Major components of the noun-head phrase 7 page

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 587.

Finite clauses. With respect to the use of finite clauses, the higher percentage in conversation and fiction is due largely to the use of comment clauses. These finite clauses usually have a first person pronoun subject and no subordinator, and are used explicitly to mark a proposition as the speaker's opinion, or to convey some level of personal doubt or certainty. When these expressions are integrated into the clause structure, they usually occur as a main clause taking a that-complement clause (e.g. I think that...). When they are not integrated into the clause structure, they are finite clause stance adverbials: I'm going to get a new one for the basement I think.(conv) It'll come out in the wash I guess!(conv) You'd wear that more than I would I bet. (conv) This room's not been used in years, I would say.(fict) Well, he has had to he careful so long, watching every tiny little thing he does, I suppose.(fict) We have, I believe,paid more attention to sentimental Goldsmith and Richardson than lively old Fielding and Smollett! (fict) In fiction, finite clauses are also occasionally inserted to show doubt or possibility, especially with the clause who knows: They fantasise that if they had parents like yours, they'd sit on their backsides and eat chocolates, and hell, who knows,maybe they resent you because you don't. (fict) In addition, conversation has finite stance clauses with because that give the evidence for the speaker's claim: He's seriously deficient in what he should be learning cos- he should know that at least.(conv) News and academic prose more commonly use comment clauses to show the source of information - sometimes vaguely and sometimes specifically: Ratepayers in Ards may have to foot the bill if the district council goes ahead with a proposal not to charge for collecting rubbish from orange halls, it has been disclosed.(news) The view that organizations are rational structures set up to achieve their goals in the most efficient way has been legitimated, Albrow has claimed, on the erroneous assumption that Weber associated rationality with efficiency. (acad) The comment clauses it seems and it appears also allude to some evidence supporting the proposition, although at the same time they introduce a certain level of doubt: The new 1.8 engine is worth a second glance, it seems.(news) For, by 1841, he had worked out not only his theory of the origin of species, natural selection, but also, it seems,his theory of generation (or reproduction, including heredity, variation so on), pangenesis. (acad) Wallace, it appears,created a model for scientific sociology which has an elitist appeal rather than the pluralistic one desired in the present project. (acad) The net result was she had to do most of the work, the finished products were, as one might expect,completely professional. (fict)This, as you might guessis called "systematically contributing to the field's knowledge base." (acad) In news and academic prose, the use of the subject you in these clauses creates a more involved text, overtly attributing an attitude to the reader.

Other syntactic forms (adverb phrases, noun phrases, and non-finite clauses)have more limited functions as conveyers of stance. Adverb phrases, when they do occur, tend to be a combination of an adverb such as quite, rather, or most modifying an adverb of attitude or likelihood: They most likelywouldn't be able to give you the help as well. (conv) Quite likelyhe's not even a doctor. (fict) Beer is, quite rightly,Britain's favorite Friday night drink. (news) "These appointments are stressful and quite honestlysomething like this just makes it even more traumatic," she said. (news) Rather surprisingly,Friedman (1976) has found that in Gryllus assimilis the ultrastructure of the cells is <.. .> (acad) Noun phrases are uncommon as stance adverbials, with the exception of the phrase no doubt: These rows and rows of blue balloons - so no doubtit was a boy that was being christened. (conv) The thing no doubtwould have happened differently to another man. (fict) But many people would no doubtargue that the current "anything goes as long as it sells papers" style goes too far the other way. (news) At the same time, readers will no doubtcontinue to be inventive I harnessing the insights of teachers and the tools of linguistic analysis. (acad) Finally, when non-finite clauses occur as stance adverbials, they tend to be style adverbials conveying how the speaker/writer is communicating: I don't know to tell you the truth.(conv) There's still a good deal afforest left, comparatively speaking,anyhow. (fict) We feel that if we did not pursue this second transplant it would be like, to put it bluntly,pulling the plug on her. (news) Generally speaking,you get what you pay for in a kitchen. (news) To put it less charitably,it has been a hotch-potch approach in which any variable deemed by the researcher to be even vaguely relevant has been thrown into the statistical melting pot. (acad)

