AS/EN 2710
Lecture 2
Fall 2012
Notes
Discrete combinatorial systems: “A finite number of discrete
elements are sampled, combined, and permuted to create larger
structures with properties that are quite distinct from those of
their elements.” (Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct, 75).
Unlike a mixing system, in which you blend flour, water, salt,
and yeast to create bread, in which no trace of the flour or
water or salt or yeast can be discerned
Parts of speech and roles in sentences
—two overlapping system of taxonomy and description. The
problem of different grammars having somewhat different
labels for some or many of these.
The point here is that the two overlapping systems organize
words and sentence element on two differing principles: what
a word is intrinsically and what a word does in the context of
other words in a sentence—not unlike the gap between the
intrinsic you and the you that plays one of a series of socially
mandated roles in the context of others.
Nomenclature: Several ways of naming
Form classes versus structure classes; open and closed classes of
words; content vs. architecture.
Form/open/content classes: noun, verb, adjective, adverb
Structure/closed/architecture classes: determiner, auxiliary,
conjunction, preposition, qualifier, pronoun, numeral,
interrogative, expletive, interjection
“Morphological” definition (by form) vs. semantic definition (by
referent)
Morphologically, nouns are not words designating person place
or thing. Rather, Nouns are words that can be made plural,
whether by adding a terminal s or by some more recondite
method and that can be made possessive by some combination
of an s and an apostrophe.
Grammatical/syntactic definition, which refers to the behaviours
of nouns when they are in association with other words in
sentences. Nouns most usually manifest themselves in
sentences in groups of words called noun phrases, though
contemporary grammarians ask us to expand our usual notion
of phrases as consisting of more than one word, to include the
possibility of one-word phrases.
Verbs, which are traditionally said to be words representing an
action or a state, are described morphologically as words that
have tenses, in English, present and past tenses. &, in English
all verbs except the verb “to be” have five forms—base form
(1st person singular present); third person present singular (s
form); simple past tense (ed form); past participle (en form);
present participle (ing form).
Adverbs and adjectives have conventionally been defined as words
that modify verbs and nouns respectively—but, reasonably
enough, structural grammarians noticed that these
conventional works are only portions of these words’ job
descriptions.
Morphologically, adjectives and adverbs are that can be
inflected—that is may be changes by adding suffixes—into
comparative and superlative degrees the er and est forms for
some words and the more most forms for others.
In English, many adverbs are marked by what is called the
derivational suffix “ly.” One can usually transform a word
from one of the other form classes into an adverb by adding an
“ly” (sometimes with adjustments “ily” “ally”)
Modify—This may appear foolish but I think it’s worth pausing to
thing a bit about the word usually used to describe what
adjectives and adverbs do—they modify other words; they are
modifiers—and to think about what it is that the word actually
means—as in “Elvis and Zorro were sent to military school to
get their attitudes modified.” As determiners fix and locate, so
modifiers transform, most often in the direction of specificity,
the words to which they are affixed
Prepositional phrases, allow for the transformation of nouns for
modification, or modifying purposes, that is, into what are
functionally adjectives and adverbs, though K&F will call
them, rightly, adjectivals and adverbials so as to designate
their grammatical/syntactic role while not mistaking that fact
that, in terms of form, the nouns in a prepositional phrase
remain unreconstructedly nouns.
And do recall that a noun following a preposition is the object of
that preposition, which has no impact whatever on nouns,
which have no inflected forms save the plural and the
possessive, but, as we recall from last week, pronouns are
inflected and do have accusation or objective forms and need
to be found in those while dallying in preposition phrases.
The basic structure of the sentence in English—a sentence being a
group of words containing a subject and a predicate. In terms
of forms, or parts of speech, about which we’ve been talking,
the sentence is a union between a noun phrase or its surrogate
and a verb phrase, Which is to say that while the subject may
not always be a noun phrase, the predicate is always a verb
phrase and a sentence has always a complete verb. Otherwise
you’re in that place where the grader may scribble
“fragment!!!!” in the margins.
We in English have a kind of baseline of what Foster Wallace
labels the s.v.o. (subject verb object) because, in simple
sentences at least the subject precedes the predicate and, in the
predicate, the object of the verb follows it
7) Kolln & Funk’s 10 Patterns
Patterns 1-3 revolve around the use of the verb “to be.”
Patterns 4 & 5 are predicated, literally, on “linking verbs” that is,
verbs that require a subject complement (what might have
been called in earlier books a “subjective completion,” a noun
or an adjectival phrase to complete them and are not “to be.”
Pattern 6 is an intransitive verb, requiring no object to complete
its work (though clearly with many verbs intransitivity is a
transitory state—it is a very small stretch to add “their weary
heads” to K&F’s “The students’ rested.” The move from
pattern 6 to 7 is an unwearying one.
Patterns-7-10 are the transitive verb patterns. In each of these the
verb requires an object, though in Patterns 8-10 that object has
company
The more canonical 10 types of sentences:
1) Arugula is on the phone.
NP + be + ADV/TP
2) Arugula is tyrannical.
NP + be + ADJ
3) Arugula is a tyrant.
NP + be + NP1
4) Arugula seems homicidal.
NP + VL + ADJ
5) Arugula became a monster.
NP1 + VL + NP1
6) Arugula snored.
NP + VI
7) Arugula signed the order.
NP1 + VT + NP2
8) Arugula gave the rebels an ultimatum. NP1 + VT + NP2 + NP3
9) Arugula considered the envoy foolish. NP1 + VT + NP2 + ADJ
10) Arugula considered the envoy a fool. NP1 + VT + NP2 + NP2
USAGE MOMENT 2: I thought of enrolling in the Grammar
course but, after going once, I found is was too disinterested.
“In the following sentence the adjective ‘military’ modifies the
noun ‘school.’”
BUT
“Elvis and Zorro were sent to military school to get their attitudes
modified.”
Griselda mordivit Quincam.
Quincam mordivit Griselda.
Mordivit Griselda Quincam.
7) 10 fundamental sentence Patterns
Patterns 1-3 revolve around the use of the verb “to be.”
Patterns 4 & 5 are predicated, literally, on “linking verbs” that is,
verbs that require a subject complement (what might have
been called in earlier books a “subjective completion,” a noun
or an adjectival phrase to complete them and are not “to be.”
Pattern 6 is an intransitive verb, requiring no object to complete
its work (though clearly with many verbs intransitivity is a
transitory state—it is a very small stretch to add “their weary
heads” to K&F’s “The students’ rested.” The move from
pattern 6 to 7 is an unwearying one.
Patterns-7-10 are the transitive verb patterns. In each of these the
verb requires an object, though in Patterns 8-10 that object has
company