7

Basic and derived structures

Chapters 2 to 6 have outlined a method of parsing English sentences.

In this final chapter of Part B, we concentrate on some difficulties you
are likely to meet when you apply this parsing method to sentences you
meet in texts. As we do this, we shall sketch in an extra dimension to
the study of grammar: that is, the study of what we may call BASIC and
DERIVED structures. This will enable us to deal with a range of
grammatical patterns which do not fit neatly into the view of grammar
so far presented. But first, let us take stock of what has been done up
to now.

7.1 Constituent structure grammar

In Chapter 2 (p. 23) we defined grammar, roughly, as a set of 'rules for
constructing and for analysing sentences'. So far, we ha~J>een primarily
interested in 'analysing' rather than 'constructing': essentially, we have
been aiming at a parsing of sentences, and have been mainly concerned
with the kinds of rules which enable us to identify the constituents of
sentences, and their structures. For example:
(a) 'The structure of an NP is {MI} H {MI}' (specifying the structure
of a class of constituent).
(b) 'An 0 can be an NP or an NCl' (saying what classes of constituent
can fill a given functional slot).
(c) 'A subordinate clause can be either finite or non-finite' (specifying
the subclasses of a constitutent).
Such rules can be used in analysis, but if they were formulated precisely
enough, they could also be used for constructing or generating
grammatical sentences by rule. For example, we could use such rules to
construct a sentence like The question may arise. But we could not use
them to construct sentences such as:
(1) *The ask may arise.
(2) *The question arise may.
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G. Leech et al., English Grammar for Today
© Geoffrey Leech, Margaret Deuchar, Robert Hoogenraad 1982
114 ENGLISH GRAMMAR FOR TODA Y

Why not? Because each of these sentences violates one of the rules of
English grammar. In (1) ask is a V, not a N, and cannot therefore be
used as head of a noun phrase. In (2) may is a modal auxiliary, and like
all auxiliaries, can only occur before the main verb, not after it. Thus
the rules that have been presented in a rather passive sense, as a means
of analysis, can also be thought of in a more active, productive sense, as
a MODEL of the English speaker's knowledge of grammar, whether it is
used to analyse sentences, to produce them, or to judge whether
sentences are grammaticalor not.
The model we have presented may be called a CONSTITUENT
STRUCTURE model of grammar, and it works pretty weIl. But there are
some aspects of English grammar which it falls to explain. Some of
them have been glimpsed already. Our response to them is not to throw
away the whole model, but rather to see how the model can be im-
proved or extended to cope with them. The tree diagrarns of constituent
structure gramm ar provide a two-dimensional view, and what we aim to
do now is to make that gramm ar three-dimensional, by introducing the
not ion of BASIC and DERIVED structures. For this, we call on a further
kind of grammatical rule, called a TRANSFORMATION. 1 This is the kind
of rule which relates two different constituent structures. [Now try
Exercise 7a.]

7.2 Basic and derived structures

It is often said that English has a fairly fixed word order, but that
exceptional orders are allowed. Actually, when people discuss English
word order, they almost invariably refer to what would be more
correctly called 'phrase order' - the order of elements in the clause (the
order of words in phrases being more or less fixed). And in this
connection we have already assumed a neutral, basic order of clause
elements - S, P, 0, C, A - which is that of the normal declarative clause.
We have already implied, however, that some other clause types - e.g.
questions, relative clauses - can be explained as systematic deviations
from this expected order. Here are some more examples:
(3) {[(I) (adore) (cocktails)]. BASIC ORDER spo
(3a) [(Cocktails) (I) (adore)]. DERIVED ORDER asp

The concept of transformational rules has been developed in re cent technical

studies of English grammar (see, for example, Akmajian and Heny, 1975). Our
aim is to make very informal use of this concept as a means of explaining
significant relations between sentence structures.