The Various Semantic Classes of Determiners in English - Assignment Example

Identify the various semantic es of determiners in English. Explain how English Grammar handles combinations of these es in the Noun Phrase. The Noun Phrase is one of the most common units in the English sentence, and can occur as subject, object or complement. Within a basic Noun Phrase there is usually either a determiner or an adjective, and sometimes both. In more complex Noun Phrases there can be several determiners, and also several modifiers. The modifiers can apply to the determiner or to the noun, making for some quite complex combinations of items, each of which must obey certain individual rules. The interplay of these rules is difficult for non native speakers to learn, and one way of illuminating the problems, and the solutions, is to look more closely at both the semantic classes of determiners and the grammar rules which English uses in the building of Noun Phrases. L. Berk (1999, p. 29) defines the term “determiner” as “ a small class of function words (articles, demonstratives, interrogatives and genitives) that precede both the noun and any adjectives in the NP.” Their function is usually to modify the meaning of the noun in some way and in this respect they resemble adjectives. Some attempts have been made to classify these by grammatical categories such “definite” and “indefinite”, following the terminology of the relevant articles, and interrogative” and “relative” following the terminology of pronouns and this describes well the grammatical role that the determiners play. The nature of the Noun head is also critical, because it determines which of the determiners can be used (if any) or in some cases must be used. In the sentence The child is hungry for example, the definite article is obligatory and it is not possible to say, for example, *Child is hungry. If the noun is plural, however, the definite article is usual The children are hungry and in this case it is possible to construct a sentence without an article Children are hungry. If the noun is a proper noun, then the situation is that it is not possible to use an article at all, whether singular or plural, for example Peter is hungry. The most helpful way of reflecting usage is the definition of Greenbaum and Nelson (2002, p.52). They explain that “Determiners introduce noun phrases. The three classes of determiners are defined by the order in which they come”. Their three suggested classes are as follows (with examples): 1. pre-determiners e.g. all, both, half 2. central determiners e.g. a(n), the, those 3. post determiners e.g. other, two. In everyday speech any or all of the three classes can occur but they always occur in the same order, for example : all these other books. This classification removes the confusing overlap with articles and pronouns, and shows how English uses determiners to modify the noun gradually from the general to the specific instance in question. Berk, L. (1999). English Syntax: from word to discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Greenbaum, S. and Nelson, G. (1991, repr. 2002) An Introduction to English Grammar. Harlow: Longman Explain the difference between root and synthetic compounds. Can it be said that either of these forms is rule-governed in English? In morphology, the word compound is used to mean the putting together of two lexemes to form one new unit. Root (or primary) and synthetic (or secondary) compounds are two different ways of doing this and linguists disagree as to whether they each arise out of a lexical process or a syntactical process. Each compound is said to have a “head” and a “non-head” and they are described as left head or right head compounds, depending on which part carries the dominant meaning. In English the “head” is more often on the right than the left. The whole compound then acquires the syntactic properties of the right hand “head”. Plag (2003, p. 135) notes that “the vast majority of compounds are interpreted in such a way that the left-had member somehow modifies the right-hand member” and calls this a “modifier –head structure”. Categorization can be difficult in English, and it is even more complicated in inflected languages where parts other than the root can be included in the compounds. Katamba (1994, p. 25) points out that any kind of syntactic modification of the inside of a compound is a “no-go area” in English. An example of this rule at work is the word handful where the plural goes at the end of the word as in handfuls and not in the middle as in *handsful. Root Compounds are non-verbal Linguists describe them as “concatenated” which means that they are just laid together without any syntactical rules. The first element of a root compound is stressed and in speech this distinguishes the root compound from a simple adjective + noun phrase, for example “Don’t touch the hotplate” meaning the electrical device is stressed on the hot part of the compound while “Don’t touch the hot plate” places the stress on the word plate, meaning a china dish which is hot. In contrast, Synthetic Compounds are derived from verbs and the head of the compound is verbal while the non head is non verbal. Plag (149) illustrates this with the example bookseller where there is no such verb as *to booksell but it is still possible to make a compound using this “synthetic” construction. The suffix er is added to the verbal head, and not to a previous compound such as *booksell. There is also a large amount of innovation and variation in the way that compounds are formed in English, so that even if the definitions can be fixed, there are always hybrid cases and ambiguities which make it difficult to establish firm rules. Katamba, F. (1994) English Words: