V. M. Chanda

LAN4212 - THEORETICAL SYNTAX

COURSE OUTLINE

PRE-REQUISITE None AIM The aim of the course is to give the students an update of syntactic theory and research with emphasis on the period from 1957 to the present. OBJECTIVES By the end of the course, students should be able to:

a. demonstrate acquaintance with a wide range of topics in contemporary syntactic theory since 1957 with emphasis on those theory using the X - schema;

b. show awareness of differences in parameters between a variety of languages; and

c. identify areas where in a given language some theoretical concepts is not

applicable or is applicable differently from some other language. CONTENT Topics to be covered will include, among others: 1. history of generative grammar to the emergence of Government-Binding;

2. Government-Binding (GB): X-Scheme, government, binding, bounding, theta-

criterion, theta-marking, case assignment, move-alpha, etc; 3. Generalised Phrase Structure Grammar (GAPS) : immediate dominance

(ID)/linear precedence (LP), metarules and other rules, projection from rules to trees, etc;

4. Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) : Constituent Structures, Functional

Structures, the Lexicon, Control and Binding, etc. 5. Stratificational Grammar; and 6. Systemic Linguistics.

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METHOD OF TEACHING Four contact hours per week: 2 lectures, 1 tutorial, 1 seminar ASSESSMENT

Continuous assessment 50% o 2 assignments, 15% each 30% o 1 test 10% o 1 seminar presentation 10%

Examination 50% REQUIRED READINGS Berry, M. (1975/1977) Introduction to Systemic Linguistics: Structures and

Systems. London: B.T. Batsford Ltd Horrocks, G. (1987) Generative Grammar. London. New York; Longman Lamb, S.M. (1966) Outline of Stratificational Grammar Washington, DC :

Geogetwon University Press. Sells, P. (1985) Lectures on Contemporary Syntactic Theories. Leland Staford

Junior University: Centre for the Study of Language and Information. RECOMMENDED READINGS Chomsky, N. (1981) Lectures on Government and Binding. Dordrecht: Foris Gazdar, G. Et al, (1985) Generalised Phrase Structure Grammar. Cambridge;

Mass: Harvard University Press. Radford, A. (1988) Transformational Grammar : A First Course. Cambridge:

CUP Press.

ABBREVIATIONS

ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS * unacceptable (for some grammatical, lexical, pragmatic, etc reason(s)) Adj adjective AdjP adjective phrase Art article AUX auxiliary (= tensem auxilaiaru verb if any, modal verb if any etc) D determiner Dem demonstrative GP genitive pronoun Lit. literally Loc locative prefix LocN locative noun N noun NP noun phrase

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Num numeral OM object marker P preposition Poss possessive PP prepositional phrase PredP predicate phrase S sentence SM subject marker V verb VP verb phrase CONTENT UNIT 1 - Introduction UNIT 2 - Distinguishing between sentences and clauses UNIT 3 - Syntactic functions UNIT 4 - Parts of speech UNIT 5 - Clause types and sentence types (5+6)

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UNIT 1

PRELIMINARIES 1.1 DEFINING SYNTAX Defining syntax according to traditional grammar, Hartmann and Stork (1972) and Crystal (1991) write: (a) Syntax is that ―branch of grammar which is concerned with the study of the

arrangement of words in sentences and of the means by which such relationships are shown, i.e. word order and inflection.‖ Hartmann and Stork (1972: 231

(b) The term syntax is ―a traditional term for the study of the rules governing the

way words are combined to form sentences in a language.‖ Crystal (1991:341)

Likewise, Gleason (1969; 128), after pointing out that ‗Grammar is conventienly divided into two portions: morphology and syntax, says that syntax may be roughly defined as the principles of arrangement of words into larger constructions ofvarious kinds. Such constructions ―of various kinds‖ include phrases and sentences. In modern linguistics, the term syntax has other meanings as well besides the above, but we shall not be concerned with these additional meanings 1.2 SYNTAX AND GRAMMAR Traditionally, syntax has been considered to be one of the two branches of ‗grammar.\, the other one being morphology, as can be seen in the following text from the Web (Internet)1:

“There are two branches to grammar, whether Latin or English. Morphology is the grammar of single words and their inflections, the different endings particular kinds of word can take and what they mean. Syntax is the grammar of words in combinations: how they fit together into sentences, and the different grammatical constructions or rules of combination that apply.”

1 http://www.rhul.ac.uk/Classics/NJL/Latin/intro2.html, 2/28/2007

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In contemporary linguistics, the term ‗grammar‘ covers the study of a language‘s structure in general, including, therefore such branches as phonology. 1.3 TERMINOLOGY USED IN THIS MATERIAL For the terminology used and concepts discussed, we shall closely, but not solely, follow Quirk et al (1985). 1.4 SYNTACTIC UNITS A comprehensive syntactic study is based, among others, on the following twofold assumption: (a) The syntax of a language has various units; and (b) These syntactic units are organized into a hierarchy. Following Quirk et al (1985: 42-43), we assume that the following are the syntactic units, which are termed grammatical units by Quirk et al2:

Sentence; Clause; Phrase; Word; and Morpheme.

The morpheme, which is studied in morphology, is included here in order to account for such morphosyntactic phenomena as agreement. , We further assume, with Quirk et al (1985: 42-43), that the above syntactic units are organized into a hierarchy as follows. Syntactic hierarchy3: ―HIGHEST UNIT: SENTENCES, which consist of one or more CLAUSES, which consistof one or more PHRASES, which consistof one or more WORDS, which consistof one or more MORPHEMES‖ As pointed out by Quirk et al (op. cit. p. 43), a orpheme is a minimum unit of form and meaning which may be a whole (for example forget in English), an inflectional affix such as –s in English (as in forget + s) or a derivational affix such as un- or -ful in English (as in un +forget + ful)

2 Op. cit. 3 Quirk et al (op. cit.) use the term ‘grammatical hierarchy’.

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UNIT 2

DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN SENTENCES AND CLAUSES From the assumption that the sentence is the highest-ranking unit of grammar, we infer that the purpose of a grammatical description of any natural language (English , Chinese, Lozi, Bemba, Italian, Zulu, Tonga etc) is :to describe, by means of whatever descriptive apparatus may be necessay (rules, categories etc), what counts as a grammatical sentence in that language‖, although the term ‗grammar‘ is indeterminate in the sense what counts as a grammatical sentence in a given language ―is not a always a question which permits a decisive answer‖ (Quirk et al, ibid). As pointed out above (1.4), a sentence is made of one or more clauses. What is a clause? We define a clause as a group of words containing a subject and a predicate, the subject being, according to traditional grammar and traditional logic, a word or group of words denoting the entity (person, thing etc) of something is said or, to use a logical term, predicated. Consider, for instance the TONGA statements in (1) and (2)4: (1) mwana ulalila child is-crying ‗the child is crying‘ (2) ooyu mwana ulalila ono this child is-crying now ‗this child is crying now‘ In (1) mwana is the subject and is ulalila the predicate, and in (2) ooyu mwana is the subject and is ulalila ono the predicate. The clause is not the highest-ranking unit of grammar, the highest-ranking unit of grammar is the sentence: as has been already stated, the highest-ranking unit of grammar is the sentence, which contains one or more clauses. Consider, for instance the following example from BEMBA: (3) Chali taaliko ilyo baakafundisha baaishile Chali was-not-there when the-teacher(s) came ‗Chali was not there when the teacher(s) came‘ (3) is a sentence made of two clauses, Chali taaliko ‗Chali was not there‘ and ‗baakafundisha baaishile ‗the teacher(s) came‘, the former being the main clause and the latter a subordinate clause introduced by a subordinating conjunction (or subordinator), ilyo ‗when‘.

4 In examples, tones will not marked, except when tone is discussed or is relevant to a discussion.

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Note that just as sentence (3) as a whole, Chali taaliko ilyo baakafundisha baaishile ‗Chali was not there when the teacher(s) came‘, has a subject and a predicate, each clause in (3) has a subject and a predicate: In the sentence Chali taaliko ilyo baakafundisha baaishile ‗Chali was not there when the teacher(s) came‘, the subject is Chali ‗Chali‘ and the predicate is taaliko ilyo baakafundisha baaishile ‗was not there when the teacher(s) came‘; In the clause Chali taaliko ‗Chali was not there‘, the subject is Chali ‗Chali‘ and the predicate is taaliko ‗was not there‘; In the clause baakafundisha baaishile, introduced by the subordinator ilyo, the subject is baakafundisha ‗the teacher(s)‘ and the predicate is baaishile ‗came‘; Compare now the TONGA sentences in (1)-(2), on the one hand, and the BEMBA sentence in (3). In each of the TONGA sentences there is one subject and one predicate, while in the BEMBA sentence there are three subjects and three predicates. These facts show that where a sentence is made of one clause (monoclausal sentence) there is only one subject and one predicate, and when a sentence contains more than one clause (biclausal sentence, multiclausal sentence), there are more than one subject and more than one predicate, the number of subjects end the number of preedicates being equal to the number of clauses. On this account, we conclude that, while it is true than a sentence contains one or more clauses, a clause can be viewed as a sentence containg only one subject and only one predicate. Note that in a sentence, whether made of one or more clauses, the number of subjects and the number of predicates are equal. However,there are cases where the is no subject. This is the case, for example, in many imperative sentences, e.g. (LOZI/ENGLISH). (4) zamaya! ‗go-sg!‘ (= ‗go!‘ as acommand issued to one person) In such cases, in traditional grammar it is said that the subject is ‗understood‘. What this means is that all sentences have a subject but in some sentences the subject is ‗understood,, that is, it is not expressed. Following some contemporary grammatical theories, such as Government-Binding theory (GB), we would say that if the subject of a sentence is not expressed, the subject is empty (or null), or the sentence has an empty subject (or a null subject). Thus, in (4) above, the empty (or null) subject is wena ‗you-sg‘ (= singular you), just as in the English gloss (= translation) go-sg!, the empty (or null) subject is you-sg (= singular ‗you‘). On the presence and absence of subjects, there additional problems whish are not encoutered in English:. Consider the following examples5: (5) BEMBA

5 Unmarked for tone.

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a. abaana baleelwa ‗the children are fighting‘, lit. ‗children they-are-playing‘ b. baleelwa ‗they are fighting‘, lit. they-are-playing‘ (6) LUNDA a. mutoondu udi haanzhi ‗the tree is outside‘, lit. ‗tree it-is outside‘ b. udi haanzhi ‗it is outside‘ lit‘ ‗it-is outside‘ (7) TONGA a. mukaintu ulabeleka ‗ the women is working‘, lit. ‗woman she-is- working‘ b. ulabeleka ‗he/she is working‘, lit. he/she-is-working‘ From the glosses, we notice the following:

In the a-examples the verb begins with a morpheme, termed in this course ‗subject marker‘ (SM), referring to the subject noun, so that there are two corefernetial subjects (BEMBA: abaana and ba-; LUNDA: mutoondu and u-; TONGA: mukaintu and u-)

In the b-examples, while in the English sentence she is working, the

subject is a word (she), this word is rebndered in Bantu by a verbal morpheme, underlined in the following morphological analyses: BEMBA: baleelwa < ba-lee-lu-a; LUNDA: udi < u-di; TONGA: ulabeleka < u-la-belek-a.

Consider now the following tree-diagrammatic representation of the English sentence she is working: (8) S NP PredP Pron AUX VP she is working For languages like English and Bantu, in a tree like this, the NP is the subject.

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How about the Bantu (TONGA) sentence ulabeleka ‗he/she is working‘?. Since it is one word, one might suggest the following tree-diagram: (9) S NP PredP Pron AUX VP ulabelaka where the Pron will surface as verbal prefix (SM = subject marker), u-. Such an analysis is problematic since the ulabeka will always qhen a subject noun like mukaintu ‗woman is present: (10) S NP PredP N AUX VP mukaintu ulabelaka The usual solution for the structure in (10) is to say that initially the SM u- (of ulabelaka) is not there: it is the result of class agreement with the subject noun mukaintu ‗woman‘, something like this: (11)a. S NP PredP N AUX VP mukaintu -la-belak-a

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b. S NP PredP N AUX VP mukaintu ulabelaka Then, how to account for structure in (9), i.e. when there is no subject noun? The following analysis seems plusible: in ulabeleka ‗he/she is working‘, there is a noun subject but this is not expressed (it is ‗understood‘). In the theory known as Government-Binding (GB), we would say that the subject NP is empty but, whatever it is, its head is in class 1, this being the reason why the SM (u-) is in class 1 by class agreement in trees e = EMPTY): (12)a. S NP PredP N AUX VP +class1 e -la-belak-a b. S NP PredP N AUX VP +class1 e -la-belak-a ulabelaka The word ulabeleka ‗he/she is working‘ is a sentence. This this kind of one-word sentence is very common, and is normal, in Bantu. English does have one=word sentences (e.g. imperatives) but, unlike in Bantu, these are exceptions.

