Questions tagged [constituents]
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What is the constituent type of 'laugh' in 'I saw her laugh'?
Could someone explain to me the constituent type of “laugh” as in “I saw her laugh”？ Best with an X-bar graph. I know it's a lot of trouble. You don't have to draw the whole thing, a simplified ...
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An annoyingly technical question about right nonce-constituent coordination in Huddleston & Pullum (2002)
I'm currently reading Huddleston & Pullum (2002), aka CGEL, specifically the chapter on "right nonce-constituent coordination"; the relevant pages are pp. 1342-1343. My question is about ...
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Can I really follow the theoretical framework proposed in the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language?
In the book 'the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (CGEL)', the authors propose the theoretical framework used to describe the English sentences as shown below:
Text version:
Clause:
...
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Noun phrases + Colons + SemiColons
Given:
John was causing obstruction: the act of preventing passage or progress.
or
The doctor said: "you need medical attention".
What do the constituents of these phrases look like?
Given that ...
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What parts of speech and sentence constituents are “yes” and “no” words in answers?
Let's look at some examples:
— Would you like some ice cream?
— No.
— Are you happy?
— Yes.
According to Wiktionary “yes” is a particle:
ParticleyesUsed to show agreement or acceptance...
“No” and “...
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Matrix clause or infinitival clause?
What is the function of “the doctor” in the following sentences? Is it a constituent of the matrix clause or of the infinitival clause?
I wanted the doctor to examine my daughter.
I persuaded the ...
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Structural ambiguity [closed]
This sentence is supposed to be ambiguous. However I cannot see the ambiguity.
"We heard Mr. Vaughn’s voice on the loudspeaker"
My interpretation is:
We: SUBJECT
Mr. Vaughn's voice: DO
On the ...
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How can an adjective follow and modify an adverb in “somewhere new”? Is this ellipsis?
I would like to go somewhere new tonight.
I met someone nice at the party
Are the preceding two sentences the same as the following, but with ellipsis applied?
I would like to go somewhere [that is] ...
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Constituent structure of 'He arranged for me to go there'
This question was inspired by the discussions in this post.
Consider the sentence
[1] He arranged for me to go there.
What is required is to determine its constituent structure (in the sense of ...
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a [box [of apples] ] vs [a box] [of apples]
The standard linguistic analysis of the NP
a box of apples
is that we have a determiner (a) which acts on (modifies?) box of apples. (For an example of standard analysis, see e.g. Fig. 6 here). ...
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In 'The hat is red', how do we know that 'is red' is a constituent?
As far as I understand, in the sentence
[1] The hat i̲s̲ ̲r̲e̲d̲.
the underlined part, is red, is a syntactical constituent ('a group of words that functions as a ...
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In 'The hat is not red', how do we know that 'is not' is a constituent?
This post concerns the phrase structure point of view of grammar.
1. The basic question
Consider the sentence
[1] The hat is not red.
The most common syntactic reading of that sentence (but not ...
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What is and isn't a constituent, and how (whether?) can one argue that something is or isn't grammatical
Background
In CGEL on p. 1317, we find the following analysis of the sentence
[1] [Beauty] [as well as love] is redemptive.
They note that the singular is signifies that as well as is here not a ...
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