1

Supplementary Readings

Chapter 4 From Word to Text

Table of Contents

Text 1. Word Order (Wikipedia)

Text 2. Basic Terminology (Radford, et al.)

Text 3. Word, Sentence, and Text (Halliday)

Text 4. Substitution (Bloomfield)

Text 5. Subclasses, Irregularities, and Economy (Robins)

2

Text 1

Word Order

Wikipedia

Word order, in linguistic typology, refers to the order in which words appear in sentences across different languages. In many languages, changes in word order occur due to topicalization or in questions. However, most languages are generally assumed to have a basic word order. That word order is unmarked. That is, it contains no extra information to the listener. For example, English is SVO (subject-verb-object), as in I don't know this but OSV is also possible:

This I don't know.

This process is called topic-fronting (or topicalization) and is very common. OSV in English is a marked word order because it emphasises the object.

An example of OSV being used for emphasis:

A: I can't see Alice.

B: What about Bill?

A: Bill I can see. (rather than I can see Bill)

OSV word order is also found in poetry in English.

Sentence word orders

These are all possible word orders for the subject, verb, and object in the order of most common to rarest:

• SOV languages include the prototypical Japanese, Turkish, Korean and the Dravidian languages, as well as many others using this most common word order. Some, like Persian, have SOV normal word order but conform less to the general tendencies of other such languages.

• German and Dutch are SOV with V2 word order.

• SVO languages include English, French, Chinese, Kiswahili, etc.

• Mandarin is SVO but has many SOV characteristics.

• VSO languages include Classical Arabic, the Insular Celtic languages and Hawaiian.

• VOS languages include Fijian and Malagasy.

• OSV languages include Xavante.

• OVS languages include Hixkaryana.

• Others, such as Latin and Finnish have no fixed word order (although in Latin SOV is the

3

most frequent word order with others usually used for poetry, and in Finnish SVO is the most frequent one. For Finnish, see Finnish grammar#Sentence structure), meaning that the sentence structure is extremely flexible.

It is not understood why word orders with the subject before the object are much more common than word orders with the object before the subject. It must be noted that in most nominative-accusative languages there is the tendency to identify the subject with the topic (who or what is being talked about), and to place the topic at the beginning of the sentence so as to establish the context quickly.

Some languages can be said to have more than one basic word order. French is SVO, but it incorporates or cliticizes objective pronouns before the verb. This makes French SOV in some sentences. However, speaking of a language having a given word order is generally understood as a reference to the basic, unmarked, non-emphatic word order for sentences with constituents expressed by full nouns or noun phrases. In other languages the word order of transitive and intransitive clauses may not correspond. Russian, for example, has SVO transitive clauses but free order (SV or VS) in intransitive clauses.

Phrase word orders and branching

There are several common correlations between sentence-level word order and phrase-level constituent order. For example, SOV languages generally put modifiers (adjectives and adverbs) before what they modify (nouns and verbs), and use postpositions. VSO languages tend to place modifiers after their heads, and use prepositions. For SVO languages, either order is common.

For example, French (SVO) uses prepositions (dans la voiture, à gauche), and places adjectives after (une voiture spacieuse). However, a small class of adjectives generally go before their heads (une grande voiture). On the other hand, in English (also SVO) adjectives always go before nouns (a big car), and adverbs can go either way, but initially is more common (greatly improved).

Further reading

• Syntactic and Paratactic Word Order Effects (PDF) Analysis of different types of word order variations across languages. Technical, but contains non-technical appendix.

• The Language Instinct (ISBN 0-06-095833-2) - Good general introduction to linguistics.

(Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_order)

4

Text 2

Basic Terminology

Andrew Radford, et al.

1. Categories and functions

It is traditionally said that sentences are structured out of words, phrases and clauses, each of which belongs to a specific grammatical category and serves a specific grammatical function within the sentence containing it. The lexical and functional categories from section 9 are examples of grammatical categories, and as our discussion proceeds, we shall see how phrases and clauses can be categorised. The smallest type of sentence which we can produce is one containing a single clause, such as (219):

(219) John smokes

This comprises the noun John, which is traditionally claimed to serve the function of being the subject of the clause (in that it denotes the person performing the act of smoking), and the verb smokes which serves the function of being the predicate of the clause (in that it describes the act being performed). Consider next the slightly longer clause in (220):

(220) John smokes cigars

Here we have the subject John, the predicate smokes and a third item, cigars, which is the complement (cigars refers to the entities on which the act of smoking is being performed). The subject John and the complement cigars are the two arguments of the predicate smokes (i.e. the two entities involved in the act of smoking). A clause is an expression which contains a subject and a predicate, and which may also contain other types of element (e.g. the clause in (220) contains a complement as well, and so is of the form subject + predicate + complement).

There are a number of morphological and syntactic properties which differentiate subjects from complements. For one thing, the two occupy different positions within the clause: in English, subjects generally precede predicates and complements follow them. Moreover (with an exception to be noted later), subjects generally have different case properties to complements. The different case forms of typical pronouns and noun expressions in English are given in (221):

(221) nominative objective genitive I me my We us our you you your he him his she her her it it its they them their who who(m) whose the dog the dog the dog's

5

Subjects typically carry nominative case, whereas complements typically carry objective case. This isn't immediately obvious from (220), since nouns like John and cigars aren't overtly inflected for the nominative/objective case distinction. However, if we replace John by an overtly case-marked pronoun, we require the nominative form he, not the objective form him; and conversely, if we replace cigars by an overtly case-marked pronoun, we require the objective form them, not the nominative form the),:

(222) a. He/*Him smokes cigars

b. John smokes them/*they

A third difference between subjects and complements is that, as we have noted on several occasions, in English verbs agree in Person and Number with their subjects. However, they don't agree with their complements. So, if we have a third person singular subject like he or John, we require the corresponding third person singular verb-form smokes; but if we have a first person singular subject like I, or a first person plural subject like we, or a second person singular or plural subject like you, or a third person plural subject like they, we require the alternative form smoke:

(223) a. He smokes/*smoke cigars

b. I/We/You/They smoke/*smokes cigars

If, however, we change the complement, say replacing the plural form cigars with the singular a cigar in (220), the form of the verb in English is unaffected:

(224) John smokes cigars/a cigar

Overall, then, we can differentiate subjects from complements in terms of whether they normally precede or follow the verb, whether they have nominative or objective case, and whether or not they agree with the verb.