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UNIT 3

SYNTACTIC FUNCTIONS 3.1 INTRODUCTION The various words and individual phrases that combine to form clauses play specific ‗functions‘ or ‗roles‘ and so do clauses that combine to form sentences. In this lecture, I will deal with:

discourse functions of sentences;

functions of phrases; and

the concept of ‗head‘.

3.2 THE DISCOURSE FUNCTIONS OF THE SENTENCE From a discourse point of view, the following four types of utterances have traditionally been recognized (Quick et al. 1972 385 – 6):

statements: utterances that are primarily used to convey factual information;

questions: utterances that are primarily used to request the listener to supply some lacking information on a specific point;

commands: utterances primarily used to instruct some body to do something;

exclamations: utterances primarily used to express the speaker‘s own

feelings or emotions. Sentences that perform these discourse functions are called declarative sentences, interrogative sentences, imperative sentences and exclamative sentences, respectively. They are illustrated below: (13) Declarative sentence (statements): BEMBA: Umusumba wa Lusaka uukalamba ‗Lusaka City is big‘ KAONDE: Baayááya baaji kúpuma kábwa léélo lúkeelo ‗my elder brother beat the dog today in the morning‘ LOZI: Lubinda ulata musalaka hahulu ‗Lubinda loves the woman very much‘

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LUNDA: Hi nadiiñi na kuzata naadiileeña ciwaahi ‗when I was working I used to eat well‘ LUVALE: Lunga ukweci mwaneeyi eezanga zau ndumbwami ‗the man ‗whose child came yesterday is my brother‘ NYANJA: Ndinamuitana ndipo sanabwere (Paas 2004:318) ‗I called him/her and she did not come‘ (14) Interrogative sentence (questions) BEMBA: Uli na abaana banga? ‗how many children do you-sg have?‘ LOZI: Una ni bana babakai? ‗how many children do you-sg have?‘ TONGA: Nguni wakaunka kumunzi? ‗who-sh has gone to the village?‘ (15) Imperative sentence (commands): ENGLISH: Tell me where you went!’ (16) Exclamative sentence (exclamations): ENGLISH: a. How difficult the examination was! b. What a nice time we had! It is important to note that the four discourse functions are not always performed by sentences. For example, the exclamation in (5) is not a sentence: (17) (ENGLISH) Great! (exclamation) Likewise, if I want to order my son to come where I am I can simply say in BEMBA: (18) Kuno! (command) ‗Here!‘ accompanying this utterance with the appropriate gesture of my right hand. On the distinction between form and function Quirk et al. (1972) write:

“It is also important to distinguish between form and function. The four types of sentences, distinguished on the basis of the functions they perform (statement, question, command and exclamation) have specific formal properties. For example interrogative sentences in English have their subjects

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put after a verb (e.g. Are you alright?/ will you take this? Does he work?). Therefore a sentence which is a question is not necessarily an interrogative sentence.”

Thus, the NYANJA sentence in (19) and its ENGLISH counterpart are not interrogative sentences because they do not have the form of an interrogative sentence, while the NYANJA and ENGLISH sentences in (20) are interrogative sentences : (19) Ndikufunsa ngati unakonda nsomba kapena nyama. I am asking you-sg whether you like fish or meat. (20) (Kodi) unakonda nsomba kapena nyama ? Do you-sg like fish or meat? All sentences in (19) and (20) are questions, but the sentence in (7) is formally declarative sentence which is functionally a question. 3.3 FUNCTIONS OF PHRASES 3.3.1 Elements of sentence structure Tradiotionally, it is customary to see a sentence as comprising five units termed elements of sentencestructure: Subject (S) Verb (V) Complement (C) Object (O) Adverbial ( A).

These elements are exemplified in the following ENGLISH sentence: (21) They (S) elected (V) her (O) chairperson (C) last year (A) . Two types of object and two types of complement are distinguished: The object can be direct object (Od) or indirect object (Oi), as in: (22) a. The police (S) arrested (V) the thug (Od). b. The staff (S) reserved (V) him (Od) a surprise (Od). The two types of complement are: the subject complement (Cs) and the object complement Co, as illustrated in: (23) a. Chungu (S) was (V) the boss (Cs). b. They (S) elected (V) her (Od) chairperson (Co).

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It is important to note that there are many ways in which each element of sentence structure can be realized. The above categories (S, V, C, O, A) and subsequent analyses of sentences in (21)-(23) may be adequate for English and English-like laguages, but not for Bantu, unless Bantu one-word sentences, like ulabeleka ‗he/she is working‘, are analyzed as follows: (24) u(S)labelaka(V) But in ulabelaka, the verb (V) is not beleka but the whole of it: ulabelaka (see (12) above). It is proposed to analyze such one-word sentences as illustrated in (25): (25) (Se) ulabeleka (V) where Se = empty subject. At this stage, the status of the SM (= subject marker) is not to be shown since the SM is but one of the verbal morphemes, though it one of the categories partaking of the syntax/morphology interface; ulabeleka is both a word and a sentence. As a word, the (morphological) analysis is as follows: u-la-belek-a, in which u- is a subject marker, -la- a tense/aspect marker (TM), -belek- a radical, and –a an ending6. There is a similar problem with a sentence like she insulted him. While the structure of this sentence is that in (26), the structure of the equivalent sentence in Bantu is that in (27): (26) she (S) insulted (V) him (O) (27) Se aaliimutuka (V) Where Se stands for ‗empty subject‘ (see ulabeleka above), ‗him‘ being rendered by a verbal morpheme, an object marker (OM): (28) a-alii-mu-tuk-a, where a- = SM, -alii- = tense marker (TM), -mu- = OM, -tuk- = radical, -a = ending. 3.3.2 Subject and predicate These two terms are used in philosophy, logic and, traditionally, in grammar to refer to what is being talked about (topic or theme) in a sentence and what is said about it,

6 I do not like the term ‘final vowel’ (FV) used by some Bantuists, as the position occuopied by what they term FV is occupied by –ile, -ire, ide, etc.

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respectively. For example, in (29), below. The gun is the subject is and under the bed is the predicate: (29) The gun is under the bed. Like most notional definitions, these definitions are inadequate because they cannot apply in all cases. To illustrate this point, Crystal (1987-94) gives the following examples: (30) a. It’s raining. b. Michael asked Mary for a pen. He observes that, while it is clear to anyone who knows English that (30a) is a well-formed sentence and the grammatical subject thereof is it, It cannot possibly be the topic of the sentence. On (30b), Crystal (ibid) observes that ‗It is difficult to decide which of Michael, Mary, or the pen is the topic – or whether we have three topics‖. Despite the failure to offer an adequate universal definition of ‗subject‘ and predicate‘, speakers of a language are generally capable of identifying subjects just as, despite the failure to adequately define what the sentence is, they are generally capable of identifying sentence. It seems that the identification of subjects, predicates, sentences and other linguistic units is based both on notional and formal features of the various units. The term ‗subject‘ covers a number of distinct roles, such as the roles of agents and experiencers 3.3.3 Complement Hartmann and Stork (1972:44) have defined a complement as ―that part of verbal phrase which is required to make it a complete predicate in a sentence‖. For example (ibid): the object noun that occurs with a transitive verb (hit the ball). the noun or adjective that occurs after a copulative verb (became president or is beautiful :) the adverb in a phrase like it happened yesterday. It is important to note that complements are obligatory. Thus for the following phrases to be well-formed, they must be followed by an appropriate word or phrase and it is such a word or phrase which is called a complement: (31) a. He hit – b. He became – Complement is traditionally associated with ‗completing‘ the action or state expressed by the verb (Crystal 1985:60). Thus, in its broadest sense, a complement is any obligatory phrase other than the verb within the predicate such as the object in sentences like He greeted the boss or the adverbial in sentences like He was in the car. However, as pointed out by crystal (1985:60) ―In some approaches, the

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complement is given a more restricted definition, e.g. to refer only to the ‗completing‘ function of structures following the verb to be (or similar verbs – in such an analysis, He kicked the doctor would be subject – verb – object, whereas He is a doctor would be subject – verb – complement‖. Furthermore, a distinction is often made between

Subject complement, e.g. president and the president in He is the president or He was elected president, respectively; and

Object complement, e.g. president in They elected him president. Crystal

(ibiden) concludes his explanation by saying that ―the domain of complementation remains an unclear area in linguistic analysis‖. For example, in more recent linguistic theories, phrases other than VP (=verb phrase) may contain complement. Thus Radford (1988: 187-207) gives examples of NPs (=noun phrases) with what is considered to be complements. One of such examples is (p. 176):

(32) The student of physics with hair In this example, the PP (= prepositional phrase) of physics is a complement of student while the PP with long hair is not a complement because, unlike with long hair, of physics is necessary in that it ―tells what it is that the individual concerned studies‖. 3.3.4 Object The term object refers to the complement of verb other than to be (or similar verbs such as to become). An object is a constituent that can be given as an answer to a question beginning with what or who/whom, where ‗what?‘ or ‗whom?‘ is not a subject. Examples: (33) a. He kicked the ball b. What did he kick? – The ball (= object) (34) a. He kicked his boss. b. Who did he kick? – His boss (= object) (35) a. She gave her husband a glass of wine. b. What did she give her husband? – A glass of wine (=object) c. Who did she give a glass of wine? – Her husband (=object) The objects in (33b), (34b) and (35b) are examples of direct object while the object in (35c) is an indirect object. Traditionally, the direct object is defined as the person or thing which suffers the action of one verb in the sentence and the indirect object as ‖ the person of thing for which or on whose behalf an action is carried out‖ (Hartmann and Stork 1972:155).

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Consider the following sentences: (36) a. I read the whole book. b. I read the whole night. These two sentences have the same structure: I read is in both cases followed by an NP (the whole book in (36a) and the whole night in (36b). However the ‗what/who test‘ proposed earlier reveals that the whole book is an object while the whole night is not an object: (37) a. I read the whole book. b. I read the whole night. c. What did I read? – The whole book (=object) - *The whole night. (The asteristic, or star, *, means, that the whole night cannot be an answer to the question in (37c). The concept of object and that of transitivity are related. A transitive verb is a verb with a direct object and an intransitive verb is a verb which can make sense without an object. Note, however that (a) some verbs can be used either transitively (i.e. with a direct object) or intransitively (i.e. without an object). (38) a. He drinks on Saturdays. (intransitive) b. He drinks only wine. (transitive) Verbs that must be used transitively include, among many others, to hit, to fill, to tear; those that are always used intransitively include to sleep, to arrive, to come, etc. I now wish to present what is meant by cognate object. A cognate object is a word which is a direct object and is etymologically (i.e. historically) and semantically (i.e. in meaning) related to the verb of which it is the object, e.g. song in to sing a song (Hartmann and Stork 1972:40), or utulo ‗sleep‘ BEMBA ukulaala utulo, meaning literally, ‗to sleep a sleep‘. To wind up this section, consider the following examples (objects/complements are underlined): (39) a. Lee is old (=subject complement) b. Lee grew old (=subject complement) c. Lee wants a bike (= direct object) d. Lee gave Bob a bike (= indirect object + direct object) e. Lee made Bob happier (= direct object, object complement). f. Lee slept. (no object, no complement) Verbs like those in (26a-b) with a subject complement are called intensive verbs and all the others are called extensive verbs (Quirk et al. 1973:14). The so-called intensive verbs are more often termed copular verbs or just copulas.