2.2.4.The apposition is a part of the sentence expressed by a noun or nominal phrase and referring to another noun or nominal phrase (the headword), or sometimes to a clause. There are several kinds of meaning expressed by the relationship of apposition: a) the two noun phrases are equivalent in meaning, with one providing the name or specific identity of the other (I came to my sister, Miss Helga); b) one noun phrase provides a rewording of the other (He's a philologist - that is, a linguist); c) one noun phrase expresses an attribute of the other ( I like reading books, good ones); d) one noun phrase includes the other (I like good classical music, for example Mozart). The apposition is similar to an attribute, as it characterizes the person or non-person denoted by the headword: I always admired cats, very pretty creatures. Beyond the house, a big, good-looking building, began the forest. Some grammarians treat the apposition as a variety of the attribute (appositive attribute).

Like the attribute, the apposition may be in preposition or postposition to its headword. However, unlike the attribute, which is always subordinated to its headword, words in apposition are, at least syntactically, coordinated parts, i.e. both the headword and the apposition are sentence constituents of the same level: Mr Smith, the local doctor, was known to everybody. – The local doctor, Mr Smith, was known to everybody. However, an apposition can rarely replace the headword in the sentence. Communicatively they are not of the same rank – the headword is superordinate (semantically, or informatively, or both), and the apposition is subordinate. From the point of view of their relation to the headword, appositions, like attributes, fall into non-detached and detached. Non-detached appositions form one sense group with their headword (titles, professions, kinship terms, geographical names): Mr Brown, Doctor Watson, Uncle Sam, President Abama, Queen Elizabeth, Oxford Street, Mount Everest, the River Thames. Detached appositions form separate sense groups and are wider in their meaning: they may give identification, explanation, etc., especially when referring to pronouns. They may follow the headword immediately or be separated from it: He actually envied Jolyon the reputation of succeeding where he, Soarnes, had failed. Cooper was taller than Mr Warbutlon, a strong, muscular young man. (fict) An apposition may also refer to a clause or sentence as an explanatory remark: The night was quiet, a bit drizzly, windless, and very warm - the ideal conditions for a walk. (fict)

3. The order of sentence elements. The term word order is most often used to refer to the order of the elements in the clause, elements which are, of course, often each realized by phrases or clauses rather than just one word each: subject, verb, object, predicatives, and adverbials. The syntactical structure of a language imposes restrictions on the way messages may be organized in that language. English word order has often been described as relatively fixed. Most of English grammar is taken up with the rules governing the order in which words in a sentence can appear. The order of the constituents in syntactical constructions is crucial for English. Due to its analytical structure, syntactical functions of elements have, as a rule, no special morphological markers (e.g., case inflections). The position itself, or more exactly the distribution of an element, may determine its relationship with other elements in a syntactical construction.