Now consider the even longer clause in (225):

(225) The president smokes a cigar after dinner

This clause comprises three constituents (i.e. structural units) the function of which is already familiar—namely the subject the president, the predicate smokes and the complement a cigar. But what is the function of the expression after dinner which also occurs in (225)? Since after dinner does not refer to one of the entities directly involved in the act of smoking (i.e. it isn't consuming or being consumed), it isn't an argument of the predicate smokes. On the contrary, it simply serves to provide additional information about the time when the smoking activity takes place. In much the same way, the italicised expression in (226) provides additional information about the location of the smoking activity:

(226) The president smokes a cigar in his office

An expression which serves to provide (optional) additional information about the time or place (or manner, or purpose, etc.) of an activity is said to serve as an adjunct. So, after dinner in (225) and in his office in (226) are both adjuncts.

Now consider the following kind of clause (characteristic of colloquial styles of English):

6

(227) Cigars, the president never smokes them in front of his wife

The function of the constituents contained in the part of the clause following the comma is straightforward to analyse: the president is the subject, smokes is the predicate, them is the complement, and never and in front of his wife are both adjuncts. But what is the function of the expression cigars which precedes the comma? The traditional answer is that cigars functions as the topic of the clause, in the sense that it serves to indicate that the clause tells us something about cigars; the part of the clause following the comma is said to be the comment. It is interesting to contrast (227) with (228):

(228) Cigars, the president never smokes in front of his wife

In (227) cigars is the clause topic, and them (which refers back to cigars) is the complement of the verb smokes. By contrast, in (228), cigars seems to serve both functions, and hence is the topic of the overall clause as well as being the complement of the verb smokes.

Now consider the clause in (229):

(229) The president was smoking a cigar for relaxation

Again, this comprises a number of constituents with familiar functions: the president is the subject, smoking is the predicate, a cigar is the complement, and for relaxation is an adjunct. But what is the function of the auxiliary was? The answer is that it serves to mark Tense, indicating the time at which the activity took place (viz. the past). English has a binary (i.e. two-way) tense system, so that in place of the past tense form was in (229), we could use the corresponding present tense form is. Although this distinction is traditionally said to be a past/present one, many linguists prefer to see it as a past/non-past distinction, since the so-called present tense form can be used with future time-reference (e.g. in sentences such as). However, since the term 'present tense' is a familiar one, we'll continue to use it below.

2. Complex sentences

So far, we have looked at simple sentences – i.e. sentences which comprise a single clause (hence, all the clauses in (219), (220) and (222)-(229) above are simple sentences). However, alongside these we also find complex sentences – i.e. sentences which contain more than one clause. In this connection, consider the structure of the following sentence:

(230) Mary knows John smokes

If we take a clause to be a structure comprising (at least) a subject and a predicate, it follows that there are two different clauses in (230)—the smokes clause on the one hand, and the knows clause on the other. The smokes clause comprises the subject John and the predicate smokes; the knows clause comprises the subject Mary, the predicate knows and the complement John smokes. So, the complement of knows here is itself a clause. The smokes clause is a complement clause (because it serves as the complement of knows), while the knows clause is the main clause. The overall sentence in (230) is a complex sentence because it contains more than one clause. In much the same way, (231) below is also a complex sentence:

(231) The president may secretly fear Congress will ultimately reject his proposal

7

Once again, it comprises two clauses - one containing the predicate fear, the other containing the predicate reject. The main clause comprises the subject the president, the auxiliary may, the adverbial adjunct secretly, the verbal predicate fear and the complement clause Congress will ultimately reject his proposal. The complement clause in turn comprises the subject Congress, the auxiliary will, the verbal predicate reject, the complement his proposal and the adjunct ultimately.

Now contrast the two different types of complex sentence illustrated below:

(232) a. We expect [John will win the race]

b. We expect [John to win the race]

Both sentences comprise two clauses - a main clause and a bracketed complement clause. The main clause in (232a) comprises the subject we, the verbal predicate expect and the complement clause John will win the race; the main clause in (232b) is identically constituted except that the complement clause is John to win the race. The complement clause in (232a) comprises the subject John, the auxiliary will, the verbal predicate win and the complement the race; the complement clause in (232b) comprises the subject John, the infinitive particle to, the verbal predicate win and the complement the race. So, superficially, at least, the two sentences appear to have much the same structure.

Yet, there are important differences between the two complement clauses they contain. In (232a), the auxiliary will is a tensed form (more specifically, a non-past form), as we see from the fact that if we transpose the whole sentence into the past tense, we use the corresponding past tense form would instead of will:

(233) We expected [John would win the race]

By contrast, if we transpose (232b) into the past tense, the infinitive particle to remains invariable:

(234) We expected [John to win the race]

So, we can say that the bracketed complement clause in (232a) and (233) is tensed, whereas its counterpart in (232b) and (234) is untensed (i.e. unspecified for tense).

A further difference between the two types of complement clause can be illustrated in relation to (235):

(235) a. I didn't know [John wears glasses]

b. I've never known [John wear glasses]

In (235a), the verb wears agrees with its third person singular subject John; but the corresponding verb wear in (235b) doesn't agree with John. More generally, complement clauses like that bracketed in (235a) contain a verb inflected for agreement with its subject, whereas complement clauses like that in (235b) contain a verb form which lacks agreement.

