Unit 8: Common Verbal Patterns
At the opening of William Faulkner's novel The Sound and the Fury, the actions of two men playing golf are described, from the viewpoint of an uncomprehending child. The narrative includes the sentences
They were hitting little.
and
He hit and then the other one hit.
Any native speaker of English feels these to be ungrammatical. Something's missing from them, and not merely missing in the way that things can be ellipted yet leave a grammatical structure: these are ungrammatical. Clearly what's missing is some sort of entity that gets hit. When you first read the sentences, in context, you may even get the impression that the men are beating someone up, or hitting each other - some impression of unexplained violence. But of course the men are hitting golf balls. It's not clear that the childlike narrator understands this: hence the intransitive use of what is very much a transitive verb.
With a verb like hit, we understand the process to extend or 'go across' from a do-er to a done-to, that is, grammatically, from a Subject to an Object, and so we call such verbs transitive. A transitive verb requires, for it to be used grammatically, that the Object be stated.
The most immediate contrast is with intransitive verbs. When someone says:
I went along the fence.
the verb went (go) has no accompanying Object (along the fence being an Adjunct). Compare, too, these simplest forms:
I hit.
I went.
Given this simple scheme, where would you put verbs like eat and read? Are they intransitive or transitive?
Are there any situations in which the former is grammatical? How about the latter? Verbs like go, walk, smile, sigh, collapse, stagger, sleep, run, are described as intransitive, since they do not ordinarily take or require an Object. They do not represent activities in which a process 'extends' from a do-er to a done-to.
Most English verbs are transitive, but they're not all transitive in the same way, and the differences between the kinds of 'accompaniment' that different verbs seem to need is the kind of topic that interests grammarians. To connect up with the SPOCA elements of simple sentences, transitive verbs appear in sentences which are
S P O (A)
while intransitive verbs appear in sentences which are
S P (A)
Read and eat are among the quite numerous verbs that, in fact, can appear in either sentence. But if you were pressed to put read and eat into one class or the other, transitive or intransitive, which class might we argue that they 'deep down' belong to? [The linguists' term for the way things are 'deep down' is 'underlyingly'. If you go on to do any further linguistic studies you are sure to hear the word 'underlyingly' many times over.]
By the way, do not assume that (all) English verbs are only either transitive or intransitive: there is a third very important class, usually called intensive verbs, such as be, become, seem, and get (as in Martin got angry). These are the verbs that show up in S-P-C constructions.
Consider the verbs expect and believe. In some ways these two verbs are similar. For example, using a simple substitution test, we can just as grammatically say either
I expected Jean
or
I believed Jean
We can also say, equally grammatically, either
I expect I'll have one of Bellamy's delicious meat pies.
or
I believe I'll have one of Bellamy's delicious meat pies.
But while you can say
I expect to get at least a B in this class.
you can't grammatically say
I believe to get at least a B in this class.
Even seven-year-olds tacitly know this: they avoid saying or writing ungrammatical sentences like the last one cited. Grammarians are interested in figuring out why it is that expect and believe, though both are transitive, differ in the details in these kinds of ways.
Think up (and write down) some sentences which highlight some of the ways in which the verbs expect and persuade and try seem to allow different kinds of construction to follow them. And then comment on what the differences suggest. E.g., we can say I expected to win, and I tried to win, but not *I persuaded to win. Why? And so on.
An Object is conveniently defined as that part of the clause that can become the Subject if the whole clause is passivized. In the light of this definition, what is interesting about the following sentences?
I gave the distributor to Sabina.
The bank sent a letter to the customer.
John knitted a sweater for Benny.
How many Objects do these verbs seem to have?
What other noticeable rearrangement is possible of each of these sentences, involving no more words than those supplied?
Think of two other verbs that seem to behave like give and knit, and give example sentences to confirm this.
(an asterisk preceding a cited sentence marks it as ungrammatical/unacceptable)
A tag question is a little follow-up checking question which we can add to an ordinary declarative sentence, usually to draw forth some further specific response from the person we are talking to. Here, underlined, is a classic tag-question:
a. Imagine you are explaining, to a Japanese highschool student of English, how to make English tag-questions. First draw up instructions which will work on the following sentences. That is, given the declarative sentences in the lefthand column, your instructions should 'yield' the tag-questions in the righthand column:
It was amazing, wasn't it?
