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Return to IEL Homepage Index Department of English Introduction to English Language Online Unit 6: Comments (The Structure of the Clause)

Activity 1

1. Water only until the first truss is setting. then apply normal strength solution at every watering.
2. He made his mark on history when he went berserk one day and smashed two knitting machines belonging to a local stocking-maker.
3. The destiny of today's Benson and Hedges Cup final might prove to have been settled less than a fortnight ago when Derbyshire popped a roughened old ball into a Jiffy bag, exchanged glances of righteous suspicion and posted it down to Lord's for detailed examination.
4. Oft did the Harvest to their Sickle yield. (did... yield)
5. Their Furrow oft the stubborn Glebe has broke:
6. How jocund did they drive their team afield! (did drive)
7. How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!

Further Remarks

1. Water

The clause of which Water is the predicator appears to have no object; the clause seems to consist of just the verb, and thus to be intransitive. However, it may be more complicated than that. The text is taken from a packet of tomato fertilizer and we may suppose that there is an understood object such as the plants. Normally, if this verb is used without an object, the understood object is retrieved from the context of utterance, typically the garden, but potentially anything which the speaker thinks the hearer will understand, e.g. the vegetables, the tennis court etc.

An alternative to calling this an intransitive clause would be to say that it is actually transitive, but that the object has been ellipted because of the particular text-type. This view would put verbs such as water into a mid-way category between transitive and intransitive verbs, i.e. object-deleting verbs. They are capable of deleting their objects given certain conditions. On the other hand, a view which sees transitivity as a property of the clause rather than of the verb avoids having to make this decision.

2. belonging

This is a non-finite verb. The non-finite clause of which it is the predicator is actually part of a longer noun phrase (two knitting machines belonging to a local stocking maker), which in turn is the object of smashed.

3. might prove+to have been settled

This combination of words shows the considerable potential for complexity in English predicator structures. There are certainly two verb phrases here: might prove and to have been settled. The issue of whether they combine to form a single predicator, or whether they are in fact two predicators in separate clauses, one dependent on the other, is too contentious to deal with here.

4. Notice the separation of the two parts of the predicator in this kind of verse, and also the archaic participle broke, a form used only for the past tense in modern standard English. In regional dialects, especially in the West Midlands, broke is still a participle, and of course it is also used as a predicative adjective in modern standard English: I'm broke.

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Activity 2

Further remarks:

S3. The negative particle not is usually treated as part of the predicator. sleep is used intransitively, and is typically intransitive, in that it is usually without an object. Note the following rather exceptional example from the corpus: She had a quite unusual thirst for knowledge and lived and slept books. Despite being typically intransitive, its use without any further clause components is not so frequent. It is more usual to say where, when or how the action is taking place, e.g. He slept on the sofa, he slept soundly, etc.

S4. Straightforward SPC clause, with the C slot filled by an adjective in this case (cf. S2 where the C is a noun phrase).

S5. Straightforward SPO clause, with a two-word verb phrase at P.

S6. Simple SPO clause, but with a complicated noun phrase at S.

S7. Entered above as SPC, on the grounds that concealed is an adjective in this context (cf. concealed lighting). The sentence was taken from a colour supplement article on desirable residences. It is possible that such a clause could be SP, with is concealed as a passive verb phrase, but difficult to imagine the precise context. This point is covered again in Unit 7.

S8. SPC - straightforward.

S9. Imperative - no S.

S10. possible is CO ('object complement') here, since it refers to the 0, our ability to remember, not to the S. The other entries in the C column are all CS. These are obviously far more frequent, so one does not usually bother to label them as such. Notice that the order of elements in the original clause has had to change to fit into the table.

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Activity 3

Further remarks:

1. Straightforward.

2. The man who entered is a noun phrase, whose structure you are not required to analyse in this activity because you only have to find the major divisions.

3. Should be straightforward. Ask yourself: (a) what is the action; (b) what has he brought; (c) where has he brought it.

4. Similar, but an intransitive clause. Recall what was said earlier about intransitive clauses. Although they do not have an object, they frequently do have an adjunct, since verbs like rummage are not often used alone, e.g. He rummaged. This is not easy to contextualise.

5. This is similar to 2, but looks a little confusing at first because of the sequence 'are is'.

6. upon his knee could give rise to doubt here. Was it the leaves of the book upon his knee that he turned over, or was it the leaves of the book that he turned over, and the place where he did this upon his knee? The first analysis seems more plausible.

7. Here, it is the Object slot rather than the Subject slot which contains the complex noun phrase (cf. 2 and 5). Not only that, but the adjunct is also elaborated with a preposition into, and a complex noun phrase following.

8. Similar.

9. Sometimes it is hard to decide whether a predicator consists of just the verb, or the verb plus a preposition. In this case, ask yourself whether there is really a verb rest upon. Could you look it up in a dictionary? Try it and see. By contrast, fall upon is clearly a verb in its own right. So in this case, rest is the predicator, and upon forms part of the adjunct.

10. The complement here is again a complex noun phrase.

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