Part II

Thus the words were divided into four form-classes. Fries gives no names to these four classes of words, except the numbers: Class 1. Class 2. Class 3, Class 4.

The Function Words

Besides the four classes Fries also distinguishes function words. These words do not fill in the forms of the sentence frames. They are grammatical signals of the structural meaning of the sentence (There was a man in the room), (Please dance); or they are signals of the grammatical meaning of the words in the sentence (Give me a sheet of paper —Give me the (that) sheet of paper). Fries estimates the number of the function words as 154.

Here belong: (1) 'determiners' as occur in the same position as 'the', that is with Class 1 words; (2) 'modal and auxiliary verbs' as occur with Class 2 words; (3) words of the 'very' type as occur with Class 3 words (very good'. 'extremely bad'); (4) conjunctions; (5) prepositions; (6) introducers (there, it); (7) interrogative words (when, where, who, what, how, etc.); (8) interjec­tions; (9) the words 'yes' and 'no'; (10) attention getting signals (look, say, listen); (11) the polite formula 'please'; (12) 'lets' as a device which includes the speaker into a request and some other smaller divisions of the third group.

The Grammatical Meaning of a Sentence

Fries develops the idea of the grammatical meaning of the sentence sug­gested by Bloomfield.

He says that it is the classes of the words used in the sentence, their for­mal devices (morphemes), and their positions that signal the structural meaning of a sentence and its parts, not the concrete lexical meaning of the words.

To elucidate this he presents a set of sentences with nonsensical words, whose grammatical meaning is quite clear, though. They are:

Woggles	ugged	diggles
Uggs	woggled	diggs
Woggs	diggled	uggs

The structural signals of these sentences make us understand that 'woggles' 'uggs' and 'woggs' are the words of the First Class, that is 'thing words' of some kind; that in each case there are more than one of these 'things', and that they, at some time in the past, performed certain 'actions' (denoted by the Class 2 words): and that these actions were directed towards other 'things', de­noted as 'diggles', 'diggs', and 'woggles'.

There is another proof that a syntactic structure has a meaning of its own, irrespective of the meaning of the words used in the sentence, [f the construc­tion of the sentence is not clear, we shall hesitate in understanding the sentence, although we have command of the words used in it.

Thus a telegram "Ship sails today" is ambiguous: the sentence could be understood as a statement and as a command. The ambiguity arises because of the uncertainty of the positions: is 'ship' position 1 or 2? Is 'sails' position 2, or 3? (as in "The clerk remembered the tax.")

Thus Fries confirms Bloomfield's idea that a sentence needs the follow­ing means or ways, to be a complete grammatical unit: (1) the selection of the part of speech units, (2) the forms of these items (morphemes), (3) the ar­rangement of positions, and (4) the intonation or sequences of pitch.

But Fries finds that these means are not sufficient to arrive at the com­plete structural meaning of any utterance.

The Phrase Grammar

To arrive at the complete structural meaning of a sentence, to know how the sentence is built we must determine how the separate units of the sentence its constituents, are grouped.

Fries introduces in the analysis of the sentence the idea of phrases con­sisting of the immediate constituents.

To show the importance of the phrase grammar he compares in his book the phrase grammar with the mathematical grouping of" the items in a problem.

He shows that the answer to a very trivial problem such as "Five plus four times six minus three" will vary with each different grouping of the con­stituents, although there will be each time the same items: 5, 4, 6. and 3 and the same three operations: addition, multiplication and subtraction. Depending on different grouping there may be four different answers'

(5+4)(6-3)=27; 5+(4x6)-3=26;

5+4(6-3)= 17; [(5+4)x6]-3=51

This problem shows how important the grouping of the constituents is.

English Phrases

Each language has its own system of structural grouping and the signals of the groups (or phrases). In English there are generally two Phrase Grammar in a phrase. English has dichotomous phrase structure, which means that the phrase in English can always be divided into two elements. One of the signals of the group boundaries is the function word-preposition.

In spoken language the structural phrases are shown by intonation and pauses. This suggests teaching the phrase grammar together with the rhythmi­cal division of the chunks of speech. The practical value of this theory is great, because it gives correct division of speech into phrases that signals the meaning of the syntactic constructions and gives the speech its natural rhythm.

It is a well-known fact that a speaker of a foreign language who has a perfect command of the sounds, but whose phrase pauses are wrong, cannot be understood by native listeners. This proves the practical value of the phrase grammar.

The Analytical Model of the Sentence

Charles Fries has suggested the following diagramme for the analysis of he sentence which also brings forth the mechanism of generating sentences.

The largest 1С of a simple sentence are the NP and the VP. The boundary between them goes between the word of Class 1 and the word of Class 2. The NP in English has two 1С—the determiner and Class 1 word (N). The vertical lines must show the boundary inside the phrase. If the word of the first class has an attribute to it (as is the case in our sentence below), this small phrase must be again divided into the 1С. The VP comprises two 1С: the verb itself, and either NP (if the V is transitive), or a word of Class 4 if the V is in­transitive. Thus we must show the boundary between the V and the NP ('his promotion'), then analyse the NP— 'his promotion'.

The recommending committee approved his promotion

Layer 3

Layer 2

Layer 1

The deeper the layer of the phrase (the greater its number), the smaller the phrase, and the smaller its 1С.

The analysis is begun with the largest 1С and comes down to the small­est phrases. If the sentence is complex the largest 1С are the sentences included into the complex construction.

The diagramme may be drawn somewhat differently without changing its principle of analysis. This new diagramme is called a 'candelabra' diagramme:

The man hit the ball

S

In fact, if we turn the analytical (candelabra) diagramme upside down, we get a new diagramme which is called a 'derivation tree.' because it is tit not to analyse sentences, but shows how a sentence is derived (or built, or gener­ated) from the 1С

The Derivation Tree Diagramme

The derivation tree is drawn as two branches forking out from the sign S (sentence).

E

S

ach branch has nodes (joints or knots) in it from which smaller branches fork out. Each node corresponds to a phrase, the two forking branches correspond to the '1С of the phrase. The diagramme below is a derivation tree for generating simple sentences with a transitive verb.

To generate a sentence we must know that it consists firstly of an NP and a VP, that an NP consists of a determiner and an N, that a VP with a transitive V consists of a V and an NP, that the NP again has a determiner and an N. All this is shown by the diagramme called the 'derivation tree.' The generating of the sentence involves first only the classes of words and the function words. Only on the lowest level (the morphemic level) we choose the concrete lexical elements.