A comprehensive descriptive grammar of English.pdf

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author: Renaat Declerck
title: A comprehensive descriptive grammar of English
publisher: Kaitakusha (Tokyo)
ISBN: 4-7589-0538-X
595 pages
This is a preliminary version. Its page numbers are different from those in the published book.
This book was revised for later editions

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PREFACE
When, in 1970, I started teaching English to undergraduates, I could not find any grammatical
handbook that corresponded exactly to what I thought the students ought to know. Although there were
quite a few good grammars available, I found none of them completely satisfactory as regards the
selection of data to be presented, the organization and structure of the work, and the formulation of the
rules. I therefore set out to write a textbook of my own. The first version drew heavily on the well-known
traditional grammars of people like Jespersen, Poutsma, etc., but also incorporated a number of insights
and terms from structuralist and transformational grammar. Since then I have never stopped revising and
updating the book. The final revision took place in 1990, after Prof. Shigeki Seki, who was then spending
a year at my university, informed me that (without my knowing about it) he had sent the work to
Kaitakusha Co. in Tokyo and that they were interested in publishing it.
The fact that the work has been devised as a textbook for university students has some important
consequences for its form and contents.
To begin with, the book clearly has a double purpose. It aims not only to help the students to learn
English but also to make them gain a clear insight into the structure of the language. This means that
apart from offering a host of practical rules, it also introduces a lot of linguistic concepts. In fact, it aims
to make the reader acquainted with all the basic linguistic terminology that is used in descriptive
linguistics. In this way it should provide him with the necessary basis for tackling linguistic literature of a
more theoretical nature.
A second aspect of the book that is explained by its being written as a coursebook is its structure, i.e. the
ordering of the chapters. This order is not determined by linguistic considerations, but simply reflects the
order in which I like students to tackle the various subjects. The result is that chapters dealing with
elements of the verb phrase are intermixed with chapters treating elements of the noun phrase. This kind
of presentation may be unusual in the tradition of English grammars, but I deem it convenient from a
pedagogical point of view. Apart from the introduction (which is purely theoretical), the early chapters of
the book are those that are most essential for building up a working knowledge of the language. For
example, students need to learn the tense and aspect systems of the language as soon as possible. A
detailed knowledge of the modal system is less pressing: the chapter going into this can be placed after
more urgent ones, such as those dealing with the use of adverbs, articles, nouns and pronouns. The fact
that there is a detailed table of contents and an extensive index makes sure that subjects can be looked up
quickly anyhow: the book can easily be used as a reference grammar.
Another aspect of the book that is related to its genesis is the relative weight that has been assigned to
the various areas of English grammar. This weight, which is reflected in the length of the chapters, is
mainly determined by the book’s aim to be usable as a practical grammar. Areas of the grammar which
are interesting from a theoretical point of view but present no practical problems are only treated
summarily. For example, the book does not go into the rules of word-formation (except the ones that
have to do with inflection) because a language learner does not need to be able to use these rules
consciously: complex and compound words are normally learnt as a whole, not derived from other words
by the conscious application of rules of derivational affixation or compounding. By contrast, the book
pays considerable attention to the English systems of tense, aspect and modality. These systems are
notoriously complex and difficult to learn, yet in virtually all English grammars that I know they receive
a treatment that is very much simplified. The Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (Quirk
et al. 1985), which is the most prestigious English grammar at this moment, devotes only 71 pages to
tense, aspect and modality together. This is roughly the same number of pages as are devoted to word-
formation, viz. 4.33% of the entire book. By contrast, the chapters dealing with the same subjects in the
present grammar take up almost 50% of the whole work. This is a deliberate choice, since the systems of

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tense, aspect and modality are not only extremely intricate but also play a crucial part in English
grammar. I have chosen to describe them in detail, rather than offer a simplified set of rough-and-ready
rules.
It follows that the book is not ‘comprehensive’ in every sense of the term. It is comprehensive in the
sense that the subjects that are dealt with are given a thorough treatment (even if it has sometimes proved
impossible to avoid simplification); it is not comprehensive in the sense that all areas of the grammar are
fully gone into. Some major areas which are not treated in this book are phonetics, phonology, lexicology
and derivational morphology. It should also be noted that the book is only concerned with grammatical
structure; it contains no sections that are concerned with such things as punctuation or essay-writing.
Since there are many varieties of English, I have had to make a choice as to the variety I was going to
describe. The kind of English that is treated in this book is ‘Standard English’ as it is used in Great
Britain today. As is well-known, there are a number of respects in which this English differs from the
other major variety, viz. American English. Although the most obvious differences concern the choice of
lexical items, there are also some differences in grammatical structure. The most important of these are
pointed out in the book.
As I am not a native speaker of English, my knowledge of the language is the result of teaching,
observation and reading. Over the past twenty years I have read a lot of works on English grammars, and
many of them have contributed greatly to my knowledge of the language. It is impossible, however, to
say for each area of the grammar which has been the specific contribution of these various works. For
this reason I have conformed to the well-established tradition of writing a grammar without references
and of adding a bibliography that lists the works that I feel especially indebted to.
My final remark concerns the index. When compiling it, I became increasingly aware of the fact that I
would have to make a choice between two possibilities. On the one hand I could give, for each entry in
the index, an exhaustive list of the pages on which the term was used. If I did this, the result would be an
index that was comprehensive but unwieldy, because many entries would be followed by dozens of page
numbers. On the other hand, I could restrict the page numbers listed in the index to just those that
referred to the places where the term was defined or where the concept in question was directly
discussed. If I did this, the index would be less comprehensive, but it would be perfectly usable as a
means of looking up information quickly. Since I intend the book to be usable as a reference grammar, I
have chosen the second option. The index at the end of this book is therefore a selective one.
Kortrijk, June 1991

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 1. Introduction
1.1 Linguistics 1
1.2 Semantics 3
1.3 Morphemes 4
1.4 Words 8
1.5 Parts of speech 10
1.6 Syntax 12
1.7 Noun Phrases 21
1.8 Prepositional phrases 33
1.9 Verb phrases 37
Chapter 2. Morphology
2.1 The plural of nouns 49
2.2 The genitive 52
2.3 The formation of verb forms 54
2.4 Formation of comparative and superlative 62
2.5 Formation of adverbs 65
Chapter 3. The tenses
3.1 Introduction 69
3.2 The absolute tenses 71
3.2.1 The present tense 71
3.2.2 The past tense 74
3.3.3 The present perfect 77
3.3.4 The future tense 88
3.3. Temporal relations in a domain 93
3.3.1 Relations in a past time-sphere domain 94
3.3.2 Relations in a pre-present sector domain 97
3.3.3 Relating a situation to a present TO 100
3.3.4 Relations in a post-present domain 102
3.4 Sloppy simultaneity 104
3.5 Alternatives to temporal subordination 105
3.6 Different ways of establishing a domain 112
3.6.1 Direct and indirect binding 113
3.6.2 Temporal focus 114
3.6.3 Implicit time of orientation 117
3.6.2 Adverbial time clauses 118
Chapter 4. Progressive Aspect
4.1 Durative or progressive aspect 122
4.1.1 General meaning 122
4.1.2 Normal uses of the progressive 123
4.1.3 Special uses of the progressive 127
4.1.4 Conditions for the progressive 131
4.2 The use of nonprogressive tense forms 138
Chapter 5. The Auxiliary do

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5.1 Introduction 145
5.2 Sentences involving inversion 145
5.3 Negative Clauses 148
5.4 Do for emphasis 148
5.5 Do substituting for a lexical verbs or VP 149
5.6 Notes on the use of do with have 155
Chapter 6. The Passive Voice
6.2 The passive transformation 160
6.3 The use of the passive 166
Chapter 7. The Adverbials
7.2 Classes of adverbials and their positions 172
7.2.1 Adjuncts 172
7.2.2 Subjuncts 178
7.2.3 Disjuncts 182
7.2.4 Conjuncts 183
Chapter 8. The Noun
8.1 Number 185
8.2 Case 198
8.3 Gender 202
Chapter 9. Pronouns and Pronominal Determiners
9.2 The personal pronouns 206
9.2.1 Person 206
9.2.2 Gender 213
9.2.3 Case 214
9.3 The compound personal pronoun 215
9.4 The demonstrative pro-forms 218
9.5 The interrogative pro-forms 211
9.6 The possessive pro-forms 223
9.7 The indefinite pro-forms 225
9.7.1 One 225
9.7.2 Either, neither 229
9.7.3 All, each, every, both 230
9.7.4 Some, any 235
9.7.5 Other 241
9.7.6 No, none, nothing, nobody, no one 242
9.7.7 Few, little, many, much 244
9.7.8 Such, so 247
9.7.9 Half, double, twice, one third, etc. 249
9.8 The numerals 250
Chapter 10. The Article

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10.2 The use of the definite article 259
10.3 The use of the indefinite article 268
Chapter 11. The Adjective
11.1 The use of comparative and superlative forms 272
11.2 Further syntactic characteristics 275
Chapter 12. The modal system
12.2 Inflectional modal forms 280
12.2.1 The subjunctive 280
12.2.2 Modal indicative forms 282
12.3 Modal auxiliaries 286
12.3.1 Volition 286
12.3.2 Permission 293
12.3.3 Prohibition 296
12.3.4 Compulsion, necessity 298
12.3.5 Absence of compulsion or necessity 307
12.3.6 Ability 309
12.3.6 Possibility 315
12.3.7 Impossibility 321
12.3.8 Epistemic necessity 323
12.3.8 Probability, expectation, belief 327
12.3.9 Wish 330
12.3.10 Habit 330
12.3.11 The verb dare 332
12.4 Modal auxiliaries in subclauses 333
12.4.1 Noun clauses 333
12.4.2 Conditional clauses 336
12.4.3 Subclauses after expressions of wish or hope 348
12.4.4 Subclauses after expressions of fear 349
12.4.5 Clauses of purpose 350
12.4.6 Concessive clauses 352
Chapter 13. The Participle
13.1 Morphological characteristics 355
13.2 Syntactic characteristics 358
13.3 Function of the participle in the sentence 359
13.3.1 Prenominal modifier 359
13.3.2 Postnominal modifier 360
13.3.3 Subject complement 361
13.3.4 Supplementive clause 362
13.3.5 Object complement 363
13.3.6 Absolute participial clause 366
13.3.7 Unrelated participle 367
Chapter 14: The infinitive

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14.1 Morphological and syntactic characteristics 368
14.1.1 Morphological characteristics 368
14.1.2. Syntactic characteristics 369
14.2 Function of the infinitive in the sentence 370
14.2.1 Infinitive with to 370
14.2.2 The infinitive without to 387
Chapter 15. The gerund
15.1 Morphology 391
15.2 Syntactic characteristics 393
15.3 Functions of the gerund in the sentence 397
15.3.1 Subject 397
15.3.2 Subject complement 398
15.3.3 Direct object 398
15.3.4 Object complement 408
15.3.5 Object of a preposition 408
15.3.6 Complement of an adjective 410
15.3.7 Gerund after as, than, but, except 411
Chapter 16. Indirect speech and thought.
16.2 Indirect speech and thought 412
16.2.1 Statements 412
16.2.2 Questions 417
16.2.3 Commands 419
16.2.4 Exclamations and yes/no 419
16.2.5 Stretches of discourse 419
16.2.6 Free indirect speech 420
Chapter 17. Relative clauses
17.2 The relative connectives 423
17.3 Complex constructions 434
17.4 Word order in the relative clause 435