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Extensive verbs are of four types: (a) monotransitive verbs, verbs with a direct object; (b) ditransitive verbs, verbs with a direct object and an indirect object; (c) complex transitive verbs, verbs with an object complement; and (d) intransitive verbs, verbs with no object and no complement The verbs in (a-c) being intransitive and those in (d) being intransitive, tree-diagrammatically, verbs ore organized as follows: Verb Intensive Extensive (copular) Monotransitive Ditransitive Complex transitive Intransitive Examples are given in Table 2 one the next page. BEMBA: Básalílé Chándá úkubá Kalémba Mukalmbá ‗they elected him Secretary General‘ NJANYA: Anásankha Chanda kukhâla mfûmu ‗they elected Chanda chief‘

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Table 1: Syntactic categories of verbs and examples from English SYNTACTIC CATEGORIES EXAMPLES A. Intensive verbs be, as in She is a

teacher; they are trustful grow, as in The tree has

grown taller become, as in I became

suspicious B. Extensive verb

1. Monotransive verb 2. Ditransitive verb 3. Complex transitive verb 4. Intransitive

insult, as in She insulted the neighbours.

tell, as in The Secretary

told him everything. teach, as in He taught

me theoretical synmtax. make, as in Geoffrey

made me angry. elect, appoint, as in The

Board of Directors elected/appointed Geoffrey Chairman of the Ad Hoc Committee.

walk, fall, as in the child

walked/fell there

3.3.5 Adverbial 3.3.5.1 Definition and adverbial functions As pointed out by Leech et al. (1982:76), ―Adverbials fill out the clause by adding extra circumstancial information of various kinds‖. The information given by Leech et al. 1982:77) is presented in Table 2 on the next page:

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Table 2: Identification of adverbials with exemples from English

ADVERBIAL TYPE ELICITING QUESTION EXAMPLE Place where? on a box Direction where to/from? to/from Kitwe Time-when when? on Sunday Duration how long? for a month Frequency how often? once a week

every day

Manner how? in what manner? quickly with confidence

Agency by whom? by a tall dark stranger Goal to/for whom? to Mary

for himself

Reason why? because of her mother Condition In what circumstances? if you do the dishes Degree how much? How far? completely

to some extent

Sentence adverbial

NO QUESTION (expresses attitude, connection, etc)

in fact, consequently

It is important to note that what is termed goal by Leach et al.inthe above table is generally referred to as indirect object. Table 3: Examples from Nyanja7

ADVERBIAL TYPE EXAMPLES FROM NJANJA Place pamtenje

‗on the roof‘ Direction Tudzápita kuKitwe ‗we shall go to Kitwe

Tunacokela kuKitwe ‗we have come from Kiwe‘ Time-when Ndidzábwela mumazûlo ‗I shall come in the evening‘ Duration Anágwira ncîto mwézi umôdzi ‗he/she/they worked

for a month‘ Frequency Amabwêre kamôdzi mumwêzi ‗he/she comes once

a month‘ Manner Mwána wânga álemba bwino ‗my child writes

well‘ Bwêra mwamsânga! ‗come-sg quickly! Análi kúdya pa ônopa ôno ‗he/she/they ate

/7 With tones marked.

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slowly‘ Agency Análumidwa ndí gâlu ‗he/she was bitten by a dog‘;

they were bitten by a dog‘ goal anápatsá njôbvu ndalâma ‗he/she/they gave Njobvu

money Reason Phíri anâfa cifúkwa cá moŵa ‗Phiri died because of

beer‘ Condition Ndidzákupatsa ngaati ndífuna ‗I will give you-sg if I

want‘ Degree Análi kúdya pa ôno ‗he/she/they ate little‘

Análi kúdya pa ôno ôno ‗he/she/they ate very little‘

Sentence Adverbial

Kukúuza zôôna8, palîbe cimêne ndâcita mtáuni ‗To tell you-sg the truth, there is nothing I have done in town‘

Table 4: Examples from Bemba9

ADVERBIAL TYPE EXAMPLES FROM NJANJA Place pamutenge

‗on the roof‘ Direction Tukaya kuKitwe ‗we shall go to Kitwe

Tufúmíné kúKitwe ‗we have come from Kiwe‘ Time-when Ndééísá icúngúló ‗I shall come in the evening‘ Duration Áabómbélé úmweshí úmó ‗he/she worked for a

month‘ Frequency Éésa límó múmweshi ‗he/she comes once a

month‘ Éésa umúkú úmó múmweshi ‗he/she comes

once a month‘ Manner Úmwaná wándí álalémbá bwíno ‗my child writes

well‘ Béése bwangu ‗they should come quickly‘ Béése bwangubwángu ‗they should come very

quickly‘ Agency Náasúmwá/náabámúsúmá kúmbwa ‗he/she has

been bitten by a dog‘ Goal Áapéélé Njóbvu índaláma ‗he/she gave Njobvu

money Reason Tabááishílé pantu tabáakwété indalámá sháá

kunííníná ‗they did not come because they had no transport money‘

Condition Nkakupéélá nga ndééfwáyá ‗I will give you-sg if I want‘

Degree Áalíílé paanóno ‗he/she ate little‘

8 Kukámba zôôna, … = ‗To tell the truth‘; Kukúuzáni zôôna, … = ‗To tell you-pl the truth, …. 9 Marked for tone.

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Sentence Adverbial

Nacíiné báalííshílé ‗(and) indeed, they came‘

Some examples in KAONDE (marked for tone): (27) a. (REASON) Ukeeba kuya mambó wáázhingila ‗he/she wants to go because he/she is angry‘ b. (TIME-WHEN) Baayááya baaji kúpuma kábwa léélo lúkeelo /my elder brother beat the dog today in the morning‘ c. (AGENCY) Kábwa baaji kumúpuma kubaayááya léélo lúkeelo ‗the dog was beaten by my elder brother today in the morning‘ 3.3.5.2 Units realizing adverbial functions Quirk and Greenbaum 1973:207) have listed the realizations of the functions of the adverbial in English as follows: Table 5: Units realizing adverbial functions in English

REALIZATION EXAMPLES Adverb phrases, i.e. phrases with advebs as head or sole realization

Peter was playing as well as he could.

We‘ll stay there Noun phrases (less common) Peter was playing last week. Prepositional phrases Peter was playing with great skill Finite verb clauses Peter was playing although he was

very tired. Non-finite verb clauses, in which the verbs is : (a) infinitive (b) –ing participle (c) –ed participle

Peter was playing to win. Wishing to encourage him, they

praise Tom. If urged by our friends, we‘ll stay.

Verbless clauses Peter was playing, unaware of the danger.

What is a finite verb and what is a nonfinite verb? In English finite verbs are verb forms other than infinitives (e.g. ‗(to) talk‘), other

than the –ing participles (e.g. ‗talking‘) and other than the –ed participles (e.g. ‗talked‘ in ‗I have talked‘): infinitives, -ing participles and –ed participles are non-finite verb forms in English. The distinction between finite and nonfinite verbs is based at least on tense. Thus Hartmann and stock (1972: 85, 153) define finite verb as ―A form of the verb which is limited in time by a tense and also, in many

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languages, shows agreement with person and number‖ and nonfinite verb as ―A form of the verb which is not limited by person, number or time‖.

In Bantu langauges, all tensed verb forms are finite verb foms and in most of

them, infinitives are the only nonfinite verb forms Let us compare the folwing data from Bantu and their English glosses in Table 6: Table 6: Some data from Bantu and their English glosses

DATA FROM BANTU10 ENGLISH GLOSS Language Data

Bemba mu anda in/into the/a house Kaonde Munzubo Lozi Mwandu Nyanja Munyumba Nyanja Pamtenje on the/a roof Lunda Hamutoondo on the/a tree Tonga Amuntu on the/a person Kaonde Baayááya baaji kúpuma kábwa

léélo lúkeelo ‗My elder brother beat the dog today in the morning‘

Bemba Beeshile uluceelo. They came in the morining.

Bemba Nkwata nga naakupeela If I had, I would give you. Tonga ku anda to the/house Mbukushu11 Pamuve on the floor Mbukushu12 Pakuyendaghura nayimono I saw it while I went

round. We notice the following: ‘in/into the/a house’, ‘on the/a roof’, on the/a tree’, ‘on the/a person’, to/a

house, ‘on the floor’ These are prepositional phrases, whose structure is (PP = prepostional phrase; P = preposition; NP = noun phrase; Det =determiner; Art = article; N = noun) : PP P NP Det N Art 10 Unmarked for tone. 11 Fisch (1998). 12 Fisch (1998).

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For instance, in/into the/a house is structured thus: PP P NP Det N Art in/into the/a house All the above prepositional phrases are rendered in the table by locative nouns. ‗Locative nouns‘ in Bantu are single nouns whose frist morpheme is termed a locative prefix. In the above locative nouns the locative prefixes are as follows:

mu- in BEMBA mu anda, KAONDE munzubo, in NYANJA munyumba mwa- in LOZI mwandu pa- in NYANJA pamtenje ha- in LUNDA hamutoondo a- in TONGA amuntu ku- in TONGA ku anda pa- in MBUSHU pamuve

‘today’, ‘in the morning’

While the English adverb today is also rendered by an adverb, leelo, in KAONDE, the PP (= prepositional phrase; see above) in the morning is translated by lukeelo, a noun. Likewise, in the morning is expressed by a noun in BENBA, uluceelo. ‘If I had’

While ‗If I had‘ is an adverbial clause introduced by the subordinating conjunction ‗if‘‘, the whole of it is rendered in Bemba, in the above sentence, by a single word: a verb form. ‘while I went round’.

The English adverbial clause, introduced by a subordinating conjunction, while, is translated in MBUKUSHU by a locative infinitive, i.e. an infinitive to which a locative prefix is attached: pa-kuyendaghera, in which pa- is a locative prefix and the rest an infinitive (‗to go round‘). The conclusion is twofold:

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(a) The same adverbial function is not always.necessarily realized by the same means in all languages; and (b) The above data display obvious similarilities among the languages other than English. This is no surprise since all these languages are Bantu languages; they are cognate languages (= they developed from the same parent/ancestor language. 3.3.5.3 Classes of adverbials,adjuncts disjuncts, conjuncts Quirk and Greenbaum (1973:207-.) have defined adjuncts, disjuncts and conjuncts as follows: ―Adverbials may be integrated to some extent into the structure of the clause of they may be peripheral to it. If integrated, they are termed ADJUNCTS. If integrated, they are termed DISJUNCTS and CONJUNCTS, the distinction between the two being that conjuncts have primarily a connective function.‖ An adverbial is integrated to some extent in clause structure if it is affected by such clausal processes as negation and interrogation. For example, it is an adjunct if either it cannot appear initially in a negative declarative clause: - *Quickly they didn’t leave for home. (The asterisk (= star) here means that the expression is not acceptable) or it can be the focus of a question or of clause negation: - Does he write to his parents because he wants to (or does he write to them because he needs money)? -We didn’t go to Chicago on Monday (but we did go there on Tuesday) In contrast, a disjunct or a conjunct is not affected by either of these clausal processes. For example, the disjunct to my regret can appear initially in a negative declarative clause and cannot be the focus of a question or of clause negation: (40) a. To my regret, they didn’t leave for home b. *We didn’t go to Chicago to my regret, (but we did go there to my relief.) (Recall: the asterisk (= star) means that the expression is not acceptable.) Items can belong to more than one class. For example, naturally is an adjunct in (41) They aren’t walking naturally (‗in a natural manner‘)

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and a disjunct in. (42) Naturally, they are walking (‗of course‘) (Quirk and Greenbaum 1973:207-8) As pointed out above, conjuncts differ from disjuncts in that they have a connective meaning. In the examples in (43) and (44), below, the dots (……) stand for a clause: (43) Examples of disjuncts Seriousely, …. (e.g. seriously, did you mean it?) Briefly, …. Very frankly, ….. Even more important, …… Most important, ….. To our regret, …… Surprisingly, ……

(44) Examples of conjuncts you are wrong for two reasons. First, …… Secondly, …… We went to the playhouse and to a nightclub. All in all, we‘ve had a very good

time. However, …… Furthermore, …… For example, …… Likewise, …… By the way, …… Consequently, …… Alternatively, …… Anyway, …… As a result, ……

Notice that conjuncts connect what is being said to what has been said previously. 3.3.4 The head Crystal (1991:163) has defined ‗head‘ as ‗A term used in the grammatical description of some types of phrase (endocentric phrases) to refer to the central element which is distributionally equivalent to the phrase as a whole‖, adding that ―such constructions are sometimes referred to‘ as headed (as opposed to non-headed)‖. An endocentric construction is a construction which functions syntactically in the same way as one of its conststituents. Thus noun phrase behaves syntactically as

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the noun, the verb phrase behave syntactically like the verb and the adjective phrase behaves syntactically like the adjective, as illustrated in (3): (45) (NP) a. S NP VP D N V AdjP Adj PP The students are happy about the decision b. S NP VP N V AdjP Adj students are happy We see that a noun (students) can play the same role as an NP (the students) and an adjective (happy) can play the same role as an AdjP (happy about the decision). Therefore, NPs and AdPs are endocentric constructions. Here is an example from BEMBA: (46) Abaaice babili baaishile na amabuuku. ‗Two children came with books‘

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This sentence may be analyzed as follows: S NP VP N Det V PP P NP Num N Abaaice babili bakeesa na amabuuku ‗Children two will come with books‘ (‗Two children came with books‘) In the above example, the NP (= noun phrase) Abaaice babili is endocentric because just as Abaaice babili is a subject, so can Abaaice, on its own, and babili, on its own, be a subject (Abaaice bakeesa na amabuuku ‗children will come with books‘; Babili baaishile na amabuuku ‗Two will come with books‘). Likewise, the VP (= verb phrase) bakeesa na amabuuku is endocentric because Abaaice babili bakeesa (= with the original VP minus na amabuuku is a correct sentence. ‗Exocentric‘ is the opposite of ‗endocentric: a construction is exocentric if no word in the construction can play the role play by the construction as a wholle in the sentence of which this is a constituent. Thus the phrase with a hat in (34a), below is exocentric because neither with nor a or hat can play the role palyed by with a hat in it:. (47) a. The guy with a hat is crazy. b. * The guy with is crazy. c. *The guy a is crazy. d. *The guy hat is crazy. Although the concept of endocentricity is somehow related to that of syntactic headness, they do not always coincide. For instance the head of a PP (= prepositiona phrase is a P (= preposition) albeit all PPs, as far as I know, are excocentric since no member of a PP can function syntactically like a PP, as shown in the following example: (48) a. The Chairman wrote on the board. (= PP) b. *The Chairman wrote on. c. *The Chairman wrote the. d. *The Chairman wrote board.