The meaning of a sentence often depends entirely on the order in which the elements are placed: The man ate the fish. – The fish ate the man. They are here. – Are they here? Only Mary loved Joan. – Mary loved only Joan. The man with a dog saw me. – The man saw me with a dog. Synthetical languages which have elaborate systems of case inflections tend to have fewer restrictions on word order than analytical languages like English. The words in an English sentence are arranged in a certain order, which is fixed for every type of the sentence, and is therefore meaningful. Word order fulfils several functions: grammatical, phatic or communicative, and linking. These functions are manifested in different arrangements of the parts of the sentence. The main function of word order is to express grammatical relations and determine the grammatical status of a word by fixing its position in the sentence. There are thousands of rules forbidding speakers to put words in a certain order: I walked to town. - * To town walked. That's a fine old house. - *That's an old fine house. John and I saw her. - *I and John saw her. She switched it on. - *She switched on it. Thus, it is certainly true that the placement of the core elements of the clause is strictly regulated. Yet there is variation, even in the core of the clause. Consider the following passage from a fiction text: It was beautiful grey stone mellowed by the years. There was an archway in the centre and at the end of he west wing was a tower with battlements and long narrow slits of windows which looked rather definitely out of place with the rest of the house which was clearly of a later period.(fict) This is a description of a house, and the house is the topical starting-point in both sentences. The portion in bold illustrates an unusual or markedchoice of word order: the clause opens with a circumstance adverbial, identifying a location in the house, followed by inversion of the subject (a tower ...) and the verb (was). This word order contributes to the maintenance of a consistent perspective. It is also significant that the author chose a there-construction to open the same sentence. The word order of English clauses is determined by the interaction of a number of factors. First and most important, however, word order is used as a grammar signal. One of the functions of word order is to express continuity of thought in sentences (or clauses) following one another. This continuity is often supported by demonstrative pronouns and adverbs: Some people looked down on him. Those people he despised. And, oh, that look! Oh that look Euphemia had spent much anxious thought. They must sow their wild oats. Such was his theory. Women are terribly vain. So are men – more so, if possible. Similarly, for purposes of enumeration, a word (or words) marking continuity is sometimes placed at the beginning of the sentence, with the verb immediately following: Next comes the most interesting fact.

In order to study the discourse functions of word order and its variations, we need to understand the nature of the normal or unmarked order which may be altered to meet particular requirements of information flow or weight distribution, or to convey a special effect of emphasis. Fundamentally word order is used as a grammar signal in English in the following four ways: 1. Clause elements appear in a preferred order in relation to each other: the subject before the verb, the verb before its complements, etc. SV, SVA, SVC, SVO_d, SVOiOd, SVO_dO_i, SVO_dC, SVO_dA. 2. Independent interrogative clauses are signalled through subject-operator inversion (with the exception of clauses with a wh-word as subject, e.g. Who did it?) Subject-operator inversion is also obligatory after certain other elements when placed initially, such as never.

3. All clause elements realized by wh-words are regularly placed in initial position. This applies to all wh-clauses, whether they are independent interrogative or exclamative clauses, or dependent nominal, or relative clauses. (However, if there is more than one such clause element in a clause, only one is placed in initial position, e.g. Who did what?)

4.Phrases are normally continuous. This could be called the principle of contact.These grammatical principles frequently operate in agreement with other ordering principles: She's had a miserable life. (conv) Here we have the regular SVO order, and the clause also conforms to the information principle and the principle of end-weight.

There exist two ways of arranging words direct and inverted word order. The most common pattern for the arrangement of the parts in declarative sentence is Subject - Predicate Verb - Object (SVO), which is called direct word order. The direct or unmarked order serves all the needs of communication. Direct word order allows of only few variations in the fixed pattern, and then only for the secondary parts. Thus if there are two objects, the indirect one precedes the direct one (Subject - predicate - Indirect object - Direct object), or the prepositional allows the direct one (Subject - Predicate - Direct object - prepositional object): The boss gave me no information. The boss gave no information for me. As to the secondary parts of the sentence, such as attributes and adverbial modifiers, their position is less fixed. Usually those parts that are closely connected tend to be placed together. Secondary parts referring to main parts are placed close to them. Attributes either premodify or postmodify their headwords. Adverbials and different function words seem to be the most mobile parts in the sentence. Their mobility is partly accounted for their varied reference to different parts of the sentence.When referring to a verb adverbials may be placed in: a) front position (Again he was late), b) contact preposition (He often did it) interposition (He has never seen ocean); d) contact post-position (they are never on time); e) end position (Tom works hard). When adverbials refer to adjectives, adverbs, nouns, numerals, or pronouns they are usually placed close to these words, generally preceding them: Mother was very upset about it. For adverbials allowing of different reference any change of position may result in a change of meaning: Nearly all died. – All nearly died.

