Grammatical Relations

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 427.

Adjectives and Verbs

IRREGULARITY IN SYNTAX

GEORGE LAKOFF

We will try to present a case for the plausibility of the assertion that adjectives and verbs, are members of a single lexical category (which we will call VERB) and that they differ only by a single syntactic feature (which we will call ADJECTIVAL).

Of the arguments given below, 1, 4, 5, 7, and 9 were worked out by Paul Postal and by the author, working independently. Arguments 2, 6, and 8 are due solely to Postal; 3 was pointed out by Lester Rice.

There are a great many pairs of sentences – in which one contains a verb where the other contains an adjective – that are understood in the same way. For ex­ample,

1. a. I regret that. (A-1)

b. I am sorry about that.

2. a. I like jazz.

b. I am fond of jazz.

3. a. I forgot that fact.

b. I was oblivious of that fact.

4. a. I know about that.

b. I am cognizant of that.

b. I am aware of that .

There are other pairs of the same sort, where the adjective and verb seem to be the same lexical item.

1. a. I desire that. (A-2)

b. I am desirous of that.

2. a. John hopes that peace will come soon.

b. John is hopeful that peace will come soon.

3. a. I fear that the Dodgers will win.

b. I am fearful that the Dodgers will win.

4. a. John considers Mary's feelings.

b. John is considerate of Mary's feelings.

5. a. That will please John.

b. That will be pleasing to John.

6. a. That excites me.

b. That is exciting to me.

7. a. Our actions in the Dominican Republic appall me.

b. Our actions in the Dominican Republic are appalling to me.

8. a. Massachusetts politics amuses me.

b. Massachusetts politics is amusing to me.

9. a. Cigarettes harm people.

b. Cigarettes are harmful to people.

10. a. The President's decision surprised me.

b. The President's decision was surprising to me.

In most of the above cases, the a and b sentences differ only in that the b sentences contain be + adjective + preposition where the a sentences contain a verb. These differences are quite superficial. The auxiliary verb, be, serves only to carry the tense marker before adjectives, in just the same way as do carries the tense marker before verbs in negative and question sentences. Although no pre­position appears after the verb in the surface structure of the a sentences, there is good reason to believe that the preposition is there on some level of analysis, since prepositions do show up when verbs are nominalized. Thus we get:

a. My fear of rain . . . ↔ I fear rain. (A-3)

b. My liking for jazz . . . ↔ l like jazz.

c. John's desire for Mary . . . ↔ John desires Mary.

d. John's consideration of Mary's feelings . . . ↔ John considers Mary's feelings.

It appears that there is a late rule in English which drops prepositions after verbs that have not been nominalized. It is a moot question whether such preposi­tions appear in the deep structures of the above sentences or whether they are introduced by "spelling rules" which insert them before the object noun phrase as a kind of case marking. I will assume that the latter is the case, though this assumption will not matter in any of the following arguments. