grammatical foundations

Grammatical Functions

In (49) the situation is exactly like the subject of the finite clause and the expletive subject must be present. In (50) however, the subject is obligatorily absent, though it is clear that the clause is interpreted as though Terry is the subject: the one who is escaping. We will investigate these observations later in this book. For now, however, what all this shows is that subjects are treated rather differently from other arguments from a grammatical point of view.

Semantically, the treatment of subjects is not quite so clear-cut. It is a traditional point of view that the subject names what the sentence is about, with the rest of the sentence (traditionally called the predicate) saying something about the subject. So it is claimed that a sentence such as (51) is about Simon and what is said about him is that he ate the sandwich:

(51)Simon ate the sandwich

However, although this may be true for a lot of sentences, there are many occasions when it is not so. For example, sentences with expletive subjects could hardly be claimed to be about the subject as otherwise they would not be about anything at all. Moreover, other sentences can just as easily be said to be about arguments other than the subject:

(52)a as for your claim that you are Superman, I don’t believe it b Q: what’s up with Amanda?

A:the teacher just failed her

In (52a) the subject is I, but it is clear that the sentence is not about me but the dubious claim. The answer given in (52b) has the teacher as the subject, but given the context of the question, we see that the sentence is about Amanda, the referent of her, which is a complement. Therefore the traditional approach to the subject is highly problematic and will not be adopted here.

The other semantic aspect of the subject concerns its interpretation as an argument of the verb. This is also very complex, but less doubtful than the claim that the subject is what the sentence is about. When there is a meaningful subject of a verb with two or more arguments, the subject is interpreted as a specific argument, and we do not just interpret it as any one of the possible arguments:

(53)Henry hit Thomas

The verb hit has two arguments: the one who does the hitting, the agent, and the one who gets hit, the patient. But (53) is unambiguous: it must be interpreted with Henry as the agent and Thomas as the patient. Indeed, agent is a very typical -role for a subject to have. Experiencer is also a typical subject -role:

(54)Simone sensed a problem

This does not mean to say that we never have any other kind of subject however, as it is possible to have patient and theme subjects:

(55)a the letter arrived late b a problem was sensed

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However, it might be claimed that these are special cases (the nature of their status will be discussed in a later chapter) and that the typical position for such arguments is not the subject.

Further problems for a simple relationship between subjects and thematic interpretation can be seen in examples such as the following:

(56)a Fred fears heights

b heights frighten Fred

In both these cases, the argument Fred is interpreted as experiencer and in (56a) the experiencer is the subject, as would be expected. However, this is not the case in (56b). We see then that the relationship between thematic interpretation and grammatical position is a complex business. We will not go into the matter here as we lack the means to do so. We will return to the issue in a subsequent chapter.

One last point to mention about subjects is that although all the cases we have so far dealt with have involved a DP subject, it is possible to find other kinds of phrases and even clauses in subject positions:

(57)a [PP down there] would be a good place to hide

b [S that I don’t know the answer] should not be surprising c [AP ill] was how I was feeling at the time

d [VP run away] is what I advise you to do

Clearly some of these sentences have a special status in one sense or another and it is certainly not typical to find AP or VP subjects. They are included here however to provide a fuller picture of the set of possibilities.

2.2The object

So far we have concentrated on the subject, but what about any other argument: do they have special statuses? One other argument, known as the object, might be claimed to have special features with regard to all other types of complement.

The object is a DP complement and like other complements it follows the verb:

(58)a Peter put [DP the bike] [PP in the shed]

c Gary gave [DP the voucher] [PP to the attendant]

Note that the object has a privileged position in relation to the other complements in that it must immediately follow the verb:

(59)a *Peter put [PP in the shed] [DP the bike]

c *Gary gave [PP to the attendant] [DP the voucher]

Another fact about objects is that they are arguments which may undergo certain syntactic processes and so seem to be singled out by these. For example, in a passive sentence, the subject may go missing (it may be present inside a by-phrase, but we will not deal with this at the moment). In this case, the argument which would normally be interpreted as the object appears in the subject position. We may interpret this as a process which ‘moves’ the object into subject position:

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(60)a we all saw Wendy b Wendy was seen –

This process is restricted to object and does not happen to other kinds of complements:

(61)a [DP the bike] was put [PP in the shed]

b [DP the voucher] was given [PP to the attendant] a *[PP in the shed] was put [DP the bike]

c *[PP to the attendant] was given [DP the voucher]

We have also seen that the object is a more limited complement in some ways. For example, Verbs and Prepositions have objects, but nouns and adjectives do not:

(62)a see [DP the sights] b to [DP the castle]

c *a picture [DP his mother] d *regretful [DP his deeds]

The object following the preposition is called a prepositional object.