There is a third important difference between the two types of complement clause in (232a,235a)and(232b,235b),as we can see from the fact that if we replace the subject John by a pronoun overtly marked for case, we require the nominative form he in (232a, 235a), but the objective form him in (232b, 235b):

8

(236) a. We expect [he/*him will win the race]

b. We expect [him/*he to win the race]

(237) a. I didn't know [he/*him wears glasses]

b. I've never known [him/*he wear glasses]

To use the relevant grammatical terminology, we can say that an auxiliary or a verb is finite if it inflects for tense/agreement and has a nominative subject, and non-finite if it doesn't inflect for tense or agreement and doesn't have a nominative subject. By extension, we can distinguish between a finite clause (i.e. a clause with a nominative subject which contains a verb/auxiliary inflected for tense/agreement) and a non-finite clause (i.e. a clause which doesn't have a nominative subject, and which doesn't contain a verb/auxiliary inflected for tense/agreement). Thus, the complement clauses in (232a) and (235a) are finite clauses, but those in (232b) and (235b) are non-finite.

We observed in section 9 that verbs in English can have up to five distinct forms, as illustrated in (238):

(238) -s -d base -n -ing

shows showed show shown showing

The -s and -d forms are finite forms, the -s form being the third person singular present tense form, and the -d form being the past tense form. By contrast, the -n and -ing forms are non-finite forms, since they are not inflected for either tense or agreement (recall that the -n form often ends in -ed!). At first sight, it might seem odd to claim that the -n and -ing forms are untensed, since -ing forms are sometimes referred to in traditional grammars as present participles and -n forms as past participles. However, it is clear from sentences like (239) that the tense of the clause is marked by the auxiliaries is/was, not by the verb form going:

(239) a. He is going home

b. He was going home

But if the -ing inflection on going doesn't mark tense, what does it mark?

The answer as we have noted, is that -ing serves to mark aspect (a term used to describe the duration of the activity described by a verb, e.g. whether the activity is ongoing or completed). In sentences such as (239), the -ing form indicates that the action of going home is still in progress at the time indicated by the auxiliary: hence (239a) can be loosely paraphrased as 'He is now still in the process of going home', and (239b) as 'He was then still in the process of going home.' Thus, the -ing forms like going in (239) mark progressive aspect. By contrast, -n forms such as gone in (240a, b) mark the completion of the act of going home:

(240) a. He has gone home

b. He had gone home

Hence (240a) can be loosely paraphrased as 'He has now completed the action of going home' and (240b) as 'He had by then completed the action of going home.' Tense is marked by the choice of

9

has or had, and we say that -n forms like gone in (240) mark perfect aspect (i.e. they indicate perfection in the sense of completion of the relevant act). We have, of course, already met -ing forms and -n forms in section 10, where they were respectively referred to as progressive participles and perfect participles. Since participles mark aspect (not tense or agreement), they are non-finite forms.

So far, we have argued that the -s and -d forms of verbs are finite, but the -ing and -n forms are non-finite. But what about the uninflected base forms of verbs (the forms which appear in dictionaries of English)? The answer is that the base form of the verb has a dual status, and can function either as a finite form or a non-finite form (i.e. it corresponds to more than one grammatical word in the sense of section 10). In uses like that italicised in (241) below, the base form serves as a finite present-tense form:

(241) I/We/You/They/People show little interest in syntax these days

But in uses like those italicised in (242), the base form is non-finite and is traditionally termed an infinitive form:

(242) a. She didn't want him to show any emotion

b. He didn't show any emotion

c. You mustn't let him show any emotion

Base forms also have other uses which we will come across subsequently (e.g. the imperative use of keep/tell in 244c and 245c below).

Up to now, all the complex sentences we have looked at have comprised a main clause and a complement clause. But now consider the rather different kind of complex sentence illustrated in (243):

(243) I couldn't find anyone who could help me

There are two clauses here -- the find clause and the help clause. The find clause comprises the subject I, the negative auxiliary couldn't, the verbal predicate find and the complement. The complement in turn comprises the pronoun anyone followed by the clause anyone who could help me. Since the pronoun who in this clause 'relates to' (i.e. refers back to) anyone, it is called a relative pronoun, and the clause containing it (who could help me) is called a relative clause. The relative clause in turn comprises the subject who, the auxiliary could, the verbal predicate help and the complement me. The relative clause is a finite clause, since (although it doesn't inflect for agreement) the auxiliary could is a past tense form (as we see from the fact that it carries the past tense suffix -d, see I couldn't find anyone who helps/helped in the kitchen), and its subject who carries nominative case (in formal English, the corresponding objective form would be whom, and this would be inappropriate here -- see *anyone whom could help me) .

(Adapted from Andrew Radford, Martin Atkinson, David Britain, Harald Clahsen, Andrew Spencer, 1999. Linguistics: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press and FLTRP.)

10

Text 3

Word, Sentence, and Text

M. A. K. Halliday

1. Sentence and word

There is no fixed upper limit to the grammar, in terms of rank; but traditionally grammar stops at the sentence (the 'clause complex' in the present description), and there is a sense in which this does form an upper bound.

Below the sentence, the typical relationship is a constructional one, of parts into wholes. In a functional grammar this means an organic configuration of elements each having its own particular functions with respect to the whole (most elements in a grammatical structure are multifunctional). One manifestation of this structural relationship is the sequence in which the elements occur; but this is only one variable among others.

Into this constructional type of organization are introduced two minor motifs: (1) structural patterns of another kind that are more like the dynamic processes of text formation (Chapter 7), and (2) non-structural forms of organization that create cohesion -- reference, ellipsis and so on (Chapter 9).

