Pullum_geoffrey_k_a_student_s_introduction

§8.2 Personal pronouns

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comes out of hospital Y.QH should take a holiday together} or it might not (Will you now please turn to page 58).

Last, if both questions get a negative answer, a 3rd person form is used. That means any 3rd person NP will normally be taken to refer to people (or things) other than the speaker and addressee, though in a few cases we find the speaker or addressee being referred to in the 3rd person. For example, in formal writing, expressions like the writeror the readerare sometimes used instead of Ist or 2nd person pronouns.

Non-deictic use ofyou

There is a secondary, non-deictic, use for 2nd person you in which it does not refer to any particular person(s}: You could hear a pin drop or You can't do that kind of thing when you're pregnant (which could be addressed to a man no less than to a woman). Here it is used to talk about people generally, and is equivalent to the slightly formal one, a less prototypical member of the personal pronoun category.

Gender

The 3rd person singular pronouns contrast in gender, which is a classification of NPs that has a variety of dimensions in some languages but in English revolves mainly around sex.

The masculine gender pronoun he is used for males - humans or animals that have salient enough sexual characteristics for us to think of them as differentiated (certainly for gorillas, usually for ducks, probably not for rats, certainly not for cockroaches).

The feminine gender pronoun she is used for females, and also, by extension, for certain other things conventionally treated in a similar way: political entities (France has recalled her ambassador) and certain personified inanimates, espe­ cially ships (May God bless her and all who sail in her).

The neuter pronoun it is used for inanimates, or for male or female animals (especially lower animals and non-cuddly creatures), and sometimes for human infants if the sex is unknown or considered irrelevant: The baby grunted again, and Alice looked very anxiously into itsface to see what was the matter with ft.

Choice of a singular human pronoun without sex specification

No singular 3rd person pronoun in English is universally accepted as appropriate for referring to a human when you don't want to specify sex. The need for such a pro­ noun is often acute, especially where no particular person is referred to and the antecedent is indefinite and applicable to both males and females. The pronoun most widely used in such cases is they, in a secondary use that is interpreted seman­ tically as singular. (In its primary use, of course, it refers to groups and has plural

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antecedents.) Examples of semantically singular they are given in [52] :

[52]

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III

IV

Nobodv in their right mind would do a thing like that. Everyone has told me toothink. I made the right decision.

We need a manager who is reasonablyflexible in their approach.

In that case the husband or the wife will have to give up their seat on the board.

Notice that this special interpretation of they doesn't affect verb agreement: we have they think (3rd plural) in [ii], not *they thinks (3rd singular). Nonetheless, they can be INTERPRETED as if it were 3rd person singular, with human denotation and unspecified gender.

The pronoun he used to be recommended for these uses. That would give us

%Nobody in his right mind would do a thing like that instead of [52i] . However, this now seems inappropriate to a large proportion of speakers, who systematically avoid the use of he in such contexts (hence the per cent sign on the example just given).

This avoidance of he can't be dismissed as just a matter of political correctness. The real problem with using he is that its primary sense unquestionably colours the interpretation, sometimes inappropriately. If his were used in place of their in [52iii], it would suggest that the speaker assumes the manager will be a man. And he is impossible forjust about all speakers in cases like [52iv], where the antecedent is a coordination of a masculine and a feminine NP joined by or: you could hardly say ?In that case the husband or the wife will have to give up his seat on the board.

This shows that he doesn't have a genuinely sex-neutral sense.

Some speakers use disjunctive locutions like he or she in preference to the sexist use of he: We needa manager who is reasonablyflexible in his or herapproach. But this sounds absurd when there are repeated occurrences: examples like ?Everyone agreed he or she would bring his or her lunch with him or her are far too cumber­ some for use. And *Everyone's here, isn't he or she? is flatly ungrammatical, because the interrogative component in this construction is required to contain just an auxiliary and a pronoun. The only natural non-sexist alternative would be: Every­ one's here, aren't they?

Among younger speakers today, semantically singular they is extending its scope: people use it even with definite NP antecedents, sidestepping any presump­ tions about the sex of the person referred to, as in You should askyourpartner what they think, or The person I was with said they hatedthefilm.

There is just one problem area for they with singular antecedents: what to use in the reflexive construction (the one containing compound forms like myself, ourselves, etc.). Everybody enjoyed themselves seems fine, because we're talking about a number of people; but ?Somebody here obviously considers themselves above the law, with the visibly plural selves, sounds odd given that there's just one person involved and the verb is a 3rd person singular form. The obvious solution would be to have a singular form themself. This is found, and has a long history in English, but at the moment it is quite rare, and can't really be regarded as standard.