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(* = unacceptable) a‘ S NP VP D N V PP P NP Art D N Art The teacher wrote on the board b‘ * S (* = unacceptable) NP VP D N V *PP P Art The teacher wrote on c‘ * S (* = unacceptable) NP VP D N V * PP D Art Art The teacher wrote the * S

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d‘ NP VP D N V * PP NP Art N The teacher wrote board

UNIT 4

PARTS OF SPEECH 4.1 INTRODUCTION The first thing to do before undertaking a morphoogical or a syntactic description of a language is to establish the full list of parts of speech. The term parts of speech is a traditional term used to refer to the various types of words defined, traditionally, in notional terms (e.g. a noun is, Traditional Grammar, defined as a word denoting a person, a thing or a concept) or, in modern linguistics, in structural terms, i.e. on the basis of their morphological or/and syntactic properties. In modern linguistics, parts of speech are also called word classes.

In this course, the terminology used in Module 4a (The Structure of Bantu Languages) will be used. 4.2 UNIVERSAL AND NONUNIVERSAL PARTS OF SPEECH Some parts of speech are universal, in that they are found in all human natural languages while others are not universal. Universal parts of speech include, among others:

Nouns; Verbs; and Interjections.

Parts of speech which are not are not universal include, among others, articles.

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4.3 PARTS OF SPEECH IN BANTU 4.3.1 List In Module 4a (The Structure of Bantu Languages), the list of parts of speech in Bantu was given as follows:

1. noun 2. adjective 3. personal pronoun 4. demonstrative 5. numeral 6. genitive pronoun 7. possessive 8. indefinite pronoun 9. relative pronoun 10. preposition 11. conjunction 12. adverb 13. interjection 14. onomatopoeia 15. ideophone 16. verb 17. particle

The above list is not complete but is close to 100 percent. Most notable among the parts of speech not included in the above list is the pronoun that has come to be known as logophoric pronoun. This is a rare word category but is important to Zambia on the account of the fact that it is found in some Zambian languages, for example LUNDA and LUVALE. Logophoric pronouns At the entry LOGOPHORIC, The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, Vol.4, 1994, 2303)13 writes:

The term „logophoric‟ („returning to the discourse‟) was created by Claude Hagège (1974) [„Les pronoms logophoriques‟, BSL 69: 287-310] to describe a type of pronouns found in a number of West African languages. He defined it as follows (my translation): „The term “logophoric” is here proposed to designate a particular category of anaphoric pronouns, personal and possessive, which refer to the author of a discourse or to a participant whose thoughts are reported‟ (Hagène 1974: 287).

Logophoric pronouns are pronouns translating the complementizer that introducing a clause that is a direct object in such sentences as: 13 Asher R.E. & J.M.Y. Simpson (eds), The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, Vol.4, 1994, 2303

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I told you that I would come tomorrow. I think that she was right.

In (49) we give examples from LUVALE (the logophoric pronouns are underlined)14: (49) (LUVALE)

a. Ngwakulwezanga ngwáami ngunakukóola I-told-you(sg) that I-am-sick

‗I told yoy that I am sick‘

b. Wangulwezanga ngwóove unakukóola You(sg)-told-me that you(sg)-are-sick

‗You(sg) told me that you)sg0 are sick‘

c. Twakulwezanga ngwéetu tunakukóola We-told-you(sg) that we-are-sick

‗We told you(sg) that we are sick‘

d. Ngwézhíiva ngwáami uli na zhingóolo I-know that you(sg)-are-with-strength

‗I know that you(sg0 are strong‘ We see that the word for that in that-clauses varries accoring to the subject of the main clause:

In (49a) and (49d), where the subject is the 1st person singular, the word for that is ngwáami;

In (49b), where the subject is the 2nd person singular, the word for that is

ngwóove; and In (49c), where the subject is the 1st person plural, the word for that is

ngwéetu; The English word that in the glosses (= translations) is a subordinating conjunction, often termed complementizer while its translations in LUVALE are pronouns called logophoric pronouns, following Claude Hagège who coined the term in French (pronoms logophoriques). Verbs of saying, verbs of believing, verbs of knowing etc that are used in main with complement that-clauses, like in the above examples are referred to as logophoric verbs.

14 These examples are marked for tone.

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4.3.2 inflected and uninflected parts of speech The parts of speech that occur in Bantu are, like in other languages, of two types, namely:

(a) inflected parts of speech; and (b) uninflected parts of speech Inflectional categories in Bantu include, among aother:

(a) inflection of nouns for number (singualar/plural) within the Bantu class system; (b) concordial inflection (e,g an noun/adjective agreement; subject/verb agreement); (NOTE: concordial = relating to agreement) (c) verb: tense inflection, aspect inflection etc. The main parts of speech in Bantu as are given in the table below. Table 7: Inflected and uninflected parts of speech

INFLECTED PARTS OF SPEECH UNINFLECTED PARTS OF SPEECH Nouns Prepositions Adjectives Adverbs Personal pronouns Conjunctions Genitive pronouns Onomatopeias Possessives Ideophones Demonstratives ‗Particles‘ Some numerals Some numerals Some indefinite determiners and pronouns

Some indefinite determiners and pronouns

Some interrogative words Some interrogative words Some enclitics Some enclitics Logoric pronouns interjections

4.4 THE TERM ‘ADJECTIVE’ IN TRADITIONAL GRAMMAR Traditional Grammar distinguishes several types of adjectives, for example:

Qualifying adjectives: these are the words simply referred to as adjectives in English ;

The other adjectives are opposed to pronouns, as illustrated in the following

table:

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Table 8: The term ‗adjective‘ in Traditional Grammar

ADJECTIVE PRONOUN

Qualifying adjective, e.g. he was nervous; a blue shirt

Demonstrative adjective: this is a demonstrative determining a noun, e.g. this in this book is expensive

Demonstrative pronoun; : this is a demonstrative not determining a noun, as in this is expensive

Possessive adjective: this is a possessive of the series my, our, our, her etc, I‘e‘ a possessive determing a noun

Possessive pronoun; : this is a possessive of the series mine, yours, hers, ours etc, i.e. when the possesse is not expressed

In this course, what is called qualifying adjective in Table 7 will simply called adjective, while in all other cases where the term ‗adjective‘ is used in Traditional Grammar, the terminology shall be as follows: Table 9: Some terminological differences

TRADITIONAL GRAMMAR IN THIS COURSE Qualifying adjective Adjective Demonstrative adjective Demonstrative pronoun

Demonstrative determiner Demonstrative pronoun

Possessive adjective Possessive pronoun

Demonstrative determiner Possessive pronoun

Finally note that the word translating the English preposition of in such prepositional phrases as the child of Banda or the children of Banda (e.g. mwana wa Banda and bana ba Banda, respectively, in Nyanja) are not possessives. In this course there be termed genitive pronouns.

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UNIT 5

CLAUSE TYPES AND SENTENCE TYPES 5.1 CLAUSE TYPES Clauses are categorized in many ways, principally:

In relation to the sentence; and

According to their functions. 5.1.1 Clauses types in relation to the concept of sentence The main types of clauses defined in relation to the sentence are:

The independent clause: a clause constituting a sentence; The dependent, or subordinate, clause: a clause structurally dependent upon

another (termed main clause); and

The main clause: the clause upon which another clause (dependent/ subordinate clause) depends structurally.

Below are some examples: (50) BEMBA: a. Independent Umwana aleelila. ‗The chid is crying.

b. Main and dependent Ninkweba ati ndeeisa. ‗I have told you-sg that I will come.‘ (Ninkweba = main; ndeeisa = dependent, or subordinate)

(51) KAONDE: a. Independent Umwana aleelila.’

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‗The chid is crying.

c. Main and dependent Ninkweba ati ndeeisa. ‗I have told you-sg that I will come.‘ (Ninkweba

5.2 SENTENCE TYPES This section classifies sentences accrding to: Their discourse functions; and Their complexity.

5.2.1 Clauses/sentence types according to their discourse functions The classification of sentences according to their functions was carried in section 3.2, where four (4) types of sentences were distinguished:

Declarative sentence; Interrogative sentences;

Exclamatory sentences; and

Imperative sentences.

Their functions are as follows (http://www.quia.com/quiz/106467.html ) :

The declarative sentence makes a statement; The interrogative sentence asks a question;

The exclamatory sentence is a statement that shows strong emotion; and

The imperative sentence gives a command.

However, as was shown in 3.2, the functions ‗making a statement‘, ‗asking a question‘, ‗showing strong emotion‘ and ‗giving a command are not always perfomed by sentences see examples (9) and (10) above). On the other hand, not all sentences expressing a question are interrogative sentences (see examples (11) and (12) above. Indeed, as was also pointed out in 3.2, it is important to distinguish between form and function.

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5.2.2 Classification of sentences according to their complexity According their structure and complexity, three (3) types of sentences are distinguihed, as follows (http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/573/02/) :

Simple sentence: A sentence with one independent clause and no dependent clauses.

Compound Sentence: A sentence with multiple independent clauses but no dependent clauses.

Complex Sentence: A sentence with one independent clause and at least one dependent clause; and

Complex-Compound Sentence: A sentence with multiple independent

clauses and at least one dependent clause.

The above definitions have been taken from the following text downloded from the Internet: ―Sentence Types Structurally, English sentences can be classified four different ways, though there are endless constructions of each. The classifications are based on the number of independent and dependant clauses a sentence contains. An independent clause forms a complete sentence on its own, while a dependent clause needs another clause to make a complete sentence. By learning these types, writers can add complexity and variation to their sentences.

Simple sentence: A sentence with one independent clause and no dependent clauses.

My aunt enjoyed taking the hayride with you.

China's Han Dynasty marked an official recognition of Confucianism.

Compound Sentence: A sentence with multiple independent clauses but no dependent clauses.

The clown frightened the little girl, and she ran off screaming when she saw it.

The Freedom Riders departed on May 4, 1961, and they were determined to

travel through many southern states.

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Complex Sentence: A sentence with one independent clause and at least one dependent clause.

After Mary added up all the sales, she discovered that the lemonade stand

was 32 cents short

While all of his paintings are fascinating, Hieronymus Bosch's triptychs, full of

mayhem and madness, are the real highlight of his art.

Complex-Compound Sentence: A sentence with multiple independent clauses and at least one dependent clause.

With her reputation on the line, Peggy played against a fierce opponent at the

Scrabble competition, and overcoming nerve-racking competition, she won

the game with one well-placed word.

Catch-22 is widely regarded as Joseph Heller's best novel, and because Heller served in World War II, which the novel satirizes, the zany but savage wit of the novel packs an extra punch.‖

(http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/573/02/ ) According to the above definitions and examples, it is clear that:

a compound sentence is a sentence made of two or more coordinated clauses;

a complex sentence is a sentence chacaerized by subordination, e.g. where there is an adverbial clause or a that-clause as in I told you that the test has been cancelled; and

in a complex-compound sentence there is a combination of coordination and

subordination. 5.2.3 Simple sentences in Bantu As stated above, a simple sentence is made of one and only one clause which is an

independent clause. Below are examples from various Bantu languages: (52) LUNDA

a. Nidi mwitála

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‗I am in the house‘ b. Mutóóndú udi haánzhi ‗the tree is outside‘ (mutóondu ‗tree) c. Káwá udi haánzhi ‗the dog is outside‘ (káwa ‗dog)

(53) SWAHILI (Wilson 1985)

a. (Ni) lazima uende sasa ‗you-sg must go now‘ b. Mahali penyewe panafaa ‗the place itself is suitable‘

(54) NKORE (a bantu language spoken in Uganda)

a. Abantú nibaijá kuryá enyama ‗(the) people will eat meat‘ b. Émbwa yaarebuká omunyu ‗the dog was seen in the bush‘ c. Enju eri háríya ‗the house is there‘ d. Abantu baí mukyaro ‗(the) people are in the village‘ (ekyaro ‗village‘)

e. Ninkóra vs nyowé ninkóra ‗I am working‘ vs ‗I am working‘ f. Nibakóra vs bó nibakóra ‗they are working‘ vs ‗they are working‘

(55) UMBUNDU (Schadeberg 1990):

a. Ongevé yáméla ‗the hippo came closer‘ b. Ndasangá óngevé ‗I met a hippo‘

(56) TONGA15 a. Bailya nkuku ‗they have eaten the chicken‘, lit. they have eaten it the chichen‘

15 Unmarked for tone.

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b. Uyandanzi? ‗what do you-sg want?‘

