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ENGLISH SYNTAX AND ARGUMENTATION
 MODERN LINGUISTICS SERIES

Series Editor

Professor Maggie Tallerman

Newcastle University, UK

Each textbook in the Modern Linguistics series is designed to provide a carefully graded
introduction to a topic in contemporary linguistics and allied disciplines, presented in a man-
ner that is accessible and attractive to readers with no previous experience of the topic, but
leading them to some understanding of current issues. The texts are designed to engage the
active participation of the reader, favouring a problem-solving approach and including liberal
and varied exercise material.

Titles published in the series

English Syntax and Argumentation (5th Edition) Bas Aarts

Phonology (2nd Edition) Philip Carr and Jean-Pierre Montreuil
Pragmatics Siobhan Chapman
Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition Vivian Cook
Sociolinguistics: A Reader and Coursebook Nikolas Coupland and Adam Jaworski
Morphology (2nd Edition) Francis Katamba and John Stonham
Semantics (2nd Edition) Kate Kearns
Syntactic Theory (2nd Edition) Geoffrey Poole
Contact Languages: Pidgins and Creoles Mark Sebba

Further titles in preparation

Introduction to Bilingualism Christina Schelletter

Language Development Kathy Conklin
English Syntax and
Argumentation

Fifth Edition

BasAarts
Professor ofEnglish Linguistics, UCL
© Bas Aarts 1997, 2001, 2008, 2013, 2018
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
publication may be made without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted
save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence
permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency,
Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS.
Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this
work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First edition 1997
Second edition 2001
Third edition 2008
Fourth edition 2013
Fifth edition published 2018 by
PALGRAVE
Palgrave in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of 4 Crinan Street,
London N1 9XW.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries
ISBN 978-1-137-60579-5
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully
managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing
processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the
country of origin.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
To my family and friends
 Also by Bas Aarts:
Small Clauses in English (1992, Mouton de Gruyter)
The Verb in Contemporary English (1995, edited with Charles F. Meyer, CUP)
Investigating Natural Language (2002, with Gerald Nelson and Sean Wallis, Benjamins)
Fuzzy Grammar (2004, edited with David Denison, Evelien Keizer and Gergana Popova, OUP)
The Handbook ofEnglish Linguistics (2006, edited with April McMahon, Wiley)
Syntactic Gradience (2007, OUP)
Oxford Modern English Grammar (2011, OUP)
The English Verb Phrase (2013, edited with J. Close, G. Leech and S. Wallis, CUP)
Oxford Dictionary ofEnglish Grammar (2nd edition 2014, with Sylvia Chalker and Edmund Weiner, OUP)
Oxford Handbook ofEnglish Grammar (2018, with Jill Bowie and Gergana Popova, OUP)
Contents

Preface to the First Edition xvi

Preface to the Second Edition xvii
Preface to the Third Edition xvm
Preface to the Fourth Edition xix
Preface to the Fifth Edition xx

Part I Function and Form

1 Introduction 3
Key Concepts 7
2 Function 8
2.1 Subject and Predicate 8
2.2 Predicator 14
2.3 Direct Object 15
2.4 Indirect Object 19
2.5 Adjunct 20
Key Concepts 21
Exercises 22
Further Reading 23
3 Form: Words, Word Classes and Phrases 24
3.1 The notion 'word' 24
3.2 Nouns and determinatives 25
3.3 Adjectives 31
3.4 Verbs 33
3.5 Prepositions 43
3.6 Adverbs 43
3.7 Conjunctions 45
3.8 Interjections 47
Key Concepts 47
Exercises 48
Further Reading 50
4 More on Form: Clauses and Sentences 52
4.1 Clauses and clause hierarchies 52
4.2 The rank scale 55
4.3 Clause types 57
4.3.1 Declarative clauses 57
4.3.2 Interrogative clauses 58
4.3.3 Imperative clauses 59
ix
X CONTENTS

