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Table l.l Present tense of French parler, 'to speak' 16 Table 1.2 Glosses for person and number 18 1.1 SOME CONCEPTS AND MISCONCEPTIONS lable 4.1 Syntactic relationships between a and its dependent 123 Table 6.1 The core arguments 177 Table 6.2 The major case systems 179 1.1.1 What is the study of syntax about? Table 7. 1 Accusative and ergative case systems 215 Table 7.2 Primary grammatical relations 220 This is about the property of human known as syntax. 'Syntax' means ' construction': how group together to make and sentences. Table 9.1 Inflectional paradigm for the Welsh preposition wrth, 'at' 276 Tab le 9.2 Inflectional paradigm for the of the Welsh Some people also use the term to mean the same as syntax, although most linguists follow the more recent practice whereby the grammar of a language verb gweld, 'see' 278 includes all of its organizing principles: about the sound system, about the form of words, how we adjust language according to context, and so on; synta x is only one part of this grammar. The term 'syntax' is also used to mean the study of the syntactic properties of . In this sense, it's used in the same way as we use '' to mean the study of literary . We're going to be studying how languages organize their syntax, so the of our study includes the classification of words, the order of words in phrases and sentences, the structure of phrases and sentences, and the different se ntence constructions that languages use. We'll be looking at examples of sentence structure from many different languages in this book, some related to English and others not. All languages have syntax, although that syntax may look radically different from that of Engli sh. My aim is to help you understand the wa) syntax works in languages, and to introduce the most important syntactic concept, and technical terms which you'll need in order to see how syntax works. we'll encounter many grammat ical terms, including '', 'verb', 'preposition', 'relatiVE ', '', 'nominative', 'agreement' and 'passive'. 1 don't expect you to knOll the meanings of any of these in advance. Often, terms are not for mally defined wher they are used for the first time, but they are illustrated so you can understand the concept, in preparation for a fuller discussion later on. More complex terms ane concepts (such as 'case' and 'agreement') are discussed more than once, and a picture of their meaning is built up over several chapters. To help you understand what the study of syntax is about, we first need to discuS! some things it isn't about. When you read that 'syntax' is part of'grammar', you ma) have certain impressions that differ from the aims of this book. So first, althougt we will be talking about grammar, this is not a DESCRIPTIVE GRAMMAR of EngUst or any oth er language. Such are certainly avai lable, but they usually ai m ]( catalogue the regularities and peculiarities of one language rather than looking a 2 Understanding syntax What is syntax? 3 the organizing principles of language in general. Second, I won't be trying to improve way doesn't fun ction properly, it just doesn't confo rm to someone's idea of what is your 'grammar' of English. A PRESCRIPTIVE GRAMMAR (one that prescribes how the aesthetic, or classy. In just the same way, so me people have the idea that certai n forms author thinks you should speak) might aim to teach you where to use and IVltom; of language are more beautiful, or classier, or are simply 'correct'. But the beltef that or when to say me alld Kim and when to say Killl alld I; it might tell you not to say so me forms of language are better than others has no linguistic basis. Since we often differellt thall or different to, or tell you to avo id split such as 10 boldly go. make social judgements about people based on their accent or dialect, we tend to These th ings aren't on our agenda, because they're essentially a matter of taste - they transfer these judgements to their form of language. We may then think that some are social, not linguistic, matters. forms are undesirable, that some are 'good' and some 'bad'. For a linguist, however, In fact, as a linguist, my view is that if you're a native speaker of English, no matter dialectal forms of a la nguage don't equate to 'bad grammar'. what your dialect, then you already know perfectly. And if you're a Again, you may here that examples of NON-, such as those native speaker of a different language, then you know the grammar of that language italic ized in the last paragraph, or things like We dOlle it well good, are sloppy , perfectly. By this, I don't mean that you know (consciously) a few prescriptive rules, or perhaps illogica l. This appeal to and precision makes prescriptive grammar such as those mentioned in the last paragraph, but that you know (unconsciously) seem to be on a higher plane than if it's all down to social prejudice. So let's exam me the much more impressive mental gra mmar of your own language - as do all the logic more closely, and see if it bears scrutiny. Many speakers of English its native speakers. Although we've all learnt this grammar, we can think of it as are taught that 'two negatives make a positive', so th at forms like (1) 'really' mean I knowledge that we've never been taught, and it's also knowledge that we can't take out did somethillg wrong: and exami ne. By the age of around seve n, children have a fairly complete knowledge of the grammar of their native languages, and much of what happens after that age (1) 1didn't do nothing wrong. is learning mo re . We can think of this as parallel to 'learning' how to walk. Children can't be taught to walk; we all do it naturally when we're ready, and we can't Of course, this isn't true. First, a speaker who uses a sentence like (I) doesn't intelld it say how we do it. Even if we come to understand exactly what muscle movements to mean I did something wrong. Neither would any of their addressees, however much are required, and what brain circuitry is involved, we still don't 'know' how we they despise the , understand (I) to mea n I did something wrong. wa lk. Learning our native language is just the same: it happens without outside Second, there are languages, such as French and Bre ton, that use a double negative as intervention and the resulting knowledge is inaccessible to us. STANDARD, not a dialectal form, as (2) illustrates:' Here, you may object that you lVere taught the grammar of your native language. Perhaps you thin k that your paren ts set about teaching you it , or that you learnt it at (2) Je ne mange jamais de via nde. (French) school. But this is a misconception. All normally developing children in every culture I NEGATIVE eat never of meat learn their native language or languages to perfection without any formal teaching. 'I never eat meat.' Nothing more is required than the simple exposure to ordinary, live, human language within a society. To test whether this is true, we just need to ask if all cultures teach Example (2) shows that in the negative has two parts: in addition their children 'grammar', Since the answer is a resounding 'no', we can be sure that to the little negative lie there's another negative wo rd jamais, 'never'. Middle all ch ildren must be capable of constructing a mental grammar of their native English (the English of roughly 1100 to 1500) also had a double negative. Ironically languages without any formal instruction. Most linguists now believe that, in order for the 'logic' argument, the of French that has the double negat ive is the most to do this, human infants are born pre-programmed to learn language, in much the formal and presti gious variety, whereas colloquial French typically drops the mIliaI same way as we are pre-programmed to walk upright. All that's needed for language negative word. to emerge is appropriate input data - hearing language (or seeing it; sign languages Another non-standard of certain Englis h dia lec ts which doesn't conform are full languages too ) and taking part in interactions within the home and the wider to prescriptive not ions is illustrated in (3), from a northern (Br itish) English dialect: society. So if yo u weren't taught the grammar of your native language, what was it you (3) 1aren't going with you. were being taught when yo ur parents tried to get you not to say things like I ain't done IlOwl wrong. or He's more happier than what I {If11, or when your school teachers Here, th e logic argument runs like this: you can't say *1 are not (the star or is a tried to stop you from using a preposition to end a sentence wit h? (Like the sentence co nvention used in linguistics to indicate an impossible se ntence), so the contracted I just wrote.) Aga in, co nsider learning to walk. Although children learn to do this perfectly without any parental instruction, their parents might not like the way the I. Section 1.2.2 explains in detail how to read linguist ic exa mples. YOll don't need 10 know any French to sec the point that example (2) is making. The technique you should employ is to read the English child slouches along, or scuffs the toes of th eir shoes on the ground. They may tell the , then carefully examine the second line of the example. which is the literal translation child to stand up st raight , or to stop wearing out their shoes. It's not that the child's of the original language. 4 Understanding syntax What is syntax? 5 form [ aren't must be wrong too. It's true that speakers who accept (3) don't ever say wonder why (7) is not possible. Not only are examples like (7) ungrammatical in [ are not. But the argumen t is fl awed: standard English is just as illogical. Look how English (i.e. they sound impossible to native speakers), they are ungrammatical in the statement in (4a) is turned into a in (4b): Welsh, as in (8):

