Language Landscapes · TESL 5002
Categories and functions: An overview
Brett Reynolds · Adapted narrated companion · AI narration using the author’s approved voice
01:08:30 · 55 sections
The narration explains the pronoun and determinative tables through their patterns. The complete tables are available in the written reference. Exercises have pause points and separate answers or worked examples where the book supplies them.
Audiobook with 55 chapter markers · Complete MP3 · Track playlist · Text transcript · Written reference and tables
Chapter 3. Categories and functions: An overview.
By the end of this chapter, you should be able to explain the many-to-many relationship between grammatical categories and syntactic functions. Distinguish between lexical categories, such as nouns, verbs, and adjectives, and phrasal categories, such as noun phrases, or NPs; verb phrases, or VPs; and adjective phrases. Identify the main syntactic functions: head, subject, modifier, determiner, complement, and object.
Apply diagnostic tests to distinguish adjectives from other lexical categories. Recognize and analyse adjective phrases in various syntactic contexts. Differentiate between pronouns, determinatives, and adjectives based on their grammatical properties. Understand how definiteness works in English NPs. And use category and function terminology accurately in grammatical analysis.
With some understanding of the concepts of standards, Standard Englishes, grammaticality, and normativity under our belts, I turn back to the ideas we started to develop in Chapter 1. For the reasons laid out in Chapter 2, as well as for practical reasons, the focus will be on Standard English in this chapter and most of the book.
Here, I'll explain how categories and syntactic functions interact in Standard English. I'll then provide explanations of adjectives and adjective phrases, pronouns, and determinatives and determinative phrases, or DPs.
I'm in my front garden in late May. The garden is lush, and the peonies are particularly notable as they begin to set their buds. Soon, they'll bloom into large flowers. But a closer examination of their stems reveals that they aren't very thick or strong, despite being fairly long. In fact, these peonies grow to about three feet in height. Given the size of the blooms, which can rival that of a newborn's head, their slender stems often struggle to support the weight, and the flowers droop.
Stems play a crucial role in plants. They provide structural rigidity, ensuring the plant remains upright. In the case of these peonies, the stems might not be up to the task. But in the same garden, there's a rosebush. Its stems are sturdy and can easily support the weight of its flowers. While roses and peonies are different types (or categories) of plants, their stems serve a similar function: transporting nutrients and providing support.
But stems aren't the only plant parts with important roles. Consider the roots. While they anchor the plant into the ground, offering some structural support, their primary function is nutrient absorption. So, while roots prioritize nutrient absorption and offer some support, stems focus more on support while also aiding in nutrient transport.
In my garden, there's also a challenge with weeds, especially on the pathways. To combat this, I have spread mulch. Interestingly, it is made of wood, which was a tree's “stem” (or trunk and branches). In its original role, the wood provided structural support to the tree and aided in nutrient transport. Now, repurposed as mulch, its function has shifted to weed suppression and moisture retention in the garden. Different organisms might see other uses for this wood: insects might view it as a food source, while a salamander might see it as a potential home.
The garden serves as a microcosm, illustrating the multifunctionality of natural elements. We categorize plant parts into stems, roots, flowers, and leaves, and each of these categories can serve multiple functions, from structural support to nutrient transport. Similarly, in language, words belong to lexical categories: nouns, verbs, adjectives, and so on. These categories serve various linguistic functions, from modification to heading a phrase or acting as a subject or determiner.
The key takeaway is the flexibility and multifunctionality inherent in both nature and language. There isn't always a one-to-one relationship between categories and functions: a single function can be realized by multiple categories, just as a single category can fulfill various roles.
Check your understanding. Before moving on, make sure you can answer these questions.
One. In the garden metaphor, what do stems represent in language?
Two. Can you think of a word that serves different functions in different sentences?
Three. Why might the same function be performed by different categories?
Pause here to work through the questions. There isn't a supplied answer key for this check.
There's no one-to-one relationship between categories and functions, and the belief that there is is akin to the fallacy of monosemy. If there were, then we would have a much easier time defining the categories. For instance, if nouns and only nouns functioned as subjects, then we could simply define a noun as any word that functions as a subject, and we wouldn't have to bother with the stuff about coming after “the” and “a”, adjective phrases as modifiers, plurals, and the rest of it as we saw in the earlier discussion of nouns. But that's not how language works.
This echoes the point that was being made in the soup sketch: no single criterion will define a category. And yet, assuming one-to-one relationships is more or less what traditional English school grammars have always tried to do. They say that an adjective is any word that modifies a noun. Here's an example from the eleventh edition of the very popular The blue book of grammar and punctuation.
On page one, it says: “A noun is a word or set of words for a person, place, thing, or idea.”
On page fifteen: “An adjective is a word or set of words that modifies, that is, describes, a noun or pronoun. Adjectives may come before the word they modify.”
It gives two examples: “That is a cute puppy.” And: “She likes a high school senior.”
Of course, this can't be right. A high school is a place (or a thing?), which should make “high school” a noun under the definition above, but in the example sentence, it's supposed to be an adjective. In other cases, such as “the Trudeau government”, Trudeau is a person but the word is, in the phrasing of The blue book of grammar and punctuation, “modifying the noun”, in this case “government”. So is “Trudeau” a noun or an adjective? Or is it in some kind of quantum superposition of being both at the same time? In fact, both “high school” and “Trudeau” are just nouns, full stop. Check the properties in the earlier discussion of nouns yourself if you doubt this.
This illustrates how we can better understand language by recognizing that the relationships between categories (like noun and adjective) and functions (like subject or modifier) are many-to-many. Traditional grammars often try to resolve this complexity with explanations like “it's a noun functioning as an adjective,” but that's like saying that the woody stem of a rhododendron is “functioning as a rose stem,” or that poppies' long, slender stems “function as peony stems.” These stems all function as (better or worse) supports, but the only stem that “functions as a rose stem” is a rose stem. Claiming that a noun “functions as an adjective” is a category mistake: adjective is not a function.
