Chapter Four
From Word to Text
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• Syntax is the study
of the rules
governing the ways
different constituents
are combined to form
sentences in a
language, or the
study of the
interrelationships
between elements in
sentence structures.
2
1. Syntactic relations
• Syntactic relations can be analysed
into three kinds:
– relations of position
– relations of substitutability
– relations of co-occurrence
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1.1 Relations of Position
• For language to fulfill its
communicative function, it must have a
way to mark the grammatical roles of
the various phrases that can occur in a
clause.
• The boy kicked the ball
NP1
NP2
Subject
Object
4
• Positional relation, or WORD ORDER,
refers to the sequential arrangement of
words in a language.
– If the words in a sentence fail to occur in a
fixed order required by the convention of a
language, one tends to produce an
utterance either ungrammatical or
nonsensical at all.
• For example,
5
• The boy kicked the ball
– *Boy the ball kicked the
– *The ball kicked the boy
• The teacher saw the students
• The students saw the teacher
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• Positional relations are a manifestation
of one aspect of Syntagmatic Relations
observed by F. de Saussure.
– They are also called Horizontal Relations
or simply Chain Relations.
7
• Word order is among the three basic
ways (word order, genetic and areal
classifications) to classify languages in
the world:
– SVO, VSO, SOV, OVS, OSV, and VOS.
– English belongs to SVO type, though this
does not mean that SVO is the only
possible word order.
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1.2 Relation of Substitutability
• The Relation of Substitutability refers to
classes or sets of words substitutable
for each other grammatically in
sentences with the same structure.
– The ______ smiles.
man
boy
girl
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• It also refers to groups of more than
one word which may be jointly
substitutable grammatically for a single
word of a particular set.
strong man
– The tallest boy smiles.
pretty girl
yesterday.
– He went there
last week.
the day before.
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• This is also called
Associative Relations by
Saussure, and Paradigmatic
Relations by Hjemslev.
– To make it more
understandable, they are
called Vertical Relations or
Choice Relations.
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1.3 Relation of Co-occurrence
• It means that words of different sets of
clauses may permit, or require, the
occurrence of a word of another set or
class to form a sentence or a particular
part of a sentence.
– For instance, a nominal phrase can be
preceded by a determiner and adjective(s)
and followed by a verbal phrase.
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• Relations of co-occurrence partly
belong to syntagmatic relations, partly
to paradigmatic relations.
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2. Grammatical construction and its
constituents
2.1 Grammatical Construction
• Any syntactic string of words ranging
from sentences over phrasal structures
to certain complex lexemes.
– an apple
– ate an apple
– Mary ate an apple
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2.2 Constituents and Phrase
Structure
• Constituent is a part of a larger
linguistic unit. Several constituents
together form a construction:
– the girl (NP)
– ate the apple (VP)
– the girl ate the apple (S)
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Immediate Constituent Analysis
(IC Analysis)
The girl ate the apple
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Phrase Structure
S
Tree diagram
NP
Det
VP
N
V
NP
Det
N
The girl ate the apple
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Word-level
Phrasal
N=noun
A=adjective
V=verb
P=preposition
Det=determiner
Adv=adverb
Conj=conjunction
NP=noun phrase
AP=adjective phrase
VP=verb phrase
PP=preposition
phrase
S=sentence or clause
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Bracketing
• Bracketing is not as common in use, but it
is an economic notation in representing the
constituent/phrase structure of a
grammatical unit.
– (((The) (girl)) ((ate) ((the) (apple))))
– [S[NP[Det The][N girl]][VP[V ate][NP[Det the][N apple]]]]
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2.3 Endocentric and Exocentric
Constructions
• Endocentric construction is one whose
distribution is functionally equivalent to
that of one or more of its constituents,
i.e., a word or a group of words, which
serves as a definable centre or head.
– Usually noun phrases, verb phrases and
adjective phrases belong to endocentric
types because the constituent items are
subordinate to the Head.
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21
• Exocentric construction refers to a group of
syntactically related words where none of the
words is functionally equivalent to the group as
a whole, that is, there is no definable “Centre” or
“Head” inside the group, usually including
– the basic sentence,
– the prepositional phrase,
– the predicate (verb + object) construction, and
– the connective (be + complement)
construction.
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• The boy smiled. (Neither constituent
can substitute for the sentence
structure as a whole.)
• He hid behind the door. (Neither
constituent can function as an
adverbial.)
• He kicked the ball. (Neither constituent
stands for the verb-object sequence.)
