Meaningful Arrangement; Exploring the Syntactic Description of Texts; Edward McDonald

Edward McDonald [+–]

University of Auckland.

Edward McDonald is Lecturer in Chinese at the University of Auckland.

This book takes apart and problematises the whole process of identifying and explaining the patterning of words in sentences. It brings together two concepts – syntax and text – that are normally treated separately, and shows how they can best be understood in relation to each other. Part 1, Processing the text, concentrates on getting texts ready for syntactic analysis. Since the data needs to be mediated through the processing of the text, the nature of that processing and its effects on subsequent analysis need to be made explicit. Part 2, Analysing the clause, introduces the relevant syntactic phenomena and the sorts of concepts normally used to explain them. It shows how many of the assumptions of traditional syntactic analysis derive from the languages which form the basis of the European tradition, and that different languages require the so-called “basic categories” of syntactic analysis to be rethought. Part 3, Theorising syntax, sketches the range of syntactic theories available for the “consumer”. It gives a sense of developments in the field over the last 50 years not just in terms of the usual “schools”, but by picking up on concepts such as the key complementarity between syntagmatic and paradigmatic to characterise the emphases and biases of different theories.

Series: Functional Linguistics

Prelims

Acknowledgements [+–] vi

Briefing [+–] 1-9

Part 1: Data – Processing the text

1 Meaning and structure [+–] 13-19

A brief look at what is understood by ‘syntax’ in the Western tradition, and see how that depends on a particular understanding of texts, and of language in general.

2 Processing the text [+–] 20-32

Chapter 2 takes a close look at the challenges of ‘glossing’ a text – that is, presenting it for interpretation, normally only necessary when the language being analysed is different from the one in which the analysis is being done, but in fact an essential part of any syntactic description – and see how the choices made there can affect any further descriptive claims made for the text.

3 Linear sequence and structural order [+–] 33-42

This chapter examines how language conceals a layered complexity beneath its ostensible ‘one word after another’ form, and what sorts of concepts are needed to reveal that complexity.

4 Identifying syntactic units [+–] 43-53

Chapters 4 and 5 focus on the challenges of identifying syntactic units – at the very least, words and clauses – and see how this again often unexamined step has huge implications for description.

5 Bracketing and labelling [+–] 54-60

Part 2: Description – Analysing the clause

6 Constituency and dependency [+–] 63-75

Chapter 6 begins Part 2 by identifying the two main models for describingsyntactic relations: constituency and dependency.

7 Identifying clause functions [+–] 76-89

In Chapters 7 and 8 Tesnière’s framework is used to identify a set of clause functions, drawing on Matthews for an understanding of the reasons for identifying particular functions. This framework is applied to texts in the two main languages under description – Mandarin Chinese and Scottish Gaelic – then each text is translated into the other language, to compare how different languages represent the same experience, and how our developing descriptive framework deals with both.

8 Analysing function structures [+–] 90-112

9 Words and phrases [+–] 113-136

In Chapter 9 the issue of whether it is necessary to recognise an intermediate unit between word and clause is considered, and some of the principles according to which words combine with each other are discussed.

10 Combining clauses [+–] 137-150

In Chapters 10 and 11, the author goes beyond the focus on the structure of individual clauses to examine the ways in which clauses may be joined to each other, and how particular pieces of information can be traced through a text.

11 Information flow [+–] 151-165

12 Full words and empty words [+–] 166-179

In Chapter 12 the author considers the so-called ‘empty’ or ‘grammatical’ words that express the interaction between speaker and addressee.

Part 3: Theory – Theorising syntax

13 Delimiting syntax [+–] 181-191

In Chapter 13, the author sets the scene with an account of two of the most influential syntactic theorists to emerge in the 1950s: Lucien Tesnière and Noam Chomsky. These two theorists in effect represent different reactions to the impact of structural linguistics on traditional grammar. Both of them clearly recognised the then marginal status of syntax, and both argued strongly for its ‘autonomy’, though for very different reasons. Although their specific claims turn out to contain some surprising similarities, their overall frameworks point in very different directions, and show that it was in no way inevitable that syntax should have taken the Chomskyan path, so often now regarded as the default one.

14 Theorising syntactic relations (i): case [+–] 192-200

Now that syntax is established as an independent field of study, there are two major theoretical decisions to be made: firstly, how to theorise syntactic relations, including the relationship between syntactic categories and semantic ones; and secondly, how to model syntactic patterning. In Chapters 14 and 15 the first of these themes is explored, tracing the theorisation of syntactic relations in terms of two concepts from traditional grammar which both date back to Greek and Roman antiquity: case and transitivity. Both concepts are in origin morphological ones, used to explain aspects of the inflectional patterning of Greek and Latin, but in the last half-century have been reinterpreted syntactically, and in some cases semantically, to characterise clause structure in terms of an array of noun functions (Chapter 14) or of clause types (Chapter 15). The history of these concepts, which show up in some form or other in most current syntactic theories, shows how in syntax, as in most fields, old ways of thinking have remarkable staying power if they can be reinterpreted to meet current needs.