4.3.4 Exclamative clauses 60

4.3.5 The pragmatics of the clause types 60
4.4 More on tree diagrams 61
Key Concepts 65
Exercises 66
Further Reading 68
5 The Function-Form Interface 69
5.1 Function-form relationships 69
5.2 Realisations of the Subject 70
5.2.1 NPs functioni ng as Subject 70
5.2.2 PPs functioning as Subject 71
5.2.3 Finite clauses functioning as Subject 71
5.2.4 Nonfinite clauses functioning as Subject 71
5.2.4.1 To-infinitive clauses functioning
as Subject 72
5.2.4.2 -ing participle clauses functioning as Subject 72
5.2.4.3 Small clauses functioning as Subject 73
5.3 Realisation of the Predicate and Predicator 73
5.4 Realisations of the Direct Object 73
5.4.1 NPs functioning as Direct Object 74
5.4.2 PPs functioning as Direct Object 74
5.4.3 Finite clauses functioning as Direct Object 74
5.4.3.1 That-clauses functioning as Direct Object 74
5.4.3.2 Finite wh-clauses functioning as
Direct Object 75
5.4.4 Nonfinite clauses functioning as Direct Object 75
5.4.4.1 To-infinitive clauses functioning as
Direct Object 75
5.4.4.2 Bare infinitive clauses functioning as Direct
Object 76
5.4.4.3 -ing participle clauses functioning as Direct
Object 76
5.4.4.4 -ed participle clauses functioning as
Direct Object 77
5.4.4.5 Small clauses functioning as Direct Object 77
5.5 Realisations of the Indirect Object 77
5.5.1 NPs functioning as Indirect Object 77
5.5.2 Wh-clauses functioning as Indirect Object 78
5.6 Realisations of Adjuncts 78
5.6.1 AdvPs functioning as Adjunct 78
5.6.2 PPs functioning as Adjunct 78
5.6.3 NPs functioning as Adjunct 78
5.6.4 Finite clauses functioning as Adjunct 79
5.6.5 Nonfinite clauses functioning as Adjunct 80
5.6.5.1 To-infinitive clauses functioning as Adjunct 80
5.6.5.2 Bare infinitive clauses functioning as Adjunct 80
 CONTENTS xi

5.6.5.3 -ing participle clauses functioning as Adjunct 81

5.6.5.4 -ed participle clauses functioning as Adjunct 81
5.6.5.5 Small clauses functioning as Adjunct 82
5.7 Motivating the analyses in this chapter 82
Key Concepts 84
Exercises 84
Further Reading 86

Part II Elaboration

6 Predicates, Arguments and Thematic Roles 89

6.1 Predicates and arguments 89
6.2 Thematic roles 92
6.3 Grammatical functions and thematic roles 94
6.4 Selectional restrictions 95
6.5 Three levels of description 96
Key Concepts 97
Exercises 97
Further Reading 99
7 Cross-categorial Generalisations: X-bar Syntax 100
7.1 Heads, Complements and Specifiers 100
7.2 Adjuncts 108
7.3 Cross-categorial generalisations 115
7.4 Subcategorisation 117
7.4.1 Subcategorisation versus argument/thematic structure 119
Key Concepts 120
Exercises 120
Further Reading 123
8 More on Clauses 124
8.1 The I-node 124
8.2 Subordinate clauses 128
8.2.1 Clauses functioning as Direct Object,
Subject and Adjunct 128
8.2 .2 Clauses functioning as Complement within phrases 131
8.2.3 Clauses functioning as Adjuncts within NPs 132
Key Concepts 133
Exercises 133
Further Reading 134
9 Movement 136
9.1 Verb Movement: aspectual auxiliaries 136
9.2 NP-Movement: passive 142
9.3 NP-Movement: Subject-to-Subject Raising 148
9.4 Movement in interrogative sentences:
Subject-Auxiliary Inversion 150
xii CONTENTS

9.5 Wh-Movement 152

9.6 The structure of sentences containing one or more auxiliaries 156
Key Concepts 158
Exercises 158
Further Reading 160
10 Tense, Aspect and Mood 161
10.1 Time and tense 161
10.1.1 The present tense 161
10.1.1.1 Uses of the present tense 162
10.1.2 The past tense 163
10.1.2.1 Uses of the past tense 163
10.1.3 Ways of referring to future time 164
10.2 Aspectuality and aspect 165
10.2.1 Progressive aspect 165
10.2.1.1 The progressive construction 165
10.2.1.2 Uses of the progressive 166
10.2.2 Perfect aspect 166
10.2 .2 .1 The perfect construction 166
10.2.2.2 Uses of the present perfect 167
10.3 Modality and mood 168
10.3.1 Different types of modality 168
10.3.2 The core modals 169
10.3.2.1 The morphosyntactic characteristics
of the core modals 169
10.3.2.2 Meanings expressed by the core modals 170
10.3.3 Other ways of expressing modality 171
Key Concepts 172
Exercises 172
Further Reading 173
Part III Argumentation