Above the sentence, the position is reversed. Here the non-constructional forms of organization take over and become the norm, while only in certain cases, particular kinds of text, are there recognizable units like the structural units lower down. And the sequence in which things occur is no longer a variable available for realizing functional relationships, like Subject before or after Finite verb; it becomes a dynamic order determined by the semantic unfolding of the discourse. Looked at from the vantage point of the text, a sentence is the smallest unit that cannot be displaced in sequence. Changing the order of sentences in a text is about as meaningless an operation as putting the end before the beginning.

The sentence, then, does constitute a significant border post, which is why writing systems are sensitive to it and mark it off. By and large, therefore, the chapters that follow take as their domain the traditional realm of syntax, the terrain from the sentence to the word. Grammatically, that is where the action is; and within that, the fundamental unit of organization is the clause. It should be remembered that in functional grammar (where the terminology is on the whole more consistent), a clause is the same unit whether it is functioning alone (as a simple sentence) or as part of a clause complex (a compound/complex sentence).

Sentence and word are the two grammatical units that are recognized in our folk linguistics; and this incorporates a piece of good common sense. Although when we come to explain grammar we have to recognize other structural units that are intermediate between the two- groups and phrases – these are in origin just mutations of one or the other. A phrase (in the sense in which the term is used here) is a reduced strain of clause, while a group is an enlarged strain of word. Functionally, the two come together in the middle; groups and phrases share many of the same environments.

11

Thus sentence and word are not so sharply set off from one another; they are no different in kind – both are units in the grammar. There is a notion that when we are speaking or writing, engaged in producing text, we are making new sentences out of old words; but this is quite misleading. It is true, of course, that words get used over again more often than sentences do; much of the time, a speaker does create new sentences – sentences that are new to him, at any rate. Rather fewer of his clauses are new; phrases and groups fewer still, and words fewest of all. But speakers create new wordings at all ranks; it is simply that, the larger the syntagm, the more likely it is to be original. Recently I noted busybodyish, obstinacities, unselfassuredness – forms which I doubt whether the speaker had stored ready for use.

And just as words can be new, so also sentences can be old. A good stock of the wordings we use are stored at higher rank, ranging from formulaic expressions like the manager will see you in a minute through it needs to be put on a sound commercial footing to the small change of family life like have you remembered to take your vitamin C? and where's that cat?. Proverbial sayings provide an extreme case of learnt syntagms stored at higher rank, but they are by no means unique.

It is also worth pointing out that a speaker of a language has a fairly clear idea of the probabilities attached to stored items; he 'knows' (in other words it is a property of the system) how likely a particular word or group or phrase is to occur, both in the language as a whole and in any given register of the language. The treatment of probabilities is outside the scope of the present volume; but they are an important part of the grammar and will eventually need to be taken into account in the interpretation and evaluation of texts.

2. System and text

The grammar, then, is at once both a grammar of the system and a grammar of the text. We follow Saussure in his understanding of the relationship between the system of language and its instantiation in acts of speaking; although not in his implied conclusion, that once the text has been used as evidence for the system it can be dispensed with -- it has served its purpose. This mistake (whether due to Saussure or to his interpreters) haunted linguistics for much of the twentieth century, making it obsessed with the system at the expense of the text -- and hence provoking the present swing of the pendulum in the opposite direction.

Linguists of the main European functional 'schools' -- the Prague school, the French functionalists, the London school, the Copenhagen school -- all, in different but related ways, regarded the text as the object of linguistics along with the system. Their view would be that one cannot really understand the one without the other. It is of little use having an elegant theory of the system if it cannot account for how the system engenders text; equally, it adds little to expatiate on a text if one cannot relate it to the system that lies behind it, since anyone understanding the text does so only because they know the system.

Discourse analysis has to be founded on a study of the system of the language. At the same time, the main reason for studying the system is to throw light on discourse -- on what people say and write and listen to and read. Both system and text have to be in focus of attention. Otherwise there is no way of comparing one text with another, or with what it might itself have been but was not. And, perhaps most important of all, only by starting from the system can we see the text in its

12

aspect as a process.

The natural tendency is to think of a text as a thing -- a product. This is the form in which it is presented to us as a piece of writing; and even when we admit the category of 'spoken text' we still turn it into an object in order to be able to attend to it. We 'capture' it on tape, and then 'transcribe' it into written form. Hjelmslev, however, thought of text as process; he referred to language as system and process. It is not difficult to follow him in conceiving of text as process; the problem for text analysis is that it is much harder to represent a process than it is to represent a product.

The process/product distinction is a relevant one for linguistics because it corresponds to that between our experience of speech and our experience of writing: writing exists, whereas speech happens. A written text is presented to us as product; we attend to it as product, and become aware of its 'process' aspect as a writer but not as reader or analyst, unless we consciously focus on the activities which led to its production. Spoken language on the other hand is presented to us as process; moreover, like many processes it is characterized by a continuous flow, without clear segments or boundaries, so that it appears as text (mass noun) rather than as a text/texts (count noun).

Traditionally, grammar has always been the grammar of written language; and it has always been a product grammar. Perhaps not quite always: it seems that in its earliest origins classical Greek grammar was a grammar of speech -- the first attempts at syntax were tied to rhetoric, to an explanation of what it is that makes spoken discourse effective. But Aristotle took grammar out of rhetoric into logic; and since then it has been mainly a grammar of written discourse. That was how it continued to evolve in classical times; that was the foundation of medieval and renaissance syntax; and that is the received 'traditional grammar' that we are still using today. It is relatively unsuited to the spoken language, which needs a more dynamic and less constructional form of representation.

One approach to this problem would be to start from the beginning and construct a grammar that was just a grammar for speech, quite different from the existing grammars of written language. That would have the advantage of being unencumbered with product-oriented concepts and categories. But it would have three serious disadvantages: (i) that it would force an artificial polarization of speech versus writing, instead of recognizing that there are all sorts of mixed categories, such as formal speech, dramatic dialogue, subtitles, written instructions and the like, which have some of the features typical of each; (ii) that it would suggest that spoken and written language derive from different systems, a distinct 'language' lying behind each, whereas while there are systematic differences between speech and writing they are varieties of one and the same language; (iii) that it would make it extremely difficult to compare spoken and written texts, to show the influence of one mode on the other or to bring out the special properties of each in contrastive terms.

