Coordinating Information and Communications Technology Across the Primary School

A Study in the Adjectives of English

Connor Ferris

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317894131
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This book adopts a new approach to a major area of syntax - the way in which adjectives are bound together with other words in phrases or sentences.

Chapter 1

The intensional framework of syntax

1.1 The overall goal of this investigation is to argue that there is a very great deal that can be said, that has not yet been said, about the semantic value of fundamental syntactic relations. It addresses this issue by looking at a large body of empirical evidence, specifically at examples of the relations between adjectives and other words in their phrases or sentences (these other words by no means always being nouns or noun phrases). The observations which we shall make can be directly linked to an account of the overall possibilities of English grammatical structure; by this we do not mean to speak of the paradigmatic relationships between different clauses, but of the syntagmatic relations which construct the clause itself. We argue that adjectives appear, diversely, in their own right, as syntagmatic structures unfold, and that clauses proposed to underlie them are illusory.

We confidently assume that the results set out here will, in their broad principles, be valid for any language; however, because of the limitless domains that would appear on the horizon if one were to include proper exemplification from other languages, and since there is ample material to consider in English alone, the latter is the basis on which the investigation will proceed.

If the approach to be found here can be tied to a previous tradition, it will be to the modern speculative grammar of which Jespersen and Sapir were eminent exponents earlier in the century; this tradition has become unfashionable in the past two or three decades, though distinguished work in this mode has still been produced by various scholars, for instance P. H. Matthews in England and Dwight Bolinger in America; in particular, if there are any worthwhile results in the present text, they owe much to Bolinger’s example of investigation through careful scrutiny of what really happens grammatically when a given expression is used. However, even though the work described here is certainly concerned with grammar (and not, for example, based on sociological data or on lexical classification), it cannot be denied that it is remote from much of modern writing on grammar. On the other hand, there are three points which may count in its favour:

First, it provides a straightforward account of the very varied uses of adjectives in English, and points to a quite direct correlation between observable facts and a highly economical set of assumptions about basic grammatical relations. Moreover, these assumptions can themselves be related to the nature of communication in a particularly simple way.

Second, it includes a description of the meaning of each construction, qua construction, where English adjectives are found. The word meaning is to be taken seriously here. We take it as obviously inadequate merely to assert that fundamental syntax is semantic; nor shall we believe that we have described (let alone explained) the meaning of a syntactic construction by simply giving it a name, such as attribution or predicative adjunction. We do not intend to set up an alternative formal system (uninterpreted in itself) to act as the interpretation for our syntax, and we shall not just specify patterns of co-occurring word classes on the supposition that causal factors are described by exhibiting the phenomena they govern (or, worse, that the two are the same); this mistake, which has been widely made, reverses the logical priorities – rather as if one were to answer an enquiry about the underlying geological structure of a region by offering aerial photographs of the terrain. In practice, this mistake has been responsible for much confusion in the discussion of syntactic possibilities and their means of expression.

Third, the account can explain some of the interpretative and grammatical facts of English, both general and particular. This does not mean merely showing that two parts of the descriptive apparatus march in step with one another; the explanation here is a matter of showing that the facts in question are natural consequences of interaction between the meanings of the syntactic constructions as constructions, and the lexical meaning of the individual items that appear in them. In order to be as specific as possible, we shall cite three examples chosen at random from the text that follows. The account given in this book, based on the constructional meanings, enables us to give answers to these questions:

Why does Oliver imagined her red-haired have two different meanings, one where he is trying mentally to change the lady’s image, and the other where he wonders what sort of person he is going to meet)? (Chapter 4)

Why is the question in (1) grammatical while that in (2) is not? (Chapter 5)

(1) he likes his beef tea strong

how does he like his beef tea?

(2) muzak drives them mad

*how does muzak drive them?

Why is the first sentence of (3) grammatical while the second is not? (Chapter 10)

(3) rarely do headmasters smoke in excess

*generally do headmasters drink in moderation

1.2 It is tempting at this point to plunge straight into an account of the adjectival system and how it produces such results as those above; and in fact we should state clearly at this point that readers who prefer to build up the picture piece by piece, assessing the validity of the connexion between data and theory by starting from the evidential end, may pass immediately to Chapter 2 without any disadvantage.

