Lecture 2 - Summary

Levels of description I

1. The rank scale

Five different types of units have to be recognized in our account of English grammar. Together, these units form the so-called rank scale:

	sentence
	clause
	phrase
	word
	morpheme

The rank scale principle:

Each unit in the rank scale (except the morpheme) is made up of one or more units from the next lower rank.

This means that grammatical constructions are hierarchical (cf. the relationship between e.g. university - faculty - department or book - chapter - paragraph). However, grammatical constructions differ from other hierarchical structures in that they admit rank shift:

Rank shift:

A unit (above morpheme rank) is used as part of another unit of the same or lower rank; it is thus shifted down the rank scale and is treated as if it were a unit of lower rank.

Examples:

the flowers in the garden are beautiful: the subject noun phrase (in italics) contains a rankshifted phrase (bold italics)

the flowers that grow in the garden are beautiful: the subject noun phrase (in italics) contains a rankshifted clause (bold italics)

2. Morphemes

A morpheme is the smallest meaning-bearing unit in the grammatical system; it can be represented as a linguistic sign made up of a content side (meaning) and an expression side (form) (cf. lecture 1).

Morpheme types:

lexical (e.g. dog, chase) v. grammatical (e.g. un-, be-, -ly, -s)
root (free morpheme) unknown
affix (bound morpheme):

prefix

unknown

suffix

unknown

inflectional (does not change the word class membership of the inflected word, e.g. dogs, children) v. derivational (normally the addition of such a morpheme results in a word of a different word class from the original one, e.g. badly, childish; occasionally, however, only the meaning of the word is affected: lioness, smallish).

3. Words

For the time being, we will regard as a word whatever is written between two spaces (or between a space and a punctuation mark) in a sentence. A more complex view of what a word can be will be taken up in lectures 11 and 12.

We make a major distinction between lexical words and function words. Their most important differences can be summarized thus:

Lexical words	Function words
Words with inherent sense.	Words with little or no sense.
Form open classes (new words can easily be created).	Form closed classes (new words are rarely created).
Form classes with many members.	Form classes with few members.
Short or long, simple or complex.	Typically short and simple (but note complex prepositions such as because of, in view of)
Many lexical words are restricted to a particular type of discourse (e.g. spoken v. written).	Most function words are not restricted to a particular type of discourse (although some function words are more common in formal written discourse, e.g. whilst, in view of)

A few definitions related to meaning:

Sense: the intrinsic meaning of a lexical word, what the word denotes.
Reference: the relationship between a word or phrase and that which it is used to represent (refer to) in a given speech situation.
Deictic words: words (used about people, place and time) whose meaning is determined by aspects of the speech situation, e.g. I ('the speaker'), you ('the addressee'), here ('where the speaker is'), now ('the moment of utterance').

The following are the classes of lexical words and function words that EGTU recognizes in Modern English:

Lexical word classes	Function word classes
nouns	determiners
verbs	pronouns (personal, relative, etc.)
adjectives	auxiliary verbs
adverbs	prepositions
	co-ordinating conjunctions
	subordinating conjunctions
	existential there
	dummy it
	the negator not
	the infinitive marker to

Word classes can be characterized in terms of meaning (semantically) and in terms of their possible function(s) in grammatical constructions (syntactically), as well as in terms of their possible inflection and/or derivation (morphologically). Some important characteristics of the lexical word classes are shown in the following table (not an exhaustive list):

	Semantic	Syntactic	Morphological
Noun	Denotes concrete entity (e.g. dog) or abstract notion (e.g. idea)	Functions as Head of NP	Inflected for number and case
Verb	Denotes action (e.g. chase) or state (e.g. believe)	Functions as Head of VP	Inflected for tense
Adj.	Denotes quality that can be ascribed to an entity (e.g. good)	Functions as Head of AdjP, Modifier in NP	Inflected for comparison
Adv.	Denotes degree of quality (e.g. very good), circumstances (e.g. Come back soon!), attitudes (e.g. Fortunately, we can try again); establishes link between sentences (e.g. however, moreover)	Functions as Head of AdvP, Modifier in AdjP and AdvP	Inflected for comparison (e.g. faster); derived from Adj. by adding -ly (e.g. quickly). In many cases no morphological characteristics (e.g. perhaps)

4. Phrases

A phrase is a construction made up of one or more words which together form a unit.