So to be perfectly clear, almost all categories perform multiple functions, and almost all functions can be performed by more than one category. NPs, being no exception, have multiple functions, and not every subject is an NP. In fact, it's quite common for nouns to function as modifiers in NPs as “Trudeau” does in “the Trudeau government”.
Continue to: Noun–noun combinations: examples
Make a list of other noun–noun combinations, such as “soccer ball” and “faculty office”, where the first noun is a modifier and the second is the head. Pause here to make your list. The next section gives the book's examples.
Here are the book's examples. In each, the first noun modifies the second.
“health care”, “world war”, “law enforcement”, “climate change”, “air force”, “family member”, “video clip”, “credit card”, “breast cancer”, “interest rate”, “justice department”, “tea party”, “blood pressure”, “Saturday night”, “security council”, “heart attack”, “task force”, “press conference”, “stock market”, “school district”, “death penalty”.
Here is a chain where the second noun of one combination becomes the first noun of the next.
“cell phone”, “phone call”, “call centre”, “centre stage”, “stage manager”, “manager position”, “position paper”, “paper towel”, “towel rack”.
And another chain.
“community college”, “college student”, “student loan”, “loan guarantee”, “guarantee program”, “program director”, “director level”, “level change”.
We have two fundamental types of categories: lexical categories and phrasal categories. These categories can often be identified out of context. For instance, if you see the word “happy”, you can categorize it as an adjective. You can look it up in a dictionary, and it will say “adjective”. There is no need for any more context. In some cases, the category will be ambiguous, as we saw with verb and noun forms like “run”, “jump”, and “walk” in the earlier discussion of verbs. It's not the case that each of these words belongs to two categories; the verb “walk” and the noun “walk” are different words, belonging to different lexical categories. It's simply the case that we may not have enough information to say which of the two words we're looking at in a particular case. It is clear, however, that “walk” is not an adjective, adverb, preposition, or anything other than a noun or a verb.
Functions, on the other hand, are relational. We can't ever look up a word in a dictionary and find out whether it's a modifier, a subject, a head, or a dependent. These functions can only be determined in a context by seeing how the phrases relate to those around them. A dictionary can tell you what a word is, but not what it is up to.
Quick self-check. Can you give an example of one word that belongs to the same category but serves different functions? And can you give an example of two different categories that can serve the same function?
Think about the different jobs NPs can do, and about the categories that can fill the determiner slot. Pause here to consider your answers.
Lexical categories contain individual words. Usually, in English, these are set off by spaces in writing, although there are some words that contain an internal space (for example, “each other”). So far, we have considered nouns and verbs. The other lexical categories we will look at in this book are adjectives, pronouns (a kind of noun), determinatives, prepositions, adverbs, coordinators, and subordinators. The only lexical category we won't eventually look at is interjections. If you'd like to learn about them, I suggest starting with the Wikipedia entry for English interjections. The written reference includes the link and the book's authorship note.
Phrasal categories. Most of the lexical categories mentioned so far have a related phrasal category. The diagram in the book shows six pairs. Nouns head NPs. Verbs head VPs. Adjectives head adjective phrases. Determinatives head DPs. Adverbs head adverb phrases. And prepositions head preposition phrases, or PPs.
There's one additional phrasal category, clause, which is headed by a VP, as we saw earlier. The diagram therefore links verb to VP, and VP to clause.
As we saw in Chapter 1, the everyday meaning of “phrase” happens to be “a group of words that have a particular meaning when used together,” but for our purposes, all we need is a head word. Often, this comes with dependents, but one-word phrases are also possible. This is another example of the difference between the everyday meaning and the technical definition. So, here, “go to school” is a VP, but so is “go” in “please, go”. We can have a long NP such as “all the very interesting people who I met yesterday”, but we can also have single-word NPs such as “they” or “water”.
Syntactic functions, or just functions, are broadly split into head and dependent. There is only one kind of head, but we'll divide dependents into subject, modifier, determiner, and complement. We'll also include a special kind of complement called an object. There are some other functions that I'll introduce later, but we'll stick with these for now.
Once again, the following explanations may include terms that you're not yet familiar with. As I've said, because this is a system, this is difficult to avoid, but the terms will be explained soon, at which point you may wish to review these definitions.
The head is the function of the most important element in a phrase. The phrase is almost always named after the lexical category of its head. For example, an adjective phrase has an adjective as its head, and every phrase has a head. Heads are often the only element in a phrase. In “rain fell”, the subject NP contains just the head noun “rain”, and the head VP contains just the head verb “fell”. In the written book, I often shorten head to the letter H.
A dependent is any element in the structure of a phrase or clause other than the head. In “the best kind”, the NP is headed by “kind”, with two dependents: “the” and “best”. In “won an award”, the VP is headed by “won”, with one dependent: “an award”. In “more important”, the adjective phrase is headed by “important”, with one dependent: “more”. Subjects, complements, modifiers, and determiners are all kinds of dependents. In the book, dependent is often abbreviated Dep.
Subject, a type of dependent. The subject typically functions as the topic of the clause and is syntactically a dependent of the VP in a clause.
It most often precedes the VP in declarative clauses. In “A sunny day should be savoured”, the subject is “A sunny day”, and the VP is “should be savoured”.
In questions with subject–auxiliary inversion, the subject follows the auxiliary. In “Could they be right?”, the subject “they” follows the auxiliary “could”. We'll explore that structure further in the later discussion of questions.
