Final: Morenberg whole book and Downing 1/2 book Flashcards
why are Indirect Objects almost always animate?
Can you provide an IO that is inanimate?
Can you provide one that doesn’t use give?
The IO tells to whom or for whom something is done.
She gave me a gift
It would be difficult to find an inanimate IO for this reason.
He rewarded the car with new tires.
Why are Vc verbs usually verbs of thought or articulation?
You have to be able to think or articulate to ‘consider’ something
They have to have an object compliment
I find coffee essential.
They appointed him President.
What is the LV test?
LV Test - test to see if a verb is a linking verb by substituting it with BE or SEEM. If it still makes sense, it’s a linking verb.
What are NAVA words?
noun, adjective, verb, adverb
“Content words” major category open class - word class that can have new words added
Why is the common notion of POS unreliable? Why does the list vary?
Words don’t always fit into one category
Ex; Paint can be a noun or verb
-that is a nice coat of paint (noun)
-Paint me. (verb)
And they’re often debated. For some, interjections are a POS; for others, interjections are
a function
Explain determiners.
words that specify something about a noun -
ex) the, a, an
5 Categories: articles demonstratives possessive pronouns numbers prearticles
What is the difference between determiners and adjectives?
they both provide information about nouns
adjectives –describe the qualities or attributes of nouns regardless of the speaker
determiners– express the references or positions of nouns to the speaker
adjectives are open class, content words
determiners are closed class, function words
Rhetorically, how are definite and indefinite articles useful?
they serve to differentiate whether an NP expresses SHARED INFO.
Definite indicates that the speaker/writer and listener/reader share information
indefinite do not share info
Def: Will you bring the chair?
Indef: Will you bring a chair?
How are prearticles confused with prepositions?
prearticles contain words like of, making it confusing to identify a PP.
confusing to identify a PP.
A BOWL OF strawberries, NOT A bowl of strawberries.
Demonstratives contain deictics - explain.
deictics = pointing] because demonstratives this, that, these, and those share old information, they are “pointing” deictically to the object.
That chair, those Pringles.
Sentence
string of words with at least one independent clause ending in a period
Clause
String of words that contain a subject verb relationship
Noun
can be inflected for plural, genetive, and can take an article
Verb
a word that can be inflected by using tense, modality, and aspect (when an action has been completed or is progressing)
Prepositions can never be alone. How can we find them alone in SE sentences?
Prepositions can occur at the end of phrases
ex: “this is the book I was talking about”
“that is the shop I live beside”
They’ve been separated from the noun they refer to.
Explain constituency and hierarchy in sentence structure
constituency refers to membership in a hierarchical syntactic structure.
words phrases clauses and sentences make up the grammatical heirarchy that shows how each works together to form meaning
Ex: the water supply in flint, michigan contains too much lead.
The branches in the tree diagram refer to hierarchy
explain heads and attributes in phrases
a headword is a word in a phrase to which all other words depend on
an attribute qualifies another word
head of noun phrase is the noun
attributes cluster around the head (any word around the noun)
what are phrasal verbs?
A phrasal verb is a combination of words (a verb + a preposition or verb +adverb) that when used together, usually take on a different meaning to that of the original verb
karen had been baking
what are verb particles?
A word that is locked onto a verb to constitute another meaning
look up something
Ex: She gave up. She didn’t literally give ‘up’ anything. It’s just a VP to complete the verb.
How are verb particles different from prepositions?
A particle combined with a verb produces a new meaning different from the verb’s meaning by itself
—He looked up the word.
Prepositions do not change the meanings of their preceding verbs and are independent of them.
—He looked up the tree.
tense, modality and aspect
Modality: (verbs of attitude); have to be put in a clause to figure out what type: epistemic or deontic
I MAY go.
Two tenses: present and past
————time of a verb’s action or state of being
I was there.
Four aspects: simple, progressive, perfect, perfect-progressive —(aspect discusses the status of the verb as completed or not)
He is trying. (present progressive, trying has the prog. aspect)
what is the difference between epistemic and deontic modals?
Epistemic–Knowledge, speculation, ability
—-Ex: Can I go to the bathroom? (speculation question)
Deontic– obligation permission
—Ex: May I go to the bathroom? (Permission question)
Explain the difference between finite and nonfinite verbs.
Finite has tense
nonfinite does not.
Ex: I am going to do the laundry
. ‘Am’ is present tense and therefore finite.
‘Going’ is a nonfinite verb but doesn’t have tense.
Independent possessive pronouns are not determiners
Ind poss pronouns stand alone and aren’t determiners.
Commonly at the end of clauses or phrases
Ex: the locker is HERS.
