntactic evidence in support of your answers. i They arrested a member of the party. ii She remained a member ofthe party. iii It looks a barfain to me. iv He proposed a barfain to me. v They continued the investifation. 9. Recall the classification of canonical clause types into (a) ordinary intransitive; (b) complex-intransitive; (c) monotransitive; (d) complex-transitive; and (e) ditransi tive. For each of the verbs below, deter mine which of the five constructions it can enter into, and construct relevant illustrative examples. iii judge appear iv keep ii consider viii show v promise ix turn vi save x wish vii send 1 0 . Explain the ambiguities of the following two sentences (they can each be under stood either as complex-transitive or as ditransitive ):

i I found her a good lawyer. ii He called me a nurse.

.-:

Nouns and noun phrases

2 3

4 5

6 7 8 9

Introductory survey 82 Number and countability 85 Determiners and determinatives 90 Complements 93 Internal modifiers 95 External modifiers 97 The fused-head construction 97 Pronouns 1 00 Genitive case 1 08

Introductory survey Distinctive properties of prototypical noun phrases

(a) Function. The main functions in which NPs occur are these four: [I]

In clause structure:

SUBJECT OBJECT PREDICATIVE COMPLEMENT ii In PP structure: COMPLEMENT

A student helped us. They elected a student. She is a student. We were talking [to a student].

(b) Form. A typical NP consists of a noun serving as head word and (possibly) various accompanying dependents.

Distinctive properties of prototypical nouns (a) Inflection. Nouns typically inflect for number (singular or plural) and case (plain or genitive): [2] PLAIN CASE GENITIVE

SINGULAR

PLURAL

student student 's

students students '

(b) Function. Nouns can normally fill the head position in phrases with any of the four functions listed in [ I ] .

§ 1 Introductory survey

(c) Dependents. There are various kinds of dependent that occur exclusively or almost exclusively with nouns as head. Examples of such items are underlined in [3]. [3]

CERTAIN DETERMINATIVES

ii PRE-HEAD ADJECTIVES iii RELATIVE CLAUSES

the door; {! year; every book, which paper young children, a f2ig dog, recent events the guy who fainted, the book I'm reading

Nouns and concrete objects The noun category includes words denoting all kinds of physical objects (people, animals, places, things) and substances: apple, dog, fire, London, sister, water, etc. We can't use this as the criterion for identifying English nouns, though, because there are also large numbers of nouns denoting abstract entities : absence, debt,fear, love, silence, work, etc. But we can use it as the basis for a general definition apply ing across languages: [4]

NOUN: a grammatically distinct category of words which includes those denoting all kinds of physical objects, such as persons, animals and inanimate objects.

Types of dependent Dependents in the structure of the NP are of three main types. We introduce them briefly here, and then deal with them in more detail in § § 3-6. [5 ]

DETERMINERS

ii COMPLEMENTS iii MODIFIERS

the news, {! pear; some cheese, two new films, no reason the loss of blood, a ban on smoking, the fact that she 's alive a young woman, a friend from Boston, people who complained

The determiner is a kind of dependent found only in NP structure. It is normally an obligatory element in NPs with certain types of singular noun as head. Compare The door is open and *Door is open, or compare 1 bought {! book and *1 bought book. Complements have to be licensed by the head noun - as complements in clause structure have to be licensed by the head verb. Compare his loss of blood with He was losing blood. Note that nouns like fact, knowledge, or suggestion can be accompanied by such subordinate clauses as that she 's alive, but nouns like boy, madness, or inquiry cannot. Modifiers are the default type of dependent, lacking the above special features; there is no limit to the number of modifiers that can occur in an NP. Those in [iii], for example, can combine in a single NP: a young woman from Boston who complained.

Nominals In clause structure we have recognised a unit intermediate between the clause and the verb, namely the verb phrase. In the same way we recognise a unit intermediate between the noun phrase and the noun, which we call a nominal. In the guy who

Chapter 5 Nouns and noun phrases

fainted or a young woman, for example, the first division is between the determiner and the rest, with guy who fainted and young woman each forming a nominal. Simplified structures are as shown in [6] : [6]

Head: Nominal

Determiner: Detenninative

� Modifier:

Head: Noun

the

Relative clause

� whofainted

guy

Head: Nominal

Determiner: Detenninative

�Head:

Modifier: Adjective

Noun

young

woman

Here the noun is head of the nominal, and not directly of the NP, but we will often simplify by talking of NPs with various kinds of noun as head.

I nternal and external dependents Dependents in the structure of the NP may be distinguished as internal or external, according as they fall inside or outside the head nominal. Complements (with the exception of the type discussed in §9. 1 ) are always internal, and determiners are always external. All the modifiers illustrated so far are internal, but there are also external modifiers. Compare the following examples, where underlining marks the dependent and brackets surround the head nominal: [7] II III

COMPLEMENT DETERMINER MODIFIER

internal external internal external

a [knowledge of Latin], the [idea that he liked it] these [old papers], some [people / met] a [Qig dog], the [book I'm reading] almost the [only survivor], even a [young woman]

Subclasses of noun The three major subclasses of noun are pronouns, proper nouns, and common nouns: [8]

PRONOUNS

ii PROPER NOUNS iii COMMON NOUNS

me, my, mine, myself, you, he, she, it, who, what, . . . Kim, lones, Beethoven, Boston, Canada, Nile, Easter, . . . cat, day, furniture, window, fact, truth, perseverance, . . .

Pronouns constitute a fairly small class of words distinguished from other nouns most clearly by their inability to combine with determiners (cf. *the me, *a myself, etc.). The most central ones differ inflectionally from other nouns - e.g. in having a contrast between nominative and accusative forms (l vs me, he vs him, etc.).

