Chapter 4

nullChapter 4 Chapter 4 From Word to Textnull 4.1 Syntactic Relation 4.2 Grammatical Construction and its Constituents 4.3 Syntactic Function 4.4 Category 4.5 Phrase, Clause and sentence 4.6 Recursiveness 4.7 Beyond the sentence 4.1 Syntactic Relation4.1 Syntactic Relation4.1.1 Positional Relation Positional relation, or WORD ORDER, refers to the sequential arrangement of words in a language. Positional relations are a manifestation of one aspect of Syntagmatics Relations observed by Saussure. They are also called Horizontal Relations or Chain relations. 4.1.2 Relation of Substitutability The relation of substitutability refers to classes or sets of words substitutable for each other grammatically in sentences with the same structure. This is what Saussure called Associative relations or in Hjemslev’s term Paradigmatic relations. They are also called vertical relations or choice relations. 4.1.3 Relation of co-occurrence By the relation of co-occurrence on means that words of different classes may permit, or require, the occurrence of a word of another set or class to form a sentence or a particular part of a sentence. In this way, relations of co-occurrences partly belong to syntagmatic relations, partly to paradigmatic relations. 4.2 Grammatical Construction and its Constituents4.2 Grammatical Construction and its Constituents4.2.1 Grammatical Construction Grammatical construction or construct can be used to mean any syntactic construct which is assigned one or more conventional functions in a language, together with whatever is linguistically conventionalized about its contribution to the meaning or use the construct contains. Two properties of a construction on the level of syntax: external and internal. The external syntax of a construction refers to the properties of the construction as a whole, that is to say, anything speakers how about the construction that is relevant to the larger syntactic contexts in which it is welcome. The internal syntax of a construction is really a description of the construction’s “make up’ with the terms such as ‘subject, predicate, object, determiner, noun’ .null4.2.2 Immediate constituents Constituent is a term used in structural sentence analysis for every linguistic unit, which is a part of a larger linguistic unit. To dismantle a grammatical construction into its constituents is called Immediate constituent analysis or IC analysis. Immediate constituent(IC) analysis may be defined as the analysis of a sentence in terms of its immediate constituents---word groups (or phrase), which are in turn analyzed into the immediate constituents of their own, and the process goes on until the ultimate constituents are reached. We usually stop at the level of word.)null4.2.3 Endocentric and exocentric constructions An endocentric construction is on whose distribution is functionally equivalent, or approaching equivalence, to one of its constituents, which serves as the centre, or head, of the whole. An endocentric construction is also known as a headed construction. Typical endocentric constructions are noun phrases, verb phrases and adjective phrases. The exocentric construction is defined as a construction whose distribution is not functionally equivalent to any of its constituents. There is no noticeable centre, or head, in it. Propositional phrases like on the shelf are typical examples of this type.null4.2.4 Coordination and Subordination Endocentric constructions may be further divided into two subtypes: subordinate and coordinate constructions. In the coordinate construction, there are more than one head, e.g. boys and girls. The distribution of the whole is functionally equivalent to either of its component parts. One property that coordination reveals is that there is no limit on the number of coordinated categories that can appear prior to the conjunction. Subordination refers to the process or result of linking linguistic units so that they have different syntactic status, one being dependent upon the other, and usually a constituent of the other. (Those in which there is only one heads, with the head being dominant, and other constituents dependent, are subordinate constructions.) 4.3 Syntactic Function4.3 Syntactic Function The syntactic Function shows the relationship between a linguistic form and other parts of the linguistic pattern in which it is used. Names of functions are expressed in terms of subjects, objects, predicators, modifiers, complements, etc. null4.3.1 Subject Definitions of Subject: a) Subject refers to one of the nouns in the nominative case, e.g. in Latin. b) In English, the subject of a sentence is often said to be the doer of the action, while the object is the person or thing acted upon by the doer. c) Grammatical subject and logical subject Characteristics of subject in English: A. Word order: subject ordinarily precedes the verb in statement. B. Pro-forms: the first and third person pronouns in English appear in a special form when the pronoun is a subject. C. Agreement with verb D. Content questions E. Tag questionnull4.3.2 Predicate Predicate refers to a major constituent of sentence structure in binary analysis in which all obligatory constituents other than the subject were considered together. It usually expresses actions, processes, and states that relate to the subject. 