2024年1月5日发(作者：)

语言学导论第11讲：

 ENDOCENTRIC construction is one whose distribution is functionally equivalent to that

of one or more of irs , a word or a group os words, which serves as a

definable CENTRE or HEAD.

 EXOCENTRIC construction is just the opposite of endocentric construction. It refers to a

group of syntactically related words where none of the words id functionally equivalent to

the group as a whole.

Endocentric constructions fall into two main types, depending on the relation between constituents:

coordination and subordination.

COORDINATION is a common syntactic pattern in English and other langauges formed by

grouping together two or more categories of the same type with the help of a conjunction such as

and, but, and or.

SUBORDINATION refers to the process or result of linking linguistic units so that they have

different syntactic status, one being dependent upon the other, and usually a constituent of the

other.

The three basic ytpes of subordinate clauses are: complement clauses, adjunct (or adverbial )

clauses, and relative clauses.

(p.89-92)

The term

category is used for defining properties of units like noun and verb.

 The noun is usually said to have the categories of number, gender, case; and the verb the

categories of tense, aspect, voice.

 1) Number is mostly a category of the noun and pronoun.

There are usually two terms of number: singular and plural.

Classical Greek and Arabic have a third number: dual.

Chinese has no numbers.

 “们”can be used only with human nouns, but not with “things”. Even with human nouns,

it cannot be used together with quantifiers.

学生们, *椅子们, *三个学生们

2) Gender is also mostly a category of the noun and pronoun.

In English, the gender distinctions are natural, determined by the biological gender of the creature:

actor, actress, hero, heroine, etc.

In French,the gender distinctions are grammatical.

 3) The category of case is prominent in the grammar of Latin, with six distinctions of

nominative(主格), vocative(呼格), accusative(宾格), genitive(属格),dative(与格) and

ablative(离格).

In English, pronouns have three cases of nominative主格, accusative宾格and genitive属格.

Nouns have only two cases:general通格 and genitive属格(John’s, boy’s)

 Tense and Aspect

Tense and Aspect are two important categories of the verb, and they were not separated in

traditional grammar. Based on the tense system in Latin grammar, English used to have sixteen

tenses.

simple present

simple past

simple future

present progressive present perfect

past progressive

future progressive

past perfect

future perfect

present perfect progressive

past perfect progressive

future perfect progressive

perfect simple past future Past

progressive

future past future perfect past future

progressive

 Two Distinctions made by modern linguists:

 1)The distinction between time and tense:

Time is a universal concept, which every language is capable of expressing; tense is a linguistic

concept, which varies from language to language.

 2) The distinction between tense and aspect:

 Tense is deictic(指示的), ting time relative to the time of utterance; aspect

indicates the time not relative to utterance, but relative to the time of another event

described, or implied, in the narrative.

As a result,

 there are only two tenses recognized now: past and present

 The so-called future tense is not expressed by morphology, not by the different forms of

the verb, but by various other means, such as “will/shall”, “be going to”, “present

progressive aspect”, “simple present tense” etc.

 There are two aspects: perfective(完成体) and imperfective(未完成体).

 The former refers to the completion of an action, and the later expresses duration

without completion.

 In English, the two aspects are known as “perfective” and “progressive”.

 Quirk suggested that the perfective should be interpreted in the broadest possible way as

indicating anterior time:(先前时间）i.e. “time preceding whatever time orientation is

signalled by tense or by other elements of the sentence or its context.”(“由时、或句子的其它成分、或上下文表明的任何时间定位前的时间”)

Concord and Government

一致关系和支配关系

Concord(agreement) is the requirement that the forms of two or more words in a syntactic

relationship should agree with each other in terms of some categories.

 He speaks English.

 They spoke English.

 Government means that the form of some words is controlled by other words in certain

syntactic constructions.

 It differs from concord in that this is a relationship in which a word of a certain class

determines the form of others in terms of certain category.

 In English, the pronoun after a verb or a preposition should be in the object form as in

“She gave him a book”.

 Syntactic Function

it is the relationship between a linguistic form and other parts of the linguistic pattern in which it

is used.

