Граматика / English Syntax

16	Function

The characterisation of Direct Objects I have just given is in terms of the kind of role they play in sentences: in the same way that Subjects typically play an agentive (i.e. instigator) role, Direct Objects have a Patient role (though of course not in the medical sense!). As we have just seen, what this means is that the referent of the constituent that we can identify as Direct Object typically undergoes the action or process denoted by the verb. However, although this semantic characterisation is useful, and in most cases enables us to find the Direct Object of a sentence, we will also need to define DOs syntactically, i.e. in terms of their structural properties.

So what can we say about the structural properties of Direct Objects? Well, like Subjects, DOs are often Noun Phrases (though not exclusively, as we will see in Chapter 5). Secondly, their usual position, as (39)–(42) show, is after the main verb. Thirdly, Direct Objects have a strong relationship with the verb that precedes them. Recall my discussion in Chapter 1 of the sentence in (43):

(43)Our vicar likes fast cars.

We saw that the verb like requires the presence of a Noun Phrase. We can now be a little more precise and say that like requires a Direct Object Noun Phrase. In (39)–(42) we have the same situation: each of the verbs in these sentences requires the presence of a Direct Object. If the DO is left out, the results are bad:

(44)*His girlfriend bought.

(45)*This silly fool broke.

(46)*Our linguistics lecturer took.

(47)*My sister found.

We will say that a verb that requires a Direct Object to complement its meaning is a transitive verb.

Not not all verbs are transitive. We also have intransitive verbs. These are verbs that do not need a following constituent to complete their meaning. Below are some sentences whose main verbs are intransitive:

(48)William blushed.

(49)Sean cried.

(50)Thomas slept.

(51)Lee dreamt.

(52)Garry jumped.

Unlike in the case of (44)–(47), we do not have a sense of incompleteness with these sentences.

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Some verbs appear to be able to function both transitively and intransitively, as the sentences in (53) and (54) show:

(53)a Harold moved the table.

bHarold moved.

(54)a Jake walked the dog.

bJake walked.

Saying that in each case the verb can function both transitively and intransitively amounts to saying that we have two di erent verbs move and two di erent verbs walk. Following dictionary practice let’s call these two sets of verbs move1/move2 and walk1/walk2. Move1 and walk1 in (53)a and (54)a are transitive, whereas move2 and walk2 in (53)b and (54)b are intransitive. Positing the existence of two verbs move is not implausible, given the fact that the meaning of move in (53)a is di erent from the meaning of move in (53)b, witness the fact that we can substitute another verb, for example displace, for move in (53)a, but not in (53)b: Harold displaced the table/ *Harold displaced. A change of meaning can also be detected in contrasting (54)a with (54)b. We can replace walk in (54)a by the near-equivalent escort, but not in (54)b: Jake escorted the dog/*Jake escorted.

Consider now (55) and (56):

(55)a Goneril was reading a book.

bGoneril was reading.

(56)a Pat was eating a sandwich.

bPat was eating.

Here again we might surmise that we have two verbs read and two verbs eat. However, more plausibly, we might say that although the Direct Object is missing in (55)b, it is nevertheless felt to be there. After all, Goneril must have been reading something. The same is true for (56)b. Rather than positing the existence of two di erent verbs in (55) and (56), we will say that the Direct Objects here are understood or implicit. This solution is preferable, because in the a- and b-sentences of (55) and (56) the meanings of read and eat stay constant.

So far we have seen that Direct Objects are constituents that are closely related to the verb that precedes them. A fourth syntactic characteristic of DOs is brought out by comparing the a-sentences below with the b-sentences:

(57)a His girlfriend bought this computer.

bThis computer was bought by his girlfriend.

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(58)a That silly fool broke the teapot.

b The teapot was broken by that silly fool.

(59)a Our linguistics lecturer took this photograph.

bThis photograph was taken by our linguistics lecturer.

(60)a My sister found this book.

bThis book was found by my sister.