(4) a. I'm not going with yo u. (8) 'Beth maen nhw yn bwyta wyau a (Welsh) b. Aren't I going with you? what are they in eat eggs and *'What are they eati ng eggs and _ I' Example (4) does not co nform to the usual rules of English grammar, whi ch for m ques ti ons by inverting the in [ can't to give can't [, and [ should to give In fact, the equivalents to (7) and (8 ) are generally ungrammatical in the world's should /, and so on. Given these rules, the'logically' expected fo rm in (4b) would be languages. It seems likely, then, that many of th e un consciously 'known' rules of amn't / (a nd in fact this form is found in some dialects) . If the standard English in indiv idual languages like English or Welsh are actually UN IVERSAL - common to all (4) fails to follow the usual rules, then we ca n hardly criticize (3) for lack of logic. languages. And sin ce aren't I is OK, th ere's no logical reason fo r dismissing [ aren't. The dialects that allow either [ aren't or allln't / could actually be cons idered more logical than standard English, since they fo llow the general ru le, wh ile the sta ndard dialect, in »» »»» »»»»»»> (4), has an irregularity. It is clear, then, that socially stigmati zed forms of language are potent ially just Befo re read ing further, note that English do es have a way of expressing what (7) as 'logical' as standard Engl ish. Speakers of non -s tanda rd dialects are, of co urse, would mean if it were gramm atical - in other words, a way of express ing the question following a set of mental rules, in just the same way that speakers of the most you would ask if you wanted to know what it was that they were eating with their prestigious dia lects are. The va rious dia lects of a language in fact share the majority eggs. How is this question formed' of the ir rules, and diverge in very few areas, but the extent of the differences tends to be exaggerated beca use they aro use such strong feel ings. In sum, speakers of prestige «««««««««««< dialects may feel that only their va ri ety of English is 'grammatically correct', but these views can not be defended on either logical or linguistic grou nds. Yo u could as k: They are eatillg eggs and what! (with heavy emphasis on the what). If, by way of contrast, some speaker of English produced exa mples like (5) , then we could justifiably claim that they were speaking ungrammatically: The fact that certain organ izing rules and principles in language are universal leads many linguists to co nclude that huma n beings have an INNATE language facu lty (5) 'I do didn't wrong anything. - that is, one we are born with. We can't exa mine this direc tly, and we sti ll know "Do wrong didn't anything r. relatively little about what brain circuit ry is involved, but we do know that there must be something unique to humans in this regard. All normal children learn al Such examples completely contravene the mental rules of all dialects of English. We least one language, but no other an imals have anything like language as a natural all ag ree on this, yet speakers of English haven't been taught that the se ntences in (5) com munica tion system, nor are they able to learn a human language, even under are bad. Our judgements must therefore be part of the shared mental grammar of intense instruction. To try to understand the language fac ult y, we examine its output English. - namely the structures of natural la nguages. So by loo king at syntax we hope to Most of the rules of this mental gram mar are never dealt wi th by prescri ptive or discover the common properties between languages, and maybe even ultimately to teach ing gram mars. So no grammar of English would ever explain that, although we discover something about the workings of the human brain. can say both (6a) and (6b), we can't have ques tions like (7) (the gap _ indicates an As well as looking fo r absolutely universal principles, linguists are interested understood bu t'missing' element, re presented by the question word what): in discovering what types of construction are poss ible (a nd impossible) in the world's languages. We look for recu rring patterns, and often fi nd that amazingly (6) a. They're eating eggs and chips. similar constructions appear in un related languages. In the nex t pa ragraph, I give b. What are they eating _ 1 an example of this type which compares Indonesian and English. You don't have to know anyth ing about Indonesian to get the point being made, but if the idea of (7) "What are they eating eggs and _ l looki ng closely at exoti c languages seems too dau nting at this stage, come back to the examples after you've read Sec tion 1.2. The row of > > > arrows marks the start The rules that make (7) imposs ible are so immutable and fu ndamental that they of a section of the text in which th e reader is invited to work so meth ing out, as in hardly seem to co unt as a subject for discussion: native speakers never stop to the example just given; the «< arrows mark the end of that section, and where Wha t is syntax? 7 6 Understanding syntax So if the word Hasan is already promoted, as in (9b), then it can move again, giving necessary, the exercise is followed by a suggested answer. Here, the task is simply to (I I). Otherwise, promotion of Ha sa n is imposs ible, as (12) shows. In fa ct, It seems exa mine all the sentences, and try to follow the argument. like the promotion has to occur in stages, rather th an in one single jump str aIght to »»»»»»»»»»»> the front of the sentence. Perhaps you're thinking, maybe it's Ju st a questIOn of gettlllg rid of the to in (1 2); then it'd be fine. But if we look at (13) and (14), the IndoneSIan equivale nts to (I I) and (12), we get so me strong clues that this is not the case. Note In English we can say either (9a) or (9b) - they alternate freely. In (9b), the that the change from l11eng-kirim in (10) to di-kirim in (13) and (14) IS equIvalent to wo rd Hasan appears earlier in the sentence; let's say that in (9b), Hasan has been the change in English from sem to was sent: PROMOTED in the se ntence: itu oleh Ali . (9) a. Ali sent the letter to Hasan. (Indonesian ) (13) Ha san di-kirim-kan surat Hasan was-sent letter the by Ali b. Ali sent Hasan the letter. 'Hasan was sent the letter by Ali: In Indones ian, we fi nd the same alte rnation, shown in (10). If you're this (14) ' Hasan di-kirim su rat ilu (kepada) oleh Al i. before the disc ussio n on the use of linguistic exa mples in Section 1.2, please Hasan was-sent letter the (to) by Al i remember to concentrate particularly on the second line of each example: the literal "" Hasan was sent the letter to by Al i.' translation. The main 'foreign' feature in (10) is surat itu 'letter the' where English has th e word order'the letter'; otherwise, the word order in the two Indonesian examples Just as in English, one construction is fi ne, the oth er impossible. What makes the is the sa me as that of the two English exa mples in (9): difference? In the Indonesian, we can tell that it can't be anything to do wIth the word forto' (kepa da ), because (14) is imposs ible with or without that word - the (10) a. Ali ll1 eng~k irim surat itu kepada Hasa n. parentheses ( ... ) mean that whether or not kepada is included makes no difference to Ali send letter the to Hasan the accep tabilit y of the sentence. The reason only (13) IS acceptable IS that we have 'Ali sent the letter to Hasa n.' to start off with (lab) to get th ere - the version in which Hasan has already been b. Ali meng-kir im-kan Hasa n surat itu. promoted once. And we know that (13) does indeed come via (lab) because th e word Ali send Hasan letter the which means 'was sent', di-kiril/l-kml, has that endlllg -ka ll whtch shows that Hasall 'Ali sent Hasan the letter.' has been promoted - whereas di-kiril/1 in (1 4) doesn't. So we could hypothes ize that English probably works in the sa me way. Although there's nothing in EnglISh to mark In (lab), we find an ending -kan on the word for 'send': this endi ng in dicates in the first promotion of Hasa ll in (9b), it's likely th at just as in IndoneSIan, It's the Indonesian that the word Hasan has been promo ted. English has no equivalent to promot ion that's the distinguishing factor between the grammattcal example III (II ) -kan. and the ungrammatical one in (1 2). . Now look aga in at the English in (9). When Hasan is in the promoted position At this stage, I hope to have show n that two totally unrelated languages can dISplay in (9b), we ca n promote it to an even higher position in the sentence, giving (I I). some remarkably similar synt ac tic behaviour. Finally, please note that although We indicate the position that Hasan is understood to have moved from with the this section was rather technical, you should be able to understand It If you read It gap _ . In (I I), there is also a cha nge from sent to was sent, which signals the through more than once, stopping to work out each stage as yOu go. This tip will also further promotion of Hasan. To understand why a language would need to indicate be helpfu l throughout the book. th is promotion of some part of the sentence, think about the difference in meaning between Ha san sent the letter and Ha san was sent the letter. «««««««««««<

(11) Hasan was sent _ the letter by Ali. 1.1.2 If we start with (9a), however, where Hasan is not in a promoted position, then trying to promote it from th ere directly to the very highest position in th e sentence would Speakers of established la nguages such as English often disl ike changes occurring give (12): again, I show the position the word Ha san has moved from with the gap. within their ow n language, believ ing that change equates wIth dec1 mmg standards. But (12) is not a possible sentence of Engli sh (as indicated by the asterisk): In fac t, however, the grammar of all languages changes over time, and no amount of intervention by prescriptive gram marians or language academies ca n prevent th IS. (12) ' Hasan was sent the letter to _ by Ali. In this sec tion, I look at so me exa mples from the hi story of English, and th en at more 8 Understanding syntax What is syntax? 9 recent changes. The exa mples of Midd le English in (I5) are from the prologue to b. Why hydestow (i.e. hidest thou) the keyes ... ? Cha ucer's Wife of Balhs Tale, wrillen in the fourt eenth century: 'Why do you hide the keys?'

