Analyzing the Grammar of English, 3rd Edition

246 Pages·2007·2.17 MB·English

by  Richard V. Teschner

ANALYZING THE GRAMMAR OF ENGLISH
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Analyzing
the Grammar
of English
Third Edition
Richard V. Teschner
and
Eston E. Evans
Georgetown University Press | Washington, D.C.
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As of January 1, 2007, 13-digit ISBN numbers have
replaced the 10-digit system.
13-digit Paperback: 978-1-58901-166-3
10-digit Paperback: 1-58901-166-X
Georgetown University Press, Washington, D.C.
© 2007 by Georgetown University Press. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying
and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Teschner, Richard V.
Analyzing the grammar of English / Richard V. Teschner and
Eston E. Evans.—3rd ed.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN-13: 978-1-58901-166-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 1-58901-166-X (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. English language—Grammar. I. Evans, Eston Earl,
1940– II. Title.
PE1112.T48 2007
425–dc22
2006031186
This book is printed on acid-free paper meeting the requirements
of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for
Printed Library Materials.
14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
First printing
Printed in the United States of America
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Contents
Figures ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction xiii
1 Utterances, Sentences, Clauses, and Phrases 1
The Most Important Parts of Speech 5
Noun 5
Verb 7
Adjective 10
Adverb 12
Pronoun 13
Determiner 14
Quantifier 14
Preposition 14
Case 16
Subject Case 17
Genitive/Possessive Case 17
Object Case and Subject Case 17
Sounds: Phones, Phonemes, and Allophones 19
Forms: Morphemes and Allomorphs 24
/z/—A Highly Productive English Morpheme 25
/d/—Another Highly Productive English Morpheme 28
Problems with /d/ 29
Note 30
2 Verbs, Tenses, Forms, and Functions 31
Conjugating a Verb 31
Regular Verbs 31
Irregular Verbs 32
The Nine Morphological Patterns of Irregular Verbs 33
Verb Tenses and Auxiliary Verbs: The Nonmodal Auxiliaries (Do, Be, Have) and
the Modal Auxiliaries 38
The Simple Tenses 38
The Importance of the Subject 38
Imperatives, the Present Tense, and the Excluded Subject Pronoun 39
The Compound Tenses: Present and Past 39
v
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vi Contents
The Compound Tenses: Future and Conditional 40
Future Tense 41
Conditional Tense 41
Verb Tenses’ Meanings and Uses 45
The Present Tense 46
The Past Tense 48
The Future and the Conditional Tenses 48
The Progressive Tenses: Present/Past/Future/Conditional 50
The Perfect Tenses: Present/Past/Future/Conditional 50
Notes 54
3 Basic Structures, Questions, Do-Insertion, Negation, Auxiliaries,
Responses, Emphasis, Contraction 55
The Five Basic Structures 55
Two Different Types of Questions 55
Do-Insertion 55
Negation 56
The Role of the First Auxiliary (aux) 56
Nonmodal Auxiliaries Be/Do/Have Can also Be Used as Lexical Verbs 57
Wh-Words as Subjects vs. Wh-Words as Objects 58
Selection Questions 63
Declarative Questions 63
Echo Questions 64
Tag Questions 64
Invariant Tags 65
Elliptical Responses 65
Emphasis and Emphatic Structures 68
Contractions: A Summing Up 71
Contracting Not 71
Nonmodal Auxiliaries’ Contractions 71
Modal Auxiliaries’ Contractions 74
Note 77
4 Modals, Prepositional and Particle Verbs, Transitivity and Voice, and Conditionality 79
Modals and Perimodals 79
Perimodals 81
The Meanings of Modals and Perimodals 82
Two-Word Verbs: Prepositional Verbs vs. Particle Verbs 89
General Comments about Prepositional vs. Particle Verbs 92
Transitivity: Active Voice, Passive Voice 95
Intransitive Verbs and “Voice” 100
Transitive Verbs in Superficially Intransitive Constructions 100
Normally Transitive Verbs used Intransitively 101
Real-World Use of the English Passive: Pragmatic Constraints and
Agent Phrase Addition 103
GET Passives 104
Conditionality 106
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Contents vii
5 Some Components of the Noun Phrase: Forms and Functions 113
Person and Number 113
Gender 113
Case 114
Expressing Possession: Genitives and Partitives 116
Partitive-Genitive Constructions 117
Determiners, Common/Proper Nouns, and Mass/Count Nouns 121
