Challenging Grammar
Spring 2017
Institute of English and American Studies
University of Debrecen
Instructor: Éva Kardos
Information packaging in the clause
(based on Chapter 15 of Huddleston and Pullum 2005)
1. Introduction
This week and next week we will talk about the constructions illustrated in (1)-(3).
(1)
(2)
(3)
a. Her son was arrasted by the police. (the passive construction)
b. The police arrested her son.
a. It’s unusual for her to be this late. (the extraposition construction)
b. For her to be this late is unusual.
a. There were two doctors on the plane. (the existential construction)
b. Two doctors were on the plane.
The examples above are similar in that the (b) sentences are structurally simpler.
Q: What indicates this?
Interestingly, in some cases, the basic counterpart of the non-canonical construction is missing.
(4)
a. There is plenty of time.
b. *Plenty of time is.
The (a) and (b) examples in (1) – (3) have the same core meaning. The differences have to do
with how the information is organised in the sentence. In what follows we will refer to all three
types of constructions as information-packaging constructions.
The aim of the following discussion will be to describe the syntactic differences between these
constructions and investigate the factors which favour and disfavour the use of one of these
constructions rather than the more basic counterpart.
2. Passive clauses
Passive clauses contrast with active clauses in a system called voice. In this system the terms
differ as to how the syntactic functions are aligned with semantic roles. Usually there are also
formal differences either associated with the verb or with the NPs.
Q: Can you illustrate these?
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Differences between active and passive clauses
A major factor influencing the choice between the orders of presentation has to do with the
familiarity status of the NPs. This involves the contrast between old and new information. This is
illustrated in (5).
(5)
a. The plumber says the dishwasher can’t be repaired, but I don’t think that’s true.
b. My neighbour came over this morning; she asked me if I’d seen her cat.
In English there is a preference for packaging information so that subjects represent old
information. This is why (6b) sounds a little strange.
(6)
a. I bought a car.
b. A car was bought by me.
Lexical restrictions
Most transitive active clauses have passive counterparts, but not all. Some exceptional verbs are
as follows:
(7)
(8)
(9)
a. The town boasts a great beach.
b. *A great beach is boasted by the town.
a. Max lacks tact.
b. *Tact is lacked by Max.
a. The jug holds three litres.
b. Three litres are held by the jug.
Prepositional passives
The subject of a passive may correspond to an object of a preposition rather than a verb.
(10)
(11)
a. People are looking into the matter.
b. The matter is being looked into.
a. They took advantage of us.
b. We were taken advantage of.
Prepositional passives can be of two types: The preposition can be lexically specified by the verb
as in (10) and (11), or it is not specified, as in (12).
(12)
a. Someone has slept in this bed.
b. This bed has been slept in.
Q: Some writers on scientific topics appear to think that passives are required for objectivity.
What is your take on that?
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3. Extraposition
There are two extraposition constructions: subject extraposition and internal complement
extraposition.
Subject extraposition
(13)
(14)
a. That he was acquitted disturbs her.
b. It disturbs her that he was acquitted.
a. How she escaped remains a mystery.
b. It remains a mystery how she escaped.
We call the subordinate clause in the (b) examples an extraposed subject since it’s an element in
extraposed position, outside the VP, that corresponds to the subject of the basic version.
In many cases a sentence with extraposition is the default. For example, subordinate clauses tend
to be heavier (longer and structurally more complex) than NPs, and there is in general a
preference for placing heavy material at the end of the matrix clause. Another reason for this is
that the context for a non-extraposed subject must permit its content to be taken as old
information.
4. Existential clauses
We begin with some illustrative examples:
(15)
a. There is a cat in the kitchen.
b. There are two books on the shelf.
In these clauses there is the subject.
Q: Can you provide support for this?
One common kind of existential clause contains just dummy there, the verb be, and a displaced
subject. These sentences are often called bare existentials. They have no corresponding basic
version, as shown in (16).
(16)
a. There is a god.
b. *A god is.
There are also extended existentials, which contain an additional element within the VP:
(17)
a. There’s a book on the table.
b. There is another problem to address.
c. There are still some seats available.
There are some constraints that apply to both versions:
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(i)
Indefinite NPs
(18)
a. *Two holes were in my sock.
b. There were two holes in my sock.
Definite NPs
(ii)
(19)
a. Your mother is here.
b. ?There’s your mother here.
5. The it-cleft construction and pseudo-clefts
Another information-packaging construction is the it-cleft construction. Some examples of this
are given in (20).
(20)
a. It was Sue who introduced Jim to Pat.
b. It was this car that I saw at the fair.
c. It was Sara who sat next to you.
In these sentences we differentiate between foregrounded and backgrounded information. The
foregrounded element is the complement of be and the backgrounded part is expressed as a
relative clause.
Q: How does Hungarian express this contrast?
The foregrounded element can be subject, object, complement of a PP and many other things.
This is shown in (21).
(21)
a. It’s you they think should leave.
b. It was to Pat that Sue introduced Jim.
c. It isn’t often that she misses a class.
d. It was to avoid being fired that I resigned.
Pseudo-clefts are different from the previous construction in that they include a fused relative
construction, which contains the background material.
(22)
a. What we need is more time.
b. What he claims is that he was insulted.
c. What I will do now is call my friend.
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