However, to assert that there is a very great deal remaining to be said about the mutual effects of semantics and syntax may seem a bold claim, perhaps even a surprising one, given the number of those who have worked on both areas and the many publications with titles suggesting that the two have been linked inside their covers. It may therefore not be entirely idle to try to hazard suggestions as to why the field should still be so open. The best possible way to do this will be to set down the account resulting from a different approach, so that one can see what it is that has been overlooked so far; and this is something which this book sets out to do.

Beyond that, however, there are clearly certain factors which have acted to throw a kind of cloak of invisibility around the semantic contribution made by syntactic constructions. Together these produce a powerful effect, and, after reviewing them and the way they work, it becomes very much less surprising that the semantic essence of syntactic constructions has proved so elusive in the past. Since such a review stands rather apart from the rest of the material, it is presented separately, in Appendix A, where we consider what syntax is and is not, and the difficulties that have beset previous attempts to explain it, of which the principal result has been an implicit acceptance of what may be called the ‘perspicuity of grammar’.

In the remainder of this chapter, we shall present an outline sketch of the assumptions about the fundamental structure of grammar which form the background to our discussion of English adjectives, and which allow us to derive the kind of detailed inferences about grammaticality and interpretation exemplified above. It will be pleasing if the features of this sketch seem intuitively natural, as indeed we would claim, but justification for them is of course to be sought primarily in the observations of Chapters 2 to 10 and the way that these observations fit our assumptions about the bases of adjectival syntax. Our treatment in this chapter will try to be as informal as possible in order to be comprehensible. Notes towards a more formal account are offered in Appendix B.

1.3 At the simplest level, we assume that there are only two types of element possible in human linguistically structured thought, entities and properties. Elements of these two types contract any of four ‘horizontal’ relations, belonging to the same level, with other entities or properties or both, as will be described immediately below (it is probable that exactly one of these relations is specifically linguistic rather than being a relation implied by human mental activities in general).

Both types of elèment (or strictly speaking tokens or occurrences of both types) contract a ‘vertical’ relation of instantiation with linguistic expressions, or more precisely with the meanings of linguistic expressions. In all that follows, we shall assume that these basic linguistic expressions are words, as indeed they normally are, unless we have specific reason for focusing our attention on phrases or morphemes. We may also say that the linguistic expressions (or their meanings) that appear in particular token constructions identify entities and properties (and we shall feel free to extend this use of identify to the activity of the speakers and writers who use the constructions). Entities, being elements of a specifically linguistic domain which we shall call theintensional level, may or may not have a referent in some real or imaginary external world; we can certainly talk about an entity while uncertain of the existence of any related ‘thing’ in the world about which we are speaking, or even while explicitly rejecting such an existence. In precisely the same way, when we use the word property it will mean an element of this domain used by speakers in constructing their acts of linguistic communication, and not a property as perceived or conceived extralinguistically in a real or imaginary world, unless we specifically state that the latter is intended.

Another way of putting this is to say that human linguistic thought is such that all particular thoughts (whether expressed overtly or not) can be constructed only in terms of ideas classified as either entities or properties, and put together by means of some combination of the four fundamental relations already alluded to.

The first of these relations is what we shall call qualification. Both entities and properties may be specified in more detail by extending them with elements of e...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Longman Linguistics Library
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Descriptive signs
• Acknowledgements
• Series List
• Dedication
• Chapter 1 The intensional framework of syntax
• Chapter 2 Attributive adjectives: the distinction between ascriptive and associative
• Chapter 3 Predicative and postnominal attributive adjectives
• Chapter 4 Predicate qualifiers and clausal adjectives
• Chapter 5 Adverbal and postverbal adjectives
• Chapter 6 Minor structures
• Chapter 7 Restrictive and non-restrictive adjectives
• Chapter 8 Intensional grouping
• Chapter 9 Extraclausal adjectives and numerals. The interpretation of constructions with have
• Chapter 10 The semantic distinction between mode and comment
• Appendix A The elusive nature of syntax
• Appendix B Towards a formalism for intensional syntax
• Appendix C The identity of the adjective positions
• References
• Index of adjectives and adverbs
• Index