4.3.3 Object Object is also hard to define, object may refer to the receiver or goal of an action and it is further classified in Direct Object and Indirect Object. Modern linguists suggest that object refers to such an item that it can become subject in a passive transformation. 4.3.4 The relation between classes and functions Classes and functions determine each other, but not in any one-to-one relation. A class item can perform several functions. Similarly, a function can be fulfilled by several classes. 4.4 Category4.4 CategoryCategory, usu. as grammatical category, refers to a class or group of items which fulfill the same or similar functions in a particular language: e.g. case, person, number, tense, aspect, etc.null4.4.1 Number Number refers to a grammatical distinction or feature which determines whether noun, verb, adj, pron,etc in a language are singular or plural. In English, Number is mostly a category of the noun and pronoun, e.g. a book, some books; I, we. 4.4.2 Gender Gender refers to a grammatical distinction in which noun, Art. Adj. Pron, are marked according to a distinction between masculine, feminine, and sometimes neuter. In English, the gender distinctions are on the whole natural, determined by the biological gender of the creature, e.g. actor, actress, hero, heroine. The opposite is grammatical gender.null4.4.3 Case Case is a grammatical category that shows the functions of Noun or Noun phrase in a sentence. The form of Noun or Noun phrase changes to show the different functions or cases. In English, pronouns have three cases of nominative (e.g. I, he), accusative (e.g. me, him) and genitive (e.g. my, his). 4.4.4 Agreement Agreement (or Concord) may be defined as the requirement that the forms of two or more words in a syntactic relationship should agree with each other in terms of some categories. For example, in English the determiner and the nun it precedes should concord in number as in this man, these men, some books. And the form of a subject should agree with that of the verb in terms of number in the present tense as is shown by He speaks English, they speak English. 4.5 Phrase, Clause and sentence4.5 Phrase, Clause and sentence4.5.1 Phrase Phrase is a single element of structure containing more than one word, and lacking the subject-predicate structure typical of clauses. Traditionally, it is seen as part of a structural hierarchy, positioned between clause and word. Therefore, first, a phrase is lower on the grammatical hierarchy than clauses. A distinction between Word Group and Phrase: A word group is an extension of word of a particular class by way of modification with its main features of the class unchanged. We have nominal group, verbal group, adverbial group, conjunction group and preposition group. 4.5.2 Clause A constituent with its own subject and predicate, if it is included in a larger sentence, is a clause. Clause can also be classified into FINITE and NON-FINITE clauses, the latter including the traditional infinitive phrase, participle phrase, and gerundial phrase. 4.5.3 Sentence Traditionally, Sentence is the minimum part of language that expresses a complete thought. Bloomfield (1935) defined the sentence as “one not included by virtue of any grammatical construction in any larger linguistic form”.4.6 Recursiveness 4.6 Recursiveness Recursiveness mainly means that a phrasal constituent can be embedded within another constituent have the same category. Recursiveness has become an umbrella term, under which may be brought together several important linguistic phenomenon such as coordination and subordination, conjoining and embedding, hypotactic and paratactic. null4.6.1 Conjoining Conjoining refers to the process where one clause is coordinated or conjoined with another. The sentences made up in this way can be understood as instances of coordination. 4.6.2 Embedding Clauses are either independent or dependent. When you embed a clause as a dependent clause, you take one sentence and combine it into another. Embedding refers to the means by which one clause is included in the sentence in syntactic subordination. 4.7 Beyond the sentence 4.7 Beyond the sentence 4.7.1 Sentence connection The notions of hypotactic and paratactic relations can also be applied to the study of syntactic relations between sentences. 4.7.2 Cohesion Cohesion is a concept to do with discourse or text rather than with syntax, it refers to relations of meaning that exist within the text, and defines it as a text. Discoursal/textual cohesiveness can be realized by employing various cohesive devices: conjunction, ellipsis, lexical collocation, lexical repetition, reference, substitution, etc.