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LING3350 – Structure of English Lecture 1 Introduction LING3350 Structure of English is essentially about the sentence-level grammar of the English language, or English syntax. This course deals with the analysis of sentence constituents, and the way they interact to form sentences. The course also considers some of the most common types of sentences in English, and provides an analytical approach to their structure. When taking this course, it would be necessary to bear in mind that linguistics is a big and complex domain of science, minimally involving the following subfields (each with its own specific topic area): phonetics/phonology: speech sounds morphology: internal structure of words syntax: internal structure of sentences semantics: language meaning More broadly, linguistics also includes a number of related fields of study: psycholinguistics: the nature of mental processing in language acquisition and language use sociolinguistics: the role of language in determining social/cultural/ethnic identity neurolinguistics: brain areas and neural networks involved the processing of language stimuli applied linguistics: language teaching/learning, language testing, translation/interpreting, language policies, etc. LING3350 Structure of English is specifically concerned with English syntax, i.e., with the way sentences are constructed, with how various sentence components (such as words and phrases) interact in order to form sentences. We’re only going to talk about the syntactic structure of one language— English. In terms of their sentence structure, other languages can differ considerably from English, at least on the surface. It is important to bear LING3350

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this in mind if you are a teacher, or a speech pathologist, or a linguist—in your work you might well encounter people who are native speakers of another language with quite a different structure, and this, in turn, may affect how they speak English. Language as an infinite resource Human language is an exceptionally complicated system whose operation involves extremely complex and abstract principles—so complex that we still can’t claim to understand them properly. As importantly, language is an extraordinarily rich and creative system: we could describe it as an infinite resource of meaning. Nowadays, it is in fact a standard assumption that human language has the capacity to produce a practically infinite number of meaningful new combinations of words. This is clearly reflected in the way we use language: even in the most ordinary circumstances we almost never produce sentences which are absolutely the same as sentences we have heard or produced before. Almost any sentence we produce is to some degree different from what we (or anyone else) have ever produced. A former linguistics professor from this University used to illustrate the amazing productive potential of language in the following way: go to the University library, randomly select one section of the library, then randomly select a row, then randomly select a book, then randomly select one page of the book, then randomly put your finger anywhere on that page and read the sentence that the finger is pointing to. Then try and find absolutely the same sentence on the same page or the same book or any book on the same row or any book in the same section or any book in the whole library, and he was prepared to bet his last dollar that you would be unable to find the same sentence anywhere in the whole library! Nowadays we have an even more compelling way of illustrating this. As you are probably well aware, Google searches scan literally billions of web pages. Let’s try search for an exact match for any of the sentences in these lecture notes (you can do this by inserting a sentence in quotation marks). Let’s search for an exact match of the sentence “Nowadays we have an even more compelling way of illustrating this”. What do we get? Not a single hit. Now let’s do this with another sentence, e.g. “you can do this by inserting a sentence in quotation marks”. Not a single hit again! This exact sentence was not found on any one of the billions of web pages Google searched through!

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In view of language’s extraordinary productivity, one of the greatest challenges for linguistics (as the science of language) has been to propose analytical principles which would allow us to analyse any grammatical sentence that any speaker can produce. In a somewhat limited way this is what we would be trying to achieve in this class: to provide you with the conceptual knowledge and the analytical principles which would enable you to understand the syntactic structure of types of sentences and phrases which you have not previously seen. Course objectives: After completing this course you should be able to:  understand the internal structure of simple and some more complex sentences (including word classes and phrase structure);  analyse sentences in terms of their constituent structure;  understand the differences between simple and complex sentences;  understand grammatical relations – the way in which different parts of a sentence relate to each other, and  apply grammatical knowledge to the analysis of texts. Analysis of Syntax In linguistics, and particularly in the field of syntax, there are many different views on major and minor issues and a great variety of different terms. This class cannot present all of these views, and it would be counterproductive to do so at this stage. Therefore we will look at a particular analysis of the structure of English, with an associated set of terminology; please bear in mind that the specific analysis we will be working with is by far not the only analysis used by linguists to analyse syntactic structures, but the essential principles on which this analysis is built are common to, and widely accepted within, contemporary linguistics. In our discussions of English syntax we will also make regular references to the analysis used in the NSW K-6 Curriculum. Often the differences between them are only minor and superficial, relating mainly to choice of terms for items (this is also true of other different linguistic analyses). I’ll try and point out where the differences have deeper implications.