Determiners 121
Articles, Definiteness, and Specificity 121
Common and Proper Nouns 123
Mass Nouns and Count Nouns 123
Mass-to-Count Shifts 124
Dual-Function Nouns: Nouns That Are Both Mass and Count 125
Pronouns 128
The Morphology of Personal Pronouns 131
Reflexive Pronouns 131
Reciprocal Constructions 132
Demonstratives 135
Demonstrative Pronouns 136
Indefinite Pronouns 137
Relative Pronouns 138
Interrogative Pronouns 139
Pro-Words: Pronoun-Like Words for Clauses, Phrases, Adjectives, and Adverbs 140
Note 142
6 Adjectives and Relative Clauses 143
Attributive and Predicate Adjectives: Identification and Syntax 143
The Syntax of Prenominal Attributive Adjectives 147
Adjectives and Adverbs: Comparative and Superlative Forms 148
Changing Equatives to Comparatives: When to Use More and When to Use -er 148
The Morphology of Superlatives: When to Use -est and When to Use Most 150
Equatives, Comparatives, and Superlatives: Their Structures and Meanings 150
Equatives with Comparative Meanings and Equatives and Comparatives with
Superlative Meanings 153
Relative Clauses, Relative Pronouns, and Their Antecedents 155
When to Use Who and When to Use Whom 157
Deleting Relative Pronouns: Creating Gaps and the Process of Gapping 157
The Twenty Types of Relative Clauses 158
How to Use the Example Sentences in Figure 6b 158
The Relativization of the Possessive Determiner Whose 159
Restrictive and Nonrestrictive (Relative) Clauses 165
Relative Pronoun Clauses with Present Participles/Gerunds and with
Past Participles 168
Notes 170
7 Adverbs, It and There Referentials and Nonreferentials, and Fronting 171
Adverbs 171
It as a Referential, It as a Nonreferential 174
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viii Contents
Adverb Referential There, Existence-Marking Nonreferential There 175
Emphasis by Peak Stressing, Solo Fronting, or Cleft Fronting 178
Note 182
8 Compound Sentences: Coordination, Subordination 183
Compound Sentences 183
Coordinate Sentences 183
Subordinate Sentences 188
Clausal Adverb Complements 190
Clausal Object or Subject Complements 191
Clausal Predicate Nominative Complements 192
Clausal Noun Complements 192
Clausal Adjective Complements 193
Tenseless Complements 195
Infinitives and Gerunds as Tenseless Verb Complements 195
The That-Clause 197
The Infinitive Complement 197
Equi-Deletion 198
Raising to Object 198
Infinitive Complement with Equi-Deletion 198
Infinitive Complement with Raising to Object 199
Gerund Complement 201
Gerund Complement with Equi-Deletion 201
Gerund Complement with Raising to Object 201
Gerund Complement with Raising to Possessive 202
Purpose Complements 203
Miscellaneous Complementation Patterns 204
Summary of All Clausal Complementation Patterns 204
Appendix 211
Glossary of Terms 219
Index 229
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Figures
1a Utterance, Sentence, and Clause 2
1b The Twelve English Vowel Phonemes 20
1c Words Exemplifying the English Vowel Phonemes’ Sounds 21
1d Correlation of Stress and Schwa 21
1e Voiceless and Voiced Consonant Pairs 22
1f The Twenty-Four English Consonant Phonemes 22
2a The Fourteen Active Voice Compound (and the Two Simple)
Verb Tenses 42
3a Presence of do-Insertion 56
3b Absence of do-Insertion 57
3c Tag Questions: The Tree 65
3d Tag Questions: The Outline 65
3e Tag Questions: The Examples and the Explanations 66
4a The Perimodals 81
4b The Eight Modality Types and Their Representative Modal Verbs 83
4c Simple and Compound Tenses in the Passive Voice 96
4d The Syntax of GET Passives and BE Passives 104
4e The Various Types of Conditionality 107
5a Grammatical Gender: English Compared with Spanish 114
5b Genitive versus Partitive in Expressions of Possession 115
5c The Mass Noun/Count Noun Distinction: Potential Environments 126
5d The English Personal Pronoun System 130
5e The English Demonstratives 136
6a The Ordering of Prenominal Attributive Adjectives 147
6b The Twenty Types of Relative Clauses 159
7a Different Ways of Expressing Emphasis 179
8a The Structure of a Coordinate Sentence 189
8b The Structure of a Subordinate Sentence 189
8c The Structure of Multiple Complementing with that-Clauses 191
8d The Structure of an Equi-Deletion 198
8e Equi-Deletion Complements in the Passive Voice 199
8f Infinitive Complement with Raising to Object 200
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