(57) BEMBA a. Baakafúndisha tabalaaísa na nômba

‗the teacher has not yet come up to now‘/ ‗the teachers have not yeat come up to now‘

b. Naacímumóná úlucéélo na munónko ‗I saw him/her with your brother‘

(58) NYANJA16 a. Ndidzáphunzitza ‗I will teach‘ b. Ndidzáphunzitza ‗I will teach today c. Dulani nyama ndi mpeni ‗cut-pl the meat with a knife‘

(59) LOZI

a. Mutaféla u olá li ólo ‗Mutafela is writing a letter‘ b. Mutaféla wezâ i? ‗What is Mutafela doing?‘

(60) KAONDE

a. Mwáaná waábikaa méema mumpúki ‗The child has put water in the/a pot‘ b. Nááile kumzhi ‗I went to the village‘ c. Júuba jaasáama ‗The sun is bright‘

(61) LUVALE

b. Válí na kuteta nyama ‗They are cutting the meat‘ b. Vanalímí lyéhi

16 Unmarked for tone.

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‗They have already cultivated‘

Recall from Unit 2 that a sentence may be made of a single, where ulabeleka ‗he/she is working‘ (TONGA) was given as an example. 5.2.4 Compound sentences As stated above, a compound sentence is a sentence made of two or more coordinated sentences. Consider the following sentences from English: (62) a. Banda and Mwila are not good. Banda and Mwila are b. It was a Sunday morning and it was very cold. Both sentences contain a coordinator, and, both only (62a) is a compound sentence: it contained two coordinated clauses, It was a Sunday morning and it was very cold. Sentence (62a) is a simple sentence whose subject a compound phrase : it is made of two coordinated NPs (=noun phrases, in this case two coordinated Ns (= nouns). In English, there are three major coorinators: and, but and or. Likewise, in Bantu there are three major coorinators; the equivalents of the three English coordinators and, but and or. The elements coordinated are termed conjuncts or, sometimes, coordinands. Where there only two conjuncts, there is binary coordination and if there are more than two conjuncts, there is multiple coordination. It is important to note that conjuncts are not always, or necessarily linked. In other words, there maight be no coordinator at all, in which case the kind of coordination is termed asyndetic coordination and the construction is called asyndetic construction or asyndeton. Where there is a coordinator, the kind of coordination is termed syndetic coordination and the construction is called syndetic construction or asyndeton. Thus, the famous Latin quotation from Julius Ceasar Veni, vidi, vici ‗I came, saw, won‘ is an asyndeton (asyndetic sentence). One important feature and-coordination in Bantu is that in many Bantu languages there is one coordinator used only when conjuncts are not clauses, and a different one when conjuncts are clauses. Another important feature feature is that when two VPs (verb phrases) with the same subject are coordinated by and in English, in many Bantu the word for ‗and‘ is

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positioned after the the verb of the second VP and followed by the infinitive of the same verb, as illustrated in the BEMBA sentence in (63) (the word for ‗and is underlined): (63) Aaingila aaikala na ukwikala. ‗He/She entered and sat down‘, lit. ‗He/She enteted sat and to sit.‘ Note the sentence in (63) may be replaced with: (64) a. Aaingila na ukwikala aaikala. Lit. ‗He/She entered and to sit he/she sat.‘ b. Aaingila na ukwikala. Lit. ‗He/She entered and to sit.‘ Consider the following compound sentences from KAONDE17: (65) a. Waatangilenga búúku, múkwabó waanembelenga nkaláta. ‗He/She was reading a book and his/her friend was wriring a letter‘ In this sentence, and is not rendered by any coordinator: instead of this, there is a comma. Our informant was emphatics that this was the only way the English sentence ‗He/She was reading a book and his/her friend was wriring a letter‘ could be translated in KAONDE, while in the translation of ‗Kapiji insulted Banda and Mutafela heard‘, the two conjuncts were linked by a coordinator, nee: (66) K‘apijí waatukile Banda18 5.2.5 Complex sentences

A complex sentence is a sentence containing an independent, or mai, clause and at least one dependent, i.e. subordinate clause. (65) KAONDE a. Mbeena kúkeba ába baaishílé keesha ‗I want those who came yesterday‘ b Muntu yéé naamwene keesha waáfwa ‗The person whom I saw yesterday is dead‘

17 Data from Mr. Kelvin Mambwe. 18 Phonetically [b

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UNIT 6

NOTES ON SOME THEORIES 6.1 GENERATIVE GRAMMAR (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_grammar)

In theoretical linguistics, a generative grammar refers to a particular approach to the study of syntax. A generative grammar of a language attempts to give a set of rules that will correctly predict which combinations of words will form grammatical sentences. In most approaches to generative grammar, the rules will also predict the morphology of a sentence.[citation needed] Generative grammar arguably originates in the work of Noam Chomsky, beginning in the late 1950s. However, Chomsky has said that the first generative grammar in the modern sense was Panini's Sanskrit grammar.[1] Chomsky also acknowledges other historical antecedents.[2]

Early versions of Chomsky's theory were called transformational grammar, and this term is still used as a general term that includes his subsequent theories. There are a number of competing versions of generative grammar currently practiced within linguistics. Chomsky's current theory is known as the Minimalist program. Other prominent theories include or have included dependency grammar, head-driven phrase structure grammar, lexical functional grammar, categorial grammar, relational grammar, link grammar, and tree-adjoining grammar.[citation needed]

Chomsky has argued that many of the properties of a generative grammar arise from an "innate" universal grammar. Proponents of generative grammar have argued that most grammar is not the result of communicative function and is not simply learned from the environment (see the poverty of the stimulus argument). In this respect, generative grammar takes a point of view different from cognitive grammar, functional, and behaviorist theories.[citation needed]

Most versions of generative grammar characterize sentences as either grammatically correct (also known as well formed) or not. The rules of a generative grammar typically function as an algorithm to predict grammaticality as a discrete (yes-or-no) result. In this respect, it differs from stochastic grammar, which considers grammaticality as a probabilistic variable. However, some work in generative grammar (e.g. recent work by Joan Bresnan) uses stochastic versions of optimality theory.[citation needed]

Historical development of models of transformational grammar Main article: Transformational grammar Chomsky, in an award acceptance speech delivered in India in 2001, claimed "The first generative grammar in the modern sense was Panini's grammar".This work, called the Ashtadhyayi, was composed in 6th century BC.

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Generative grammar has been under development since the late 1950s, and has undergone many changes in the types of rules and representations that are used to predict grammaticality. In tracing the historical development of ideas within generative grammar, it is useful to refer to various stages in the development of the theory.

Standard Theory (1957–1965)

The so-called Standard Theory corresponds to the original model of generative grammar laid out in Chomsky (1965).

A core aspect of Standard Theory is a distinction between two different representations of a sentence, called Deep structure and Surface structure. The two representations are linked to each other by transformational grammar.

Extended Standard Theory (1965–1973)

The so-called Extended Standard Theory was formulated in the late 1960s to early 1970s. Features are:

syntactic constraints

generalized phrase structures (X-bar theory)

Revised Extended Standard Theory (1973–1976)

The so-called Revised Extended Standard Theory was formulated between 1973 and 1976. It contains

restrictions upon X-bar theory (Jackendoff (1977)).

assumption of the COMP position.

Move α

Relational grammar (ca. 1975–1990) Main article: Relational grammar An alternative model of syntax based on the idea that notions like Subject, Direct Object, and Indirect Object play a primary role in grammar.

Government and binding/Principles and parameters theory (1981–1990) Main article: Government and binding Chomsky's Lectures on Government and Binding (1981) and Barriers (1986).

Minimalist Program (1990–present) Context-free grammars Generative grammars can be described and compared with the aid of the Chomsky hierarchy proposed by Noam Chomsky in the 1950s. This sets out a series of types of formal grammars with increasing expressive power. Among the simplest types are

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the regular grammars (type 3); Chomsky claims that regular grammars are not adequate as models for human language, because all human languages allow the center-embedding of strings within strings.

At a higher level of complexity are the context-free grammars (type 2). The derivation of a sentence by a grammar can be depicted as a derivation tree. Linguists working in generative grammar often view such derivation trees as a primary object of study. According to this view, a sentence is not merely a string of words, but rather a tree with subordinate and superordinate branches connected at nodes.

Essentially, the tree model works something like this example, in which S is a sentence, D is a determiner, N a noun, V a verb, NP a noun phrase and VP a verb phrase:

The resulting sentence could be The dog ate the bone. Such a tree diagram is also called a phrase marker. They can be represented more conveniently in text form, (though the result is less easy to read); in this format the above sentence would be rendered as: [S [NP [D The ] [N dog ] ] [VP [V ate ] [NP [D the ] [N bone ] ] ] ]

Chomsky has argued that phrase structure grammars are also inadequate for describing natural languages, and formulated the more complex system of transformational grammar.[3]

Grammaticality judgments When generative grammar was first proposed, it was widely hailed as a way of formalizing the implicit set of rules a person "knows" when they know their native language and produce grammatical utterances in it (grammaticality intuitions). However Chomsky has repeatedly rejected that interpretation; according to him, the grammar of a language is a statement of what it is that a person has to know in order to recognize an utterance as grammatical, but not a hypothesis about the processes involved in either understanding or producing language.[citation needed]

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6.2 GOVERNMENT-BINDING (GB) THEORY

1. Introduction

Government-Binding Theory (GB) was developed initially by Chomsky19 and is in a sense the immediate descendent of Transformational Grammar. Most materials presented in these notes are taken verbatim from a number of textbooks (see ‗References‘).

2. Overall organization of the GB grammar (a) d-structure s-structure phonetic form (PF) logical form (LG) (b) d-structure X’-Theory, -Theory Move- Projection Principle -Criterion Case Filter s-structure ECP Phonetic form Binding Theory Logical form Control 3. X’-theory 3.0 General X‘-theory provides principles for the projection (a) of phrasal categories from lexical categories and (b) of the clause from a grammatical category, typically (but not solely) from INFL (INFL for ‗inflection‘, which contains, among others ‗tense‘), and

19 Chomsky’s first comprehensive work on GB is his Lectures on Government and Binding. Dordrecht: Foris, 1981.

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imposes conditions on the hierarchical organization of categories in the form of general schemata. 3.1 Categorial features

[+N] [-N] [+v] A V {-v] N P

3.2 X’-schema X” maximal projection Specifier X’ Modifier X Argument 3.3 X’-Equivalences

X X’ X’’ N N’ NP V V’ VP A A’ AP P P’ PP

INFL S S’ 3.4 Some sample instantiations of the X-schema: (1) the claim {about money, that Bill is leaving} NP Det N’ N PP/S’ the claim about money/ that Bill is leaving

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(2) quite sure {of his children, that Mary will win} AP Det A’ A PP/S’ quite sure of his children/ that Mary will win (3) The claim {about money, that Bill is leaving} PP P’ NP P N’ N with Kerry (4) sold the house at a profit VP V’ PP V NP sold the house at a profit (5) S-structure

IMPORTANT NOTE: The maximal projection for a clause is S’ (and not S’’). A clause is the maximal projection of INFL’

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(a) that Bill is sitting down20 S’ COMP S NP INFL VP that Bill PRES is sitting down 4. Theta-theory Theta-theory is concerned with the assignment of what Chomsky calls ‗thematic‘ roles to sentential constituents. NOTE: Thematic roles (or theta-roles, or -roles) = semantic roles (e.g. Agent, Patient, Instrumental). 5. Case theory Case theory deals with the principles of case assignment to constituents. Examples of case: Nominative, Accusative NOTE: A distinction is made between Case (with capital ‗C‘) and case (with small ‗c‘). the former is abstract, the latter is concrete (i.e. morphologically realized). 7. Binding theory Binding theory is concerned primarily with the conditions under which NPs are interpreted as coreferential with other NPs in the same sentence. There are three (3) types of NPs:

(a) anaphors = NPs whose reference is necessarily determined sentence-internally, e.g. himself, each other;

(b) pronominals = NPs that lack specific lexical content and have only the features person, (gender and) Case; unlike anaphors, they may either refer to individuals independently or co-refer to individuals already named in a given sentence. E.g. he, him, it, they, them; and

(c) R-expressions (= referential expressions) = NPs with lexical heads which potentially refer to something

In addition, NPs are divided into (a) overt NPs and (b) non-overt NPs and are defined in terms of two features, [anaphor] and [pronominal] as indicated in the table below:

20 As in I can see that Bill is sitting down.

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TYPE OVERT NON-OVERT

[+anaphora, -pronominal] anaphor NP-trace [-anaphora, +pronominal] pronoun pro [-anaphora, -pronominal] R-expression wh-trace [+anaphora, +pronominal] PRO pro (= small pro) and PRO (= big PRO) Examples of pro in Italian:

io parlo = parlo (pro parlo) ‗I speak‘ tu parli = parli (pro parli) ‗you-sg speak‖ lei parla = parla (pro parla) ‗he.she speaks‘ noi parliamo = parliamo (pro parliamo) ‗we speak‘ voi parlate = parlate (pro parlate) ]you-pl speak‘ loro parlano = parlano (pro parlano) ‗they speak‘

Examples of PRO in English:

I want to go = I want PRO to go (cf. I want you to go) I asked you to come = I asked you PRO to come) Prakash wondered whether to invite her = Prakash wondered whether

PRO to invite her

8. Bounding theory Bounding theory is concerned with the limitations to be placed on the movement of constituents by the transformational schema Move- . 9. Control theory Control theory is concerned with the analysis of sentences with verbs taking infinitival complements 10. Theta-criterion Each argument bears one and only one -role and each -role is assigned to one and only one argument. 11. Projection principle Syntactic representations (i.e. syntactic structures) must be projected from the lexicon, in that they observe the subcategorization properties of lexical items they contain. 12. Case Filter

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Any s-structure that contains an NP with lexical content but no Case is ungrammatical. 13. Government theory 13.1 Governing category

is the governing category for , where = {N, V, A, P, AGR} if and are dominated exactly by the same maximal projections (= full phrasal categories)., 13.2 Government

governs iff (i) is a governor; (ii) c-commands and c-commands ; and (iii) no barrier intervenes between and

Maximal projections are barriers to government. Governors are heads.