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Textbook There’s no textbook for this course, and in fact no course notes either. I will, however, place my powerpoints on Blackboard each week before the class time. Full lecture notes will be placed on Blackboard before assignments are due. Sources that can be used as resources are Rediscover Grammar by David Crystal, and Contemporary Linguistics by O’Grady, Dobrovolsky & Katamba. Note that on some subjects, material presented by these authors may differ from what is said in class. For the purposes of assessment the final word is what is said in class, and not what is in found in those texts. As a word of warning, due to the fact that there are so many different analyses and terms, it may be counterproductive and confusing at this point to look at other syntax textbooks and grammars of English. This, of course, does not mean that at some later stage you may not want to compare the analysis given here with some other ones, but rather that it is better to avoid it at the moment. Educated adults (such as yourselves) sometimes have strong preconceived ideas with respect to what grammar is about. These ideas are often a reflection of the exposure to grammar (or lack thereof) that students have received in their school years. While such preconceived idea may not necessarily be wrong, I would encourage you to approach this course with an open mind and in some cases be even prepared to give up previously developed linguistic concepts. Assessment The assessment for this class is as follows: 3 assignments, at 20% each and a final exam at 40%. The assignments will become available on Blackboard approximately two weeks before they are due, according to the timetable in the Course Outline (see also the Schedule in Blackboard). The assessment tasks in both the assignments and the exam will involve the syntactic analysis of different sentences and phrases. In view of language’s immense productivity and variety, successful performance on these tasks would be impossible without a good understanding of the linguistic concepts and analytical principles introduced in class as part of the lectures. LING3350

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Basic concepts Sentence constituents When we analyse the structure of sentences, we are primarily interested in the different kinds of units that go together to form sentences; we call these units constituents. Many of these constituents are what we call phrases. Please bear in mind that the linguistic concept of phrase is somewhat different to the everyday meaning of the word ‘phrase’. The latter refers to a relatively stable combination of words used to express a specific meaning (e.g. ‘sleight of hand’); ‘phrase’ in its everyday meaning must involve at least two words. The linguistic term phrase is used to refer to a syntactic unit/constituent; as we are bound to find out very soon, a linguistic phrase can consist of a single word. A lot more will be said about constituents/phrases in week 3 (and thereafter). Phrases go together to make sentences or it is probably more precise to say clauses. We’ll discuss the distinction between clauses and sentences later. Phrases in turn, for the most part, consist of words, and are named after different kinds of words: we thus have noun phrases (NPs), verb phrases (VPs), etc. Most of this you will remember from 1000 level courses. The NSW Syllabus notion of phrase is somewhat different from the linguistic one, and I’ll make comments on this as we go along. Let us start then by talking about the different kinds of words. Word Classes (Parts of Speech) Words are the most basic unit of language—sentences consist of words and combinations of words. One of the first things we learn about language, however, is that its words are not all of the same type/category. Words differ in terms of their meaning, their grammatical features, the way they interact with other words, their function in the sentence. Since ancient times scholars have classified words into a number of different types/categories. These types have traditionally been called parts of speech. A more recent term for them is word classes. One key distinction is between content words and function words. It relates to the type of meaning a word can express. Content words are typically used to refer to objects/actions/properties in the world around LING3350

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us—they have their own lexical (or referential) meaning which in most cases can be clearly described and defined. Take the word ‘table’, for instance. We can define it in terms of some of the physical properties of the object this word refers to—flat horizontal surface, four legs. We can also describe its function—to eat meals at, etc. Content words are also described as open class words, because there is quite a lot of them (possibly in the millions) and new words are continuously created and added to them. Function words, on the other hand, have little or no lexical meaning of their own. Take the definite article ‘the’, for instance. What does ‘the’ mean? Can its meaning (whatever that is) be described in the same way as we did with ‘table’? The answer is obviously No. Function words are typically used to perform various grammatical functions and their meaning is entirely, or almost entirely, grammatical. When we attach the definite article ‘the’ to a noun like ‘car’ we do this to assign definiteness to that noun (e.g., indicate familiarity with this object). Function words are a closed class category of words, because they involve a relatively small number of members—in the low hundreds at the most. Their number remains fixed (no new members are created). English function words include: articles: a/an, the demonstratives: this, that, these, those quantifiers: all, each, every, many, … pronouns: personal: I, we, you, he, she, it, they, … reflexive: -self/-selves relative: who, which interrogative: who, which, what possessives:

my, your, his, her, their, …

auxiliary verbs modal: primary: coordinators: subordinators:

can/could, may/might, will/would, shall/should, must be, have, do and, but, or, … that, although, because, since, …

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Function words are among the most frequently used words in a language, any language. Content words are divided among several major lexical classes, incl. nouns:

table, house, devotion, infinity, ...

verbs:

drive, understand, arrive, ...

adjectives:

nice, ugly, fluent, …

adverbs:

completely, very, …

prepositions:

at, in, on, under, through, of, about, along, ...

Please note that many grammars describe prepositions as function words. This is because they involve a relatively small (and fixed) number of items, and also because their meaning is quite hard to describe. That said, most prepositions do have some referential meaning (for instance, denoting spatial or temporal relations among objects) and for the purposes of this course we will treat them as one of the lexical classes, alongside nous, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. The distinction between content and function words can be illustrated with reference to the use of the verbs ‘be’, ‘have’ and ‘do’ which we defined as primary auxiliary verbs (in other words, as a category of function words). Thus in a sentence like Bill has arrived “has” performs a purely grammatical function and has no referential/lexical content. We can easily come up with numerous examples involving all three primary auxiliaries: Bill is smiling. Bill did (not) know. Importantly, all three primary auxiliaries have lexical equivalents which have their own lexical/referential meaning. In other words, ‘be’, ‘have’ and ‘do’ can be content words and when they are, they are used as a main verb in the sentence: Bill has a car. Bill is in the room.

