Concluding comments

We finish the discussion in this chapter with five general comments. The first is simply that the tests of transposition and substitution apply inside clauses, although they are often said to apply inside sentences. This is one reason why the clause is a useful unit for our analysis; it enables us to handle the fact that sequences of words occur in different positions and to apply the tests to sequences whose status is not clear. Ellipsis too applies inside a clause, but its operation takes two or more clauses into account, since it deletes phrases that are repeated from one clause to the following one.

The second comment concerns the different types of phrase. The labels ‘noun phrase’, ‘prepositional phrase’ and ‘adjective phrase’ are in general use. A phrase with a noun as its head is a noun phrase, for example, her colleague who was collecting the exam scripts; a phrase with a preposition as its head is a prepositional phrase, for example to Alan; a phrase with an adjective as its head is an adjective phrase, for example exceedingly sorry about the mistake. Sequences such as quickly and unbelievably quickly constitute adverbial phrases, that is, phrases in which the adverb – here, quickly – is the head.

The third comment concerns the fact that phrases can contain other phrases. The phrase to her colleague in the extended version of (18a) discussed in Section 2.3 is a prepositional phrase; inside it is the noun phrase her colleague. The phrase to Alan, discussed just above, is also a prepositional phrase containing a noun phrase, which happens to consist of one word, Alan. The phrase the rather intriguing results of the examination is a noun phrase. Its head is results, a noun which is modified by the, by rather intriguing and by of the examination. Rather intriguing is an adjective phrase whose head is the adjective intriguing. This adjective is modified by rather. There are two more phrases inside the large noun phrase. One is the prepositional phrase of the examination, with the preposition of as its head. The other is inside the prepositional phrase and is the noun phrase the examination. This example, the rather intriguing results of the examination, is instructive; it shows how a phrase may have more than one phrase inside it – rather intriguing, of the examination, and the examination are all inside the noun phrase the rather intriguing results of the examination; it shows how a phrase can contain a phrase of the same type – the noun phrase the examination is inside the larger noun phrase the rather intriguing results of the examination.

Phrases can also contain clauses, as in the example in the paragraph following (4) the room which Jeeves shimmered into. This is a noun phrase with room as its head. Room is modified by the relative clause which Jeeves shimmered into. In the idea that David Hume might wear a toga the head noun idea is modified by the noun complement clause that David Hume might wear a toga.

These examples demonstrate an extremely important property of language, namely the ability of phrases and clauses to be indefinitely extended. Probably all English-speaking children at some point in their primary-school education discover that you can take a main clause such as I know and add to it the complement clause that he knows and then add the complement clause that I know, to yield I know that he knows that I know and so on. Not every child can produce such examples with the same skill, and comprehension usually fades after three or four complement clauses have been added.

The fourth comment has to do with the title, ‘Constituent Structure’. We have talked of words constituting phrases, and we can also talk of phrases constituting clauses. we can also talk of clauses constituting sentences. Another way of putting these ideas is to say, for example, that words are the constituents, or constituent parts, of phrases, that phrases are the constituents of bigger phrases or of clauses and that clauses are the constituents of sentences. The arrangements of words into phrases, phrases into clauses and clauses into sentences is known as constituent structure.

The final comment is that very little of the arrangement of words into phrases, phrases into bigger phrases, phrases into clauses and so on is signaled in either speech or writing. In many types of written text, writers signal how they organize clauses into sentences: they may signal boundaries between clauses by means of commas or semi-colons, and individual words are typically kept apart by a space. But there are no conventions of punctuation that point to the intricate structure of a complex noun phrase such as the very intriguing results of the examinations.

In speech, especially spontaneous conversation, practically nothing is signaled. In the reading-aloud of written texts, the reader may pause between sentences, but typically does not do so between clauses and certainly not between individual words; speakers very seldom utter words one at a time and with a gap between each one. Even when carefully reading a text aloud, speakers may pause at the end of sentences, clauses or phrases but not after every word. Of course, we do leave a space between words when we write, but the spaces in written texts do not correspond to spaces in speech. If you listen to someone speaking a language you do not know, whether German, Finnish or Turkish, you will have no idea where words begin and end; if you pick up a text written in one of these languages, you will see the gaps between the words and will immediately be able to ask about the meaning of particular words.

Equally, in spontaneous speech, speakers typically do not pause between clauses. When they do pause, they are just as likely to do so in the middle of clauses, in the middle of phrases or even in the middle of words, depending on rapidity of speech, emotional state, whether the speaker has just run up a flight of stairs or has been sitting quietly in an armchair, and so on. All these properties of speech point to the arrangement of words into phrases, phrases into clauses and so on as something abstract. Linguists put the arrangements, the structure, into their analysis of particular clauses, but ordinary native speakers of a given language carry knowledge of the arrangements in their heads. Faced with a line of words on the page or a sequence of sounds produced by a speaker, readers and hearers invest the sequence with structure; they ‘read’ into it the words, the organization of words into phrases and so on.