(15) a. I sey nat this by wyves that been wyse So these are two ways in which MAtN in Middle English (verbs that aren't '1 do not say thi s for wives that are wise.' auxiliaries) behave differently than in modern English. You may also have noltced b. But Crist ... bat nat every wight he sholde go selle al that he hadde that ' do -support' is used in modern English for emphasis too. We had an example Just 'But Chr ist did not bid everyone to go (and) sell all that he had: now: Middle English did allow tlt is COllstruerioll. . Although yo u may not be surprised that changes li ke this occurred over a penod The major change here is in the negation of verbs such as say and bid (Chaucer's bar is of several hundred years (with do-support becoming standard by around 1700),.lt modern bade). In Chaucer's English, any verb can be negated by pUlli ng 1101 directly may be less obvious that English changed in the twentieth century, and mdeed, IS still after it: I sey nal; Crist bal nat. In modern Englis h, we don't negate verbs directly in changing constantl y. But there are plenty of syntactIC changes III progress right n?w. this way:'I say not this, 'Christ bade not aren't possible. Instead, we use a form of do At the moment, these are res tricted to cert alll dialects or to non-standard Bnltsh which doesn't add any meaning of its own, but is there purely to support lIot, as in: English, but all the exa mples of change discussed later are spreading, and some may I do 1101/ don't say this. Chaucer's English doesn't have this 'do-support' rule, as it is eventually become standard English. First, consider TAG such as those III sometimes know n. bold in (17):

» » »»»»»»»» »> (17) a. It is a hot day, isn't it? b. I ca n come, can't I? Before reading further, think of at least five wo rds other than forms of do that can be c. We still lost in the end, didn't we? directly negated by a follow ing 1101 in modern English: find words that fit into the gap in a sentence such as: 1_ flot/n't leave. These questions 'tagged onto' the end of a statement are formed by speci fi c rules « « «««««« « «« < in standard English which match the tag to the statement. A positive statement like It is ... gets a negative tag, Isn't it. Most importantly, an auxllmy used III the This gap can be fill ed by may,lIlight, IlIlISt, call, could, will, would, shall, should as well statement must be used in the tag (I con and can't I) and the (such as 11,1, as dare and lIeed. By changing leave to left or leaving we can also add have and be to lVe) in the stateme nt is also in the tag. In (l7c), there's no auxiliary: ma in verbs like the li st of words that can fit the gap, as in I have lIolleft,l amllot/eavillg. ln modern lose ca n't occur in tags ('lost lVe) so do-support occurs, as in other questions. But English, only words of a certain class, a ve rb-like word know n as an AUX ILI ARY , can in some dialects of British Engli sh, a si ngle tag question init is used m each of the be directly negated by IIOt. Where there is no other auxiliary, do is used as a kind of co ntexts shown in (17). Example (18) illustrates. The tag init is a reduced form of 'dummy' auxi liary. isn't it, a form which, in standard English, is possible only if the statement contams is. In illit dialects, however, this has become an invariant tag, so that as weU as the » » »»»»»»»»» > grammat ica lly standard Its a hot day, ill it?, we find:

Apart from its role in negation, do-support has another major role in modern (18) a. I can come, init? English. Try to think of some examples of this. b. We still lost in the end, init? « « «««««««««< So me other varieties of English, such as Indian English, already have an invariant iSll't it tag. And in some languages, an invariant tag is completely standard, as In Do is also used to form 'yeslno' questions, where there's no other auxiliary. So French: n'est-ce pas (literally, 'isn't it?') occurs whatever the form of the statement: altho ugh we can say Mightlcall/will YOllleave?, usi ng one of the auxiliaries just listed, as well as Are YOIl leaving? and Have YOIl left?, an ordinary verb can't be used in (19) a. 11 va arr ivcr demain , n'est-ce pas? (French) quest ion formation: 'Left YOIl yesterday? Once again, Middle Engl ish did allow th is he goes arrive tomorrow TAG :onstru ct ion: 'He will arrive tomorrow, won't he?' b. Nous n avons pas de pam, n'est-ce pas? (16) a. Seyyou no? we NEG have NEG of bread TAG 'Do YO LI sa}' no ?' 'We haven't got any bread, have we?' 10 Understanding syntax What is syntax? 11

Perhaps standard British Engli sh will also have an invaria nt tag one day too. use of they in (22): it's used not as a pronoun, but rather as a gender-neutral A second example of ongoing change is illustrated by the differen ces between singular pronoun. This is clear in (22a), where allY candidate was addressed to a (20) and (21). Example (20) is standard English, but in a very common, though group of males and females; but they can also be used as in (22b) and (22c), where technIcally non-standard variant, (20b) is replaced by (21) : the speakers must know the actual sex of the person referred to. (l can confirm that this is th e case for the response in (22c), since I was that speaker, and heard myself (20) a. less difficulty; less wheat; less boredom ; less milk say this!) b. fewer st udents; fewer sheep; fewer people; fewer difficulties Interestingly, this development seems to have occurred independently of any desire to use non-sexist language; British English has not, for example, adopted such forms (21) less students; less sheep; less people; less diffic ult ies as waitpersall, often used in American English. »»»» »»» »»»» > To summarize, I argued in Section 1.1 that all native speakers of a language share an internal grammar, although they have never been taught its rules. Evidence for Look first at (20) and work out what it is that cond itions th e use of less and JelVer in this is that we largely agree about what is and what is not a possible sentence of standard Enghsh. Then desCflbe how the non -s tandard variety in (21) differs. If you our language, though speakers are likely to differ over their acceptance of certain don't have the grammatical terminology, give as accurate a description as you ca n of non-standard or dialectal variants. What is more, languages which are unrelated the properties involved. share many common properties and const ructions, suggesting that human beings have an innate language faculty. Finally, we saw that language changes through time, ««««« « ««««« < and I gave some examples of ongoing changes. I now demonstrate how to make use of examples from other languages. In st. ndard English, less is used only with MASS or NON-COUNT - words like difficulty, IVheat, boredolll and milk. These are inherently singular; we can't say *three 1.2 USE OF LINGUISTIC EXAMPLES boredoms. COUNT nouns, by way of contrast, have a plural form, such as students, sheep, people and difficulties, and in standard Engl ish these occur with JelVer. (Note that although sheep doesn't take the regular plural -5, one way we ca n tell that it ca n 1.2.1 Why not just use examples from English? be a plural word is exactly by the fa ct that it can occur after felVer.) Some nouns can, This book co ntains examples from a wide variety of languages, including English. m fact, be either mass or cou nt, like difficulty. Example (2 1) reflects a widespread At first you may find it difficult to study examples from unfamiliar languages, and non -standard usage m whICh less IS used before any noun, including plural count perhaps you wonder why we don't just use examples from English. There are two nouns. main reasons for using foreign -language exa mples: to learn about the differences Our final example of language change in progress comes from the non-standard between languages, and to learn about the similarities between them. use of they, illustrated by th e attested (= real -life) examples in (22). First, then, languages don't all look the same, and exa mining just our own language and it s immediate relatives doesn't show how much languages can differ. Imagine that (22) •. If any candidate hasn't got a form, they need to get one from the offi ce. you've met only two languages, English and German, two closely related Germanic h. I remember one st udent who said they couldn't wr ite the answers because languages from northern Europe. Example (23), from German, is a word -far-wo rd they'd lost their one and only pen. translation of the English. c. Do you know which assistant you spoke to? No, but they were ta il and dark-haired. (23) der schone Wasser fall (German) the prett y waterfa ll The they and their are always plural in standard English, so can only be used to refer to a plural noun , such as the calldidates. But in (22), these You might imagine that the tra nslation of this phrase would look the same in any pronoun s refer back to a which is singular in form: allY calldidate, aile language: first a word for 'the', then a word for 'pretty' or 'beautiful', then a word for 5lUdelJt, which assistant. This is actually not a new usage - sim ilar uses of they occur 'waterfall'. But this is not so. In Spanish, for instance, we'd get (24): even as far back as Middle Engli sh. In modern standard British English, though, stIli renected m the speech of some older speakers, a singular pronoun he or she is (24) I. cascada hermosa (Spanish) requ Ired In each of these co ntexts. This gives examples like If anyone /leeds to leave the wate rfall beautiful he should raise his hand, whereas most speakers nowadays would say If anyo/le 'the beautiful waterfall' lIeeds to leal'e they should raise their halld. Note that there's no plural intended in the What is syntax? 13 12 Understanding syntax