Semantically, the subject often denotes the agent in active sentences, but this is not universally the case. We'll discuss exceptions later.
Agreement with the verb in person and number is a key characteristic of the subject, particularly visible in present tense verbs. Compare “I like it” with “She likes it”. Notice the -s ending on “likes”.
While typically an NP, subjects can also be clauses, VPs, or even PPs. This shows the flexibility of this grammatical function. In the book, subject is often abbreviated Subj.
Determiner, a type of dependent. Determiners are found only in NPs. A head noun will never have more than one determiner. The book marks “my the class” as ungrammatical.
Determiners are usually DPs or possessive NPs. Examples are “the”, “almost all”, “some”, “each”, “my”, and “Brett's”.
A singular countable noun needs a determiner to form an NP. For example: “I need a pen”. “I need the pen”. “I need each pen”. “I need every pen”. But the version without a determiner is ungrammatical: “I need pen”.
Determiners come before modifiers in the NP. In “the Trudeau government”, “the” is the determiner and precedes the modifier “Trudeau”.
In the book, determiner is often abbreviated Det. Determiner and modifier are syntactic functions. The -er ending tells you it's a function. In contrast, determinative and adjective are lexical categories.
Modifier, a type of dependent. Most heads allow one or more modifiers. Typical modifiers are adjective phrases and adverb phrases, but almost any phrase can be a modifier.
Modifiers can often change position. Listen to the position of “quickly” in “he quickly jumped the fence” and “he jumped the fence quickly”.
Modifiers can often be removed without drastic or unexpected changes of meaning. “A nice, furry dog was sitting there” becomes “a dog was sitting there” when we remove “nice” and “furry”. Similarly, modifiers can almost always be added or removed without affecting grammaticality.
In theory, the number of modifiers is unlimited. Unfortunately, the boundary between complements and modifiers can be very fuzzy. In the book, modifier is often abbreviated Mod.
Complement, a type of dependent. Complements “complete” a phrase. The spelling has an E after the L, like “complete”. Compliments with an I, in contrast, are nice things you say about somebody.
Almost any kind of phrase can be a complement, though adverb phrase and DP complements are very rare. Complements usually follow their head. In contrast, modifiers can often move around. For example, the modifier “quickly” can go at the beginning, middle, and end of “she changed direction”.
Complements are selected by a head. “Listen to the music” is grammatical, but the following is not: “listen about the music”. “Listen” selects a PP headed by “to”.
If a phrase is indifferent about a head, it's not a complement. For example, “on Monday” can go with almost any verb: “eat on Monday”, “play on Monday”, “work on Monday”, “think on Monday”, “sit on Monday”.
There are zero, one, two, or sometimes three complements, but never four. If you think of subjects as a kind of complement, then four is possible. Unfortunately, the boundary between complements and modifiers can be very fuzzy. In the book, complement is often abbreviated Comp.
Objects are a kind of complement. Objects are always dependents in VPs or in PPs. For example, “the bag” is the object in both “grab the bag” and “in the bag”. Objects are almost always NPs.
If there's an action, the object is usually what is acted upon. In “I threw the ball”, the object is “the ball”. The object of an active sentence is usually the subject of the related passive sentence. Compare “A friend made the cake” with “the cake was made by a friend”. “The cake” is the object in the first and the subject in the second.
Verbs like “be”, “become”, “seem”, “appear”, “feel”, and “look” take complements, but not the special kind called objects. Two examples are “I feel good” and “it looks easy”. In the book, object is often abbreviated Obj.
Continue to: Subjects: answer key
Subject exercise. Identify the whole subject in each quotation. If there is more than one subject, identify the first two. Ignore any further subjects. Pause after each quotation if you need more time. The answer key is in the next section.
One. From Michael Chabon: “Undressing her was an act of recklessness, a kind of vandalism, like releasing a zoo full of animals, or blowing up a dam.”
Two. From Sara Nović: “The war in Zagreb began over a pack of cigarettes.”
Three. From Marilynne Robinson: “Jack put his arm out the window, waving his hat like a visiting dignitary, backed into the street, and floated away, gentling the gleaming dirigible through the shadows of arching elm trees, light dropping on it through their leaves like confetti as it made its ceremonious passage.”
Four. From J. M. Ledger: “A sudden warm rainstorm washes down in sweet hyphens.”
Five. From Paul Harding: “And as the ax bites into the wood, be comforted in the fact that the ache in your heart and the confusion in your soul means that you are still alive, still human, and still open to the beauty of the world, even though you have done nothing to deserve it.”
Six. From Edward P. Jones: “Within seconds of that thought, the train entered Washington, where she was to come to her end more than sixty-eight years later, a mother to seven living and two dead, a grandmother to twenty-one living and three dead, a great-grandmother to twelve, a great-great grandmother to twins.”
Seven. From Tobias Wolff: “We were all a little drunk with spring, like the fat bees reeling from flower to flower, and a strange insurrectionary current ran among us.”
Eight. From Denis Johnson: “When he was dry, he believed it was alcohol he needed, but when he had a few drinks in him, he knew it was something else, possibly a woman; and when he had it all — cash, booze, and a wife — he couldn't be distracted from the great emptiness that was always falling through him and never hit the ground.”
Nine. From Richard Beard: “Lizards skit like quick beige sticks.”
Pause here before continuing to the answers.
Subject exercise: answer key.
One. “Undressing her”.
Two. “The war in Zagreb”.
Three. “Jack”, then “light”.
Four. “A sudden warm rainstorm”.
Five. “The ax”, then “the ache in your heart and the confusion in your soul”.
Six. “The train”, then “she”.
Seven. “We”, then “a strange insurrectionary current”.
Eight. “He”, then “he”.
Nine. “Lizards”.