§8.3 Inflection

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Usage manuals vary considerably in their attitude to semantically singular they. The more factually based ones treat it as acceptable, recognising that it has been in the language for several hundred years, used by writers of impeccable standing - Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Austen, Wilde, and large numbers of other authors. The more conservative man­ uals, however, insist that the conflict between the primarily plural form and the singular meaning makes this use of they incorrect. In fact there are manuals still in print that directly recommend the use of he. But defenders of this advice must face an awkward question: why should an extension from plural to singular sense for they be unacceptable, if extension from masculine to sex-neutral sense for he is supposed to be all right?

We don't think there is any way to answer this question, or to defend the conservative position. Semantically singular they is well established in fine literature and completely natural in both conversation and writing.

8.3Inflection

The personal pronouns exhibit a greater amount of inflectional variation than other nouns. In the first place there is a distinction between reflexive and non-reflexive forms, and secondly they have up to four different case-forms. The following table displays in full the forms of the central personal pronouns.

[53]				NON-REFLEXIVE			REFLEXIVE
		Nominative	Accusative			Genitive	Plain
		Plain			Dependent Independent
	I	I		me	my	mine	myself
II	you		you		your	yours	yourself
III	he	he		him		his	himself
IV	she	she		her	her	hers	herself
v	it		it			its	itself
VI	we	we		us	our	ours	ourselves
vii	you		you		your	yours	yourselves
viii	they	they		them	their	theirs	themselves

Reflexive forms

The reflexive pronouns have two main uses: one where they function as complement, and an emphatic use where they function as modifier in clause or NP structure:

[54]	COMPLEMENT USE	EMPHATIC USE
a.	Sue hurt herself.	b. Sue designedthe house herself.
ii a.	Sue was talking to herself.	b. Sue herselfadmitted it was a mistake.

the accusative

106Chapter 5 Nouns and noun phrases

g.In the complement use the reflexive forms generally contrast with non-reflexive ones: [ia] contrasts with Sue hurt her, and so on. In [ia], Sue is the antecedent for the pronoun, so the meaning is that the person hurt was the same as the one who caused the hurt: "Sue hurt Sue". In Sue hurt her, by contrast, Sue cannot be the antecedent, and hence we understand that Sue hurt some other female. Complement reflexives occur in a close syntactic relation to the antecedent. In the simplest and most com­ mon case, illustrated here, the antecedent is subject of the clause containing the

reflexive as complement of the verb, as in [ia], or of a preposition, as in [iia].

•In the emphatic use only reflexive forms are permitted: we can't say *Sue designed the house her. In [ib] the reflexive emphasises that it was Sue who designed the house: she didn't have someone else do it. In [iib] it emphasises that Sue made the admission: perhaps she was the one who made the mistake.

The nominative-accusative contrast of case

The grammatical category of case applies to a system of inflectional forms whose primary use is to mark various syntactic functions. This is clearly the major factor determining the choice between nominative and accusative forms in English, but style level is an important secondary factor. Compare:

[55]

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J1l

IV

They wrote the editorial.	[subject: nominative1
Kim met them in Paris.	[object of verb: accusative]
I was talking to them yesterday.	[object of prep: accusative]
It was they/them who complained.	[PC: nominative or accusative]

When the pronoun is subject of a finite clause it appears in nominative form, and when it is object - of the verb, as in [ii], or of a preposition, as in [iii] - it appears in accusative form.

• When the pronoun is predicative complement both forms are found - though the nominative is largely restricted to constructions of the form it + be + pronoun, as in [iv] . Here the nominative is quite formal in style, with the accusative some­ what informal. However, in constructions like The only person who didn'f com­ plain was me a nominative could hardly replace the underlined accusative.

Case in verbless constructions

There is also alternation between the two case-forms in certain verbless constructions:

[56]

a. She's a yearyounger than I.

b. She's a year younger than me.

Again, the nominative in [a] is strongly formal in style, and the accusative is much more common in ordinary conversation.

The more authoritarian and conservative manuals claim that only a nominative is gram­

matically correct in [55ivl, where the pronoun is predicative complement, and [56], where it is understood as subject of an elliptical clause (cf. younger than Iam). But that is to confuse correctness with formality, as we pointed out in Ch. 1, §2:

variants are unquestionably grammatical in Standard English.