Here, the word order is different in one respect: the word for 'beautifu l' follows 1.2.2 How to read linguistic examples 'waterfall'. Otherwise, the Spanish is not too different from the English: it has just the 1.2.2.1 The layout of examples same three words, and a word for 'the' in the same position. This isn't too surprising, as Spanish is also related to English, although more distantly than German. But in Your first task as a syntactician is to learn to make use of examples from other certain other languages, th e equivalent to 'the' comes at the end of the phrase, as in languages. This book contains examples from over 100 different languages. Of Indonesian surat itu 'letter the' illustrated in (10), or else there may be no word for course, I don't speak most of these - the examples come from other linguists, or from 'the' at all, as in japanese and Chinese, or in some languages there isn't even a direct native speakers of the language (and sometimes native-speaker linguists). But I can translation of the adjec tive beautiful. utilize these examples because linguists set them out in a speci fi c way for students The worl d's languages have many interesting and important syntactic features that and researchers who don't speak the language. I'd like yo u to know abouL English has some but not all of these features, so if we Examples of thi s special layout occur in the two Spanish illustrations in (24) and only looked at Engli sh you'd miss out on the resLln (25), we see one example, from (25) . Each consists of three lines. The first line is from the source language under Spanish: consideration. The third line is a translation from the source language into English. You need this line to know what the original example means, but it's not th e most (25) Es nuevo. (Span ish) important part of the example, because it only tells you about English - it tells you IS new nothing about the source language. The really important line is the second one, called 'It's new.' the GLOSS. The gloss is a literal translation of the original language. Each meaningful part of the original is translated, whether it corresponds exactly to a word in English Exa mple (25) has no word for 'it'; it literally means 'is new' - an impossible sentence or not. Look back at (2): French l1e is GLOSSED (translated) simply as NEGATIVE in English. Spanish typ ically drops the subj ec t pronoun meaning 'it' in such examples; because there's no English word that directly corresponds to it. for this reason, it's known as a PRO-DROP language. Many languages have examples To see why the gloss is so importa nt, consider (26) and (27), from japanese and parall el to th is, but confining the discussion to English would never reveal that. In yet from Welsh. I have left out the gloss line. Both examples mean the same thing in the other languages, such as and Indonesian, the three-word English sentence It is sense that they can receive the sa me English translation: new tra nslates as 'It new' (this is illustrated in Chapter 2). These simple exa mples show that we can't expect sentences in other languages to be word-far-word of (26) Sensei*ga gakusei ni tegami-o kaita. (Japanese) English sentences. So we study other languages to discover the range of constructions 'The teacher wrote a lette r to the student .' and features they contain - in order to find out about Ll NGUtSTIC DIVERSITY. (27) Ysgrifennodd yr .thro Iythy r aI y myfyriwr. (Welsh) The second reason for looking at examples from other languages is that linguists 'Th e teacher wrote a letter to the student.' wa nt to discover the common properties that languages sha re - their hOlllogeneity or sameness. One of the most important discoveries of modern linguistics is that Let's suppose the point I'm trying to make is th at sentences in japanese, Welsh and languages don't vary from each other at random, but are remarkably alike. Certain English all have different word orders. Unless you happen to know both Japanese and feat ures occur in all languages. For instance, every language dist ingui shes a word Welsh, you won't be able to work this out from (26) and (27).ln (28) and (29), I give class of NOUNS (words like tree, liquid, expression and student) from a word class of the full exa mples, with glosses:' VERBS (words like liquefy, leam, enjoy and grow), although some languages have no other major word classes. (Chapter 2 exam ines word dasses.) To discover this kind gakuse i ni tegami -o kaita. (Japanese) of information, linguists need to exam ine a representati ve sample of languages from (28) Sensei-ga st udent 10 letter wrote different language families and different geographical areas. teacher 'The teacher wrote a lette r to the student.' Most lingu ists want to uncover th e ce nt ral patterns common to all languages. Although spec ific constructions are not universal (= common to all languages), all (29) Ysg rifennodd yr at hro lyI hyr aI y myfyriwr. (Welsh) languages use a sub-set of the same basic tools of gra mmar. Each language has a wrote the teacher letter 10 the student or which all its speakers share, and that wordl ist always contains 'The teacher wrote a letter to the student.' words from several different dasses.All languages combine these words into phrases and sentences, and ca n manipulate the order of the phrases fo r various purposes - 2. To simplify mailers, I leave two sma ll words in the Japanese unglossed: ga indicates that sensei perhaps to ask questions, or to emphas ize different parts of a sentence, or to show '(the) teacher' is the subject (here. the one ) and 0 indicates thallegami '(the) letter' is the who's doi ng what to whom. This is syntax, and it forms the su bject matter of the object (here. the thing being written). These terms come up again later, and in Chapters 2 and 6, so cha pters ahead. don't worry if they arc unfamiliar to you now. 14 Understanding syntax Whatis syntax? 15

Now we can compare the word orders of th e three languages. First, the word for'wrote' glosses contain only lexical information. The Rapa Nuiexample in (30), though: has (a verb) has a different position in all three languages: at the end of the sentence in two items glossed as NON PAST and PROGRESSIVE (whICh mdlCates an ongomg ac tIOn ). Japanese, at the beginning in Welsh, and so mewhere in the middle in English - to This information co ncerns grammatical categories such as TENSE and ASPECT (more be precise, after the phrase the teacher. This tells us right away that not all languages on these in Chapter 2). The point is that there are no separate words in English - have the same sentence structure as English. Second, in both Japan ese and Engli sh, members of the English LEXICON or vocabulary - that can translate th iS gra mm atICal the phrase '(the) teache r' is initial in the sentence, so Japanese and English have an information, so it is glossed using the technical terms that descnbe ItS function m important fea ture in common. In fact, at least 80 per cent of all languages would start the source language. . . their version of our sentence with the 'teacher' phrase. Welsh is different: its sentences All languages contain grammatical information. In (3 1), we show thiSby suggestmg start with the verb mean ing 'wrote', a pattern found in perhaps 12 per cent of the a precise gloss of an example from English, treating it as if it were a fOreign language, world's languages. Third, both Welsh and English have the same order in the phrase and representing the grammatical information, as usual, m small capitals. 'to the student', wh ile the Japanese in (28) has the word order: gak ll sei IIi, literally, 'student to'. (31) The student-s ask-ed ror these book-so Using the glosses we can work out quite a lot about the word order differences - OEF.ART student-Pl ask-PAST for DEM..PL book-Ill and similarities - between the three languages. Other facts about Japanese and Welsh 'The students asked for these books.' emerge from the glosses too: for example, Japanese has no equivalent to 'the' and 'a, and Welsh has no word fo r 'a'. Taking these glosses as illustration, we ca n now explain the usual lingui stic You should now begin to see the importance of the gloss. On reaching a three-line conventions. There are some familiar lexical items, 'student', 'ask', 'for' and 'book', example in the text, you should start at the bottom and work upwards, reading the but I've glossed the by referring to the grammatical information it represents: it's a translation first, then exa mining the gloss, then looking at the source language. Keep DEFINITE ART ICLE - a wo rd meaning 'th e', as opposed to an IND EFI NITE - in that the English may bear little resemblance to the original so urce. In (28) a word meani ng 'a'. I also glossed these as DEM.PL: these is a DEMONSTRATI VE wo rd, and (29), the examples are pretty similar to the Engli sh, wo rd-for-word (even if the a 'pointing' word from the set this, that, these, those. It's also PLURA L: there fo re used wo rd orders are different), but this certainly isn't always the case: (30) is from Rapa before a plural word like books. Throughout the book, though, I wil l normally try Nui, the Polynesian language of Easter Island. where possible to use glosses you can recognize as words. . . Apart from the lexical and gra mmati cal information, the gloss also contallls pieces (30) E tagi a te poki. (Rapa Nui) of information separated by a (-). A hyphen precedmg or foUowlll g a piece NON PAST cry PROG RESSIVE the boy of grammatical information in the gloss means th at the grammatical element IS 'The boy is crying.' attached to the word, or to another grammat ical element, and can't be a separate word. Cruciall y, th ough, such grammatical elements have their ow n mea ning. So the Apart from the word order differences (as in Welsh, the verb meaning'cry' is (almost) glosses book-PL and stlldent-PL indicate that books and students are plural nouns; at the beginning of the sentence), Rapa Nui has va rious other interesting feature s. -s is a plural ending. And -ed is a past tense ending. I've also used the hyphen In In the Engli sh, is indicates that th e crying is now, i. e. not in the past. The Rapa Nui the first line in (3 1) to indicate the boundaries in the source lang uage betwee n the example has no word for 'is', and instead a small wo rd e indicates 'nonpast'. Second, grammatical information and the lexical items, although no t all examples in this in English the -illg ending on cry indicates an ongoi ng act ion, i.e. the boy hasn't book follow this convention. fi nished crying. Rapa Nui has a separate word to indicate this: the 'progressive' Grammatical elements attached to th e beginning or end of a word , or to word (mean ing an unfinished action). Neither of these features of Rapa Nui ca n be other pieces of grammatica l infor mation, are called AF FIXES (meaning something discovered from the Engli sh translation, of course. So you always need to read the attached). Generally, then, a hyphen in the gloss indicates an , such as the plural gloss carefu lly, thinking about what ever point is being made in the surrounding text. -so Grammatical come in two main va rieti es: and prefixes. English It should be clear by now that if you read only the last line of an example, you won't plural -s, progressive -illg and pas t tense -ed are SUFF IX ES; they're attached to the end find out about any language other th an English! of words. PREFIXES are attached at the beginning of words; exa mp les from English are WI- as in untidy and re- as in re-seal. 1.2.2.2 Lexical and grammatical information Elements of meaning such as 'ask' and 'past tense', 'un-' and 'plural' are known as . As you can see, some of these represent in dependent words, but not Glosses contai n both LEX ICAL information, prin ted in normal type, and GRAMM,>;nCAL all. The study of word forms is known as , and though this is generally inform ation, printed in small capita ls. Lex ical information means ordinary words outside the scope of this book, we will often meet exa mples that show the mterface which are translations (or paraph rases) of the ori ginal language. In (28) and (29), the between morphology and syntax - morphosyntax. Glosses in an exa mple essenti ally 16 Understanding syntax What is syntax? 17

