Analyzing Grammar

Analyzing Grammar is a clear introductory textbook on grammatical analysis, designed for students beginning to study the discipline. Covering both syntax (the structure of phrases and sentences) and morphology (the structure of words), it equips them with the tools and methods needed to analyze grammatical patterns in any language. Students are shown how to use standard notational devices such as Phrase Structure trees and word-formation rules, as well as prose descriptions, and are encouraged to practice using these tools through a diverse range of problem sets and exercises. Emphasis is placed on comparing the different grammatical systems of the world’s languages. Topics covered include word order, constituency, case, agreement, tense, gender, pronoun systems, inflection, derivation, argument structure, and Grammatical Relations, and a useful glossary provides a clear explanation of each term.

PAUL R. KROEGER is Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Applied Linguistics at the Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics, Dallas. He has previously published Phrase Structure and Grammatical Relations in Tagalog (1993) and Analyzing Syntax (Cambridge University Press, 2004). He has carried out linguistic fieldwork in East Malaysia, and has written for many journals including Pacific Linguistics, Oceanic Linguistics, and the Philippine Journal of Linguistics.

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Analyzing Grammar

An Introduction

PAUL R. KROEGER

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CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo

Cambridge University Press
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge, CB2 2RU, UK

Published in the United Sates of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521816229

© Paul R. Kroeger 2005

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2005

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data

Kroeger, Paul, 1952–
Analyzing grammar : an introduction / Paul R. Kroeger.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-521-81622-9 – ISBN 0-521-01653-3 (pbk.)
1. Linguistic analysis (Linguistics) 2. Grammar, Comparative and general. I. Title.
P126.K76   2005
415–dc22         2004057104

ISBN-13 978-0-521-81622-9 hardback
ISBN-10 0-521-81622-X hardback
ISBN-13 978-0-521-01653-7 paperback
ISBN-10 0-521-01653-3 paperback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

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For Sarah, Ruth, and Katie

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Contents

		Preface and acknowledgments	page xi
		List of abbreviations	xiv
1		Grammatical form	1
		1.1  Form, meaning, and use	1
		1.2  Aspects of linguistic form	2
		1.3  Grammar as a system of rules	4
		1.4  Conclusion	5
2		Analyzing word structure	7
		2.1  Identifying meaningful elements	7
		2.2  Morphemes	12
		2.3  Representing word structure	14
		2.4  Analyzing position classes	18
		2.5  A typology of word structure	22
		Exercises	24
3		Constituent structure	26
		3.1  Ambiguity	26
		3.2  Constituency	28
		3.3  Hierarchy	32
		3.4  Syntactic categories	33
		3.5  Tree diagrams: representing the constituents of a clause	38
		3.6  Pronouns and proper names as phrasal categories	44
		3.7  Conclusion	46
		Practice exercises	47
		Exercises	47
4		Semantic roles and Grammatical Relations	51
		4.1  Simple sentences and propositions	52
		4.2  Arguments and semantic roles	53
		4.3  Grammatical Relations	55
		4.4  Adjuncts vs. arguments	58
		4.5  “Indirect objects” and secondary objects	61
		4.6  Conclusion	62
		Exercises	63
5		Lexical entries and well-formed clauses	66
		5.1  Lexical entries	66
		5.2  Argument structure and subcategorization	67
		5.3  Properties of a well-formed clause	72
		5.4  Uniqueness of oblique arguments	79
		5.5  Zero-anaphora (“pro-drop”)	79
		5.6  Further notes on English Phrase Structure	81
		5.7  Conclusion	83
		Exercises	83
6		Noun Phrases	87
		6.1  Complements and adjuncts of N	87
		6.2  Determiners	89
		6.3  Adjectives and Adjective Phrases (AP)	90
		6.4  Possession and recursion	92
		6.5  English NP structure (continued)	97
		6.6  Conclusion	98
		Practice exercise	98
		Exercises	98
7		Case and agreement	102
		7.1  Case	102
		7.2  Agreement	111
		7.3  Conclusion	118
		Exercises	119
8		Noun classes and pronouns	128
		8.1  Noun classes and gender	128
		8.2  Pronouns	135
		Exercises	143
9		Tense, Aspect, and Modality	147
		9.1  Tense	147
		9.2  Aspect	152
		9.3  Perfect vs. perfective	158
		9.4  Combinations of tense and aspect	161
		9.5  Mood	163
		9.6  Modality	165
		9.7  Conclusion	168
		Exercises	169
10		Non-verbal predicates	173
		10.1  Basic clause patterns with and without the copula	174
		10.2  Existential and possessive clauses	180
		10.3  Cross-linguistic patterns	181
		10.4  A note on “impersonal constructions”	185
		10.5  Further notes on the predicate complement (XCOMP) relation	187
		10.6  Conclusion	189
		Exercises	190
11		Special sentence types	196
		11.1  Direct vs. indirect speech acts	196
		11.2  Basic word order	197
		11.3  Commands (imperative sentences)	199
		11.4  Questions (interrogative sentences)	203
		11.5  Negation	211
		11.6  Conclusion	214
		Practice exercise	214
		Exercises	215
12		Subordinate clauses	218
		12.1  Coordinate vs. subordinate clauses	218
		12.2  Complement clauses	220
		12.3  Direct vs. indirect speech	224
		12.4  Adjunct (or Adverbial) clauses	227
		12.5  Relative clauses	230
		12.6  Conclusion	240
		Practice exercise	241
		Exercises	241
13		Derivational morphology	247
		13.1  Stems, roots, and compounds	248
		13.2  Criteria for distinguishing inflection vs. derivation	250
		13.3  Examples of derivational processes	253
		13.4  Word structure revisited	259
		13.5  Conclusion	265
		Practice exercise	265
		Exercises	266
14		Valence-changing morphology	270
		14.1  Meaning-preserving alternations	271
		14.2  Meaning-changing alternations	277
		14.3  Incorporation	280
		14.4  Conclusion	282
		Practice exercises	283
		Exercises	284
15		Allomorphy	288
		15.1  Suppletion	290
		15.2  Morphophonemic changes	292
		15.3  Rules for suppletive allomorphy	296
		15.4  Inflectional classes	297
		15.5  Conclusion	299
		Practice exercises	301
		Exercises	302
16		Non-linear morphology	304
		16.1  Non-linear sequencing of affixes	305
		16.2  Modifications of phonological features	307
		16.3  Copying, deleting, re-ordering, etc.	309
		16.4  Inflectional rules	312
		16.5  Conclusion	313
		Exercises	314
17		Clitics	316
		17.1  What is a “word?”	317
		17.2  Types of clitics	319
		17.3  Clitic pronouns or agreement?	325
		17.4  Conclusion	329
		Practice exercise	329
		Exercises	330
		Appendix: Swahili data for grammar sketch	334
		Glossary	341
		References	352
		Language index	360
		Subject index	362