What is happening here? Clearly, in each of these cases the a-sentence is related to the b-sentence. The question is: how? We will refer to the a-sentences as being active, and to the b-sentences as being passive. Active sentences present their Subject as being actively engaged in something, whereas passive sentences present their Subject as undergoing something. (This, incidentally, is another reason for not defining Subjects exclusively as Agents.) As for the syntactic di erences between active and passive sentences, notice that the italicised Direct Objects of the a-sentences are the Subjects of the b-sentences. This is quite a regular alternation in English, so much so that linguists have attempted to set up a rule to capture it. The basic insight of this rule is the observation that if we turn an active sentence into a passive sentence, the Direct Object of the active sentence becomes the Subject of the passive sentence. Furthermore, the Subject of the active sentence ends up in a phrase introduced by the word by. Notice that in each of the passive sentences a form of the verb be has appeared (in the guise of was in these particular cases).

Exercise

Produce passive versions of the following active sentences:

(i)We drank this bottle of coke.

(ii)My son found a wallet.

(iii)The inspectors checked the tickets.

(iv)This store sells only silk shirts.

You should not have experienced any problems in producing the passives of these sentences. They are This bottle of coke was drunk by us, A wallet was found by my son, The tickets were checked by the inspectors and Only silk shirts are sold by this store.

We saw above that Direct Objects complete the meaning of the verbs that precede them. Another way of putting this is to say that Direct Objects function as Complements to verbs. When we talk about Complements we’re using a cover term to denote any constituent whose presence is required by another element. As we saw in sentences like (39)–(42) and (44)–(47), Direct

Indirect Object	19

Objects are required to the extent that they typically complete the meaning of an active verb. They are not the only units that can function as Complements of verbs, though. I will now discuss an additional type of Complement, Indirect Objects.

2.4Indirect Object

In this section we will be looking at a further type of verbal Complement: Indirect Objects (IOs). In the sentences below the IOs have been italicised:

(61)We gave the boys the CDs.

(62)The publisher sent her a review copy of the book.

(63)She lent the student a diskette.

(64)My father always told us stories.

When we discussed Subjects and Direct Objects in the previous sections we saw that Subjects typically have the role of Agent, and that Direct Objects typically have the role of Patient/Undergoer. In (61)–(64), the typical role associated with the italicised Indirect Objects is Goal/Receiver or Beneficiary. Notice that (61)–(64) also contain Direct Objects, namely the phrases the CDs, a review copy of the book, a diskette and stories. Verbs that take a Direct Object and an Indirect Object are called ditransitive verbs.

Apart from their semantic properties, Indirect Objects have a number of syntactic characteristics.

Firstly, they are usually Noun Phrases.

Secondly, they cannot occur without a following Direct Object. Compare the sentences in (65)–(68) with those in (61)–(64): if we leave out the Direct Objects, the sentences become ungrammatical.

(65)*We gave the boys.

(66)*The publisher sent her.

(67)*She lent the student.

(68)*My father always told us.

Of course, (65)–(68) are possible, but only if we interpret the NPs following the verbs as Direct Objects.

Thirdly, Indirect Objects always precede Direct Objects. We cannot have the sentences in (69)–(72) where the order of IOs and DOs has been reversed:

(69)*We gave the CDs the boys.

(70)*The publisher sent a review copy of the book her.

(71)*She lent a diskette the student.

(72)*My father always told stories us.

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Notice that we can ‘repair’ the sentences in (69)–(72) by adding the word to:

(73)We gave the CDs to the boys.

(74)The publisher sent a review copy of the book to her.

(75)She lent a diskette to the student.

(76)My father told stories to us.

A final syntactic characteristic of Indirect Objects is that, like DOs, they can become the Subjects of passive sentences. Compare (77)–(80) with (61)–(64):

(77)The boys were given the CDs by us.

(78)She was sent a review copy of the book by the publisher.

(79)The student was lent a diskette by her.

(80)We were always told stories by our father.

Notice that the Subjects of the active sentences again end up in a by-phrase. The Direct Objects stay in place.

Now, compare (77)–(80) with (81)–(84):

(81)The CDs were given to the boys by us.

(82)A review copy of the book was sent to her by the publisher.