inform the reader about the morphosyntax of the words used, as well as just giving some third party, an individual or group other than the speaker and addressee: the their literal meaning. 'he/she/it' and 'they' forms. Sometimes, we recognize that a word contai ns more than one piece of in format ion, The category of NUM BER refers to the distinction between SINGULAR (one person) that is, more than one , but these meani ng elements have no discernible and NON-SINGULAR (more than one person). In French, as in most European languages, boundaries. For instance, if (3 1) had been The students took these books home, we nu mber is either 'singular' or 'plural'. No te, though, that French distinguishes wo uld recognize that the verb took is past tense, just as asked is, but took is irregular, between tu paries, 'you (si ngular) speak', and vaLIs parlez, 'you (plural) speak'. and does n't have a past tense -ed . We ca n't tell what part of took means 'past'. English once had this distinction too: thou meant 'you (singular)', equivalent to IU; Linguists generally indicate this in the gloss using a colon (:) or a dot: thus, took and some varieties of mode rn English also have second person plural forms such as would be glossed 'take:PAsT' or 'take. PAST'. This convention means that a single YOll all or yous (for instance,yoll' occurs in parts of both northeast and northwest so urce wo rd contains more than one mo rpheme (such as 'take' and 'past tense') but England). Some languages divide non-singular into several categories, such as a there are no clear boundaries between these morphemes. category referring to two people (a DUAL), a category for three people (a TRIAL), and We also use this convention if we just don't wish to show the boundaries in a additionally a plural, used fo r referring to more than three people. For example, the parti cular example, usuall y for the sake of keeping things clear or simple for the Polynesian language Kwamera has just such a system. reader. Illustrati ng agai n with asked, I could show it as in (31) as ask-ed, with the Kwamera also has more PERSON distinc tions than are familiar in European hyphen indicating a morpheme boundary in the source word, and gloss it as ask­ languages. Firs t person in this language div ides into INCLUSIVE and EXCLUSIVE PAST, again showing the morpheme boundary. Al ternatively, I could show asked in forms.'Inclusive' means 'we (as in me and you, speaker and addressee)', and 'exclusive' the source line, and ask. PAST in the gloss. Typically, we use this convent ion whe n we mea ns 'we (speaker and other party, excluding you, the addressee)'. Imagine that a don't need to emphasize the detailed morphosyntax of the example. friend says 'We could go and see a film tonight'. You reply'We? Do you mean you and me (lVe inclusive) or you and your boyfriend (we exclusive)?' English doesn't have 1.2.2.3 Tile categories of person and number different forms of'we' to specify th is info rmation, but Kwamera does: In this section, I discuss the conventions used to represent the grammatical (32) a. sa-ha-akw (Kwamera) categories of PERSON and NUMBER, using examples from French and Kwa mera (spoken in Van uatu in the Pacific). l INC-PLURt\ L-break.up 'We all break up.' (inclusive 'we') If you have lea rnt a foreign language, you will probably be used to meeting tables b. ia- ha-vehe of verb forms li ke Table 1.1, from French. 1EX ( -P LU RAL -come Table 1.1 'We came.' (exclus ive 'we') Present tense of French verb parler, 'to speak' Before going any further, it's vitally important that you understand how to read Singular Plural the information in examples like this. The English translations in (32) contain 1st je parle nous parlons several words - four separate words in (32a)) for instance. But the Kwamera source 2nd tu paries vous parlez examples each contain just one word, tho ugh this incorporates several distinct pieces 3rd il/elle parle ils/elles parlent of lexical and grammatical in format ion. I'll explain usi ng (32a), where there is a verb STEM, akw, and two prefixes attached to it - prefixes are grammatical elements which precede a stem. The ha- form closest to the verb stem means 'plural', and Such tab les, know n as PARADIGMS, display the set of related forms that a particular the sa- form on the outs ide mea ns 'first person inclusive'. Together, these buy the lexical word has in a given grammatical con text. The paradigm in Table 1.1 shows the meaning 'inclusive we'. English and Kwamera differ in a crucial way here. English set of forms that makes up the present tense of the verb parler, 'to speak'. Readi ng has a separate pronoun we - it's a distinct, independent wo rd on its own, not part of down the colum n headed Singular, the forms mea n 'I speak, you (singular) speak, the verb. Th is is known as a FREE PRONOUN. But in the Kwamera. the re is no separate he/she speaks'. In the colu mn headed Pl ural, the fo rms mean 'we speak, you (pl ural) word for'we' at all: ins tead, that meaning is expressed by usi ng gra mmatical elements speak, they (masculine/fem in ine) speak'. attached to the verb itself. The forms sa- an d ia- can't be separated from the verb, The labels 1st (FIRST), 2nd (SECOND) and 3rd (THIRD) in the fi rst column designate and don't occur on their own, and so are known as BO UND PRONOMINAL$ (there is more the grammatica l category called PERSON. First person indicates the speaker, or a gro up discussion of thi s in Section 4.3). of people that includes th e speaker: so both the T and 'we' forms are first person. Note that in Kwamera, there are separate afftxes represent ing the categor ies of Second person indicates the addressee(s): the 'you' forms. Third person indicates PERSON and NUMBER, whereas in English the pronou n lVe represents bot h person 18 Understanding syntax What is syntax? 19

