26 A Grammar of Spoken English Discourse
subject N has a zero realization if its realization would amount to a second
mention of the fi rst N of a reduplicating pair. In (36) we fi nd the extensive
subchain she’d parked ø outside. The subject of the subchain is she and the
N element, the car is the fi rst N of the reduplicating pair car, she, and has a
zero realization in the subchain. Similarly in (37) we fi nd the suspensive
subchain she went along ø. The subject is she and the N element, the street, has a
zero realization.
Brazil (pp. 136–7) discusses the presence of optional elements such as that
and who(m) in the chain. He provides two illustrative examples:
(38) She drove past the turning that she wanted
N V P d N+ N N V Ø
(39) She drove past the turning she wanted
N V P d N+ Ø N V ØThe fi rst thing to note is that in (38) and (39) there is no second mention
of the turning. All that has occurred in (38) is that an element that, which is
redundant both as a fi ller of a slot and as a carrier of information, has been
overtly realized at the beginning of the subchain prior to the subject. Brazil
speculates plausibly that the insertion of such redundant elements may be a
consequence of a learned prescriptive standard of written language (p. 137).
This section has described without critical comment Brazil’s description
of his grammar. The assumption that it is both necessary and useful to
decompose an utterance into a string of word-like elements in order to
provide a full and accurate description of an utterance will be reviewed in
Chapter 4.
2.2.5 Asking exchanges
Up until this point we have only presented the chaining rules for telling
increments. Brazil claims that the difference between asking and telling
increments lies in who knows what. In a telling increment the speaker’s
contribution on its own can achieve target state. In an asking increment the
contributions of both the speaker and hearer are required to achieve target
state. Brazil proposes no formal syntactic or intonational distinction between
asking and telling increments (p. 192). Thus:
(40) What am I going to do now
(41) She said that