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
Am.E. American English
Br.E. British English
O object
DST direct speech and thought
fml formal
FPS future perspective system
infml informal
N noun
NP noun phrase
OC object complement
OP object of a preposition
P preposition
PO prepositional object
pp past participle
pf perfect
PP prepositional phrase
PPS present perspective system
RST reported speech and thought
SC subject complement
S subject
TO time of orientation
TS time of the situation referred to
TU time of utterance
V verb
VP verb phrase

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CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
1.1 LINGUISTICS
A. Linguistics can be defined as the science that studies human language (natural language). Within
linguistics several approaches are possible. One of them is descriptive linguistics, which aims at
providing rules that describe and analyse the well-formed (grammatical) sentences of a language. Such a
description is possible because the infinite number of possible sentences in any language appear to be
built after a restricted number of patterns: the system underlying a potentially infinite number of
utterances can be described by means of a limited number of rules.
B. A descriptive grammar of English will contain several sections in which different types of structure
are examined:1
1. The first level of analysis is concerned with the system of speech sounds that are used by the
speakers of English:
a. In that part of linguistics that is called phonetics, the linguist makes an inventory of the speech
sounds that are employed by speakers of the language and describes them:
1) In the branch of phonetics that is called articulatory phonetics the phonetician examines
how speech sounds are produced by the human speech organs and in which ways they
differ from each other.
2) In acoustic phonetics the phonetician examines how speech sounds are conveyed from the
speaker to the hearer by means of sound waves.
3) In auditory phonetics the phonetician examines how the speech sounds are received by
the human ear and conveyed to the brain so as to be decoded.
b. In phonemics (or phonology) the linguist concentrates on those speech sounds that are
phonemes and studies the phonemic system of the language. (A phoneme is a speech sound
that is capable of distinguishing meaning. For example, /r/ and /l/ are phonemes because there
are minimal pairs like rid vs lid, which are recognizable as different words (with different
meanings) because of the phonemic difference between /r/ and /l/.)
2. The next higher level is concerned with morphemes (meaningful combinations of phonemes) and
shows how one or more morphemes can constitute a word. This part of linguistics is called
morphology. (The study of words is also called lexicology.)
3. The third level deals with the ways in which words can be arranged to form larger combinations, viz.
phrases, clauses and sentences. This is the realm of syntax.
C. That part of linguistics that is concerned with the meaning of sentences is called semantics.
D. Recent linguistics also involves a branch (called pragmatics) which studies those aspects of meaning
that are not inherent in the utterance itself but have to do with how we use language in conversation (e.g.
how we use language in order to get people to do things).
E. The term grammar usually refers to a linguistic work that deals both with syntax and with some
morphological questions (more specifically, inflection and conjugation).2
However, the term may also
1. All the terms introduced in this section and left unexplained here will be defined in some later section.
2. The terms inflection and conjugation are explained in section 1.3.,E.

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indicate a linguistic theory (e.g. ‘Transformational Generative Grammar’) which aims at dealing with
every level of structure, including phonology and semantics.
F. It should be noted that spelling (orthography) is not one of the levels of linguistic analysis. Indeed,
the spelling system used by the speakers of a language has nothing to do with the system of the language
itself: language is by definition oral. Writing is no more than a conventional way of recording language in
a visual form. There are a great many languages spoken by tribes that do not even use a form of writing.
(Of course, this does not mean that spelling is irrelevant. Misspellings should be avoided because they
will mostly be considered as marks of illiteracy or ill-breeding.)
The spelling system used by speakers of English is a very imperfect phonemic (alphabetic) system: in
an ideal alphabetic system one letter would always stand for the same phoneme and one phoneme could
only be represented by one letter. In fact there is not a single letter in the English alphabet that cannot
stand for more than one phoneme, and most phonemes can be represented in a variety of ways. For
example, the letter a can represent at least seven different phonemes (can, father, orphan, cane, bare,
small, village) while the phoneme /i:/ can be spelt in at least eleven different ways (margarine, retrieve,
anaemic, foetus, he, receipt, steam, sleep, key, quay, people).
G. When studying a language like English, we must keep in mind that languages are not normally
uniform but consist of a number of varieties:
1. Most languages show regional varieties. For English we must reckon with varieties spoken in
different parts of the world (United Kingdom, U.S., Australia, Canada, Zimbabwe, etc.) and with
further dialectical variation within these varieties. Regional varieties may differ in:
a. pronunciation (e.g. new is pronounced as /nju:/ in Br.E. and as /nu:/ in Am.E.)
b. orthography (e.g. Br.E. humour, theatre, realise,3
offence, judgement, likeable, travelling vs.
Am.E. humor, theater, realize, offense, judgment, likable, traveling)
c. vocabulary (e.g. in pairs like the following the first word is the Br.E. term, the second its Am.E.
equivalent: railway/railroad, allege/claim, liquidizer/blender, pavement/sidewalk, taxi/cab,
mad/crazy, angry/mad, engine/motor, flat/apartment, tin/can, petrol/gas, main road/highway,
film/movie, etc.)
d. grammar (e.g. in Br.E. we say I have just seen him, not I just saw him; in Am.E. either form is
good.)
2. There are social varieties (studied in sociolinguistics), which are related to the social class or
education of the speaker. The English which is accepted as ‘good English’ by everybody is called
Standard English. The English of the uneducated is nonstandard or substandard English (slang).
An example of nonstandard English is the word ain’t, which is very common in dialects and in
‘uneducated’ English. It is used as a contracted form of either am not, are not, is not, have not or has
not.
e.g. I ain’t going to do it.
You ain’t a teacher.
I ain’t got any more money.
She ain’t been here for weeks.
Slang differs from standard English not only in pronunciation and vocabulary but also in its syntax.
e.g. One of the syntactic peculiarities of slang is that in negative sentences there is more than one
marker of negation: I don’t need no doctor ; You ain’t seen nothing yet ; She ain’t never said
nothing to nobody.4
3. In Br.E. we can write either -ize or -ise.
4. The following example (uttered by a New Yorker) was recorded by W. Labov: There ain’t no cat can’t come
in no coop (= There is no cat that can get into one of the coops).

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3. There are ‘register’ varieties, which have to do with
a. the situation of speaking: much depends on the degree of distance (formality) between the
speaker/writer and the listener/reader. For example, we will not use the same register when
addressing the Prime Minister as we do when speaking to a relative or intimate friend.
b. the subject matter (e.g. the archaic and stilted language of legal texts vs. a commentary on a
baseball match)
c. the mode of discourse (e.g. oral vs. written, monologue vs. dialogue, spontaneous vs. prepared
speech)
d. the purpose of the act of speaking or writing: the speaker may want to set out facts, to teach, to
persuade, to exhort, to establish social relationships, to entertain, to exchange arguments, to
describe something, etc. (For example, the language of advertising and propaganda certainly
forms a register of its own.)
All these factors together lead to a distinction between several registers, which, for our purpose, may
be brought together under three headings: formal English, informal English, and a neutral register
in between the two.
e.g. The verb to die belongs to the neutral register; to pass away is formal, to kick the bucket is
informal.
1.2 SEMANTICS
In recent linguistics a distinction is made between different categories of meaning:
1. Implication or entailment
An implication is a proposition which is logically entailed by a sentence. For example, I have killed
him logically entails ‘He is dead’. Since an implication follows necessarily from the truth of a
sentence, it cannot be denied without semantic inconsistency: !I have killed him, but he is not dead is
semantically anomalous.
2. Presupposition
A presupposition is a condition which has to be fulfilled if a sentence is to make sense as a
statement, order, etc. For example, the sentence Close the door! logically presupposes ‘The door is
not closed now’; if this presupposition is not true, the sentence cannot be used in an appropriate way.
Unlike implications, presuppositions are not cancelled by negation: whereas the addition of not to I
have killed him takes away the implication ‘He is dead’, the addition of not to Close the door! does
not affect the presupposition: Don’t close the door! still presupposes that the door is open now.
3. Implicature
An implicature is something which is suggested by a sentence or other type of linguistic expression
(and which the hearer has a right to accept as true) unless there is an indication to the contrary. For
example, the sentence Someone has cleared away the glasses implicates that ALL the glasses have
been cleared away, but this implicature can be cancelled by the context, as in The person who has
cleared away the glasses has left some on the window-sill.
Implicatures have to do with ‘pragmatic meaning’, not with ‘semantic meaning’. An implicature is
something that can be inferred from the USE of a certain linguistic expression, although it does not
belong to its proper MEANING.5
Implicatures are the result of the fact that speakers conventionally
observe certain rules when using the language. One of these rules is that a (co-operative) speaker
gives all the information that is necessary for a correct interpretation of his sentence. (H.P. Grice has
5. At least, this is true of conversational implicatures, not of conventional implicatures (see below).

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dubbed this principle ‘the Maxim of Quantity’: “Make your contribution as informative as required
for the current purposes of the exchange”.) For example, the sentence I have three children is
misleading (though strictly speaking true) if the speaker actually has five children. This is because I
have three children implicates ‘I have no more than three children’. This implicature follows from
the principle that the speaker should be maximally informative, i.e. should not hold back any
relevant information.
The following are a couple of further examples of implicatures that follow from the Maxim of
Quantity:
e.g. When a speaker uses an indefinite NP (e.g. a woman) he implicates that the referent is not
identifiable to the hearer. For, if the referent is identifiable to the hearer (and the speaker knows
this), the speaker should use a definite NP (e.g. the woman, my sister, Betty), since a definite
NP is more informative than an indefinite one. The following is an example of how violation of
this implicature can lead the hearer to draw false conclusions:
A. Have you heard? They’ve stolen a car in the street.
B. I’m pleased to hear that. I don’t like all those strangers parking their cars in our street.
There’s hardly any space left for parking our own.
A. Don’t be too pleased. It’s your car that has been stolen.
In his first sentence speaker A violates the definiteness implicature: he should not speak of a
car if he knows that the car in question belongs to the hearer.
e.g. In many contexts some implicates ‘not all’. Thus, it is deceiving to say Some pupils are absent
if all the pupils (of the relevant set) are absent. In that case the speaker should use the more
informative expression all the pupils (or simply the pupils -- see above).
Another principle of conversation which a (co-operative) speaker will observe is what Grice calls
the ‘Maxim of Relation’: the speaker should only say things that are relevant to the conversation he
is having.
e.g. Consider the following scrap of conversation:
A. Jack doesn’t seem to care for his children much.
B. He took Janice to the playground yesterday and bought her a kite.
Speaker B implicates that Janice is Jack’s daughter. If this is not the case, his sentence is not a
relevant reply to A’s remark.
e.g. Sentences like I was going to resign or I had intended to resign implicate that the speaker no
longer intends to resign. This is because the intention is located in the past and not in the
present. Since, other things being equal, statements about the present are more relevant than
statements about the past, we should expect the speaker to locate his intention in the present (I
am going to... or I intend to...) if he has the intention at the moment of speech. (As usual, the
implication can be cancelled by the context. This is the case in He was going to resign, and
perhaps he will.)
Apart from conversational implicatures there also exist conventional implicatures. A
conventional implicature is an implicature which has come to be part of the meaning of the
expression used. This means that it arises whenever the expression is used and is, therefore, not
cancellable. For example, the verb phrase manage to do X conventionally implicates ‘It is difficult to
do X’. In He even invited John the word even conventionally implicates that John was the least
likely person to be invited.
1.3 MORPHEMES
A. Although a phoneme functions as a signal of meaning, it has no meaning itself. Only combinations of
phonemes can have a meaning. The smallest such meaningful combinations are called morphemes. We

