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I am learning syntactic theory from the book "English Syntax and Argumentation." I got decent understanding of S, NP, VP, I. I do not use DP or TP because the textbook does not use it. However, I have problem understanding constituency for sentences where the sentence starts with an adjunct or the adjunct is at sentence level. Here are three examples:

By next October he will have been serving as town clerk for thirty-two years.

After all those years, he finally married the girl of his dreams.

Frankly, this whole paragraph needs work.

I have problem with the parts in bold. Should they be considered as Adjuncts to the Verb Phrase or the sentence? If they are part of the Verb Phrase, how do I justify having them at the beginning of the sentence.

In the third one, "Frankly" applies to the whole sentence. I've seen it being called sentence level adjunct or disjunct. I haven't seen any three that has a part for a sentence level adjunct.

Thank you

Based on @user6726 comment, I rephrased the question to be about constituency and not about drawing tree diagrams. Hope this clarifies the question.

user2840286
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  • Requests for help with drawing syntax trees are off-topic here sorry. – curiousdannii Oct 14 '16 at 06:12
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    @curiousdannii, in fact, the OP has done some research and, arguably, is asking for help with a specific problem. I'm not confident this one should be closed. – Be Brave Be Like Ukraine Oct 14 '16 at 06:32
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    @bytebuster The core problem with tree questions is that there's almost always several ways to do it. Answers will depend on the general linguistic school (generative, functional), specific frameworks (P&P, Minimalism), and often individual preferences or purposes (what do they want to highlight, what information can be ignored.) If a question gives all those details I'm happy for it to be open, but if not then they should be closed. How can we answer whether the bold phrases should be adjuncts to the VP without knowing whether IP, TP, VP′, vP etc are options in OP's framework? – curiousdannii Oct 14 '16 at 06:38
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    The OP does say "No DP or TP" but it's not clear if they mean they don't have a decent understanding of them, or whether they don't use them. I won't have thought S and I would be used in the same framework. Students are often taught a somewhat idiosyncratic model of syntax by their lecturers, which is why it's very hard for us to help. – curiousdannii Oct 14 '16 at 06:42
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    @curiousdannii, exactly. I mean, this question seems to be salvageable, unlike other questions of the kind. We should probably ask user2840286 to review the comments above and edit the question accordingly. – Be Brave Be Like Ukraine Oct 14 '16 at 07:40
  • I agree with both of you: Further details about the framework are curcial to answer the question, then I would say it is on-topic in as much as it is not a typical "Draw the tree for me" request but a legitimate question showing own research, but as long as these necessary details are not provided yet, the question should be closed. – Natalie Clarius Oct 14 '16 at 09:54
  • I added a clarification and a link to the online pdf version of the book which is freely available. The book does not use TP or DP at all. Does not even mention them.

    As for @curiosdannii's comment, I do not know the linguistic school. The author is Bas Aarts. My guess is functional because there is a lot of emphasizes on function. The second chapter title is Function. The specific framework I believe is Minimalism because Chapter 10 talks about Economy of description and Occam's razor. As for individual preference or purpose, I have none because I am still learning.

     – user2840286 Oct 14 '16 at 14:59
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    This problem has a very simple solution. Do not mention trees. Rephrase the question as being about constituents: trees are a way of representing constituency. The underlying questions is, "is 'Frankly' an adjunct to the VP?". I repeat, absolutely never use the word 'tree'. – user6726 Oct 14 '16 at 16:48
  • @user6726 thank you. I just did that. – user2840286 Oct 14 '16 at 16:58
  • McCawley, in TSPE, describes the relationship between by phrases like that in your first example and the auxiliary verbs of English that express tense and aspect. – Greg Lee Oct 14 '16 at 18:37

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I have a reply for your third example, "Frankly, this whole paragraph needs work." "Frankly" here is a manner adverb which modifies a root sentence (which is a non-embedded sentence, in the sense of Joseph Emonds, who introduced the category of root sentence into syntactic analysis). Semantically, root sentences represent the performance of speech acts, so the sense here is that the speaker of the sentence is being frank with hearers of the sentence. The very same word, in other positions and with different intonation, can be used to modify the VP of a non-root clause, as for example in "He told us to always speak frankly."

I have given a syntactic theory which gives explicit means for describing the grammar of root sentences and such adverbs as the performative "frankly", which theory is based on an extension of Relational Grammar to a grammatical relation "0", to supplement the grammatical relations "1", "2", "3".

Other than my theory, I am not aware of any explicit syntactic theory which provides a way of describing performative adverbs, except for Arc Pair Grammar or Zeno Vendler's theory of adverbs. My theory is outlined elsewhere here on SE, 2psg SE post (which post has been closed).

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Greg Lee
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Yes, they are adjuncts, they are just topicalized. Alternative word order is orthogonal to what categories phrases have.

Atamiri
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  • Can you elaborate on what tropicalized means. Also why/what is alternative word order orthogonal to categories phrases.if you can do it with regard to the sentences I provide it would be great. Thanks. – user2840286 Oct 14 '16 at 21:50
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Based on the comments and additional research I did, here is what I came up with.

Trees are used for drawing sentences and there are different types of trees based on the grammar being used. Trees require that the lines/branches do not intersect. To explain what happens when phrases are moved there are different approach in linguistics. After @Atamiri's answer, on Wikipedia, I found out about Discontinuity (in the English language: topicalization, wh-fronting, and extraposition); and about Dislocation. The first two sentences in my post are examples of Topicalization. The phrases "By next October" and "After all those years" are part of the Predicate that is the Verb Phrase but have been moved at the beginning of the sentence.

One thing I am not sure is why are they not considered Dislocations but are treated as Discontinuity. It seems to me that Dislocations are more specific maybe noun phrases related to pronouns.

The third sentence differs because it is a sentence level adjunct that applies to the whole sentence and expresses the authors attitude towards the sentence that follows. Based on @Greg Lee's answer, currently there is no syntactic theory that provides a way to incorporate disjuncts. @Greg Lee propose that a higher level then the sentence / main clause is introduced to accommodate this cases.

user2840286
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