英语语言学第四单元参考答案

1.

syntax: 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.

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, what can precede a noun (dog) is usually the determiners and

adjectives, and what can follow it when it takes the position of subject will be predicators

such as

bark, bite, run, etc. In short, co-occurrence is the syntactic environment in which a

construction, with its relevant elements, can appear grammatically and conventionally. Thus

relations of co-occurrence partly belong to syntagmatic relations, partly to paradigmatic

relations.

construction: it refers to any syntactic construct which is assigned one or more

conventional functions in a language, together with whatever is linguistically

conventionalized about its contribution to the meaning or use construct contains. It can be

further divided into the external and internal properties. Take sentence

The boy kicked the

ball as an example, we will determine the external syntax as an independent clause, while NP

(―the boy‖), VP (―kicked‖) and NP (―the ball‖) will be assigned respectively to the different

elements in this clause.

constituent: Constituent is a term used in structural sentence analysis for every linguistic

unit, which is a part of a larger linguistic unit. Several constituents together form a

construction: for example, in the sentence

The boy ate the apple,

S (A), the boy (B), ate the

apple(C),

each part is a constituent. Constituents can be joined together with other

constituents to form larger units. If two constituents, in the case of the example above, B (the

boy) and C (ate the apple), are joined to form a hierarchically higher constituent A (―S‖, here a

sentence), then B and C are said to be immediate constituents of A.

endocentric: 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. In the phrase

two pretty girls,

girls is the Centre or Head of this

phrase or word group.

exocentric: 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. Exocentric construction usually includes basic

sentence, prepositional phrase, predicate (verb + object) construction, and connective (be +

complement) construction. In the sentence

The boy smiled, neither constituent can substitute

for the sentence structure as a whole.

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coordination: A common syntactic pattern in English and other languages is formed by

grouping together two or more categories of the same type with the help of a conjunction

such as

and, but or

or. This phenomenon is known as coordination. In the construction

the

lady or

the tiger, both NPs

the lady and

the tiger have equivalent syntactic status, each of the

separate constituents can stand for the original construction functionally.

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. Thus the subordinate constituents are words which modify the Head.

Consequently, they can be called modifiers. In the phrase

swimming in the lake,

swimming is

the head and

in the lake are the words modifying the head.

category: The term category in some approaches refers to classes and functions in its

narrow sense, e.g., noun, verb, subject, predicate, noun phrase, verb phrase, etc. More

specifically, it refers to the defining properties of these general units: the categories of the

noun, for example, include number, gender, case and countability; and of the verb, for

example, tense, aspect, voice, and so on.

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). For instance, the syntactic relationship between

this pen and

it in the following

dialogue:

--Whose is this pen?

--Oh, it’s the one I lost.

embedding: Embedding refers to the means by which one clause is included in another

clause in syntactic subordination. E.g.,

I saw the man who had visited you last year.

recursiveness: it mainly means that a phrasal constituent can be embedded within (i.e.,

be dominated by) another constituent having the same category, but it can be used to any

means to extend any constituent. Together with openness, recursiveness is the core of

creativity of language. For example,

―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‖.

grammatical subject & logical subject: Grammatical and logical subjects are two terms

accounting for the case of subject in passive voice. Take the sentences

a dog bit John and

John was bitten by a dog as examples. Since the core object noun (John in this case) sits in the

slot before the verb in the passive, it is called grammatical subject, for the original object

noun phrase occupies the grammatical space before a verb, the space that a subject normally

occupies; the core subject (a dog), now the object of a preposition (by

a dog), is called a

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logical subject, since semantically the core subject still does what a subject normally does: it

performs an action.

cohesion: Cohesion refers to relations of meaning that exist within the text, and that

define it as a text. The cohesive devices usually include: conjunction, ellipsis, lexical

collocation, lexical repetition, reference, substitution, and so on. In the following example,

the cohesive device is ―Reference‖, that is, ―it‖ refers back to

the door:

He couldn't open the

door. It was locked tight.

3.

(a) ((The) (boy)) ((was) (crying)).

(b) (Shut) ((the) (door)).

(c) ((Open) ((the) (door))) (quickly).

(d) ((The) (((happy) (teacher)) ((in) ((that) (class))))) ((was) ((beaming) (away))).

(e) (He) (((bought) ((an) ((old) (car)))) ((with) ((his) ((first) ((pay) (cheque)))))).

