Linguistic Theory

1. Linguistic Theory Lecture 9 Grammatical Functions

2. Introduction • The notion of grammatical function (subject, object, etc.) seems to be a basic element of grammatical analysis. But: • There are questions of how they are to be defined • There are questions of whether they are present in all languages (universality) • There are questions of how they are to be identified

3. The classical approach • The study of classical languages, which were rich in morphology and allowed fairly free word orders, and which did not distinguish rigorously between form and meaning, lead to a particular view of grammatical functions: • They were associated with words • They were semantically defined • They were morphologically identified

4. Grammatical functions = words • Because the notion of a phrase did not become prevalent until the 1900s, syntactic phenomena was mostly seen as facts about words: • Their forms • Their meanings • Their functions • The subject of the sentence was therefore defined as that word with a particular form and meaning

5. Semantic definition • Two common approaches: • The subject is what the sentence is about (complements ‘predicate’) • The subject is the one who carries out the action described by the verb • Subject = topic • Subject = agent

6. Topics • Topics are the ideas that link a set of sentences (discourse) as being ‘about’ something. • Sentences form a consistent body if there is a continued string of topics in them • The topic is often associated with phonological reduction • Reduced to a pronoun • Reduced to nothing (where allowed)

7. Topics • E.g. Two dogs are drinking in a bar. A horse walks in (to the bar). He says: “is this chair free?”. One dog turns to the other (dog) and (he) says: “wow – a talking horse!”

8. Topics • Now consider the following sentences: • Mary entered the room • John kissed her • In the second sentence • The topic of the sentence is not the subject • The subject is not a topic • Moreover: • It seems John is rich • ‘it’ cannot be the topic as it is meaningless (the sentence would be ‘about’ nothing)

9. Agent • Not all subjects are agents • Not all verbs involve actions • Even activity verbs may have non-agent subjects (in passive) • There may be a connection between ‘subject’ and theta role • Fillmore’s Case hierarchy • But this is not straightforward • John fears sincerity (experiencer – theme) • Sincerity frightens John (theme – experiencer)

10. Semantic approaches - conclusion • As is usual, semantic definitions of syntactic phenomena are rarely straightforward and do not yield unproblematic results

11. Morphological approach • There are two main morphological facts associated with the subject: • Case (morphological – not Fillmore’s) • Subject is nominative • Agreement • Verb agrees with subject features

12. Grammatical functions and Case • Standard assumptions: • Subject = nominative • Object = accusative • But even for languages where this seems to hold, there are problems: • John believes she is smart • John believes her to be smart • Is the accusative object here?

13. Reasons to believe in accusative subjects • The similarity of • John believes she is smart • John believes her to be smart • The dissimilarity of • John believes her to be smart • John persuaded her to be smart • John persuaded her that she should be smart • * John believed her that she should be smart

14. Reasons to believe in accusative subjects • Subject properties of accusative element • John believes there to be a problem • There is a problem • * John persuaded there to be a problem • John believes the cat to be out of the bag • The cat is out of the bag • John put the cat out of the bag

15. Reasons to believe in accusative subjects • So, not all subjects are nominative and not all accusative elements are objects.

16. Further problems for Case identification of grammatical functions • Not all languages have Case distinctions (are grammatical functions universal?) • Different Case systems: • Most European languages have the nominative-accusative case system • He left 1 V • He loves her 2 V 3 • 1 and 2 = nominative • 3 = accusative

17. Further problems for Case identification of grammatical functions • Some languages do not do things this way (Tsez – North Caucasian): • ziyabik’i-s 1 V • cow go-past • “The cow left” • eniy-ā ziyabišer-si 2 3 V • mother-casecowfeed-past • “Mother fed the cow • 1 and 3 zero marked case • 2 differently marked case

18. Further problems for Case identification of grammatical functions • Dilemma: • Do we say that 1+2 are subjects in English (common case = nominative) and 1+3 are subjects in Tsez (for the same reason)? • Do we say that 1+2 are subjects in both languages but that the object of a transitive verb is assigned the same case as the subject of the intransitive verb in some languages?

19. Grammatical functions and agreement • Standard assumptions: • Verb agrees with subject • Verb does not agree with object • But even for languages where this seems to hold there are problems • There is a cloud in the sky • There are clouds in the sky • What is the source of verb agreement?

20. Further problems for agreement based identification of grammatical functions • Not all languages have agreement morphology (Chinese) • Some languages (Chukchi) have too much – the verb agrees with everything (subject and object) • Some languages (Tigre) have agreement only with what would be object in other languages (universal subject?)

21. The structural approach • American structuralists • For Indo-European • Subject is a phrase • The phrase which sits in a certain structural position • But – Relativity • You can only analyse a languages and a culture from the point of view of that system • Trying to impose notions from other systems onto a language is inevitably wrong • So, subject is not a universal notion

22. The structural approach • Generative grammar • Adopted the structuralist structural definition of grammatical functions • Disagreed with Relativity • But disagreed amongst themselves as to whether grammatical functions are basic to the system

23. Subject a derived notion • We define the subject as anything that sits in a certain position (NP immediately inside S): SNP VP V NP Subject

24. Subject a derived notion • But not everything that ends up in this position starts there: things move: • ------ was seen Mary • Mary was seen • So, in this case, the notion ‘subject’ is only established at S-structure • It would seem reasonable to assume that the notion is always only established at S-structure • Therefore at D-structure there is no ‘subject’

25. Subject a derived notion • In mid-1980s it was argued that all arguments start off inside VP • So no argument is in ‘subject position’ at D-structure • The subject in all sentences is derived

26. Subject a derived notion • E.g. Word order in Arabic: • Arabic shows two main word orders: • SVO verb agrees with subject • VSO verb is in 3.sing. Form • a Qara?-a al-tulaab-u al-kutub-a read-past the students-nom the books-acc “the students read the books” • b al-tulaab-u qara?-uu al-kutub-athe-students-nom read-past-3pl. the books-acc “the students read the books”

27. Subject a derived notion • We can account for this if we assume: • The verb always moves out of VP to inflection position • Movement to subject position is optional • When NP moves to subject position it becomes subject and verb agrees with it • If it does not move, there is no subject and the verb has ‘default’ 3.sing. form

28. Disagreements • Some generative theories disagree and claim that grammatical functions are not derived notions, but basic building blocks of grammar

29. Lexical Functional Grammar • LFG assumes that sentences are analysed at two levels: • F-structure • C-structure • Unlike S- and D-structure, these are not derived one from the other, but operate in parallel

30. Lexical Functional Grammar • F-structure is not a constituent structure • More abstract assignment of elements to functions: • Predicate: love • Subject: John • Object: Mary

31. Lexical Functional Grammar • C-structure is a constituent structure associated with an F-structure by rules which map F-structure elements onto C-structure elements: • S NP2 VP 1 = predicate 2 = subjectJohn V1 NP3 3 = object loves Mary

32. Lexical Functional Grammar • This helps in dealing with non-configurationallanguages, where word order is unimportant (e.g. Warlbiri) • witta-jarra-rlu ka-palayalumpuwajili-pi-nyikurdu-jarra-rlumaliki • small-dual-erg pres-3du that chase-nonpast child-dual-erg dog • “two small children are chasing that dog” • In such languages the c-structures are very different to English-type languages, but f-structures are similar and map onto the relevant bits.