§2.2 Count and non-count nouns Proper nouns characteristically function as the head of NPs serving as proper names, names individually assigned to particular people, places, festivals, etc. They also occur, derivatively, in other kinds of NP (cf. Let 's listen to [some Beethoven]). Common nouns represent the default subclass, lacking the special properties of pronouns and proper nouns.

Number and countability

Number is the name of the system contrasting singular and plural. In the first instance, it applies to noun inflection: nouns typically have contrasting singular and plural forms. Thus cat and cats are the singular and plural forms of the noun cat, and so on.

2. 1

Nouns with fixed number

Although most nouns have variable number, there are nevertheless many that do not - nouns which are invariably singular or invariably plural.

(a) Singular-only nouns Examples of nouns which have a singular form but no plural are given in [9] : [9]

i crockery, dross, footwear, harm, indebtedness, nonsense, perseverance ii italics, linguistics, mumps, news, phonetics, physics

Those in [ii] look like plurals, but the final s is not in fact a plural marker, like that in cats. This is evident from the fact that we say The news is good (not are), and so on.

(b) Plura l-only nouns Nouns with a plural form but no singular are illustrated in [ 1 0] : [ 1 0]

i alms, auspices, belongings, clothes, genitals, scissors, spoils, trousers ii cattle, police, vermin

Those in [i] contain the plural suffix ·s, but it cannot be dropped to form a singular. In most cases there is some fairly transparent connection to plurality in the ordinary sense of "more than one": belongings denotes things that belong to someone, clothes is a cover term for articles of clothing, while scissors and trousers denote objects with two main parts. The nouns in [ii] have no inflectional marking of plu rality, but behave syntactically as plurals. Note, for example, that we say these cattle, not *this cattle; The police have arrived, not * The police has arrived.

2.2

Count and non-count nouns

Closely related to the distinction between nouns of variable and invari able number is that between count nouns and non-count nouns. As the names

Chapter 5 Nouns and noun phrases

imply, count nouns can take cardinal numerals (one, two, three, etc.) as dependent, while non-count nouns cannot.

Non-count nouns that are invariably singular Non-count nouns are usually invariably singular. The possibilities forfurniture, for example, are shown in [ 1 1 ] , where it is contrasted with the count noun chair: SINGULAR WITH NUMERAL ONE

PLURAL WITH NUMERALS

one chair

two chairs

SINGULAR WITH DETERMINER THE

[1 1] COUNT NOUN

the chair

NON-COUNT NOUN

the furniture

*one furniture

*two furn itu res

Furniture cannot combine with any numeral, not even one, which goes with singu lar forms. The same restrictions apply to such nouns as clothing, equipment, footwear or the abstract nouns eagerness, perseverance, wetness .

Non-count nouns that are invariably plural There are a fairly small number of non-count nouns that are invariably plural. Com pare the possibilities for count corpse and non-count remains shown in [ 1 2] : PLURAL WITH DETERMINER THE

[ 1 2]

SINGULAR WITH NUMERAL ONE

PLURAL WITH NUMERALS

COUNT NOUN

the corpses

one corpse

two corpses

NON-COUNT NOUN

the remains

*one remain

*two remains

Remains is invariably plural, but even so, it cannot combine with numerals like two or three, etc. Other nouns of this kind include credentials, genitals, proceeds, etc.

Nouns with count and non-count uses Nouns that have only a count interpretation or only a non-count interpretation are in a minority. Most nouns can be used with either kind of interpretation. The [a] and [b] pairs in [ 1 3] are fairly typical. NON-COUNT INTERPRETATION

COUNT INTERPRETATION

[ 1 3] 11

III IV

a. Would you like a cake? a. I 'll have to borrow your football. a. The cover of this book is torn. a. I suggested afew improvements.

b. b. b. b.

Would you like some more cake? I 'm going to play football. The awning provides some cover. There 's been little improvement.

When we speak of count and non-count nouns, therefore, we are referring to nouns as used with a count and non-count interpretation. Thus cake is a count noun in [ia] but a non-count noun in [ib] , and so on.

§2.2 Count and non-count nouns

The meaning distinction between count and non-count A count noun generally denotes a class of individual entities of the same kind. The count noun table, for example, denotes the whole class of tables (one table provides a way of referring to a single member of the class, two tables talks about two mem bers, and so on). An individual member of this class cannot be divided into smaller entities of the same kind as itself. That is, a table can be chopped up into smaller parts, but those parts are not themselves tables. Likewise, if you cut a loaf in half, what you have is not two loaves, but two halves of a loaf. Non-count nouns typically have the opposite property. A good number of them denote physical substances that can be divided into smaller amounts of the same kind. If you cut up some bread, the pieces can still be described by the non-count noun bread. If you take some wood and cut it into shorter lengths, these can still be referred to by means of the non-count noun wood the same noun is applicable to the same stuff in smaller quantities. -

Marking of the count vs non-count distinction In many but by no means all cases, grammatical features of the NP force or strongly favour either a count or a non-count interpretation.

(a)

Plurality favours the count interpretation

A plural head noun will generally indicate a count interpretation. In She described the improvements they had made, for example, we interpret improvements in a count sense like that of [ 1 3iva] (/ suggested a few improvements) rather than the non-count sense of [ l 3ivb] (There 's been little improvement). That is, it implies a set of sepa rable, individual improvements that you could count. As noted above, there are some non-count plural nouns, like remains, but they are restricted to a relatively small number of particular lexemes.

(b) Singular common noun head with no determiner favours the non-count interpretation In general, common nouns can occur in the singular without a determiner only if they have a non-count interpretation. That's why we get these contrasts: [ 1 4]

i a. *She was reading book. ii a. * We made table.

b. She was drinking water. h. We made progress.