Now that you have a better understanding of categories and functions, it's time to look at the characteristics of adjectives and adjective phrases.
Before we start, I think it's useful to restate that these characteristics are often related to teaching points. For example, the issue of nouns being countable is actually an issue that causes a great deal of confusion for students. With that in mind, here are the central properties.
Adjectives typically denote properties or characteristics, but not objects or actions.
Adjectives always head adjective phrases.
Adjective phrases typically function as modifiers in NPs, as “nice” does in “a nice day”, and complements in VPs, as “nice” does in “was nice”. Sometimes they also function as modifiers in adjective phrases, though not in VPs or most other phrase types, and complements in PPs, as “free” does in “for free”.
Any phrase that can function as complement to all three of “be”, “become”, and “seem” is an adjective phrase.
Any word that can be modified by all three of “very”, “too”, and “so” is an adjective (or an adverb).
Many adjectives can take -er and -est endings, but so can a number of commonly used adverbs.
Many adjectives can be graded with “more” and “less”, and “most” and “least”, but so can many adverbs.
Many adjectives can take an -ly ending and become adverbs.
Here are some examples.
Denotation. As in the earlier discussion of nouns, the terms used here are just everyday descriptions. They're not technical terms, nor are they meant to be exhaustive.
Evaluative properties: “good”, “great”, “helpful”, “interesting”.
Scalar properties: “big”, “heavy”, “high”, “old”, “thick”.
Relationship properties: “Canadian”, “different”, “mutual”, “ninth”, “other”.
Material properties: “ceramic”, “metallic”, “plastic”, “wooden”, “woolen”.
State properties: “amorphous”, “aqueous”, “crystalline”, “gaseous”, “viscous”.
Here are examples of adjectives heading adjective phrases. Listen for the head as the phrase grows.
“Happy”. “Very happy”. “Very happy with the outcome”. The head in each is “happy”.
“Nice”. “Not nice”. “No nicer than the other one”. The heads are “nice”, “nice”, and “nicer”.
“Interesting”. “Easily more interesting than mine”. The head in each is “interesting”.
“Slightly too big”. The head is “big”.
Now, adjective phrases as modifiers in NPs. I'll read each NP and identify its modifier.
“Civil rights”. The modifier is “civil”. “Some quite good news”. The modifier is “quite good”. “National security”. The modifier is “national”. “The whole thing”. The modifier is “whole”. “Recent years”. The modifier is “recent”. “Our mental health”. The modifier is “mental”. “Her very best friend”. The modifier is “very best”. “A really big deal”. The modifier is “really big”. “A supremely important responsibility”. The modifier is “supremely important”.
Adjective phrases as complements to “be”, “become”, and “seem”. Try each of the following phrases after each of the forms “is”, “became”, and “seems”. The phrases are “clear”, “aware”, “available”, “pregnant”, “familiar to me”, “popular with the ladies”, and “very interested in the difference”. The diagnostic requires all three verbs.
Now, adjective phrases with “very”, “too”, and “so” as modifiers. Try each of those three modifiers before each of the following adjectives: “good”, “important”, “late”, “different”, “difficult”, and “nice”. Many adverbs work here too, including “well”, “importantly”, “differently”, and “nicely”.
Here are adjectives taking -er and -est suffixes: “bigger”, “biggest”; “greater”, “greatest”; “older”, “oldest”; “lower”, “lowest”; “younger”, “youngest”. A number of commonly used adverbs work here too: “stay longer”, “leave earlier”, “run faster”, “work harder”, “jump higher”.
Many adjectives can be graded with “more” and “less”, and “most” and “least”. Try those four words before each of the following: “likely”, “expensive”, “favourite”, “important”, “restrictive”, “effective”, “able”, “possible”. Again, adverbs like “frequently”, “environmentally”, “politically”, and “often” work here too.
Finally, adjectives taking -ly to form adverbs: “quick” becomes “quickly”; “real” becomes “really”; “actual” becomes “actually”; “probable” becomes “probably”; “final” becomes “finally”; “simple” becomes “simply”; “exact” becomes “exactly”; “certain” becomes “certainly”.
Continue to: Worked example: following · Worked example: those · Worked example: wire · Worked example: magnanimous · Worked example: fresh
Apply the properties to identify the adjectives in this excerpt from “A very old man with enormous wings” by Gabriel García Márquez, translated by Gregory Rabassa. If you're not sure how to do this, listen to the worked examples that follow. First, here's the passage.
On the following day, everyone knew that a flesh-and-blood angel was held captive in Pelayo's house. Against the judgment of the wise neighbor woman, for whom angels in those times were the fugitive survivors of a celestial conspiracy, they did not have the heart to club him to death. Pelayo watched over him all afternoon from the kitchen, armed with his bailiff's club, and before going to bed he dragged him out of the mud and locked him up with the hens in the wire chicken coop. In the middle of the night, when the rain stopped, Pelayo and Elisenda were still killing crabs. A short time afterward, the child woke up without a fever and with a desire to eat. Then they felt magnanimous and decided to put the angel on a raft with fresh water and provisions for three days and leave him to his fate on the high seas. But when they went out into the courtyard with the first light of dawn, they found the whole neighborhood in front of the chicken coop having fun with the angel, without the slightest reverence, tossing him things to eat through the openings in the wire as if he weren't a supernatural creature but a circus animal.
Pause here to identify the adjectives. The next sections work through five words from the passage.
The word is “following”. Here is its sentence.
On the following day everyone knew that a flesh-and-blood angel was held captive in Pelayo's house.
“Following” is a modifier in the NP “the following day”, but it is not modifiable by “very”, “so”, or “too”.
The following combinations do not work: “more following”, “most following”, “less following”, “least following”.
We can't say something is “the followingest”.