§8.3 Inflection

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Plain case

In Present-day English the contrast between nominative and accusative fonns is found only with personal pronouns and with interrogative and relative who (discussed in Ch. 9, §2.4, Ch. 1 1 , §3). Other nouns appear in the same fonn in all the above con­ structions: cf. The minister wrote the editorial, Kim met the minister in Paris, and so on. We use the tenn plain fonn here: to say that minister was nominative in the first and accusative in the second would be to make the mistake of confusing

INFLECTIONAL CASE with GRAMMATICAL FUNCTION.

Case in coordinations

For many speakers the above rules extend to constructions where the pronoun is coordinated, but there are also many who use special rules for coordinative con­ structions. Note the status markers on the following examples:

[57]	a.	Kim and 1 went over there.	b.	!Kim and me went over there.
ii	a.	They invitedSandy and me.	b.	%They invited Sandy andl.

The whole coordination is subject in [i] and object in [ii], so in the absence of coor­ dination we would have nominative I in [i] (I went over there) and accusative me in [ii] (They invited me). Construction rib] is not accepted as Standard English, though it is very common in non-standard speech. Construction [iib], however, is used by many highly educated people with social prestige in the community; it should be regarded as a variant Standard English fonn.

The pattern in [iib] is heard constantly in the conversation of people whose status as speakers of Standard English is clear, but it is nevertheless condemned as incorrect or illiterate by many usage manuals. For this reason it is not so common in print: editors will often 'correct' it. Nonetheless, examples are certainly found. Those who condemn it sim­ ply assumethatthe case ofa pronoun in a coordination must be the same as when it stands alone. Actual usage is in conflict with this assumption. (Note that we have already come

across another instance ofcoordinated NPs differing in form from non-coordinated ones: recall the discussion of husband and wife in [15iia].)

Genitive case

While the nominative-accusative contrast is found only with a handful of pronouns, genitive case applies to nouns quite generally - and hence is discussed in a separate section below (§9). The distinction between dependent and independent forms of the genitive, however, is restricted to personal pronouns. Compare:

[58]DEPENDENT FORM

a. I've lost lID'. key.

ii a. He objected to lID'. taking notes.

INDEPENDENT FORM b. This is mine.

b. Yourproposal is better than mine.

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4ft The dependent form usually functions in NP structure as determiner to a follow­ ing head, as in [ia] . It also occurs as subject of a gerund-participial clause, as in [iia], where it is a dependent of the VP head; this latter use is somewhat formal in style, with accusative me as an informal alternant.

•The independent form occurs as head in NP structure - a pure head in rib], a fused determiner-head in [iib], where we understand "my proposal".

8.4Reciprocal pronouns

There are two reciprocal pronouns, each other and one another. They are written with a space as if they were two words, but the parts are inseparable and they are best regarded as single pronouns. There is no difference in meaning between them.

The reciprocal pronouns are similar to the reflexives (in their complement use) in that they have to be in a close syntactic relation to their antecedent. Compare:

[59]	REFLEXIVES	RECIPROCALS
	a. Lee and Pat cursed themselves.	b. Lee and Pat cursed each other.
ii	a. *Lee and Pat knew that I would	b. *Lee andPatknew that I would
	curse themselves.	curse each other.

Usually, the antecedent is subject of the clause containing the pronoun, as in [i] . It cannot normally be in a different clause, as shown in [ii] . It should be clear that lack of meaning is not the problem. Just as [ib] means that Lee cursed Pat and Pat cursed Lee (as the term 'reciprocal' suggests), so [iib] could have meant (if it were gram­ matical) that Lee knew that I would curse Pat and Pat knew that I would curse Lee.

The reciprocals differ from the reflexives, however, in two major respects.

• First, they do not display person agreement with their antecedent.

" Second, they have genitive forms, as seen in Lee and Pat blamed each other's parents.

9Genitive case

Leaving aside interrogative and relative whose and the personal pro­ nouns (which have the irregular forms listed in [53]) the genitive is marked in writ­ ing by . 's (dog's) or by the apostrophe alone (dogs'): for the distinction between these, see Ch. 1 6, §4.2.

9. 1	Genitive NPs as subject-determiner

The most frequent use of genitive case is to mark a dependent in the structure of an NP:

[60] a.

11 a.