Book and table normally have count interpretations, and so the [a] examples are inadmissible, whereas non-count water and progress occur readily without a deter miner because they're interpreted in a non-count sense. Count nouns are found without determiners only in a very limited range of special syntactic constructions. Two of them are illustrated in [ 1 5 ] : [ 1 5]

a . Who wants to b e treasurer?

ii a. They were living together as

husband and wife.

h. * Who wants to be millionaire? h. *I 've met husband, but J don 't think

I 've ever seen him with wife.

Chapter 5 Nouns and noun phrases

Treasu rer in [ia] is what we have called a bare role NP (one without a deter miner: see Ch. 4, §4. 1 ). Nouns that do not denote some kind of role or office can not occur without a determiner in predicative complement function, as evident from the contrast between treasurer and millionaire in [i] : treasurer is a role in an organisation, but millionaire is just a status that anyone has as soon as their net worth reaches a million dollars, pounds, etc. In [iia] we have two closely related nouns in a coordination construction, which sometimes allows omission of the determiner. But the same nouns need deter miners when they are not in a coordination, as we see from [iib] .

(c) Certain determinatives are generally restricted to one or other interpretation Determinatives such as the, this, that, what, and no occur with either type of noun, but in singular NPs the determinatives listed in [ 1 6] are generally restricted to one or the other, as illustrated in [ 1 7] : [ 1 6] 11

[ 1 7]

COUNT NON-COUNT

one, another, each, every, either, neither; also to some extent a much, little, a little, enough, sufficient; also to some extent all b. * Every furniture was inspected. b. He didn 't drink much water.

a. Every table was inspected.

ii a. *He didn 't read much book.

We have set aside a and all at the end of the lists because with these determinatives there are some exceptions, as in He has a high regard for them (where regard is non count) and He spent all day at the races (where day is count).

2.3

Subject-verb agreement Number is the major factor involved in subject-verb agreement.

Compare: [ 1 8]

SINGULAR SUBJECT

a. Their dog eats a lot. ii a. Their dog was eating.

PLURAL SUBJECT b. Their dogs eat a lot. b. Their dogs were eating.

As we change from a singular subject in [a] to a plural subject in [b] the inflectional form of the verb changes too, and the verb is accordingly said to agree with the sub ject. The agreement applies in the present tense with all verbs except the modal aux iliaries. In the preterite, only the verb be displays agreement: other preterites such as ate occur in the same form with all kinds of subject. Subject-verb agreement involves person as well as number, for 1 st person I, although singular, requires eat, not eats. Eats occurs with 3rd person singular sub jects and eat with all others: i.e. plurals, 1 st person I, or 2nd person you. But most of the complexities regarding agreement arise with respect to number, and that is why we will now focus on number in more detail. There are four special cases to be noted.

2.3 Subject-verb agreement

Measure expressions Expressions like ten days, twenty dollars, five miles, etc., are plural in form but the quantity or measure they denote can be conceptualised as a single abstract entity, and this singular conceptualisation can override the plural form in determining the form of the verb. So the following examples have plural subjects with a singular agreement form of the verb: [ 1 9] 11

a. Ten days iJ. a long time to be on your own. b. Twenty dollars seems far too much to pay for a takeaway pizza. a. That ten days we spent together in Paris was wonderful. b. Another three eggs iJ. all we need.

Ten days can be seen as a single block of time; twenty dollars is a price; three eggs can be viewed as a single quantity of food. Note that in the [ii] cases the measure expression not only takes a singular verb, it even occurs with a determiner that nor mally selects a singular head (cf. that day, another egg) .

Quantificational nouns There are a few nouns expressing quantification which can occur in the singular as head of an NP whose number for agreement purposes is determined by a smaller NP embedded within it: [20]

SINGULAR

PLURAL

[A lot of mono] was wasted.

[A lot of things] were wasted.

[The rest of the meat] is over there.

[The rest of the eggs] are over there.

(not possible)

[A number of faults] were found.

The head of the bracketed NP in each case is marked by double underlining. Notice that each head is singular, but the form of the verb depends on the single-underlined NP that is complement to the preposition of The meaning of number is such that the embedded NP must be plural, so the bottom left position in the table can't be filled.

Collective nouns Nouns such as board, committee, jury, staff, team are collective nouns in that they denote a collection, or set, of individuals. When they occur in the singular as head of the subject NP the verb can, especially in BrE, be either singular or plural, though AmE clearly favours the singular: [2 1 ]

SINGULAR VERB 11 III

a. The committee has interviewed her. a. The jury is still deliberating. a. The board consists entirely of men.

PLURAL VERB

b. % The committee have interviewed her. b. % The jury are still deliberating. b. The crew are all over forty.

The choice of a plural verb focuses on the individuals that make up the collection, on the members of the committee or jury or whatever, rather than on the collection as a unit, the official body that the members constitute.

Chapter 5 Nouns and noun phrases

The examples in [iii] are cases in which variation would be less likely. In [iiia], the property of consisting entirely of men can only apply to the board as a whole; it can't apply to any individual member of the board, so a plural verb is much less likely (though not all BrE speakers would dismiss % The board consist entirely of men as impossible). In [iiib] , by contrast, the property of being forty or older can apply only to the individual members of the crew, not the crew as a whole, and the adjunct all reinforces the focus on the individuals; so [iiib] with its plural agreement is much more likely than % The crew is all over forty (though in AmE the latter might nonetheless occur).

Any, no, none, either, neither We also find alternation between singular and plural verb agreement in examples like [22] : [22]

a. [None of the objections] was valid.

ii a. [Neither of them] seems valid.

b. [None of the objections] were valid. b. [Neither of them] seem valid.

Subjects with any, no, and none occur freely with either singular or plural agree ment. With neither, and even more with either, singular agreement is usual; plural agreement is informal, and condemned by prescriptivists. The difference is that any and no can function as determiner to both singular and plural nouns : both No objec tion was valid and No objections were valid are grammatical. Either and neither occur only with singulars: Neither objection was valid is grammatical, but *Neither objections were valid is definitely not.