In indirect or marked word order core clause elements are placed in an unusual position to achieve cohesion, emphasis, or some other stylistic effect. The main types are fronting of elements which are normally found in post-verbal position and inversion of subject and verb, while there is less variation in the placement of the core elements at the end of the clause.

There is a natural tendency in any language to develop its emotional and effective means of expression. Emotive nuances and intensity of meaning can be obtained by linguistic devices of different levels: phonetic, morphological, syntactic and phraseological, by word-making and special intensifiers. All these can function as effective means to produce emotive and logical intensity of the utterance. There are two different types of grammatical focus. The first type of focus involves the recording of constituents such that the constituent appearing in sentence-initial position – or sometimes sentence-final position – receives special emphasis in the discourse. The other type of grammatical focus entails the use of special constructions. A focus construction is a structure that frames, i.e., gives explicit grammatical focus to the constituent appearing in the focus slot.

There are numerous ways of producing intensity and emphasis in Modern English. We include here the structures of modification (She is activity itself, She is all nerves, All wrong, all at once). Idiomatic variety of Partitive Genitive (An actor's actor. An actors' actor. An actor of actors). Idiomatic Variety of the Comparative Degree (Deafer then deaf).The Superlative + of-phrase: The best of the seasons. The kindest of the kind. Adjectives or adverbs intensified by far, by far, well, far and away, a great deal, still:He was well ahead. She is far better now. Syntactic Metathesis: A baby of a thing. A Spartan of a boy. Structures of Predication Paradigmatic emphatic forms of the Present Indefinite, Past Indefinite and the Imperative Mood: Shedid help me. Do help him. A fixed phrase of emphatic precision: It was he who did it. Grammatical idioms: to be sure + to V: He is sure to come; be sure + and + V: Be sure and come; go + and + V: He went and married. Don'tgo tiring yourself. He came to be highly respected. He got to be highly respected. He fell to thinking. Grammatical idioms do nothing but + V: He does nothing but grumble. Grammatical idiom "all you can": Sit still all you can. Cf.: Sit as still as you can. Idiomatic sentence-pattern: This is a war, if ever there was one. Patterns with "...and all": I would do it, I would and all.I did it in spite of what you told me, I did and all. Patterns with "appended statement": He likes it, he does. Sub-clauses of comparison or degree in absolute use As if I ever stop thinking about it. Patterns with "nexus of deprecation", rhetorical questions: Me catch cold! No fear. What's the good of that?

In modern English there are trends in the increasing development of inversion and segmentation. Sometimes one of the secondary parts of a sentence by some specific consideration of the writer is placed so that it seems formally independent of the word it logically refers to. Such parts of structures are called detached. The essential quality of detached construction lies in the fact that the isolated parts represent a kind of independent whole thrust into the sentence or placed in a position which will make the phrase (or word) seem independent. But a detached phrase cannot rise to the rank of a primary member of the sentence - it always remains secondary from the semantic point of view, although structurally it possesses all the features of a primary member. This clash of the structural and semantic aspects of detached constructions produces the desired effect - forcing the reader to interpret the logical connections between the component parts of the sentence. Here are some more examples of detached constructions: "Daylight was dying, the moon rising, gold behind the poplars." (Galsworthy).“I want to go,” he said, miserable." (Galsworthy) "She was lovely: all of her–delightful." (Dreiser). The segment does the duty of the object: My handkerchief. He threw (J. Joyce); the prepositional object: About Mincho. Could you let me know? (J. Galsworthy); the adverbial adjunct: Behind.There is someone (J. Joyce). The postponed segments may do the duty of the predicative: I am quite alone here. Sad too (J. Joyce); the attributive adjunct: A cloud began to cover the sun. Grey. Far (J. Joyce); adverbials of place: The carriage rattled swiftly across Blessington street. Over the stones (J. Joyce); adverbials of time: belong to a race... that is hated and persecuted. Also now. This very moment. This very instant (J. Joyce); adverbials of purpose: Dedalus, come down. For my sake and all our sakes (J. Joyce); adverbials of manner: He just knocked again. Louder (D. Salinger); adverbials of attending circumstances: He drank. With faraway mourning eye (J.Joyce). Segmented structures should be distinguished into: structures with the contact position of the segment: He was interrupted at that point.By me (D. Salinger) and structures with the distant position of the segment: ''Someone laid a bunch of flowers there. Women. Must his birthday.For many happy returns (J. Joyce). Segmentation is not unfrequent in larger syntactic its: You must get some sleep.If you can (G. Greene). The progressive development of segmented structures of various types, their grammatical organization and communicative value deserve prior consideration in syntactic description.