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Preface and acknowledgments

          This book provides a general introduction to morphology (the structure of words) and syntax (the structure of phrases and sentences). By “general” I mean that it is not specifically a book about the grammar of English, or of any other particular language. Rather, it provides a foundation for analyzing and describing the grammatical structure of any human language. Of course, because the book is written in English it uses English examples to illustrate a number of points, especially in the area of syntax; but examples from many other languages are discussed as well.

   The book is written for beginners, assuming only some prior knowledge of the most basic vocabulary for talking about language. It is intended to be usable as a first step in preparing students to carry out fieldwork on under-described languages. For this reason some topics are included which are not normally addressed in an introductory course, including the typology of case and agreement systems, gender systems, pronoun systems, and a brief introduction to the semantics of tense, aspect, and modality. This is not a book about linguistic field methods, but issues of methodology are addressed in various places. The overall goal is to help students write good descriptive grammars. Some basic formal notations are introduced, but equal emphasis is given to prose description of linguistic structures.

   In this book I am chiefly concerned with structural issues, but I do not attempt to teach a specific theory of grammatical structure. My basic assumptions about how human grammars work are those of Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG; see Bresnan 2001 and references cited there), but I have adopted a fairly generic approach which will hopefully be usable by teachers from a wide variety of theoretical backgrounds. For the sake of simplicity, I have adopted some analyses which are different from the standard LFG approach, e.g. the treatment of “pro-drop” in chapter 5. The main features of the book which are distinctive to LFG are the well-formedness conditions outlined in chapter 5 and the inventory of Grammatical Relations (including OBL_θ and XCOMP).

   It is somewhat unusual for a single textbook to deal with both morphology and syntax. In adopting this broad approach, the present work follows and builds on a tradition of grammar teaching at various training schools of the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL). Earlier work in this tradition includes Pike and Pike (1982); Elson and Pickett (1988); Thomas et al. (1988); Healey (1990a); Bickford (1998); and Payne (2002, MS). Bickford’s book, in particular, has had a major influence on this one in terms of scope and organization, and in a number of specific details cited in the text.

   Teaching morphology is much easier if the students have some basic background in phonology. For this reason, most of the chapters dealing with morphology are clustered at the end of the book (chapters 13–17), for the benefit of students who are concurrently taking a first course in phonology. In situations where this is not a factor, those chapters could be taught earlier, though some of the exercises assume material taught in previous chapters. Chapters 3– 5 are a tightly knit unit and should be taught in that order; with the other chapters, the ordering is probably less crucial. Chapters 9 (Tense, Aspect, and Modality systems) and 17 (clitics) are relatively independent of the rest of the book, and could probably be taught wherever the instructor wants to fit them in.

   The contents of this book can be presented in a standard semester-length course. However, this material is intended to be reinforced by having students work through large numbers of data analysis exercises. Many teachers have found the exercises to be the most important part of the course. In addition, it is very helpful to assign a longer exercise as a final project, to give students some practice at writing up and integrating their analyses of various aspects of the grammar of a single language. (A sample of such an exercise, using Swahili data, is included as an appendix at the end of the book.) For most beginning students, extra tutorial hours or “lab sessions” will be needed to complete all of these components in one semester.

