Reconsidering Alternative Grammar

Takehiro Tsuchida, Japan

Takehiro Tsuchida is a teacher at Digital Hollywood University in Tokyo, Japan. He has a Master’s degree in English language from the University of Manchester, UK. His interests include English as a second language (ESL), language education, syntax, semantics, corpus linguistics and cognitive linguistics. E-mail: tsuchida@dhw.ac.jp

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Introduction
“The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language”
Distinction between category and function
Prepositions
Information packaging
Conclusion
References

Introduction

There seems to be an increasing awareness among ESL teachers that English grammar should be presented within a descriptive rather than prescriptive framework. However, it is also noted that this descriptive English grammar itself has a fairly short history, a little over one century-long (Hudson, 2010: 249). As a result, contrary to the popular belief among both native and non-native speakers/teachers of English that English grammar today is a well-established system that is readily available via many renowned grammar books, such as Quirk et al.’s (1985), Biber et al.’s (1999) and Swan’s (2005), the fact of the matter is that it is by no means conclusive. There appear to be a number of linguistic studies that have been attempting to revise conventional English grammar to better serve its purposes. This paper picks up Huddleston and his colleagues’ work as a remarkable example of highly provocative yet apparently reasonable and practical alternatives. In particular, three grammatical points, i.e. category/function distinction, prepositions and information packaging, are discussed in this paper in order to illustrate that adhering to traditional grammar is not always the best policy and is a potentially misleading practice.

“The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language”

Huddleston and his associates have published three major titles on English grammar so far. The Cambridge grammar of the English language (Huddleston and Pullum et al., 2002) is a 1,842-page tome of comprehensive descriptive grammar of present-day standard English, intended to “bridge the large gap that exists between traditional grammar and the partial descriptions of English grammar proposed by those working in the field of linguistics” (2002: xv). It seems obvious that Huddleston’s (1984) Introduction to the grammar of English, which was already rather argumentative, developed nearly two decades later into a volume almost four times the length, in collaboration with other grammarians. The third one, A student’s introduction to English grammar by Huddleston and Pullum (2005), is an accessible textbook version of their 2002 publication.

In this discipline of descriptive contemporary English grammar, Quirk et al.’s (1985) A comprehensive grammar of the English language, which originated from their first complete book (Quirk et al., 1972), is widely acclaimed as a monumental work. In fact, it would be no exaggeration to say that almost all famous grammars, from popular Swan’s (2005), Murphy’s (2004) and Crystal’s (2003) to more advanced, corpus-based Biber et al.’s (1999), Sinclair’s (2005) and Carter and McCarthy’s (2006), are to a greater or lesser extent followers of Quirk and his co-workers. However, what is of profound significance here is that a series of Huddleston and his team’s writings, particularly The Cambridge grammar of the English language, goes against this trend, deliberately challenging the carefully structured accounts of conventional grammar, and indeed looks fairly successful in this venture. Its meticulousness in reviewing seemingly every single detail on English grammar generates a large number of thought-provoking arguments, many of which are illuminating and intuitively convincing for English teachers and learners alike.

Distinction between category and function

One of the key features of Huddleston and Pullum et al. (2002) that substantially depart from standard accounts is a clear distinction between syntactic category and grammatical function and especially the adoption of the notion of grammatical relation in analysing syntactic structures. According to Huddleston and Pullum et al. , each constituent of the sentence is classified into seventeen syntactic categories—nine lexical categories: noun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, determinative, subordinator, coordinator and interjection; and eight phrasal categories: clause, verb phrase, noun phrase, nominal, adjective phrase, adverb phrase, preposition phrase and determinative phrase (2002: 22-23). In addition to these categories, each constituent always has grammatical function that shows the relation between constituents and the constructions of larger components. These functions include head, predicate, predicator, complement (subject, object, predicative, etc.), modifier, determiner, etc. (2002: 24). Therefore, one always sees a functional label attached to a category label in every node of tree-diagrams depicted in the grammar. Indeed, with both types of labels compensating the shortcomings of each other, this combination of phrase and functional structures appears to work very well, resulting in considerably more balanced and practical presentations of English syntactic structure.

This rigid category/function distinction also has some major consequences for the explanation of English. As observed above, the term determiner is used as a name of function whereas the term determinative is employed as a name of syntactic category. This means that the determinative, such as the, that, all, both, any and three, operates not only as determiner in noun phrase structure but also as predeterminer, modifier, predicative complement, marker of coordination, fused head, etc. In contrast, the role of determiner can be performed not only by a determinative or a determinative phrase but also by a possessive noun phrase like Ally’s (Huddleston and Pullum et al. , 2002: 354-357). Furthermore, rather than using the term verb (V) as both syntactic category and grammatical function (as in traditional grammar), Huddleston and Pullum et al. adopt the predicator (P) as the functional label of the head of a verb phrase, making such clause structures as SPO and SPOC instead of SVO and SVOC (2002: 215-228; Huddleston and Pullum, 2005: 63-78). Thus, the label verb indicates syntactic category only as usually seen in dictionaries and thereby possible confusion over structural analysis can be avoided. Overall, this rather obstinate clarification of terminology may sound too technical for the description of general English grammar. Nonetheless, such labels as predicator do seem highly beneficial, particularly for beginners, considering the crucial role of function in the whole grammar of English.