(83)A diskette was lent to the student by her.

(84)Stories were always told to us by our father.

Here the Direct Objects of (61)–(64), rather than the Indirect Objects, have become the Subjects of passive sentences. In passivising (61)–(64) to become (81)–(84), not only have the Direct Objects of active sentences become the Subjects of passive sentences, another change has occurred: the Indirect Objects have ended up in phrases beginning with to: to the boys, to her, to the student and to us. The generalisation is that if we passivise the Direct Object of a sentence which also contains an Indirect Object, then the Indirect Object ends up in a to-phrase.

2.5Adjunct

We turn now to a final grammatical function. Consider the following sentences:

(85)The bus stopped suddenly.

(86)Shakespeare wrote his plays a long time ago.

(87)They went to the theatre in London.

(88)He hates maths because he can’t understand it.

Adjunct	21

The italicised strings of words in these sentences have the function of telling us about the how, when, where or why of the situations expressed by the respective sentences. Constituents that have this function we will call Adjuncts. We can test to see if a particular sentence contains an Adjunct by asking how?, when?, where? or why? For example, if we want to know what is the Adjunct in (85) we ask ‘how did the bus stop?’. The answer is ‘suddenly’, and this phrase therefore functions as an Adjunct. Similarly, in (86) we can ask ‘When did Shakespeare write his plays?’ The answer is ‘a long time ago’. Adjuncts are always optional and express peripheral information. Another characteristic of Adjuncts is that they can be ‘stacked’, which means that more than one of them can appear in a sentence:

(89)Last year I saw this film several times.

Finally, Adjuncts are mobile, as the following examples show:

(90)Greedily Andre´ate all the biscuits.

(91)Andre´greedily ate all the biscuits.

(92)Andre´ate all the biscuits greedily.

Notice, though, that the position between the main verb and Direct Object is excluded:

(93)*Andre´ate greedily all the biscuits.

In Chapter 7 we will distinguish between sentence-level Adjuncts and phrase-level Adjuncts.

Key Concepts in this Chapter

Functions:

Subject

Predicate

Predicator

Direct Object

Indirect Object

Adjunct

In this book all function names will be written with a capital letter. Remember that functional labels are mutually exclusive: if a string of words is a Subject, it cannot also be a DO, or an Adjunct or anything else.

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Exercises

NB: In this book the exercises are graded, such that the starred ones are slightly more di cult.

1.Assign function labels (Subject, Direct Object, Adjunct, etc.) to the italicised phrases in the following sentences:

(i)Greg opened a can of Coke.

(ii)She arrived last week.

(iii)You will need a comprehensive travel insurance.

(iv)Who said that?

(v)Benny worked in a shoe factory when he was a student.

(vi)Who will do the cleaning?

(vii)The lecturer from France who talked about Wittgenstein yesterday left.

2.Construct sentences containing:

(i)a Subject, a Predicator, an Indirect Object and a Direct Object

(ii)a Subject, a Predicator, a Direct Object and an Adjunct

(iii)a Subject, a Predicator and an Adjunct

(iv)a Subject and a Predicator

3.In the text we said that Subjects are obligatory. In this context, discuss the sentence in (i) below:

(i)Read Chapter 5 for tomorrow’s class.

Is this an exception? Motivate your answer.

(Sentence (i) is an imperative sentence which will be discussed further in Section 4.3.)

4.True or false? In the sentence This summer all the students will have vacation jobs in their home towns:

(i)the Subject is this summer

(ii)summer is an Adjunct

(iii)vacation jobs is an Indirect Object

(iv)all the students is the Subject

(v)in their home towns functions as Adjunct

(vi)the Direct Object is vacation jobs

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5.Underline the Adjunct(s) (if any) in the sentences below:

(i)Gradually, the train accelerated.

(ii)It finally hurtled through the landscape at great speed.

(iii)Then, suddenly there was a loud bang at the back of the train.

(iv)It startled all of us.

(v)It turned out that there had been an animal on the tracks.

(vi)Why does this happen each time I travel?

*6. Consider the sentence in (i):

(i)In August we always go to France.

