A Linear Grammar of Speech 93
In both examples the dummy subject there is followed by the verb be and a
noun group. The noun group in (12) is whales swimming freely about and in
(13) is great sources of pain which is followed by the prepositional phrase in
everyone. The ‘problem’ according to Hunston and Francis is that in (12) if
a constituent analysis is preferred the pattern is there V n and the pattern of
(13) is there V n prep. They note that in the pattern there V n the noun
group often includes a rank-shifted clause such as whales swimming freely
about and hence they argue that the pattern there V n ‘does not give all the
information it might’ (ibid. 238). The ‘diffi culty’ is that while the general
pattern is that something follows the nominal group, that something can
only be coded if it is either a prepositional phrase or an adverb. Adoption
of a linear view circumvents the ‘diffi culty’ and both (12) and (13) can
receive the linear coding there V n-pat where n-pat indicates a noun with a
complementation pattern.
Pattern grammar, unlike Brazil’s theory, is based on lexical and not situ-
ational rules. For example, Brazil (1995: 49) argues that she saw is unlikely
to satisfy a communicative need; Hunston and Francis argue that saw has
the pattern V..n or V..n..v^7 among others but not the pattern V. However,
their rules for patterns are not based on the abstract introspection of lexical
rules but rather on the attested usage of language. In other words, Brazil,
and Hunston and Francis are effectively making the same claim.
While the lexical patterns proposed by Hunston and Francis are not
incompatible with Brazil’s chaining rules, they have the potential to result
in a different analysis of the same utterance, e.g.
(14) The fact that he wrote a letter to her suggests that he knew her.
d N n+ n v d n p n^8 V N+ N V N.................................................................................
The fact that he wrote a letter to her suggests that he knew her
N... that V...... that
V..... n.... to... n
(Hunston and Francis’s coding)
Brazil (1995) claims that the N element fact prospects a following V
element and this prospection is satisfi ed by the V element suggests. Hunston
and Francis argue that the lexical item fact prospects the that clause. The
difference arises because Brazil focuses on the truism that N elements
prospect V elements, while Hunston and Francis focus more narrowly
on the lexical patterns belonging to fact, one of which is N... that.