13.3 C-command

c-commands iff does not dominate and every X that dominates also dominates

6.3 GENERALIZED PHRASE STRUCTURE GRAMMAR: XSOME LEADING

IDEAS

1. introduction The theory of Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar (GPSG) was developed principally by Gerald Gazdar at the end of the 170s. Other contributors to the theory include Ewan Klein, Geoffrey Pullum and Ivan Sag.. While practically every detail of the theory has changed in the intervening period, the initial motivation of the original work is preserved. GPSG is in a sense a very homogeneous theory, in that it posits only one level of syntactic representation, surface structure, and, in its pure conception, only one kind of syntactic object, the phrase structure rule. What GPSG does is augment a phrase structure grammar in certain ways that still leave you with a phrase structure grammar, but one that can handle constructions previously thought to be describable only with the aid of transformations. Work in GPSG has generally taken the idea of formalization quite seriously; consequently, GPSG is full of technical detail to a level unprecedented in contemporary grammatical theory. As such, the mathematical properties of GPSG grammars have been and are the focus of much attention. GPSG has only one type of rules, which represent immediate dominance, and are called ID-rules.

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2. Organization of a GPSG grammar Lexical ID-Rules Metarules Non-Lexical ID-Rules Expanded Set of ID-Rules Feature Cooccurrence Restrictions Feature Specification Defaults

Head Feature Convention Well-Formedness Foot Feature Principle Definition Control Agreement Principle Linear Precedence Statements trees 3. Feature percolation GPSG relies on being able to pass information around trees, and this information is encoded by means of syntactic features; GPSG is in fact a theory of syntactic information ―percolates‖ (= flows) within a structure. 4. X’-Theory The part of X‘-Theory that defines a phrase as a projection of the features of a head is a central part of GPSG, for the information of what is the head determines much of the distributional of syntactic features. GPSG adopts a two-level X-theory, and defines the major categories, N, V, A and P in terms of the primitive features [N] and [V]. At this point similarity with Government-Binding (GB) stops; for GPSG proposes that the ‗basic‘ X‘-scheme is not to descend level by one, as in GB Theory, but rather to remain at the same level. This is dealt with by a default mechanism: unless otherwise indicated, the bar-level of a mother and the head daughter will be identical. 5. V, VP, S and S’ in GPSG Information that ultimately shows up on the verb must be present on the dominating S-node (feature percolation); for example, the verb think subcategorizes for a complement that is tensed: (1) a. Lee thinks (that) Sandy is muscular.

b. *Lee thinks (for) Sandy to be muscular. Information about the present of tense must therefore pass between the inflection on the verb and the S-node. In GB Theory this is accomplished by assuming that the information flows up from INFL to its projection S in the syntax, before INFL is combined with the verb in PF. For theories like GPSG which only allow fully inflected words to be inserted into trees, such an option is not available, and the information must flow directly from V to S (S being a projection of V) Now, from a number of considerations it is also desirable to have both VP and S‘ be maximal projections (i.e. X‘‘s); it is quite common to find rules that affect NP, VP, AP,

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PP an S‘. in order to allow such generalizations to be captured, GPSG assigns the categories, VP, S and S‘ all the same X‘ level, namely the maximal projection of V. VP, S and S‘ are distinguished as follows:

S is distinguished from VP by a SUBJ feature (SUBJ for ‗subject‘); and

S‘ is distinguished from S by COMP (for ‗complementizer‘). The X-equivalences for these categories are shown in (2), below: (2) a. V2[-SUBJ][COMP NIL] = VP b. V2[+SUBJ][COMP NIL] = S c. V2[+SUBJ][COMP ] = S‘ where {that, for, whether, if} 6. Categories A syntactic category in GPSG is taken to be a set of feature-value pairs. For example, the label NP (N2) is taken to be an abbreviation for the set {<N, +>, <V, ->, <BAR, 2} where BAR is a feature just like anything else. 7. ID / LP Format GPSG factors out information of immediate dominance (ID) and linear precedence (LP). For example, in Latin, where word order is free the rule may be formulated as follows: (3) VP V, NP, NP where the commas indicate that the categories are unordered with respect to each other. Below are examples of how the issue of word order in the VP in English can be handled in GPSG: (4) a. VP V, NP kiss the bride b. VP V, NP, PP send the message to Kim c. VP V, NP, S‘ tell the class that break is over d. VP V, NP, VP expect results to be forthcoming

e. V < NP < XP Note, however, that this is not the actual GPSG. 8. Lexical ID-Rules and Non-Lexical ID-Rules Consider the following set of rules: (5) a. S X2, H[-SUBJ] b. NP Det, H1 c. N1 H[30]

c. N1 H[35], PP[of] d. PP H[38], NP[of] e. VP H[5], NP, NP

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The first two rules, (5a-b), differ from the rest, in that, unlike (5a-b), each of the rules (5c-e) introduce a lexical head (H).

Lexical ID-Rules are ID-rules (= immediate dominance rules0 that introduce a lexical head

Non-Lexical ID-Rules are ID-Rules that do not introduce a lexical head.

9. Feature Cooccurrence Restrictions Feature Cooccurrence Restrictions (FCRs) express certain dependencies between features, and, as categories are sets of feature-value pairs, express certain restrictions on what is a possible category. Some, such as those in (6), below, are presumably universal while others may be language-specific. The identifying number of each FCR is taken from GPKS21. (6) a. FCR 2: [VFORM] [-N, +V] b. FCR 3: [NFORM] [+N, -V] c. FCR 4: [PFORM] [-N, -V] The first one says that any category with a VFORM feature specification must be a verb; the ‗ ‘ means ‗logically implies‘. FCRs 3 and 4 express a similar requirement for nouns and prepositions 10. Feature Specification Defaults Feature Specification Defaults (FSDs) are something that all theories use in some way or other. Here are some FSDs taken from GPKS: (7) a. FSD 1: [-INV]\ b. FSD 2: ~[CONJ]. c. FSD 3: ~[NULL]. FSD 1 says that things are not inverted unless specifically forced to be so by a rule. In other words, the default case for order is not to be inverted. FSD 2 says that it is marked, i.e.. not the usual case, to have a category that is a conjunct. FSD 3 says that it is marked, i.e.. not the usual case, to have a category that is null (phonetically empty). 11. Head Feature Convention The term ‗head features‖ refers to the class of features that get copied over, an example of this is the feature BAR. In its simplest formulation, the Head Feature Convention (HFC) says that the HEAD features of the mother are identical to the HEAD features of the head daughter, as shown in (8):

21 Gazdar, Gerald, Ewan Klein, Geoffrey K. Pullum, and Ivan Sag, 1985. Generalized Phrase Structure

Grammar. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.

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(8) <N, -> <V, +> <BAR, 2> VFORM, 2> <PAST, -> <SUBCAT, 1> <N, +> <N, -> <V, -> <V, +> <BAR, 2> <BAR, 0> <PER, 3> VFORM, FIN> <PLU, +> <PAST, -> <CASE, ACC> <NFORM, NORM> 12. Foot Feature Principle Some features are distributed around a tree without necessarily obeying the Head Feature Convention. Such features are termed Foot Features, e.g. the feature [+R] characterizing relative pronouns in sentences such as the one in (9): (9) Kim, the rumours about whom are totally false, will make a statement later this morning. S [+R] NP VP Det N1

the N PP rumours P NP are totally false [+R] about whom The idea of the Foot Feature Principle (FFP) is that FOOT features will be passed up from any daughter in a tree (not just the head), with the upper and lower limits of this propagation determined by prior specification, either in a rule or in a lexical item. A foot feature is a feature percolating from daughter to mother while head features percolate from heads to their projections. 6.4 MISCELLANY 1. Coordination: syndetic and asyndetic Constructions 2. Syndesis (or syndeton) and asyndesis (or asyndeton) 3. Syntactic polarity 4. The structure of the Noun Phrase 5. The structure of the Verb Phrase 6. Relative clauses

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7. The syntax and semantics of adverbial clauses 8. Control; Control Theory; control verbs; controller; controllee 9. PRO and pro 10. Argument Structure 11. A Contrastive Study of Agreement in English and … 12. The Syntax and Semantics of of-phrases/ The Syntax and Semantics of of-

phrases in… (e.g. Shona) 15. Translating English Adjective in… (e.g. Mbunda) 16. Transformation; transformational rule 17. Transformational grammar 18. Transformational rule 19. Phrase structure rule 20. Subcategorization rules 21. Obligatory and optional transformational rules 22. Transformationalism and lexicalism 23. Deep structure and surface structure 24. Parameters 25. Tag (question) 26. Echo question 27. pro-drop parameter 28. Interrogative sentences 29. Agreement 30. Transformationalist and lexicalist 31. NP Rules: N‘‘ D N‘ [= Determiner Rule]; N‘ N‘ PP [= Adjunct Rule]; N‘

N NP [= Complement Rule] 32. Specifier 33. Complementizer 34. Head 35. Projection 36. Syntactic features 37. Trace 38. Empty category 39. Clausal argument (= sentence that is an argument of a predicate) 40. Main verbs and auxiliaries 41. Expletives 41.1 „It‟ and extraposition (Haegeman 1994: 60-63) Example: (1) a. The burglary surprised Jeeves. b. That the pig had been stolen surprised Jeeves. c. It surprised Jeeves that the pig had been stolen. From (1a) and (1b) we infer that surprise takes two arguments. Neither of these can be omitted: (2) a. *The burglary surprised.. b. *Surprised Jeeves. c. *That the pig had been stolen surprised.

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It cannot be assigned a thematic role since surprise only assigns two thematic roles, already saturated. Moreover, it is not possible to question the element it in (1c), no can it receive focal stress:

(3) a. *What surprised Jeeves that the pig had been stolen? b. *IT surprised Jeeves that the pig had been stolen. On the basis of these observations we formulate the hypothesisw that it plays no no

role in the semantic make-up of th sentence and that its prrsence is required in (1c) simply for some structural reason.

41.2 ‘There’ and existential sentences (Haegeman 1994: 63-65)

Example: (1) a. Three pigs are escaping. B. There are three pigs escaping. In (1a), the verb escape has one argument, realized by the NP three pigs. In (1b) the sentence contains one more element, the pronominal there, which occupies the subject position. First note that there is not an adjunct of place. In (1b) there, unlike place adjuncts, cannot be questioned: (2) A: I saw Bill there last week. B: Where did you see Bill last week? C: There (3) A: There are three pigs escaping.

B: *Where are three pigs escaping. Also, unlike the place adjunct, there in declarative (1b) cannot be omitted freely: (4) a. I saw Bill there last week. b. I saw Bill last week. (5) a. There are three pigs escaping. b. *Are three pigs escaping. But there does not really contribute anything to the meaning of (1b), which has the same meaning as (1a). Again the data suggest that there is required for structural reasons: it fills up the subject position. Unlike the place adjunct, there in (1b) cannot receive focal stress. As was the case with the pronominal it discussed before, we call there an expletive. 41.3 Expletive attribute (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expletive_attributive ) An expletive attributive is an adjective or adverb (or adjectival or adverbial phrase) that does not contribute to the propositional meaning of a sentence, but is used to

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intensify its emotional force. Often such words or phrases are regarded as profany or "bad language", though there are also inoffensive expletive attributives. There are a large number of attributive adjectives and adverbs in English that function as expletives, indicating a speaker's anger, irritation, or in some cases strong approval or other emotion, without otherwise modifying the meaning of the phrase in which they occur. An example of an expletive attributive is the word bloody as used in the following sentences: (1) a. You'd better pray for a bloody miracle if you want to avoid bankruptcy. b. That was a bloody good meal. c. You'd better bloody well make it happen! An expletive attributive is an intensifier. Unlike other adjective or adverb usage, "bloody" or "bloody well" in these sentences do not modify the meaning of miracle, good meal, or make it happen. The expletive attributives here suggest that the speaker feels strongly about the proposition being expressed. Other vulgar words may also be used in this way: (2) a. The goddamn policeman tailed me all the goddamn way home. b. I fucking hope he fucking chokes on his motherfucking pretzels. " Bloody, bloody well, goddamn and fucking do not contribute anything to the meaning. Rather, they suggest the strength of feeling of the speaker. Other words that are never thought of as offensive can be used in similar ways. For example: (3) I forgot to pay the phone bill twice running, so the wretched line was cut off. The phone line discussed may (before it was cut off) have been just as good as any other, and therefore would not have been wretched in the dictionary senses of "extremely shoddy", "devoid of hope" or similar. Rather, wretched serves here as a politer equivalent of expletive bloody and the like. 42. Universal Grammar (UG) (Haegeman 1994: 12).

