Граматика / English Syntax

196	Constituency: Movement and Substitution

Notice that we cannot leave behind any of the component parts of the moved NP:

(8)*[NP The books about New York] nobody liked — that she bought.

Not only NPs can be topicalised, other phrases can too:

(9)Wendy: Is Elly always so nervous?

Al:	[Neurotic] I would say she is — , not nervous
(10) Kate:	Does Greg really keep his pets in his attic?
Len:	[In his attic] he keeps his plants — , not his pets

(11)Nicky promised to write an essay, and [write an essay] he will —

In (9) we’ve fronted an AP, in (10) a PP, and in (11) a VP.

With regard to Topicalisation we can establish the following principle:

If we can topicalise a string of elements whose principal element is an X (where X stands for N, A, P or V) then that string is an XP (i.e. a phrase headed by X).

We turn now to a more detailed discussion of VP-Topicalisation, better known as VP-Preposing.

11.1.1.2 VP-Preposing

Consider the sentence in (12):

(12)Ralph says that he will clean his room,

and [clean his room] he will —

A movement process has taken place here, such that the string clean his room, a verb with its Direct Object, has moved from a position at the end of the second clause to the beginning of that clause. Because the principal element of this string (i.e. its Head) is the verb clean, we conclude that we must be dealing with a Verb Phrase. We refer to the movement process in

(12)as VP-Preposing. VP-Preposing involves movement of a Verb Phrase from its normal position in the clause to the beginning of that clause, and as such is a special type of Topicalisation. Here are some more examples:

(13)Sally says that she will return my book,

and [return my book] she will —

Movement	197

(14)Drew says that he will wash the dishes,

and [wash the dishes] he will —

Interestingly, (12)–(14) show that Direct Objects are part of the Verb Phrase of the sentences in which they occur, and this is because they are fronted along with the main verb that precedes them. We cannot leave the DOs behind:

(15)*Ralph says that he will clean his room, and [clean] he will — his room.

(16)*Sally says that she will return my book, and [return] she will — my book.

(17)*Drew says that he will wash the dishes, and [wash] he will — the dishes.

These data are a confirmation of the structure of Verb Phrases that we posited in Chapter 7, and at the beginning of this chapter (see (1)). You will remember that we said that Direct Objects are sisters of the main verb inside VP, as in the tree diagram below, which represents the VP of (12):

(18)	VP
	Spec	V0
	V	NP
	clean	his room

When VP-Preposing applies, the VP is moved to a clause-initial position. We will assume that the entire VP is moved, including the empty Spec-position.

Notice that VP-Preposing can only apply if the sentence in question contains an auxiliary verb, such as will in the examples we have looked at, or did in (19):

(19)Sally said that she returned my book, and [return my book] she did —

The following is impossible:

(20)*Sally said that she returned my book, and [returned my book] she —

198	Constituency: Movement and Substitution

Another notable fact about (12)–(14) is that in each case will is left behind. This means that modal auxiliary verbs are not part of the VP of the sentence in which they occur. If they were, they would have been fronted along with the main verb and Direct Object. (21) below shows that the auxiliary in (12) cannot also be preposed:

(21)*Ralph says that he will clean his room,

and [will clean his room] he —

Here again we have confirmation of our analysis in Chapter 8. We said there that modal auxiliaries are dominated by ‘I’, not by VP.

What’s important about VP-Preposing is that we can use it as a test to see whether a particular element or string of elements is part of VP. In (12)–(14) VP-Preposing established that the VPs of these sentences are clean his room, return my book and wash the dishes. Consider now the sentence below in which an Adverb Phrase functioning as an Adjunct has been added:

(22)Ralph says that he will clean his room meticulously.

Recall that in Chapter 7 we claimed that Adjuncts like meticulously are sisters of V0 inside VP, as in the tree in (23):

(23)	VP
	Spec		V0
		V0		AdvP
	V		NP
	clean		his room	meticulously

We now want to know whether we can show that the AdvP in (22) is indeed part of the VP or not. Let’s apply VP-Preposing and see:

(24)Ralph says that he will clean his room meticulously, and [clean his room meticulously] he will —

(25)*Ralph says that he will clean his room meticulously, and [clean his room] he will — meticulously.

