Syntax
The term ‘syntax’ relates to the structure of phrases and sentences, the larger grammatical units. A phrase is a group of words that belong together as a group. Inside each phrase, there is one ‘central’ word or head which carries the main meaning of the phrase and which determines what other kinds of words the phrase can or must contain. These other words are traditionally called dependents and are divided into complements (a phrase required by the head to ‘complete’ it) and modifiers (an ‘optional’ phrase with a modifying function). Constituency is the term used to describe the grouping of words within phrases and the grouping of phrases within sentences. Phrases can be identified by constituency tests. There are various kinds of constituency test, but we will limit ourselves to three examples here: substitution, coordination and ‘movement’. Example (15) illustrates the substitution test, where the bracket ed constituents in (15a) are identified as phrasal units (NPs) because they can be substituted as a coherent unit by pronouns (15b):
The phrasal constituent that friend of George’s with the glasses is identified as a noun phrase (NP) because it is headed by the noun friend. The same applies to the NP Lily’s bike, which is headed by the noun bike.
Example (16) illustrates the coordination test, where a string of words is identified as a phrase by the fact that it can be coordinated with another phrase of the same category. For example, two NPs are coordinated in (16a), and two VPs are coordinated in (16b).
Example (17) illustrates the ‘movement’ test. The idea behind the term ‘movement’ is that a phrase can occur in a ‘special’ position in order to become more prominent in the sentence. In English, the cleft construction is a productive means of achieving this kind of discourse prominence. The cleft construction is shown in schematic form in (17). Example (18a) shows an ‘ordinary’ (non-cleft) construction, and examples (18b)–(18e) show how different phrasal constituents can be ‘clefted’.
The idea of constituency, which has been influential in linguistics at least since Bloomfield (1933), is open to different interpretations. In generative approaches, phrasal constituents are thought of as units of grammar that are ‘built’ on the basis of grammatical rules or principles. In contrast, the cognitive model rejects this idea and assumes that phrases and sentences are ‘stored whole’ as generalised patterns emerging from repeated experience of usage events. Despite this important theoretical difference, which is central to Part III of this book, cognitive linguists nevertheless recognise the existence of phrases within sentences and share this common vocabulary with linguists of other theoretical persuasions.
Another important term, which we have taken for granted so far, is sentence. This overlaps with the term clause. Linguists define the clause as a string of words containing a subject and a predicate. In the grammatical sense, the predicate corresponds to the verb phrase (everything apart from the subject). In example (19), Lily is the subject, and loves George to distraction is the predicate. The term ‘subject’ (like ‘object’, ‘predicate’ and ‘adverbial’) refers to a grammatical function (section 14.3.5).
Strictly speaking, a clause consists of a single subject and a single predicate, while a sentence may be more complex. A simple sentence, like the ones we have seen so far, consists of a single clause; in this case, the terms ‘clause’ and ‘sentence’ are equivalent. A complex sentence, however, may consist of more than one clause. There are various kinds of relations that hold between the clauses in a complex sentence which we will not address here, but two examples of complex sentences are provided in (20), where clauses are bracketed.
Despite the distinction between the terms ‘clause’ and ‘sentence’, these are often used interchangeably by linguists.