(Ist) and number (plural) simu ltaneously. So the prefix ia- in (32b) some of the examples don't start with capital letters; the phonetic doesn't represents not T or 'we', but jus t first person: it becomes 'we' only when the plu ral follow the conventions of a . prefix ha- follows. This means that the same 'first person exclusive' form ia- also translates as T: 1.3 WHY DO LANGUAGES HAVE SYNTAX? (33) ia-pkagkiari-m ha IExc-ta lk-NEG Speakers manipulate sentences in all sorts of ways because they're trying to convey 'I didn't talk: different meanings. Syntax allows speakers to express all the meanings that they need to put across. In the simples t cases, this might mean altering the basic word order of In future examples I gloss person and number as in Table 1.2, unless the language a sentence, to emphasize or downplay a particular phrase, or to ask a question, or else has some special inclusive and exclusive forms as in Kwamera. The first and second grouping words together in different ways to modify the meaning. This section gives columns give the glosses and their meani ng - this is grammatical information - a preliminary idea of some of the typical sy ntac tic constructions fo und in languages, and the third column lists the pro nouns which in English are associated with this and demonstrates that languages really do have syntactic structure. grammatical info rmation, to help you remember. 1.3.1 Word order Table 1.2 Glosses for person and number In English, the WORD ORDER is pretty fixed. There are three main elements in the sentence in (34): Killl, the one drinking the tea; drallk, the verb, which expresses Gloss Meaning what Kim did; and the tea, express ing what is being dru nk. We use the term 'word lSG fi rst person singular 'lime' order' (more accurately, as we will see later on, 'constituent order ) to discuss the 2sG second person singular 'you [singular!' order in which these three ma in parts of a sentence occur in a language. In English, 3SG third person singular 'he/him; she/her; it' the three elements occur in the order shown in (34a). This is the normal word order, and all variants of it are impossible (therefore starred) except fo r (34f), which has a 11'1. first person plural 'we/us' res tricted special usage. 2PL second person plural 'you [plural], 31'1. third person plural 'they/them' (34) a. Kim drank the tea. b. *Kim the tea dra nk. If the gloss specifi es just the person, 'I', '2' or '3', but doesn't mention singular or c. *Drank Kim the tea. plural, th is means that the particular language being glossed does not have number d. ""Drank the tea Kim. dist inctions in thi s insta nce. e. ""The tea drank Ki m. f. The tea Kim drank. 1.2.2.4 Writing systems and glosses Most of the logically possible variations are impossible in English. However, each of No t all languages use the Roman alphabet (the one you're read ing now). For the word orders in (34) is attested (= found) among the world's languages, though example, Russian uses the Cyrillic alphabet, and Chinese and Japanese both use some are much more common than others (see Chapter 6). The three most common wr iting systems based on characters rather than an alphabet. But there usually exist basic word orders in languages other than English are those of (34a), (b) and (c). conventions for writing such languages in the Roman alphabet, and this enables We saw in Section 1.2.2.1 that Japanese has the basic word order of (34b), and Welsh linguists to make use of the examples. I mostly follow the published source that my the basic order of (34c) . Malagasy, spoken in Madagascar, has the basic order in data come from, although some labels for glosses are changed to bring them into line (34d). The two word orders in (34e) and (34f) are the rarest basic word orders in the with my practice. Addi tio nally, I standardize glosses that are more detailed or less la nguages of the world, although they are fo und in the Carib language fami ly of the detailed than we need. Occasionally I si mplify by not glossing some item, especially Amazon basi n. For exa mple, Hixkaryana has the word order in (34e). if we haven't yet met the appro priate grammatical term. I will often omit the tones It is generally possible to determine the basic, neutral word order in a language, in examples from languages such as Chinese: these specify pronunciation and are but the flexibility or rigidity of the basic word order differs widely among the world's not vital to our discuss ion of syntax. Finally, note that some languages don't have a languages. English has a fixed basic word order, wh ile Russian has a very flex ible writing system at all, since they've never been written down. In this case, ling uists word order, and Japanese allows ma ny di ffere nt orders provided the verb co mes at typically give a phonetic representation of the original language. For that reason, the end of the sentence, as in (28). In English, some of the starred (ungramm atical) 20 Understanding syntax What is syntax? 21 word orders in (34) might just about be permissible in poetry, but not in the spoken need to be able to define what an object is in order to find the phrase that's moved. language or in prose. Example (34f) may initially sou nd odd to you, but it can be Try to work out th e basic word order, find the phrase that's moved, and indicate used to on what it was th at Kim drank; the phrase the tea is fronted from its where it has moved from by using a gap, as 1 did earl ier. Then say why you think usual position as given in (34a), so becomes more prominent. Try adding a bit of the writer chose this construction, rather th an using the basic word order of context: Kim visits an eccent ric aunt who makes tea and beer out of strange garden English: plants: The tea, Kim drank ~ but the home-Illade lI ettle beer, she really hated _ . The gaps are used to show the normal position of the fronted phrases Ihe tea and (37) It may harm you r defence if you do not men tion when quest ioned something the home-made nettle beer. In technical terms, this construction involves fronting which you later rely on in court. what is known as the DIRECT OB JECT of the verbs drank and hated: the direct object (From 1994 Criminal Jllstice and Public Order Act) (or just 'object') of drank is the tea (the 'th ing drunk') and the object of hated is the (38) Mrs Verwoerd struggled to read without her glasses a stalement appealing to hOllie-made lIettle beer (the 'thing hated') . Example (35) shows a published example Nelson Mandela to give the Afrikaner a yolkstaat. of the sa me object-fronting construction; the context is th at the writer is learning to (From The Gllardiall, 21.8.95) fly a microlight aircraft: «««««««««««< (35) The last exercise, a stall while climbing,l didn't do _ well. (From Travels will! Pegasus, Chri stina Dodwell . 1 indicate the moved phrase by following the usual linguistic practice of enclosing it Sceptre, Hodder & Stoughton , 1989) inside square brackets: I... ]; the brackets sign ify the beginning and end of a phrase. Here are the answers to the exercise: In (35), the fronted object is shown in bold, and again its more usual position is marked by a hyphe n. Object-fronting is, in fact, quite rare in English. It's known as (39) It may harm your defence if you do not mention _ when questioned a MARKED (= unusual) construction, while the usual basic word order as in (34a) is [something which you later rely on in cour t]. termed UNMAR KED , Often there are styli stic rea sons for changing basic word order. The fronted phrase (40) Mrs Verwoerd struggled to read _ _ without her glasses [a statement appealing in (35) is rather long, and sounds cl umsy in the usual object position: I didll't do the to Nelson Mandela to give the Afrikaner a volkstaat J. last exercise, a stall while climbillg, well. In (36), we illustrate a different kind of word order change, which involves breaking up a rather long phrase by moving part of it to In (39), the basic word ord er would be I mentioned somelhing when questioned, not the right. The ph rase in bold type moves ri ghtwards from its basic position following • I lIIentioned when qnestioned sOlllething. But because the bra cketed object in (39) the word estimates, shown by the gap: is a particularly long phrase ('heavy' is the technical term), it's allowed to shift from its normal position, and indeed so unds better that way. Similarly in (40), the basic (36) Est imates _ vary greatly about the number of fluent speakers (i.e. of word order has to be She read a statemenlwithout her glasses not 'She read without Esperawo). her glasses a statemellt. But again, the object is heavy: it's the whole phrase a stalement (From Tire Cambridge Ellcyclopedia of Lallguage, David Crystal. appealing to Nelson Mandela to give the Afrikaner a volkstaat. So th e preferred Ca mbridge Univers it y Press, t987) position of this heavy ph ra se is not its basic position, but a position to the ri ght of the shorter phrase withow her glasses. This avoids the clumsiness of a long initial phrase estilllates aboul the IIwllber of If you previo usly had no idea how to determine the OBJECT of a verb,look a1 the fluent speakers before the short phrase vary greatly. (Compare the normal word order position of th e gaps in (39) and (40). Both gaps immediately follow verbs, namely in Estimates about this vary greatly.) As (34) showed, English has a generally inflexible IIIClltion and read. The objects are the 'thing mentioned' and the 'thing read ' here: word order in the sentence, but optional MODIFYING phrases can be reordered quite both these phrases in some sense co mplete the meaning of the verb, and so are easily, as is the case for the abow ... phrase which modifies (= expands on) the word oft en known as th e COMPLEMENTS of the verb. The normal position for a direct estimates. object in English is immediately following the verb. I discuss these technical terms in more detail in Chapter 2, but these features wi ll help yo u identify objects »»»»»»»»»»»> in th e next section. Please review this section before moving on if yo u weren't prev iously familiar wi th the grammatical term 'object'. We return to word order The examples in (37) and (38) agai n involve rightward moveme nt of a phrase. In in Ch apter 6. both cases the moved phrase is the object of a verb - as it was in (35) - but you don't 22 Understanding syntax What is syntax? 23

