DESCRIPTIVE GRAMMAR

Major concepts and Categories

Parts of the Sentence

Subject and predicate

In order to state general rules about the construction of sentences, it is constantly

necessary to refer to smaller units than the sentence itself. Our first task must
therefore be to explain what these smaller units are that we need to distinguish,
confining our attention for the present to a few sentences which, though showing
considerable variety, are all of fairly elementary structure. Traditionally, there is a
primary distinction between subject and predicate:

John carefully searched the room [1]

The girl is now a student at a large university [2]
His brother grew happier gradually [3]
It rained steadily all day [4]
He had given the girl an apple [5]
They make him the chairman every year [6]

Although such a division obviously results in parts which are (in these examples)very
unequal in size and dissimilar in content, it is of course by no means arbitrary. The
subject of the sentence has a close general relation to “what is being discussed,”
the“theme” of the sentence, with the normal implication that something new (the
predicate) is being said about a “subject” that has already been introduced in an
earlier sentence. This is of course a general characteristic and not a defining feature:
it is patently absurd in relation to sentence [4], for example. Another point is that the
subject determines concord. That is, with those parts of the verb that permit s
distinction between singular and plural, the form selected depends on whether the
subject is singular as in [2], the girl is, or plural as in [6], they make. Furthermore, it is
important to distinguish the subject since it is the part of the sentence that changes
its position as we go from statement to question:

Did John carefully search the room ? [1q]

Did his brother grow happier gradually ? [3q]
Did it rain steadily all day ? [4q]
Had he given the girl an apple ? [5q]
Operator, auxiliary, and predication
In contrast with the subject, there are few generalizations that we can usefully make
about the predicate since -- as [1-6] already make clear -- it tends to be a more
complex and heterogeneous unit. We need to subdivide it into its constituents. One
division has already been suggested in [lq], [3q], [4q] and [5q]; this distinguishes
auxiliary as operator (as in [5q]) and the special operator-auxiliary do (as in [Iq], [3q],
[4q]) on the one hand from what we may call the predication on the other. The
distinctions may be illustrated as follows:

The second variant in this cxample draws attention to a further characteristic of the
operator: it can be followed bry the informal contraction n't (as well as by the full form
not).
The position immediately after the operator is in fact crucial in forming
a negation or a question:
a) Negation is cxpressed by inserting not (informally n't) after the operator:

They should have bought a new house

They should not have bought a new house

b) Questions are formed by placing the subject of the sentence after the
opcrator:

They should have bought a new house

Should they have bought a new house?
Where the V element in a positive declarative sen:cnce has no operator, a
form of do is introduced as operator in the negative or interrogative
version:

They bought a new house

They didn't buy a new house.
Did they buy a new house?
Where the V element is realized by a form of be, this functions as itself ar
operator:
The sea is very rough
The sea is not very rough.
Is the sea very rough?

NOTE : The verb have can function like be, especially in BrE
She has the time to spare
She hasn't the time to spare
Has she the time to spare?

Predicate can be divided into verb, complement, object, and adverbial (abbreviated
as V, C,O, A); together with the subject (S), they constitute the elements of sentence
(and clause) structure:

John (S) carefully (A) searched (V) the room (O) [1]
The girl (S) is (V) now (A) a student (C) at a large university (A) [2]
His brother (S) grew (V) happier (C) gradually (A) [3]
It (S) rained (V) steadily (A) all day (A) [4]
He (S) had given (V) the girl (O) an apple (O) [5]
They (S) make (V) him (O) the chairman (C) every year (A) [6]

Complements and objects

The relation between the room in [1] and the other elements in that sentence is very
different from the relation between the girl in [5] and its fellow elements, though both
are labelled "object." Even more obviously, perhaps, the two elements labelled
"object" in [5] play sharply distinct roles in this sentence. We need in fact to
distinguish two types of object and two types of complement in the sentences so far
illustrated.

The direct object is illustrated in

John carefully searched the room (Od) [1]

He had given the girl an apple (Od) [5]
It should be understood that the direct object is by far the more frequent kind of
object, and that with most ditransitive verbs it must always be present if there is an
indirect object in the sentence. Example [5] illustrates also the indirect object:
He had given the girl (Oi) an apple [5]

As here, the indirect object almost always precedes the direct object; it is
characteristically (though by no means always) a noun referring to a person, and the
semantic relationship is often such that it is appropriate to use the term “receptive.”
Loosely, one might say in most cases that something (the direct object) tends to be
done for (or received by) the indirect object.