She's Portuguese, isn't she?
You aren't hungry, are you?
They weren't very friendly, were they?
You're in Hagget Hall, aren't you?
Activity 4 (continued)
b. Now consider the following slightly more complicated examples. Modify your directions, if you have to, to get the correct tags for both the earlier sentences and these new ones:
The girl was singing in French, wasn't she?
John isn't annoyed, is he?
The chairs are Chippendale, aren't they?
c. Now consider the following more complicated examples. Modify your directions, if you have to, to get the correct tags for both the earlier sentences and these new ones:
Kim might have gone straight home, mightn't he?
The boys have been drinking, haven't they?
She couldn't be persuaded, could she?
He wasn't watching channel 22 again, was he?
d. Now consider the following further examples. Modify your directions, if you have to, to get the correct tags for both the earlier sentences and these new ones:
You finished off that tub of icecream, didn't you?
She didn't go skiing yesterday, did she?
The police released him on bail, didn't they?
You catch the 72 bus, don't you?
You won't catch cold, now, will you?
i. Consider the following conversational 'turn':
Why can't I skip off to Andorra before the exams? Because I've got three courses to keep up with, for one thing. And besides, I haven't any money, ______ I?
What is your likely tag verb in the specified slot?
Do you find anything surprising here? You might like to consider other sentences and their likely tags, such as
I haven't a clue,
You have a computer,
They have some nerve,
ii. It's my hunch that, in ordinary conversation, younger speakers use a kind of tag which is less grammatically complex than all of the above. Would you agree? How do you 'tag' sentences so as to mark them as intended as questions? Listen, at lunch or whenever, to how those around you form tags..
iii. When teaching your Japanese learner of English, do you think it would be important to tell them also something about the rhythm and intonation they should use in these tags? What instructions would you give?
When you are doing SPOCA analysis, a lot of trouble can be caused for you by sentences in which the lexical verb (in the P) is immediately followed by a preposition - She climbed down the mountain, He laughed at the suggestion. Can that preposition or particle be grouped with the verb, as part of the P, so that She climbed down the mountain, for example, is analysed as S-P-O, with perhaps the supporting argument that it means the same as She descended the mountain? In general, in this course, we shall say No! We prefer to analyse She climbed down the mountain as S - P - A. The basic reason for this is that down the mountain is a more unified chunk (a constituent), in this instance, than climb down is; this is reflected in the fact that we can have rephrasings like the following: Down the mountain she climbed (laboriously). Down the mountain is then a classic Adjunct: relatively freely movable and deletable.
But there are some `verb + particle' sequences that can be treated as special cases, where the particle is indeed part of the P, and followed by an Object. One set of special cases includes multi-word verbs like put up with, as in She put up with noisy neighbors for many years. Here you cannot treat up with noisy neighbors as an A, freely movable: *Up with noisy neighbors she put for many years. Here put up with can be very reasonably classed as the P, with noisy neighbors as the O.
Another set of special cases are those in which the particle is so tied to the verb that, paradoxically, it can be moved quite far away from it, to the other side of the Object. This is something which cannot be done with `climbing down the mountain': *She climbed the mountain down.
Genuine `verb + particle' constructions of this type, like `put out (the cat)' and `bring on (the dancing girls)' , are called phrasal verbs.
Consider the following sentences:
John took off his sweater.
John took his sweater off.
John took it off.
*John took off it.
Mary switched on the light.
Mary switched the light on.
Mary switched it on.
*Mary switched on it.
a) what kind of verb are these, transitive or intransitive?
b) is the process one of 'taking', or of 'taking off'; of 'switching' or 'switching on'? If the latter in each case, is there a one-word substitute for these two-word sequences (this is one test of 'phrase-hood')?
c) judging by the asterisked fourth sentence in each group, what seems to be the rule or pattern concerning how to use these verbs when the Object is a pronoun?
Discuss, as best you can, the grammatical sources of the ambiguities in the following sentences or pairs of sentences:
a. Indrani is eager to please.
Indrani is easy to please.
b. The shark is ready to attack.
The shark is difficult to attack.
The shark is ready to eat.
c. Flying planes can be dangerous.
d. Annoying children can be fun.
e. The teacher was retiring. {And about time too!}
{But not excessively so.}
f. '83 Cutlass Supreme for sale. Single owner, runs good but needs tlc.