In the same way that subjects tend to have a Case form associated with them, so too do objects. The object, when it sits in object position and is not moved to the subject position as in (60), always appears in its accusative Case:

(63)a I saw him/her/them/etc. b *I saw he/she/they/etc.

The prepositional object also must appear in the accusative form:

(64)a I looked at him/her/them/etc. b * I looked at he/she/they/etc.

Prepositional objects also sometimes undergo the same movements that verbal objects do, for example in passive structures:

(65)a the doctor looked at her

b she was looked at – by the doctor

However, this phenomenon is complex and not all objects of prepositions can undergo this movement:

(66) *the doctor was stood near by the patient (cf. the patient stood near the doctor)

Quite what determines when a prepositional object may undergo this movement and when it may not is not well understood. It seems to have something to do with the relationship between the verb that is passivised and the preposition whose object moves: the closer the relationship, the more likely the object will be able to move. Thus the at preposition in (65) is closely related to the verb, heading the PP complement of this verb. The near preposition in (66) does not head a PP complement, but a PP that modifies the verb. Modification is not such a close relationship as it is not indicated in a head’s lexical entry, but can be fairly freely be added to any appropriate head.

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The clausal complement of certain verbs have some properties in common with objects. For example, these clauses can undergo movement in passive structures:

(67)a everyone believed [that Bill belly-dances]

b [that Bill belly-dances] was believed – by everyone

Presumably this is one of the reasons why verbs which have clausal complements have traditionally been considered as transitive verbs. There are, however, a number of differences between clausal and DP complements. One is that clauses obviously do not appear in accusative Case. However, given that it is only the pronouns in English that demonstrate Case distinctions, this is not surprising. Another difference is that not all clausal complements can undergo passive movement:

(68)a * [that Charley cheated] was considered by everyone b * [if Kevin likes coffee] was wondered by Wendy

Moreover, even in those cases where it can take place, the movement is an optional one:

(69)a [that students attend exams] is expected by the university b it is expected [that students attend exams] by the university

DP objects always move in passive structures:

(70)a Fiona was found by the search party

b * it was found Fiona by the search party

Given the differences between clausal and DP objects, we will, in this book, reserve the term object for DP complements alone and will not extend it to clausal complements as is sometimes done.

Overall, we see that the object receives a special treatment in the grammar, though it is treated very differently to subjects.

2.3Indirect object

Some verbs can have more than one object:

(71)Lucy lent Larry a lasso

This construction is known as the double object construction, for obvious reasons. Interestingly, the two objects do not have the same properties. For one thing, their

orders are fixed in Standard English, though there are dialectal differences, especially if either or both objects are expressed by a pronoun:

We call the object that immediately follows the verb in Standard English the indirect object and the one that follows this, the direct object. The indirect object is more often than not assigned the goal or beneficiary -role by the verb while the direct object bears the theme -role.

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Restricting ourselves to the discussion of the standard dialect, we find the two objects also differ in terms of passive movement. Only the indirect object can undergo this movement:

(73)a Larry was lent a lasso b * a lasso was lent Larry

The direct object can only undergo passive movement if the goal argument is expressed as a PP, in what is often called the dative alternate or the dative construction:

(74)a Lucy lent a lasso to Larry b a lasso was lent to Larry

The notions of subject, direct object and indirect object are known as grammatical functions. It is fairly clear that they are defined as positions in the English sentence, in that any element which sits in those positions will be interpreted as subject and object respectively, no matter if this makes sense or not:

(75)a Eddy ate his dinner b ?his dinner ate Eddy

The fact that people eat dinners and that dinners do not usually eat people is irrelevant as far as the interpretation of these sentences is concerned. What is important is which position each argument occupies and hence which grammatical function each argument has, and this alone is what determines how to interpret the sentence.

