The Teachers Grammar Book - James Williams

Sentence 4.60: The book, which was a first edition, had a gold-inlaid cover.

Sentence 4.61: Fred vacationed in Mexico, which disturbed his parents.

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Usage Note

Most people treat the relative pronouns that and which as being identical. In fact, many teachers are known to tell students who ask about these words that they are interchangeable and that they should be used alternatively to add more variety to writing. Formal standard usage, however, differentiates them along a very clear line: That is used exclusively to introduce restrictive relative clauses, and which is used, generally, to introduce nonrestrictive relative clauses. The word “generally” is important because there are several types of relative clauses, and some involve the relative pronoun which even though they are restrictive, as in: “The deposition in which the answer appeared had been sealed by the court.” This construction is examined in more detail in the next section.

Relative Clauses and Prepositional Phrases

Another interesting feature of relative clauses is that they often involve a prepositional phrase. When they do, the noun phrase in the prepositional phrase is a relative pronoun. Consider the following sentences:

68.The triangle in which they were embroiled defied logic.

69.We knew several people for whom banishment was too kind.

It may be easier to understand these constructions if we look at the dependent clauses before they are relativized:

68a. The triangle defied logic. They were embroiled in the triangle.

69a. We knew several people. Banishment was too kind for several people.

Earlier, we examined (and discarded) the common school injunction against ending sentences with prepositions. We are now in a better position to consider what is involved when at least one kind of sentence ends with a preposition. Consider sentences 70 and 70a:

70. Macarena hated the clothes which Fred arrived in. 70a. Macarena hated the clothes. Fred arrived in the clothes.

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Sentence 70 is very similar to sentence 68 in that it involves a prepositional phrase with a relative pronoun in the NP. It differs, however, in that the prepositional phrase has been split; the relative pronoun is at the beginning of the relative clause, but the preposition still follows the verb. English allows this sort of construction.

Examining 70a suggests an important pattern for relatives. When we take a clause like Fred arrived in the clothes, where the NP that gets relativized is an object—either of the verb or of the preposition—we move the resulting relative pronoun to the front of the clause. We do not have to do this when we relativize a subject NP because it is already at the beginning of the clause. When the relativized NP is the object of a preposition, as in sentence 70, we have the option of shifting the entire PP to the beginning of the clause or of shifting just the relative pronoun. Exercising the second option results in sentences like 70, with a preposition at the end. This analysis offers a grammatical explanation for why the injunction against ending a sentence with a preposition is wrong.

A couple of small adjustments to our phrase-structure rules allow us to account for sentences with relative clauses that are part of a prepositional phrase:

Sconj

	comp
S Æ		(NP) VP
	RP
	PP

NP

PP prep RP

These rules allow us to describe a relative clause with a PP when the object of the preposition is a relative pronoun. Note that the rules also indicate that a prepositional phrase with a relative-pronoun object outside the domain of a relative clause will be ungrammatical. The null marker fills the place of a shifted relative pronoun. As in some other cases, there is a feature here that we cannot write into the rule, and we must consider it outside the expression: The optional NP occurs only when the RP of a relative clause is functioning as the subject; otherwise the NP is obligatory.

A single diagram illustrates the role of relative pronouns in prepositional phrases:

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Sentence 4.68: The triangle in which they were embroiled defied logic.

NEGATIVES

Although there are many ways to say no in English even when appearing to say yes, grammatically we form the negative using no, not, and never. Technically, these words are adverbials, but phrase-structure grammar analyzes them as negation markers in the Aux, as the following phrase-structure rule shows:

Aux Æ tense (neg) (DO) (M) (prog) (perf)

no
neg Æ not

never

An interesting feature of the negative is that it triggers Do Support in the verb phrase of simple active sentences. Consider these examples:

71. Fred kissed Macarena.

71a. Fred did not kiss Macarena.

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Strangely enough, negation does not have this effect on progressive or perfect verb forms, as the following sentences illustrate:

72.Buggsy is inviting Michael Star to his next party. 72a. Buggsy is not inviting Michael Star to his next party.

73.Buggsy had left the waiter a huge tip.

73a. Buggsy had not left the waiter a huge tip.

APPLYING KEY IDEAS

Directions: Analyze these sentences, identifying their constituents.

1.The movie that Universal made on the USC campus disrupted classes.

2.Raul played the part of a man who won the lottery.

3.He liked the work, which thrilled his aunt.

4.Raul did not want the part.

5.Raul did not complain.

6.The actress who played his wife had amazing red hair.

7.The director whom Raul had met at a beach party gave him some acting lessons before filming.

8.Fritz, who knew Raul slightly, was jealous when he heard about the film.

9.Fritz was not happy with his career in banking because it lacked glamour.

10.He knew that Mrs. DiMarco had pawned the bracelet that he had given her for the rent.

11.The bracelet, which had been a gift for Macarena, looked like an heirloom.

12.Fritz thought that he could ask Buggsy for a loan that would buy back the bracelet, but he was afraid of the goons, who always looked mean.

13.Meanwhile, Fred had decided that Macarena, whom he loved, was the woman for him.

14.He did not have much money, but he went to Beverly Center for an engagement ring.

15.He knew a jeweler there who would give him a good price.

16.The ring that Fred wanted was very expensive, which did not surprise him.

17.Reluctantly, he turned his attention to a smaller ring that had been marked down.

18.The jeweler Fred knew was not working that day, which was a disappointment.

