SYNTAX

YOPITO SEFERINO HARBELUBUN

201588203043

ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT

FACULTY OF TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION
MUSAMUS UNIVERSITY
2018
3.4. Relationship Between Constructions

The above constructions fall into two major classes, the DECLARATIVE in (7) and the
INTERROGATIVE constructions (8). It is generally accepted that the DECLARATIVE
ACTIVE construction in (7a) is basic. It is the most frequent type of construction in English,
because speakers most often make assertions, indeed assertions about agents, and it allows
the widest range of modifications – for example, Frank had been buying the piano for Jane is
perfectly acceptable, and even The piano had been being bought by Frank, though awkward.
Examples of the basic construction allow the widest range of adverbs and are semantically
basic; the interpretations of Did Frank deceive Emma? And Frank didn’t deceive Emma both
involve an understanding of Frank deceived Emma, to which is added an understanding of
what is signalled by the interrogative syntax and of what is signalled by the negative didn’t.

The basic construction in (7a) is related to the other constructions in (7b–c) and also to the
interrogative constructions in (8). We can think of the relationships among the constructions
as paths that lead from the basic construction to the others. Do we lay out paths from the
basic construction to every other one, say from the construction in (7a) to the constructions in
(7b), (8a) and (8c)? The answer is ‘no’. Instead, we lay out paths from the basic
DECLARATIVE construction to the other DECLARATIVE constructions, and then we will
put down paths from each of the DECLARATIVE ] constructions to the corresponding
INTERROGATIVE one.

What about the constructions in (2)? As explained above, these are WH interrogatives, and a
simpler version of (2b) is given in (9). In the discussion of (2a–c), we saw that (9) relates not
to Frank bought a piano for Jane but to Frank bought something for Jane. The speaker
knows that Frank bought and Jane received a present and asks for the present to be specified.
We have three constructions to connect, shown in (10).

As before, we avoid paths going independently from the construction in (10a) to the
constructions in (10b) and (10c). Instead, we will lay down a path from (10a) to (10b) and a
path from (10b) to (10c). This captures the fact that (10b) and (10c) have something in
common, the occurrence of the auxiliary verb did before the subject Frank. It also captures
the fact that in syntactic terms (10c) is further away from (10a) than (10b), since not only is
there the auxiliary verb did preceding the subject Frank, but
(10c) also contains the WH pronoun what.