There is no adverb “followingly”.
It can't function as the complement of “become” or “seem” (for example, “the day became following”).
Therefore, “following” is probably not an adjective, or at best it is a very bad example of an adjective. Since it ends in -ing, consider whether it might be a verb.
The word is “those”. Here is its sentence.
Against the judgement of the wise neighbor woman, for whom angels in those times were the fugitive survivors of a celestial conspiracy, they did not have the heart to club him to death.
“Those” comes before the noun “times”, but it doesn't denote a property. Instead, it has a kind of pointing meaning.
It is not gradable with the -er ending, “more”, or “less”.
It can't be modified by “very”.
It can't function as complement of “become” or “seem”.
There is no word “thosely”.
So, “those” is probably not an adjective either.
Pause and reflect. Notice how we've now seen two words, “following” and “those”, that seem like they might be adjectives but fail the diagnostic tests. What does this tell us about the importance of using multiple tests rather than relying on just one criterion? Pause here to think about that.
The word is “wire”. Here is its sentence.
Pelayo watched over him all afternoon from the kitchen, armed with his bailiff's club, and before going to bed he dragged him out of the mud and locked him up with the hens in the wire chicken coop.
“Wire” functions as a modifier in the NP “the wire chicken coop”, but it denotes a physical object, not a property.
We can say “that seems like wire”, but the following is ungrammatical: “that seems wire”.
It has none of the other characteristics of an adjective.
It can modify a verb. In “a wire wrapped guitar string”, “wire” modifies “wrapped”.
Again, “wire” is probably not an adjective. Given that it denotes a physical object, consider whether it might be a noun.
The word is “magnanimous”. Here is its sentence.
Then they felt magnanimous and decided to put the angel on a raft with fresh water and provisions for three days and leave him to his fate on the high seas.
“Magnanimous” doesn't modify a noun, but it functions as a complement in a VP headed by “felt”.
It denotes a characteristic of the people (they).
There isn't a word “magnanimouser”, but we do have “more magnanimous” or “less magnanimous”.
It can be modified by “very”.
There is an adverb “magnanimously”.
There's nothing wrong with “it seems magnanimous”.
So, “magnanimous” seems to be an adjective.
The word is “fresh”. Here is its sentence.
Then they felt magnanimous and decided to put the angel on a raft with fresh water and provisions for three days and leave him to his fate on the high seas.
“Fresh” is a modifier in the NP “fresh water”.
It denotes a scalar property.
It can be graded (for example, “fresher”, “freshest”, “least fresh”).
Something can be “very fresh”.
There is an adverb “freshly”.
Something can “seem fresh”. And while it's kind of unusual for something to “become fresh”, just because things tend to go from fresh to stale and not the other way around, there's no grammatical problem with “become fresh”.
Clearly, “fresh” is an adjective.
Now, return to the passage with these examples in mind. Pause here to work on it again.
Summary and review. Fill each blank with “noun”, “verb”, or “adjective”, using the plural where appropriate. I'll number the statements so you can pause and keep track of your answers.
One. A word that denotes a person, place, or thing is a blank. It can typically follow “the” or “a”.
Two. A word that is countable is a blank.
Three. Almost every blank can follow the infinitive marker “to”.
Four. An NP is typically headed by a blank.
Five. An adjective phrase is always headed by a blank.
Six. Blank phrases can perform a variety of functions, including subject and object.
Seven. Any phrase that can function as a complement to “be”, “become”, and “seem” is a blank phrase.
Eight. Almost every blank has an -ing form.
Nine. Blank commonly denote actions and states, and they do not denote physical objects.
Ten. Many blank can take -er and -est endings, but so can many adverbs.
Eleven. Blank typically denote properties or characteristics, but not objects or actions.
Twelve. Blank phrases can typically be possessive.
Thirteen. Typically, blank can be modified by adjective phrases.
Fourteen. Many blank can take an -ly ending and become adverbs.
Fifteen. Almost every blank has a third-person singular -s form.
Sixteen. A blank is often in an agreement relationship with a phrase functioning as its subject.
Seventeen. A blank can't be modified by an adjective phrase.
Eighteen. The head of a clause is typically a blank phrase.
Nineteen. Blank can denote almost anything from objects to actions to characteristics.
Twenty. Any word that can be modified by “very”, “too”, and “so” is a blank, or an adverb.
Twenty-one. Blank can't typically be modified by adverb phrases.
Twenty-two. A word that has a past-tense form is a blank.
Twenty-three. Many blank can be gradable with “less” and “least”, and so can many adverbs.
Twenty-four. Blank phrases modify nouns and blank, but not verbs. There are two blanks in this statement.
Twenty-five. Almost any word that is plural is a blank.
Twenty-six. A blank phrase must be headed by a verb.
Pause here to complete the exercise. Keep working on recalling the properties of nouns and verbs, and add adjectives to your practice. The book doesn't supply an answer key for this review.
Did you ever notice that we sometimes say things like “Look at the baby. It's so cute”, but we'd never say the following, marked as ungrammatical in the book: “Look at her boyfriend. It's so cute”?
Did you ever notice that plural “they” is used to refer to anything from teachers to trees but singular “they” is only for persons? If you doubt me, give it a try.
Did you ever notice that in some uses, “whose” is used to refer to anything from children to chambers (for example, The chasm ran through a chamber whose ceiling was lost in the darkness above), but “who” is only for persons?
Did you ever notice that in some cases “which” can't be used for persons? For example, the book marks the following as ungrammatical: “that's the guy which sold me the car”.
Of course, everyone's aware of the masculine and feminine gender pronouns, but did you ever think about personal and non-personal gender pronouns?
