CAU, FLHSM
Syntactic Analysis
Professor Abdellah Elhaloui
Exploring Structure II
3 things have been shown so far:
A sentence is NOT just a string of words but a structure.
Some word strings can be shown to be self-contained constituents.
We have seen how Substitution and Displacement (e.g., Movement) can be used as diagnostics
(tests) for constituency.
In this lecture,we want to explore some more diagnostics of constituency:
1. Question Formation
2. Ellipsis
3. Clefting, and
4. Co-ordination
Invent answers for the following questions:
Who have you invited to the party?
Who has invited you to the meeting?
What have you bought?
An Indian meal or fish, which do you prefer?
Compare an interrogative sentence with its canonical counterpart.
What have you bought?
You have bought some apples?
Subject-Aux Inversion (SAI)
In the interrogative sentence, “what” is not placed in its canonical position.
In the interrogative sentence, some information is missing and the speaker wants to know it.
Ask a wh-question about each one of the underlined words:
The customer in the corner will order the drinks before the meal.
What are we asking a question about in each of the following examples:
I think that would be the worst thing in the world for him, a family holiday! What’s he going to do? Sit
on the beach?!
What is Sylvia to do? What are we all mean to do? Hang our cars from the trees? Throw them away?
A: We need fewer people.
B: What would you do? Eliminate them?
Ask a wh-question about each one of the bracketed word strings:
The customer in the corner will order the drinks before the meal.
Is the omitted string of type (1) or type (2):
VP = V + NP
VP = AUX + V + NP
How do you know?
A: The customer in the corner will order the drinks before the meal
B: Are you sure he will before the meal?
A: The customer in the corner will order the drinks before the meal.
B: Are you sure he will?
Clefting is a way of foregrounding the information we want to promote in a sentence while
“backgrounding” another information in the same sentence.
It was the prison chaplain’s wife who first gave me an inlinking for writing.
Paul directed many films, but it is for Westerns that he will be remembered.
Clefting is a way of foregrounding the information we want to promote in a sentence while
backgrounding another information in the same sentence.
It was the prison chaplain’s wife who first gave me an inlinking for writing.
Paul directed many films, but it is for Westerns that he will be remembered.
Which constituents are clefted in the following sentences?
The customer in the corner will order the drinks before the meal.
It is the customer in the corner who will order the drinks before the meal.
It is before the meal that the customer in the corner will order the meal.
It is the drinks that the customer in the corner will order.
Clefting does NOT affect VP but there is a special type of clefting which does: Pseudo-clefting.
Pseudo-clefting
I don’t need the equivalent of another car loan.
What I don’t need is the equivalent of another car loan.
You are seeing the Biblical law of reciprocity in Prince George’s Country.
What you are seeing in Prince George’s country is the Biblical law of reciprocity.
Pseudo-clefting
She needed someone to talk to.
What she needed was someone to talk to.
They will force them underground.
What they will do is force them underground.
Pseudo-clefting
Contacting his relatives will cause mayhem in his family.
What contracting his relatives will do is cause mayhem in his family.
Why is sentence (3) ungrammatical while (1) and (2) grammatical?
What the customer in the corner will do before the meal is order the drinks.
What the customer in the corner will do is order the drinks before the meal.
* What the customer in the corner will do is will order the drinks before the meal.
Identify the highlighted constituent in the following examples.
In the lower 48 states, people consider the deer as pets, so the last thing they would do is eat them.
All Pastor Edgar Chacon wanted to do, he says now, was protect the children.
All we can do is do it well.
Two constituents can be co-ordinated:
The customer in the corner will order the drinks and the dessert before the meal.
1- Say which constituents are coordinated in the following examples.2- Identify the category of each of
the co-ordinated constituents.
Many parents with children in these schools have felt the impact and seen the point.
Jones said urban sprawl and heightened environmental concerns were imposing increased limits on U.S
military activities in Western Europe and driving up costs.
1- Say which constituents are coordinated in the following examples.2- Identify the category of each of
the co-ordinated constituents.
Being in Europe does not tend to mean that public transport is functional, that public health care is not
considered a dangerous pipe-dream, and that education is valued.
Among the larger issues here are why this happened at all, who allowed it to happen and why the law
re-enforcement refused to intervene even after it was clear that a great injustice was occuring.
Summary
Some strings of words are constituents.Here
constituents.Here are the diagnostics we use to check if a string of words is a
constituent:
1. Substitution
2. Displacement
3. Question Formation
4. Clefting
5. Ellipsis
6. Coordination