   Some data exercises are included at the end of each chapter, except chapter 1. Those labelled “Practice exercises” are suitable for classroom discussion; the others can be used for either homework or tutorial sessions. Model answers for some of these exercises are available from the author. For most chapters, additional exercises are suggested from two source books: Merrifield et al. (1987) and Healey (1990b). Of course, similar exercises are available from many other sources as well, and instructors should feel free to mix and match as desired. The discussion in the text does not generally depend on the students having worked any specific exercise, except for exercise 3A(ⅱ) at the end of chapter 3, which is referred to several times.

   (A new edition of the Merrifield volume was published in 2003; it contains the same exercises as the 1987 edition with some orthographic changes. A few of the data sets have been re-numbered, but there is a table at the beginning of the 2003 edition listing the changes in numbering. Numbers cited in the present book refer to the 1987 edition.)

   So many people have helped me with this project that I cannot list all of their names. Special thanks must go to Joan Bresnan, René van den Berg, Dick Watson, Bill Merrifield, John Roberts, and Marlin Leaders for their contributions. To all of the others, I offer my thanks with apologies for not naming them individually. Thanks also to my students in Singapore, Darwin, and Dallas who have pushed me to clarify many issues with their insightful questions and suggestions, and to my long-suffering family for their encouragement and support.

   The copyright for data exercises that I have cited from Merrifield et al. (1987); Roberts (1999); Healey (1990b); and Bendor-Samuel and Levinsohn (1986) is held by SIL International; these exercises are used here by permission, with thanks.

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Abbreviations

–		affix boundary
=		clitic boundary
[ ]		constituent boundaries
∗		ungrammatical
#		semantically ill-formed or inappropriate in context
?		marginal or questionable
%		acceptable to some speakers
(X)		optional constituent
∗(X)		obligatory constituent
Ø		null (silent) morpheme
1		1st person
2		2nd person
3		3rd person
A		transitive agent; Actor
A(DJ)		adjective
ABIL		abilitative mood
ABL		ablative case
ABS		absolutive
ACC		accusative
ACT		active voice
ADV		adverb
ADVBL		adverbializer
ADVRS		adversative
AGR		agreement
agt		agent
AP		Adjective Phrase
APPL(IC)		applicative
ASP		aspect
ASSOC		associative
AUX		auxiliary
BEN		benefactive
C		consonant
CAT		syntactic category
CAUS		causative
CLASS		classifier
COMIT		comitative (accompaniment)
COMP		complementizer
CONCESS		concessive
CONJ		conjunction
CONT		continuous
COP		copula
DAT		dative
DEB		debitive (must/ought)
DESID		desiderative
DET		determiner
DIR		directional
DIRECT		direct knowledge (eye-witness)
DU(AL)		dual
DUB		dubitative
DV		dative voice (Tagalog)
ERG		ergative
EVID		evidential
EX(CL)		exclusive
EXIST		existential
F(EM)		feminine
FOC		focus
FUT		future tense
GEN		genitive
GR		Grammatical Relation
HIST.PAST		historic past
HORT		hortative
IMPER		imperative
IMPERF		imperfective
IN(CL)		inclusive
INAN		inanimate
INDIRECT		indirect knowledge (hearsay)
INF		infinitive
INSTR		instrumental
INTERROG		interrogative
IO		indirect object
IRR		irrealis
IV		instrumental voice (Tagalog)
LNK		linker
LOC		locative
M(ASC)		masculine
N		Noun
N′/⃞		N-bar (see Glossary)
NEG		negative
N(EUT)		neuter
NMLZ		nominalizer
NOM		nominative
NONPAST		nonpast tense
NP		Noun Phrase
OBJ		primary object
O(BJ).AGR		object agreement
OBJ2		secondary object
OBL		oblique argument
OPT		optative
OV		objective voice (Tagalog)
P		(1) preposition; (2) transitive patient
PASS		passive
PAST		past tense
pat		patient
PERF		perfect
PERM		permissive
PERS		personal name
PFV		perfective
pl / PL / p		plural
POSS		possessor
PP		Prepositional Phrase
PRE		prefix
PRED		predicate
PRES		present tense
pro/PRO		pronoun (possibly null)
PROG		progressive
PRT		particle
PS		Phrase Structure
Q(UES)		question
QUOT		quote marker
REC(IP)		recipient
REC.PAST		recent past tense
RECIP		reciprocal
REDUP		reduplication
REL		relativizer
REPORT		reportative
S		(1) sentence or clause; (2) intransitive subject
S′/⃞		S-bar (see Glossary)
SBJNCT		subjunctive
sg /SG / s		singular
STAT		stative
S(UBJ)		subject
S(UBJ).AGR		subject agreement
SUBORD		subordinate
SUFF		suffix
TAM		Tense-Aspect-Modality
th		theme
TNS		tense
TODAY		today past
V		(1) verb; (2) vowel
VP		Verb Phrase
WFR		Word Formation Rule
WH		Wh- question marker
X∗		a sequence of zero or more Xs (X is any unit)
XCOMP		predicate complement
XP		phrase of any category
YNQ		Yes–No question