There are 5 functional categories of clause constituents:

Subject,verb,object,complement, and adverbial

S—subject

V—verb

O—object –direct object (Od)

—indirect object(Oi)

C—complement –subject complement (Cs)

—object complement(Co)

A—adverbial –subject-related(As)

—object-related(Ao)

A subordinate clause may function as subject, object, complement, or adverbial in a superordinate

clause. For example:

That we need a larger computer has become obvious. (subject)

He doesn’t know when they will come. (direct object)

You can tell them that I’ll be back in ten minutes.(indirect object)

One result of the delay was that the cost became much higher.(subject complement)

I found her reading in the dining room.(object complement)

When you see Jack, give him my best wishes. (adverbial)

Subject:

Grammatical subject & logical subject:

John was bitten by the dog.

The core object noun (John) sits in the slot before the verb in the passive, it is called the

GRAMMATICAL SUBJECT, for the original object noun phrase occupies the grammatical space

before a verb, the space that a subject normally occupies, the core subject (a dog), now the object

of a preposition, is called the LOGICAL SUBJECT,since semanticallt the core subject still does

what a subject normally does: it performs a action.

The properties of subjects in English:

a. Word order: Subject ordinarily precedes the verb in statements: Sally collects stamps.

b. Pro-forms: the first and third person pronouns in English appear in a special form when the

pronoun is a subject:

He loves her.

They threw stones at us.

c. Agreement with verb:

She angers him.

They anger him.

t questions: if the subjects id replaced by a question word, the rest of the sentence

remains unchanged, but when any other element of the sentence is replaced by a question word, an

auxiliary verb must appear before the subject.

John stole/would steal Mrs. Thatcher’s picture from the British Council.

(ask questions with the above underlined words respectively.)

e. Tag question: it always contains a pronoun which refers back to the subject,and never to any

other elements in the sentence.

John loves Mary, doesn’t he?

John loves Mary, doesn’t she? ﹡

 Predicate: it refers to a major constituent of sentence structure in a binary analysis in

which all obligatory constituents other than the subject were considered together. It

usually expresses actions, processes, and states that relate to the subject.

The new master soon put the class into good order.

we can divide it first into subject,and predicate, then to divide the subject into nominative and

its enlargement, and finally its predicate into finite verb, completion and extension, the completion

being either object or commplement ot both.

Subject: Nominative: master

enlargement: (1) the, (2) new

Predicate: finite verb: put

completion: object: the class

complement:into good order

extension: soon

The predicator comprises what there is of the verbal group in addition to the finite element.

Some claused, known as non-finite clauses, have only a predicator.

Mary sat at the desk, reading a book.

The predicator has four functions:

(1) It specifies time reference other than reference to the time of the speech ’secondary’

tense: past, present or future.

(2) It specifies various other aspects and phrases like seeming, trying, hoping, etc.

(3) It specifies the voice: active or passive

(4) It specifies the process (action, event, mental process, behavior, relation or existence.

e.g.

Has been trying to be heard

(1) A complex secondary tense, been +ing;

(2) A conative phase, try +to

(3) Passive voice, be+ -d

(4) The nmental process hear

(5) Object:

Grammar usually considers the object as the non-subject argument (中词)of a transitive verb.

Object may refer to the “receiver” or “goal”of an action, and it is further classified into

DIRECT OBJECT and INDIRECT OBJECT.

Mother bought a doll

Mother gave my sister a doll.

In some inflecting languages, object is marked by case labels: the accusative case for direct object,

and the dative case for indirect object.

In English, “object”is recognized by tracing its relation to word order and by inflections (of

pronoun).

Mother gave a doll to my sister

John kicked me.

In some inflecting languages, object is marked by case labels: the accusative case for direct object,

and the dative case for indirect object.

In English, “object”is recognized by tracing its relation to word order and by inflections (of

pronoun).

Mother gave a doll to my sister

John kicked me.

Modern grammar regards the object as an element which can become subject in a passive

construction.

Jim broke the window glass. (The window glass was brokenby Jim)

Mike beat Mary. (Mary was beaten by Mike)