0805852212.pdf

79. Macarena,to stay awake,made a pot of coffee. (adverbial)

We also have instances in which nonfinite verb forms appear with negative
markers, as in:

80. Macarena answered slowly,not to be coy but to be clear.

Our phrase-structure rules require some significant adjustment if we are to
describe these structures; we must change the rule for S, write a new VP rule,
and change the rules for Aux and comp:

SÆ

Sconj

comp

RP

(NP)

VP

VP

Æ

ì

í

ï

ï

î

ï

ï

ü

ý

ï

ï

þ

ï

ï

æ

è

ç

ç

ç

ç

ç

ö

ø

÷

÷

÷

÷

÷

ì

í

î

ü

ý

þ

VPÆAux (inf) V (NP) (AdjP) (AdvP) (PP)

AuxÆ

ìÆ

í

ï

îï

ü

ý

ï

þï

æ

è

ç

ç

ç

ö

ø

÷

(tense) (neg) (do)

(m) (prog) (perf)

÷

÷

compÆ

that

for

Æ

ì

í

ï

î

ï

ü

ý

ï

þ

ï

What does all this mean? Well, when we modified the Srule, we put parenthe-
ses around the dependent clause markers; this indicates that the marker now is
optional. We have to do the same thing for NP to describe the fact that our
nonfinite verb clauses do not have a visible object. Then we need to add a new
constituent, VP, which we call bar-VP. The VPwill be the core of the new clause.
The second line of the modified rules indicates that the new clause has a verb
with an optional infinitive marker (inf) and optional NP, AdjP, AdvP, and PP. To
describe negatives, we also must adjust the expression for Aux, transforming it
so that all constituents are optional (we must include a null marker also). The
last step is to allowcompto includeforas well asthat.
With this fairly good set of phrase-structure rules, we have the ability to
analyze a wide variety of sentences. Many of those we just covered have a
very interesting structure when we look at their diagrams as illustrated in
4.78 – 4.80.

PHRASE STRUCTURE GRAMMAR 155