The result is that if we prepose the VP the AdvP must be moved along with the main verb and Direct Object, and is therefore inside VP. Leaving the AdvP behind, as in (25), leads to an ungrammatical result.

Movement	199

At this point we are only concerned to show that the AdvP is indeed inside VP. We still need to demonstrate, however, that the internal structure of the VP is as shown in (23). This we leave to Section 11.2.2.

So far we have established that DOs are inside VP, as are Adjuncts following the DO (cf. (22)–(25)), and that modal auxiliaries are outside VP. What about Adjuncts that precede the main verb, as does carefully in (26)?

(26)Ralph says that he will carefully clean his room.

Exercise

Applying VP-Preposing, check whether the AdvP carefully is part of the VP of (26).

The results should look like this:

(27)Ralph says that he will carefully clean his room, and [carefully clean his room] he will —

(28)*Ralph says that he will carefully clean his room, and clean his room he will carefully —

We see from these sentences that, just like Adjuncts that follow the DO, Adjuncts that precede the main verb are also inside VP, because they cannot be left behind when we move a string of elements that includes the main verb. The structure of the VP in (26) is as in (29):

(29)VP

Spec	V0
AdvP		V0
	V	NP
carefully	clean	his room

All the sentences involving VP-Preposing that we have looked at so far conform to the same pattern: there is always an auxiliary verb at the end of the second clause. This is because VP-Preposing can only operate in sentences that contain an auxiliary verb. As we have seen, VP-Preposing is an important constituency test, but does the restriction on VP-Preposing that we just noted mean that we cannot use it as a constituency test when there is no auxiliary in

200	Constituency: Movement and Substitution

a sentence? No, it doesn’t, because we can always create a context in which an auxiliary is added. How does this work? Let us assume that we come across a sentence without an auxiliary before the main verb, and we want to determine what its VP is, e.g. Simone dances the samba competently. To create a context in which we can move a string of elements minimally containing the main verb (i.e. prepose the VP) we apply a few simple steps:

1.Make the sentence a that-clause Complement of a verb of saying, e.g. say, claim, etc.: Simone says that she dances the samba competently. Notice that the Subject of the original sentence is now the main clause Subject, while the Subject of the Complement clause is a pronoun.

2.Add the coordinator and, then repeat the original sentence, changing its Subject into a pronoun, and placing an auxiliary verb in front of the main verb in both clauses: Simone says that she will dance the samba competently, and she will dance the samba competently.

3.Now prepose a strings of elements which minimally contains the main verb. If the result is good, the string is a VP. If the result is bad, the string is not a VP.

*Simone says that she will dance the samba competently, and [dance] she will — the samba competently.

*Simone says that she will dance the samba competently, and [will dance] she — the samba competently.

*Simone says that she will dance the samba competently, and [will dance the samba] she — competently.

*Simone says that she will dance the samba competently, and [dance the samba] she will — competently.

Simone says that she will dance the samba competently, and [dance the samba competently] she will —

Here we have moved di erent strings: main verb only; auxiliary verb þ main verb; auxiliary verb þ main verb þ Direct Object, and so on. Only the fifth sentence is good, and we conclude that the VP of the sentence Simone dances the samba competently is dances the samba competently.

Exercise

Determine what is the VP of each of the following sentences. In applying the steps above use the main verb say and the modal auxiliary will.

(30)Frank flies to New York tomorrow.

(31)The Head of Department holds a meeting at 4 p.m.

Movement	201

The correct results of applying the steps above are as follows:

(32)Frank says that he will fly to New York tomorrow, and [fly to New York tomorrow] he will —

(33)The Head of Department says that he will hold a meeting at 4 p.m., and [hold a meeting at 4 p.m.] he will —

The results of movement show that the bracketed constituents are VPs.

11.1.1.3Though-Movement

The next type of movement is Though-Movement, a term used to describe the displacements in sentences like (34)–(38):

(34)a Though students are fare dodgers, they’re not thieves.

b[Fare dodgers] though students are — , they’re not thieves. (35)a Though Ken usually is quite happy, today he is sad.

b[Quite happy] though Ken usually is — , today he is sad. (36)a Though she works very hard all day, at night she’s lazy.

b[Very hard] though she works — all day, at night she’s lazy. (37)a Though she is in debt, she’s very generous.

b[In debt] though she is — , she’s very generous.

(38)a Though he ate the mushrooms, he hasn’t been sick.

b[Eat the mushrooms] though he did — , he hasn’t been sick.

The term Though-Movement is misleading because it isn’t the word though that moves, as the sentences above show. I have retained the terminology, however, because it is in general use in the linguistic literature. As you can see from (34)–(38), in each case a string of words has moved to a clauseinitial position: an NP in (34), an AP in (35), an AdvP in (36), a PP in (37), and a VP in (38).

The movement exemplified in (38) confirms the results of the VPPreposing test: Verb Phrases consist of a main verb þ a Direct Object (if there is one).

Though-Movement, like VP-Preposing, is useful when we want to establish the exact delimitation of the VP of a particular sentence. Consider (39) and (40):

(39)Though Ralph will clean his room meticulously, he’d rather watch tv.

(40)Though Ralph will carefully clean his room, he’s normally untidy.

We now want to check whether the Adverb Phrases meticulously and carefully are inside the VP of these sentences. We can apply ThoughMovement to find out. This is the result:

202	Constituency: Movement and Substitution

(41)[Clean his room meticulously] though Ralph will — , he’d rather watch tv.

(42)*[Clean his room] though Ralph will — meticulously, he’d rather watch tv.

(43)[Carefully clean his room] though Ralph will — , he’s normally untidy.

(44)*[Clean his room] though Ralph will carefully — , he’s normally untidy.

(All these to be read with a short pause where the dash is positioned.)

These results confirm those of the preceding section: in (39) and (40) if we move a string of words that involves the main verb clean, then meticulously and carefully must be moved along with it. This means that both Adjuncts that precede the main verb, as well as those that follow the Direct Object, are positioned inside VP. (The trees for the VPs in (41) and (43) are shown in (23) and (29) above.)

11.1.2Movements to the Right

11.1.2.1Heavy-NP-Shift

A feature of all the movements that have been discussed so far in this book is that they were leftward movements; that is, an element or string of elements was moved to a position to the left of its original position. In this section and in the next one we’ll be looking at some examples of rightward movements. Consider the following sentences:

(45)We brought — into the country six boxes of excellent French wine.

(46)She sold — at the market the prints that she had made.

Because Direct Objects typically occur immediately to the right of the verb that subcategorises for them, it is reasonable to assume that in (45) and (46) the italicised NPs have moved to the right from the position indicated by the dash. These movements are triggered by the relative ‘heaviness’ of the NPs in question, caused by the PP of excellent French wine in (45) and by the relative clause that she had made in (46). For this reason this type of movement is called Heavy-NP-Shift (HNPS ).

A restriction on HNPS is that we cannot move Indirect Objects or Objects of prepositions to the right:

(47)*I sent — a postcard my cousin from London.

(48)*I sent a postcard to — yesterday my cousin from London.

Movement	203

For present purposes it is important to see that HNPS can be used as a constituency test. In this connexion, consider (49) below:

(49)I travelled the world from Moscow to Rio in three weeks.

With regard to this sentence we might wonder whether the string from Moscow to Rio is a postmodifying phrase, and as such part of the NP headed by world, or whether it is perhaps a separate phrase. If the string the world from Moscow to Rio is indeed an NP, it should be possible to move it, because of its ‘weight’. If it is not an NP, then displacement should not be possible. If we apply HNPS to (49) the result is (50):

(50)*I travelled — in three weeks the world from Moscow to Rio.

The result is bad, and we conclude that the world from Moscow to Rio is not an NP constituent.