3 Testing for Structure

3.1Substitution

In the previous sections we have presented the sentence as structured into a subject DP followed by a VP, and the VP as structured into the verb and its complements:

the china-shop owner

We developed this structure by noting certain distributional patterns, such as the subject the bull could be replaced by the pronoun it and the VP worried the china-shop owner could be replaced by the verb charged:

(77)it charged

As we claimed, the distribution of an element shows us that it has a certain status in the sentence and all elements which have the same distribution will have the same status. This is why we could use observations about distribution to demonstrate the structure of the sentence: the fact that the bull has the same distribution as it shows that

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the bull is a constituent, specifically a DP as, as argued above, pronouns are determiners. Furthermore, the fact that worried the china-shop owner has the same distribution as charged shows that the former is also a constituent, specifically a VP as charge is a verb. In other words, we can use distributional observations such as these to test the structure of any sentence: for any part of the sentence, if we find it distributes like some element that we know what its categorial status is, then we can assume that that part of the sentence has the same status as that element.

Let us consider another sentence to show how this might work:

(78)the bishop that just left was hiding a gun under his mitre

At first glance, you might be tempted to claim that the subject of this sentence is the bishop. But note that this cannot be replaced by a pronoun, though the whole string the bishop that just left can be:

(79)a *he that just left was hiding a gun under his mitre b he was hiding a gun under his mitre

Thus we conclude that the subject of this sentence is the bishop that just left, not just the bishop.

The rest of the sentence was hiding a gun under his mitre can be replaced by a single verb:

(80)[the bishop that just left] disappeared

Hence we may assume that this part of the sentence constitutes the VP:

Turning to the VP, we note that the word a gun can also be replaced by a pronoun it and hence this is also a DP – this time it is a DP complement, i.e. the object:

(82)[DP the bishop that just left] was hiding it under his mitre

Furthermore, the part of the sentence his mitre can also be replaced by a pronoun and so this must be a DP too:

(83)a [DP the bishop that just left] [VP was hiding [DP a gun] under it]

b [DP the bishop that just left] [VP was hiding [DP a gun] under [DP his mitre]

Next, we note that under his mitre can be replaced by the word there:

(84)[DP the bishop that just left] [VP was hiding [DP a gun] there]

This shows us that the string of words, under his mitre forms a constituent of the sentence, but the category of this constituent is not so easy to determine from the category of its replacement. We might suppose that there is a pronoun and therefore it replaces DPs, but this constituent is made up of a preposition (under) followed by a DP (his mitre) which does not distribute like a DP:

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(85)a *[under his mitre] disappeared

b *the bishop was hiding [under his mitre]

(85b) is ungrammatical if we take under his mitre to name what it is that is being hidden, equivalent to a gun in (78) (though it is grammatical with the interpretation that it names the place where the bishop was hiding! In this case it does not function as the object and hence is not distributing like one). We called this kind of constituent a prepositional phrase above and we will continue to assume this and therefore we can conclude that there is in fact a pronominal preposition phrase as this is what it seems to replace.

Turning to the structural position of the auxiliary verb was note also that the part of the VP that follows this can also be replaced by a verb:

(86)[DP the bishop that just left] was smiling

We concluded above that if something can be replaced by a verb it has the status of a VP and hence we have one VP inside another in this case, which tallies with our description of auxiliary verbs that they take verbal complements.

Putting this together, we have now derived the structure:

Turning to the subject, we note that the part of this DP bishop that just left can be replaced by a single noun:

(88)[DP the impostor] [VP was [VP hiding [DP a gun] [PP under [DP his mitre]]]]

We may conclude, therefore that this part of the structure is also a phrase, presumably a noun phrase, as the word impostor is a noun. This NP is constructed of a noun followed by that just left, which as it is introduced by a complementiser we can conclude is some kind of a clause, though admittedly it doesn’t look much like a clause and a lot more needs to be said to show that it is. For now, let us just accept that it is a clause and stop our analysis at this point. What we have therefore is the following structure:

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his mitre

In our discussion so far we have shown that whole DPs can be replaced by a pronoun and, indeed, that a PP can be replaced by the prepositional ‘pronoun’ there. But for VP we have used intransitive verb to demonstrate the distributional properties of the phrase. Is there a ‘pronoun’ for a VP? I may be that the words do so function as a kind of pronominal replacement for VPs, though its use is a little more restricted than other pronouns:

(90)the bishop hid his gun and the verger did so too

In this example, we have two sentences: the bishop hid his gun; the verger did so too. These two sentences are made into one sentence by placing them either side of the word and. The phenomena is known as coordination, about which we will have more to say in a little while. Given that the words did so in (90) are interpreted as meaning hid his gun, we can see that they replace the VP in the second sentence, forcing this VP to be interpreted the same as the VP of the first sentence. This is similar to the use of the pronoun in the following:

(91)the bishop hid his gun and he jumped into the getaway car

Given this similarity, we might take the words do so to be a pronoun which replaces VPs and hence we can test whether a constituent is a VP by seeing if it can be replaced by do so.

