A Student's Introduction to English Grammar

64 Chapter 4 Clause structure, complements and adjuncts

Diagramming clause structure

The structure of a clause like Cats like water can be represented in diagram form as
shown in [1].

[1] Clause

�

Subject: Predicate:

NP VP

�

Predicator: Object:

V NP

I D

cats like water

This diagram expresses in graphic form information about the function and cate­
gory of the various units or constituents (i.e. words, phrases, clauses, etc.):

cats like water belongs to the category 'clause';
the clause is divided into two constituents functioning as subject and predicate;
the subject precedes the predicate;
the subject takes the form of a noun phrase (NP), and the predicate is a VP;
the VP contains a predicator and an object;
the predicator precedes the object;
the predicator is a v and the object is an NP.
No function is assigned to the clause itself because it is not part of any larger con­
struction; the other units, however, are given two labels: the first indicates their
function in the construction containing them, the second gives their category.
The diagram omits, deliberately, some information that is irrelevant here: it does
not show anything about the internal structure of the two NPs. The parts of the dia­
gram under the NP labels are just shown as tr iangles, which indicates that the details
of the internal structure (like what is the head of the NP) have been left out to sim­
plify things since it is not the focus of interest and we have not yet covered the struc­
ture of NPs (that is done in Ch. 5). In this chapter we are interested merely in how
phrases combine to make clauses.

Predicators select key content of clauses

What can occur in a clause is very largely determined by the predicator. For exam­
ple, it is a crucial property of the verb like that it permits occurrence of an object
(indeed, it normally requires one in canonical clauses).
A large percentage of the verbs in English allow or require an object. Some do
not: examples include elapse,Jall, lie, mew, vanish, etc. Thus *Cats mew water is
not a grammatical clause, though Cats mew is.