Turning to complements, we may illustrate first the subject complement:

The girl is now a student (Cs) at a large university [2]
His brother grew happier (Cs) gradually [3]

Here the complements have a straightforward relation to the subjects of their

respective sentences such that the subject of [2] is understood as being a "girl
student" and the subject of [3] a "happier brother”.

Adverbials can be realized by adverbial phrases (having an adverb as head); by

noun phrases as in all day and every year; by prepositional phrases - that is,
structures consisting of a noun phrase dominated by a preposition - as in at a large
university; and by clauses as in "His brother (S) grew (V) happier (C) when [his
friend S) arrived (V)]”. where We have a finite-verb clause as adverbial, or "Having
been challenged rudely in the street”, John was angry” , where we have an
adverbial non-finite- verb clause.
John carefully searched the room [1]
The girl is now a student at a large university 12]
His brother grew happier gradually [3]
It rained steadily all day (4]
They make him the chairman every year [6]
Categories of verb

There are different types of verb corresponding closely to the different types of object
and complement. Sentences such as [2] and [3], which have subject complements,
have INTENSIVE verbs and all other sentences have EXTENSIVE verbs. The latter
are INTRANSITIVe if as in

It rained steadily all day [4]

they do not permit any of the four object and complement types so far distinguished.
Extensive verbs are otherwise TR A NSITIVE, All transitive verbs take a direct
object; some, like give in [5], permit an indirect object, and these will be distinguished
as DITRANSITIVE. A few verbs,ike make in [6], take an object complement and
these are among the verbs referred to as COMPLEX TRANSITIVE. The rest are
MONO-TRANSITIVE.
But distinctions between verbs need to be drawn not only in relation to object- and
complement-types but also in relation to whether they them-selves admit the
aspectual contrast of ' progressive' and 'non-progressive', Thus it is possible to say

John carefully searched the room[1]

or John was carefully searching the room

It rained steadily all day [4]

or It was raining steadily all day

But it is not possible to use the progressive in

The girl is now a student at a large university[2]

*The girl is now being a student…..

John knew the answer [10]

*John was knowing the answer

Stative and dynamic

A further and related contrast __________ is distinction between stative and
dynamic. Most verbs in most contexts relate to action, activity, and to temporary or
changeable conditions:
The car struck a lamppost as I was parking it.
What aria did she sing last night?

Verbs whose meaning denotes lack of motion can be equally dynamic in their
grammar:

I was quietly resting after a busy day.

Are you siting comfortably?

But it is not uncommon to find verbs which may be used either dynamically or
statively. If we say that some specific tigers are living in a cramped cage, we imply
that this is (or ought to be) a temporary condition and the verb phrase is dynamic in
its use. On the other hand, when we say that the species of animal known as the
tiger lives or is found in China, the generic statement entails that this is not a
temporary circumstance and the verb phrase is stative.
stative use is not, however, confned to generic statements:

Mrs Frost knew a great deal about economics

Did you hear the thunder last night?

(Note that it is actually ungrammatical to say 'Mrs Frost was knowing a great deal...')
Nor is the category stative confined to a minority of verb usages. In contrast to verbs
(which are normally dynamic), most nouns and adjectives are stative in that they
denote phenomena or qualities that are regarded for linguistic purposes as stable
and indeed for all practical purposes permanent:

Jack is - an engineer
very tall.
(We may note that it would be very odd indeed to add here an adverbial like this
afternoon which would suggest that Jack's profession or height applied only to the
moment of speaking.) On the other hand, just as some verbs such as live can be
used statively as well as dynamically, so also can some nouns and adjectives be
used dynamically as well as statively:

My little boy seems to like being a nuisance when we have friends to supper.Do you
really like my poem or are you just being kind?
Types of sentence structure
Bringing together the distinctions so far made, we can present some basic
sentence-structure rules diagrammatically. Each line constitutes a pattern which is
illustrated by means of a correspondingly numbered example having just those
obligatory and optional (parenthesized) elements that are specified in the formula.
The order in which the ele- ments appear is common but by no means fixed. It is a
principle of sentence organization that what is contextually familiar or 'given' comes
relatively early, while the part which needs to be stressed or which seems to convey
the greatest information is given the special prominence of 'end-focus'.