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can define a morpheme as a linguistic unit that answers the following requirements: (a) it is a word or
part of a word which has a meaning that remains the same when the morpheme is used in different
environments (combinations); (b) we cannot split it up into further meaningful parts without violating its
meaning.
e.g. The word strip is a combination of phonemes. Its basic meaning is something like ‘to undress’. It
retains this meaning in different environments, e.g. in stripped, stripped off, strips, stripping, strip-
tease. Dividing it further (s-trip, st-rip) is not possible without violation of its meaning (trip and rip
are not semantically related to strip) or without leaving meaningless remainders (s, st). Strip is
therefore a (single) morpheme.
e.g. The verb weaken consists of two morphemes: weak and -en. The latter means something like ‘to
make/render’ and also occurs in other combinations: darken, deepen, ripen, strengthen, madden,
cheapen, soften, lengthen, brighten, stiffen.
e.g. Words like product, cartoon, capsize, etc. consist of two syllables but only one morpheme. (The
verb capsize is not a combination of the morphemes cap and size because it is semantically unrelated
to these.)
e.g. Quickly, softly, slowly, etc. consist of two morphemes; only and silly consist of only one.
B. When we speak of the meaning of a morpheme, this does not necessarily mean that that meaning can
be found in a dictionary (lexicon). Morphemes such as cat, dog, eat, night, etc. which can be found there
are said to have lexical meaning.6
They have referents that exist outside the world of language.
Morphemes such as -s in books, -ed in played, -ly in quickly, etc. have a grammatical meaning only.
They refer to concepts that exist in linguistics only.
e.g. The -s morpheme in books means ‘nominal plural’. (It is homophonous with two other -s
morphemes, which mean ‘genitive of noun’ and ‘third person singular present tense of lexical
verb’.)
e.g. -ed in played is either the ‘past tense’ or ‘past participle’ morpheme.
e.g. -ly in quickly has the grammatical meaning of ‘adverb marker’.
C. Morphemes are either free or bound. They are free if they do not need to combine with other
morphemes to be uttered in a meaningful way. Free morphemes can always be used as full words, but
many of them can also combine with other morphemes to constitute a word.
e.g. undeniable, idolize, overview, bookish, improper.
A morpheme is bound if it can only be used as part of a word, i.e. in combination with one or more other
morphemes.
e.g. replay, nicely, bookish, comes, speaker, petrodollar, kingdom, selective, dreamed, undo
Note:
1. Grammatical morphemes are by definition bound.
2. Most words consist of, or contain, at least one free morpheme. But words like combine, consume,
admonish, interrupt, convert, etc. (which are loanwords) contain only bound morphemes. The reason
why we can look upon com, con, ad, inter, bine, rupt, vert, etc. as morphemes is that they are clearly
morphemes in the language from which these words are borrowed. If we did not take this diachronic
evidence into account,7
we could not regard inter, con, etc. as meaningful elements.
6. Strictly speaking, morphemes should be represented phonemically, since they are combinations of phonemes.
However, for technical reasons they will be represented here by the usual spelling symbols (i.e. by
graphemes).
7. By diachronic evidence is meant evidence from the history of the language.

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D. When several morphemes combine to form a word we can distinguish between the base (or root) and
the affixes: the base is the morpheme with the principal meaning, the other morphemes are affixes.
e.g. undeveloped, revitalization, impolitely, ungraciously, wilfulness, disbelief, erroneously, endanger,
advisable, childish
With the exception of word compounds like boy-friend (which are discussed below), a word will contain
only one base, which is usually a free morpheme, but sometimes a bound one (assent, avert). On the
other hand, there may be several affixes in a word, all of which are bound morphemes. We call them
prefixes if they precede the base and suffixes if they follow it.
e.g. prefixes: pre/destin/ation, in/just/ice, un/mis/tak/able, contra/cept/ive
e.g. suffixes: natur/al/ly, stat/ist/ic, special/iz/ation/s, contra/dict/or/i/ly, fertil/iz/er/s, in/access/ibil/ity
E. Affixes are either derivational or inflectional:
1. Derivational affixes are used for deriving new words from existing ones.
e.g. devilish, grammarian, refreshment, honestly
2. Inflectional suffixes are used in building the possible forms of a verb, noun, adjective or adverb.
e.g. look, look/s, look/ed, look/ing
mother, mother/s, mother/’s, mother/s/’
quick, quick/er, quick/est
often, often/er, often/est
Note:
1. We speak of inflection to indicate that nouns, adjectives and adverbs can take different forms
through the addition of different inflectional suffixes. In the case of verbs we speak of
conjugation. (In older grammars, the term accidence was used as a cover term. The word
flection is sometimes used similarly.)
2. The forms to which inflectional suffixes are added are called stems. They include the base(s)
and the derivational affixes, if any.
e.g. equations (base: equate, stem: equation)
fantasizing (base: fantasy; stem: fantasize)
abnormalities (base: norm; stem: abnormality)
3. A group of words involving the same stem but different inflectional suffixes is called an
inflectional paradigm.
e.g. pay, pays, paid, paying
brother, brothers, brother’s, brothers’
soft, softer, softest
A group of words involving the same base but different derivational affixes is called a
derivational paradigm.
e.g. light, lighter, lightly, enlighten, lightness, lighten, relight
play, playful, playfully, playfulness, replay, player, playable
live, alive, enliven, lively, relive, liveable, livelihood
4. There are no more than eight inflectional suffixes:
-S noun plural
-S noun genitive
-S 3rd person singular present tense verb
-ING present participle
-D past tense
-D past participle
-ER comparative

15
-EST superlative
5. Apart from their different functions, inflectional and derivational suffixes differ in the
following ways:
a. The selection of derivational suffixes is an unpredictable matter: there is no accounting for
the fact that, in order to derive an activity noun from the verb, we have to add -al to
appraise, -ment to improve, -ure to fail, -y to discover, -age to shrink, -ion to select, etc.
The selection of inflectional morphemes, by contrast, is not arbitrary at all: each
inflectional suffix can be added to (in principle) all and only the members of a particular
part of speech (word class), and different inflectional suffixes can never have the same
function.
b. The addition of a derivational suffix often entails a change of part of speech.
e.g. The addition of -able to the verb play yields an adjective: playable.
hang/er, power/ful, love/ly, natur/al/ly, bright/en, quiet/ly, re/new/al
Inflectional suffixes can never entail a change of part of speech.
c. With the exception of the noun plural morpheme and the genitive morpheme, which can
co-occur (children’s, fathers’), it is impossible to have more than one inflectional suffix in
a word. Derivational suffixes, on the other hand, may pile up:
e.g. e-norm-ous-ly (enormously), equal-ize-er-s (equalizers), norm-al-ize-ation
(normalization)
F. Every word consisting of two or more morphemes naturally falls apart into two parts, which we call
its immediate constituents (I.C.s). These I.C.s may themselves consist of two I.C.s, etc.
e.g. The word unquestionably consists of the I.C.s unquestionable and -ly; unquestionable itself has as
I.C.s un- and questionable; questionable falls apart into question and -able.
In making these divisions we primarily rely on the meaning: the meaning of a construction is normally
the sum total of the meanings of its I.C.s. Thus, unquestionable is semantically a combination of un (=
not) and questionable, not a combination of *unquestion and -able (= possible). Apart from semantic
considerations, the following instructions can help us to exercise the I.C. division:
1. If possible, one of the I.C.s should be a free form (i.e. an existing word).
e.g. anti/nuclear, powerful/ness, un/friendliness, improve/ment, in/accessible
2. If the word in question contains an inflectional suffix, this suffix will belong to the highest pair of
I.C.s.
e.g. reservation/s, disabl/ed, gentleman/’s
Further examples:
e.g. intolerably = intolerable + ly (intolerable = in + tolerable; tolerable = toler + able)
e.g. unfriendly = un + friendly; friendly = friend + ly
G. One and the same morpheme can sometimes have different phonemic forms. These variants are called
allomorphs.
e.g. The morpheme LONG is pronounced differently in the words long, longer and length.
e.g. The morpheme SENT takes on different phonemic forms in assent, resent, sentient and sentiment
e.g. chaste - chastity
e.g. compare - comparable - comparatively
Different phonemic forms are allomorphs if they have the same meaning and are in complementary
distribution (i.e. if only one of them can be selected when the morpheme is to be used in a particular
environment or combination).
e.g. The -S morpheme of the 3rd person singular present tense consists of three allomorphs, as it is
pronounced differently in takes, runs, and kisses. These different phonemic realizations are