(Adapted from M.A.K. Halliday, 1994, An Introduction to Functional Grammar. Edward Arnold. Xx-xxxiii.)

13

Text 4

Substitution

Leonard Bloomfield

1. A substitute is a linguistic form or grammatical feature which, under certain conventional circumstances, replaces any one of a class of linguistic forms. Thus, in English, the substitute I replaces any singular-number substantive expression, provided that this substantive expression denotes the speaker of the utterance in which the substitute is used.

The grammatical peculiarity of substitution consists in selective features: the substitute replaces only forms of a certain class, which we may call the domain of the substitute; thus, the domain of the substitute I is the English form-class of substantive expressions. The substitute differs from an ordinary linguistic form, such as thing, person, object, by the fact that its domain is grammatically definable. Whether an ordinary form, even of the most inclusive meaning, such as thing, can be used of this or that practical situation, is a practical question of meaning; the equivalence of a substitute, on the other hand, is grammatically determined. For instance, no matter whom or what we address, we may mention this real or pretended hearer in the form of a substantive expression by means of the substitute you -- and for this we need no practical knowledge of the person, animal, thing, or abstraction that we are treating as a hearer.

In very many cases, substitutes are marked also by other peculiarities: they are often short words and in many languages atomic; they often have irregular inflection and derivation (I: me: my) and special syntactic constructions. In many languages they appear as bound forms and may then be characterized by morphologic features, such as their position in structural order.

2. One element in the meaning of every substitute is the class meaning of the form-class which serves as the domain of the substitute. The class meaning of English substantive expressions; the class-meaning of I is that of singular substantive expressions, and the class-meaning of the substitutes they and we is that of plural substantive expressions.

Somme substitutes add a more specific meaning which does not appear in the form-class, but even in these cases a set of several substitutes systematically represents the whole domain. Thus, who and what together cover the class-meaning of English substantive expressions. In the same way, he, she, and it together cover the class-meaning of singular substantive expressions; within the set, he and she cover the same sub-domain as who, and it the same sub-domain as what, but the distinction between he and she implies a further and independent subdivision. Our selection of substitutes, then, divides English substantive expressions into the sub-classes of personal (replaced by who and he-she) and non-personal (replaced by what and it), and it subdivides the personal singulars into the sub-classes of male (replaced by he) and feraale (replaced by she).

In addition to the class-meaning, every substitute has another element of meaning, the substitution-type, which consists of the conventional circumstances under which the substitution is made. Thus, I replaces any singular substantive expression (this domain gives us the class- meaning of I), provided that this substantive expression denotes the speaker of the very utterance

14

in which the I is produced: this is the substitution-type of I. The circumstances under which a substitution is made are practical circumstances, which the linguist, for his part, cannot accurately define. In detail, they differ greatly in different languages; in speaking a foreign language, we have great difficulty in using the proper substitute-forms.

3. Nevertheless, it will be worth our while to leave, for a moment, the ground of linguistics, and to examine the problems which here confront the student of sociology or psychology. We find, at once, that the various types of substitution represent elementary circumstances of the act of speech-utterance. The substitution-types in I, we, and you are based upon the speaker-hearer relation. The types of this, here, now and that, there, then represent relations of distance from the speaker or from the speaker and the hearer. The interrogative type of who, what,1 here, when stimulates the hearer to supply a speech-form. The negative type of nobody, nothing, nowhere, never excludes the possibility of a speech-form. These types are remarkably widespread and uniform (except for details) in the languages of the world; among them we find the practical relations to which human beings respond more uniformly than to any others -- numerative and identificational relations, such as positive-negative, all, some, any, same, other, and, above all, the numbers, one, two, three, and so on. These are the relations upon which the language of science is based; the speech-forms which express them make up the vocabulary of mathematics. Many of these substitution-types have to do with species and individuals: they select or identify individuals (all, some, any, each, every, none, and so on) out of a species. Perhaps every language has a form-class of object-expressions, with a class-meaning of the type ‘species occurring in individual specimens.’ Accordingly, the substitutes for object-expressions, pronominals, will usually show the most varied substitution-types. In English, where object-expressions are a special part of speech, the noun, the substitutes for the noun make up a part of speech, the pronoun; together, these two constitute a greater part of speech, the substantive. The pronouns differ from nouns, for one thing, in not being accompanied by adjective modifiers.

To a large extent, some substitution-types are characterized, further, by the circumstance that the form for which substitution is made, has occurred in recent speech. Thus, when we say Ask that policeman, and he will tell you, the substitute he means, among other things, that the singular male substantive expression which is replaced by he, has been recently uttered. A substitute which implies this, is an anaphoric or dependent substitute, and the recently-uttered replaced form is the antecedent. This distinction, however, seems nowhere to be fully carried out: we usually find some independent uses of substitutes that are ordinarily dependent, as, for instance, the independent use of it in it's raining. Independent substitutes have no antecedent: they tell the form-class, and they may even have an elaborate identificational or numerative substitution-type -- as, for instance, somebody, nobody -- but they do not tell which form of the class (for instance, which particular noun) has been replaced.

On the whole, then, substitution-types consist of elementary features of the situation in which speech is uttered. These features are so simple that, for the most part, they could be indicated by gestures: I, you, this, that, none, one, two, all, and so on. Especially the substitutes of the 'this' and 'that' types resemble interjections in their semantic closeness to non-linguistic forms of response; like interjections, they occasionally deviate from the phonetic pattern of their language. Since, aside from the class-meaning, the substitution-type represents the whole meaning of a substitute, we can safely say that the meanings of substitutes are, on the one hand, more inclusive and

15

abstract, and, on the other hand, simpler and more constant, than the meanings of ordinary linguistic forms. In their class-meaning, substitutes are one step farther removed than ordinary forms from practical reality, since they designate not real objects but grammatical form-classes; substitutes are, so to speak, linguistic forms of the second degree. In their substitution- type, on the other hand, substitutes are more primitive than ordinary linguistic forms, for they designate simple features of the immediate situation in which the speech is being uttered.