―Given that neither formal teaching nor overt evidence seems to be the source of the native‘s speaker‘s intuitions, it is proposed that a large part of the native speaker‘s knowledge of his language, i.e. the internal grammar, is innate. The idea is that human beings have a genetic endowment that enables them to learn language.‖

43. Embedding Principle (Haegeman 1994: 12)

―A grammatical sentence can become a subordinate clause in a complex sentence.‖

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44. Parameters and Universal Grammar Haegeman 1994: 13-16) ―The innate linguistic endowment UG is not sufficient to enable us to speak a language. While certain grammatical principles are universals, there is also a lot of variation between different languages. In addition to universal linguistic properties, UG also contains parameters, which amount to possible choices. The existence of different languages and linguistic historical changes are accounted for by such parameters, or possible choices offered by UG. A parameter, in this sense, is a finite set of alternatives ( Examples of parameters:

Pro-drop Parameter (or Null-subject Parameter Head Parameter

45. Null-subject parameter ―In linguistic typology, a null-subject language is a language whose grammar permits an independent clause to lack an explicit subject, such a clause is then said to have a null subject. Typically, null-subject languages express person, number and/or gender agreement with the referent on the verb, rendering a subject noun phrase redundant. In the principles and parameters framework, the null subject is controlled by the pro-drop parameter, which is either on or off for a particular language. For example, in Italian the subject "she" can be either explicit or implicit:

Maria non vuole mangiare.lit. Maria not want [to]-eat, "Maria does not want to eat".

Non vuole mangiare. lit. Subject not want [to]-eat, "[(S)he] does not want to eat."

The subject "(s)he" of the second sentence is only implied in Italian. English and French, on the other hand, require an explicit subject in this sentence.

Of the thousands of languages in the world, a considerable part are null-subject languages, from a wide diversity of unrelated language families. They include Albanian, Hebrew, Arabic, Basque, Finnish, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Romanian, Catalan, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Persian, European Portugese, Polish and other Slavic languages, Spanish, Greek, Tamil and Turkish, as well as most languages related to these, and many others still. In fact it is rather non-pro-drop that is an areal feature of Standard Average European including French, German, and English.‖ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null-subject_language ) 46. Control: PRO in an object sentence of a sentence S The PRO must be coreferential with an object or with the subject of S. Examples: (1) John asked Billi [PROI to shave himself]

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(2) Johni asked Bill [PROI to be allowed to shave himself] (3) Johni promised Bill [PROI to shave himself] (4) John promised Billi [PROI to be allowed to shave himself]

The PRO cannot have arbitrary reference, as shown in (5)-(6), and cannot corefer outside S, as shown in (7)-(8): (5) *John asked Bill [PRO to behave oneself] (6) *John promised Bill [PRO to behave onself] (7) *Mary said that John asked Bill [PRO to behave herself] (8) *Mary said that John promised Bill [PRO to behave herself]

Conclusion: A PRO in an object sentence of a sentence S is bound in S. 47. Control: PRO in a subject sentence of a sentence S (1) [PRO to behave oneself in public] would help Bill.John asked Billi [PROI to

shave himself] (2) [PRO to behave himself in public] would help Bill. (3) Mary knows that [PRO to behave herself in public] would help Bill. (4) [PRO to behave himself in public] would help Bill‘s development.

Conclusion: A PRO in a subject sentence (co) refers freely.

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48. Complements and Adjuncts

XP

Specifier X‘ X‘ Adjunct X Complemeht

49. Aspects of discontinuity 49.0 Definition and typology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discontinuity_%28linguistics%29

In linguistics, a discontinuity occurs when a given word or phrase is separated from another word or phrase that it modifies in such a manner that a direct connection cannot be established between the two without incurring crossing lines in the tree structure. The terminology that is employed to denote discontinuities varies depending on the theory of syntax at hand. The terms discontinuous constituent, displacement, long distance dependency, unbounded dependency, and projectivity violation are largely synonymous with the term discontinuity. There are various types of discontinuities, the most prominent and widely studied of these being topicalization, wh-fronting, scrambling,[1] and extraposition.

Discontinuities should be distinguished from inversion and shifting,[2] two mechanisms that result in non-canonical word order but that do not necessarily incur discontinuities depending on the theory of sentence structure one assumes (e.g. dependency- or constituency-based). Natural languages vary with respect to the types of discontinuities that they permit. The fixed word order of English allows for relatively few discontinuities compared to, for instance, the Slavic languages, which are much more permissive. Even compared to a closely related language such as German, English is rigid, allowing few discontinuities. 49.1 Topicalization (a) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topicalization Topicalization is a mechanism of syntax that establishes an expression as the sentence or clause topic by having it appear at the front of the sentence or clause (as opposed to in a canonical position further to the right). Topicalization often results in a discontinuity and is thus one of a number of established discontinuity types (the other three being wh-fronting, scrambling, and extraposition). Topicalization is also used as a constituency test; an expression that can be topicalized is deemed a constituent.[1] The topicalization of arguments in English is rare, whereas circumstantial adjuncts are often topicalized. Most languages allow topicalization, and in some languages, topicalization occurs much more frequently than in English.

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Examples: (1) a. The boys roll rocks for entertainment.

b. For entertainment, the boys roll rocks. (Topicalization of the adjunct for entertainment)

(2) b. Everyone refused to answer because the pressure was too great.

b. Because the pressure was too great, everyone refused to answer. (Topicalization of the adjunct because the pressure was too great)

(3) a. I won't eat that pizza.

b. That pizza, I won't eat. (Topicalization of the object argument that pizza)

(4) a. I am terrified of those dogs.

b. Those dogs, I am terrified of. (Topicalization of the object argument those dogs)

(b) https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/topicalization Emphasis placed on the topic or focus of a sentence by preposing it to the beginning of the sentence; placing the topic at the beginning of the sentence is typical for English. Examples: (1) Those girls, they giggle when they see me. (2) Cigarettes, you couldn't pay me to smoke them. 49.2 Wh-movement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wh-movement Wh-movement (or wh-fronting or wh-extraction or long-distance dependency) is a mechanism of syntax that helps express a question (or form a relative clause). Sentences or clauses containing a wh-word show a special word order that has the wh-word (or phrase containing the wh-word) appearing at the front of the sentence or clause, e.g. Who do you think about?, instead of in a more canonical position further to the right, e.g. I think about you. The term wh-movement is used because most English interrogative words start with wh-, for example, who(m), whose, what, which, etc. Wh-movement often results in a discontinuity, and in this regard, it is one of (at least) four widely acknowledged discontinuity types, the other three being topicalization, scrambling, and extraposition. Wh-movement is found in many languages around the world, and of these various discontinuity types, wh-movement has been studied the most.[1]

The actual term wh-movement itself stems from early Generative Grammar (1960s and 1970s) and was a reference to the transformational analysis of that day, whereby the wh-expression appeared in its canonical position at deep structure and then moved leftward out of that position to land in its derived position at the front of

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the sentence/clause at surface structure.[2] Many modern theories of syntax do not acknowledge movement in the traditional sense, however. Despite this fact, the term wh-movement (or wh-fronting or wh-extraction) survives and is widely used to denote the underlying phenomenon even by those theories that do not acknowledge movement. Examples: (1) a. Tom has been reading Tesnière.

b. Who has Tom been reading? (The direct object corresponding to Tesnière has been wh-fronted as the wh-word who.)

(2) a. She should stop talking about syntax.

b. What should she stop talking about? (The object of the preposition corresponding to syntax has been wh-fronted as the wh-word what.)

(3) a. They want to visit us tomorrow.

b. When do they want to visit us? –(The adjunct corresponding to tomorrow has been wh-fronted as the wh-word when.)

(4) a. She is happy.

b. What is she? (The predicative adjective corresponding to happy has been fronted as the wh-word what.)

49.3 Scrambling http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrambling_%28linguistics%29 Scrambling is a common term for pragmatic word order.[1] In the Chomskyan tradition, word orders of all languages are taken to be derived from a common source with a fundamental word order, so languages which do not follow a set pattern can be said to be "scrambled" from "normal" word order.[2] The notion of scrambling has spread beyond the Chomskyan tradition and become a general concept that denotes many non-canonical word orders in numerous languages. Scrambling often (but not always) results in a discontinuity; the scrambled expression appears at a distance from its head in such a manner that crossing lines are present in the syntactic tree. Scrambling discontinuities are distinct from topicalization, wh-fronting, and extraposition discontinuities. Scrambling does not occur in English, but it is frequent in languages with freer word order, such as German, Russian and Persian. The following examples from German illustrate typical instances of scrambling:

a. dass der Mann der Frau die Bohnen gab

that the man the woman the beans gave 'that the man gave the woman the beans'

b. dass der Mann die Bohnen der Frau gab c. dass der Frau der Mann die Bohnen gab d. dass der Frau die Bohnen der Mann gab

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e. dass die Bohnen der Mann der Frau gab f. dass die Bohnen der Frau der Mann gab

These examples illustrate typical cases of scrambling in the midfield of a subordinate clause in German. All six clauses are acceptable, whereby the actual order that appears is determined by pragmatic considerations such as emphasis. If one takes the first clause (clause a) as the basic order, then scrambling has occurred in clauses b–f. The three constituents der Mann, der Frau, and die Bohnen have been scrambled. 49.4 Extraposition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraposition Extraposition is a mechanism of syntax that alters word order in such a manner that a relatively "heavy" constituent appears to the right of its canonical position.[1] Extraposing a constituent results in a discontinuity and in this regard, it is unlike shifting, which does not generate a discontinuity. The extraposed constituent is separated from its governor by one or more words that dominate its governor. Two types of extraposition are acknowledged in theoretical syntax: standard cases where extraposition is optional and it-extraposition where extraposition is obligatory. Extraposition is motivated in part by a desire to reduce center embedding by increasing right-branching and thus easing processing, center-embedded structures being more difficult to process. Extraposition occurs frequently in English and related languages. Examples from English: (1) a. Someone who we don't know left a message.

b. Someone left a message who we don't know. –(Extraposition of relative clause out of subject)

(2) a. Susan said something that nobody expected more than once.

b. Susan said something more than once that nobody expected. (Extraposition of relative clause out of object)

(3) a. Some guy with red hair was there.

b. Some guy was there with red hair. (Extraposition of prepositional phrase out of subject)

(4) a. How frustrated with their kids are they?

b. How frustrated are they with their kids? (Extraposition of prepositional phrase from predicative adjective phrase)

(5) a. ?What that was so entertaining actually happened?

b. What actually happened that was so entertaining.? (Extraposition of content clause from subject wh-element)

(6) a. ?What that upset everyone do you think they did?

a. What do you think they did that upset everyone? (Extraposition of content clause from object wh-element)

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50. Word order http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_order In linguistics, word order typology refers to the study of the order of the syntactic constituents of a language, and how different languages can employ different orders. Correlations between orders found in different syntactic sub-domains are also of interest. The primary word orders that are of interest are the constituent order of a clause – the relative order of subject, object, and verb; the order of modifiers (adjectives, numerals, demonstratives, possessives, and adjuncts) in a noun phrase; and the order of adverbials. Some languages use relatively restrictive word order, often relying on the order of constituents to convey important grammatical information. Others—often those that convey grammatical information through inflection—allow more flexibility, which can be used to encode pragmatic information such as topicalisation or focus. Most languages, however, have a preferred word order.[1] Most nominative–accusative languages—which have a major word class of nouns and clauses that include subject and object—define constituent word order in terms of the finite verb (V) and its arguments, the subject (S), and object (O).[2][3][4][5] There are six theoretically possible basic word orders for the transitive sentence: subject–verb–object (SVO), subject–object–verb (SOV), verb–subject–object (VSO), verb–object–subject (VOS), object–subject–verb (OSV) and object–verb–subject (OVS). The overwhelming majority of the world's languages are either SVO or SOV, with a much smaller but still significant portion using VSO word order. The remaining three arrangements are exceptionally rare, with VOS being slightly more common than OSV, and OVS being significantly more rare than the two preceding orders.[6]

