BTAN18010BA/BTAN1104OMA

The structure of English:

The noun phrase and the verb phrase

12/09/2017

Lecture 1

Introduction

What we do today

1) The course 3-8

2) The lecturer 9-10

3) Word classes: Vs & Ns 11-15

4) The VP and the NP 16-18

5) Syntactic Function 19-21

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About the course

Two lectures in the 1st and the 3rd semesters:

The Structure of English:

The Noun Phrase and the Verb Phrase

The English Sentence

Targets:

A descriptive grammar of English

An outlook on background linguistic issues

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Course outlines

This lecture introduces you to the descriptivegrammar of the English verb phrase (or VP) andthe English noun phrase (or NP).

We discuss what grammatical features areencoded on the English verb and the noun, andhow these features determine the constructionof the VP and the NP. We also study some ofthe variation that is observable within theinternal structure of the English verb phraseand the noun phrase.

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Exam requirements

What do we need for the exam?

The exam is primarily based on the lecture material.

Please note that the ppt presentations that we use inclass are not meant to be textbook chapters. They mostlyonly contain the examples we discuss, and some briefcommentary on them. This helps you take notes andconcentrate, but you do need to take your own notes.Print the presentations out before you come to thelecture, and put down on them whatever you find useful.The presentations will be made available on my web pageone day before the lecture (by 15:00 Monday).

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Exam requirements

What do we need for the exam?

A list of the basic terms is available on my ieas-page.This list is the list of the key terms that you need tounderstand. We discuss these during the lecture andthey constitute the basic vocabulary for talking about theVP and the NP. You are only required to understandthese terms, and you do not need to learn definitions.

You can also visit the Fogalomtár (Glossary) page ofNévmásblog for some discussions of the terminology:

https://nevmasblog.wordpress.com/fogalomtar/ .

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Exam requirements

What do we need for the exam?

We also use two readers that supplement the lecture material.

The readers are available in the library:

Verb Phrase – The Reader “Vizsgaanyag“. pp 99-148 & 175-

237. Available in the library.

Noun Phrase – The Reader “Vizsgaanyag”. pp. 245-392.

Available in the library.

Compiled from Quirk et al. 1985. A Comprehensive Grammar

of the English Language.

The readers are not compulsory. They are there to help you

prepare for the exam, and they are especially useful if you do

not have a strong background on the terminology and practice of

English descriptive grammar.

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Exam requirements

Find the pronoun which is in genitive case.

A I

B me

C my

D what

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About the lecturer9

http://ieas.unideb.hu/rakosihttp://nevmasblog.wordpress.comhttp://www.facebook.com/nevmasblog

About the lecturer10

http://ieas.unideb.hu/index.php?p=1302https://www.facebook.com/del.ieas.unideb/

Word classes

word classes/part of speech categories/lexical categories

nouns: table, girls, linguistics, student

verbs: played, runs, thought, be, has

adjectives: red, better, worst, elementary

adverbs: luckily, quickly, always, just

prepositions: in, on, at, around

etc.

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Verbs and nouns

school tradition

Verbs denote activities or states (events/eventualities).

Nouns denote concrete or abstract things (entities).

problems

(1) The event was organised by a French man.

(2) He was not in a fit state to drive.

(3) Happiness is an emotional response.

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Verbs

Feature 1: verbs have past tense

(4) played, regretted, distributed, laughed

(5) went, sang, taught, was

Feature 2: verbs have -ing forms

(6) playing, crying, going, teaching

Feature 3: verbs are ok after a modal auxiliary

(7) John can ______ (laugh/play/teach).

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Verbs

(8) a. *event-ed

b. *event-ing

c. *John can event a lot.

(9) a. Kate and Julie need washing.

b. Kate and Julie are worth washing.

(10) a. need-ed ↔ *worth-ed

b. need-ing ↔ *worth-ing

c. He can need a lot. ↔ *He can worth a lot.

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Nouns

Feature 1: nouns can be preceded by the/my

(11) the/my happiness

(12) the/my philosophy

(13) the/my beautiful Kate

Feature 2: nouns can combine with which

(14) Which happiness?

(15) Which philosophy?

(16) Which Kate?

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Phrases

Words pattern to form units in sentence structure.

phrase/constituent:

A syntactically relevant group of words.

head:

The central element of a constituent that

determines the important grammatical

properties of the whole unit.

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Phrases

books

yellow books

your yellow books

all of your yellow books

all of your yellow books on the table

(17) I saw all of your yellow books on the table.

(18) I saw them.

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Phrases

Constituency tests

(19) - Will you sing a song happily?

- I'll play the guitar

but sing a song happily I never will.

(20) I didn't sing a song happily, but Peter did so.

(21) Peter will sing a song happily,

but I won't

sing a song happily.

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Syntactic function

Phrases have a certain syntactic category (say,

NP), and that typing allows them to play

designated roles in clause structure.

These roles are known as syntactic functions.

For example, the two NPs in (22) function as the

subject and the object of the clause,

respectively.

(22) The boy saw the girl.

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Function

The syntactic function of the VP is traditionally referred to as predication, and the VP can be regarded to be a predicate (állítmány, in Hungarian grammars).

This goes back to Aristotle, who was interested in sentences that have a subject-predicate logical structure.

(23) subject (~topic) predicate (~comment)

Every Greek is a human.Humans are rational.

Thus, Every Greek is rational.

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Function

Notice that there is no one-to-one correspondence between VP-hood and predication.

(24) a. To meet you is a pleasure.b. To meet you doesn't feel good.

(25) a. I consider [Tom to be clever].b. I consider [Tom clever] .

(26) a. Tom came home drunk last night.b. Tom is wanted dead or alive.

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