The NP inside the DP may also have a pronominal replacement. Consider the following:

(92)this robbery of a bank was more successful than that one

In this sentence the word one replaces robbery of a bank, which is an NP. Note that it does not replace the whole DP, as do pronouns such as it, that, him, etc. We can therefore claim that one is a pronoun which replaces NPs and hence anything that can be replaced by one is an NP.

Pronominalising adjective phrases is more restricted than the other phrases we have considered. It appears that only APs functioning as predicates can be pronominalised and not those which are modifiers:

(93)a the bishop was guilty and so was the verger b *the guilty bishop and the so verger

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As we can see the pronoun for APs is so, though as it is restricted to predicative APs and it also plays a role in Pronominalising VPs, we might consider it as a general pronoun for replacing predicates. Nevertheless it can still be used as a constituent test as anything that functions as a predicate is a constituent of one type or another.

Finally in this section, let us consider pronouns which replace clauses. In some cases, the pronoun it can be used for this purpose:

(94)they said the bishop robbed the bank, but I don’t believe it

Given that the it stands for the bishop robbed the bank and that this is a clause, this word can be claimed to be a clausal pronoun (as well as a DP pronoun).

The word so can also replace whole clauses:

(95)they said the bishop is dangerous, but I don’t think so

Thus, besides being a general predicative pronoun, so can also be a clausal pronoun. Like other pronouns, then, it can provide us with evidence as to what counts as a constituent in a sentence.

3.2Movement

There are other aspects of distribution we might use to support a structural analysis of a clause. For example, the distribution of an element refers to the set of positions that that element may occupy. Sometimes we can identify a number of positions that an element might be able to occupy in related sentences:

(96)a the policeman searched the bishop b the bishop, the policeman searched

Both of these sentences are grammatical in English, though the second one seems to have a special status and the first is more ‘normal’ in this respect. To start with, the second sentence seems to give a special interpretation to the bishop. The meaning can be understood in a context in which there are a group of people being searched, including the bishop, and these are being searched by various people. We might therefore have an extended context:

(97)the policewoman searched the nun, the chief constable searched the vicar and the bishop, the policeman searched.

We call the element in front of the subject that has this interpretation the topic.

Note that in this case the topic is also interpreted as the object: the one being searched. This is why this structure seems to be special with respect to the one in (96a), where the object has no extra aspects to its interpretation. From a syntactic point of view, the interesting observation is that the topic is a separate position, somewhere in front of the subject. We might account for why the element which sits in this position is interpreted as both the object and the topic by proposing that the object is moved into the topic position:

(98)the bishop, the policeman searched –

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Obviously, such movement processes determine aspects of the distribution of an element: an element which can be moved from one position to another must be able to occupy both positions. Turning this the other way round, something which moves has a certain distribution and we know that anything that has a distribution is a constituent.

It therefore follows that anything that moves is a constituent, and we can use movement phenomena to test assumptions about the structure of a sentence. For example, the movement involved in topicalising the object in (98) can be taken as support that the object is a constituent of this sentence.

In the following sentence we see that the VP can also undergo a similar movement, supporting the claim that the verb and its object form a constituent:

(99)I thought the policeman would search the bishop, and [search the bishop], he did –

Thus these movement facts support the following analysis of the structure of this sentence:

There are many instances of movements to be found in language. One of the most obvious is found in certain questions. Many English questions involve a word like which, what, where, why, etc. at the beginning of the sentence. However, these words have a dual function, being associated with some function within the clause as well as indicating the interrogative status of the clause by appearing at its beginning. For example, in the following the word what is interpreted not only as an interrogative but also as the object of the sentence:

(101)what did they find

One way to account for this interpretation is to claim that the wh-element does not start in the clauseinitial position, but is moved to this position from the object position. In this way we can claim that what IS the object and hence account for its interpretation. The movement may be indicated thus:

(102)what did they find –

These interrogative elements are called wh-elements as they tend to be spelled with the letters w and h at the beginning, though this does not reflect the current pronunciation of these words. In the above example, the wh-element can be categorised as a DP, originating from object position, which is a DP position. We can also find wh-APs and PPs:

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