Determiners and determinatives

The determiner position in an NP is usually filled by one of two kinds of expression. In all the examples so far it has been a determinative, and some of these can be accompanied by their own modifiers, making a determinative phrase, abbrevi ated D P . '", I n addition, the determiner may have the form of a genitive NP.

•

Examples, with the determiners underlined, are given in [23 ] : [23]

DETERMINATIVE

DP GENITIVE NP

the city almost all politicians her income

some rotten eggs very few new books the senator 's young son

In this section we focus on determinatives and DPs. Genitive determiners are dis cussed in §9. 1 . The determiner is generally an obligatory element with count singular common nouns, as discussed in connection with [ 1 4- 1 6] above. It is, by contrast, incompat ible with pronouns: we have l am ready, not * The I am ready, and so on.

§ 3 . l Definiteness

3.1

Definiteness

The main semantic contribution of the determiner is to mark the NP as definite or indefinite. The is known as the definite article and a as the indefinite article since these are the most basic and elementary markers of definite and indef inite NPs, but all NPs can be classified as definite or indefinite.

Definite article What is meant by definite here can best be understood by looking at some examples containing the definite article. In the following the definite NP is enclosed in brack ets; the part following the is the head. [24]

i [The President of France] has appointed a new prime minister. ii Where did you put [the key] ?

The indicates that the head of the NP is considered SUFFICIENT

IN THE CONTEXT TO

I DENTIFY THE REFERENT.

Other items can then be assigned to the determinative category by virtue of hav ing one or more of the following properties: [ 1 5]

i They don't occur with articles, and articles don't occur with them. ii They can occur as the only pre-head dependent of a count singular noun. iii They can occur as fused head in a partitive construction.

The examples in [ 1 6] show how these properties distinguish the determinative some from the adjective good: DETERMINATIVE

[ 1 6] 11 1lI

a. *She gave me the some apples. a. Some guy called to see you. a. I took some of the books.

ADJECTIVE

b. He gave me the good apples. b. *Good guy called to see you. b. *1 took good of the books.

In [i], [a] is inadmissible because some cannot follow the. In [ii], guy is a count singular noun and requires a determiner, such as some. In [iii] some is fused head with a partitive complement, a construction which does not admit adjectives except for comparative and superlatives (the younger of the two, the best of the lot).

1 17

Chapter 6 Adjectives and adverbs

1 18

1 .5

Gradable and non-gradable adjectives

We have said that prototypical adjectives have comparative and superla tive forms and take degree modifiers such as very, too ("excessively") and pretty. Adjectives of this kind are said to be gradable. They denote scalar properties that can apply in varying degrees. Good, old, big and so on denote properties of this kind - and one can ask about the degree to which the property applies with how: How big is it ?, etc. Not all adjectives are of this kind. There are also non-gradable adjectives, as in an alphabetical list. It makes no sense to ask how alphabetical a list is, or to say that one list is more alphabetical than another. A lphabetical thus denotes a non-scalar property. Other examples of non-gradable adjectives are seen in [ 1 7] : the chief difficulty a medical problem

[ 1 7]

federal taxes phonetic symbols

glandular fever pubic hair

my !&.f1 arm their tenth attempt

Some adjectives can be used in either way: like the distinction between count and non-count in nouns, the gradable vs non-gradable distinction applies to uses rather than lexemes as such. Compare: NON-GRADABLE USE

[ 1 8] a. 11

1Il

in the public interest the British government The motorway is now open.

GRADABLE USE b. a very public quarrel b. a very British response b. He was more open with us than the boss.

Typically, as in these examples, the non-gradable sense is the basic one, with the gradable sense representing an extended use.

1 .6

The structure of adjective phrases

An AdjP consists of an adjective as head, alone or accompanied by one or more dependents. The dependents may be complements, licensed by the head, or modifiers, less restricted in their occurrence.

(a) Complements The complements are almost always PPs, as in [ 1 9] , or subordinate clauses, as in [20] : [ 1 9]

afraid of the dark kind to children

[20]

glad it was over busy making lunch

bent on revenge remote from reality uncertain what to do difficult for us to see

conversant with it unaltered bv heat

good at chess unfit for use

eager to win hard to grasp thankful that no one had been hurt

The choice of preposition in [ 1 9] depends on the head adjective: we couldn't have, for example, *afraid on the dark or *bent of revenge. With certain adjec tives (in particular senses) the PP is obligatory: the sense of bent shown here, for

§ 1 .7 Predicative complements and predicative adjuncts

1 19

example, requires a PP complement with on (or upon) ; and conversant cannot occur at all without a complement. The kind of subordinate clause likewise depends on the adjective: we couldn't have *glad what to do, *busy to make lunch, and so on.

(b) Modifiers The most common type of modifier is an adverb (or AdvP), as underlined in [2 1 i] , but other categories are also found: determinatives (underlined i n [2 I ii]), PPs (as in [2 l iii]), and in a very limited range of cases, NPs (as in [2 1 iv]): [2 1 ]

extremely hot morally wrong � useful almost completely watertight this young that old no different much better illll'. smaller old enough iii cautious to excess dangerous in the extreme an [in some respects good] idea iv five years old two hours long a great deal smaller a bit overpowering 11

PPs generally follow the head, but in attributive AdjPs they normally precede, as in the last example of [iii], where we have put brackets round the whole AdjP.

Predicative complements and predicative adjuncts

1 .7

In their predicative use, adjectives (or AdjPs) generally function as com plement in clause structure. As we saw in Ch. 4, §5, predicative complements occur in complex-intransitive and complex-transitive clauses: [22]

COMPLEX-TRANSITIVE CLAUSE

COMPLEX-INTRANSITIVE CLAUSE a.

