Syntactic
description has usually taken the sentence to be its basic unit of
organization.
The total human
conceptual universe is dichotomized initially into two major areas. The area of
the verb, embraces the states and events, and the area of the noun, embraces
things. The verb will be assumed to be central and the noun peripheral.
In every
language a verb is present systematically in all but a few marginal utterances,
accompanied by one or more nouns. Utterances which semantically have no verb,
like ‘oh’ or ‘ouch’ perhaps, seem best regarded as relics of the prehuman kind
of communication in which the direct symbolization of unitary messages was the
rule.
The nature of
the verb determines what the rest of the sentence will be like, it determines
nouns will accompany it, what the relation of these nouns to it will be and how
these nouns will be semantically specified
‘The men
laughed’
The verb
dictates it must be accompanied by a noun, related to it as ‘agent’ specified as
animate, and also as human.
‘The chair
laughed’
What we do is to
interpret chair as if it were abnormally animate, what we do not do is to
interpret laugh in an abnormal way as if it were a different kind of activity,
performed by inanimate objects. Any unit like past which is added semantically
to a verb is added simultaneously to the entire sentence which is built around
that verb. A noun is like a planet whose internal modifications affect it alone
and not the solar system as whole.
States
1)
a. The wood is dry
b. The rope is tight
c. The dish is broken
d. The elephant is dead
2)
a. The wood dried
b. The rope tightened
c. The dish broke
d. The elephant died
3)
a. Michael run
b. The men laughed
c. Harriet sang
d. The tiger pounced
4)
a. Michael dried the wood
b. The men tightened the rope
c. Harriet broke the dish
d. The tiger killed the elephant
In set 1) a certain noun is said
to be in a certain state or condition, the verb is specified as a state. The
remaining sentences contain verbs which are not specified as states. As a rule,
nonstates can be distinguished from states by the fact that they answer the
question ‘What happened?’ ‘What’s happening?’ and so on. A nonstate is a
‘happening’ an event.
What happened?
The wood dried
The men laughed
Harriet broke the dish
But not (for example)
The wood was dry
A nonstate can occur in the
progressive form which is not available to a state:
The
wood is drying
The
men are laughing
Harriet is
breaking the dish
But not
The
wood is being dry.
To indicate that a verb may or
may not be specified as a state, a rule of the following form can be used:
V
- →>state
The arrow has a broken shaft
means that its application is optional, it has a double head means that it must
be read is further specified as, and
not is rewritten as, is replaced by, or
the like.
Processes and actions
Nonstates
are not all of the same kind; in 2) the sentences seem to be dealing with
processes, where the noun is said to have changed its state or condition, the
verb has been specified as process. In 3) sentences express an action sentence
to distinguish an action form a process is that an action sentence will answer
the question ‘What did N do?’ where N is some noun.
What
did Harriet do?
She
sang
But not (for
example)
She
died
In 4) the verb is a process and
an action, as a process it involves a change in the condition of the noun, its
patient; as an action it expresses what someone, its agent, does. The agent is
still someone who does something, but the agent does it to something, the
patient of a process:
What did Harriet do?
She
broke the dish
What happened to the dish?
Harriet broke it
Ambient
a. It’s hot
b. It’s late
c. It’s Tuesday
The verb in each of these
sentences is specified as a state. These sentences do not answer the question
‘What’s happening?’, nor can they be made progressive, they cover the total
environment.
____________
l l
l pat
V N
state
|
The
wood is dry
|
____________
l l
l pat
V N
process
|
The
wood dried
|
|||||||||
____________
l l
l agt
V N
action
|
Harriet
sang
|
________
l l
l agt
____l____ N
l l
l Pat
V N
Process
action
|
Michael
dried the wood
|
|||||||||
V
State
ambient
|
It’s
hot
|
V
Action
ambient
|
It’s
rainig
|