The practical usefulness of substitution is easy to see. The substitute is used more often than any one of the forms in its domain; consequently, it is easier to speak and to recognize. Moreover, substitutes are often short forms and often, as in English, atomic, or, as in French, otherwise adapted to quick and easy utterance. In spite of this economy, substitutes often work more safely and accurately than specific forms. In answer to the question Would you like some fine, fresh cantaloupes? The answer How much are cantaloupes? is perhaps more likely to be followed by a delay or aberration of response (" misunderstanding") than the answer How much are they? This is especially true of certain substitutes, such as I, whose meaning is unmistakable, while the actual mention of the speaker's name would mean nothing to many a hearer.

4. Returning to the ground of linguistics, we may be somewhat bolder, in view of what we have seen in our practical excursion, about stating the meanings of substitutes. We observe, also, that in many languages the meanings of substitutes recur in other forms, such as the English limiting adjectives.

The meaning of the substitute you may be stated thus:

A. Class-meaning: the same as that of the form-class of substantive expressions, say 'object or objects';

B. Substitution-type: ' the hearer. '

The meaning of the substitute he may be stated thus:

A. Class-meanings:

1. Definable in terms of form-classes:

(a) the same as that of the form-class of singular substantive expressions, say 'one object';

(b) the same as that of the form-class defined by the substitutes who, someone, say ' personal';

2. Creating an otherwise unestablished form-class: he is used only of certain singular personal objects (the rest are replaced, instead, by she), which, accordingly, constitute a sub-class with a class-meaning, say 'male';

B. Substitution-types:

1. Anaphora: he implies, in nearly all its uses, that a substantive designating a species of male personal objects has recently been uttered and that he means one individual of this species; say 'recently mentioned';

16

2. Limitation: he implies that the individual is identifiable from among all the individuals of the species mentioned; this element of meaning is the same as that of the syntactic category of definite nouns and can be stated, say, as 'identified. '

5. Substitutes whose substitution-type consists of nothing but anaphora, are (simple) anaphoric substitutes: apart from their class- meanings (which differ, of course, according to the grammatical form-classes of different languages), they say only that the particular form which is being replaced (the antecedent) has just been mentioned. In English, finite verb expressions are anaphorically replaced by forms of do, does, did, as in Bill will misbehave just as John did. The antecedent here is misbehave; accordingly, the replaced form is misbehaved. A few English verb-paradigms, such as be, have will shall, can, may, must, lie outside the domain of this substitution: Bill will be bad just as John was (not did). Nouns, in English are anaphorically replaced by one, plural ones, provided they are accompanied by an adjective attribute: I prefer a hard pencil to a soft one, hard pencils to soft ones. This use of one as an anaphoric pronoun differs by class-cleavage from the several attributive uses of the word one especially in forming a plural, ones. The details of this anaphoric substitution will concern us later.

In subordinate clauses introduced by as or than, we have in English a second kind of anaphora for a finite verb expression: we say not only Mary dances better than Jane does, but also Mary dances better than Jane. We can describe this latter type by saying that (after as and than) an actor (Jane) serves as an anaphoric substitute for an actor-action expression (Jane dances), or we can say that (after as and than) a zero-feature serves as an anaphoric substitute for a finite verb expression accompanying an actor expression. Another case of an anaphoric zero-feature in English is the replacement of infinitive expressions after the preposition to (as in I haven't seen it, but hope to) and after the finite verbs which take an infinitive attribute without to (as in I'll come if I can). Similarly, we have zero-anaphora for participles after forms of be and have, as in You were running faster than I was; I haven't seen it, but Bill has. Zero-anaphora for nouns with an accompanying adjective occurs freely in English only for mass nouns, as in I like sour milk better than fresh. For other nouns we use the anaphoric one, ones, except after certain limiting adjectives.

While some forms of simple anaphoric substitution seem to occur in every language, there are great differences of detail. The use of one, ones, is peculiar to English; related languages of similar structure use zero-anaphora quite freely for nouns after adjectives, as, German grosze Hunde und kleine [È «gro: se «hunde unt «klajne] 'big dogs and little ones'; French des grandes potatoes et des petites [de grand porn e de ptit] 'big apples and small ones.' In some languages the subject in the full sentence-types can be replaced by zero-anaphora; thus, in Chinese, to a statement like [wo3 «ju˜4 i2 khwaj «pu4] 'I need one piece (of) cloth,' the response may be [«ju˜4 i4 «phil mo?] 'Need one roll (interrogative particle)?' In Tagalog this happens in subordinate clauses, as in the sentence [a˜ «pu:nu? aj tu«mu:bu? ha˜ «ga˜ sa mag«bu:˜a] 'the tree (predicative particle) grew until (attributive particle) bore-fruit.'

(Adapted from L. Bloomfield, 2002. Language. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press. 260-266)

17

Text 5

Subclasses, Irregularities, and Economy

R. H. Robins

As has been seen, grammar is concerned with the discovery, analysis, and statement of the regular patterns found in the word forms and the sentence structures of languages. It is these regularities that enable the linguist to class sentences together as examples of various syntactic structures and as being made up of various constructions, and to group words together in word classes whose members behave alike syntactically, and, if variable words, reveal similar paradigms of grammatically different forms. But the term word class is not as simple as may be at first suggested by the inevitable omission of detail in the preceding outline account of the ways in which words are classified grammatically. In most languages subclasses appear within several of the classes by the application of narrower criteria. Some such subclasses have already been mentioned above in other contexts.