The suggestion S

I is I ridiculous. P

I I I consider I the suggestion I ridiculous. I s P

The adjective is related to a predicand (the suggestion), which is subject in the complex-intransitive construction, and object in the complex-transitive con struction. In addition to being complements, licensed by the head, predicative AdjPs can be adjuncts. Compare, for example: [23] 11

PREDICATIVE COMPLEMENT PREDICATIVE ADJUNCT

Max was unwilling to accept these terms. Unwilling to accept these terms. Max resigned.

In [i] the AdjP is a complement licensed by the verb (be), but in [ii] it is an adjunct, with no such licensing - it is, more specifically, a supplement, detached by intona tion or punctuation from the rest of the clause. It is nevertheless still predicative, in that it is related to a predicand. We understand in [ii] , no less than in [i], that the unwillingness to accept these terms applies to Max.

1 20

Chapter 6 Adjectives and adverbs

1 .8

Adjectives restricted to attributive or predicative function

Although most adjectives can be used both attributively and predicatively, there are nevertheless many that are restricted to one or other of these two uses: ATTRIBUTIVE USE

[24 ] a.

a huUe hole ii a. utter nonsense iii a. *the asleep children

PREDICATIVE USE b. The hole was huUe.

b. * That nonsense was utter. b. The children were asleep.

Huge illustrates the default case, where the adjective appears both attributively and predicatively. Utter is an exceptional case: an attributive-only adjective, which can't be used predicatively (as shown in [iib)). Asleep is the opposite kind of exception, as evident from [iii] ; it can occur pred icatively but not attributively: it is a never-attributive adjective.

(a) Attributive-only adjectives NPs containing a sample of other adjectives that are attributive-only are given in [25]: [25]

these damn budget cuts our future prospects the only drawback the putative father

the eventual winner the main problem their own fault the sole survivor

her former husband a mere child the principal advantage a veritable jungle

(b) Never-attributive adjectives Here are some further examples of predicative uses of never-attributive adjectives: [26]

The house was ablaze. Something was amiss. It is liable to flood.

The boy seemed afraid. It was devoid of interest. The baby looked content.

The child was alone. Corruption was rik.. I was utterly bereft.

Restrictions may apply to senses rather than lexemes As with the gradable vs non-gradable distinction, the restrictions often apply just to certain senses of a lexeme. In [27 ] , for example, it is ONLY IN THE SENSES ILLUSTRATED that the underlined adjectives in [i] are attributive-only, and those in [ii] never-attributive: [27]

i a certain country ii I feel faint

the late queen He was Ulad to see her.

the lawful heir I'm sorry you missed it.

Structural restrictions on attributive adjectives Attributive AdjPs mostly cannot contain dependents that follow the head. The typi cal case is as in [28], where the underlined adjective licenses a post-head dependent (double-underlined), and the AdjP is allowed only predicatively as in the [a] cases, not attributively as in the [b] cases.

§ 1 .9 Other functions of AdjPs [28]

PREDICATIVE 11

a. She was devoted to her children. a. She was cautious to excess.

ATTRIBUTIVE

b. *a devoted to her children mother b. *a cautious to excess manager

There are a few post-head dependents that can occur with attributive adjectives, though, as seen in [29] . [29]

i a. The house was f2jg enough. ii a. The result was better than expected. iii a. It was better than anyone expected.

b. a f2jg enough house b. a better than expected result b. a better result than anyone expected

Enough is allowed quite generally after gradable adjectives, as in [i] . Than expected in [iib] is a short comparative complement that is permitted within an attributive AdjP. A longer phrase would have to be located after the head noun, as in [iiib] , where it functions as indirect complement (see Ch. 5, §4).

1 .9

Other functions of AdjPs

Besides the two major functions discussed above, there are two rela tively minor functions in which adjectives and AdjPs are found.

(a) Postpositives Postpositive adjectives function in NP structure as post-head internal modifier. There are three cases to consider: [30]

i everything useful somebody rich somewhere safe those responsible ii children keen on sport a report full of errors a suggestion likely to oU-end iii the only modification possible the ones asleep the president elect

The examples in [i] have fused determiner-heads, making it impossible for the adjectives to occur in the usual pre-head position - compare everything useful with every useful thing. The modifiers in [ii] would be inadmissible in pre-head position because the adjec tive has its own post-head dependents; the postpositive construction provides a way of getting around the fact that such AdjPs cannot be used as attributive modifiers. A limited number of adjectives can occur postpositively without their own dependents and with a non-fused head noun, as in [iii] : possible can also be attributive whereas asleep (as we have seen) cannot. Elect (meaning "recently elected but not in office yet") is one of a very small number of exceptional adjec tives that occur only postpositively.

(b) External modifiers Certain forms of AdjP occur right at the beginning of the NP, before the indefinite article a: [3 1 ]

a. [How long a delay] will there be ? ii a. It seemed [such a bargain].

b. He 'd chosen [too dark a colour]. b. [ What a /ool] I was.

121

1 22

Chapter 6 Adjectives and adverbs

One type are AdjPs containing how, as, so, too, this or that as modifier, as in [i] . There are two adjectives that can appear by themselves in this position: such and the exclamative word what, shown in [ii] .

Adverbs

The adverb is the fourth and last of the categories of lexemes that we call open - the categories with huge and readily expandable membership. Noun and verb are the major open categories. Every canonical clause, even the simplest, must contain at least one of each (Kim laughed, Clouds formed, They moved). Such ele mentary constructions can be expanded by adding adjectives and adverbs as modi fiers. Nouns take adjectives as their simplest and most typical modifiers, while verbs take adverbs. The main thing that makes the adverb category open is that such a high propor tion of adverbs are morphologically derived from adjectives by adding the suffix ·ly. It is with these related adjective-adverb pairs that we can see most clearly the con trast between the modifiers of nouns and the modifiers of verbs: [32]

MODIFICATION OF NOUN

a. a � family ii a. a �reedy child iii a. a passionate lover

MODIFICATION OF VERB

b. They all lived � ever after. b. The child devoured it �reedily. b. They loved each other passionately.

