Sentence Structure:

FUNCTION
understanding the structure of a
sentence involves more than knowing
what its constituents are. It involves
knowing the category and the function
of those constituents
these three aspects of syntactic analysis
are closely bound up with one another
 Subject and predicate
To be sure of identifying the immediate constituents
of the sentence, divide the sentence into the fewest
possible parts, i.e. into just two; Subject and
Predicate
 Example :
[Ducks]+[paddle]
Ducks paddle,
[Max]+[coughed]
Max coughed,
Birds fly, [Birds]+[fly]
Empires decline, and [Empires]+[decline]
Martha retaliated. [Martha]+[retaliated]
Draw the tree diagram!
What about more complicated sentences? A speaker’s ability to
recognise the structure of the sentences of his language is largely a
matter of being able to perceive a similar pattern across a wide
range of apparently different sentences.

The ducks are paddling away.

How do you divide the sentence into two constituents?

What about these sentences?

1. Those gigantic ducks were paddling away furiously
2. The mouth-watering duck on the table won’t be paddling away
again
What about these sentences?
It is snowing again  [it] [is snowing again]
There is nothing to eat  [There] [is nothing to eat]

The subjects (it and there) do not refer to anything – it’s an

‘empty subject’, in technical terms, called ‘expletive’.

Exercise
1. Some nasty accident could have occurred.
2. The clown in the make-up room doesn’t want to perform.
3. None of her attempts to give up chocolate were really
serious.
 Noun Phrase and Verb Phrase
 What kinds – or categories – of phrases function as subjects
and as predicates?
 All the subjects we have looked at have one thing in
common: they all contain, and are centred on, the same
category of word: noun. They are all noun phrases (np)
 The phrases functioning as predicates, on the other hand, all
contain, and are centred on, a verb. They are all verb phrases
(vp)
Identify the phrases – as Noun Phrase, Verb Phrase, or ‘other’ – by
combining them and seeing which combinations make well-formed
sentences of subject + predicate

(a) remind me of you

(b) as quickly as he could
(c) soggy chips
(d) pamphlets advertising new syntactic theories
(e) by the end of this week
(f) suddenly rained from the sky
(g) are in demand.
The only well-formed subject~predicate combinations are:

(c) + (a), (c) + (f), (c) + (g), (d) + (a), (d) + (f),

and (d) + (g)

The pianist has rejected the chiropodist

 Dependency and Function
Constituents have their functions in respect of their
sister constituents.
subject and predicate are dependent on each other
An NP only functions as a subject in the presence of
a sister VP, and a VP only functions as predicate in
the presence of a sister NP
They are both obligatory in the structure of
sentences
 Head, Modifier, and Complemet
Let’s take a first look at the other main
functions. There are three general concepts
here. These are head, and the two functions
that other elements have in relation to heads,
modifier and complement.
 Head
 The head of a phrase is the element that the phrase is centred
on. It is the one essential – or obligatory – element in that
phrase.
 If you think of the phrase as a solar system, then the head is
the sun. Everything else in the phrase revolves around and
depends on the head.
 So: it is the category of the head of a phrase that
determines the category of the phrase (NP or VP)
The modifier~head relation
“their rather dubious jokes”
right
The head~complement relation

beside a stream
(Old Sam sunbathed beside a stream)

How many sister relations are there in the phrase?

The way to do this is to see if either of the constituents
of the phrase can be omitted individually in the context
of the sentence
*Old Sam sunbathed a stream
*Old Sam sunbathed beside
Beside requires the presence of a phrase like a stream
and that a stream depends on the presence of beside
It is therefore a two-way dependency
beside is the head of the phrase
 Phil dreads affectionate cats

[Phil]+[dreads affectionate cats]

 Summary
Constituents have their functions in respect of their
sisters. There are three kinds of functional relation
between sisters:
Subject~Predicate. The functional relation between the
immediate constituents of sentences, Noun Phrase (NP)
and Verb Phrase (VP). It is a mutual (two-way)
dependency – S and P are both obligatory. S precedes P.
Modifier~Head. This is a one-way dependency:
modifiers depend on heads. Modifiers are optional
(omissible). Some modifiers precede and some follow
the heads they modify.
Head~Complement. A two-way dependency.
Complements are obligatory, needed to complete the
meaning of the phrase. The head generally precedes its
complement.
Heads. The head is the obligatory centre of its phrase.
Every phrase has a head and no more than one head.
The category of the head determines the category of the
phrase.
 Exercise
 Draw phrase markers for the following phrases

a. young car salesmen;

b. second-hand car salesmen
 Identify the subjects and predicates of the following
sentences.
a. No one has ordered my lovely prune-and-spinach fritters.
b. Her memory for names was a constant source of amazement to
him.
c. There are too many uninvited guests here.
d. Only six of the domino-toppling contestants came properly
equipped.
e. That evening, Laura learned the Health and Safety Regulations by
heart.