Finding the basic constituent of word order and mode of transmission According to Nobel prize winner Murray Gell-Mann, based on his decades-long comprehensive lab studies, the distribution of word order types in the world‘s languages, interpreted in terms of the putative phylogenetic tree of human languages, was originally SOV. This distribution expanded rather recently (sometime after Y chromosomal Adam, "out of Africa"). SOV word order followed the phylogenetic tree of languages, with the transmission of word order, to a great extent, vertical (genetic i.e. follow the phylogenetic tree of ancestry), as opposed to horizontal (areal i.e. by diffusion)[7]. A strong similarity exists between the linguistic tree and the genetic tree[8]. It is not always easy to find the basic word order of S, O and V. First, not all languages make use of the categories of subject and object. In others, the subject and object may not form a clause with the verb. If subject and object can be identified within a clause, the problem can arise that different orders prevail in different contexts. For instance, French has SVO for nouns, but SOV when the object is a pronoun and VSO for questions; German has verb-medial order in main clauses, but verb-final order in subordinate clauses. In other languages the word order of transitive and intransitive clauses may not correspond. In still others, the rules for ordering S, O, and V may exist, but be secondary to (and often overruled by) more fundamental ordering rules – e.g., for considerations such as

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topic–comment. To have a valid base for comparison, the basic word order is defined[by whom?] as:

declarative

main clause

S and O must both be nominal arguments

pragmatically neutral, i.e. no element has special emphasis

While the first two of these requirements are relatively easy to respect, the latter two are more difficult. In spoken language, there are hardly ever two full nouns in a clause; the norm is for the clause to have at most one noun, the other arguments being pronouns.[citation needed] In written language, this is somewhat different, but that is of no help when investigating oral languages. Finally, the notion of "pragmatically neutral" is difficult to test. While the English sentence "The king, they killed." has a heavy emphasis on king, in other languages, that order (OSV) might not carry a significantly higher emphasis than another order.

If all the requirements above are met, it still sometimes turns out that languages do not seem to prefer any particular word order. The last resort is text counts, but even then, some languages must be analyzed as having two (or even more) word orders.

Constituent word orders Word order

English equivalent

Proportion of languages

Example languages

SOV "She him loves." 45% Japanese, Latin, Tamil SVO "She loves him." 42% English, Mandarin, Russian VSO "Loves she him." 9% Hebrew, Irish, Zapotec VOS "Loves him she." 3% Malagasy, Baure OVS "Him loves she." 1% Apalai?, Hixkaryana? OSV "Him she loves." 0% Warao

Frequency distribution of word order in languages surveyed by Russell S. Tomlin in 1980s.[9][10]

These are all possible word orders for the subject, verb, and object in the order of most common to rarest (the examples use "I" as the subject, "see" as the verb, and "him" as the object):

SOV is the order used by the largest number of distinct languages; languages using it include the prototypical Japanese, Mongolian, Basque, Turkish, Korean, the Indo-Aryan languages and the Dravidian languages. Some, like Persian, Latin and Quechua, have SOV normal word order but conform less to the general tendencies of other such languages. A sentence glossing as "I him see" would be grammatically correct in these languages.

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SVO languages include English, the Romance languages, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbo-Croatian,[11] Chinese and Swahili, among others. "I see him."

VSO languages include Classical Arabic, the Insular Celtic languages, and Hawaiian. "See I him" is grammatically correct in these languages.

VOS languages include Fijian and Malagasy. "See him I."

OVS languages include Hixkaryana. "Him see I."

OSV languages include Xavante and Warao. "Him I see."

Sometimes patterns are more complex: German, Dutch and Frisian have SOV in subordinates, but V2 word order in main clauses, SVO word order being the most common. Using the guidelines above, the unmarked word order is then SVO.

Others, such as Latin, Greek, Persian, Romanian and Finnish, have no strict word order; rather, the sentence structure is highly flexible and reflects the pragmatics of the utterance. Nonetheless, there is often a preferred order; in Latin, SOV is the most frequent outside of poetry, and in Finnish SVO is both the most frequent and obligatory when case marking fails to disambiguate argument roles. Just as languages may have different word orders in different contexts, so may they have both fixed and free word orders. For example, Russian has a relatively fixed SVO word order in transitive clauses, but a much freer SV / VS order in intransitive clauses.[citation needed] Cases like this can be addressed by encoding transitive and intransitive clauses separately, with the symbol 'S' being restricted to the argument of an intransitive clause, and 'A' for the actor/agent of a transitive clause. ('O' for object may be replaced with 'P' for 'patient' as well.) Thus, Russian is fixed AVO but flexible SV/VS. In such an approach, the description of word order extends more easily to languages that do not meet the criteria in the preceding section. For example, Mayan languages have been described with the rather uncommon VOS word order. However, they are ergative–absolutive languages, and the more specific word order is intransitive VS, transitive VOA, where S and O arguments both trigger the same type of agreement on the verb. Indeed, many languages that some thought had a VOS word order turn out to be ergative like Mayan.

Functions of constituent word order A fixed or prototypical word order is one out of many ways to ease the processing of sentence semantics and reducing ambiguity. One method of making the speech stream less open to ambiguity (complete removal of ambiguity is probably impossible) is a fixed order of arguments and other sentence constituents. This works because speech is inherently linear. Another method is to label the constituents in some way, for example with case marking, agreement, or another marker. Fixed word order reduces expressiveness but added marking increases information load in the speech stream, and for these reasons strict word order seldom occurs together with strict morphological marking, one counter-example being Persian.[1]

Observing discourse patterns, it is found that previously given information (topic) tends to precede new information (comment). Furthermore, acting participants

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(especially humans) are more likely to be talked about (to be topic) than things simply undergoing actions (like oranges being eaten). If acting participants are often topical, and topic tends to be expressed early in the sentence, this entails that acting participants have a tendency to be expressed early in the sentence. This tendency can then grammaticalize to a privileged position in the sentence, the subject.

The mentioned functions of word order can be seen to affect the frequencies of the various word order patterns: The vast majority of languages have an order in which S precedes O and V. Whether V precedes O or O precedes V however, has been shown to be a very telling difference with wide consequences on phrasal word orders.[12]

Knowledge of word order on the other hand can be applied to identify the thematic relations of the NPs in a clause of an unfamiliar language. If we can identify the verb in a clause, and we know that the language is strict accusative SVO, then we know that Grob smock Blug probably means that Grob is the smocker and Blug the entity smocked. However, since very strict word order is rare in practice, such applications of word order studies are rarely effective.[citation needed] Phrase word orders and branching Main articles: Branching (linguistics) and Head directionality parameter The order of constituents in a phrase can vary as much as the order of constituents in a clause. Normally, the noun phrase and the adpositional phrase are investigated. Within the noun phrase, one investigates whether the following modifiers occur before or after the head noun.

adjective (red house vs house red)

determiner (this house vs house this)

numeral (two houses vs houses two)

possessor (my house vs house my)

relative clause (the by me built house vs the house built by me)

Within the adpositional clause, one investigates whether the languages makes use of prepositions (in London), postpositions (London in), or both (normally with different adpositions at both sides).

There are several common correlations between sentence-level word order and phrase-level constituent order. For example, SOV languages generally put modifiers before heads and use postpositions. VSO languages tend to place modifiers after their heads, and use prepositions. For SVO languages, either order is common.

For example, French (SVO) uses prepositions (dans la voiture, à gauche), and places adjectives after (une voiture spacieuse). However, a small class of adjectives generally go before their heads (une grande voiture). On the other hand, in English (also SVO) adjectives almost always go before nouns (a big car), and adverbs can go either way, but initially is more common (greatly improved). (English has a very small number of adjectives that go after their heads, such as extraordinaire, which kept its position when borrowed from French.)

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Pragmatic word order

Some languages have no fixed word order. These languages often use a significant amount of morphological marking to disambiguate the roles of the arguments. However, some languages use a fixed word order, even if they provide a degree of marking that would support free word order. Also, some languages with free word order—such as some varieties of Datooga—combine free word order with a lack of morphological distinction between arguments.

Typologically there is a trend that highly animate actors are more likely topical than low-animate undergoers, this trend would come through even in free-word-order languages giving a statistical bias for SO order (or OS in the case of ergative systems, however ergative systems do not usually extend to the highest levels of animacy, usually giving way to some form of nominative system at least in the pronominal system).[13] Most languages with a high degree of morphological marking have rather flexible word orders such as Latin, Portuguese, Romanian, Hungarian, Serbo-Croatian, Russian (in intransitive clauses), and Finnish. In some of those, a canonical order can still be identified, but in others this is not possible.[citation needed]

Hungarian

In Hungarian, the enclitic -t marks the direct object. For "Kate ate a piece of cake", the possibilities are:

"Kati megevett egy szelet tortát." (same word order as English) ["Kate ate a piece of cake."]

"Egy szelet tortát Kati evett meg." (emphasis on agent [Kate]) ["A piece of cake Kate ate."]

"Kati egy szelet tortát evett meg." (emphasis on object [cake]) ["Kate a piece of cake ate."]

"Egy szelet tortát evett meg Kati." (emphasis on number [a piece, i.e. only one piece]) ["A piece of cake ate Kate."]

"Megevett egy szelet tortát Kati." (emphasis on completeness of action) ["Ate a piece of cake Kate."]

"Megevett Kati egy szelet tortát." (emphasis on completeness of action) ["Ate Kate a piece of cake."]

Portuguese

In Portuguese, the clitic pronouns allow many different orders:

Eu vou entregar pra você amanhã. ["I will deliver to you tomorrow."] (same word order as English)

Entregarei pra você amanhã. ["deliver I will to you tomorrow."]

Eu te entregarei amanhã. ["I to you will deliver tomorrow."]

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Entregar-te-ei amanhã. ["Deliver to you I will tomorrow."] (mesoclisis allowed only in the future tense)

A ti eu entregarei amanhã. ["To you I will deliver tomorrow."]

A ti entregarei amanhã. ["To you deliver I will tomorrow."]

Amanhã entregarei pra você. ["Tomorrow I will deliver to you"]

Acaso entregaria eu a você amanhã? ["could deliver I to you tomorrow?]

Latin

In Latin, the endings of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and pronouns allow for extremely flexible order in most situations. Latin lacks articles.

Romulus conditerat urbem. ["Romulus had founded the city."] (Same order as English)

Romulus urbem conditerat. ["Romulus the city had founded."]

Conditerat Romulus urbem. ["He had founded Romulus city."]

Conditerat urbem Romulus. ["He had founded city Romulus."]

Urbem Romulus conditerat. ["The city Romulus he had founded."]

Urbem conditerat Romulus. ["The city he had founded Romulus."]

Romulus is in the nominative case, so it is the subject of the sentence. Urbem is the accusative case form of the third declension noun, Urbs, so it is the object of the sentence. Conditerat is the third person active indicative pluperfect form of the verb Condito. It tells the relationship between Romulus and Urbem.

In theory, Latin prose generally follows the word order "Subject Indirect-Object Direct-Object Adverb Verb" (commonly known by the acronym "SIDAV"), but this is more of a guideline than a rule. Adjectives normally go after a noun they modify (either the Subject or the Object), but this is not absolutely required. In practice, there is great flexibility in word order, though the one rule usually upheld is that the Verb goes last in the sentence. Nonetheless, it is technically not incorrect grammar to use a completely different word order. Putting a word earlier in the sentence increases the emphasis on it, but this subtlety would only be particularly obvious to a native Latin speaker. However, even in Classical Latin poetry, lyricists follow word order very loosely to achieve a desired rhyming scheme. Romulus urbem conditerat (Subject Object Verb) is preferable, but there is nothing explicitly incorrect with Conditerat urbem Romulus (Verb Object Subject).

Other issues In many languages, changes in word order occur due to topicalization or in questions. However, most languages are generally assumed to have a basic word order, called the unmarked word order; other, marked word orders can then be used

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to emphasize a sentence element, to indicate modality (such as an interrogative modality), or for other purposes.

For example, English is SVO (subject-verb-object), as in "I don't know that", but OSV is also possible: "That I don't know." This process is called topic-fronting (or topicalization) and is common. In English, OSV is a marked word order because it emphasises the object, and is often accompanied by a change in intonation.

An example of OSV being used for emphasis: A: I can't see Alice. (SVO) B: What about Bill? A: Bill I can see. (OSV, rather than I can see Bill, SVO)

Non-standard word orders are also found in poetry in English, particularly archaic or romantic terms – as the wedding phrase "With this ring, I thee wed" (SOV) or "Thee I love" (OSV) – as well as in many other languages.

Translation

Differences in word order complicate translation and language education – in addition to changing the individual words, the order must also be changed. This can be simplified by first translating the individual words, then reordering the sentence, as in interlinear gloss, or by reordering the words prior to translation, as in English-Ordered Japanese. See reordered languages for further exampl

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