Here double underlining marks the head word, and single underlining marks the modifier - an adjective in [a], an adverb in [b] .

2. 1

Adverbs as modifiers of categories other than the noun

The term 'adverb' is based on the function of these words as modifiers of verbs. But to a very large extent the words that are used for modifying verbs also function as modifiers to adjectives; and a good many modify other adverbs as well: [33]

a. a virtual disaster

ii a. It virtually evaporated. iii a. It was virtually impossible.

iv a. He spoke virtually inaudibly.

b. b. b. b.

*his almost death He almost died. He was almost dead. He was wounded almost fatally.

[noun] [verb] [adjective] [adverb]

The annotations on the right give the category of the (double-underlined) head word. In the [a] set, on the left, we have the adjective virtual modifying the noun, with the corresponding adverb virtually modifying the other three heads. In the [b] set the adverb almost modifies a verb, adjective or adverb; but since it isn't derived from any adjective there is no matching noun modifier to com plete rib] .

§2.2 Adverbs vs adjectives

1 23

Not only do adverbs modify verbs, adjectives and other adverbs, they also modify determinatives, PPs and NPs. Again we double-underline the head that is modified in [34] . [34] 11 III

a. Virtually all copies are torn. a. I did it virtually by myself. a. I 'm virtually his only friend.

b. I have almost no money left. b. It lasted almost until midnight. b. I bought almost the last copy.

[determinative] [PP] [NP]

Note that in [iii] the adverb functions as external modifier, not internal modifier like virtual in [33ia] (see Ch. 5, §6). The basic division, then, is between words that modify nouns, and words that modify other categories (categories of words or of larger constituents). The noun modifiers are adjectives, and the others are adverbs. I By no means all adverbs can modify all of this wide range of head elements, but there is a significant amount of overlap. Moreover, in all of these positions we find adverbs that are recognisable as such by virtue of being derived from an adjective by the addition of ·ly.

Adverbs vs adjectives

2.2

In § 1 . 1 we listed three maj or properties of adjectives, having to do with function, grade and modification. The last two apply to adverbs as well as adjectives. Prototypical members of the adverb category enter into the system of grade, though the · er and · est suffixes are incompatible with the ·ly suffix (we find neither *quicklier nor *quickerly), so for the most part comparatives and superlatives are formed by means of more and most rather than by inflection, as in quickly, more quickly, most quickly. And adverbs, like adjectives, take adverbs as modifier, as illustrated in [33] . The crucial distinction between adverbs and adjectives is thus a matter of function. One aspect of this has already been discussed: adjectives modify nouns whereas adverbs modify other categories. But there is another functional difference that is no less important. Most adjectives can function as predicative complement as well as noun modifier, but adverbs do not normally occur in this function. Again the differ ence is most easily seen by taking adjective-adverb pairs related by · ly: [35] 11

MODIFIER a. an impressive performance

a. She performed impressively.

PREDICATIVE COMPLEMENT b. Her performance was impressive. b. *Her performance was impressively.

[adjective] [adverb]

This is slightly oversimplified. There is a construction where we find an adverb modifying a noun. as in Industrial action resulted in the withdrawal indefinitely of the vehicularferry service or A � of timber internationally led to a steep rise in prices. The construction is subject to severe constraints; most importantly. adverbial modifiers of nouns are restricted to post-head position - compare the indefinite withdrawal of the vehicular ferry service. where the pre-head modifier is required to be an adjective. There are also constraints on the kind of adverb permitted. Manner adverbs. for example. are normally excluded. so that we have his ill1W reaction. but not *his reaction an�rily.

Chapter 6 Adjectives and adverbs

1 24

Impressive and impressively can both function as modifier (here of noun and verb respectively), but only the adjective can be used predicatively. The same applies to those adverbs that are not derived from adjectives - they cannot be used as predica tive complements: b. *Her success was almost.

a. She almost succeeded.

[36]

Overlap between the categories We do find some overlap between the adjective and adverb categories - items that belong to both by virtue of occurring in both sets of functions. 2 Compare: [37]

1 ADJ

ii Anv

their early departure They departed early.

that � day It's � good.

I don 't feel well. I didn 't play well.

With some items, such as early, the meaning is the same, while in others it is different. The adjective very, for example, means something like "particular": it empha sises the identity of the day (that one, not any other). The adverb very, on the other hand, means approximately "extremely". The adjective well means "in good health", while the adverb means "in a good way" or "to a good standard".

Warning: addition of '/y sometimes forms adjectives, not adverbs Although the addition of ·ly usually forms an adverb from an adjective, it does not invariably do so. In particular, there are some adjectives that are formed from nouns in this way; examples are given in [38] : [38]

N ii

ADJ

beast beastly

coward cowardly

death deathly

father fatherly

friend friendly

prince princely

woman womanly

It is clear that despite the ·ly ending the words in [ii] are adjectives, not adverbs. They can function attributively and predicatively, but do not modify verbs, as illus trated for friendly in [39] : [39]

2.3

ATTRIBUTIVE USE

PREDICATIVE USE

a friendly old man

He seems quite friendly.

MODIFYING VERB

*He behaved friendly.

The structure of AdvPs

The structure of AdvPs is similar to that of AdjPs, but somewhat sim pler. Dependents can again be divided into complements and modifiers. 2

The overlap is much greater in some non-standard varieties than in Standard English: a well-known non-standard feature, for example, omits the ·ly in many adverbs modifying verbs, as in ! They pay the rent regular.