1.3.2 Promotion and demotion processes ve rb (coullted out, collsidered) and they express what is being cou nted out, what is considered. In (41) and (42), the phrases their catch and pointed gllashers appear The syntactic variations in Sec tion l.3. 1 involved simply reordering the elements of a in a new, promoted position in the sentence. They have changed their grammatical senten ce. But syntactic cha nges can have much more radical results than this. Section func tion, and become the subjects of the passive se ntences. How do we know that 1.1, in the discussion of Indonesian, introduced the idea of promotion processes - these phrases are now subjects? One major indication is that their catch and poillled making a word or phrase more prom inent in the sentence. There are also demotion gllashers appear immediately before the verb, in the normal sentence-initial position processes, which make part of th e sentence less prominent. Here I give a preliminary of English subjects. (We will see more tests for subjecthood in English in Chapter 2.) introduction to another construction involving promotion and demotion - the This advancement to subject position in (41) and (42) makes the promoted phrases PASS IVE - in English and Japanese (more in Chapter 7). more salient: it fo cuses attention on their catch and pointed gllashers. By co ntrast, the The pass ive is illustrated in bold type in (41) and (42), and is an extremely phrases that were the subjects of the active se ntences in (43) and (44), namely the co mmon construction in both spoken and written English. market boss and th e girls here, are no longer subjects. In the passive sentences in (4 1) and (42),they have been demoted to a lower position. Demotion in th is case means (41) The women and boys wi lh crates converged on the boats and their catch was that they are consigned to a by-phrase, outside the core of the se ntence. Notice that counted out by the market boss. this by-p hrase is entirely optional: we coul d omit it, and just have, for instance, Their (From Travels in Mauritania, Peter Hudson. Flamingo, 1990) catch lVas colllited Ollt. Compare that optional ity with what we find in (43 ): both the (42) His normal work was filing gi rls' teeth to points, although pointed gnashers subject the market boss and the object their catch are core elements of the sentence, were considered a bit old-fashioned by the girls here. and neither ca n be omitted. (Try this.) (From Travels witli PegaslIs, Christina Dodwell. You should now be starting to have some feeling for the purpose and usual Sceptre, Hodder & Stoughton, 1989) positions of different parts of the sentence. Before leav ing the topic of the passive construction, no te that in English (and in many ot her languages) it is signalled by Compare these pass ive co nstructions with the sentences in (43) and (44), which are changes in the form of the verb: compare (45a) and (45b), where the verbs are in bold type. their counterparts in mean ing, but are both ACT IVE constructions: (45) a. Kim broke the vase. (43) The markel boss counted out their catch. (act ive) b. The vase was broken by Kim. (passive) (44) The gi rl s here considered pointed gnashers a bit old-fashio ned. The examples in (46) show the corresponding properties in Japanese. Exa mple (46a) »»»» »»» » » »»> is the act ive se ntence, (46b) its passive counterpart:

Before reading further, please try to figure out what properties differentiate the active (46) a. Sensei ga Joh n a si kat -ta. (active) (Japanese) from the passive constructions. Use the correct technical terms where you know teacher SUBJECT John OBJECT scold-PAST them. Start by dec iding on the grammatical role of the phrases in bold type in (43) 'The teacher scolded John! and (44), and see what role these same phrases have in the passive co nstructions. b. lohn ga sensei ni sikar-are-Ia. (passive) What purposes do the two different construction types seem to serve? Can you lohn SUBJECT teacher by scold- PASS iVE-PAST describe any additional grammatical features? 'John was scolded by the teacher.'

««««« « «««««< In (46a),' the 'teacher' phrase sellsei ga is the subject, and foJm is marked as the object of the 'scold' verb by the a marke r. In (46b), fohll is promoted to subject position and First, assume that act ive sentences are the more basic; they are, for instance, learnt th e 'teacher' ph rase is demoted. It appears in the eq uivalent of a by-phrase, sensei IIi much ea rlier by chil dren than are passives. Two properties of the passive occ ur in any 'teacher by' - note that Japan ese has a different word order from Engli sh here. The language which has the construction: (i) th e passive involves PROMOTION of an object phrase to a new posi tion in the sentence, know n as the SU BJECT pos iti on, and (ii ) the ph rase that used to be in the subject position unde rgoes DEMOTION. Let's go through thi s technical passage carefully. The phrases in bold in the ac tive constructions 3. The verb stem (the form before the affix is added) is sikar, bu t this changes to sikllt befo re the past in (43) and (44) are in the OBJECT position: they each im med iately follow the tense suffix - 24 Understanding syntax What is syntax? 25 verb also has a special passive sumx, -are. Please make sure you understand the way (49) a. I charged the battery up. these examples are structured before moving on. b. *1 charged the stree t up. Pass ives and other promotion and demotion cons tructions are discussed in detail (50) a. ' It was up the battery I charged (not the engine). in Chapter 7. b. Il was up the street I charged (not the co rridor). 1.3.3 All languages have structure (51) a. 'I charged up Lee's battery and (t hen) up Kim's too. b. I charged up Lee's street and (then) up Kim's too. All languages, whether living or dead, have syntactic structure, including, of course, sign languages (such as British ). Th is means that a language doesn't just consist of strings of words, but that the words group together to form phrases, Si nce native speakers of Engl ish agree about where the showing an and the phrases group together to form larger phrases and sentences. Linguists ungrammatical sentence should be placed, we must all share an unconscious describe this phrases-within-phrases pattern as HIERARCHICAL STRUCTURE. knowledge of the sentence structure of English. Even though pairs of sentences like One kind of hierarchical structure is see n in EMBEDDED sentences, a construction those in (48) look the same, they in fact have different structures. Different sets of in which sentences occur within other sentences, such as Chris told Lee [Kim couldn't words group together to form phrases in each case, and linguists represent this using swim]. This property is known as RECURSION . Here, the sentence in brackets - Kim brackets: could,,'t swim - is the embedded sentence. It serves to tell you what it was that Chris told Lee. More examples from English are given in (47): the embedded sentences are (52) a. I Jc harged up J the battery. again in square brackets. b. I charged [up the streetJ.