3.1. Fronting. Fronting refers to the initial placement of core elements which are normally found in post-verbal position. There are patterns which differ in stylistic effect and in register distribution. A full understanding is not possible without also considering variation in the order of the subject and the verb. The main discourse functions of fronting are: organizing information flow to achieve cohesion; expressing contrast; enabling particular elements to gain emphasis. Apart from the grammatically conditioned initial placement of wh-words, fronting of core elements is virtually restricted to declarative main clauses, and is relatively rare in English. When an object is placed in initial position, the subject is not moved (i.e. there is no subject-verb inversion). The subject is generally a personal pronoun. The fronted object is often a demonstrative pronoun or a complement clause. Noun phrases as fronted objects. Demonstrative pronouns often occur as fronted objects: 1. Sandy moves ahead. "ThisI do not understand," he said. (fict) 2. I put in the day on the job, which I like, and I go home at night. That I also like. (fict) The fronting in such examples can partly be accounted for by the information principle, since the clause opens with given information: the pronouns refer anaphorically to the preceding text. In examples with such, there is a similar reference to the preceding text: Such a blunder I had now committed. (fict)Why didn't you tell me? Such thingsyou must tell me. (fict) However, givenness alone is insufficient as an explanation of fronting. Notice that an unstressed object pronoun (e.g. it, him, them) never occurs in initial position, and the fronted demonstrative pronouns in examples 1 and 2 would normally be stressed if spoken aloud. Fronting therefore also signals emphasis and allows focus to be placed on two elements in a clause in a way that would not be so easy with the unfronted equivalent. It would be difficult, for example, to show in writing, or indicate by stress in speech, that both understand and this were focal in the version with unmarked order I do not understand this - compare example 1. In addition, contrast is often involved with elements in other clauses, as in the following examples, which contain other types of fronted objects: Bess was satisfied with her hair, but her frecklesshe regarded as a great and unmerited affliction. (fict) Some things you miss because they're so tiny you overlook them. But some things you don't see because they are so huge. (fict) Some things you forget. Other thingsyou never do. (fict) In the first two of these examples, the contrast is made explicit not only by the reference to both contrasted entities, but also through the conjunction but. In the last example there is close parallelism of the clause structures which also highlights the contrast.

A second type of object fronting contains a complement clause: That he has prepared his speech I do not believe for there was not even one shorthandwriter in the hall. (fict) What it was that changed this conclusion, I don't remember. (fict) Why he came this way I will probably never know. (fict) How he would use that knowledge he could not guess. (fict) Unfortunately, eating was her weakness. Whether this was congenital, stemmed from growing up around a grocery store, or nerve induced,she sometimes wondered. (fict) All these complement clauses contain pronouns referring back to the preceding text, signalling a connection with given information, although they also contain substantial new information. But the fronting goes completely against the principle of end-weight: note particularly the long whether-clause in the last example. Additionally, most of these examples contain a negative main clause, so that the fronting seems to bring about a kind of double focus: on the matter reported in the complement clause and on the negation in the main clause. That is, both clauses receive equal emphasis and are contrasted, which would not be the case if the dependent clause was in its usual position at the end. There can be a similar element of contrast when the main clause is positive, and structured in a parallel way to the fronted clause: What she had wanted, she was to have. (fict) What they can do, we can do. (fict) In the first example, the contrast is in the verb (want v. have); in the second example, the contrast is in the subject (they v. we). There is a similar double focus in example 2 in A above.Note also the co-occurrence of a fronted complement clause and a co-referent demonstrative pronoun in the following example: Whether she's involved in this hootenanny, that I do not know. (fict)

