The Derivation Tree Diagramme

The derivation tree is drawn as two branches forking out from the sign S (sentence).

Each branch has nodes (joints or knots) in it from which smaller branches fork out. Each node corresponds to a phrase, the two forking branches correspond to the IC of the phrase. The diagramme below is a derivation tree for generating simple sentences with a transitive verb.

S

NP VP

T N V NP

T N V T N

The man hit the ball

The boy took a pen

To generate a sentence we must know that it consists firstly of an NP and a VP, that an NP consists of a determiner and an N, that a VP with a transitive V consists of a V and an NP, that the NP again has a determiner and an N.

All this is shown by the diagramme called the ‘derivation tree’.

The generating of the sentence involves first only the classes of words and the function words. Only on the lowest level (the morphemic level) we choose the concrete lexical elements.

References:

1. Бархударов Л. С. Структура простого предложения современного английского языка. / Л. С. Бархударов. – М.: Высш. шк., 1966. – С. 15-28.

2. Блох М. Я. Теоретическая грамматика английского языка: Учеб. – 4-е изд., испр. / М. Я. Блох. – М.: Высшая школа, 2003. – С. 292-302.

3. Иртеньева Н. Ф., Барсова О. М., Блох М. Я., Шапкин А. П. Теоретическая грамматика английского языка (Синтаксис) / Иртеньева Н. Ф. и др. – М.: Высш. шк., 1969. – С. 56-61.

4. Fries, Ch. An Introduction To The Construction Of English Sentences. / Ch. Fries. – Lnd.: Longmans, Green and Company, 1961. – P. 256-273.

THEME 20. THE FUNCTIONAL SENTENCE PERSPECTIVE

Plan

1. The basic principles of sentence division. The notion of the functional sentence perspective. The theme and the rheme. Topic and comment.

2. Language means of expressing the theme.

3. Language means of expressing the rheme.

Czech linguists (notably J. Firbas) have for a number of years been interested in Functional Sentence Perspective or FSР, for short. In particular, they have distinguished in the sentence between THEME and RHEME, or what has in most other schools of linguistics been called TOPIC and COMMENT. This stems from the idea that we can distinguish between what we are talking about (the topic) and what we are saying about it (the comment). In some languages, there are formal ways of distinguishing topic and comment - and the category is thus a formal one. One way in which the distinction may be made is by the order of the words, and this is the situation in Czech where the theme, what is being talked about, is placed in initial position in the sentence.

If a language has clear markers of topic and comment, the linguistic description raises few problems, for the categories are formally marked and it is always relatively easy to give semantic descriptions to formal categories. But English and many other languages have no simple formal category and it is then not clear what might be meant by topic and comment. Indеed in English there seem to be at least four features that can be related to the notion.

First, it is possible in English to place а word at the beginning of a sentence when this is not its normal syntactic position as in The man over there I do not like very much. This is a device for indicating first what we are going to talk about, and it is thus reasonably treated as an example of topicalisation. But it is а fairly rare phenomenon in English. We do not usually place words or phrases initially for this purpose. Moreover, if this is topic, it is marked only if the words or phrases are NOT in their normal positions.

Secondly, we can often choose alternative syntactic constructions whose chief difference lies in what is the subject. An obvious example is active and passive, John hit Bill and Bill was hit by John. More complex are This violin is easy to play sonatas on, Sonatas are easy to play on this violin. It is argued that the choice is determined by iopicalisation, the construction chosen being the one which brings the topic into subject position. But it is by no means clear that John and Bill, the violin and sonatas are in any independent semantic sense the topic, what is being talked about. We are simply defining topic in terms of being the subject, in which case the semantics of topicalisation are simply the semantics of being the subject. But can we even find some clear motivation for the choice of one construction rather than another with particular reference to the choice of the subject? There are, perhaps, two reasons for choosing the passive. First, it is often a matter of the ‘cohesion’ of the discourse to retain the same subject. The child ran into the road and was hit by a car shows a little more ‘cohesion’ than The child ran into the road and a car hit him. Sесоndlу, the passive is used where the ‘doer’ is unknown as in The child was knocked down, or where it is deliberately left unstated. This is characteristic of scientific reports where the reporter uses the passive to avoid reference to himself, e. g. The water was heated to 8СРС. But the first of these is little more than a stylistic device, and the second is a direct result of the grammar of English which always requires a sentence to have a subject. Only in a very vague sense, then, is choice of construction involving the subject a matter of topicalisation.