15 Theorising syntactic relations (ii): transitivity [+–] 201-207

16 Modelling syntactic patterning (i): syntagmatic approaches [+–] 208-215

Now that syntax is established as an independent field of study, there are two major theoretical decisions to be made: firstly, how to theorise syntactic relations, including the relationship between syntactic categories and semantic ones; and secondly, how to model syntactic patterning.In Chapters 16 and 17, the author considers the second of these themes, how to model syntactic patterning. Here he picks up on one of Saussure’s key distinctions, that between the ‘horizontal’ syntagmatic aspect and the ‘vertical’ paradigmatic aspect of language (see Chapter 3), and show how it can be used to characterise the emphases and biases of different theories. While it is sometimes assumed that ‘syntax’ is necessarily ‘syntagmatic’ (both deriving from the same Greek root meaning ‘joint arrangement’) – something that is certainly true of mainstream approaches to the subject – there are signifi cant minority traditions which instead take the paradigmatic as their starting point. Here again, as in the case of ‘formalist’ and ‘functionalist’, there is no necessarily clean break between the two, with most paradigmatic approaches dealing also with the syntagmatic, and many basically syntagmatic approaches also incorporating aspects of the paradigmatic.

17 Modelling syntactic patterning (ii): paradigmatic approaches [+–] 216-222

Now that syntax is established as an independent field of study, there are two major theoretical decisions to be made: firstly, how to theorise syntactic relations, including the relationship between syntactic categories and semantic ones; and secondly, how to model syntactic patterning.In Chapters 16 and 17, the author considers the second of these themes, how to model syntactic patterning. Here he picks up on one of Saussure’s key distinctions, that between the ‘horizontal’ syntagmatic aspect and the ‘vertical’ paradigmatic aspect of language (see Chapter 3), and show how it can be used to characterise the emphases and biases of different theories. While it is sometimes assumed that ‘syntax’ is necessarily ‘syntagmatic’ (both deriving from the same Greek root meaning ‘joint arrangement’) – something that is certainly true of mainstream approaches to the subject – there are signifi cant minority traditions which instead take the paradigmatic as their starting point. Here again, as in the case of ‘formalist’ and ‘functionalist’, there is no necessarily clean break between the two, with most paradigmatic approaches dealing also with the syntagmatic, and many basically syntagmatic approaches also incorporating aspects of the paradigmatic.

18 ‘Doing syntax’: aims and methodologies [+–] 223-234

In this final chapter the author takes Firth’s advice on the necessity of what he called ‘renewal of connection’ (Firth 1957 / 1968: 175–6) between theory and data, to complete the circle that has taken us from data through description to theorising, by presenting a specific case study of one attempt to apply a particular theory – systemic functional linguistics – to the description of a particular language – Mandarin Chinese. As the author noted in the Briefing, syntactic analysis is not just about theories, it is about languages, and an exploration of the difficulties and contingencies of a concrete attempt to account for syntactic patterning in one language, an attempt that also involves mediating between two very different linguistic traditions, should drive home the essential relationship between theories and languages.

End Matter

Debriefing [+–] 235-241

This sets out the main conclusions that can be drawn from the exploration undertaken in this book.

References [+–] 242-246

Index of names [+–] 247-248

Index of terms [+–] 249-257

Reviews

Meaningful Arrangement takes a fresh look at syntactic analysis through a text based comparison and analysis of Mandarin Chinese and Scottish Gaelic. McDonald examines underlying principles of syntactic analysis and questions commonly held assumptions in a thought-provoking and revealing way. By bringing together syntax and text McDonald is able to address questions that are often ignored such as why one form rather than another are selected in a particular context. By drawing examples extensively from Mandarin, Gaelic as well as English he avoids the pitfall of using only English examples, as if English syntax were the prototype for all syntax. Also, by limiting the range of languages in the study he avoids the other pitfall of referring to so many languages that the reader loses any sense of languages as systems rather than collections of isolated syntactic patterns.

This book will prove to be an invaluable text for students of linguistics at all levels.’

Graham Lock
Associate Professor, Department of English and Communication
City University of Hong Kong

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Meaningful Arrangement

Exploring the Syntactic Description of Texts

Edward McDonald [+–]

University of Auckland.

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