16
allomorphs because they have the same (grammatical) meaning and are in complementary
distribution (/s/ only after voiceless non-sibilants, /z/ only after voiced non-sibilants, etc.).
e.g. The plural -S morpheme has at least five allomorphs: cf. cats, dogs, houses, oxen, sheep. (In sheep
the morpheme is realized as the so-called zero allomorph.)
e.g. A and an are allomorphs of the indefinite article morpheme: they have the same meaning and are in
complementary distribution. (Roughly, a is used before consonants, an before vowels.)
Note that the fact that morphemes often have more than one allomorph means that we have to revise the
notions of ‘bound’ and ‘free morphemes’ discussed above: it is really not the morpheme but its
allomorphs that can be called free or bound. For example, the morpheme deep has two allomorphs: the
free allomorph /di:p/ (as in deeply) and the bound allomorph /dep/ (in depth). We find a similar
alternation of a free allomorph and a bound one in the following pairs: wide - width, broad - breadth,
supreme - supremacy, fame/famous - infamy/infamous, atom - atomic, divine - divinity.
It follows that a morpheme (like a phoneme) is an abstraction: the concrete entities which we utter are not
morphemes but allomorphs.
H. When we add an allomorph to a stem or base to form a different word or word form, we normally get
the structure ‘stem/base + allomorph’, as in books, played, etc. In that case we say the allomorph is
additive. Sometimes, however, the addition of an allomorph does not result in a form with an additional
morpheme but entails a change within the stem to which it is added.
e.g. cp. look - looked, play - played, nod - nodded, lead - led.
In each case we add the past tense morpheme to a verb stem. With look, play and nod this
results in a form with an additional morpheme, but in the case of lead the result is a
replacement within the verb stem itself. This means that there is a replacive allomorph (/i:/ is
replaced by /e/) which has the same meaning as the other past tense allomorphs and is in
complementary distribution with them. In fact, the past tense still has other replacive
allomorphs, as appears from cling - clung, bite - bit, blow - blew, ride - rode, find -found, take -
took, wear - wore, give - gave, hold - held, spin - span, lie - lay, etc.
e.g. When we add the plural morpheme to mouse and louse we realize a replacive allomorph, cf. mice,
lice.
Replacive allomorphs are sometimes called infixes because they occur in the middle of the word (by
analogy with ‘prefixes’ and ‘suffixes’, which occur at the beginning and end respectively).
1.4 WORDS
A. In general, a word can be defined as the smallest portion of a sentence that can be used as a free form
and can be preceded and followed by a pause. Thus, in A man came into the house the forms a, man,
came, into, the and house are words because they are free (combinations of) morphemes and can be set
off by pauses.
B. Phrasal verbs like come in, call up (= telephone), turn down (= reject), fall through (= fail), etc. are
borderline cases: their two constituents may be used on their own, but if they follow each other it is not
possible to pause between them. Some grammars treat phrasal verbs as single words (‘two-part verbs’),
others as combinations of words (‘two-word verbs’).
C. Like morphemes, words may have a lexical meaning or a grammatical meaning. Words with a purely
grammatical meaning are often called function words.
e.g. a(n) and the are noun markers
to is an infinitive marker
have is the perfect tense auxiliary

17
be is a voice or aspect auxiliary
The lexical meaning of a word is often called its denotation. Apart from their denotation, words often
have a connotation, i.e. a meaning suggested by the word in addition to its denotation.
e.g. The words economical and stingy have a similar denotation: they can both be said of people that do
not spend much. However, economical has a good connotation (‘not wasteful’), whereas stingy has a
bad connotation (i.e. it is derogatory or depreciatory): stingy is interpreted as ‘too economical’,
‘unwilling to spend, even if spending is justified’.
e.g. Someone who writes for a newspaper can be called a journalist or a hack. The latter term has a
derogatory connotation: it implies that the person in question has to work hard and that his work is
rather uninteresting.
D. Words are either simple, complex or compound:
1. Simple words consist of only one morpheme.
e.g. book, dog, make, round, yet, hygiene, capsize, public, police, mercantile
2. Complex words consist of a base and at least one derivational affix.
e.g. charm/er, psych/olog/y, re/mov/al, advis/er, public/ly, revis/ion
3. Compound words are combinations of two or more free forms.
e.g. ground floor, sponge cake, blackbird, forget-me-not, greenhouse, apple juice, overflow
E. Noun compounds (i.e. compound words that function as nouns) can have an internal structure of
different kinds:
– Noun + noun (e.g. bookshop, dinner-party, car park, death certificate, corner stone, income tax,
electronics group)
– Adjective + noun (e.g. secondary school, diplomatic bag, solar energy, medical building)
– Genitive + noun (e.g. bishop’s hat, bull’s eye, hornet’s nest, cat’s eye, gentleman’s agreement)
– Gerund + noun (e.g. firing-line, riding-school, climbing-frame, boiling-point, whipping-boy,
drawing-room, sleeping-pill, selling price)
– Participle + noun (e.g. whipped cream)
– Noun + particle (e.g. passer-by, sit-in)
– Verb + particle (e.g. set-back, breakthrough, set-up)
– Particle + noun (e.g. onlooker, in-laws, inmate)
– Particle + verb (e.g. income, uptake, downpour)
F. Noun compounds are often similar in form to noun phrases (groups of words) (cp. a blackbird -- a
black bird). However, they differ from such grammatical structures in at least the following ways:
1. Unlike grammatical structures, compound words cannot be split by the insertion of other words.
e.g. Compare I built a greenhouse with I built a green country house.
e.g. a retail shop -- *a retail old shop
2. The components of a compound word cannot be individually modified, whereas the components of
the homophonous grammatical structure can.
e.g. cp. a red head -- a very red head
a redhead -- *a very redhead
e.g. *Phil’s father-in-civil-law
*a soundly sleeping-pill
3. Noun compounds that are homophonous with grammatical structures of the type ‘modifier + noun’
differ from these in that they normally have their nuclear stress on the first component (while the
corresponding grammatical structures have it on the noun head).

18
e.g. cp. a REDhead -- a red HEAD; a HOThouse -- a hot HOUSE, a COOKing apple -- a cooking
APPLE, a DIVing instructor -- a diving inSTRUCtor
Note:
Combinations of the form ‘noun + noun’ also mostly have their main stress on the first noun (e.g.
raincoat, housework, table leg, shoe-repairer), but some have even stress on the two nouns (e.g.
gentleman-farmer) and quite a number of them have final stress (e.g. front door, garden gnome,
Oxford station, car keys, afternoon tea, child care, woman driver, river bank, Sunday paper, apple
pie, apple tart, holiday plans, adult education, car door, garden gate, etc.).8
1.5 PARTS OF SPEECH
A. Words can be classified in classes, which are called parts of speech (or word classes). The
traditional parts of speech are: noun, verb, pronoun, pronominal determiner, adverb, numeral, adjective,
conjunction, preposition, article, interjection. This classification is based on two criteria:
1. Form
Members from four parts of speech can be identified as such because they take affixes that are
typical of the part of speech in question:
a. Some derivational suffixes are typical of nouns, verbs, adjectives or adverbs.
e.g. nominal derivational suffixes: supporter, acceptance, deprivation, participant, renewal,
supremacy, linguist, fitness, improvement, confidence, bachelorhood, automatism,
length, chancellorship, volatility, tension, departure, blockade, delivery, saviour, etc.
e.g. verbal derivational suffixes: amplify, realize, deepen, amalgamate, modernize/modernise,
etc.
e.g. adjectival derivational suffixes: beloved, prudish, fishy, consular, suspicious, causal,
prophetic, momentary, legitimate, generous, preparatory, picturesque, redeemable,
conducive, worldly, woollen, wilful, hopeless, childlike, troublesome, etc.
e.g. adverbial derivational suffixes: quickly, clockwise, northwards.
b. Nouns, verbs and adjectives have their own inflectional suffixes:
1) nouns: the plural morpheme and the genitive morpheme.
2) verbs: the past tense morpheme, the past participle morpheme, the present participle
morpheme, the morpheme of the third person singular present tense.
3) adjectives: the comparative morpheme and the superlative morpheme (which, however,
can only be added to gradable adjectives (see below), and can also be added to a couple of
adverbs, e.g. soon, often, late, early, deep, hard, far, fast).
2. Position and function
a. The different parts of speech can fulfil different functions, which are linked up with particular
positions (often called slots) in the sentence.
e.g. Conjunctions (i.e. words like and, but, because, although, if, when, etc.) always have the
function of connectives and are therefore typically found before the second of the two
constituents (e.g.clauses) which they connect.
e.g. Nouns may fulfil various functions (subject, direct object, indirect object, etc.) and may
therefore fill various slots.
b. The slots that are typically filled by nouns can sometimes also be filled by other forms (i.e. members
from other parts of speech, or phrases or clauses). Elements like these, which are not nouns but fill a
slot that is typical of nouns, are said to be used as nominals.
8. Because of their abnormal intonation pattern, combinations like these are sometimes called ‘false compounds’.

19
e.g. The direct object of the verb remember is usually a noun (as in I remember that evening), but it
may also be a pronoun (I remember him/that) or a clause (I remembered to answer the letter /
meeting him / that I had met him / when it had happened / why I had done it / who had been
there / what to do).
e.g. In Now is the moment to take legal action! the adverb now has a nominal function, viz. that of
subject.
e.g. In In the water is better than on the beach when it is that hot the two nominal positions (subject
and subject complement) of the head clause are filled by a prepositional phrase.
Not only the nominal positions but also the positions that are typical of adjectives or adverbs can be
filled by other elements. We call them adjectivals and adverbials, respectively.
e.g. In each of the following phrases the italicized constituent is an adjectival because it modifies
the noun head (which is an adjectival function): that swimming boy, the floor above, it is time
to leave, the contract that he signed, a broken vase, the entrance of the building, the one who
said that.
e.g. The following phrases and clauses are used as adverbials: (He saw Freddy) at night / that week /
two years ago / when he visited Glasgow / after going to Jill’s place / without speaking to him /
by accident. -- (He held the gun) in his left hand / that way.
Note:
Strictly speaking, the term ‘nominal’ applies to constituents that are not nouns but fill a nominal slot.
However, the term is more often used to denote any constituent that is found in a nominal position,
irrespective of whether it is a noun or not.
The same remark can be made in connection with the terms ‘adjectival’ and ‘adverbial’.
B. One and the same word form can be a member of two or more parts of speech.
e.g. The climbers are now coming down. ( adverb)
You should take the down train. (adjective)
She climbed down the ladder. (preposition)
Everybody has ups and downs. (noun)
The government easily downed the opposition. (verb)
e.g. You are getting it all wrong. (adverb)
Don’t make the wrong decision. (adjective)
They are trying to put their leader in the wrong. (noun)
He was greatly wronged by his girl-friend. (verb)
C. Parts of speech are open or closed classes. In the open classes (noun, verb, adverb, adjective), new
members may be formed (neologisms) and existing members may get out of use. In the closed classes
(the other parts of speech), the number of members is small and invariable.
D. Within a part of speech we can often find marked forms and unmarked forms. A form is marked if
it makes a distinction which the unmarked form does not make. We can find markedness on different
levels:
1. Morphologically: a marked form involves a morpheme which the unmarked form does not have.
e.g. Plural nouns like books, dogs, etc. are marked for number, whereas singular nouns are not. A
word like sheep is said to have an unmarked plural.
e.g. The stem of a verb is the unmarked form of the verb. Other forms of the verb may be marked
for tense (present, past, future, etc.), voice (active or passive), person and/or number.
e.g. A verb like hit, set, etc. is said to have an unmarked past tense and past participle.