Exercises

1 25

Complements A few adverbs fonned with the ·ly suffix license complements: [40]

i Purchase of State vehicles is handled similarly to all State purchases. ii Happilyfor the boys, the class was cancelled.

In one type, the adverb licenses the same kind of complement as the adjective from which it is formed. Compare [i] , for example, with Purchase of State vehicles is similar to all State purchases. Other adverbs of this kind (with the preposition they go with shown in parentheses) include separately (from), independently (of), and equally (with). A very few adverbs, such as happily in [ii ] , take complements that are not licensed by a corresponding adjective with a matching sense: compare * The cancellation of the class was happy for the boys.

Modifiers Modifiers are mostly AdvPs (as in [4 1 i]), but again detenninatives ([ii]), PPs ( [iii]) and certain NPs ( [iv] ) are also found: [4 1 ]

She sang � well.

I did it rather hurriedly.

He spoke remarkablv �.

ii I didn 't do it that well. They arrived much sooner than we had expected. iii They behaved badly in the extreme. He didn 't answer at all convincingly. iv We arrived three hours late. It had all happened a bit suddenly.

Exercises

I . For each of the following adjectives, decide whether it can be used in attributive func tion, whether it can be used in predicative function, and whether it can be used in postpositive function. Give your evidence in detail. i alone vi latter vii marine ii available viii previous iii ersatz ix prime iv galore x sleepy v immune 2. Classify the underlined words below as adjectives or nouns, justifying your answer by reference to the criteria given in Chs. 5 and 6. i She is secretary of the Film Society. ii I've always admired the Irish. iii That 's not a government responsibility. iv I want the original. not a copy.

v What they say is nonsense. vi That sounds stupid. vii It verges on the obscene. viii She 's quite a comic. ix Do it the French way. x He 's learning French. 3. Among younger generation speakers, espe cially in AmE, we find not only That was a lot offun, How much fun will we have ?, and I thought it was fun, but also some con structions that older-generation speakers do not use, like these:

%It was so fun. %1 can think ofa lot of thingsfunner than that. %It's thefunnest thing I've ever done. What is the change that has occurred to sep arate the two age groups' dialects? 4. Which of the underlined words below are adjectives, which are verbs, and which are

1 26

Chapter 6 Adjectives and adverbs ambiguous between the two categories in

the examples given? Give evidence for your answers. i The trains aren 't l1ll1l!il1g today. ii What we said was simply �. iii She sounded quite impressed. iv It was a rewardin& experience. v His act is not amusin&. vi His act is not amusin& the crowd. vii We were surrounded. viii The bill was pgid. ix He was H1l!1. in the leg. x Let sleepin& dogs lie. 5 . For each of the following adjectives say whether it is (a) gradable; (b) non gradable; or (c) ambiguous, usable in two senses of which one is gradable and the other is not. In case (c), give examples of the two uses, commenting on the difference in meaning. vi philosophical i certain vii true ii Christian viii worthy iii feminine ix primary iv latter x childlike v main 6. For each of these examples, identify the predicand of the underlined predicative AdjP. i We found your suggestion veO' helpful. ii The problem was thought insoluble by many. iii Unable to contain hjs an&er, Max stormed out of the room.

iv We find the accused 8JlliD!" your honour. v Eventually, too tired to cO'. the two children fell asleep. 7 . Which of the following adjectives license pp complements with a particular preposi tion as head? Give examples for those that do. If you cannot find any example in which the adjective has a pp complement, just write 'none ' . vi easy i able vii free ii capable viii intent iii careful ix long iv clever x responsible v concise 8. Classify the underlined words below as adjectives or adverbs, giving your reasons in each case. i Fortunately, he had plenty of time. ii He was going far too Jim. iii She seemed a very kindly old soul. iv We were annoyed at their � arrival. v They 're becoming increasin&ly unruly. vi I was feeling quite /lJlJlIll. vii She works extremely lJm:d. viii We made lflJ2. many concessions. ix KirYIlx refrain from smoking. x That was very un&entiemanly. 9. Construct convincing examples in which the adverb quite modifies: [i) a verb; [ii] an adjective; [iii] an adverb; [iv] a PP; and [v] an NP.

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Prepositions and preposition phrases

1 The traditional class of prepositions

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2 Extending the membership of the class 3 Further category contrasts

4 Grammaticised uses of prepositions 5 Preposition stranding 6 The structure of PPs 7

pp complements

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1 37 1 39

in clause structure

8 Prepositional idioms and fossilisation

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1 42 1 46

The traditional class of prepositions

Prepositions make up a much smaller class of lexemes than the open categories of verb, noun, adjective and adverb. There are only about a hundred prepositions in current use. Traditional grammars list even fewer than that, but we don't follow the tradition on this point. Although all words traditionally clas sified as prepositions are classified as prepositions in our treatment too, we recognise a good number of other prepositions, formerly classified as adverbs, or as 'subordinating conjunctions ' . We begin this chapter with an account of the category of prepositions as traditionally understood, and then explain why we have chosen to expand it. We give in [ I ] a sampling of the words that (in at least some of their uses) belong to the category of prepositions. [1]

above below in since

across between into through

after beyond of to

against by off under

at down on up

before for over with

behind from round without

These words share the following properties.

(a) They take N Ps as complement In general, words are traditionally analysed as prepositions only if they have complements with the form of NPs. In the following pairs, for example, tradi tional grammar accepts the underlined words in [a] as prepositions, but not those in [b] : 1 27

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[2]

Chapter 7 Prepositions and preposition phrases TRADITIONALLY A PREPOSITION

TRADITIONALLY NOT A PREPOSITION

a. The sun sank [below the horizon]. ii a. I haven 't seen her [,since Easter]. iii a. They set off [� the rain]. iv a. %He jumped [out the window].

b. b. b. b.