11.1.2.2 Extraposition of Subject Clauses

Consider (51) and (52) below:

(51)That the film ended so soon was a shame.

(52)It was a shame that the film ended so soon.

In (51) the Subject of the sentence is the clause that the film ended so soon. We can move (‘extrapose’) it from a clause-initial to a clause-final position, as (52) shows. The pronoun it is inserted in the position vacated by the Subject clause. This movement establishes the constituent status of the Subject clause.

11.1.2.3 Extraposition from NP

Consider the following sentences:

(53)Six women — appeared with yellow hats.

(54)We employed two people — last week from European Union countries.

(55)The dogs — escaped that were chained to the house.

In (53) the PP with yellow hats has been extraposed out of the Subject NP six women, while in (54) the PP from European Union countries is moved out of a Direct Object NP. In (55) a clause has been displaced. We call this kind of movement Extraposition from NP (ENP). ENP seems to be more acceptable if the Verb Phrase is relatively light, e.g. if it consists of an intransitive verb or a Raising verb (seem, appear, become, etc.). The following sentence, which contains a transitive verb, seems to be much less good:

(56)?*Three men — noisily left the theatre who were drunk.

204	Constituency: Movement and Substitution

Just like HNPS, this type of movement can be used as a constituency test, as the example that follows will make clear. We might ask whether the string with yellow hats on their heads in (57) below is one constituent, or whether it should really be regarded as two separate PPs, namely with yellow hats and on their heads.

(57)Six women with yellow hats on their heads appeared.

If the former possibility is correct, we should be able to move the whole string under ENP; if the latter possibility is correct we should be able to move only the PP with yellow hats. The result of applying ENP to (57) is (58):

(58)Six women — appeared with yellow hats on their heads.

This sentence is fine, which means that with yellow hats on their heads is one constituent. By contrast, (59) is barred:

(59)*Six women — on their heads appeared with yellow hats.

This suggests that in (59) with yellow hats is not a constituent: we cannot move it without also moving on their heads. As you will have realised, the PP on their heads is an Adjunct of the Head hats. The tree for (59) looks like this:

(60)PP

Spec P0

PNP

Spec N0

AP N0

N0 PP

N Spec

P0

P NP

Spec N0

N

with

yellow hats

on

their

heads

Substitution	205

Notice that with yellow hats is not a constituent here. (Review Section 4.4 if this is not clear to you.)

Summarising, in Section 11.1 we looked at Movement, and we saw that it can be used as a diagnostic test to determine constituency. A very important result to come out of the discussion is that Direct Objects are inside VP, and that modal verbs are not inside VP. The latter are best analysed as being located in ‘I’. We concluded that (1) should be analysed as in (2), not as in (3), i.e. S-nodes immediately dominate three constituents, not four.

11.2 Substitution

In the last section we discussed Movement, and we saw that it always a ects constituents. In this section we’ll be looking at the notion of Substitution (i.e. replacement) as applied to language. The idea here is that a particular string of words must be a constituent if it can be replaced by something else: by a single word, by another string of words, or even by nothing at all. Like Movement, Substitution can a ect full phrases, but we will see that it can a ect clauses and bar-level constituents too.

11.2.1Substitution of Nominal Projections: NP and N 0

Consider again sentence (1) repeated as (61):

(61)My father admires my mother.

Let’s concentrate on the strings my father and my mother, which you will intuitively have recognised to be Noun Phrase constituents, because the main words in both cases are nouns. We now want to be able to actually demonstrate that my father and my mother are constituents, other than by moving them. We can do so by means of Substitution. We will say that a particular sequence of words is a constituent if it can be replaced by a so-called proform, a word or word-sequence that ‘stands in’ for some other word or word-sequence. We establish the following principle:

Proform Substitution

A particular string of words is a constituent if it can be substituted by a suitable proform.

Obviously, there should be no change in meaning as a result of this Substitution. Let’s see how this works with regard to (61). To verify our intuition that my father and my mother are indeed constituents, the question we must ask is the following: ‘can we replace either my father or my mother