A Dependency Grammar of English: An Introduction and Beyond

459 Pages·2019·23.285 MB·English

by  Timothy Osborne

A Dependency
Grammar of English
An introduction and beyond
Timothy Osborne
John Benjamins Publishing Company
A Dependency Grammar of English

A Dependency Grammar
of English
An introduction and beyond
Timothy Osborne
Zhejiang University
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Amsterdam / Philadelphia
TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
8
the American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence
of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.
doi 10.1075/z.224
Cataloging-in-Publication Data available from Library of Congress:
lccn 2019014369 (print) / 2019021828 (e-book)
isbn 978 90 272 0345 8 (Hb)
isbn 978 90 272 6228 8 (e-book)
© 2019 – John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any
other means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Company · https://benjamins.com
Table of contents
Chapter 1
Some concepts of syntactic theory 1
1.1 Overview 1
1.2 Constituents and some tests that identify them 2
1.3 Phrases 6
1.4 Grammatical relations 7
1.5 Subjects 9
1.6 Semantic roles 12
1.7 Predicates, arguments, and adjuncts 15
1.8 Identifying arguments and adjuncts 18
1.9 The content of adjuncts 23
1.10 Complements and adjuncts within NPs 25
1.11 Second-order predicates 28
Chapter 2
Dependency and phrase structure 33
2.1 Overview 33
2.2 Precedence and dominance 34
2.3 Dependency vs. phrase structure 36
2.4 Strengths and weaknesses 43
2.5 Endo- vs. exocentric structures 48
2.6 Translation: Phrase structure → dependency 50
2.7 Translation: Dependency → phrase structure 54
2.8 Hybrid systems – Reed Kellogg diagrams 57
2.9 Brackets, arced arrows, and indentations 59
2.10 Dependency vs. phrase structure scrutinized 64
Chapter 3
The argument for dependency 73
3.1 Overview 73
3.2 Tests for constituents 74
3.3 In favor of dependency 79
3.4 The coordination diagnostic 83
3.5 Do-so-substitution 85
vi A Dependency Grammar of English
3.6 One-substitution 88
3.7 Clause binarity 90
3.8 Binary branching vs. flat structures 94
3.9 Historical overview of DG 98
Chapter 4
Units of structure 105
4.1 Overview 105
4.2 Generic units 106
4.3 Relational units 110
4.4 Catenae and ratios 112
4.5 Phrase structure constituents 115
4.6 Catenae in phrase structure grammar 116
4.7 Subject plus finite verb 120
4.8 Government 122
4.9 Auxiliary verb plus content verb 125
4.10 NP vs. DP 127
4.11 Governors vs. selectors 132
Chapter 5
Morphological, semantic, and prosodic dependencies 135
5.1 Overview 135
5.2 Morphological dependencies (agreement) 136
5.3 Case government 140
5.4 Semantic dependencies (selection) 143
5.5 Adjunct arrows 147
5.6 Idiom selectors 149
5.7 Predicates vs. predications 151
5.8 Prosodic dependencies (clitics) 154
Chapter 6
Valency 159
6.1 Overview 159
6.2 Tesnière’s metaphor 160
6.3 Semantic vs. syntactic valency 162
6.4 Valency frames 165
6.5 Finite vs. nonfinite verbs 167
6.6 Passive participles and ergative verbs 169
6.7 Clausal valents 173
6.8 Control 175
6.9 Raising 181
6.10 Missing objects 186
Table of contents vii
6.11 Auxiliaries 190
6.12 Light verbs 193
6.13 Beyond verb valency 194
Chapter 7
Word order 199
7.1 Overview 199
7.2 Monostratal syntax 200
7.3 Projectivity 203
7.4 Head-dependent ordering 206
7.5 Co-sibling ordering 210
7.6 Shifting 213
7.7 Overview of inversion 216
7.8 Subject-auxiliary inversion 218
7.9 Subject-verb inversion 221
7.10 Rising 222
7.11 Constituent vs. non-constituent rising 226
7.12 The Rising Principle 230
7.13 Motivating rising 232
7.14 Motivating non-constituent rising 235
Chapter 8
Types of discontinuities 243
8.1 Overview 243
8.2 Wh-fronting 245
8.3 Topicalization 250
8.4 NP-internal fronting 255
8.5 Scrambling 259
8.6 Extraposition 263
Chapter 9
Islands 269
9.1 Overview 269
9.2 Risen and rising catenae 270
9.3 Prepositions stranding 272
9.4 Left branch islands 274
9.5 Pied-piping 279
9.6 Specified NP islands 280
9.7 Subject islands 284
9.8 Adjunct islands 287
9.9 Wh-islands 290
9.10 Right roof islands 293
viii A Dependency Grammar of English
Chapter 10
Coordination 297
10.1 Overview 297
10.2 Parallel strings 298
10.3 Dependency vs. phrase structure (again) 301
10.4 String vs. gapping coordination 307
10.5 Large vs. small conjuncts 312
10.6 Forward vs. backward string coordination 315
10.7 String and/or gapping coordination 317
10.8 Summary 319
Chapter 11
The structure of coordination 321
11.1 Overview 321
11.2 Tree conventions 322
11.3 Parallelism 326
11.4 Functional parallelism 329
11.5 Structural parallelism 331
11.6 A confounding factor: Gapping and stripping 334
11.7 More on structural parallelism 338
11.8 A restriction on forward sharing (and gapping) 340
11.9 Sharing and prepositions 345
Chapter 12
Ellipsis 349
12.1 Overview 349
12.2 Null material 350
12.3 Targeted catenae and remnants 353
12.4 New information 355
12.5 Criteria of classification 356
12.6 NP-ellipsis 356
12.7 Gapping 361
12.8 Stripping 365
12.9 VP-ellipsis 369
12.10 Pseudogapping 375
Table of contents ix
Chapter 13
More ellipsis 379
13.1 Overview 379
13.2 Answer fragments 380
13.3 Sluicing 385
13.4 Null complement anaphora 391
13.5 Comparative deletion 398
13.6 Left edge ellipsis 401
13.7 Further types of ellipsis 404
13.8 Summary of ellipsis 406
Chapter 14
The syntax of comparatives 409
14.1 Overview 409
14.2 Preliminaries 410
14.3 Comparative coordination 413
14.4 Ellipsis or not? 415
14.5 Functional equivalence 417
14.6 The role of extraposition 421
14.7 The distribution of comparative deletion 424
Concluding statements 427
References 429
Index of authors 439
Subject index 443