English grammar - Roger Berry 2012

B11.3 Conclusion
B11 Beyond and beneath the sentence
Section B Development

Grammar is a complex and multi-dimensional mechanism, not the simple random collection of rules that is presented to learners of language. But we should not expect anything less of a system that is the basis of the subtleties of human communication and the expression of human thought.

Comments

Activity B11.1:

1. The links are anaphoric: ’Betty and Barney Hill’ - ’this rather ordinary American couple’ - ’they’.

2. The links are: ’Otzi’ - ’him’, and the use of yet to show the relationship between the ideas in the two clauses.

Activity B11.2:

We logically think first of all that he was wearing his pyjamas, that in my pyjamas is an adverbial, and that is how he shot the elephant. But from the second sentence we understand the elephant was wearing them and that in my pyjamas is part of a noun phrase an elephant in my pyjamas.

Activity B11.3:

If we only looked at the clause structure here we would get the same analysis: SVO. However, in 2 function is the deep-surface object of perform (as well as the object of has), whereas in 1 perform is intransitive, and ability is only the object of has. If we paraphrase with a relative clause we can see the difference:

She has an ability that she has to perform. This makes no sense.

She has a function that she has to perform.

If we choose another noun such as duty the sentence becomes ambiguous:

She has a duty to perform.