English Syntax and Argumentation

by Aarts, Bas

• ISBN13: 9780230551213
• ISBN10: 0230551211
• Edition: 3rd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-04-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

This successful introductory textbook on English syntax gives students a thorough grounding in the basics of sentence structure and acquaints them with the essentials of syntactic argumentation. The text: progresses through a range of relevant topics of increasing difficulty, from the building blocks of language - words and phrases - to constituency and argumentation, offers examples and exercises within each chapter, as well as suggestions for further reading, provides a glossary, bibliography and a list of recommended reference works at the end of the volume to aid study.

Author Biography

BAS AARTS is Professor of English Linguistics and Director of the Survey of English Usage at University College London, UK. He has published widely in the field and is one of the founding editors of the journal English Language and Linguistics.

Table of Contents

Preface to the First Edition	p. xiii
Preface to the Second Edition	p. xiv
Preface to the Third Edition	p. xv
Function and Form
Introduction	p. 3
Key Concepts	p. 7
Function	p. 8
Subject and Predicate	p. 8
Predicator	p. 14
Direct Object	p. 15
Indirect Object	p. 18
Adjunct	p. 20
Key Concepts	p. 21
Exercises	p. 21
Further Reading	p. 23
Form: Words, Word Classes and Phrases	p. 24
The notion 'word'	p. 24
Nouns and determinatives	p. 25
Adjectives	p. 31
Verbs	p. 33
Prepositions	p. 43
Adverbs	p. 43
Conjunctions	p. 45
Interjections	p. 47
Key Concepts	p. 48
Exercises	p. 48
Further Reading	p. 51
More on Form: Clauses and Sentences	p. 52
Clauses and clause hierarchies	p. 52
The rank scale	p. 55
Clause types	p. 57
Declarative clauses	p. 57
Interrogative clauses	p. 58
Imperative clauses	p. 59
Exclamative clauses	p. 60
The pragmatics of the clause types	p. 60
More on tree diagrams	p. 62
Key Concepts	p. 66
Exercises	p. 66
Further Reading	p. 68
The Function-Form Interface	p. 69
Function-form relationships	p. 69
Realisations of the Subject	p. 70
Realisation of the Predicate and Predicator	p. 73
Realisations of the Direct Object	p. 73
Realisations of the Indirect Object	p. 77
Realisations of Adjuncts	p. 77
Key Concepts	p. 83
Exercises	p. 84
Further Reading	p. 85
Elaboration
Predicates, Arguments and Thematic Roles	p. 89
Predicates and arguments	p. 89
Thematic roles	p. 92
Grammatical functions and thematic roles	p. 94
Selectional restrictions	p. 95
Three levels of description	p. 96
Key Concepts	p. 97
Exercises	p. 97
Further Reading	p. 99
Cross-Categorial Generalisations: X-Bar Syntax	p. 101
Heads, Complements and Specifiers	p. 101
Adjuncts	p. 108
Cross-categorial generalisations	p. 116
Subcategorisation	p. 118
Subcategorisation versus argument/thematic structure	p. 120
Key Concepts	p. 121
Exercises	p. 121
Further Reading	p. 124
More on Clauses	p. 126
The I-node	p. 126
Subordinate clauses	p. 130
Clauses functioning as Direct Object, Subject and Adjunct	p. 130
Clauses functioning as Complements within phrases	p. 133
Clauses functioning as Adjuncts within NPs	p. 134
Key Concepts	p. 136
Exercises	p. 136
Further Reading	p. 137
Movement	p. 139
Verb movement: aspectual auxiliaries	p. 139
NP-movement: passive	p. 145
NP-movement: Subject-to-Subject raising	p. 151
Movement in interrogative sentences: Subject-Auxiliary Inversion	p. 153
Wh-movement	p. 155
The structure of sentences containing one or more auxiliaries	p. 159
Key Concepts	p. 161
Exercises	p. 161
Further Reading	p. 164
Argumentation
Syntactic Argumentation	p. 167
The art of argumentation	p. 167
Economy of description: Linguistically Significant Generalisations and Occam's razor	p. 170
Linguistically Significant Generalisations	p. 170
Occam's razor	p. 172
Verb-preposition constructions	p. 173
Achieving economy in the domain of functional terminology	p. 177
Further constraints on description: elegance and independent justifications	p. 179
Elegance of description	p. 179
Independent justifications	p. 182
Evaluating analyses	p. 184
Key Concepts	p. 184
Exercises	p. 185
Further Reading	p. 187
Constituency: Movement and Substitution	p. 189
Movement	p. 190
Movements to the left	p. 191
Topicalisation	p. 191
VP-Preposing	p. 192
Though-Movement	p. 197
Movements to the right	p. 198
Heavy-NP-Shift	p. 198
Extraposition of Subject Clauses	p. 199
Extraposition from NP	p. 199
Substitution	p. 201
Substitution of nominal projections: NP and N'	p. 201
Substitution of verbal projections: VP and V'	p. 207
Key concepts	p. 213
Exercises	p. 213
Further reading	p. 218
Constituency: Some Additional Tests	p. 219
Coordination	p. 219
Cleft and pseudocleft sentences	p. 222
The Insertion Test	p. 223
The Constituent Response Test	p. 224
The Somewhere Else Test	p. 225
The Meaning Test	p. 227
A case study: the Naked Pizza Eating-construction	p. 228
Some caveats regarding the tests	p. 231
Key Concepts	p. 232
Exercises	p. 232
Further Reading	p. 235
Predicates and Arguments Revisited	p. 236
Establishing argumenthood	p. 236
Meaning	p. 236
Dummy elements and idiom chunks	p. 239
Passivisation	p. 240
Two further types of verb + NP + to-infinitive construction: persuade and want	p. 241
Persuade	p. 241
Want	p. 243
Overview	p. 244
Concluding remarks	p. 246
Key Concepts	p. 246
Exercises	p. 246
Further Reading	p. 249
Application
Grammatical Indeterminacy	p. 253
Category boundaries and gradience	p. 253
Subsective Gradience	p. 254
Nouns	p. 254
Adjectives	p. 255
Verbs	p. 256
Prepositions	p. 256
Intersective Gradience	p. 257
Word classes: adjective or adverb?	p. 257
Word classes: verb or noun?	p. 258
Phrases: Adjective Phrase or Prepositional Phrase?	p. 259
Constructional gradience	p. 260
Concluding remarks	p. 261
Key Concepts	p. 261
Exercises	p. 261
Further Reading	p. 262
Case Studies	p. 263
Negated modal auxiliaries	p. 263
Noun Phrase structure	p. 267
A lot of books	p. 267
A giant of a man	p. 271
Verb complementation	p. 276
Verb + to-infinitive	p. 278
Verb + NP + to-infinitive constructions involving allow	p. 281
Verb + NP + {NP/AP/PP}	p. 286
Subordinating conjunctions and prepositions	p. 289
Concluding remarks	p. 290
Key Concepts	p. 291
Exercises	p. 291
Further Reading	p. 291
Glossary	p. 293
Reference Works: Dictionaries, Encyclopedias, Grammars and Other Publications on the English Language	p. 307
Bibliography	p. 313
Index	p. 317
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