20
e.g. A word like heiress or heroine is morphologically marked for feminine gender. Words like
mare, woman, aunt are not.
2. Syntactically:
e.g. A passive verb form is marked by be and a past participle. There is no marker for voice in the
active.
e.g. In I got him to do it the infinitive is marked (i.e.to is added to it). In I let him do it we use an
unmarked infinitive.
3. Semantically:
e.g. Words like elephant or cattle are unmarked for gender (i.e. their referents may be either male,
female or neuter), whereas words like stallion, mare, bull, cow are marked for gender.
e.g. The stem of a verb is unmarked, not only morphologically but also for certain semantic
distinctions. For example, it can be used irrespective of whether there is singular or plural
reference; it can be used for more than one person.
e.g. A progressive form is semantically marked for aspect. A nonprogressive form is semantically
neutral on that score.
e.g. Adjectives like big, deep, high, old, tall, etc. can be used with a marked meaning (expressing
the opposite of small, shallow, low, young, short) but can also be unmarked (semantically
neutral) with respect to these distinctions. Thus, in the following examples old does not contrast
with young but has the unmarked meaning ‘having a certain age’: How old/*young is the boy?
He’s two years old/*young. My daughter is as old as yours.
E. Words from various word classes can be used as pro-forms, i.e. forms that are substituted for other
elements (mostly in order to avoid repetition of these elements).
e.g. To avoid repetition of a noun or NP we normally use a pronoun:
e.g. John won’t be there. He cannot come.
Susan worried about herself.
e.g. The verb do may be used as a pro-form for the VP of a clause: Janet didn’t read the letter, but I did.
e.g. So, not and to can be used as pro-forms for clauses.
e.g. Will he come? - I think so / I hope not / He refuses to.
e.g. Then and there are used as pro-forms for time and place adverbials.
1.6 SYNTAX
A. Syntax is the branch of linguistics that is concerned with the components of sentences and the
relations between them. It describes how words can be combined into phrases, clauses and sentences.
B. A phrase is a group of words organized round a headword (head, nucleus). According to the part of
speech to which the headword belongs we can speak of noun phrases (NPs), verb phrases (VPs),
adjective phrases and adverb(ial) phrases. Apart from these there are also prepositional phrases
(PPs). These consist of a preposition (P) and an NP.
e.g. The sentence This exciting book on medieval history could win the most important prize contains the
following phrases: this exciting book on medieval history (NP), the most important prize (NP),
medieval history (NP), could win the most important prize (VP), on medieval history (PP), most
important (adjective phrase).
e.g. The sentence That entirely pointless quarrel about the ownership of the brook must have started a
very long time ago contains the following phrases: that entirely pointless quarrel about the
ownership of the brook (NP), the ownership of the brook (NP), the brook (NP), must have started a

21
very long time ago (VP), entirely pointless (adjective phrase), very long (adjective phrase), a very
long time ago (adverb phrase), about the ownership of the brook (PP).
Note that a phrase is only potentially complex. In some cases it consists of one word only:
e.g. John smokes. (We can refer to John as ‘the subject NP’ and to smokes as ‘the VP of the sentence’.)
C. A clause is a combination of a NP functioning as subject and a VP functioning as predicate. The
predicate can be defined roughly as ‘what is said (or asked) about the subject’.
Note:
1. Because the verb is the most important word in the predicate it is sometimes called the predicator.
2. We speak of ‘concord’ or ‘agreement’ to indicate that the number of the subject NP is adopted by
the verb, the subject complement, and sometimes other constituents of the VP.
e.g. Jill is a girl / *Jill is girls / *Jill are a girl.
A lot of soldiers lost their lives.
They usually come in their own cars.
3. Although the subject and the predicate are necessary elements for a syntactic structure to be a clause,
they do not always have to be realized overtly:
a. In imperatives the subject is mostly omitted, but we can always assume it is you.
e.g. (You) be careful!
Note that the use of you before an imperative often has an undertone of warning or anger:
e.g. You mind your own business!
You leave her alone!
Don’t you tell them!
If the subject is not you, it must be overtly expressed:
e.g. Somebody open the door!
Mabel come with me; the rest of you carry on with what they are doing.
Everybody come over here and listen carefully.
Nobody move!
b. In informal spoken English, the subject is often omitted at the beginning of the sentence if its
meaning is clear from the context.
e.g. Wonder where she is now.
Hope to see you again some day.
Heard from her? (= Have you heard from her?)
I don’t like the chap. Reminds me of his father.
Won’t do, I guess.
c. Subject deletion also frequently occurs in infinitival clauses, gerund clauses and participial
clauses (provided they have the same subject as the head clause).
e.g. I don’t remember meeting her.
Not realizing the man was hurt, the policeman ordered him to stand up.
He was beginning to stop trying to avoid running into her. (This sentence involves four
object clauses with a covert subject.)
d. In some types of adverbial clause, both the subject and the verb can be deleted:
e.g. When alone, she starts brooding and thinking.
Though a good student, Jimmy failed to pass his English exam.
When a child, he had been taught to listen rather than speak.
D. A sentence is a clause or a combination of clauses that does not function as a constituent of a larger
construction, i.e. that forms a self-contained syntactic unit and can therefore be fully analysed
syntactically without reference to what precedes or follows.

22
e.g. Bill isn’t finished yet.
He was worried that the problem would not be solved before the holidays began.
Because a sentence is a relatively independent and self-contained unit, it is normally delimited by pauses
and marked by a falling or rising tone at the end.
Note:
1. With the exception of exclamatory infinitives (e.g. Me further stay in this dirty place? Not me!),
nonfinite clauses (i.e. clauses whose verb is an infinitive, gerund or participle -- see below) cannot
be used as sentences.
2. Some utterances that are not clauses (i.e. which fail to show the structure ‘subject + predicate’) all
the same appear to answer the definition of a sentence.
e.g. Good evening!
What a nuisance! -- Yes.
Much ado about nothing.
Such sentences are verbless sentences. Their common feature is the absence of a predicator.
E. Sentences have a so-called thematic structure (communication structure): they always consist of a
theme (or topic) and a rheme (or comment). The theme is what is talked about in the sentence, the
comment is what is said about it.
e.g. The man is in the kitchen. (theme: the man; comment: is in the kitchen)
Since the speaker is usually thinking of the topic when he starts his sentence, the topic is nearly always
the initial element. It follows that the topic (which is sometimes referred to as the ‘psychological
subject’) very often coincides with the grammatical subject. In some cases, however, the topic is another
element:
e.g. It’s snowing. (Since it has no referent, the verb is the topic.)
Yesterday things looked quite different. (The topic is yesterday. The sentence makes a statement
about what was the state of affairs yesterday.)
When the theme is an NP which is not the grammatical subject, it means that the NP in question has been
fronted:
1. There is wh-fronting when the initial position is filled by a wh-word (question word) which is not
the subject.
e.g. Who did you give it to? (derived from You gave it to who?)
To whom did you give it? (fml) (id.)
Which girl do you love? (derived from You love which girl?)
Whose car is this? (derived from This is whose car?)
2. Otherwise we speak of topical fronting (thematic fronting, topicalization). This type of
construction can be used for a double reason:
a. The speaker may topicalize an NP because he wishes to put emphasis on it by moving it into an
unusual position.
e.g. A lot of nonsense it was!
Lily everybody used to call her.
He bought the syringe in Morocco; the drug he had brought from Naples. (topicalization entailing
contrastive emphasis)
Great performance that was!
In such sentences the choice of NP to fill the topic position is a marked choice. The result is
that the NP in question receives an emphasis which it would not have if it were not fronted.
b. Another reason for topicalizing an NP may be that the NP in question picks up a theme from
the preceding context and is therefore very suitable to become the theme of the sentence, even

23
though it is not the subject.
e.g. He knew he might run into an acquaintance if he went back to London, and such an encounter he
wanted to avoid at all costs.
The term topicalization is also used to refer to cases where an adjective or verb is fronted:
e.g. Faithful she was, but not very clever.
Exhausted though he was, he kept on working.
Young as she was, she did not suspect that he might be a fortune-hunter.
Even more important is the reaction of the local peasants.
He tried to stay on good terms with the girl. But fully accept her he never did.
Note:
1. If the first NP in the sentence is the grammatical subject, the sentence is said to have the unmarked
word order. When an NP (or adjective) has been fronted, the sentence has a marked word order.9
2. In this section the word ‘topic’ (or ‘theme’) has been used in the sense of sentence topic, i.e. topic
of the sentence of which it forms part. The word ‘topic’ is also often used in the sense of discourse
topic, i.e. the topic that is being talked about in a stretch of discourse. (The term discourse (or text)
denotes a continuous piece of spoken or written language, i.e. a sequence of sentences.)
e.g. The house was built by a merchant in 1911. He lived in it till he died. My parents bought it in
1946. I inherited it in 1978. (The discourse topic of this text is the house: the text tells us about
its history. Each sentence has its own sentence topic. In this case the sentence topic is each time
also the grammatical subject.)
3. Left dislocation (which is an operation that moves an NP into pre-clause position and leaves behind
a pronoun as ‘trace’ -- cf. below) also turns the moved NP into sentence topic.
e.g. That boy, I can’t stand him. (topic: that boy; subject: I)
The addition of as for (sometimes as to) to the dislocated NP marks it as a new topic:
e.g. The children can sleep in the bedroom. As for John, he can sleep on the couch.
F. Sentences have an information structure. This means that the information they convey can be
characterized as either old (known, presupposed) or new. The new information is called the focus, the old
information is the presupposition. Most sentences have a focus and a presupposition, but sentences that
are uttered out of the blue (i.e. as discourse openers) only contain new information.
In English there is a strong tendency to express the presupposition before the focus. For this reason the
presupposition is very often the theme and the focus is very often the rheme.10
Under neutral (i.e. non-contrastive) sentence intonation, the nuclear accent of the sentence is always
located within the focus.
G. Sentences can be classified in various ways:
1. There are simple sentences and multiple sentences.
a. We speak of a simple sentence when it consists of only one clause.
e.g. At the end of the meeting the chairman tendered his resignation.
b. A multiple sentence consists of two or more clauses. There are two types:
1) A compound sentence consists of two or more clauses that are co-ordinate (conjoined),
9. Unmarked is here roughly equivalent to ‘most normal’; marked means ‘special’.
10. This frequent correspondence has led many linguists to equal thematic structure with information structure, i.e.
to treat the distinction topic/comment (theme/rheme) as identical to the distinction given/new
(presupposition/focus). Needless to say, this has been the cause of a great deal of confusion. In the second
sentence of the following example, the comment (killed it) is given information, whereas the topic (Bill) is the
focus:
e.g. Mary killed the rat. -- No, Bill killed it.

