sentence pro-sentence independent clause independent clause dependent clause compound clause conjunction compound clause adverbial adjunct argument predicate phrase predicate phrase adverbial adjunct auxiliary verb phrase adverbial adjunct argument argument argument subject case argument noun phrase noun clause adjective clause dependent sentence [P1] [P2] [P3] [P4] [P5] [P6] [P7] [P8] [P9] [P10] [P11] [P12] [P13] [P14] [P15] [P16] [P17] [P18] [P19] [P20] [P21] [P22] [P23] [P24] [P25] [P27] [P28] [P29] [P30] [P31] [P32] [P33] [P34] reference agentive assertion temporality agentive activity derivation realis reference determinate definite person male individual object abstract situational event action situation event action property description agentive assertion activity temporality reference derivation agentive derivation derivation property possessive temporality reference affective purpose derivation realis reference determinate definite reference indeterminate quantitive cumulative number person male individual object abstract situational event action person individual object concrete discrete object concrete discrete movable instrumental object abstract situational proposition hypothesis quality property gradable non-measurable situation event action situation state relation assertion modality property property temporality reference proposition derivation derivation reference possessive temporality derivation reference affective purpose derivation hypothesis reference indeterminate quantitive cumulative number object abstract situational proposition realis object abstract situational proposition hypothesis person male individual object concrete discrete movable instrumental quality property gradable non-measurable situation state relation situation state situation event action situation descriptor modal assertion modality property derivation temporality reference property derivation proposition description derivation reference possessive temporality property temporality reference affective purpose derivation derivation hypothesis reference indeterminate quantitive cumulative number object abstract situational proposition realis object abstract situational proposition hypothesis person male individual object concrete discrete movable instrumental quality property gradable non-measurable situation state relation situation state situation event action situation descriptor modal assertion temporality reference agentive contentive proposition reference possessive temporality reference affective purpose derivation realis reference determinate definite reference indeterminate quantitive cumulative number person male individual object abstract situational proposition realis person communicant speaker individual object concrete discrete movable instrumental object abstract situational proposition hypothesis situation event action situation state relation

Section 6-2 SYNTACTIC ARGUMENTS

In this section the focus is on the syntactic structure of the simplest part of the sentence — its arguments.

Syntax of a clause.  
As demonstrated in §5-1 there is a description of the structure of a sentence using the framework of a TG-grammar: a sentence consists in one or more independent clauses. The description of this requirement was put in the form of phrase structure rules:
[P1] The Sentence
[P2] The Clause
[P7] The Subject & Predicate Arguments
The logician would normally be inclined to translate sentences, as we did for those in the preceding section, into a semantic structure of the simplest kind, one having the following formal pattern:
()
In the simplest cases the analyst may indeed match structural components of the logical version to various parts of the semantic representation and these to the syntactic phrases in the sentence. It would follow that the simplest description would give a clause some form parallel to this structure — one consisting in a subject and predicate which correspond to the argument with its logical predicate. The linguist may state this analysis formally as in [P1]: a simple sentence is a interjection or an independent clause; and [P2]: the clause may be composed of one or more clauses, which would eventually consist at least in a subject argument, and a predicate. It may also have an adverbial adjunct. In addition its subject argument may sometimes be marked as the subject, e.g. when its form is that of a personal pronoun. By [P3] the predicate contains an auxiliary phrase, a verb phrase, and possibly various adverbial adjuncts at different places. These elements, which may contain other occurrences of a syntactic argument, will appear in later rules, which we will give when we describe objects and complements.
[P3] The Predicate

The right side of [P15] is designed to account for five different constituencies of the argument:
[P9] The Argument
The structure of a clause grammaticalizes a logical proposition connected to the main proposition of the sentence as an argument, or as perenthetic association with that argument. In [P15] the clause to the left expresses a proposition that is the subject (or object or a certain other complement) argument of the logical predicate, which predicate belongs to the proposition of the main assertion as an argument. The next paragraphs give examples of each of these five possibilities.

A noun phrase as an argument.  
Perhaps the most common way to express an argument (as the subject of a sentence or any objects and certain complements in it) is by means of a noun phrase (NP).
SentenceSubject=Noun PhraseStructure
(11) The boy went shopping. "the boy"

The following sentences will be built on the first sentence by expanding the noun phrase subject. The predicate, which is not under discussion at this point, consists of a common idiom being a verb complemented with a gerund.

[The boy went shopping]

An augmented noun phrase as an argument.  
A noun phrase as argument (subject or other part of the sentence) may possibly have an associated non-restrictive adjective clause (CL) in which the language user may express some additional qualifying characteristic of the argument.
SentenceNoun PhraseC + CL
(12) The curly haired boy, who had $20 to spend, went shopping. "the curly haired boy" "who" + "(he) had $20 to spend"
Structure

[The boy, who had twenty dollars to spend, went shopping]

A noun clause as an argument.  
The second way to express an argument is with a noun clause (CL) marked with a conjunction (C).
SentenceC + CLStructure
(13) That he had $20 to spend may be significant. "that" + "he had $20 to spend"

[That he had twenty dollars to spend may be significant]

An augmented noun clause as an argument.  
It is also possible for there to be a non-restrictive adjective clause associated with the noun clause.
SentenceC + CLC + CL
(14) That he had $20 to spend, which is debatable, may be significant. "that" + "he had $20 to spend" "which" + "(this) is debatable"
Structure

[That he had twenty dollars to spend, which is debatable, may be significant]

A quotation as an argument.  
Instead of a noun clause the object of a sentence may be a simple quote of another sentence.
SentenceSentence1Sentence2Structure
(15) "I have $20 to spend," said the boy. "I have $20 to spend" "the boy said (this)"

[[I have twenty dollars to spend,] said the boy]

Ordering PS-rules.  
Notice that this presentation skips rules [P4] through [P6] and [P8] through [P14] for now, so that this last rule presented has the number [P15]. The intervening rules describe the analysis of the elements of the syntactic predicate, which predicate as we noted parenthetically often contains an argument as an object. The TG linguist tries as much as possible to order the phrase structure rules in a sequence so that the ones that define a given constituent further follow after any rules that introduce that particular constituent. The idea is that a set of ordered rules is more powerful than a set of unordered ones. Note, however, that when there are alternate constituencies and optional one, as in [P15], the variations and various options are unordered.
Network of PS-Rules
The above diagram shows the relationship between the phrase structure rules of this grammar. (Click on the number to see the rule and hyperlinks to discussion relating to it.) It has been impossible to order the rules strictly. This is due to the recursion that naturally occurs in human language. The arrows in orange indicate where the ordering recurses as in [15], where the argument may take the form of a sentence. Recursion is useful in describing the infinite self-embedding of syntactic structures that manifests itself.

Works of Wonder | Paraphrastic Grammar Contents