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English Grammar ENGLISH GRAMMAR This new edition of Downing and Locke’s award-winning text-book has been thoroughly revised and rewritten by Angela Downing to offer an integrated account of structure, meaning and function in relation to context. Also used as a reference book, it provides the linguistic basis for courses and projects on translation, contrastive linguistics, stylistics, reading and discourse studies. It is accessible and reader-friendly throughout. Key features include: • Chapters divided into modules of class-length materials • Each new concept clearly explained and highlighted • Authentic texts from a wide range of sources, both spoken and written, to illustrate grammatical usage • Clear chapter and module summaries enabling efficient class preparation and student revision • Exercises and topics for individual study • Answer key for analytical exercises • Comprehensive index • Select bibliography • Suggestions for further reading This up-to-date, descriptive grammar is a complete course for first degree and post- graduate students of English, and is particularly suitable for those whose native language is not English. Angela Downing is Professor Emeritus in the Department of English Language and Linguistics (English Philology I) at the Universidad Complutense, Madrid. The late Philip Locke taught at the Institute of Modern Languages and Translation at the Universidad Complutense, Madrid. ENGLISH GRAMMAR A University Course Second edition Angela Downing and Philip Locke First published 1992 by Prentice Hall International (UK) Ltd Routledge edition published 2002 by Routledge This second edition published 2006 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group © 2006 Angela Downing and Philip Locke This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2006. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN10: 0–415–28787–1 ISBN13: 9–78–0–415–28787–6 (pbk) ISBN10: 0–415–28786–3 ISBN13: 9–78–0–415–28786–9 (hbk) This book is for: Enrique and to the memory of Philip Locke CONTENTS Foreword xi Preface to the second edition xiii Acknowledgements xv Introduction xvii Table of notational symbols xxi 1 Basic concepts 1 Module 1 Language and meaning 3 Module 2 Linguistic forms and syntactic functions 9 Module 3 Negation and expansion 21 Exercises 28 2 The skeleton of the message: Introduction to clause structure 32 Module 4 Syntactic functions and structures of the clause 34 Module 5 Subject and Predicator 42 Module 6 Direct, Indirect and Prepositional Objects 50 Module 7 Subject and Object Complements 64 Module 8 Adjuncts 69 Further reading 76 Exercises 76 3 The development of the message: Complementation of the verb 81 Introduction: Major complementation patterns and valency 83 Module 9 Intransitive and copular patterns 85 Module10 Transitive patterns 90 Module 11 Complementation by finite clauses 100 Module 12 Complementation by non-finite clauses 108 Summary of complementation patterns 114 Further reading 116 Exercises 116 4 Conceptualising patterns of experience: Processes, participants, circumstances 120 Module 13 Conceptualising experiences expressed as situation types 122 Module 14 Material processes of doing and happening 128 Module 15 Causative processes 132 Module 16 Processes of transfer 137 Module 17 Conceptualising what we think, perceive and feel 139 Module 18 Relational processes of being and becoming 144 Module 19 Processes of saying, behaving and existing 151 Module 20 Expressing attendant circumstances 155 Module 21 Conceptualising experiences from a different angle: Nominalisation and grammatical metaphor 160 Further reading 167 Exercises 167 5 Interaction between speaker and hearer: Linking speech acts and grammar 174 Module 22 Speech acts and clause types 176 Module 23 The declarative and interrogative clause types 180 Module 24 The exclamative and imperative clause types 190 Module 25 Indirect speech acts, clause types and discourse functions 197 Module 26 Questions, clause types and discourse functions 201 Module 27 Directives: getting people to carry out actions 205 Further reading 212 Exercises 213 6 Organising the message: Thematic and information structures of the clause 220 Module 28 Theme: the point of departure of the message 222 Module 29 The distribution and focus of information 238 Module 30 The interplay of Theme–Rheme and Given–New 246 Further reading 263 Exercises 263 7 Expanding the message: Clause combinations 270 Module 31 Clause combining 272 Module 32 Types of relationship between clauses 277 Module 33 Elaborating the message 281 Module 34 Extending the message 285 Module 35 Enhancing the message 290 Module 36 Reporting speech and thought 299 Further reading 309 Exercises 309 viii CONTENTS 8 Talking about events: The Verbal Group 315 Module 37 Expressing our experience of events 317 Module 38 Basic structures of the Verbal Group 323 Module 39 Organising our experience of events 331 Module 40 The semantics of phrasal verbs 336 Further reading 343 Exercises 343 9 Viewpoints on events: Tense, aspect and modality 350 Module 41 Expressing location in time through the verb: tense 352 Module 42 Past events and present time connected: Present Perfect and Past Perfect 361 Module 43 Situation types and the Progressive aspect 369 Module 44 Expressing attitudes towards the event: modality 379 Further reading 394 Exercises 394 10 Talking about people and things: The Nominal Group 399 Module 45 Expressing our experience of people and things 401 Module 46 Referring to people and things as definite, indefinite, generic 417 Module 47 Selecting and particularising the referent: the determiner 423 Module 48 Describing and classifying the referent: the pre-modifier 435 Module 49 Identifying and elaborating the referent: the post-modifier 446 Module 50 Noun complement clauses 457 Further reading 462 Exercises 462 11 Describing persons, things and circumstances: Adjectival and Adverbial groups 473 Module 51 Adjectives and the adjectival group 475 Module 52 Degrees of comparison and intensification 484 Module 53 Complementation of the adjective 494 Module 54 Adverbs and the adverbial group 502 Module 55 Syntactic functions of adverbs and adverbial groups 508 Module 56 Modification and complementation in the adverbial group 515 Further reading 521 Exercises 521 12 Spatial, temporal and other relationships: The Prepositional Phrase 529 Module 57 Prepositions and the Prepositional Phrase 531 Module 58 Syntactic functions of the Prepositional Phrase 540 Module 59 Semantic features of the Prepositional Phrase 546 CONTENTS ix Module 60 Stranded prepositions; discontinuous prepositional phrases 556 Further reading 559 Exercises 559 Answer Key 564 Select Bibliography 591 Index 596 x CONTENTS FOREWORD It is now 13 years since the publication of Angela Downing and Philip Locke’s A University Course in English Grammar, which broke new ground by offering to advanced students of English a comprehensive course, based on Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar. It went beyond the merely structural, to present an integrated account of structure and function, which gives students the information they need in order to link the grammar of English to the overall structure of discourse and to the contexts in which it is produced. Ever since its publication, the book has been used in many countries in South America, the Middle East and Europe, including of course Spain, to whose tertiary education systems both authors devoted the majority of their working lives. Downing and Locke’s grammar, while clearly rooted in Hallidayan linguistics, also responds to a number of other influences, including the grammars of Quirk and his colleagues. However, it also made its own important contribution to our knowledge and understanding of many points of English grammar, and has been widely cited by scholars working within functional linguistics. Sadly, Philip Locke died in 2003, but he would, I am sure, have been very proud of this new edition of the work, which still bears his name and has been retitled as English Grammar: A University Course. The new version of the grammar embodies three themes evident in Angela Downing’s research work over the last decade or so, themes which reflect the directions in which functional linguistics has moved in the late twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first. First, the linking of grammar to the structure and functioning of discourse, already evident in the first edition, has been taken still further, giving students an even better grasp of aspects of text production in which even advanced foreign learners of English are often rather weak. Second, the account of English grammar offers benefits from the recognition that discourse is not a static product, but a constantly changing, negotiated process: as interaction
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