—MY phone is dead, pass me YOURS.
Why is genitive more accurate than possessive?
Genitive is more accurate than possessive because people don’t always actually own the object
Ex: Martha Stewart’s book.
(does she own the book or is it the book she wrote? Hence poss. Vs. gen.)
Genitive isn’t truly possessive; it represents a relationship rather than a simple possession
Not becomes an attribute of AUX.
Not makes an aux constituent with HAVE or BE
how can do act as a modal? Does it carry the
conditional component of modal verbs? If not, what is its function?
Do can be a pro modal by taking the place of the modal in the sentence
Ex: they did not go to the beach (instead of they can not go to the beach)
Pro-verb takes the place of the main verb. Usually done to refer to a process of steps
Ex: she did the dishes
How can do become a proverb?
Replace the action verb with “do” just as a pronoun is used in place of a noun
Acts as a modal when asking a question or when placed with ‘not’ in an aux
Do carries the tense
Karen did the dishes.
Michael does karate.
What are agentless passives? Are they ever useful?
ommitting the agent can be done when the agent is unknown, unnecessary, or the speaker does not want to name them.
A cake was baked.
Last night a man was murdered.
Are conjunctive adverbs sentence modifiers? How do you diagram them?
Conjunctive adverbs like “therefore” or “however” are usually sentence modifiers and moved to the end of the sentence
ex–“they’re big (therefore) they eat a lot.”
————————————–(therefore).
Can Verb + Tense carry a negative outside of not? Are there limits?
It can but it’s limited and not as direct.
We only have words that imply negative
connotations like ‘never’ or ‘unlikely’ or ‘anti’
We never go
Explain how restrictive relative clauses embed in independent clauses. They are
always constituents of NPs – and become adjective clauses.
Restrictive clauses don’t have commas (therefore are embedded in an IC) bc they are
essential to the subject as they are part of the subject themselves.
Adding commas changes the meaning.
Ex: ‘The bus drivers who were on strike attended the meeting’
specifies that ‘the bus drivers who were on strike’ attended the meeting - not all bus drivers.
Constituency determines whether a prepositional phrase functions as an adjective or an adverb.” Explain.
Ex: We hid from the neighbor in the attic
Meaning is ambiguous bc were ‘we’ hiding in the attic (making it adverbial bc referring to verb) or was ‘the neighbor in the attic’ who ‘we’ were hiding from (making it adjectival bc referring to noun).
How do structuralists and generalists see restrictive relative clauses? take a position and defend it
ex. The bus drivers, who are on strike, are meeting.
Structuralist- restrictive relative clause is constituent of the NP bc of the relative pronoun
Generalist- restrictive clause is not constituent of NP
open/closed,
open words: Can be added to.
-NAVA
Closed words: Can’t be added to
-Modals, prepositions, conjunctions
Content / Function
Content words: refer to actions, objects, ideas
ex–chair, desk
Function Words: carry out grammatical meanings
ex–around, through
Form / Structure
Form: inflected
Structure: not inflected
Why can’t reflexives fill subject slots?
Reflexives: can’t fill subject slots because they always refer back to the subject noun
ex–
himself went to the store.
—-doesn’t work
how can do act as a modal? Does it carry the
conditional component of modal verbs? If not, what is its function?
Acts as a modal when asking a question or when placed with ‘not’ in an aux
Do carries the tense
Ex: Do the laundry
Explain how the default active pattern NP+VP+NP changes to passive. Diagram
examples and pay attention to MV labeling.
Active sentences are changed to passives by
1) moving the DO to the subject slot,
2) adding a form of BE to the Main Verb.
At minimum changing the pattern to NP + AUX + VP.
The agent may or may not be added to the sentence in a prep phrase.
Ex: Karen baked a cake VS A cake was baked (by Karen)
Explain why English has expletives, particularly expletive subjects. Explain how
they are subjects, although structuralists tell us to diagram “the underlying
Pattern.”
Expletive: Lexially empty. a word that has a grammatical function in a sentence but has no meaning of its own
Ex: There, It
It can fill a noun phrase slot - but it’s NOT a noun or pronoun itself
Expletives are placeholders - they highlight certain info
Ex: There are two weeks of classes left.
The argument stems from grammatical subjects vs. logical subjects
Why is an unstated you not part of imperatives?
English forbids an unstated you. It’s a rhetorical feature, not a syntactic one
When diagramming compounds, where do you attach/diagram the conjunction in a
single constituent?
The conjunction is always attached to the constituent to its right
Ex: I’m going to the mall or the movies
Why don’t we punctuate restrictive relative clauses?
they would become nonrestrictive -
this is how we differentiate the two - gives the sentence different meanings
Restrictive clauses are necessary information
- they narrow down
- they’re part of the subject
Ex: The bus drivers who are on strike are meeting today.