Pronouns are a special kind of noun. They typically refer to another NP that has come before or that comes later. For example: “Xi saw the egg fall but caught it before it smashed”. The pronoun “it” refers to the egg in both places. There are only a small number of pronouns. The next two sections read the main ones from the pronoun table.
The pronoun table brings together three kinds of information: person, number, and gender. It then shows the forms that each pronoun can take. The complete table is in the written reference. Here, let's use a few rows to see how it works.
Start with “I”. Its five forms are nominative “I”, accusative “me”, reflexive “myself”, independent genitive “mine”, and dependent genitive “my”. The two genitive columns distinguish independent from dependent forms. For this pronoun, the forms are different: “mine” and “my”. For “he”, both genitive forms are “his”. The two columns can therefore contain the same form.
Now compare singular and plural “you”. Most of the forms are the same, but the reflexive distinguishes “yourself” from “yourselves”.
The table also gives separate rows for singular and plural “they”, although both rows have the same five forms: “they”, “them”, “themselves”, “theirs”, and “their”. The singular row is personal; the plural row covers reference to persons and non-persons, as we discussed earlier.
The remaining rows show some other kinds of pronoun. Generic “one” has the reflexive “oneself” and the dependent genitive “one's”. Interrogative and relative pronouns include the forms “who”, “whom”, and “whose”. We'll return to their uses later in the book.
The reciprocals are “each other” and “one another”, with genitives “each other's” and “one another's”. The final two rows contain the dummy pronouns “it” and “there”. They need a little explanation, which comes next.
Use the written table when you need to check a particular form. For now, notice that pronouns have grammatical properties and contrasts of their own. They are a special kind of noun.
A dummy pronoun is one which does not refer. In “There are two dummy pronouns”, the dummy is “there”. In “It's windy today”, the dummy is “it”. There is no semantic reason for “there” and “it” to appear in those sentences. Their role is purely grammatical, because English demands a subject in this context.
Interrogative and relative pronouns are discussed further in later sections of the book.
When it comes to the possessive pronouns, gender agreement can be an issue. In some languages, they agree in gender with the head noun, while in English, “his”, “her”, “hers”, and “its” agree with the possessor. So, for the grandmother of a man, English would use the masculine “his” because he is a man, while French would use the feminine “sa” because the grandmother is a woman.
Here are the four pairs. Listen to the possessive forms in the English sentence and its French translation.
“It's his grandmother.” The English possessive is masculine. “C'est sa grand-mère.” The French possessive is feminine.
“It's his grandfather.” Masculine in English. “C'est son grand-père.” Masculine in French.
“It's her grandmother.” Feminine in English. “C'est sa grand-mère.” Feminine in French.
“It's her grandfather.” Feminine in English. “C'est son grand-père.” Masculine in French.
This can be a challenging concept to adjust to if the language you grew up speaking, your first language, or L1, makes the opposite choice. Even for speakers whose L1 doesn't make any such grammatical distinction, it may be worth pointing out how English gender agreement works in such cases.
One interesting property of pronouns is that only a pronoun, but not all pronouns, can appear in a tag question. For example: “that's very interesting, isn't it?” The pronoun in the tag is “it”. Or: “there's more, isn't there?” The pronoun in the tag is “there”.
There is a good deal of confusion about the terms “determiner” and “determinative”. The former is a function and the latter a category. Unfortunately, some books use them the other way around. Those using them flipped around include “A comprehensive grammar of English”, English and Simple English Wiktionary, and Wikipedia. I will use determiner as a function (like modifier) and determinative as a category (like adjective). In general, a reliable dictionary for checking whether a word is a determinative is the Simple English Wiktionary, although, confusingly, it calls them “determiners”. It will help if you can keep the following terminological reminder in mind.
Determiner and modifier are syntactic functions. The -er ending tells you it's a function.
Determinative and adjective are lexical categories.
For the most part, DPs tend to be single-word phrases. Occasionally, though, a DP includes a modifier.
A note about terminology. The abbreviation DP here refers simply to phrases headed by determinatives, such as “some”, “many more”, and “less than five”. This differs from how some linguists use DP to refer to what we call NPs. In the next examples, I'll identify the DP and its modifier.
“Many more people”. The DP is “many more”, and its modifier is “many”. “That many days”. The DP is “that many”, and its modifier is “that”. “All these sandwiches”. The DP is “all these”, and its modifier is “all”. “Almost every time”. The DP is “almost every”, and its modifier is “almost”. “At least two times”. The DP is “at least two”, and its modifier is “at least”.
The function that DPs typically perform is that of determiner. Only NPs have determiners, and a head noun may only have one determiner, as in “the ball”, or none, as in “balls”, never two or more. The book marks the following as ungrammatical: “the my ball”.
A singular countable noun typically requires a determiner to be a full NP, and without one, it is usually ungrammatical. For example, the following is marked as ungrammatical: “she passed me ball”.
Determinatives also commonly function as modifiers. In “I feel much better”, “much” modifies “better”. In “good enough”, the modifier is “enough”. In “this good”, the modifier is “this”.
In traditional English grammar, there is no concept of determiner or determinative. There was a special category for “the” and “a” called articles, but all the other determinatives were just called “adjectives” when they preceded a noun. For instance, the word “some” in “some people” is categorized as an adjective in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, even though it has none of the other characteristics of adjectives. There are two reasonably good ways to distinguish whether a word is a determinative or an adjective.
Most adjectives are happy to follow “the”, but it's quite rare for determinatives to do so.
Most determinatives can function in the frame “blank, of the, noun” as in “some of the people”, “all of the time”, “each of the tests”, and “many of the changes”, but adjectives never do.
And, of course, you can simply consult the list of determinatives in the Simple English Wiktionary or the appendix because there aren't very many. The next two sections read a sample from the table.