● She is in London (now) [1]

● She is a student (in London) (now) [2]
● John heard the explosion (from his office) (when he was locking the door) [3]
● Universities (gradually) became famous (in Europe) (during the Middle
Ages) [4]
● They ate the meat (hungrily) (in their hut) (that night) [5]
● He offered (her) some chocolates (politely) (outside the hall) (before the
concert) [6]
● They elected him chairman (without argument) (in Washington)
(this morning) [7]
● The train had arrived (quietly) (at the station) (before we noticed it) [8]
Words and word classes

Every constituent of a sentence ultimately consists of words. These units can be

referred to as “parts of speech” (or “form classes”), a traditional scheme in terms of
which members of the Indo-European group of languages have been analysed since
classical times.

It is useful to consider words as falling into two broad categories, closed and open.
The former
comprises, as the term suggests, classes that are finite (and often small) with a
membership that is relatively stable and unchanging in the language: words like this,
in, shall. These words play a major part in English grammar, often corresponding to
inflections in some other languages, and they are sometimes referred to as
“grammatical words,” “function words,” or “structure words.”

By contrast, the open classes of words are constantly changing their membership as
old words drop out of the language and new ones are coined or adopted to reflect
cultural changes in society. These are words like forest, computer, decorative, and
signify; their numbers are vast and are the subject matter of dictionaries.
Appropriately, they are often called “lexical words.”

Pro-forms and elllpsis

One fundamental feature of grammar is providing the means of referring back to an

expression without repeating it, This is achieved by means of pro-forms :
 ● Their beautiful new car was badly damaged when it was struck by a falling
tree. [1]
● Jacks was born in a British industrial town and Gillian grew up in an, American
One. [2]
● My parents live in the north of the country and my husband's people live there
too.. [3]
● I raised the proposal in the early months of 1988, but no one was then
particulariy interested. [4]
● She hoped they would play a Mozart quartet and they will do so.

In [l] we have the pronoun it refering back to the whole noun phrase their beautiful
new car. In [2), the pronoun one refers back to the head part industrial town of the
noun phrase a British (industrial town). In (3] there is a pro-form for the adverbial of
place in the north of the country, while then in [4] refers comparably to the time
adverbial in the early months of 1988. In (5), the pro-form do so refers to the
predication, —--------- and thus correspopds to the whole of play a Mozart quartet.

In some constructions, repetition can be avoided by ellipsis.

Thus instead of [5] , we might have:

She hoped they would play a Mozart quartet and they will.

A gain instead of [3], we might have ellipsis of the ¥ and an A in the second part:

● My parents live in the north of the country and my husband's people too.

Note also the ellipted V in

● Her daughter is studying physics and her son history

Some pro-forms can refer forward to what has not been stated rather than, as in
[11-[5], back to what has been stated. There are, for example the wh-items, as in

● What was badly damaged? (Their beautiful new car) [1a]

● Jack was born in a British what? (Industrial town) [2a]
● Where do your parents live? (In the north of the country ) [3a]
● When did you raise the proposal? (In the early months of 1988) [4a]
● What did she hope they would do? (Play a Mozart quartet) [5a]
● Cf also ' Which is their car?' (That beautiful new one)

NOTE : wh-items have a further role in subordinate clauses (!4.1) when their
reference may be backward as in [6] or forward as in [7):

I met her in 1985, when she was still a student. [6]

Please tell me what is worrying you. [7]
Assertive and nonassertive

If we consider the following examples, we see that more can be involved than what
occupies the position after the operator, when we move from a positive statement as
in [1] and [3] to negation or question:

● She has finished her thesis already. [1]

● She hasn't finished her thesis yet. [2]
● The priest gave some money to some of the beggars. [3]
● Did the priest give any money to any of the beggars? [4]

In [2], yet corresponds to the occurrence of already in [1], and in [4], any twice
corresponds to the use of some in [3]. We express these differences by saying that
the predication in positive statements is 'assertive territory' and that the predication in
negative sentences and in questions is 'nonassertive territory'. While most words can
be used equally in assertive and nonassertive predications, some determiners,
pronouns, and adverbs have specifically assertive or nonassertive use.

NOTE : [a] As well as assertive and nonassertive forms, there are also some
negative forms, Compare

● I saw somebody [assertive pronoun]

● I didn't see anybody. [nonassertive pronoun]
● I saw nobody. [negative pronoun]

[b] Nonassertive territory is not confined to negation and question predications.

for example:
● If you ever want anything, please ask.
● She is more intelligent than anyone I know.