What would you say is the function of the italicised string? Give reasons for your answer.

*7. In the text we saw that there are reasons for saying that the verb move in (i) below is di erent from the verb move in (ii):

(i)Harold moved the table. (¼ 53a)

(ii)Harold moved. (¼ 53b)

The reason for having two verbs was that move in (i) means ‘displace’, whereas it means something like ‘stir’ in (ii). However, you may want to argue that move in fact is exactly like read and eat discussed in the same section, if we simply assume that move in (ii) involves an implied DO, namely himself. Sentence (ii) above would then mean ‘Harold moved/displaced himself’. Is this a plausible line of reasoning? Give reasons for your answer.

*8. Why is assigning the grammatical function of Direct Object to the italicised strings in the sentences below problematic? Is there another function we can assign instead?

(i)This computer weighs twenty kilogrammes.

(ii)Each of these oranges costs ten pence.

(iii)The information booklet contains four pages.

(iv)That jacket suits you.

*9. Apply the criteria for subjecthood presented in Section 2.1 to the sentence in (i) below:

(i)There is a rat in the kitchen.

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You will have reached the conclusion that the Subject is there. How can we square this conclusion with the fact that it doesn’t make sense to say that there ‘is’ in the kitchen, whereas it does make sense to say that a rat ‘is’ in the kitchen? In other words, wouldn’t it make more sense to say that a rat is the Subject in (i)?

Further Reading

For other overviews of functional categories consult a major grammar of English, such as Quirk et al. (1985) or Huddleston (1984). You will also find the reference works listed at the end of this book useful. When you consult these books, be aware of the fact that there are variations in the use of grammatical terminology. For example, Quirk et al. use two additional functional labels, namely Subject Complement and Object Complement, which we have not adopted (see Chapter 10). Also, the term ‘Adjunct’ is used by them in a narrower sense than in this book. For them an Adjunct is one type of Adverbial, along with Disjuncts, Conjuncts and Subjuncts. Huddleston uses the term ‘Adjunct’ more or less in the same way as I have done here, but there are di erences too.

In Section 2.1, I assumed that ‘weather it’ is meaningless. Not all linguists would agree with this; see, for example, Bolinger (1977) for a diverging view.

3Form: Words, Word Classes and Phrases

In this chapter we’ll take a closer look at the smallest building blocks of syntax, namely words. We will see how they can be grouped into word classes and how they form phrases, which in turn combine into sentences. In the next chapter we will look at clauses and the way these too combine into sentences, but in a di erent way from phrases. Some of the concepts and ideas introduced in this chapter will only be dealt with in a preliminary way, and will receive more attention in later chapters.

3.1The Notion ‘Word’

So far, I have only mentioned words in passing. You may have thought this strange, because surely the most obvious way to divide a sentence up is into words. This is true, but as we will see later in this chapter, it is not the most interesting way to do it. Trying to define the notion ‘word’ is not easy. This may surprise you, as words seem to be straightforward enough entities. To give you some idea of the problems we might encounter in trying to characterise words as linguistic units, consider (1)–(3) below:

(1)dog, dogs

(2)eat, eats

(3)duty-free

Nobody would have any hesitation in calling what we have in (1) two separate words. Dogs is di erent from dog, because it looks di erent: it has an -s ending added to it. However, if you think about it, there is also a sense in which dogs is the same word as dog, in that it is simply its plural. Let us say that dog and dogs belong to the same lexeme, or dictionary entry. This reflects the sense in which they are the same word. At the same time they are di erent word-forms or orthographic words. We can make the distinction clear by drawing an analogy: a Boeing 747 and a Boeing 767 are the same to the extent that they are both aeroplanes, but they are di erent to the extent that the 747 has a di erent shape and size from the 767. Thus, the 747 and the 767 both belong to the ‘aeronautic lexeme’ aeroplane, but at the same time are di erent ‘aeroplane-forms’. We can make the same point for eat and eats in (2): both of these belong to the verb lexeme eat, but are di erent verb-forms. What about (3)? Here we seem to have two words duty and free,

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