24
i.e. of equal rank.
e.g. He shouted at the passers-by and insulted them, but nobody paid any attention to him.
I haven’t gone to the library yet, nor do I intend to go in the near future.
Note:
1. All the clauses of a compound sentence can function as independent clauses, i.e. as
sentences.
2. The connectors (connectives) that link co-ordinate clauses to each other (e.g. and,
but, for, nor, or, so, yet) are called co-ordinating conjunctions (co-ordinators).
e.g. I was getting nervous, for it was almost time to leave and I was still waiting for
an answer.
3. Some conjunctions occur only in pairs, e.g. not only ... but also, either ... or, neither
... nor, both... and, whether... or. We call them correlative conjunctions.
e.g. Either you apologize at once or this is the end of our business relations.
Not only did he run off with my wife but he took my car as well.
I didn’t know whether to tell her or to keep it to myself.
4. Not only clauses but also clause constituents (i.e. NPs, VPs, adjectives, adverbs,
prepositions and PPs) can be conjoined.
e.g. He was not at home nor at his office.
I practise both the hurdles and the long jump.
He is not only friendly but also hospitable.
The girl moved slowly and elegantly.
Our landlord neither liked the way we had redecorated the flat nor approved of
the people we invited.
Was the cat on or under the table?
Co-ordinated constituents must always belong to the same grammatical category:
e.g. She both plays the cello and sings. (VP + VP)
She plays both the cello and the piano. (NP + NP)
*She both plays the cello and she sings. (VP + clause)
*She both plays the cello and the piano. (VP + NP)
Co-ordination is said to be syndetic (linked) when there is a conjunction between the
two constituents and asyndetic (unlinked) when there is none.
e.g. I bought potatoes and rice and coffee. (syndetic)
I bought potatoes, rice, coffee, etc. (asyndetic)
5. A verb or NP which occurs in both (or all) the co-ordinate clauses of a sentence is
often expressed only once. If the deleted element is the verb, we call this phenomenon
gapping; if it is an NP, we speak of conjunction reduction.11
e.g. William offered her red roses and Jack asters. (gapping)
Stan washed and Naomi wiped the dishes. (conjunction reduction)
I prefer Beethoven, Jim Brahms and Nick Mozart. (gapping)
Angela will sleep and Jesse mount guard. (gapping)
I like maths but hate geography. (conjunction reduction).
The last example poses a problem of analysis: should we analyse it as a simple
sentence with two conjoined VPs or as a compound sentence? Most linguists favour
11. Some people use a slightly different terminology:
e.g. Ted was reading a poem and Jill [was reading] a novel. (verb gapping)
John liked [the book], and Kate disliked, the book. (backward gapping)
Bill came to us and [he] told us the news. (subject deletion)

25
the former analysis. This is in keeping with the fact that not all utterances with co-
ordinated elements can be seen as a reduction from a compound sentence: Ann and
Betty meet regularly cannot be derived from *Ann meets regularly and Betty meets
regularly.
2) A sentence is complex if it consists of a head clause (main clause, principal clause,
superordinate clause) and at least one subordinate clause (subclause, dependent
clause, embedded clause). A main clause is one that does not form part of, or depend on,
another clause (and can therefore often be used on its own). A subclause is a clause that is
a constituent of, or depends on, another clause (and can therefore not be used on its own).
Most subclauses have a nominal, adjectival or adverbial function. We speak of noun
clauses (nominal clauses), adjective clauses (adjectival clauses) and adverbial clauses
accordingly.
e.g. That’s the girl I told you about. (adjectival clause)
I don’t know if I can believe that. (noun clause)
I’ll do it if I have time. (adverbial clause)
Subordinate clauses are often introduced by such connectors as after, although, as, as if, as
soon as, because, before, if, lest, once, provided (that), since, so as to, that, though, unless,
when, where, in case (that), in order that/to, etc. We call them subordinating
conjunctions (subordinators).
Note:
1. Some conjunctions can introduce different types of subclause.
e.g. cp. He didn’t tell me when he will come home. (noun clause functioning as
direct object)
You will have to tell him (the news) when he comes home. (adverbial time
clause)
e.g. cp. I didn’t know where the road ended. (noun clause functioning as direct
object)
They met where the road ended. (adverbial clause of place)
Relative clauses are usually adjectival clauses, but they are nominal clauses when
they have no antecedent:
e.g. He didn’t tell me that which I wanted to know. (adjectival relative clause)
He didn’t tell me what I wanted to know. (nominal relative clause)
2. There are five main kinds of noun clause:
- that-clauses (dependent statements): I think that he is ill.
- wh-clauses (dependent questions): I don’t know who did it.
- infinitive clauses: I would like to leave now.
- gerund clauses: I hate walking in the rain.
- nominal relative clauses: I don’t believe what he told me.
3. In a complex sentence, subordination and co-ordination can be combined to form a
compound-complex sentence.
e.g. I didn’t go to his room because I knew she would be there and I couldn’t bear the
sight of them being together.
4. Subclauses can be embedded not only in head clauses but also in other subclauses.
e.g. I am sure he will attempt to do it himself. (The subclause depending on am sure
functions as head clause for the infinitive clause.)
The fact that a clause may be at the same time an embedded clause and an embedding
clause entails that multiple clause structures are possible:

26
e.g. I am afraid he will try to escape having to do his share of the work.
5. One of the differences between complex sentences and compound ones concerns the
behaviour of pro-forms. In a complex sentence, it is possible for a pro-form to
precede the word to which it refers, provided the pro-form occurs in a subclause.
e.g. If he had been more careful, John would not have had an accident.
In a compound sentence, a pro-form has to follow its referent.
e.g. John must be working overtime, for he’s not come home yet. (he = John)
He must be working overtime, for John has not come home yet. (He is not
coreferential with John.)
2. Most sentences are either statements (declarative sentences) or questions (interrogative
sentences). Statements give information, questions ask for information. Minor sentence types are
directives, wishes and exclamations (exclamatory sentences).
e.g. You are mistaken. (statement)
Who did it? (question)
Please tell me the truth. (imperative).
What a lovely garden you have! (exclamation)
Long live the queen! (wish)
Note:
1. A directive typically uses the imperative form. It can express a command (order), an
instruction, an invitation, an offer, a request, a warning, a good wish or advice.
e.g. Please help me. (request)
Be careful. (warning)
Come in. (invitation)
Have some coffee. (offer)
Cut the onion fine and add it to the stew. (instruction)
Have a nice trip! (good wish)
Have a cup of tea. That will make you feel better. (advice)
2. Questions may be used as requests, questions asking for information, speculations, questions
asking for instructions or advice, offers of service, invitations, offers or suggestions.
e.g. Where will we be in ten years’ time? (speculation)
Shall I shine your boots? (offer of service)
Shall we have a rest? (suggestion)
Will you have a cup of tea? (offer)
When did the accident happen? (informative question)
Will you please turn down the volume? (request)
What shall I say to the police? (asking for instructions)
Won’t you come in? (invitation)
What should I do about it? (asking for advice)
Why don’t you tell him the truth? (suggestion for action)12
A special type of question asking for information is the echo question:
e.g. He didn’t capitalize on her mistake. -- He didn’t what?
Did you like their puns? -- Did I like their bums?
3. A question is called a rhetorical question if it really functions as a forceful statement and
therefore does not invite an answer.
12. Suggestions for action in the form of a wh-question are sometimes called ‘whimperatives’ (e.g. Why
worry?; Why wait any longer?).

27
e.g. Is that a reason to throw him out of the house? (message: Surely, that is not a reason to
throw him out of the house.)
What can one do about it? (message: One cannot do anything about it.)
Who shall say that this is impossible? (message: Nobody can say that this is impossible.)
Isn’t there something we can do? (message: Surely, there must be something we can do.)
As appears from the examples, positive rhetorical questions are like strong negative assertions
and negative rhetorical questions are like strong positive assertions.
4. Statements, questions, exclamations and imperatives that appear in the form of a subclause are
called dependent or indirect statements/questions/exclamations/imperatives.
e.g. I don’t know who did it. (dependent question)
He said that he could not trust anybody. (dependent statement)
He told me what a shame it was. (indirect exclamation)
The robber told/ordered her to open the safe. (dependent imperative)
When an indirect statement (i.e. a that-clause) depends on a prepositional verb,13 the
preposition is deleted:
e.g. We agreed/insisted that the flat should be refurbished.
I complained that it was not my turn to do the washing-up.
When an indirect question depends on a prepositional verb, the preposition can sometimes be
dropped, sometimes not.
e.g. She must now decide (on) what her line of action is going to be.
We hesitated/agreed/wondered (about) what we should tell the police.
Joan will consult a lawyer on how she can get part of that heritage.
We haven’t yet looked into what they are proposing this time.
I wondered (*about) where he could have hidden it.
5. There are four (syntactic and semantic) types of question:
a. Content questions or wh-questions are questions beginning with a question word (e.g.
what, who, whose, where, which, why, when, how...).
e.g. How many times have I told you not to do that?
What did she say?
b. Yes/no questions or truth questions ask whether the contents of the sentence are true.
e.g. Did she tell you anything?
Such questions can have narrow scope or wide scope:
a) narrow scope: only the constituent carrying the nuclear accent is the point of the
question.
e.g. Did BILL buy that house? (implies: Or was it someone else?)
Did Bill BUY that house? (implies: Or did he only rent it?)
Did Bill buy that HOUSE? (implies: Or did he buy something else?)
b) wide scope: the truth of the whole sentence is questioned.
e.g. Is John ill? (= Is it true that John is ill?)
DID Bill buy that house? (= Is it really true that Bill bought that house?)
c. Alternative questions invite the hearer to choose between several possibilities.
e.g. Will you write a letter or send a telegram?
d. Tag questions (appended questions, tail questions).
e.g. You don’t trust her, do you?
There’s nothing lost, is there?
13. A prepositional verb is a stereotyped (fixed) combination of a verb and a preposition (e.g. look at, listen to, insist on, object to...).

28
You’ll look after the children this afternoon, right?
6.. There are several types of exclamatory sentence:
a. Exclamations are often introduced by how or what.
e.g. How lovely it was!
What a nice present it was!
Such sentences differ from wh-questions in that they do not show inversion.14
They are
often used in an elliptical form (e.g. What a nice present!).
b. Negative yes/no questions can often be used as exclamations. Their meaning is
affirmative.
e.g. Gosh! Doesn’t she look wonderful!
Wasn’t it an exciting evening!
c. Affirmative yes/no questions can also be used as exclamations. This is especially common
in Am.E.
e.g. Boy, am I thirsty!
Did she look bored during that lecture!
d. Infinitive clauses are sometimes used as exclamations:
e.g. Me work together with that creep, not me!
e. Exclamatory clauses can also be introduced by if only:
e.g. If only you would not believe those rumours!
f. NPs (whether preceded by a question word or not) and adjectives can be used as verbless
exclamatory sentences.
e.g. What a nice present!
Fire!
Brilliant!
3. Sentences are either affirmative (positive) or negative.
e.g. Bill has been lying to me. (affirmative)
Neither of them has seen her yet. (negative)
Negation can have wide scope or narrow scope:
a. wide scope: the negation bears on the whole clause.
e.g. John is not the one who did it. (= It is not true that...)
b. narrow scope: the negation bears on a particular word or phrase (which is heavily accented).
e.g. TOM didn’t give her a cake. (Someone else did.)
Tom didn’t GIVE her a cake. (He only lent it to her.)
Tom didn’t give HER a cake. (He gave it to someone else.)
Tom didn’t give her a CAKE. (He gave her something else.)
4. Sentences are either assertive or nonassertive. They are assertive if the message they convey is
both affirmative and not interrogative. Otherwise they are nonassertive.
e.g. John believes me. (assertive: affirmative statement)
You did not trust me. (nonassertive: negative statement)
Did John believe you? (nonassertive: question)
I haven’t seen any films lately. (nonassertive: negative)
Note that whether a sentence is assertive or nonassertive does not depend on whether it is
affirmative, interrogative, etc. in form. It is exclusively the tone (message) that is decisive.
Sentences that are negative and/or interrogative in form may therefore be assertive:
14. Inversion is the phenomenon that the subject follows the verb (or the first verb form if there are several). For
more details, see chapter 4.