The distinction between what are called transitive and intransitive verbs, made in the grammatical description of many languages, essentially depends on a syntactic distinction between those verbs that may construct with a second noun (i.e. other than the subject noun) under certain conditions, such as the noun exhibiting a particular case form or standing in a particular position m the sentence, or the whole sentence admitting the possibility of transformation into a passive (7.2.2, p 282; cp 6.6.3), and those verbs which may not so construct. Hitherto the distinction has, like other grammatical distinctions, been expressed in quasi-semantic terms, but in fact it has always rested on a difference of syntactic possibilities between two subclasses of verbs. The weakness of semantic definitions is well illustrated here: hit, in I hit you is syntactically a transitive verb, and is often chosen as an example because the action referred to may plausibly be said to 'pass across' via my first from me to you: but hear in I hear you is involved in exactly the same syntactic relations with the two pronouns, and is regarded as a transitive verb, though in this case, the 'action', if any actions is in fact referred to, is the other way round; and who does what, and to whom in the situation referred to by the syntactically similar verb in I love YOU?

In several languages, of which Malay and Japanese arc examples, the translation equivalents of many adjectives in European languages are best regarded formally as a subclass of intransitive verbs (but compare English (be) red, adjective, and glow, intransitive verb, and the English adjective (be) silent with the Latin intransitive verb /tace:re/, and the German schweigen /S'vaigen/, with the same meaning).

Within the English noun class an important distinction must be recognized between what may be labelled countable (or bounded) nouns and mass (uncountable or unbounded) nouns, though there is considerable over-lapping since many nouns belong to both subclasses. This formal distinction is most clearly marked syntactically: countable nouns may only be preceded by /s\m/, some unstressed, when in the plural form, which mass nouns may be preceded by /s\m/ in their singular form as well. One may contrast some flour (mass) and some flowers (countable); the use of some in its stressed form /'s√m 'flau\/ (ie an extraordinary flower) is quite separate, though orthographic

18

representation fails to mark the distinction between them.

Wheat and oats, though denoting very similar 'things' in the world, belong grammatically to the mass and countable subclasses of noun respectively. Apart from the criterion chosen as the principal defining one, a number of other distinctions are observable in the use of these two subclasses of nouns. Mass nouns need not be preceded by a or the when standing otherwise alone in the singular at the beginning of a sentence (flour makes bread, but a flower produces seeds). When singular mass nouns are preceded by a or the or plural mass nouns are preceded by a number word, they usually have the specific meaning 'species, or sort, of the substance or thing', and longer sentences with such words actually present are more usual in such contexts (this district produces two (sorts of) metal(s), iron and copper; a (series of) wheat has been developed that ripens early). As is often the case with major grammatical divisions, a difference of generic or class meaning may roughly be correlated with the formal distinction; mass nouns tend to refer to unbounded continua, shapeless substances, extents, and the like (water, time thought (= thinking), soup, sand, wheat, metal, silver; hence the label), and countable nouns tend to be used of spatially or temporally discrete or formed objects and the like (flower, bridge, house, idea, thought (= idea), season, boy). But these semantic correlations, though of great significance in a total description of a language, cannot satisfactorily be used as criteria in the first place. Class meanings are not always easily identifiable, and do not always agree with the formally distinguishing features: oats, pebbles, beans, and peas are plural countable nouns; wheat, shingle, millet, and rice are mass nouns.

Among the invariable words of a language, subclassification, like the original classification, is carried out in syntactic terms. A distinction has already been noticed among the prepositions of several languages (6.4.2) according to the case of the noun or pronoun that each governs. In Vietnamese four subclasses of particles have been set up, according to their positional occurrence in sentences: initial particle, medial particle, final particle, and polytopic particle (unrestricted in place).

English adjectives may be positionally subclassified according to the relative order, or most frequent relative order, in which they occur in groups before nouns. Big black dog is more likely than black big dog, and little old lady than old little lady. This is not to say that a series of prenominal adjectives is always fixed in its relative order of words in English, but many English adjectives do occupy specific positions relative to each other, and still more have a preferred, though not invariable position, and this can be used as a criterion of subclassification.

Morphological differences account for a good deal of subclassing of the variable words in a language. English adjectives divide, with some marginal members of both subclasses, into variable adjectives, having forms ending in -er and -est (prettier prettiest), and those forming semantically and grammatically comparable groups with more and most (more beautiful, most beautiful). Morphological differences among the paradigms of syntactically equivalent forms are the basis of the separate conjugations and declensions of verbs and nouns in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Sanskrit, and of the distinction between the 'weak' and 'strong' verbs of English and German, these latter being further divisible according to the type of vowel alternation involved (eg: sing, sang, sung; ring, rang, rung; take, took, taken; shake, shook, shaken).

When, however, all these subclassifications have been made, it is almost always found that certain

19

words cannot be accounted for wholly by assignment to any group, but must be described individually. These are the 'irregular' words. Ideally, perhaps, it might be supposed that the whole of a language should be such as to be brought within the compass of rules and classes, as far as the grammatical level is concerned; but for some reason or another no such language has ever been found, and within them all some words appear that exhibit forms outside the regular patterns, and some words differ syntactically in particular ways from the majority of members of the class to which they have been assigned.

Traditional grammar paid a great deal of attention to morphological irregularities and listed those words that displayed anomalous paradigms (irregular verb, irregular noun plurals, etc), but syntactic irregularities are just as noticeable, and should be described equally carefully. In both cases their establishment is the same, logically subsequent to the description of the regular forms. Irregularities may lie in the morphological alternations or affixations serving as exponents of a particular category (as in the English noun plurals oxen, children, feet) or in the use of more than one root in the same (suppletive) paradigm (as in good, better, best, or go, went, gone).