Thirdly, English has clear devices for dealing with the ‘given’ and the ‘new’, the information that is already known in the discourse and the information that is being freshly stated. English has several ways of making the distinction. We can avoid restating in detail what is given by using pronouns - the third person pronouns he/she/it /they instead of the already mentioned the little boy, the man on the corner, etc. Not only are there pronouns, there are also pro-verbs, e.g. do as in John came early and so did Fred, and there are, similarly, ‘proform’ adjectives, adverbs and conjunctions - such, so, therefore, etc. All of these refer back to something already stated, which is not, therefore, to be stated in full again. We also use sentence stress or accent for a similar purpose, the general rule being that the accent, the point at which there is a fall or a rise, will be on the last item that is new; whatever follows is given and is by this means not highlighted. Thus in John hit Bill and then Fred hit him the accent falls on Fred since that alone is new, hit and him being part of what is given. In contrast in John saw Bill and then Fred hit him the accent will fall on hit, for hit is now new. Even more strikingly, we can place the accent on him in John hit Bill and then Fred hit him to mean that Fred hit John not Bill. The explanation is that, though John is not strictly new, it is new as the goal rather than the actor. The given, incidentally, may be given from the general, non-linguistic context, not the linguistic discourse. Thus in The kettle’s boiling the accent usually falls on kettle simply because boiling is uninformative.

There is nothing new, for what else could the kettle be doing?

Fourthly, we often use accent for contrast. In John hit Bill any one of the three words may be accented. But this is not merely to topicalise, but to contrast. We are not merely talking about John, hitting or Bill, but we are saying that it was John and not someone else, hitting and not something else, Bill and not someone else. There is a similar, though more striking use, with not, where the accent ‘picks’ out what or who ‘is not’; in contrast what or who ‘is’. Thus we can accent various words in The professors didn’t sign the petition to suggest that others did, that they did something other than sign, or that they signed something else. The same semantic effect can often be achieved by using the paraphrase It was ..., It was John who hit Bill, It wasn’t the professor who signed the petition (for the verb we have to say What John did was to hit Bill). But such paraphrases are not always possible, e.g. with a contrasted adjective or adverb - He’s not a cruel man, Не didn’t run fast, for we cannot say *It isn’t cruel that hе’s a man, *It isn’t fast that he ran. Moreover, we can accent parts of words - They didn’t denationalise (They renationalised), This isn’t a semitic language (It’s Hamitic). No paraphrase at all is possible here. Some scholars have attempted to analyse the accentual features in terms of the paraphrase. Clearly this is misguided.

We have, then, at least four different phenomena that may be handled under topic and comment. All are in their own way part of the semantics of the language.

References:

1. Блох, М.Я. Практикум по теоретической грамматике английского языка: учеб. пособие / М.Я. Блох, Т.Н. Семенова, С.В. Тимофеева. – М.: Высш. шк., 2004. – С. 267-289.

2. Блох, М.Я. Теоретическая грамматика английского языка: учебник / М.Я. Блох. – 4-е изд., испр. – М.: Высш. шк., 2003. – С. 263-271.

3. Ильиш, Б.А. Строй современного английского языка (теоретический курс): учебное пособие / Б.А. Ильиш. – М. – Л.: Просвещение, 1965. – С. 197-204.

4. Пальмер, Ф.Р. Семантика. Очерк = Palmer, F.R. Semantics. A New Outline / F.R. Palmer; предисл. и коммент. М.В. Никитина. – М.: Высш. шк., 1982. – С. 90-92.