On the English alternation that/Ø in complement clauses: An historical approach (original) (raw)
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The Development of the Ideas About Syntactical Relations in English Grammar
Traektoriâ nauki, 2023
As one of the most significant syntax elements, syntactical relations are vital in forming a phrase and a sentence in English. The formation of grammatical rules and regularities related to subordination and coordination in contemporary English did not happen suddenly. Reviewing individual works from the first English grammar to the most contemporary ones gives a reason to understand how this linguistic phenomenon has been formed in modern English grammar. Since the first English grammar was based on the Latin model, they focused more on the language's morphology. They extensively covered the explanation of parts of speech, and syntactical relations were neglected like other syntax issues. Although it is not fully compatible with the modern English language, in essence, each of the authors of prescriptive grammar managed to express different ideas concerning syntactical relations. Making some mistakes regarding determinations of the syntactical links and relevant systematizations does not reduce the historical importance of those grammars. In some way, reflecting such ideas in grammar led to introduction of more accurate and complete approaches to the subject in classical English grammar in the later period. The scientific basis of syntactical relations was developed in classical grammar, as in all grammatical elements. Finally, modern English grammar has completed the most comprehensive explanation of this topic. Syntactical ties have also been reviewed in detail, with most or all contemporary English grammar devoted to syntax.
Toward a grammar of syntactic change
Lingua, 1969
There is an extensive body of literature on the subject of formalized theories of phonolggy, morphology and semantic change, but regrettably little on the theory of syntactic change. An exaggerated picture of the situation may be given by such a textbook as Lehmann's Historical linguistics: an introduction (1962), which discusses genetic change, if only briefly, st every level of language other than the syntactic. All the same, the bias of this book is symptomatic (cf. the lack of syntactic material in Hoenigswald's Language change and linguistic reconstruction (1960)). The present article attempts partially to fill the gap from a transformational point of view and to point to some of '~he "kinds of change found in sentence structure excluding lexicon. Particular emphasis will be laid on the two processes that are usually considered the fundamental universals of linguistic change: simplification and elaboration. No attempt is made a.t all-inclusiveness. Only a limited number of possible types of change are discussed; it is unlikely, however, that other changes would prove to be of fundamentally different character. The observations and hypotheses put forward here can hopefully be tested against tl'e histories ot many different languages so that a universal granunar of syntactic change may eventually be developed. 'rhe examples here are all taken from the history of English. t) The conventional designations Old English (OE), Middle z) The bulk of the prirrmry data is selected from: (i) King All:ted's Orosius (c. 880). Ed. H. Sweet, EETS No. 79. Lolzdon, Kegsn Paul, 11383; (if) The works o/Geo//rcy Chaucer (latter half fourteenth century). Ed. F. N. Robinson. New York, Houghton Mifflin, 1957, 2.~d ed.; (iii) The complete worhs o/ Shakespeare (end of sixteenth, beginning of seventeenth centm-ies). Ed. H. Craig. Chicago, Sco~.. Foresman, 1951. Other quotations are selected from the following worxs' ~v) The romance o/ Sir Beues o/ Hamtoun (c. 1327). Ed. TOWARD A GRAMMAR OF SYNTACTIC CH.~,NGE
In the (merely formal) description of adjectives that control clausal complements, Biber et al. (1999: 671–83) include the adjectives appropriate, crucial, essential, fitting, proper, and important in the class that can take either that-clauses or to-clauses. From a functional perspective, as these adjectives all have a deontic flavour, one could expect their clausal complements to be mainly of the type expressing ‘desired action’ (Wierzbicka 1988; Halliday 1994), such as in (1) (on the development of deontic meaning, see Van linden, Verstraete & Cuyckens forthcoming). (1) It is essential to consult a doctor or clinic before using any of the rhythm methods, because the procedures must be carefully learned (CB) However, Present-day English corpus data suggest that all these adjectives in EC take, besides a majority of desired action complements, also some propositional complements, such as in (3) below. This raises a number of questions: (i) do the proposition complements correlate with a different meaning of the adjective than the desired action complements? (ii) are these two types of complements diachronically related, and if so, in what way? (iii) how does the historical development of the complementation of these adjectives relate to the tendency attested for verbal predicates in earlier stages of English (Los 2005: 171–190), in which that-clauses are gradually superseded by to-infinitives? This paper intends to chart the formal and functional distribution of clausal complements with the six adjectives mentioned above, drawing on data from the Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Early Modern English (PPCEME), Corpus of Late Modern English Texts (CLMET) (De Smet 2005), Lancaster-Bergen-Oslo Corpus (LOB), and Cobuild Corpus (CB). Firstly, the relative frequency and the formal realization of the desired action complements will be studied throughout successive historical stages. Secondly, the development of the propositional complements with these six adjectives will be traced. Preliminary research suggests that typically the first step is a combined pattern: a to-infinitive of a cognition or verbalization predicate is followed by a propositional that-clause, e.g., (2) Now it is important to notice, that in November, the time of greatest speculation, the quantity in the market was held by few persons, and that it frequently changed hands, each holder being desirous to realize his profit. (CLMET 1780-1850) In a second step the cognition or verbalization predicate may be dropped, but is still in some sense implied, e.g., (3) [I]t’s important that the NEC is now dominated by members of the Shadow Cabinet. (CB) However, this trajectory does not seem to account for a second micro-construction with propositional complement, found with proper, appropriate, and fitting. (4) Sir Elton performed the open air gig free after Prime Minister Tony Blair approached him personally. Many fans came simply to say thanks to the singer, who stood by the Province [i.e., Ulster] during the dark days of the Troubles. It was fitting that they should gather at the castle where the historic peace pact was thrashed out. (CB) The development of this pattern and its interaction with the meaning of the adjectives should also be clarified. In any case, this study shows that the development of that- versus to-complements cannot be explained satisfactorily in purely formal terms, but is better approached in terms of the correlation between functional notions such as desired action and proposition and their formal realization. References Biber, D., S. Johansson, G. Leech, and R. Quirk. 1999. Longman grammar of spoken and written English. London: Longman. De Smet, H. 2005. A corpus of Late Modern English texts. Icame Journal 29: 69–82. Halliday, M. A. K. 1994. An Introduction to Functional Grammar. Second edition. London: Arnold. Los, B. 2005. The rise of the to-infinitive. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Van linden A., J.-C. Verstraete, and H. Cuyckens. Forthcoming. The semantic development of essential and crucial: Paths to deontic meaning. English Studies. Wierzbicka, A. 1988. The semantics of grammar. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Company.
Freywald, Ulrike. 2020. Notes on the left periphery of V2 complement clauses in German: Complementiser drop and complementiser doubling. In: Horst Lohnstein & Antonios Tsiknakis (eds.), Verb Second – Grammar Internal and Grammar External Interfaces. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. 123-146, 2020
This contribution deals with verb second (V2) in subordinative contexts, in particular in complementiserless complement clauses. As V2 is considered as a main clause phenomenon in German (and several other Germanic languages) the question arises how much alike to main clauses such embedded V2 clauses actually are. Focussing on German, I will address the syntactic problem whether the domain in front of the finite verb (the "prefield") in V2 complement clauses exhibits the same properties and the same structural layout as in V2 main clauses. Evidently, the prefield of V2 complement clauses is restricted in certain ways, for dislocation processes to the left are very limited. This can be seen as indication of a structurally reduced left periphery comparable to the reduced size of subordinate clauses in general. As a first step to address these issues I discuss a piece of indirect evidence in the present paper: complement clauses with a doubled, or resumptive, complementiser dass 'that' as in er meint, dass, wenn er das erreicht, dass sich dann auch die Erfolge wieder einstellen 'he thinks that if he manages this the successes will ensue again'. Since such clauses display a structurally richer left periphery than complement clauses with a single complementiser they shed light on the syntactic structure of the left edge of complement clauses in general and, by implication, on V2 complement clauses. Relying on data from large written and spoken text corpora I argue that the doubling of complementisers involves recursion of FinP (containing the complementisers) together with the topmost topic position(s) of the middle-field. This analysis is supported by the fact that complementiser doubling is not always a repair strategy to solve processing difficulties. It typically involves a specific type of sandwiched material in-between the two complementisers, namely delimitative expressions, or more precisely: framesetting and contrastive topics. Hence,