[The teacher's car] was stolen. [These people'state] is unknown.

b. Theyphoned [ mother).

b. Imet [the Secretary ofState's son].

§9. 1 Genitive NPs as subject-detenniner

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Underlining here marks the genitive dependent, while brackets enclose the NP in which it functions. The genitive dependent is an NP: we have one NP functioning in the structure of another. Thus the first division of the bracketed NP in [ia], for example, is the teacher's + car (not the + teacher's car). This is particularly clear in examples like those in [ii] .

•In [iia] plural these obviously belongs with plural people, not singularfate.

•And in [iib] the person I met was the son not of the State but of the Secretary of State.

The . 's suffix occurs at the end of the genitive NP; the latter usually has the head in final position, as in [ia] and [iia], but it can contain a relatively short post-head dependent, like of State in [iib] . Compare, similarly, someone else's responsibility or the guy next door's voice.

Dual function of the genitive NP

The genitive NPs i n [60] combine the functions of detenniner and complement. The construction is semantically equivalent to one where the two functions are realised separately, by a definite detenniner and a post-head of phrase complement. Compare:

[61]	i	a.	thepatient's condition	b.	the condition ofthepatient
	ii	a.	onepatient'sfather	b.	thefather ofone patient

The single dependent of the [a] examples does the work of the two dependents of the [b] examples.

•As a detenniner, the genitive is always definite. Note, for example, that [iia] corresponds to thefather of one patient, not qfather of one patient.

.. As a complement, the genitive is comparable to the subject of a clause. It occurs before the head nominal as a clause subject occurs before the head VP. And where the noun is morphologically related to a verb the genitive has the same role as a clause subject. Compare Kim's criticism of the report and Kim criticised the report, and so on.

For this reason we refer to the genitive NPs in [60-6 1 ] as subject-determiners.

'Genitive' vs 'possessive'

The tenn 'possessive' is often used instead of 'genitive', especially for pronouns, but it is important to see that the semantic relation between the genitive NP and the following head is by no means limited to that of possession. Consider these cases, and think about which of them (if any) could possibly be said to have something to do with possessing:

[62]herfather, herfriends, her birth, her infancy, her anger, her lack of money, heracceptance of your offe r, her refusal to compromise, her rapid action

Not one of these pennits a natural paraphrase withpossess, in the way that her carcan be paraphrased as the car shepossesses. Often there will be a range of interpretations

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available. Her letter might be the letter she wrote or the letter she received, and there are other possibilities available in special contexts. In the context of a language­ teaching class, for example, it could be the letter that has been assigned to her to translate.

9.2Other uses of the genitive

Genitive case is also used in the following constructions:

[63]	SUBJECT	She didn't approve of [his being given a secondchance].
ii	FUSED HEAD	They accepted Kim'sproposal but not Pat's.
iii	OBLIQUE	The argument was sparkedby a casual remark of Kim'so
iv	PREDICATIVE	Everything in this room is Mary's.
V	ATTRIBUTIVE	They'vejust moved to an oldpeople's home.

.. In formal style the subject of a gerund-participial clause that is functioning as complement (of a verb or preposition) appears in genitive case, as in [i] .

•Like most other determiners, a genitive can fuse with the head, as in [ii], under­ stood as "Pat's proposal".

•The oblique genitive occurs as complement to of in a post-head dependent. Note the contrast between a casual remark of Kim's in [iii], which is marked as indef­ inite by the article a, and Kim's casual remark, which is marked as definite by the genitive subject-determiner.

•The predicative genitive functions as complement of be, become, etc., and here it does indicate possession, as in [iv] .

•The attributive genitive functions as internal modifier in NP structure. Note that

in [v] an is determiner to the larger nominal (oldpeople's home), not the genitive one (oldpeople's); this contrasts with [60iia] above.

	1. Write out or type the following passage	understanding that we call science, but the
	(it's the opening paragraph of the preface	news has been kept a secret.
	to Steven Pinker's book The Language	2. There are a number of nouns that are
	Instinct) with the nouns underlined and the	plural-only in some of their senses, but not
	NPs enclosed in square brackets. (Don't	in all. For example:
	forget that one NP can occur within another:	PLURAL-ONLY	Eat more greens.
	in a phrase like Imetthefatherof the bride,
		ORDINARY	Thosegreensdon'tmatch.
	for example, the bride is an NP within the
		For the first nine of the following give two
	larger NP thefatherof the bride, so you
	would write [the/other of [the bridell.)	examples containing the word in an appro­
	J have never met a person who is not inter­	priate context, one where it has its plural­
		only sense, and one where it is an ordinary
	ested in language. J wrote this book to try to
		plural with a contrasting singular form. For
	satisfy that curiosity. Language is beginning
	to submit to that uniquely satisfying kind of	the last item, people, give one example

where it is a plural-only noun, and one where it is a singular:

	arts	vi	holidays
ii	beginnings	vii	letters
iii	brains	viii	spectacles
iv	compliments	ix	spirits
v	customs	x people