Another morphological irregularity appears in the absence of certain paradigmatic forms, for which comparable forms are found in other paradigms of the same class. The English noun cattle, established as plural by sentences like the cattle are sick, has no corresponding singular form, and the singular nouns plenty and neglect have no plural forms; the Latin verb /quatio:/ I shake, has no past tense form corresponding to /concussi:/ the past tense form of /concutio:/ I shake violently. Such words are called defective in respect of the paradigm forms not represented. This has nothing to do with lexical meanings. A single horned domestic animal and successive conditions of plenty or acts of neglect are all possible concepts, and so is the process of shaking referred to in the past. Gluts, negligences, and /concussi:/ all exist as words: it just happens that certain paradigms are formally incomplete.

Syntactically irregular words are those which behave differently from the majority of the words belonging to the class, or subclass, to which they are most readily assigned. The English words afraid, asleep, and some others behave in many respects as adjectives (he is afraid, he is asleep, he is happy, he is afraid of losing his money, he is fearful of losing his money). But they cannot occur in prenominal position; one finds the child is afraid and a child afraid of water cannot learn to swim, but not, nor an asleep child, though a fearful child, a timid child, and a sleepy child are found. The adjective mere, on the other hand, can only occur prenominally; mere folly, but not his folly is mere? A few English words, best regarded as nouns, are of very limited syntactic distribution, being found only in a small number of constructions and with limited collocation therein; such are sake and stead, as in for the sake of, for my sake, for this sake, for the king's sake, in his stead, in my stead, stand him in good stead, etc (notice that instead has come to be written as one word, instead of me, etc, and that this type of phrase has largely replaced in my stead, etc in spoken English).

Obviously the fewer irregularities there are the simpler in that respect will be the grammatical description of language, and it clearly behaves an investigator to bring as much as he can of the morphology and syntax under general rules that will adequately account for them, without neglecting or rejecting any word form or sentence form that constitutes a genuine part of the material of the language. Sometimes a choice between alternative methods of statement will have

20

to be made. Is a subclass of English verbs ending in -ind /-aind/ to be set up, with a past tense form ending in -ound /-aund/ as part of the regular paradigm of that subclass (bind, find, grind, wind /waind/)? In this case mind, minded and blind, blinded will be irregular within the subclasses. Or are the strong verbs of this group simply to be set among the irregular verbs, leaving mind and blind, and any others like it (rind as a verb may be accepted by some speakers), simply as regular verbs without further comment? The former treatment adds one subclass to the verbal system, but within it the anomalous forms are fewer; the latter reduces the amount of subdivision among the whole word class, but leaves a larger number of verbs to be just listed as irregular.

It might reasonably be expected that, as languages develop, irregularities would gradually be eliminated in the interests of minimal effort in learning and in communication. This process does occur. Newly created and borrowed words (8.1.8) in a language nearly all follow the regular of most frequent patterns of the words in the class to which they are assigned in use. The comparison of Ancient Greek with Modern Greek shows that there were more subclasses and irregularities in the paradigms in antiquity than there are today; and several English strong verbs (minority type) have been replaced by a corresponding weak (majority type) form (helped has replaced holp and holpen, and snowed has replaced snew). This is the process known in historical linguistics as analogy or analogical formation (8.1.9).

On the other hand, a reverse process sometimes appears in the development of languages, though this is less easily accounted for. The suppletive verbs meaning 'to go' in most of the Romance languages (eg French alter /alte/ to go, vais /v´/ (I) go, irai /ire/ (I) shall go; Italian andure /an'dare/ to go, va /va/ (he) goes, andiamo /andi'amo/(we) go) have developed from four separate Latin verbs, each of which showed a complete paradigm: /ambula:re/ to walk, /i:re/ to go /va:dere/ to go, /adna:re/ to approach (by swimming), all except /i…re/ being, in fact, regularly inflected verbs.

The only wholly 'regular' languages are the artificial ones like Esperanto, created as worldwide second languages. If somehow a speech community came to use Esperanto as its first language one wonders how long it would be before irregularities began to appear.

The discussion on the analytic treatment of apparently irregular forms focuses attention on one of the primary objectives of linguistic science (or indeed of any other science). This has already been referred to in 1.2.1, above, and is necessarily a constant concern of the linguist, whether he conceives his task as primarily the search for the most efficient means of describing and classifying the elements and structure of a language as he has observed and recorded it, or whether he is trying to make explicit the nature of a speaker's implicit and inherent knowledge or competence in regard to his own language (cf, below, 7.2.4).

Where more than one descriptive statement can be brought under a single statement a greater economy and efficiency is achieved. Part of German grammar will illustrate this. In main clauses and single-clause sentences, where no special emphasis or topicalization is required, German word order is much like word order in English. Thus wir gehen morgen in ein Konzert /vi:r 'ge:en 'mørgen >in >ain køn'ts´rt/ we are going tomorrow to a concert. But we may emphasize that it is tomorrow that we are going, and not the day after: morgen gehen wir in ein Konzert; or we may emphasize that is is to a concert that we are going, not to the theatre: in ein Konzert gehen wir morgen. And we find sentences like auf dieser Welt war mir das Glgick nicht hold /auf 'di:zer 'velt

21

va:r mi:r das 'glyk niBt 'hNlt/ on this earth fortune was not kind to me, but in the German the order of words is 'on this earth was to-me (the) fortune not kind'.

We can make separate statements that when an adverb comes first in the sentence then the subject must follow the verb, and that a similar shift in word order is required when a prepositional phrase comes first. But while all such statements of rules are probably helpful in teaching German to foreign language learners, a much more economical formulation is achieved by the statement that in German declarative main clauses the verb always occupies the place of the second major constituent, whatever syntactic role is taken by the initial constituent. This also covers German sentences in which the object noun or noun phrase comes first (6.4.4, p 239).

(Selected from R. H. Robins, 1989. General Linguistics. Longman and FLTRP. pp. 247-257.)