The same factors which govern the fronting of objects apply more generally to the fronting of nominals which have other syntactic roles: 1. Question's whether they can prove it. ThatI tend to doubt. (fict) 2. "Pretty strange, huh?" Thatit is. I nod sadly. (fict) 3.Whether Nancy was there or not, she could not be certain, looking from one to the other in her mind's eye. (fict) The fronted element in 1 is a direct object of an embedded infinitive clause, in 2 it is a subject predicative, and 3 illustrates a fronted nominal clause functioning as adjective complement. Some passages have fronted nominals which are in parallel structures and contrasted, even though they serve different syntactic roles. For example, in 4 the parallel forms are a complement of the noun idea and a direct object of know, ir 5, they are a noun phrase as prepositional object and a prepositional phrase. 4. What he was doing here I have no idea. Why he came this way I will probably never know. (fict) 5. Some things he could not vouch for (his friends had told him), but of others he had had personal experience. (fict)

Single-focus structures. Although the prime purpose of nominal fronting generally seems to be to take advantage of both of the main focal points in the clause (the beginning and the end), we also find structures with focus exclusively on the fronted element: Only one saucepan we had! – And it was stew every day if we didn't go out for dinner! (conv) Here, when spoken aloud, there would typically be no stress on either word in the non-fronted part of the clause – we had. By contrast, in most of the examples of fronting above there would typically be focus on the non-fronted part of the clause, often the verb, as well.

Predicative fronting with subject-verb inversion. Fronting of predicatives may be accompanied by inversion of subject and verb. Fronting of predicatives with inversion of subject and verb is more common than without. The subject is usually not light in weight (i.e. not a pronoun).Subject predicatives in initial position generally contain an element of comparison with respect to the preceding context which forms a cohesive link. The predicative is given in bold and the inverted subject placed in [] in the examples below: The hens in the next garden: their droppings are very good dressing. Best of allthough are [the cattle], especially when they are fed on those oilcakes. (fict) Far more serious were [the severe head injuries]; in particular a bruising of the brain. (news) But time-wise the gap between them may well be much more important than the time-span between them. <.. .> Even more important,perhaps, is [the realisation that all through this long history, the environmental belts have hardly changed their positions or their nature]. (acad) In the last example, for instance, the comparative even more important implies than this, where this links anaphorically to the preceding context; furthermore, importance is an issue which has already been introduced in the preceding context and is therefore given information. A similar connecting link is found in examples with also and such (in the case of such, the initial element could arguably be analysed as subject): Also popular for travelling are [quilted, overblown pseudo-ski jackets in pink or blue that look like duvets rampant]. (news) Under stress, Sammler believed, the whole faltered, and parts (follicles, for instance) became conspicuous. Suchat least was [his observation]. (fict) It's rotten luck for a prolific writer of talent to be known for only one work, a masterpiece which overshadows any later writing. Suchwas [the fate of Stella Gibbons]. (news) The reference to the preceding context may also be made through a definite noun phrase expressing given information: A group of councillors, along with council officials from North Down, recently met with representatives from the Board to discuss the move. Present at the meetingwere [outgoing Mayor Ellie McKay, deputy mayor Jane Copperd (news) <.. .> are noted in a number of research reports. Not least among these reportsare [those of Brake (1980), Rudduck and Hopkins (1984), <...>] (acad) The organization of these examples is in agreement with the information principle, opening with a reference to what is already known (the meeting and the existence of reports) and ending with the introduction of new information (the identity of those present at the meeting or the specific reports).