Syntax (Part 3) Quiz 12.2

Syntax (Part 3)

• Obligatory Adverbials: Certain constructions, similar to adverbs, are obligatory and cannot be omitted. Optionality and movement do not apply in these cases. Examples include: "I quietly stole upstairs," "My aunt is into yoga," or "Who set the typewriter there?"
• Adverbials indicating circumstances (place, time, reason, manner, purpose) can be freely combined with verbs or omitted. But some verbs have specific adverbials acting as complements. "They had married in Chicago before" is an example of an obligatory complement. "They lived in Chicago before" is optional.
• Verb Complementation Patterns: Stripping optional adverbials from a clause reveals basic construction types (e.g., SV, SVO, SVOD). Examples of types include monotransitive, ditransitive, copular, complex-transitive, intransitive with obligatory A, transitive with obligatory A.
• Ellipsis: Subject omission is common in informal speech. "Hm. Don't think so" is a good example.
• Constituent Order: Constituent order (e.g., SVCO) can be influenced by end-weight principles. A surprising move example: "Parliament elected spokesman an utterly unknown backbencher."
• Extraposition: Long objects can be moved and a dummy element ("it") inserted.
  • Example: "Something put it in his head that she was a foreign spy."

Syntactic Analysis

• The Recipe (Step 1): Identify the highest-ranking verb phrase (verb of the main clause). Example: "Entering the room, the wary detective rather quickly noticed something had changed."

• Criteria (Step 1): Main clause is finite, not introduced by a subordinating conjunction, and doesn't depend on another constituent.

• The Recipe (Step 2): Identify other immediate constituents based on the highest verb phrase.

• Criteria (Step 2): Immediate constituents can be replaced by single pro-forms, moved as a whole, or omitted.

• The Recipe (Step 3): Determine the forms of immediate constituents (e.g., noun phrase, verb phrase, adverbial phrase). See examples in provided materials.

• The Recipe (Step 4): Assign syntactic functions (subject, object, adverbial, etc.) to immediate constituents.

• The Recipe (Step 5): Identify the complementation pattern of the highest-ranking verb (e.g., SVO). This will denote the verb's type of structure.

Two More Syntactic Relations

• Coordination: "X and Y", or "X or Y" or "X but Y" are parallel constituents at the same syntactic level (though with different meanings). These are often joined by a coordinating conjunction. Example: "The weather will be cold and cloudy."
• Apposition: Structures are parallel and identical in function and reference, where one explains the other. Example: "Jacques Sauniere, the renowned curator, staggered through the vaulted archway."

Coordination and Subordination

• Simple Sentence: One main clause, like "Snow still lay on the ground."
• Compound Sentence: Two or more coordinated main clauses, like "May had come but snow still lay on the ground."
• Complex Sentence: One or more subordinate clauses, like "Though May had come, snow still lay on the ground."

Marking Constituency: Subordination

• Means of Subordination: Techniques for marking subordinate clauses, including conjunctions, position, wh-forms, non-finite verb phrases, verbless sentences, or inversions.