• John seemed angry. (After division, the
connective construction no longer
exists.)
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2.4 Coordination and Subordination
• Endocentric constructions fall into two
main types, depending on the relation
between constituents:
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Coordination
• Coordination is a common syntactic
pattern in English and other languages
formed by grouping together two or
more categories of the same type with
the help of a conjunction such as and,
but and or .
– These two or more words or phrases or
clauses have equivalent syntactic status,
each of the separate constituents can
stand for the original construction
functionally.
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• Coordination of NPs:
– [NP the lady] or [NP the tiger]
• Coordination of VPs:
– [VP go to the library] and [VP read a book ]
• Coordination of PPs:
– [PP down the stairs] and [PP out the door ]
• Coordination of APs:
– [AP quite expensive] and [AP very beautiful]
• Coordination of Ss:
– [S John loves Mary] and [S Mary loves John
too].
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Subordination
• Subordination refers to the process or
result of linking linguistic units so that
they have different syntactic status,
one being dependent upon the other,
and usually a constituent of the other.
– The subordinate constituents are words
which modify the head. Consequently, they
can be called modifiers.
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• two dogs
Head
• (My brother) can drink (wine).
Head
• Swimming in the lake (is fun).
Head
• (The pepper was) hot beyond
endurance.
Head
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Subordinate clauses
• Clauses can be used as subordinate
constituents. There are three basic
types of subordinate clauses:
– complement clauses
– adjunct (or adverbial) clauses
– relative clauses
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• John believes [that the airplane was invented
by an Irishman]. (complement clause)
• Elizabeth opened her presents [before John
finished his dinner]. (adverbial clause)
• The woman [that I love] is moving to the
south. (relative clause)
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3. Syntactic Function
• The syntactic function shows the
relationship between a linguistic form
and other parts of the linguistic pattern
in which it is used.
– Names of functions are expressed in terms
of subjects, objects, predicators, modifiers,
complements, etc.
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3.1 Subject
• In some languages, subject refers to
one of the nouns in the nominative
case.
• The typical example can be found in
Latin, where subject is always in
nominative case, such as pater and
filius in the following examples.
– pater filium amat (the father loves the son)
– patrum filius amat (the son loves the father)
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• In English, the subject of a sentence is
often said to be the agent, or the doer of
the action, while the object is the person
or thing acted upon by the agent.
– This definition seems to work for these
sentences:
– Mary slapped John. ■ A dog bit Bill.
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• but is clearly wrong in the following
examples:
– John was bitten by a dog.
– John underwent major heart surgery.
• In order to account for the case of
subject in passive voice, we have two
other terms “grammatical subject”
(John) and “logical subject” (a dog).
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• Another traditional definition of the
subject is “what the sentence is about”
(i.e., topic).
• Again, this seems to work for many
sentences, such as
– Bill is a very crafty fellow.
• but fails in others, such as
– (Jack is pretty reliable, but) Bill I don’t
trust.
– As for Bill, I wouldn’t take his promises
very seriously.
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• All three sentences seem to be “about”
Bill; thus we could say that Bill is the
topic of all three sentences.
• The above sentences make it clear that
the topic is not always the grammatical
subject.
• What characteristics do subjects have?
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Word order
• Subject ordinarily precedes the verb in
the statement:
– Sally collects stamps.
– *Collects Sally stamps.
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Pro-forms
• The first and third person pronouns in
English appear in a special form when
the pronoun is a subject, which is not
used when the pronoun occurs in other
positions:
– He loves me.
– I love him.
– We threw stones at them.
– They threw stones at us.
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Agreement with the verb
• In the simple present tense, an -s is
added to the verb when a third person
subject is singular, but the number and
person of the object or any other
element in the sentence have no effect
at all on the form of the verb:
– She angers him.
– They anger him.
– She angers them.
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Content questions
• If the subject is replaced by a
question word (who or what),
the rest of the sentence
remains unchanged, as in
– John stole the Queen’s picture
from the British Council.
– Who stole the Queen’s picture
from the British council?
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
When any other element of the sentence is
replaced by a question word, an auxiliary verb
must appear before the subject.
– What would John steal, if
he had the chance?
– What did John steal from
the British Council?
– Where did John steal the
Queen’s picture from?
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Tag question
• A tag question is used to seek
confirmation of a statement. It always
contains a pronoun which refers back
to the subject, and never to any other
element in the sentence.
– John loves Mary, doesn’t he?
– Mary loves John, doesn’t she?