1. Sentences are either Simple, Compound, Complex; both Simple and Complex sentences have one SPOCA analysis at the top level; Compound sentences have two or more (depending on how many independent clauses they are made up of). A complex sentence differs from a simple one only in that one of the top level elements of the main sentence, i.e., its S, O, C, or A, is itself a clause requiring its own internal SPOCA analysis. E.g.:
Kim realized that Bill was a chump by the end of the year
S P O A
[S P C]
2. SPOCA: Subject, Verb, Object, Complement, Adverbial
P: the action, relation, or process on which the whole sentence hinges. May be multi-word: should have realized; is putting up with
S: the element, usually before the P and 'thing-like', which 'agrees' with the P.
O: the element, usually right after the P, which could become the S if the sentence were passivized.
C: the non-deletable and fairly non-moveable element, usually right after Vs with main verbs such as be, seem, appear, become, look, get, feel, in sentences which cannot be passivized. Some phrase which redescribes or newly identifies whoever or whatever the Subject is.
A: usually optional or deletable, highly moveable; semantically, these supply background information about time, place, manner, reason, circumstances, concession, condition, etc.
3. Transitive/ Intransitive / Intensive Verbs.
e.g. kick clamber be
4. Active and Passive (Intransitives and Intensives cannot be passivized)
Imagine the following passage is an extract from a 'personal opinion' composition written by a seventeen-year-old, as part of a written test (taken under exam conditions) for applicants for scholarships at a particular college. First, read the passage to yourself, at normal speed.
My first trip to England was totally different than what I expected. I went with Sally (me and her were still best friends back then). The smallness in size of most peoples' houses really impacted upon me. However it's to be expected I suppose, seeing as how there are around sixty million people living on a landmass not much different in size from Washington state. Also, the country has been builded over and builded over for centuries, it seems like there's a bit of history attached to every square foot of it. I think the Tower of London is a good place to start your visit, once you've negotiated your way from the airport to the city, that is. Heathrow makes O'Hare look user-friendly. For instance, when we wanted to bring the baggage we had with us in one of those airport carts from one terminal to another, none were free. Hopefully, we asked a porter where to find empty carts; he said he had no idea! It's hard to believe he wasn't just lying; who can you trust nowadays? Anyway, at the Tower of London, you're able to really see what it was like to be Sir Walter Raleigh, imprisoned for years, his days of cloak-dirtying and drugpushing behind him, writing his History of the World before they executed him. Holed up in a tiny room, the book was written without benefit of any library, no sources, no 'factcheckers', nothing. Amazing. Its laughable to imagine the kind of book that'd be produced by you or I today in the same situation! Or by today's celebrities either. None of those people are able to write no more than a page without some ghostwriter at their elbow. The best way to see London is on foot, if you have the stamina. Walking around the narrow lanes of the City (that's actually a single square mile of business and legal institutions), the real experience of London can be felt. London is a city of innumerable noises and smells and where the sense of movement is constant. I shall never forget it's pubs and theatres and shiny black taxi's - even if the food is very average. And it's beautiful parks, where in the summer you see thousands of pale Londoners laying on the grass, trying to get a tan! Hopefully I'll get a chance to re-visit it again someday.
1. Now share your thoughts about the general content of the passage with the rest of your group. Did you enjoy it? Did it make sense? Was it reasonably coherent?
2. Did you have any general kinds of dissatisfaction with the passage? If you were on the college selection committee, would this passage help keep the candidate 'alive', or tend to cause you to reject her?
3. Now go over the passage as a group slowly, line by line, focusing on the grammar. If there are any points where you might criticize the grammar, discuss these with the rest of the group. Try to pinpoint what exactly your objection is, and make a note of whether everyone in the group feels the same way or whether some of the group see no significant problem with the phrasing under discussion.
4. What is grammar? Try to come up with two or three basic claims.
5. What is meant by 'bad grammar'? Again, try to come up with just two or three basic characteristics.
6. What is a rule? Sort out, by discussion, the typical characteristics of a rule.
7. Even four-year-olds who speak English know that adjectives come before nouns in English, not after (I want vanilla icecream, not I want icecream vanilla). Judging by what you've said about rules in #6 above, are such children following a rule about adjective-noun sequencing? What are they doing?