11 Syntactic Argumentation 177

11.1 The art of argumentation 177
11.2 Economy of description: Linguistically Significant
Generalisations and Occam's Razor 180
11.2.1 Linguistically Significant Generalisations 180
11.2.2 Occam's Razor 182
11.2.2.1 Verb-preposition constructions 183
11.2.2.2 Achieving economy in the domain of
functional terminology 187
11.3 Further constraints on description: elegance and
independent justifications 189
11.3.1 Elegance of description 189
11.3.2 Independent justification 192
11.4 Evaluating analyses 194
 CONTENTS xiii

Key Concepts 195

Exercises 195
Further Reading 197
12 Constituency: Movement and Substitution 199
12.1 The Movement Test 200
12.1.1 Movements to the left 201
12 .1.1.1 Topicalisation 201
12.1.1.2 VP-Preposing 202
12.1.1.3 Though-Movement 207
12 .1.2 Movements to the right 208
12.1.2.1 Heavy NP Shift (HNPS) 208
12.1.2.2 Extraposition of Subject clauses 209
12.1.2.3 Extraposition from NP 209
12.2 Substitution 210
12.2.1 Substitution of nominal projections: NP and N' 211
12.2.2 Substitution of verbal projections: VP and V' 217
Key Concepts 222
Exercises 222
Further Reading 226
13 Constituency: Some Additional Tests 227
13.1 The Coordination Test 227
13.2 The Cleft and Pseudocleft Test 230
13.3 The Insertion Test 232
13.4 The Constituent Response Test 233
13.5 The Somewhere Else Test 234
13.6 The Meaning Test 236
13.7 A case study: the naked pizza eating construction 236
13.8 Some caveats regarding the tests 240
Key Concepts 241
Exercises 241
Further Reading 243
14 Predicates and Arguments Revisited 244
14.1 Establishing argumenthood 244
14.1.1 Meaning 245
14.1.2 Dummy elements and idiom chunks 247
14.1.3 Passivisation 248
14.2 Two further types of verb +NP+ to-infinitive
construction: persuade and want 249
14.2.1 Persuade 249
14.2.2 Want 251
14.2.3 Overview 252
14.3 Concluding remarks 254
Key Concepts 254
Exercises 254
Further Reading 256
xiv CONTENTS

Part IV Application

15 Information Packaging 259

15.1 Preposing 260
15.1.1 Topicalisation 260
15.1.2 Left Dislocation 261
15.2 Postposing 262
15.2.1 Right Dislocation 262
15.2.2 Postposing of heavy constituents 262
15.2.3 Extraposition 264
15.3 Inversion 264
15.4 Cleft constructions 265
15.4.1 It-clefts 266
15.4.2 Pseudoclefts 267
15.5 Existential constructions 268
15.5.1 Bare existentials 268
15.5.2 Extended existentials 269
15.5.3 The presentational construction 270
15.6 The passive construction 271
Key Concepts 273
Exercises 273
Further Reading 273
16 Grammatical Indeterminacy 274
16.1 Category boundaries and gradience 274
16.2 Subsective gradience 275
16.2.1 Nouns 275
16.2.2 Adjectives 275
16.2.3 Verbs 276
16.2.4 Prepositions 277
16.3 lntersective gradience 278
16.3.1 Word classes: adjective or adverb? 278
16.3.2 Word classes: verb or noun? 279
16.3.3 Phrases: adjective phrase or prepositional phrase? 280
16.3.4 Constructional gradience 281
16.4 Concluding remarks 282
Key Concepts 283
Exercises 283
Further Reading 284
17 Case Studies 285
17.1 Negated modal auxiliaries 285
17.2 Noun phrase structure 289
17.2.1 A lot of books 289
17.2.2 A giant ofa man 293
17.3 Verb complementation 298
17.3.1 Pattern 1: V + to-infinitive 300
 CONTENTS xv

17.3.2 Pattern 2: V + NP + to-infinitive

constructions involving allow 304
17.3.3 Pattern 3: V + NP + {NP, AP, PP} 308
17.4 Subordinating conjunctions and prepositions 311
17.5 Concluding remarks 313
Key Concepts 313
Exercises 313
Further Reading 314

Glossary 315
Reference Works: Dictionaries, Encyclopedias, Grammars
and Other Publications on the English Language 327
Bibliography 333
Answer Key for the Exercises 337
Index 392
Preface to the First Edition