2.

(1) The instructor told the students to study. [NP(det.+n.)+V+NP(det.+n.)+inf.]

(2) The customer requested for a cold beer. [NP(det+n.)+V+PP(prep.+det.+adj.+n.)]

(3) The pilot landed the jet. [NP(det+n)+V+NP(det+n.)]

(4) These dead trees must be removed. [NP(det+adj.+n.)+mv(modal verb)+be(auxiliary

verb)+Past Participle]

(5) That glass suddenly broke. [NP(det+n)+adv.+V]

4.

(a) Ducks quack. (non-headed, independent clause)

(b) The ladder in the shed is long enough. (non-headed, prepositional phrase)

(c) I saw a bridge damaged beyond repair. (headed; headword—damaged; adjectival

group)

(d) Singing hymns is forbidden in some countries. (headed; headword—singing;

gerundial phrase)

(e) His handsome face appeared in the magazine. (headed; headword—face; nominal

group)

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(f) A lady of great beauty came out. (non-headed; prepositional phrase)

(g) He enjoys climbing high mountains. (headed; headword—climbing; gerundial phrase)

(h)The man nodded patiently. (non-headed; a sentence)

(i) A man roused by the insult drew his sword. (headed; headword—roused; adjectival

phrase)

5.

a. N b. Y c. Y d. Y e. Y f. N g. Y h. N

6.

(a) The comet that Dr. Okada discovered appears every twenty years.

(b) Everyone respected the quarterback who refused to give up.

(c) The most valuable experiences that I had on my trip to Europe were small ones.

(d) Children whose parents abuse alcohol will probably become abusers of drugs or

alcohol.

(e) Many nations are restricting emissions of noxious gases which threaten the

atmosphere.

7.

In this chapter, several ways to extend syntactic constituents are brought under the

category of recursiveness, including coordination and subordination, conjoining and

embedding, hypotactic and paratactic and so on. Coordination and conjoining are the

different names for the same linguistic phenomenon, that is, to use

and,

but or

or to join

together syntactic constituents with the same function. For instance, the sentence

A man got

into the car could be extended into a sentence like this "[NP A man, a woman, a boy, a car and

a dog] got into the car". While subordination and embedding can be understood as the

extension of any syntactic constituent by inserting one or more syntactic elements with

different functions into another.

I saw the man who had visited you last year is an extended

sentence by changing the independent clause

The man had visited you last year into a

dependent element (here a relative clause).

However, hypotaxis and parataxis are the two traditional terms for the description of

syntactic relations between sentences. In the examples below, the former is hypotactic, while

the latter is paratactic:

We live near the sea. So we enjoy a healthy climate.

He dictated the letter. She wrote it.

8.

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(a) The best thing would be to leave early. (infinitive phrase)

(b) It's great for a man to be free. (infinitive phrase)

(c) Having finished their task, they came to help us. (past participial phrase)

(d) Xiao Li being away, Xiao Wang had to do the work. (absolute phrase)

(e) Filled with shame, he left the house. (past participial phrase)

(f) All our savings gone, we started looking for jobs. (absolute phrase)

(g) It's no use crying over spilt milk. (gerundial phrase)

(h) Do you mind my opening the window? (gerundial phrase)

9.

The grammatical category ―subject‖ in different language possesses different

characteristics. In English, ―subject‖ may have the following characteristics:

A. Word order: Subject ordinarily precedes the verb in statement such as ―Sally collects

stamps".

B. Pronoun forms: The first and third person pronouns in English appear in a special form

when the pronoun is a subject. This form 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.

C. Agreement with verb: In the simple present tense, an –s is added to the verb when a

third person subject is singular. However, 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.

D. Content questions: if the subject is replaced by a question word (who or

what), the rest

of the sentence remains unchanged, as in (b). But when any other element of the sentence is

replaced by a question word, an auxiliary verb must appear before the subject. If the basic

sentence does not contain an auxiliary verb, we must insert

did or

do(es) immediately after

the question word, as in (d, e)

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(a) John stole/would steal Mrs. Thatcher’s picture from the British Council.

(b) Who stole/would steal Mrs. Thatcher’s picture from the British council?

(c) What would John steal, if he had the chance?

(d) What did John steal from the British Council?

(e) Where did John steal Mrs. Thatcher’s picture from?

E. 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?

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