(meaning—Bill possesses a car) (meaning—Bill occupies a position in the room) Bill did the assignment. (meaning—Bill completed/finished the assignment) LING3350

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We can in fact have each as both a primary auxiliary and a main verb in the same sentence: Bill is being clever. Bill has had a curious experience. Bill did (not) do the assignment. Returning to the lexical classes, it is not always obvious which lexical class a word belongs to. Word classes have traditionally been defined in a number of different ways: semantically (the word’s meaning), morphologically (internal structure of the word), syntactically (the word’s position in the sentence and its relationship with other sentence constituents), and functionally (the function it performs). There isn’t always complete agreement about which lexical class particular words belong to. Linguists have in fact devoted quite considerable efforts to determining the criteria for categorising different words into lexical classes. The NSW Syllabus says that a noun is “a word used to represent people, places, ideas, and things”. Linguists don’t like to use such meaning-based definitions. Even though they have often been used in traditional grammar, meaning can be elusive and as a result meaning-based definitions can be misleading. For example, the traditional definition of a noun is “the name of a person, place, or thing” while that of a verb is “the name of an action” or “a doing word”. However, the word ‘destruction’—which names an action, or the consequence of someone’s actions—is a noun, not a verb. So how then are we going to define nouns and verbs (and other word classes)? Well, we’ll look now at some criteria that will help, but please bear in mind that human language is a very rich and complex system which does not yield itself to easy and/or simple description and categorisation. The criteria for defining word classes that I will propose here work quite well most of the time, but not all of the time. This, unfortunately, is generally the situation with language—there are exceptions to almost all rules/criteria. This makes it more difficult to determine the word class that some words belong to, but this is part of the nature of language—things are not as clear-cut as they are in some other fields. Even though almost every individual criterion that we can apply may have some exceptions, since

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there are several criteria for most word classes, with a combination of criteria you’ll be able to figure out the word class of almost all words. Generally, linguistics—the scientific study of language—has been able to demonstrate that it may be possible to deal in a consistent and principled way even with exceptions. Nouns A morphological property of nouns is that they (usually) have plural forms, which usually end in -s or -es, e.g. cats, dogs, roses. There is a very productive rule in English converting singular nouns into the plural: N + ‘-s’  plural Some nouns have irregular plurals, e.g. cacti is the plural of cactus, children is the plural of child, but these are still plural forms. With a couple of nouns, the plural form is the same as the singular form, e.g. sheep, but it is still a plural form, since it still means more than one – as in “I saw several sheep in the paddock”. There are however some nouns that don’t have plurals—more accurately they do, but the meaning is changed. There are two groups of nouns that don’t typically have plurals: non-count nouns and proper nouns. Count and Non-Count Nouns Many nouns name objects that you can count, for example 1 cat, 2 cats, 1 language, 47 languages. However, some nouns cannot be counted and cannot take a plural marker, for example you cannot say * 3 furnitures or *2 butters. Of course you can say 3 pieces of furniture and 2 slabs of butter, but then you are pluralising piece and slab, not furniture and butter. Nouns of this sort are called, non-count nouns or mass nouns, as opposed to count nouns like cat, and language. Crystal (p. 120) says that “Non-count nouns refer to an undifferentiated mass or notion, such as butter, music, and advice” There are some variations on these exceptions. There are in fact times when non-count nouns take plural endings, but as was mentioned before, there will be a change of meaning. You could

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perhaps say “I tried 5 cheeses tonight” but what you really mean is that you tried 5 different kinds of cheese. You could also say “I have sands from all over the world”, by which you mean that you have varieties of sand from all over the world, or something like that. There are also some expressions like the snows of Kilimanjaro and the sands of time, but these are a sort of fixed expression, often invoking a special (e.g. metaphorical) meaning, as is the case with the latter. Beer, as an example, is in principle a non-count noun, but you can say I had 3 beers last night. It is possible here that you could mean you had three bottles, or cans, or glasses of beer, or, you could mean that you had three different brands of beer. Here we could say that you are using a non-count noun as a count noun, but this seems to occur only with certain non-count nouns. For example, you could not say *I had two milks’ yesterday with the meaning that you had two glasses or cartons of milk. Even ‘I had two wines’ last night sounds a little odd, unless you mean you had two different kinds of wine. Common and Proper Nouns Count and non-count nouns together form the group of nouns called common nouns. Opposed to these are proper nouns (or proper names), which name particular people and places. Examples of proper nouns are Australia, Barack Obama, Newcastle, Kevin Rudd, and North Sydney. As the NSW Syllabus points out, proper nouns begin with a capital letter. Note that some proper nouns consist of more than on...