Lecture 2 - examples

Constituents

Constituents are syntactic units consisting of one or several words. They can be phrases or
clauses. Some strings of words can be constituents (and clause elements), while others cannot
(they are in fact non-clausal elements, see Lecture 1, plus conjunctions, tags, inserts, prefaces,
parenthetical constructions). Elliptical (and recoverable) constructions (see Lecture 1) can be
constituents.

Constituents have syntactic functions (roles): Subject, Verb, Object, Complement (of the
Subject, of the Object, of an adjective Head, of an adverb Head, or of a noun Head derived from
a verb), Adverbial, modifier (pre-, or post-) of a phrase’s Head (in the case of adjective, nouns,
adverb, or preposition Heads). In the Longman book the term “Subject predicative” is used
instead of Subject Complement.

Examples of clausal elements (bracketing first, then tree structures):

1. You could see inside the doll house.

2. Must you make so much noise?
3. Everybody is afraid of fire.
4. She is a very refreshingly young research assistant who has a recently acknowledged in
the faculty board talent for analyzing what hides underneath the outer shell of the cell
nucleus.
5. Where you go does not concern me.
6. You really must see this house.
7. Elizabeth knew what that letter was, but she kept it to herself.
8. The school principal proposed that the scholarship go to the Ferring brothers.

How can we determine which strings of words are constituents? We apply constituency tests:

1. Substitution / pro-form: A constituent can be replaced by a pronoun (due to its nominal

nature), an operator (due to its verbal nature), or an adverb (due to its adverbial nature).
2. Movement: A constituent can be moved to another place in the sentence without altering the
meaning of the sentence.
3. Question: The constituent represents the answer to a question asked within the sentence.
4. Clefting / pseudo-clefting: A constituent takes the focus position in a cleft / pseudo-cleft
sentence.

Phrases: NP, VP, AdjP, AdvP, PP

Shared structure: a Head and various forms of complementation (see Morphology). Phrases can
be embedded in other phrases. Phrases can contain other phrases. Phrases can contain clauses.
Phrases can be discontinued/interrupted (see Subject-operator inversion). Phrases can have
various syntactic functions (see above). – work on the examples above!

Examples of phrases:
NP: determiner (the) + modifier (good) + Head (advice) + modifier (to you) + complement
(that you take the offer)
VP: operator (any auxiliary, including modal verbs: is, do, can, can be, has, would, should
have, must have been) + Head (main verb/lexical verb: show) + all complementation, both
optional, and obligatory (the main verb’s Objects, Adverbials, any Subject or Object
Complements) – see all the sentences above.
AdjP: modifier (so) + Head (afraid) + complement (of heights)
modifier (more) + Head (important) + complement (than you think)
- + Head (expensive) + modifier (enough) + complement (to change my mind)
AdvP: modifier (pretty) + Head (slowly)
modifier (so) + Head (late) + complement (that it won’t matter)
- + Head (late) + modifier (enough)
PP: modifier (exactly) + Head (to) + complement (the point)

Clauses: Always with predication. In some other languages the sentence can exist without a
Subject, but in English the Subject is obligatory, so the predication (relationship S-V) is an
essential characteristic of any clause (even elliptical, if recoverable, see Lecture 1). That said,
the Verb in a clause can be finite, non-finite, or so-called missing (“verbless” clauses). The
main clause in a sentence (or the only one if the sentence only has one clause), also called
matrix clause, always has a finite Verb. If a sentence has a number of coordinated matrix
clauses, all of them have finite Verbs.

Clauses can be part of other clauses, and they can embed other clauses. They can be
discontinued/interrupted. Non-clausal elements can be found in sentences, but since they do
not have syntactic relationships with other elements (see above, and Lecture 1), they do not
belong to the syntactic structure of clauses. Therefore, when we represent the syntactic structure
of a sentence we will mark non-clausal elements separately. Also, if the clauses are elliptical in
any part, we will reconstitute the sentence by also marking the missing element.

Clauses, too, can have various syntactic functions (see above). They can constitute sentence
elements (S, O, C, A) in a sentence or they can be a Head’s Complem ent etc. within a phrase. –
work on the examples above!

PRACTICE

I. Here is a list of strings of words. Divide them into a) phrases and b) clauses. Now look at
the phrases in list a), for each phrase bracket out and label its structure (what parts it is made of),
then put the structure into a “tree structure”. Then look at clauses in list b), for each clause
indicate the pattern, then divide the clauses into i) wh-Cl., ii) that-Cl., iii) if-Cl., iv) –ing-Cl., v)
to-Cl., vi) –ed-Cl., vii) before-Cl., viii) after-Cl..
… a school [that] I know just there
very pretty if I were you …
… [for] cooling in the fridge for ten minutes knowing you as I do …
before Enlightenment … after he signed the papers
[wanted] to buy a shirt my time
[am] sorry about the mess [regret] to tell you that they voted against it
[you] be back before dinner his refusal to acknowledge his mistake
an icecream machine … [where you] can find white paint
[a car] that you should buy that beautiful cottage on the hill
for your birthday exactly at eighty degrees
… that I could take a break anytime the question if you can arrive in time
to be honest … [try] taking an aspirin
… before you called early enough
quite affordable [the question] if you will accept the offer
… why you called me after lunch
… installed here before Brexit …when I can talk to you
… to a new stage in my life from our people here

II. Reconstruct the following phrases:

NP [det + NP + N + wh-Cl.]
AdvP [modif. + Adv + that-Cl.]
AdjP [Adj + Adv + to-Cl.]
VP [oper. + V + NP [det. + AdjP + N] + PP [P + NP [det. + N]]]
AdvP [modif. + Adv ]
PP [P + NP [det. + N + wh-Cl.]]

III. Reconstruct the following sentences:

NP + VP [V + AdjP]
Wh-Cl. + VP [V + NP]
NP + VP [V + AdvP]
That-Cl. + VP [V + NP + PP]