Prepositions

Huddleston and Pullum et al. (2002) take prepositions to be heads of preposition phrases, in which the complement of the head preposition often follows the preposition. For instance, in the preposition phrase “of the house”, the preposition of is the head and the noun phrase the house is its complement. They then extend the member of the class on the grounds that “prepositions head phrases compatible in structure to those headed by verbs, nouns, adjectives, and adverbs” (2002: 599). Specifically, the complements of prepositions can be not just nouns, pronouns, preposition phrase, adverb phrase, adjective phrase and interrogative clause, as in traditional grammar, but also declarative clauses, as shown in (1b) below (2002: 600):

Now after in (1b), which is traditionally considered to be a subordinating conjunction, is recognised as a preposition as well as after in (1a), and the clause you promised to help in (1b) and the noun phrase the accident in (1a) are both complements of the head preposition after, in the same way as remember as a verb and the accident and you promised to help as its complements in (2):

Huddleston and Pullum et al. (2002) also argue that the complements of prepositions are optional rather than obligatory like those of verbs and that prepositions without any complement are grouped into intransitive prepositions as with intransitive verbs. Therefore, since in (3b) below is deemed to be a preposition, more precisely an intransitive preposition, instead of an adverb (2002: 600):

Additionally, a number of such words with locative or temporal meanings as abroad, here, there, downstairs, forward, now and then, which do not take complements and are traditionally viewed as adverbs, are classified as prepositions because of syntactic similarities to other ordinary prepositions like around, beyond, over, since and within (2002: 613-615). In fact, this atypical categorisation does not seem so surprising since it does appear to accord well with the analysis of metaphors in semantics in cognitive linguistics as well as our natural senses. On the whole, Huddleston and his colleagues’ reinterpretation of prepositions seems to have a certain validity in terms of both structure and meaning and both logical clarity and empirical intuition. It is certainly of great assistance to the elucidation of the perplexing, miscellaneous category of adverb.

Information packaging

With an increasing interest in the branch of pragmatics, the grammar by Huddleston and Pullum et al. (2002) further the idea of information packaging, which demonstrates the interconnectedness of grammar and meaning/context, with great clarity. For example, informational-packaging constructions such as (4), (5) and (6) below are different from their syntactically more elementary counterparts not in terms of truth conditions or illocutionary meaning but in the way the information is presented (2002: 1366):

(4) INVERSION On board were two nurses.
(5) PASSIVE The car was taken by Kim.
(6) POSTPOSING I made without delay all the changes you wanted.

One of the major factors of these constructions is familiarity status of the information in discourse. Unfamiliar or new piece of information tends to occur after more familiar or older one as can be seen in (4) and (5). Another main cause is the weight of constituents; heavy constituents tend to be positioned near the end of a clause as in (6).

It is also intriguing to see that in some cases, these conversions are far from straightforward: the syntactically more basic version may be pragmatically unacceptable as in (8) (the symbol # indicates the example is semantically or pragmatically anomalous), or the two sentences may not have the same truth condition as in (9) (2002: 1365):

In general, this kind of analysis beyond simple syntax or morphology in grammar seems to be of immense value. Information packaging is actually a domain that receives insufficient attention in conventional grammar.

Conclusion

In conclusion, a novel approach to English descriptive grammar seems entirely feasible. As discussed above, one such example by Huddleston et al. discloses formerly neglected grammatical issues to non-specialists, offering both stimulating and invaluable, though inevitably controversial and theoretical, arguments with real insight from a fresh perspective. Besides giving ESL teachers food for thought, alternative grammar appears to be of great service to English learners who cannot be satisfied with stereotypical explanations. It is often the case that apparently naive questions from students turn out to be unexpectedly rational after careful thought. In fact, no grammar precedes its language and English grammar is not a fixed entity. It is natural that there are various manners of organizing and abstracting this wonderfully expressive communication system. Indeed, with each complementing one another, any grammar can be a welcome addition to the accumulation of knowledge and understanding of English grammar for both ESL teachers and learners as long as it is persuasive and sensible enough.

References

Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S. and Finegan, E. (1999). Longman grammar of spoken and written English. Harlow: Longman.

Carter, R. and McCarthy, M. (2006). Cambridge grammar of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Crystal, D. (2003). The Cambridge encyclopedia of the English language (2nd edn). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Huddleston, R. (1984). Introduction to the grammar of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Huddleston, R. and Pullum, G. et al. (2002). The Cambridge grammar of the English language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Huddleston, R. and Pullum, G. (2005). A student’s introduction to English grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hudson, R. (2010). An introduction to Word grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Murphy, R. (2004). English grammar in use (3rd edn). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G. and Svartvik, J. (1972). A grammar of contemporary English. Harlow: Longman.

Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G. and Svartvik, J. (1985). A comprehensive grammar of the English language. Harlow: Longman.

Sinclair, J. (ed.) (2005). Collins Cobuild English grammar (2nd edn). Glasgow: HarperCollins Publishers.

Swan, M. (2005). Practical English usage (3rd edn). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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