234 Notes
(^3) Lear’s rhyme: There was an Old Derry down Derry; who loved to see little folks merry, so
he made them a book, and with laughter they shook at the fun of that Derry down Derry is
presumably not judged grammatical on formal criteria alone but rather is judged
acceptable [and innovative] because it fulfi ls a communicative act.
(^4) A grammar where each word in real time creates an expectancy that only certain
ways forward are possible.
(^5) Sentences whose fi rst words lead the listener up the garden path to an incorrect
analysis.
(^6) Assuming we are investigating the pattern of the to be verb.
(^7) ‘She saw him’ demonstrates the pattern V..n, and ‘she saw him leave’ demon-
strates the pattern V.. n ..v.
(^8) By coding the entire suspensive subchain in lower case we have highlighted the
fact that the entire subchain suspends the production of the following V element
but obscured the fact that within the subchain some elements formally suspend
other elements within the subchain.
(^9) Brazil (1995) does not overtly state that the orthographic word is the unit of
selection. However, in his sample analysis (p. 215–18) he somewhat inconsistently
codes multi-storey and handbag as single lexical E and N elements respectively, but
codes car park, back seat and driveway as reduplicative N+N elements.
(^10) The coding PHR-V is adopted from the Cobuild Advanced Learner’s dictionary
(2003) which classifi es is raining cats and dogs as a Phrase: verb. The coding PHR
is used throughout this book to signal a single lexical item which itself consists of
more than one orthographic word. Cobuild is used in this book as shorthand to
refer to the 2003 edition of the dictionary.
and as an infl uence on the hearer’s attitudes; and Textual – language functioning
as a means of constructing a text.
Chapter 4
(^1) The discussion of the grammar in Chapter 3 showed that while it is couched in
terms of prospections between elements, not all elements have the same status.
For instance N elements and P/N elements are themselves formed out of sus-
pensive elements which prospect further N elements. Thus, for readers used to
phrase trees the increment The old woman drove off leaving the short bald man on the
pavement can be notated as:
(^2) The diacritic * indicates that the sentence is ungrammatical.
N
d
The old woman
Init State Inter 1 Inter 2 Inter 3 Target State
drove off leaving the short bald Man on the pavement
eN V V' deeNpd N
N P/N