English Grammar and Discourse – María de los Ángeles Gómez González
ENGLISH GRAMMAR AND DISCOURSE
Prof. Dr. María de los Ángeles Gómez González
IPCs/ NON-CANONICAL CONSTRUCTIONS / SPECIAL THEME CONSTRUCTIONS
ACTIVITY 1
In the following excerpts identify the IPCs that you find and explain if their incidence may be affected by the type pf discourse (speech
(conversation) vs. writing (academic prose))
- Marked word order (fronting, inversion, etc.)
- Passive constructions
- Existential there
- Detachments
- Demonstrative wh-clefts
English Grammar and Discourse – María de los Ángeles Gómez González
A) Conversation
A: You couldn’t handle the spicy cranberry cobbler or the warm
ginger chocolate cake?
B: Well, spicy cranberries.
A: And the pound cake with brandy sauce, you wouldn’t want
that. B: I know there’s something.
A: Green lime and blood orange sorbet.
B: That sounds really disgusting. Why in the world would you
name a dessert blood orange?
A: Apple fritters. That doesn’t sound—why not the date and
cinnamon ice cream? That might be good?
B: Yeah, that’s not a problem. […]
B: It’s such a beautiful score. Play some of these tracks at my
memorial service when I die. That’s what we want, beautiful music.
English Grammar and Discourse – María de los Ángeles Gómez González
B) Academic prose: Chinese characters
Some scholars are opposed to this view of Chinese characters as
representing concepts and insist instead that they represent specific
words. They have therefore advanced the designation ‘logograph’,
that is, a graph that represents a word (from the Greek logos:
‘word’). Synonymous with the logographic concept is the expression
‘lexigraphic’, referring to word in the lexicon or vocabulary. The key
point of disagreement leading to these terms is whether a character
conveys meaning directly or through the intermediary of the word.
A modification of the logographic concept has been suggested by
some students of writing who argue that Chinese characters
represent morphemes rather than words and hence should be called
‘morphemic’ or ‘morphographic’.
English Grammar and Discourse – María de los Ángeles Gómez González
ACTIVITY 2
Can you convey these messages by means of different IPCs constructions in which the
underlined constituents functions as Topics?
1. I quite liked Hemingway, but I just adored Faulkner.
2. Our main problem lies in his inability to concentrate.
3. He washed my shirts yesterday, but she washed your shirts last week.
4. My dad said I would often cry and I often cried.
ACTIVITY 3
For each of the following, give a cleft / pseudo-cleft with the same truth conditions,
with the underlined constituent as the foregrounded element.
1. Why he pleaded guilty puzzled everyone.
2. We objected to the lack of consultation.
3. One of their friends informed the police.
4. They finally convinced her with great difficulty.
ACTIVITY 4
Explain the different implied meanings in the clefted versions of the above sentences.
ACTIVITY 5
Give existential or presentational counterparts of the following clauses if they are
available. If none is available explain why.
1. Only one student was on the committee.
2. One of them was a genius.
ACTIVITY 6
For each of the following, say whether it is (a) a passive clause (a be-passive or a get-
passive); (b) a complex-intransitive clause with an adjectival passive as complement; or
(c) ambiguous between the two. For the ambiguous cases, describe the difference in
meaning.
1. I was very embarrassed.
2. She was injured.
English Grammar and Discourse – María de los Ángeles Gómez González
ACTIVITY 7
For each underlined clause, give an extraposed counterpart if one is available, or if
none is available, explain why.
1. That they were cheating seems very likely.
2. The suggestion that they were cheating is preposterous.
ACTIVITY 8
Give non-existential counterparts of the following clauses if one is available, and where
none is available explain why. counterpart.
1. There are some friends of yours outside.
2. There's been a terrible accident.
ACTIVITY 9
Explain why answer in (1) is infelicitous, whereas the answer in (2) is correct. In
addition, indicate why (3) is ungrammatical.
1. What are you reading? -*A book I’m reading.
2. Are you reading a book? -A book I’m NOT reading.
3. *I find it strange that kind of explanation.
ACTIVITY 10
Classify the following examples as (a) left detachment/dislocation; (b) right
detachment/dislocation; (c) preposing; (d) postposing; or (e) extraposition. Underline
the dislocated or reordered constituent. In cases of detachment/dislocation, also
underline the constituent in the clausal predication that has the dislocated phrase as its
antecedent.
1. Surprise everyone you certainly did!
2. It would be stupid for John to ignore her advice.
3. As for the vase, Garfield broke it yesterday.
4. Such a blunder I had now committed.
5. We explained to the police everything they asked us to explain.
6. Was he just crazy, that teacher who had an affair with that girl?
7. Oh we never knew what happened to her. The other we knew ah but Vidya we
didn’t know.