I went [below]. I haven 't seen her [since she left town]. We stayed indoors [because of the rain]. He jumped [out of the window].

'\l Below fails to qualify in [ib] because it has no complement at all. " The other items in [b] fail because they have complements that are not NPs: a clause in [iib] and a pp headed by of in [iiib/ivb] . .' With out there is divided usage. In AmE it can sometimes take an NP comple ment, as in [iva] , but in BrE it requires of so it can be a preposition in AmE but not in BrE. -

(b) No inflection The prepositions of traditional grammar do not inflect. We have just at, for example: there are no forms *atter, *ats, or whatever.

(c) Meaning: relations in space or time Most traditional prepositions have meanings to do with relations in space or time: at the post office identifies a spatial location, into the garden fixes a direction of travel, after lunch locates a time period as following lunchtime, etc. Not all prepositions have this kind of meaning (for example, despite in [2iiia] doesn't), so this can't be used as a condition for belonging to the class of prepositions; but it is relevant to a general definition of prepositions, and we will take it up again in §4.

(d) Function : head of wide range of dependents Prepositions head phrases that characteristically occur in a range of functions, notably dependents of either nouns or verbs, including as a special case the com plement of the verb be. In the following examples single underlining marks the PP, double underlining the head on which it is dependent: [3]

DEPENDENT OF NOUN

a house at the beach ii the chair in the corner iii the woman from Paris iv a bottle of milk

DEPENDENT OF VERB COMPLEMENT OF BE

He saw her at school. She k11 in the pool. She comes from Paris. I don 't approve of it.

He i! at lunch. We were in the pool. She is from Paris. That i! of interest.

Extending the membership of the class

The reason why we extend the membership of the preposition class beyond the words that traditional grammar calls prepositions is that we see no jus tification for restricting it to words that have NP complements. That is, we don't think the condition discussed under (a) in § I should be regarded as essential.

§2. 1 Prepositions vs subordinators

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Notice first the effect of the NP complement condition on how we have to clas sify the word before in the three constructions shown in [4] . We compare before with the verb know : [4]

before AS HEAD We left before the last act. That was before he died. I had seen her once before.

TYPE OF COMPLEMENT NP ii CLAUSE iii NO COMPLEMENT

know AS HEAD

We know the last act. I know he died. Yes, I know.

In [i] the complement of before or know (marked by double underlining) is an NP; in [ii] it is a subordinate clause; and in [iii] there is no complement. Everyone agrees that this difference in the complements has no bearing on the classification of know : it is a verb in all three examples. Know happens to be a verb that licenses either an NP or a clause as complement, and where the complement is optional. But traditional grammar treats before in a completely different way. It is treated as a preposition in [i] , a 'subordinating conjunction' in [ii] , and an adverb in [iii] . We see this triple assignment as an unnecessary complication. It is much simpler to give before a uniform analysis, treating it as a preposition in all three, just as know is a verb in all three. Notice in the first place that before has the same meaning in all of [i-iii] . Sec ondly, it takes the same modifiers in these three contexts. We could, for example, insert such items as long, shortly, an hour, a short while in front of before in all three examples in [4] . The difference between the three instances of before is thus solely a matter of the complement. Nowhere else in the grammar is a part-of-speech distinction based purely on a difference of this kind. Our extension of the preposition category involves redrawing the boundaries between prepositions and subordinators, and between prepositions and adverbs. We take up these two pairs in turn. 2. 1

Prepositions vs subordinators

The traditional class of subordinating conjunctions contains (among others) the words in [5] : [5]

i after ii a. although

b. if;

before because that

since

ifc

whether

till lest

until provided

though

unless

We need to distinguish two words with the shape if. One has a conditional meaning, as in I 'll help you if [ can: we show this above as ifc. The other occurs in subordinate interrogative clauses like See ifthere are any vacancies, corresponding to main clause A re there any vacancies ?: we show it as i/;. This is a variant of whether: compare See whether there are any vacancies.

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Chapter 7 Prepositions and preposition phrases

The words in [i] traditionally belong to the preposition class as well, whereas those in [ii] do not. We have argued against a dual classification treatment of the [i] words, analysing them simply as prepositions that license different kinds of complement. But once we reconsider the distinction between prepositions and subordinators we find there are good reasons for reassigning the words in [iia] as well to the preposition class. This leaves a very small subordinator class, with that, whether and ifi as its main members. The major argument for drawing the boundary between prepositions and subor dinators between [iia] and [iib] is that that, whether and ifi function as markers of subordination whereas the other words in [5] function as heads of the constituents they introduce. Consider the following examples: a. I think [(that) she 's probably right]. b. I don 't know [whether they have received our letter yet]. ii a. She stayed behind for a few minutes [after the others had left]. b. They complained [because we didn 't finish the job this week].

[6]

In [i] the bracketed constituents are subordinate clauses with that and whether simply marking the subordination: the main clause counterparts are She is prob ably right (declarative) and Have they received our letter yet ? (interrogative). In this context the that is optional (as indicated by the parentheses): the clause is in the position of complement to think, so it is not obligatory to mark its subordi nate status in its own structure. Whether is not omissible because it marks the clause as interrogative as well as subordinate: it is just with the default declara tive type that the subordinator is often optional. After and because in [ii] by contrast are not grammatical markers of subordination. They have independent meaning, and it is by virtue of this meaning that we interpret the bracketed constituents as adjuncts of time and reason respectively. This makes them like heads - just as after is head in the time adjunct after the departure of the others. They are not themselves part of the subordinate clause; rather, the subordi nate clauses are just the others had left and we didn 't finish the job this week, and these function as complement within the phrases headed by after and because. 2.2

Prepositions vs adverbs

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