Five different phrase types have to be recognized in English grammar; in four of these, we find a lexical word as head, i.e. the central word in the phrase:

Phrase	Standard abbreviation	Abbreviation used in EGTU	Head
Noun phrase	NP	nounp	Noun
Verb phrase	VP	verbp	Verb
Adjective phrase	AdjP	adjp	Adjective
Adverb phrase	AdvP	advp	Adverb
Prepositional phrase	PP	prep.p	---

Note that a prepositional phrase such as after the concert lacks a head; instead, the phrase is made up of two equally indispensable elements, namely a preposition (after) and a complement (in this case a noun phrase, the concert).

The elements in a phrase can be related to each other in the following ways:

co-ordination involves elements of equal status:

The boys and girls were all on their way to school.

a cheap but sturdy

bookcase

before and after the meal

between May and August

subordination involves elements of unequal status and can be of two types:

modification is the relation between a modifier (a syntactically optional element) and a head that we can find in noun phrases, adjective phrases and adverb phrases:

red

_]modifier

roses

_]head

people

_]head

in the street

_]modifier

very

_{]modifier [}

happy

_]head

quite

_]modifier
[

often

_]head

complementation is the relation between a complement (often a syntactically obligatory element) and a head that we can find in adjective phrases and adverb phrases:

(She is)

fond

_]head

of children

_]compl

(She lives)

far

_{]head [}

from here

_]compl

(I'm)

sorry

_{]head [}

(that) I spoke

_]compl

not

(I'm)

afraid

_{]head [}

(that) I can't help you

_]compl

As a rule of thumb, all degree expressions (very, quite, fairly, rather, enough) and descriptive adverbs (surprisingly, remarkably, etc.) function as modifiers in AdjP's and AdvP's; all other expressions added to the head function as complements.

4.1 Noun phrases

A noun phrase is a grammatical construction which can be used in a text (spoken or written) to refer to a person, animal, concrete object or abstract phenomenon in the outside world, e.g. a girl, five horses, my house, an outburst of anger.

A noun phrase is constructed according to the following pattern (with a few examples):

determiner	+	(premodifier(s))	+	head	+	(postmodifier(s))
the				girl		in the blue dress
the		blue		dress
a		very old		story
a		silly₁ old₂		story

The brackets here indicate that the modifiers are optional elements in the noun phrase, whereas the determiner and the head are obligatory.¹ There can, furthermore, be more than one premodifier or postmodifier, but only one determiner and one head.

In addition, it is also possible for a noun phrase to have a split modifier (also called discontinuous modifier), which has one part before the head of the noun phrase, and another part after it. The modifier itself is typically an adjective phrase made up of head + complement. In some cases the whole adjective phrase can be placed as a postmodifier in the noun phrase instead:

a different result from yours (split modifier)

a result different from yours (postmodifier)

A typical noun phrase has a noun as its head (noun-headed noun phrase), as in the examples above. However, a noun-headed noun phrase can usually be replaced by a pronoun, in which case we say that the pronoun makes up a pronoun-headed noun phrase:

The girl in the blue dress
She

opened the door.

Some pronoun-headed noun phrases can also include postmodifiers: you at the back, we who know him, he who is without guilt, something that just occurred to me.

Noun phrase structure will be discussed in greater detail in lectures 13 and 14.

Note

¹ In Table 2a (p. 19, EGTU), the reader is given the impression that it is possible to construct noun phrases without a determiner. In chapter 5, however, the authors will introduce the zero article for such cases, thus making the determiner an obligatory element. This will be discussed further in lecture 15. Back