(47) I wonder [if Lee will arrive late[. In (52a ), the brackets show that there's a phrase charge up. This makes sense if yo u The claim [that she doesn't like KimJ is very surprising. think that the only thing you can do with a battery is charge it up; you can't charge [That we've no coffee left] isn't my fault. it down, over, across, or anything else. So up belongs with charge in (52a).ln (52b), We asked [how to gel to the stalion J. it doesn't: instead, there's a syntactic unit up the street, which ca n be moved around the sentence for fo cus, as for example in (SOb), It was up the street I charged. And For the first three phrases in brackets in (47), you can check that they really are in (52b), up can be replaced with a number of other words: I charged down the sentences by removing the words if and that whic h introduce them: you then get street/over the street/across the street and so on. The very fact that up forms a un it perfectly good independent sentences such as Lee will arrive late. But this doesn't with charge in (52a) but with the street in (52b) is responsible for the patterns of work for all embedded sentences, as is clear from how to get to the station; we will see (un) in (49) to (51). We'll return in detail to questions of structure much more on this in Chapter 3. Try to decide what properties this final examp le has and the grouping of words to form phrases in Chapter 5. that set it apart from the other embedded sentences in (47). As a second demonstration of syntactic structure, let's exa mine possessive -s There are no limits to the number of embedded sentences that can be strung in English, as in Lees friend. You might ass ume at first that this possessive ending together. So given a sentence like Kim couldn't swim we can turn it into Lee tilought simply attaches to a noun, a word such as Lee or , as in the governments that Kim couldn't swim, then I said that Lee thought that Kim couldn't swim, and so on. dilemma. But consider (53): This means it's never possible to cons truct a (longest sentence' , I end th is chapter with two short practical demonstrations that syntac tic structure (53) a. I saw the woma n next door's ch ildren. really exists, in other words that speakers of a language share the same mental b. What was that guy who retired last month's ? representations of this structure. First, look at the examples in (48): c. The student I lent th e book to's room -mate said she'd left. (48) a. I charged up Ihe battery. b. I charged lip the street. Each example in (53) shows that -s actually attaches to the end of a whole phrase, not to the single noun at the end of the phrase: we know that the doo r doesn't have AJ first glance these se ntences appear to be structurally identical. Of course, you children, and that the answer to (53b) co uldn't be November. And to in (53c) isn't might be aware when you read them that charge mea ns something different in (48a) even a nou n (you may find this example a little odd, because it belongs in spoke n and (48b), but otherwise, the only diffe re nce see ms to be that street replaces battery. rather than wr itten English. Try saying it aloud a few times.) Native speakers also And yet the sy nta ctic behaviour of the two sentences is entirely different. As always, know that yo u can't attach the -s to the noun it logically seems to belong to: ' What the asterisks indicate ungrammatical senten ces: was that guys who retired last month name! The fact that we agree where to attach the 26 Understanding syntax What is syntax? 27 shows once again that sentences do have structure, and that we have an intuitive -s Standard dialect knowledge of it. The phrases that -5 attaches to are show n in brackets: Northern dialect myself myself (54) a. Ithe wOlllan next door!,s yourself yourself b. Ithat guy who retired last monthl's himself c. Ithe student I lent the book to!'s hi sself herself herself Demonstrations of this nature could be given from any language, because the rules of ourselves theirseJf the syntax of all lang uages are STRUCTURE DEPEN DENT. This is why no language has rules yourselves that, for exa mple.form questions from statements by reversing the order of the words ourselves in the sentence - such a rule wouldn't depend on the st ructure of the sentence at all, themselves yourselves and so ca n't work. When, as linguists, we try to figure out the sy ntactic structures of a theirselves language, we rely on the judgements of native speakers to tell us whether our example sentences are possible or impossible (the latter being starred). These GRAMMATtCALITY I've ~mitted itself, which is the sa me across all dialects, and doesn't shed any light IUDGEMENTS, along with examples that are collected from a spoken or written corpus ?n ~ e ques~lOn. Also, the form myself is generally pronounced more like meself of the language, form the data of the science of linguistics. It doesn't matter that 1111 t IS nort ern dIalect, but [ take this to be a phonetic reduction which is not native speakers usually can't tell us why they feel that a particular sentence is good or re evant to the ques tion. The northern dialect has one more reflexive ronoun bad; the ve ry fact that they have these intuitions shows up the structural differences than standard English. What is it, and what do you think it's used for' 0f ' and similarities between sen tences. not) natIve speaker of this dialect, you may find it helpful to look back' at S:c~r:~ i.. 1. . Some English speakers have a singular form themself comment on how this FURTHER READING ItS II1to the set of forms 111 standard English, and say how it is used (if you're not a speaker who has thiS form: see tf you can imagine how it's used). FlI1aliy, do you thll1k that more logi cal' eq uals 'better' as far as languages An excellent ge neral introduction to linguistics and to the views of linguists concerned? } are on is Fromkin, Rodman and Hya ms (2007). I can also strongly recommend Jackendoff (1993) and Pinker (1994). Baker (2001) is a recent 2. [n Ch;rter I , we discussed sy ntactic changes in progress in English, such as the introduction to the view of language learning most associated with the work of use 0. '/Ilt 111 tag questIOns. Another change which seems to be gainin round the linguist . Chomsky's idea th at speakers possess a subconscious llliffiBrltlSh Enghsh concerns the COM PA RISON of adject ives (words like re~ghap'hv 'k nowledge' of their native languages is explored accessibly in the early chapters of dI /Cult 111 Enghsh). ' 0' his (1986) book, Kllowledge of lallguage. On language change, see McMahon (1994) and Millar (2007) . On person, see Siewierska (2004); on gender, see Corbett (1991); Task: (i) Consider firstwhat words can fit into the gap in (I); compile for ourself on number, see Corbett (2000); and on agreement, see Corbett (2006). Also on a hst whICh you th ll1 k tS representative: y person, number and related issues see Whaley (1997: Chapter 10) and Comrie (1989: Chapter 9). The topics raised in Section 1.3 all appear again in later chapters: wo rd (1) Th is is _ than Ihat one. order is in Chapter 6, promotion and demotion processes in Chapter 7, and sy ntactic structure in Chapters 4 and 5. Standard English uses ei ther a si ngle word from a list like (a) or a phras f hst like (b): e rom a EXERCISES (a) funnier (b) more difficult older more dramatic I. In Chapter I, 1 argued that dialectal forms of English cannot be criticized for dearer more generous lack of'logi c'. The table that follows lists both the standa rd Engl ish form s of the cleverer more unpleasa nt REfl EXIVE PRONOUNS (the 'self' forms) and the forms found in a northern dialect pleasanter more expensive of British English. Wh ich dialect has the more regular pattern for the fo rmation of its reflexive pronouns' Why? Be as specific as you ca n about how the reflexives So the COMPARATIVE form of adject ives in standard Englis h can consist of e'th are formed in each case, using the correc t technical terms if you ca n. ADJECTtVE + ffi . I' () I er . -er su IX, as 111 1S t a, or 1II0re plus as in list (b). 28 Understanding syntax What is syntax? 29

(i i) Work out the standard English rule that governs the choice of th ese Republic of Vanuatu in the southwest Pacific; data are from Lindstrom and Lynch alternatives. Your answer should account for the fac t that standard Engli sh does (1994) and Lynch (1998 ). I give the original and th e gloss, and your task is to not have fo rms like those in (2): suggest a translation. You will find it useful to look back at Sec tion 1.2.2.3, where the Kwam era exa mples are discussed in the text. (2) "more difficulter, *more unpieasa nter, lI-more generouser Hint There is rarely just one correct way of translating each exa mple; the important The forms in (2) are ungrammatical in all dialects, as far as I know, but many part here is to make sure you understand the role of the gram mati cal information speakers of non-standard English can fill the gap in (I) with the forms in (3): in the glosses (in small capitals) . (3) more funnier, morc dearer, morc cleverer (1) t-r-uv-irapw (Kwamera) FUTURE -3SG- mave-au twa rd s (iii) Desc ribe as acc urately as you can the sy ntactic change in progress here, using the correct grammatical terms if you ca n. (2) t-r-am -apri (Kwamer.) 3. The data in this exercise are from Icelandic, a Germanic language which is related FUTU R£- 3SG -CONTINUous-sleep quite closely to English, and are taken from Sigur3sson (2006). Translate the 'continuous' prefix alii - using an -ing form of the verb in English, Task: All these exam pl es illustrate a single, spec ific, grammatical difference as in llYas sleeping, I've been sleeping, I lVil/ be sleeping. Both Kwamera alii- and between English and Icelandic. What is thi s? You should use th e correct English -ing denote an ongoing action here. gra mmatical term , wh ich is given earl ier 0 11 in th is chapter. If you find other sy ntactic differences between the two languages in any example, list these too. (3) iak-imiki kuri u (Kwamera) Finally, in what spec ific ways ca n you see that Icelandic is syntactically sim ila r I EJ«-dislike dog this to English? Use th e correct terminology wherever possible. NB! The Icelandic alphabet includes some characters that are not used in English, but this has no The prefix iak- is the form of the first person exclus ive which occurs before bearing on the an swer. vowels.

(1 ) sal bekk. (4) k-ro u-a numwi (Kwamera) woman sat on bench IINe-DUAL- drink 'A woman sa l 011 a bench.' (2) Eg keypti skemmtilega b6k morgun. Note that the first person inclusive prefIX, k-, does not have the sam e form as the first person inclusive sa- that we saw in (32a) in th e text. The reaso n for this is I bought interesting book in morning that sa- is used in with a plural prefIX, while k- CO-occu rs with a dual 'I bought an interesting book this morning.' prefix. (3) Olafur er prMesso r. Olafur IS professor (5) K-im-hal-vin -uas. (Lenakel) 'Olafur is a professor.' 3PL -PAST-TRIAL -go. there-together (6) R-im-avhi -i n mun (4) !J ao er maollf ga roinul11 . (Lenakel) 3SG-PAST- read-TRANS again there 15 man in garden. the 'There is a man in the ga rden.' The suffix -in marks the verb as TRANSITIVE (more in Chapter 2): this means (5) Sa se m er a() tala er fslendingur. that it is understood to have an objec t (see Section 1.3.1), and this should affect the.one who is to talk is Icelander your tran slation. 'The one who is talki ng is an Icelander.' (7) Ktmlu i-tllln-Ja-gtll (Southwest ·Janna ) 4. In (I) through (8), which follow, are so me more exampl es from Kwam cra, an d we.twO. EXC i PL-I'AST-tJuAL-nfraid two closely related languages, Lenakel and Southwest Tan na, all languages of th e 30 Understanding syntax What is syntax? 31

(8) Kimlu i-imn-Ia-hai pukah (Southwest Tanna) • Tinrin has a grammat ical category 'd ual' , like Kwamera, discussed in this we.twO.EXC IPl- PA$T-DUAL-stab pig chapter. But this is not relevant to your answer. • It wi ll help to compare the structure of (I) through (6), which have the nrd Recall from Section 1.2.2.2 that the dot ',' in a gloss indicates that the various marker in question, with that of (7) through (9), which do not. What syntactic pieces of gramma tical information can't be separated from each other: the whole factor distinguishes these two groups of data? form kimlu in (7) and (8) therefo re has the meaning (glossed as) 'we.two.EXc'. 5. The following data are all from Niger-Congo languages, a massive family of (1 ) rru fi pwere anramw