19.A young woman who had eyes as blue as the Pacific helped him at the counter.

20.She told him that some girl was really lucky, which made Fred blush.

21.Suddenly, he wondered whether he should ask Macarena about marriage before buying the ring.

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22.The young woman, whose name was Maria, told him that most women do not like surprises of this kind.

23.At that moment, Raul, who had a date with Maria, walked into the store, which interrupted the moment.

24.Maria remembered the day when she met Raul.

25.Fred could not think of a reason why he had not talked to Macarena about his dream.

NONFINITE VERB FORMS

Up to this point, all the verb constructions we have worked with have included tensed, or what are called finite, verbs. Some of the more interesting grammatical constructions, however, involve untensed, or nonfinite, verbs. There are two major types of untensed verb forms: infinitive and bare infinitive (inf). The infinitive involves to + verb, whereas the bare infinitive lacks the word to. These constructions are significantly different from any we have looked at so far, and analyzing them requires a level of abstraction that is quite a bit higher than what we have needed in the other sections. For reasons that are beyond the scope of this book, nonfinite verb constructions are deemed to be clauses, even though they do not look much like any clauses we have considered.

Nonfinite verb forms function as subjects, noun phrase complements, predicate complements, and adverbial modifiers, as illustrated in the following sentences:

74.For him to invite Rod Harris is crazy. (subject)

75.Mrs. DiMarco had a job for him to do. (NP complement)

The word for, which normally would be a preposition, is functioning as a complementizer in both 74 and 75.

76. Macarena wanted to hold the baby. (predicate complement)

The bare infinitive verb form, illustrated in sentence 77, also functions as a predicate complement:

77. Raul’s mother made him eat his vegetables. (predicate complement)

As an adverbial modifier, infinitive verb forms are sentence-level modifiers, as in sentences 78 and 79:

78. To appear calm, Fred smiled. (adverbial)

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79. Macarena, to stay awake, made a pot of coffee. (adverbial)

We also have instances in which nonfinite verb forms appear with negative markers, as in:

80. Macarena answered slowly, not to be coy but to be clear.

Our phrase-structure rules require some significant adjustment if we are to describe these structures; we must change the rule for S, write a new VP rule, and change the rules for Aux and comp:

		Sconj
					VP
		comp
S Æ					(NP)
		RP			VP

VP Æ Aux (inf) V (NP) (AdjP) (AdvP) (PP)

Aux Æ (tense) (neg) (do)
(m) (prog) (perf)
that
comp Æ for

What does all this mean? Well, when we modified the S rule, we put parentheses around the dependent clause markers; this indicates that the marker now is optional. We have to do the same thing for NP to describe the fact that our nonfinite verb clauses do not have a visible object. Then we need to add a new constituent, VP, which we call bar-VP. The VP will be the core of the new clause.

The second line of the modified rules indicates that the new clause has a verb with an optional infinitive marker (inf) and optional NP, AdjP, AdvP, and PP. To describe negatives, we also must adjust the expression for Aux, transforming it so that all constituents are optional (we must include a null marker also). The last step is to allow comp to include for as well as that.

With this fairly good set of phrase-structure rules, we have the ability to analyze a wide variety of sentences. Many of those we just covered have a very interesting structure when we look at their diagrams as illustrated in 4.78 – 4.80.

Sentence 4.78: To appear calm, Fred smiled. (adverbial)

Sentence 4.79: Macarena, to stay awake, made a pot of coffee. (adverbial)

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Sentence 4.80: Macarena answered slowly, not to be coy but to be clear.

As with some of our other rules, the grammar requires us to add restrictions that cannot be written into the expressions. For example, the dependent clause marker is only optional in the context of S, and NP in the S is optional only in the presence of VP. Bare infinitives only appear with certain kinds of verbs, such as make, and tense is optional only in a VP.

The necessity of adding these extra-rule restrictions is clearly a problem for phrase-structure grammar. The grammar would be more elegant, perhaps, if we could write the rules in such a way as to include these restrictions, but no one has figured out how to do that. As we approach the end of this chapter, it may be tempting to anticipate the next by intuiting that transformational-gen- erative grammar solves the problem of restrictions. In this case, however, intuition would be wrong.

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APPLYING KEY IDEAS

Directions: Analyze these sentences, identifying their constituents. Select five and diagram them using the phrase-structure rules presented in this chapter.

1.Fred wanted to talk to Macarena about marriage.

2.For him to buy an engagement ring at this point would be foolish.

3.Fred decided to discuss the matter with his priest.

4.Her fondness for the two boys made Macarena tell them a lie.

5.Buggsy told his goons that he had a message for them to deliver.

6.Raul asked Maria to go with him to the dance.

7.Macarena was delighted to get the invitation to Buggsy’s next party.

8.To tell the truth, she was impressed with Buggsy’s money.

9.For her to turn down the invitation would have been unthinkable.

10.She decided to tell Fred and Fritz that she wanted to visit her sick aunt.

SUMMARY OF PHRASE-STRUCTURE RULES

Before we go on to consider transformational-generative grammar in the next chapter, let’s take a moment to review the final versions of the phrase-structure rules we’ve developed:

1.XP Æ XP CC XP

2.XP Æ XP S

3.S Æ NP VP

4.NP Æ (det) (AdjP) N (PP)

5.VP Æ Aux V (NP) (AdjP) (AdvP) (PP)

V

6.V Æ V prt

7.prt Æ particle

adv 8. AdvP Æ NP

pro

9.det NP poss

art