3.Say whether the underlined nouns in the following examples have a count or a non­ count interpretation. In each case construct

another example in which the noun has the opposite interpretation.

i You needn't have gone into so much detail.

iiI've run out of 1lfJIlil..

iiiCan I have another sausage?

ivHe hasjet-black hair.

v They treat their new help appallingly.

4. Are the underlined NPs below definite or indefinite? Give reasons for your answer.

iThose shoes arefilthy.

iiBoth copies Qjthe report are missing.

iiiI need two copies ofyour report.

ivEither time would be OKfor me.

vWe found several big mushrooms.

5.In the following examples give (a) the function within NP structure, and (b) the category, of the underlined expressions

(there are twenty in all; for reference they're labelled with small roman numeral subscripts).

i] interest in language!ii]

g!iii] brick!iv] wall

the!v] people who needmost helprvi]

three!vii] Canadian]viii] soldiers

its!ix] many!x] virtues

avery useful!xi] discussion <litheproblem]xii]

aperson Q,fimpeccable taste]xiii]

even]xiv] the director herselftxv] several]xvi] things you forgot to saYrxvii] a Vietnam war!xviii] veteran

that largerxix] a deficit!xx]

6.Classify the fused heads in the following examples as (a) simple; (b) partitive; or

(c) special:

Exercises III

ilill has two children and her sister three.

iiWhich of her arguments didyoufind the most convincing?

iiiThousands of people saw it, and most thought it wasfirst-class.

ivYou 've made progress, but much still remains to be done.

vThere were several slices, and as usual Tom took the largest.

viThe show verges on the obscene.

viiThere are wolves out there; I saw several.

viiiThefirst letter is P and the is Q.

ixThe gooddie young.

xMany are called but.kJf. are chosen.

7.Select an appropriate case-form of the pronoun I for the blank positions in the following examples. If more than one case-form is admissible in Standard English, list them all and comment on the difference between them.

i Yourfather and _ have been consider­ ing this matter.

iiIn the otherphoto, the guy in the middle of thefront row is _.

iiiThey've arrangedfor you and _ to meet with Dr lackson this evening.

ivThey went to the same school as _. v They're seeing Kim before you and _.

8.What kind of genitive do we have in the following examples: (a) subject-determiner;

(b)subject; (c) fused-head; (d) oblique;

(e)predicative; or (f) attributive?

iAfriend of mine told me you 're leaving the country.

iiYour application has been approved but lW's is still being considered.

iiiThis book belongs to Pat, but the rest are yours.

ivDo you know ifthere's a men's toilet around here?

vHe objects to your beingpaid more than everybody else.

_Adjectives and adverbs

1 Adjectives 1 12

2 Adverbs 122

1Adjectives

1 . 1

Distinctive properties of prototypical adjectives

Adjectives typically denote properties of objects, persons, places, etc.: properties relating to age (old, young), size (big, small), shape (round,flat), weight

(heavy, light), colour (black, blue), merit or quality (good, bad), and so on. Syntac­ tically, prototypical adjectives in English have the following three properties.

(a) Function

They have attributive and predicative uses. Attributive adjectives function as inter­ nal pre-head modifier to a following noun; predicative adjectives function mainly as predicative complement in clause structure:

[ I ]	ATTRIBUTIVE USE	an old car	black hair	good news
ii	PREDICATIVE USE	The car is old.	Her hair is black.	The news is good.

(b) Grade

They either inflect for grade, showing a contrast between plain, comparative and superlative forms, or else form comparative and superlative adjective phrases (AdjPs) marked by more and most:

[2]	PLAIN	COMPARATIVE	SUPERLATIVE
	She is tall.	She is taller than you.	She is the tallest of them all.
II	This is useful	This is more useful than that.	This is the most useful one.

(c) Modification

They can be modified, usually by adverbs, as in [3] (the adverbs are double­ underlined):

[3]	too old remarkably tall extremely useful to us

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