Reference Grammar Issues in the English Language Predicator - Assignment Example

Linguistic review Reference Predication I Identify the predicator and referring expressions. that some have two sentences, therefore twopredicators. Ignore any tense marking on the verb and anything in brackets.)  II.: Say what type of reference is involved for each of the referring expressions.  III.: Say what the referring expressions refer to (in the real world or discourse world.)  IV.: If there are any ambiguities, be sure to discuss them in full.  a. The government promised that a new house would be built each day.  The above sentence has three referral expressions – government, house and day. Government is an indefinite specific noun phrase that refers to a body comprising people. The House is a definite description while day is a temporal referent that specifies a repetitive period in time. The predicator is ‘promised’. b. A man at the back of the room wants your attention.  The referring expressions are man and the room. The predicator is ‘wants’. While ‘Man’ is a definitive noun phrase that identifies a particular man at a particular place, the room is a spatial reference which denotes a particular region. c. John isn’t a very good host…  The referring expression is John. The predicator is ‘isn’t’. The sentence is a case of use with John as a definitive noun phrase that identifies a specific individual. d. …He thinks party hats are the utmost in sophistication.  The referring expressions are ‘He’ and ‘party hats’. The predicators are ‘Thinks’ and ‘are’. He is a pronoun and a party hat is a definitive noun that identifies a class of objects. 2. Lexical aspect (aspectual classes (Vendler 1967)) (50%)  We discussed four types of situation: state, activity, achievement and accomplishment. Describe and compare these categories with examples (at least 3 examples for each type of situation) and provide at least three tests each to identify them. Role and Reference Grammar (often referred to as RRG in short) is heavily influenced by the study of verb classes and plays a central role in the theory of lexical interpretation. A verb is assumed to represent a lexical system under Role and Reference Grammar. Role and Lexical grammar takes root from Vendler’s classification of verbs into individual classes based on several criteria (Christopher Butler, 2003). This classification of verbs or situations is based on the level of knowledge about an entity, the feeling or mere actions at achieving something. Based on these standpoints, verbs are classified into states (for example, have, believe), activities (walking, speaking, writing etc.), achievements (realize, aim, learn etc.), and accomplishments (such as teach, give, take etc.). This classification of verbs into individual classes is based on a representation scheme that has been proposed by Dowty to facilitate such segregation (Pamela Faber, 1999). The differences between these verb classes has been achieved through the construction of a lexical decomposition system that identifies certin basic stative predicates such as be, have, know etc. and derives other classes from these basic origins. In this context, achievements are interpreted semantically as states along with a ‘become’ operator. For instance, ‘become Know’ implies the state of ‘learn’ about something. In the same fashion, accomplishments are causative attributes that are denoted using the ‘Cause’ operator along with the ‘Become’ operator. Using the earlier example, ‘Become (Cause know)’ implies ‘Become learn’, which points to the verb ‘teach’. Likewise, activities are represented through the ‘Do’ operator (Robert Valin, 1997). Class Logical format State Predicate (a) Achievement Become (a) Activity Do (a) Accomplishment ‘a’ Cause ‘b’, where ‘a’ = an activity predicate, ‘b’ = achievement predicate The logical structures described above are the origins for interpreting thematic relations under RRG. These relations are specified on the basis of argument positions within the decomposed structures of the logical structures. A distribution of the verb classes is as shown below:       1. State verbs       a. Locational be  x=person, y=attribute   b. Non-Locational       1. State or condition warm(x) x=kettle   2. Perception view(x,y) x=viewer, y=object   3. Cognition believe(x,y) x=viewer, y=object   4. Possession possess(x,y) x=person, y=attribute   5. Comparison like(x,y) x=person, y=attribute   2 Activity verbs       a. Uncontrolled       1. Non-motion talk(x,y) x=initiator, y=location   2. Motion run(x) x=theme   b. Controlled Do (x, [ talk(x)]) x=initiator In the above table, the kettle is association with a stative verb that described a specific state or condition such as ‘the Kettle is warm’. The object is the second attribute of two place stative verbs such as ‘The Book is on the Table’. In this context, the desk is the location and the first argument of the two place stative verb under the perception sub-class (Christopher Butler, 2003). The single activity within the motion sub-class serves as the theme. For instance, ‘The boy ran’ consists of a participant whose action is unmarked for any kind of volition as is the case with ‘The gate squeaks’. Such thematic roles help emphasize that such roles under RRD are motivated in an independent fashion. Role and Reference Grammar depends immensely on logical structures and thematic roles where such roles perform the task of linking syntactic and semantic structures. In this context, the actor, the entity influenced by the action and the macro-roles are the other elements that provide the necessary linkage (Pamela Faber, 1999). Macroroles are similar to grammatical arguments under a transitive predication. The various classes of verbs described above encompass several cognitive dimensions within language. The primary distinction amongst them can be drawn between state and activity, which provide the conceptual flavor to the verb classes (Robert Valin, 1997). As specified above, state verbs can further be classified into locational and non-locational verbs whereby the latter further consists of further sub-classes including state, perception, possession and cognition. Verbs that fall under the activity class are segregated on the basis of the control element they are associated with while uncontrolled verbs are divided by determining the element associated with their motion. Examples of the different types of situation State 1. Mark knows German. 2. The Elephant is huge. 3. He has a cake. Achievement 1. Abraham learnt the art. 2. John realized his strengths. 3. Mike understood the lecture. Activity 1. I like swimming. 2. He walks every morning. 3. They talk a lot. Accomplishment 1. I give knowledge. 2. He teaches mathematics. 3. They cherish sunshine. References 1. Christopher Butler (2003), Structure and function: a guide to three major structural-functional theories. New York: John Benjamins. 2. Pamela Faber (1999), Constructing a lexicon of English verbs. London: Walter de Gruyter. 3. Robert Valin (1997), Syntax: structure, meaning and function. Cambridge University Press. Read More