A Grammar of Spoken English Discourse - The Intonation of Increments

A Review of A Grammar of Speech 25

3. open selectors in (33). Brazil (p. 251) states that open selectors consist of a
   number of elements which are classifi ed ‘in various ways’ by a sentence
   grammar. He provides examples of open selectors such as who, when and
   because, and argues that what unites these disparate elements is that they
   defer a particular selection which is pertinent to the achievement of
   target state to later in the discourse. In a formal sense they serve to fi ll a
   slot which the chaining rules mandate must be fi lled (p. 140).

A further type of extension and suspension is reduplication which Brazil
(p. 253) defi nes as:

Extensions and suspensions [which] can be initiated after nominal ele-

ments and adverbial elements by producing another element of the same

kind.

Some examples taken from Brazil (p. 122) illustrate.^11

(34) She inspected her passenger, the little old lady

N V d N+ d e e N

(35) This old lady, this bloke, got out

d e N+ d n V A

In (34) the speaker has run through a simple chain (NVdN) without attaining
target state. To achieve target state, she extends the chain by producing a
reduplicating N element which achieves target state. The reduplicating
suspensive N element this bloke, in (35), fails to result in a further intermediate
state and the speaker remains obliged to produce the following VA elements
anticipated by the fi rst N of the reduplicating pair old lady, this bloke.
Brazil argues that the absence of certain predicted N elements in a chain
(pp. 33–8) is foreseeable. Two examples demonstrate:

(36) They inspected the car she’d parked outside

N V d N+ N V V' Ø^12 A

(37) The street she went along was pretty quiet

d N+ n v p Ø V A E

In (36) and (37) the second mentions of the car and the street have a zero
realization. Brazil (p. 138) claims that this zero realization is both mandatory
and predictable. He proposes a rule that any N in a subchain following the