29
e.g. Wouldn’t you do something to get me out of here? (= Do something!)
Didn’t I warn you against him? (= I did warn you against him.)
Some words and phrases can only occur in assertive clauses. We call them assertive items. Words
and phrases that require a nonassertive context are nonassertive items.15
e.g. When denoting an indefinite amount, number or quantity, some requires an assertive context,
whereas any requires a nonassertive one. (The two words are therefore in complementary
distribution.)
e.g. I have lent him some books. (*any)
I haven’t lent him any books. (*some)
Have you lent him any/some books? (Some is used when the speaker expects a positive
reply; otherwise any is used.)
e.g. Already and yet are similarly in complementary distribution:
cp. I have already visited him. (assertive)
I have not visited him yet. (nonassertive)
Have you already visited him? (assertive: expects positive reply)
Have you visited him yet? (nonassertive: open question)
e.g. I have not done anything at all. (nonassertive: *I did something at all.)
I haven’t done anything whatsoever. (nonassertive)
He still hasn’t come. (assertive)
He hasn’t come yet. (nonassertive)
He is (*not) far from satisfied. (assertive)
I don’t mind if she has a limp. (nonassertive: *I mind if he has a limp.)
Have you ever seen anything like that? (nonassertive)
He was not in the least satisfied. (nonassertive)
Nobody lifted a finger to help us. (nonassertive)
Note that assertive items can occur in negative sentences provided they do not fall within the scope
of the negator:
e.g. He will certainly/surely/perhaps not help us. (= It is certain/sure/possible that he will not help
us.)
*He won’t certainly/surely/perhaps help us.
e.g. I haven’t spoken to some pupils because I am seeing them tomorrow. (= There are some pupils
that I haven’t spoken to...)
1.7 NOUN PHRASES
A. A noun phrase (NP) is a phrase whose head is a noun or another type of nominal (e.g. pronoun,
gerund).
e.g. none of my acquaintances in London (head: acquaintances)
everybody in this town (head: everybody)
that ruthless handling of the situation by John (head: handling)
For convenience, the term NP is normally used to cover not only such word groups but also one-word
nominals like John, students, he, etc.
Note: In transformational grammar, the term NP also covers noun clauses.
15. In the linguistic literature assertive items are sometimes called ‘positive polarity items’, whereas nonassertive
items are referred to as ‘negative polarity items’.

30
B. Every constituent of the NP that is not the head is an adnominal. Adnominals are prenominals or
postnominals according to whether they precede or follow the head.
Note:
1. An adnominal constituent may be a word, a phrase or a clause.
e.g. that beautiful nineteenth century house in Brook Street that belongs to Lord Edgeware (head:
house; adnominal words: that, beautiful; adnominal phrases: nineteenth century, in Brook
Street; adnominal clause: that belongs to Lord Edgeware)
2. The head is the most essential element in the NP. It is also the constituent that determines the
number of the verb.
3. Some older grammars speak of ‘adjuncts’ instead of ‘adnominals’. However, the term ‘adjunct’ is
now normally used to refer to a particular type of adverbial (see chapter 6).
C. Prenominal constituents can occur in one of seven positions in the NP.
e.g. (1) nearly (2) all (3) these (4) five (5) old (6) silk (7) man’s shirts
1. In position 1 we find such adverbs as almost, especially, even, just, merely, nearly, only, which are
called focusing adverbs (see chapter 6).
e.g. nearly all the pupils
especially the people living close to the motorway
only one false start
even those people that look down on us
2. In position 2 we find the predeterminers. We can distinguish four small classes:
a. such and what
e.g. such a nice book, what a charming garden
b. the quantifiers all, both and half
e.g. all/both/half these ripe apples, both the old houses
c. the multipliers: double, twice, three times, four times, etc.
e.g. It costs twice / thrice / four times that amount.
I want double the sum they are offering me.
d. the fractions: two-fifths, one-third, etc.
e.g. One-third the population rejects this policy.
3. Position 3 is that of the determiners. Here we can find:
a. the articles (a/an and the)
b. the possessive pronominal determiners (my, your, his, etc.)
c. the demonstrative pronominal determiners (this, that, these, those)
d. the interrogative pronominal determiners (which, whose, etc.)
e. some indefinite pronominal determiners (e.g. another, any, each, either, enough, much, neither,
no, some)
f. proper names in the genitive (e.g. John’s car)
g. defining genitives of common nouns (e.g. the doctor’s car)16
Note:
Unlike the other determiners, indefinite and interrogative pronominal determiners cannot be
preceded by predeterminers:
e.g. *Half whose money was lost?
*I want three times some amount.
*Double what sum do you want?
4. In position 4 we find the postdeterminers. This position can be filled by
16. The term defining genitive is explained in chapter 7, section II.

31
a. the cardinal numerals (one, two, three, etc.) and the ordinal numerals (first, second, third,
etc.)
e.g. the two houses, every second house, the first three candidates
b. some indefinite pronominal determiners (e.g. few, little, many, other, same, several)
e.g. the few/many/other/several poems I’ve read, the little money he earns
Note:
For ease of reference, the term ‘determiner’ is often used as a cover-term for predeterminers,
postdeterminers, and ‘real’ (i.e. ‘central’) determiners.
5. Position 5 is that of the modifying adjectives and participles.
e.g. quite a spacious/modern/comfortable flat
a threatened/disappearing species
Some adverbs, indications of place or time and other phrases can also be used as premodifiers and
fill this position.
e.g. the then President of the United States, a nearby village, the Liverpool fans, the 1968 riots, an
across-the-board wage increase
6. Position 6 is occupied by nouns (e.g. material nouns) functioning as premodifiers.
e.g. these two lovely copper statuettes
the two brass kettles in the scullery
7. In position 7 we find constituents which form a compound with the noun head. These constituents
are either classifying nouns, classifying genitives or classifying adjectives.17
e.g. my former college friends, a nice corner house, an impertinent young baker’s boy, black
printer’s ink, a new concrete veterinary school, cheap solar energy
If position 7 is filled, the nuclear stress of the NP usually falls on the word filling position 7.
D. Adnominals occurring in positions 5 and 6 belong to the class of modifiers. Modifiers are adnominals
that denote a property of the head noun and which therefore have a predicate-like function.
e.g. a cheap book (cp. The book is cheap.)
an oak door (cp. The door is made of oak.)
Modifiers that are put before the noun head are prenominal modifier or premodifiers.
Note:
1. The term ‘modifier’ is sometimes used in the wider sense of ‘adnominal’.
2. If the NP consists of only the head, or only of the head and a determiner, we call it a simple
noun phrase. If it also contains other constituents, we speak of a complex noun phrase.
E. Adnominals that follow the head noun are either complements or postmodifiers (postnominal
modifiers):
1. A constituent is a complement of the noun head when it stands in a kind of verb-object relation to
that noun (see below).
e.g. their fear of social unrest, his attempt at convincing her, her hope of success, the rumour that
he is ill
2. Postmodifiers can be adjectives, PPs, adverbs, NPs or adjectival clauses.
e.g. the cloth on this table, the meeting last week, the rooms downstairs, the plants that he has
grown, the creatures living on this planet, all the goods available
e.g. He is the artist for you to imitate.
I have no reason to believe that.
Note:
17. The term classifying is explained in chapter 8, section 8.2.

32
1. Postmodifying NPs that are coreferential with the noun head and have the same syntactic
function in the clause are called appositives (nouns in apposition).
e.g. The body was found by a Mr Simpson, a taxi-driver from London.
Tell me something about your friend the doctor.
We can also speak of appositives in cases like the following:
e.g. He’s a pugilist -- that is, a professional boxer.
I made the acquaintance of Mr Harris, a rather boisterous type.
2. When a postmodifier is relatively long it is often extraposed from the NP and placed at the end
of the clause. This phenomenon, which results in a discontinuous NP, is called extraposition
from NP.
e.g. There are few people in the village who can read and write.
I wonder if there will be anything left of what they bought yesterday.
There’s no mention in the newspaper of yesterday’s riots in Peking.
3. A postmodifying of-PP is sometimes fronted.
e.g. Of the 28 athletes that took the start only five reached the finish.
F. A modifier is restrictive (defining) if it is necessary to identify the noun head, i.e. if it helps to make
clear which member of a set is being referred to; otherwise it is nonrestrictive (nondefining) (i.e. it just
gives additional information).
Nonrestrictive modifiers that follow the head do not belong to the same tone unit as the rest of the NP.
In written language they are therefore enclosed within commas.
e.g. cp. A cottage which was built at the beginning of this century is less comfortable than one which
was built ten years ago. (restrictive )
A cottage, which is fairly small, is less expensive than a country house, which usually has a lot
of bedrooms. (nonrestrictive)
e.g. cp. The bed he sleeps in used to be mine. (restrictive)
He has sold his saloon car, which he no longer needs now. (nonrestrictive)
e.g. The abbey at Battle was built by William the Conqueror. (restrictive)
He lives in Harrow, a suburb of London. (nonrestrictive)
The boy in front has bad eye-sight. (restrictive)
Do you know my cousin Mabel? (restrictive)
This book, on Persian art, was given to me on my birthday. (nonrestrictive)
The Chinese are said to be unable to pronounce the letter R. (restrictive)
I want the green apples, not the red ones. (restrictive)
Note:
1. As a rule, restrictive premodifiers are more likely to be accented than nonrestrictive ones.
e.g. The clever girl had already looked up the answer. (nonrestrictive if the main accent of the NP
is on girl; restrictive if the main accent is on clever)
2. Nonrestrictive premodifiers precede restrictive ones.
e.g. cp. the mysterious third man (= the third man, whose identity is unknown)
the third mysterious man (= the third of the mysterious men)
G. Occasional examples can be found of modifiers that partly precede and partly follow the noun head.
We call them discontinuous modifiers. (See also chapter 10.)
e.g. This is a different problem from last time.
It was an easy problem to solve.
She is a cleverer girl than you are.