The determinative table also brings several distinctions together. Start with the articles. “A”, with its alternative form “an”, is singular and indefinite. “The” is definite and flexible in number.
Next, compare the four demonstratives. “This” and “that” are singular; “these” and “those” are plural. All four are definite. These comparisons let us keep number and definiteness separate: two forms can differ in number while agreeing in definiteness.
The complete table is in the written reference. It records the type, number, gender where relevant, and definiteness of each entry. We'll come to the qualification about gender after looking at the other groups.
The other entries include “each” and “every”; “any” and “some”; “either” and “neither”; and “no”, with “none” in parentheses. There are also “few”, “fewer”, “fewest”, and “a little”. Numerals such as “one” and “two” belong here too, as do interrogative and relative uses of “what” and “which”.
Notice some number contrasts. “Each”, “every”, “either”, and “neither” are marked singular. “Few”, “fewer”, and “fewest” are plural. “Any”, “some”, and “no” are flexible in number. The written table keeps all these classifications available for reference.
The gender labels have a qualification: they apply only when the determinative is used without a head noun. The book allows “What person is this?” but not “What is this?” as a question about a person. Demonstratives aren't always impersonal. For example: “This is my friend.” And: “Those who try win.”
Like pronouns, determinatives can often refer to NPs that appear elsewhere in the discourse. For example: “I bought a bag of chocolate chip cookies, and I ate some on the way home”. Here, “some” refers back to the cookies. For this reason, they are often categorized as pronouns. For example, this use of the word “some” is categorized as a pronoun in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, even though it has none of the other characteristics of pronouns. For one thing, determinatives don't have the various forms that most pronouns have and, like adjectives, pronouns can't appear in the frame “blank, of the, noun”, just discussed. The following two examples are ungrammatical: “she of the students”; “us of the teachers”.
A given NP is either definite or indefinite. In English, this is usually marked by the choice of determiner (the function). Certain determinatives, such as “the” and “this” along with possessive (genitive) NPs, such as “my” and “Brett's”, mark the NP as definite. Other determinatives such as “a”, “any”, and “some” mark the NP as indefinite, and most NPs without a determiner are also indefinite. The main exceptions here are proper names and most pronouns, which are definite.
But there's a subtlety here. Determiner choice is a grammatical fact about the NP. Whether the speaker expects the listener to identify the referent is a semantic one. The two usually align, but not always: generic “the” (“the lion is a noble beast”) is grammatically definite but doesn't pick out a specific lion, while specific “a” (“a certain student kept disrupting class”) is grammatically indefinite but does.
Definiteness is one of those concepts that seems obvious at first blush but which, on second thought, turns out to be less clear. A useful if somewhat simplified way to think about it is found in The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, or “CGEL”, which says definiteness can be understood as pre-empting a question with “which”?
Here's the passage from “CGEL”, page 368. Compare, for example:
“Where did you park the car?”
“The father of one of my students rang me up last night.”
The first person to run the mile in under four minutes was Roger Bannister.
The first example illustrates the frequent case where the addressee can be assumed to be familiar with the referent of the definite NP: you have been driving the car and presumably know a good deal more about it than that it is a car, including what colour and make of car it is, and so on. You thus don't need to ask “Which car?”: you know which one I'm referring to.
End of the quoted passage.
If you did respond to my question about the car by asking “Which one?”, it would indicate that there had been a breakdown in communication, that I had been mistaken in assuming that you'd be able to identify which car I was referring to.
Definiteness can be a trouble point for learners of English because definiteness in English is always marked (by a definite determiner or by virtue of being a pronoun or a proper name), but only optionally marked in many languages. Determiner choice is also only partially conditioned by definiteness. Countability, quantity, number, proximity, and possession all factor in.
The book's tree diagram groups determinatives by their semantics. It has three main branches: definite, quantificational, and interrogative. I'll describe the branches in turn.
The definite branch divides into demonstrative, general, and temporal. The singular demonstratives are “this” and “that”; the plural demonstratives are “these” and “those”. The general definite determinative is “the”. The temporal entries are “next” and “last”, each shown with “week” in parentheses.
The quantificational branch has six divisions: grade, universal, dual, singular, partial, and cardinal. Let's take them one at a time.
Grade divides into abundant and scarce. Under abundant, the basic forms are “many” and “much”, and the graded forms are “more” and “most”. Under scarce, the mass or non-count forms are “little” and “least”, and the unit or count forms are “few”, “fewer”, and “fewest”.
The universal group contains “all”, “each”, “every”, and “no”. The dual group contains “both”. The singular group contains “a” or “an”, and “another”.
The partial group divides into four: positive, with “a little” and “a few”; sufficing, with “enough” and “sufficient”; dual, with “either” and “neither”; and existential, with “any” and “some”.
The cardinal group distinguishes singular “one” from plural “zero”, “two”, “three”, and so on.
Finally, the tree's interrogative branch contains “what” and “which”.
The excerpt is from Alice Munro's “The love of a good woman”. The task is to identify any phrase functioning as determiner in each NP. First, I'll read the passage. In the next section, I'll read the NPs separately. As in the exercise's instructions, we'll ignore the smaller NPs inside them.
These women aren't so much older than Kath and Sonje. But they've reached a stage in life that Kath and Sonje dread. They turn the whole beach into a platform. Their burdens, their strung-out progeny and maternal poundage, their authority, can annihilate the bright water, the perfect small cove with the red-limbed arbutus trees, the cedars growing crookedly out of the high rocks. Kath feels their threat particularly, since she's a mother now herself. When she nurses her baby she often reads a book, sometimes smokes a cigarette, so as not to sink into a sludge of animal function. And she's nursing so that she can shrink her uterus and flatten her stomach, not just provide the baby — Noelle — with precious maternal antibodies.