‘Who are on strike’ is necessary because it specifies which bus drivers - this clause is restrictive
The bus drivers, who are on strike, are meeting today.
WITH commas is non-restrictive. It says all bus drivers are on strike
Relative Pronouns
that, which, who, whom
how do we derive perfective participles?
You can delete BE and a grammatical subject from a relative clause to create a perf part.
Ex: Students who are taught phonics can sound out words. (before)
Students taught phonics can sound out words.
(perfective participle)
What’s the problem here: They are seeming smart. vs. They are looking smart.
While they’re the same constructions, the linking verb ‘seeming’ + the progressive
doesn’t make sense.
Seeming is more vague than looking .
Given the perception of the speaker, they are unsure of something that they would know.
Anaphora
looks/refers back
EX. When Mary called Jack, she was upset.
(She refers to Mary)
Cataphora:
looks/refers forward
EX.. When she called Jack, Mary was upset.
(She refers to Mary)
Ways of interpreting sentence structure
Theme: NP: subj
Rheme: VP: pred
what happens when phrasal verbs work with nouns/pronouns?
With phrasal verbs, pronouns are less moveable:
Emily will pick her up Emily will pick up her (sounds weird)
The pronoun must split the phrasal verb
Nouns are more powerful and more moveable
Emily will pick Olivia up Emily will pick up Olivia
some/any as assertive/non-assertive words – do the non-assertives contain a shade of negativity or no?
Assertive words: some (asserts a quantity)
Non-assertive: any (suggestion of infinity)
Any is connected to negativity
I don’t have any money (can’t say I don’t have some money)
prototypical vs. non-prototypical words – “baked” is more transitive than “ran” or “have;”
Bake: has high valency therefore it controls where other words can be in the sentence and is more powerful and prototypical.
–so “bake” is highly transitive to the point that we can leave the direct object out because we know you have to bake something.
Have: highly non-prototypical as a transitive verb but can be one. Low valency
More prototypical usually means more valency
Ex: I have a croissant.
ergative verbs – what do they do? Can all verbs be ergative?
With ergatives you can promote the
object to the subject position without making it passive.
Not all verbs can be ergative
Vt with high valency might be able to.
ergatives aren’t passive! Passives require a BE verb.
Karen baked a cake -> A cake baked. (ergative)
Complement /attribute
Compliment—Janice is a nurse. - nurse is a compliment (Can’t be flipped “a nurse is Janice” doesn’t work)
Attribute—Janice is the nurse - nurse is an attribute (bc it can flip into ‘The nurse is Janice’)
Transferred Negation
I don’t think she was French
–Main verb has uncertainty
I think she wasn’t French
–Main verb doesn’t have a negative so sounds more certain
verbs of an independent clause are more powerful than dependent clause verbs
Explain the most important differences between the RK diagrams of structural grammar and the Tree diagrams of generative grammar.
RK: genatives are diagrammed as possessives.
— Tree: there’s differentiation
RK: prearticles diagrammed as prep phrases
— Tree: diagrammed as demonstrative
Ex: a cup ‘of milk' in RK a prep;
in Tree: ‘a cup of’ is a prearticle expressing a Measurement
Also linearity of Tree VS. RK
Explain the many uses of that, and provide examples for each.
Deictic determiner: Shows proximity/ relation or points to something
ex—I don’t want that grammar exam.
Subordinator: introduces a noun clause (a clause that functions as a noun - to test
Replace the clause with ‘something’)
ex—They assumed that I finished.
Relative Pronoun: connect clause or phrase to noun or pronoun
I bought the book that is required.
Explain what we mean by deixis and provide at least two specific examples to support your answer. How is this rhetorically useful?
Deixis a rhetorical device that points to something in proximal distance.
Ex: I did not have sexual relations with that woman,
——–Monica Lewinsky. (creates distance between himself and ML)
Ex: I want to wear these slides
—————-(puts my slides close to me syntactically :))
Explain the relationship between syntax and punctuation, and provide at least two specific examples to support your answer.
Punctuation governs syntax.
–A period asserts that the previous structure is a sentence, despite whether it’s technically true in terms of standard grammatical rules.
Ex: No. Not really a sentence with a subject and predicate, but the period says it is.
–A comma can dictate whether a clause is restrictive or nonrestrictive, thereby changing the meaning
Ex: the bus drivers sentence again
Intransitive verbs have _____ valency
low
—an intransitive verb controls adverbial Prep Phrase
Sentence Modifier
A structure that is part of a sentence but is not constituent of an independent clause, it is a constituent of the entire sentence.