33
H. Predeterminers, determiners and postdeterminers can be subdivided into identifiers and quantifiers
according as they help us to identify the referent of the noun head or indicate quantity.
e.g. identifiers: a, the, his, John’s, this, another...
quantifiers: three, much, many, some, any, all, few, several...
I. Determiners and predeterminers are either definite or indefinite:
1. They are definite if the following conditions are satisfied: (a) the NP refers to a specific entity or
group, and (b) the speaker assumes that this referent is uniquely identifiable to the hearer.
e.g. They want to cut down the/that tree.
Beware of the dog.
Where is your house?
I didn’t live in England at the time.
2. Otherwise the determiner is indefinite.
e.g. They want to cut down a/some tree.
Cheese is made from milk. (zero article)
Some/most/many people do not like wine.
He wants another car.
The whole NP is also called definite or indefinite accordingly.
J. NPs have not only a lexical meaning (denotation) but also a referential meaning (reference). The
denotation of an NP can be seen as a property (or set of properties) that is typical of a particular set of
entities. Thus, the denotation of boy is the characteristic ‘male human being who is not yet grown up’,
which is shared by a set of beings. The referential meaning of an NP like the boy is then a particular (and
identifiable) member from that set (which we can refer to as the referent).
K. An NP is said to have generic reference if it is used to refer to a class (genus) as a whole. This is
possible if the determiner is a, the or zero.
e.g. A/the beaver builds dams.
Beavers build dams.
Children can be very noise.
A good teacher knows his subject well.
The lecture was about the hyena.
L. Nongeneric reference can be specific or nonspecific:
1. An NP is specific (or rather, has specific reference) when the speaker has a particular individual or
group in mind.
e.g. I have bought a/the/this/his car.
Neil wants to employ a private detective. He is talking to him over the phone now.
I have bought some flowers.
Suddenly an old woman rose from her seat and started railing at the speaker.
Some teacher must have told them that they shouldn’t use split infinitives.
2. An NP has nonspecific reference if it refers to an arbitrary member or subset of the set of entities
corresponding to its denotation.
e.g. She needs a psychiatrist. (The speaker is not thinking of a particular psychiatrist. Any
psychiatrist will do.)
We’ll have to buy some wine.
Please fetch me a drink.
Neil wants to employ a private detective, but he hasn’t found a suitable one yet.
Needless to say, definite NPs can never have nonspecific reference.

34
M. NPs can fulfil several functions in a clause:
1. Subject (S)
e.g. The girl is in love with him.
That night he ran away from home.
Note:
1. In some cases the NP or nominal which is the real subject is shifted backwards and replaced in
the subject position by a dummy (expletive, replacive, anticipatory) pronoun. There are two
such constructions:
a. When the dummy subject is there, we speak of an existential construction:
e.g. There are two girls in the lounge. (We may call there the syntactic subject and two
girls the notional subject.)
There’s a photo of her in the drawer.
There were a couple of girls polishing their nails behind the desk.
b. When the notional subject of a copular sentence is a subclause,18
it will normally be
shifted to the end of the head clause and replaced in subject position by it. This operation
and its result are called extraposition.
e.g. cp. ?To prevent side-effects is difficult.
It is difficult to prevent side-effects.
e.g. It is clear that he is too old to do it.
It is not always easy to be an unmarried woman.
It’s no good/use talking about your problems to her.
It would be nice if you could visit us next summer.
It is not known whether he was successful.
It doesn’t matter what she believes.
With some verbs and adjectives, extraposition can be followed by raising. This means that
an NP from the extraposed clause is ‘raised’ so as to become the subject of the head
clause:
1) We speak of subject raising when the subject of the extraposed clause is raised so as
to become the subject of the head clause. Subject raising is possible
a) with adjectives like sure, certain, likely, etc.
e.g. It is sure/certain/likely that she will win. ---- She is sure/certain/likely to
win.
b) with verbs like seem, appear, happen, etc.
e.g. It seems/appears that he is dead. ---- He seems/appears to be dead.
It happened that I was there. ---- I happened to be there.
c) in the passive, with verbs of saying and thinking.
e.g. It is said/thought that he is clever. ---- He is said/thought to be clever.
2) We speak of object shift when it is the object of the extraposed clause that is raised
so as to become the subject of the head clause.19 Object shift is possible when the
head clause involves such an adjective as easy, difficult, hard, pleasant, dangerous,
impossible, tough, etc.
e.g. It is easy/difficult/hard to beat him. ---- He is easy/difficult/hard to beat.
It is impossible for us to understand their motives. ---- Their motives are
impossible for us to understand.
18. A copular sentence is a sentence whose main verb is the copula (linking verb) be (e.g. John is ill).
19. In early transformational grammar the term ‘tough-movement’ was often used for this.

35
2. In some sentences there is no notional subject (theme). In that case an empty (or impersonal) it
will fill the subject position. (This it has no referent.)
e.g. It is a quarter to six.
It is snowing.
It is a long way to Tipperary.
It looks bad for our future.
2. Direct object (direct O)
e.g. I met the boy on my way home.
Verbs that take a direct object are used transitively. Some verbs can only be used transitively (e.g.
mend, make). We call them transitive verbs. Other verbs (e.g. go, die, arrive, seem) cannot be used
with a direct object. We call them intransitive verbs. There are also verbs that can be used
transitively in one sense but not in another (She’s expecting a letter vs She’s expecting), while some
verbs can be used both ways without a change of meaning (e.g. eat, drink, sing, smoke, write). The
latter are sometimes called pseudo-transitive verbs. (However, they are also often included in the
class of transitive verbs.)
Note:
1. We can distinguish between an affected direct object and an effected one. The former denotes
the entity that undergoes the activity; the latter refers to the entity that comes into being as a
result of the activity.
e.g. I’ve bought a house. (affected)
I’ve built a house. (effected)
The factory produces glass. (effected)
2. Some verbs that are basically intransitive can be used transitively
a. with a cognate object (i.e. a noun that repeats the meaning (and often also the form) of the
verb).
e.g. All of them died a terrible death.
They lived a long and happy life.
She dreamt a startling dream that night.
b. with causative meaning.
e.g. Let’s walk the lady who is tired home.
The cowboys have to swim the cattle across the river.
If there is enough wind, we will fly the kite this afternoon.
3. Some verbs that are basically transitive can be used intransitively in a passive sense.
e.g. The novel reads/sells well.
The car no longer drives smoothly.
Do nylon clothes wash/iron easily?
This expression does not translate easily into French.
4. Object clauses must normally undergo extraposition when there is an object complement.20
e.g. *He made that he did not agree clear. ---- He made it clear that he did not agree.
Do you find it advisable to notify the police?
I think it a shame that all this material is wasted.
I would regret it if I introduced you to the wrong person.
5. In some idiomatic expressions the direct object is an empty it.
e.g. Oh, blow it! He’s done it again.
You’ll catch it when the headmaster finds out about this!
20. The term object complement is explained on one of the next pages (section 5.).

36
I’ll have it out with you!
The rescuers did not make it in time.
3. Indirect object (indirect O)
e.g. I gave Mary a bunch of roses.
I baked Jake a cake.
Sentences like these can often be reworded with to or for.
e.g. I gave a bunch of roses to Mary.
I baked a cake for Jake.
It cost me five pounds. (*to me, *for me)
I asked him some questions. (*to him, *for him) (not impossible but rare: of him)
After a number of verbs the indirect O is obligatorily constructed with to.
e.g. acknowledge, admit, affirm, announce, attribute, communicate, complain, confess, confide,
declare, dedicate, deliver, demonstrate, describe, detail, devote, dictate, disclose, explain,
express, indicate, introduce, mention, name, propose, put a question, read, relate, reply, report,
reveal, say, state, suggest...
e.g. I explained the problem to him. (*I explained him the problem.)
Describe to me what the cottage looks like.
4. Subject complement (complement to the subject, subjective complement) (SC)
An NP is SC when it follows a linking verb (e.g. be, seem, taste, etc.) and says something more
about the referent of the subject (i.e. it either denotes a quality of that referent or identifies the
person or object in question).
e.g. John is a plumber.
He seems a reliable man.
The chairman is that man over there.
Note:
1. Older handbooks use the term nominal part of the predicate or predicate nominal.
2. The linking verb (or copula) after which the SC occurs can be
a. a verb of ‘being’: be, prove (e.g. He proved a good teacher.)
b. a verb of ‘becoming’: became, get, go, grow, turn, etc.
c. a verb of ‘remaining’: remain, stay, keep...
d. a verb of ‘impression’: seem, appear, look, feel, sound, smell, taste
3. The SC need not be an NP. It can also be a nominal (pronoun, infinitive, gerund, finite clause),
an adjectival, a PP or an adverbial.
e.g. The fence was painted red.
One of them is already at liberty / out of prison.
This is what I want you to do.
It sounds extraordinary / all right to me.
The Government stood firm.
The soup didn’t taste good.
4. An NP used as SC must agree with the subject in number and gender.
e.g. Mary wants to become a seamstress.
The two girls are heiresses.
5. In some sentences involving a SC the V is not really a copula but a lexical verb or even a VP.
e.g. He went home a disillusioned man.
Her parents died young.
I would be disappointed if we did not part good friends.
The applicant left the office disappointed.

37
The others stood waiting for me at the entrance of the museum.
The cat lay motionless on the TV.
He earns a living selling newspapers.
In such examples, the adjective (phrase), participle (clause) or NP in the predicate will also be
analysed as a SC because it stands in a be-relation to the subject. This is clear from paraphrases
like
e.g. He was a disillusioned man when he went home.
Her parents were young when they died.
In traditional grammar this kind of SC (which does not follow a true copula) is usually called a
predicative adjunct to the subject.
In some cases the ‘prepositional copula’ as has to be inserted before this kind of SC.
e.g. He began his career as a shoeshine boy.
The measures struck me as unfair.
6. SCs of this type can often be separated from the rest of the sentence by a break, represented by
a comma in the written mode. Traditional grammars call such SCs free adjuncts. Modern
grammars often speak of supplementive clauses.
e.g. The old lady, uncomprehending, repeated that she wanted to go home.
A true Christian, he goes to church every Sunday.
Supplementive clauses are verbless or non-finite clauses which have no overt subject but which
are interpreted as having the same subject as the clause on which they depend. They can
precede or follow that subject. They are interpreted as having an adverbial meaning, which can
be stressed by the use of a conjunction or preposition.
e.g. When a baby, he had fallen from his chair and lost an eye.
These issues, though very important, will not be discussed at this week’s summit.
The dog kept on barking, as if trying to convey some message to us.
If elected, he will do a lot to develop this region.
Convicted for armed robbery, he spent a long time in jail.
7. Clauses of this type are sometimes given a subject of their own. We then speak of absolute
clauses (absolute free adjuncts). They are sometimes introduced by with.
e.g. The short break over, the pupils went back to the class-rooms.
With Alice at my side, I will never be lonely any more.
The huge wolf, its eyes gleaming in the dark, approached us menacingly.
With the Soviet Union willing to negotiate, the chances of a peaceful solution have
increased.
5. Object complement (complement to the object, objective complement) (OC)
The OC completes the sequence ‘V + direct O’ by describing or identifying the referent of the direct
O.
e.g. The cricket team chose Botham captain.
We called him Jim, not James.
Everybody seemed to think the decision a mistake.
Who did they select (as) their spokesman?
We found it a satisfactory solution.
Note:
1. An OC can never become subject of a passive sentence.
e.g. *Captain was chosen Botham by the cricket team.
2. The OC always indicates a property of the referent of the direct object. In fact, the relation
between a direct O and an OC is similar to the relation between a subject and a SC.

A comprehensive descriptive grammar of English.pdf

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