This book grew out of a need for an introductory text that teaches students
not only English syntax but also the basics of argumentation. It is inspired by
current Chomskyan theory, but it is not an introduction to it. However, having
worked their way through this book, students should be able to progress to a
more advanced study ofsyntax, descriptive or theoretical.
I would like to thank the following people for having read an earlier
version of the book or parts of it: Flor Aarts (who also helped correcting
proofs), Valerie Adams, Judith Broadbent, Dick Hudson, Gunther Kaltenbock,
Andrew Spencer, and the students who took part in the Modern English
Language seminar at University College London.
Special thanks are due to Noel Burton-Roberts for his advice, extensive
comments and support. Naturally, all blunders, bloopers and other blemishes
are entirely due to me.

xvi
Preface to the Second Edition

This new edition is a completely revised and corrected version of the first
edition. The most obvious change is that Chapter 7 of the first edition (on
X-bar syntax) has been split into two, giving more prominence to clauses in
a new Chapter 8 (entitled 'More on clauses'). In addition, the book contains
many new exercises, which are now graded in terms of level of difficulty. I am
grateful to colleagues and students who used the first edition of this book,
and gave me very valuable feedback preparing the present edition. In particu-
lar, I would like to thank Kersti Borjars, Ilse Depraetere, Nik Gisborne,
Sebastian Hoffman, Hans-Martin Lehmann, Magnus Ljung, Gergana
Popova, Mariangela Spinillo and Gunnel Tottie, as well as students at UCL,
the Universidad de La Laguna, the University of Sofia and the University of
Zurich.

xvii
Preface to the Third Edition

This new edition incorporates a number of corrections and changes in

terminology. For example, I now use determinative as a form label, rather
than determiner. I have added a new chapter on grammatical indetermin-
acy, which has been informed by my research on syntactic gradience (Aarts
2007). Furthermore, I have reorganised Chapter 15 (formerly Chapter 14) by
moving one of the case studies to the new Chapter 14, and by adding a new case
study. I have also written a number of new exercises, while removing others
that didn't 'work'.
I am again extremely grateful to a number of colleagues for sending
me corrections and suggestions for changes. Among them are Dong-
hwan An (who translated the second and third editions into Korean),
Gunnar Bergh, Myong-Hi Chai and three anonymous readers. For advice,
comments, suggestions and corrections I'm very grateful to Maggie Tallerman,
the new editor for the Modern Linguistics series, to Sonya Barker at Palgrave
Macmillan, as well as to my copy- editor Penny Simmons. Finally, I would
like to thank my students at UCL, past and present, who have always been a
tremendous pleasure to teach, and students from elsewhere who have written
to me with corrections and comments.

xviii
 FUNCTION I I

guideline. If we want to define the notion Subject more precisely, we will need
to do so in structural terms, i.e. in terms of syntactic configurations.
The first thing to note about the Subjects of the sentences we have looked
at so far is that they predominantly consist of groups of words whose most
important element denotes a person (that stupid waiter, the stuntman, she,
my brother, the girl with the red hair), an animal (the cat, the rat), a group of
people (the police, the committee), an institution (this factory) or a thing (this
car). Anticipating the discussion in Chapter 3, we will call such words nouns.
Furthermore, we will refer to groups of words such as the cat, that stupid waiter,
the girl with the red hair etc. as noun phrases (NPs). The generalisation we can
now make is to say that Subjects are usually noun phrases.
Second, in straightforward sentences, i.e. those that are used to make a
statement, the Subject is the first NP we come across.
Third, with the exception of what we will call imperative clauses in Section
4.3.3 (e.g. Open the door; Listen to me.), Subjects are obligatory. Notice that if
we leave out the Subjects from (5)-(12), we derive ungrammatical sentences.
Fourth, Subjects determine the form of the verb in such cases as the
following:

(15) She never writes home.

(16) James always sulks.
(17) This book saddens me.
(18) Our neighbour takes his children to school in his car.

We say that the verbs (write, sulk, sadden, take) in these sentences agree with the
Subjects (she.James, this book, our neighbour). This agreement is visible through
the -s ending on the verbs. Such agreement occurs only if we have a third per-
son singular Subject. Such a Subject does not denote the speaker or the hearer
(i.e. a third person is not me or you), but someone (or something) else. Any
Subject other than a third person singular Subject takes what is called the base
form of the verb, i.e. a form of the verb that has no endings:
(19) I like tea.
(20) You like tea.
(21) We like tea.
(22) They like tea.

Here we have Subject-verb agreement as well, although it is not visible as an

ending on the verb.
Before presenting a fifth characteristic of Subjects, compare sentences (23)-
(26) with (27)-(30):

(23) This teacher is a genius.

(24) The kids have arrived safely.
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