– *John loves Mary, doesn’t she?
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3.2 Predicate
• Predicate refers to a major constituent
of sentence structure in a binary
analysis in which all obligatory
constituents other than the subject
were considered together.
• It usually expresses actions, processes,
and states that refer to the subject.
– The boy is running. (process)
– Peter broke the glass. (action)
– Jane must be mad! (state)
• The word predicator is suggested for
verb or verbs included in a predicate.
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3.3 Object
• Object is also a term hard to define.
Since, traditionally, subject can be
defined as the doer of the action, object
may refer to the “receiver” or “goal” of
an action, and it is further classified
into Direct Object and Indirect Object.
– Mother bought a doll.
– Mother gave my sister a doll.
IO
DO
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• In some inflecting languages, object is
marked by case labels: the accusative
case for direct object, and the dative
case for indirect object.
– In English, “object” is recognized by
tracing its relation to word order (after the
verb and preposition) and by inflections
(of pronouns).
– Mother gave a doll to my sister.
– John kicked me.
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• Modern linguists suggest that object
refers to such an item that it can
become subject in a passive
transformation.
– John broke the glass.  The glass was
broken by John.
– Peter saw Jane.  Jane was seen by Peter.
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• Although there are nominal phrases in
the following, they are by no means
objects because they cannot be
transformed into passive voice.
– He died last week.
– The match lasted three hours.
– He changed trains at Manchester. (*Trains
were changed by him at Manchester.)
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4. Category
• The term category refers to the defining
properties of these general units:
– Categories of the noun: number, gender,
case and countability
– Categories of the verb: tense, aspect,
voice
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4.1 Number
• Number is a grammatical category used
for the analysis of word classes
displaying such contrasts as singular,
dual, plural, etc.
– In English, number is mainly observed in
nouns, and there are only two forms:
singular and plural, such as dog: dogs.
– Number is also reflected in the inflections
of pronouns and verbs, such as He laughs:
They laugh, this man: these men.
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• In other languages, for example, French,
the manifestation of number can also
be found in adjectives and articles.
– le cheval royal (the royal horse)
– les chevaux royaux (the royal horses)
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4.2 Gender
• Such contrasts as “masculine : feminine :
neuter”, “animate : inanimate”, etc. for
the analysis of word classes.
– Though there is a correlation between
natural gender and grammatical gender, the
assignment may seem quite arbitrary in
many cases.
– For instance, in Latin, ignis ‘fire’ is
masculine, while flamma ‘flame’ is feminine.
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• English gender contrast can only be
observed in pronouns and a small
number of nouns, and, they are mainly
of the natural gender type.
– he: she: it
– prince: princess
– author: authoress
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• In French, gender is
manifested also both
in adjectives and
articles.
– beau cadeau (fine gift)
– belle maison (fine
house)
– Le cadeau est beau.
(The gift is good.)
– La maison est belle.
(The house is
beautiful.)
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• Sometimes gender changes the lexical
meaning as well, for example, in French:
– le poele (the stove)
– la poele (the frying pan)
– le pendule (the pendulum)
– la pendule (the clock)
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4.3 Case
• The case category is used in the
analysis of word classes to identify the
syntactic relationship between words in
a sentence.
– In Latin grammar, cases are based on
variations in the morphological forms of
the word, and are given the terms
“accusative”, “nominative”, “dative”, etc.
– There are five cases in ancient Greek and
eight in Sanskrit. Finnish has as many as
fifteen formally distinct cases in nouns,
each with its own syntactic function.
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• In English, case is a special form of the
noun which frequently corresponds to
a combination of preposition and noun,
and it is realized in three channels:
– inflection
– following a preposition
– word order
• as manifested in
– teacher : teacher’s
– with : to a man
– John kicked Peter : Peter kicked John
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4.4 Agreement
• Agreement (or concord) may be defined
as the requirement that the forms of
two or more words of specific word
classes that stand in specific syntactic
relationship with one another shall also,
be characterized by the same
paradigmatically marked category (or
categories).
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• This syntactic relationship may be
anaphoric, as when a pronoun agrees
with its antecedent,
– Whose is this pen? --Oh, it’s the one I lost.
• or it may involve a relation between a
head and its dependent, as when a verb
agrees with its subject and object:
– Each person may have one coin.
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• Agreement of number between nouns
and verbs:
– This man runs.
– These men run.
The bird flies.
These birds fly.