–Not constituent to any individual part of the sentence.
–Any nonrestrictive modifier is going to be a sentence modifier
EX….
Systemic Functional Grammar
Semiotic approach is different from that of Chomsky
Semiotics= the study of signs
, Systemic Functional (SF) Grammar, as a tool for exploring meaning in any language
transitivity
Transitivity describes the verb or the clause in terms of the number of basic constituents (mostly noun phrases) that are required to make the clause grammatical. The verb determines the transitivity of the clause.
Ex: “Sarah sneezed”
——only Subject and Verb: intransitive
Ex: “Sarah ate an apple”
——-Subject, Verb, Do: transitive
indicative mood
makes a statement
interrogative mood
asks a question
finite and nonfinite clauses
A finite clause may stand alone as a complete sentence
Independent clauses are finite
only independent clauses can be indicative, interrogative, imperative, etc.
–ex…. Charlie raises his hand constantly.
A nonfinite clause cannot stand alone.
dependent clauses are nonfinite
–ex… He loves to
Comparative (noun clause)
follows comparative forms of Adj/Adv
–ex: The results are better than we thought.
Supplementive units (noun clause)
The new Kindle is out of stock. Which is a pity.
Verbless clause (noun clause)
lacks a verb and maybe a subject—
EX—–Book your tickets whenever possible.
——Hands off!
Abbreviated clauses (noun clause)
subject + finite verb only with rest of clause ellipted because it is known – anaphoric sense.
I can’t go to the library today, can you?
embedding
Embedding—a kind of subordination of clauses
He said that he wanted to pick up the tickets.
Coordination
uses a coordinating conjuction
FANBOYS
Ex—I would like to thank you for the card you sent me.
Subordination
joining clauses with a subordinator
Thanks for the card that you sent me – that becomes DO.
difference between verbs with attributive/locative complements:
Attributive: He is the tall repairman..
—-attributive SC since “the tall repairman” is adjectival
Locative: He stayed at the airport
—-locative SC since “at the airport” : adverbial prep phrase
Ability to become the subject—
Passivization with promotion to Subject
for transitive verbs….
Karen baked a cake. –A cake was baked by Karen.
–ADD BE VERB
Or intransitive verbs
Queen Victoria slept in this bed.
—This bed was slept in by Queen Victoria –what happens with the PP?
We can’t have “In this bed was slept by Queen Victoria.”
OP takes absent DO’s job to promote to subject, but PP must be split
recipient Indirect object
She gave me a book/She gave a book to me
– can be easily passivized
Beneficiary Indirect Object
She bought me a book/ She bought a book for me
—not as easily passivized
Object Complements
usually occurs right after DO
– look for verbs of thought/articulation – find, make, appoint, consider, call, elect, vote, think
Deverbal noun
nouns (not verbals) derived from verbs:
Ex—-Have a taste. Take a rest.
Strength of DO: I swam the English Channel vs. I swam across the English Channel.
What’s the difference? Which sentence is stronger? Why?
“I swam across the english channe”l is stronger because the preposition adds specific distance.
“I swam the english channel” could simply refer to someone who swam in the channel.
Catenative verb
these are verb chains created to form a series of actions or thoughts
EX——I want to try to learn to dive.
Explain the ‘semi-modal’ problem in this sentence: Jimmy Fallon should be able to judge Best in Show at the next Winchester Kennel Club competition at Madison Square Garden.
‘Be able to’ is a semi-modal or at least carries a sense of modality.
You can’t have more than one modal in a sentence, so coupled with ‘should’ there’s a problem.
Yes/No questions
AUX+NP+VP.
Ex: will you leave? Will the dog be good? Did Karen bake?
Participles and tense
participles are recognized in terms of form: prog/perf.
Participles do not carry
tense, as they derive from aspectual forms.
Look at the two “Chinese cooks” sentences, what’s the difference?
Chinese cooks claim that snake meat keeps you warm in winter. (NC)
-THAT functions as the DO of the verb; it’s a subord. And introduces noun clause but has
no function within it.
- Chinese cooks prepare snake-meat dishes that keep you warm in winter. (RC)
- THAT is a relative pronoun and functions as subject of the relative clause
Explain how we extrapose that-clauses
Sometimes when that-clause functions as a subject it’s movable to the end of the sentence
And the subject is filled with “it”, possibly an expletive, which functions as the grammatical subject while the
That-clause functions as the logical subject.
Ex– That we were poor never occurred to me.
(becomes) —–It never occurred to me that we were poor.
Gerunds fill noun slots
A gerund is the ing form of a verb used as a noun
EX–Running is good exercise