Structure, History, Usage. Abingdon: Routledge. Plag, I. (2003) Word Formation in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. What is meant by the term ‘participant’? What is the relationship between the possible grammatical functions and semantic roles these participants may have? The term “participant” is used by Lock (1996) to refer to an “entity” which is in some way involved in a process. Participants are realized by noun groups, processes are realized by verb groups and qualities are realized by adjective groups (Lock, 1996, p. 63). This is a more subtle and semantic-based analysis than just the straightforward subject, verb, direct object, indirect object distinctions which are commonly used in grammar. The focus of attention here is on the verb and the participants can be people but they can also be objects, despite the connotations of “participant” in non technical English as a living person. Lock explains (1996, p. 82) the different types of participant which are possible. The most common one is the Actor, or in other words the participant who is actually doing the action, for example Mr Smith is eating the poisoned food has Mr Smith as the Actor. At times when the speaker or writer wants to shift the focus away from this main participant, then the passive mood can be used. In this case the Actor can be relegated to a subsidiary role behind the preposition “by” as in for example The poisoned food is being eaten by Mr Smith. In many can even be made to disappear, or be only implied from the context, as in for example as for example The poisoned food is being eaten. These alterations allow the attention to fall more squarely on parts of the sentence other than the Actor. There can also be a second participant which is called the Goal, in other words the participant which is at the receiving end of the action. Actor only clauses are called intransitive clauses and Goal clauses are called transitive clauses. Other kinds of participants are Recipients, which are receivers of the Goal Beneficiaries, for whose benefit the action is carried out Ranges which “typically indicate the extent, range or scope” of the action which is carried out. These distinctions are semantically important, but not always evident purely from the syntax. All but the last participant type are fairly easy to spot, but the Range can appear very like the Goal. One way to distinguish the two is to look at the verb. Range is often used with a delexical verb. This is a verb which depends on the Range to convey most or all of the meaning of the process. The example which Lock gives to illustrate is The advance party reached the summit. This shows two participants, the Actor (= The advance party) and the Range (= the summit). Lock, G. (1995) Functional English Grammar: An Introduction for Second Language Teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Discuss the characteristics that distinguish inflectional and derivational affixation in English. Affixes are bound morphemes, meaning that they are additions to a main morpheme. This is different from compound formation (see above) because in compounds both morphemes are free. English has both prefixes, which come before the main morpheme, and suffixes, which are attached at the end. Some languages, like Old Irish, have infixes, used in this case to indicate pronouns, for example, but this is not possible in English. The inflectional affixes in English are all suffixes and they are : -s noun plural -’s noun possessive -s verb present tense third person singular -ing verb present participle/gerund -ed verb simple past -en verb past perfect participle -er adjective comparative -est adjective superlative. What these suffixes have in common is that they are all relics of the earlier structures of English which were once much closer to German, which has retained many more inflections than English. They achieve the grammatical functions which are noted above. There are a few other rare inflectional suffixes, such as –en for plural as in oxen but these are now archaic. These are called inflectional because they bend (flex) the main morpheme a little but do not change its basic meaning or the fact that it is a verb. So for example the verb walk, can change to walks, walking, walked and it still remains a verb denoting forward movement on legs. All prefixes, on the other hand, are derivational, and they also are bound morphemes. Derivational suffixes exist too. Unlike the inflectional suffixes, however, derivational prefixes and suffixes tend to make a significant change to main morpheme’s meaning or its syntactical function. Examples are very numerous and diverse. Common derivational suffixes with a syntactic effect are –ly which changes an adjective to an adverb, as in he looked smug and he smiled smugly, or -ness which changes an adjective to a noun as for example they were very sad and he turned away sadly . Common derivational suffixes which change the meaning of the main morpheme are the negating prefixes un and non which make the new meaning exactly the opposite of the core morpheme’s meaning. A great many derivational affixes are of Latin and Greek origin such as anti-, mega-, poly-, pseudo-, pro- contra- which started out being attached only to words of the same language origin but are increasingly used in combination with words of Germanic origin, such as megastar or even, in colloquial or youth English in expressions like “That’s mega!”. Two or more affixes can be used in the same word for example if the main morpheme is the verb think then it is possible to use suffixes and affixes to modify both its syntax and its meaning as follows : thinking (present participle/gerund), unthinking (negation) and unthinkingly (adverb). Read More