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5. Phrase, Clause and Sentence
Sentence
Clause
Phrase
Word
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• the three tallest girls
(nominal phrase)
• has been doing
(verbal phrase)
• extremely difficult
(adjectival phrase)
• to the door
(prepositional phrase)
• very fast
(adverbial phrase)
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Clause
Finite
Non-finite
Subject
Object
Infinitive
Adverbial
Relative
Participial
Appositional
Complement
Gerundial
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• The best thing would be to leave early.
• It’s great for a man to be free.
• Having finished their task, they came to help
us.
• John being away, Bill had to do the work.
• Filled with shame, he left the house.
• All our savings gone, we started looking for
jobs.
• It’s no use crying over spilt milk.
• Do you mind my opening the window?
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Sentence: traditional approach
simple
Sentence
complex
non-simple
compound
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Sentence: functional approach
Yes/no
Interrogative
Indicative
whDeclarative
Sentence
Jussive
Imperative
Optative
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Basic sentence types: Bolinger
• Mother fell. (Nominal + intransitive verbal)
• Mother is young. (Nominal + copula +
complement)
• Mother loves Dad. (Nominal + transitive
verbal + nominal).
• Mother fed Dad breakfast. (Nominal +
transitive verbal + nominal + nominal)
• There is time. (There + existential + nominal)
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Basic sentence types: Quirk
• SVC
•
•
•
•
•
•
Mary is kind.
a nurse.
SVA Mary is here.
in the house.
SV
The child is laughing.
SVO Somebody caught the ball.
SVOC We have proved him wrong.
a fool.
SVOA I put the plate on the table.
SVOO She gives me expensive presents.
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6. Recursiveness
• Recursiveness mainly means that a
phrasal constituent can be embedded
within another constituent having the
same category, but it has become an
umbrella term such important linguistic
phenomena as coordination and
subordination, conjoining and
embedding, hypotactic and paratactic.
– All these are means to extend sentences.
– How long can a sentence be?
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• Theoretically, there is no limit to the
embedding of one relative clause into
another relative clause, so long as it
does not become an obstacle to
successful communication.
• The same holds true for nominal
clauses and adverbial clauses.
– I met a man who had a son whose wife
sold cookies that she had baked in her
kitchen that was fully equipped with
electrical appliances that were new …
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•
•
•
•
John’s sister
John’s sister’s husband
John’s sister’s husband’s uncle
John’s sister’s husband’s uncle’s daughter,
etc.
•
•
•
•
that house in Beijing
the garden of that house in Beijing
the tree in the garden of that house in Beijing
a bird on the tree in the garden of that house
in Beijing
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6.1 Conjoining
• Conjoining: coordination.
• Conjunctions: and, but, and
or.
– John bought a hat and his
wife bought a handbag.
– Give me liberty or give me
death.
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6.2 Embedding
• Embedding: subordination.
• Main clauses and subordinate clauses.
• Three basic types of subordinate
clauses:
– Relative clause: I saw the man who had
visited you last year.
– Complement clause: I don’t know whether
Professor Li needs this book.
– Adverbial clause: If you listened to me,
you wouldn't make mistakes.
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7. Text and discourse
• The development of modern linguistic
science has helped push the study of
syntax beyond the traditional sentence
boundary.
• Linguists are now exploring the
syntactic relation between sentences in
a paragraph or chapter or the whole
text, which leads to the emergence of
text linguistics and discourse analysis.
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7.1 Sentential Connection
• Hypotactic (subordinate clauses):
– You can phone the doctor if you like.
However, I very much doubt whether he is
in.
– We live near the sea. So we enjoy a healthy
climate.
• Paratactic (coordinate clauses):
– In Guangzhou it is hot and humid during
the summer. In Beijing it is hot and dry.
– He dictated the letter. She wrote it.
– The door was open. He walked in.
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7.2 Cohesion and cohesiveness
• Cohesion is a concept to do with discourse
or text rather than with syntax. It refers to
relations of meaning that exist within the text,
and defines it as a text.
• Cohesiveness can be realized by employing
various cohesive devices:
– conjunction
– ellipsis
– lexical collocation
– lexical repetition
– reference
– substitution, etc.
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• “Did she get there at six?”
“No, (she got there) earlier (than six).”
(Ellipsis)
• “Shall we invite Bill?”
“No. 1 can’t stand the man.” (Lexical
collocation)
• He couldn’t open the door. It was locked tight.
(Reference)
• “Why don’t you use your own recorder?”
“I don't have one.” (Substitution)
• I wanted to help him. Unfortunately it was too
late. (Logical connection)
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