Kath and Sonje have their own Thermos of coffee and their extra towels, rigged up as a shelter for Noelle. They have their cigarettes and their books. Sonje has a book by Howard Fast. Her husband has told her that, if she has to read fiction, she should read Fast. Kath is reading the short stories of Katherine Mansfield and the short stories of D. H. Lawrence. Sonje has got into the habit of putting down her own book and picking up whichever book of Kath's that Kath is not reading at the moment. She limits herself to one story and then goes back to Howard Fast.
End of the passage. You can pause here or continue to the NPs.
Here are the NPs from the Munro passage, in order. For each, identify any phrase functioning as determiner. Pause after each one if you need time.
1. “These women”.
2. “Kath”.
3. “Sonje”.
4. “they”.
5. “a stage in life that Kath and Sonje dread”.
6. “They”.
7. “the whole beach”.
8. “a platform”.
9. “Their burdens”.
10. “their strung-out progeny and maternal poundage”.
11. “their authority”.
12. “the bright water”.
13. “the perfect small cove with the red-limbed arbutus trees”.
14. “the cedars growing crookedly out of the high rocks”.
15. “Kath”.
16. “their threat”.
17. “she”.
18. “a mother”.
19. “herself”.
20. “she”.
21. “her baby”.
22. “she”.
23. “a book”.
24. “a cigarette”.
25. “a sludge of animal function”.
26. “she”.
27. “she”.
28. “her uterus”.
29. “her stomach”.
30. “the baby”.
31. “Noelle”.
32. “precious maternal antibodies”.
33. “Kath”.
34. “Sonje”.
35. “their own Thermos of coffee”.
36. “their extra towels, rigged up as a shelter for Noelle”.
37. “They”.
38. “their cigarettes”.
39. “their books”.
40. “Sonje”.
41. “a book by Howard Fast”.
42. “Her husband”.
43. “her”.
44. “she”.
45. “fiction”.
46. “she”.
47. “Fast”.
48. “Kath”.
49. “the short stories of Katherine Mansfield”.
50. “the short stories of D. H. Lawrence”.
51. “Sonje”.
52. “the habit of putting down her own book and picking up whichever book of Kath's that Kath is not reading at the moment”.
53. “She”.
54. “herself”.
55. “one story”.
56. “Howard Fast”.
Pause here to finish the exercise. The book doesn't give a complete answer key, but the later section on NPs as determiners discusses the possessives.
When one label names two things.
In Chapter 1, you saw that “furniture” refers to individual items but is grammatically non-count. There's a syntactic property called “countability” (takes numerals, pluralizes, requires a determiner with singulars) and a semantic property also called “countability”, whether the referent consists of distinct individuals. They usually agree; when they don't, confusion follows.
This pattern (one label, two overlapping categories) recurs throughout linguistics. We've just seen it with definiteness: syntactic marking by determiners and semantic identifiability usually align but can diverge. We'll meet it again with tense and time in Chapter 5, where a past-tense form can carry present meaning (“I wish I knew”). It shows up with aspect, gender, and more. The large overlap makes the two look like one; the mismatches then look like exceptions.
When a reference book's rule seems to have too many exceptions, check whether it's conflating a syntactic property with a semantic one. The “exceptions” are usually just cases where the two don't align. Seeing this is one of the most practical things analytical training gives you: you stop blaming the language for being irregular and start noticing that the description was muddled. The table summarizes three examples.
For countability, the syntactic side is taking numerals and pluralizing; the semantic side is individuation; and the mismatch is “furniture”.
For definiteness, the syntactic side is determiner choice; the semantic side is an identifiable referent; and the mismatch is generic “the lion”.
For tense, the syntactic side is verb inflection; the semantic side is temporal reference; and the mismatch is “I wish I knew”.
The Munro passage includes possessive NPs functioning as determiners, such as “their” and “her”. This is the other major category that fills the determiner slot.
The dependent genitive pronouns in the pronoun table, “my”, “your”, “his”, “her”, “its”, “our”, and “their”, are all NPs. They're nouns (specifically pronouns), and they function as determiners, just as “the” and “some” do. The difference is purely categorical: “the” is a determinative; “my” is a pronoun.
Longer possessive NPs work the same way. In “my mother's sister”, the NP “my mother's” functions as a determiner in the larger NP. And “my mother's” has its own internal structure: the pronoun “my” functions as a determiner inside it. So we have an NP nested inside an NP, each with its own determiner. The next section goes through the three examples.
In “my mother's sister”, “my” is the determiner in “my mother's”; “my mother's” is the determiner in “my mother's sister”.
In “the dog's owner”, “the” is the determiner in “the dog's”; “the dog's” is the determiner in “the dog's owner”.
In “this morning's headlines”, “this” is the determiner in “this morning's”; “this morning's” is the determiner in “this morning's headlines”.
This nesting can go further. In “my uncle's dog's vet”, the possessive NP “my uncle's” is a determiner in the NP “my uncle's dog's”, which is itself a determiner in “my uncle's dog's vet”. In principle, there's no limit, though in practice we rarely go beyond two levels. Tree diagrams for these structures appear in the later chapter on trees.
Notice how this connects to the many-to-many theme from the start of the chapter. The determiner function can be filled by a DP (“the”, “some”, “every”) or by a possessive NP (“my”, “Brett's”, “the dog's”). Two different categories, one function.
Summary. Most of this analytical detail stays behind the scenes in a language classroom. But it informs every professional judgment you make: whether a textbook's explanation will cause confusion down the road, what examples you choose, and what you say when a student asks you what an adjective is. You don't need to cover all the exceptions and edge cases from the beginning, but you shouldn't be setting traps for yourself to fall into later.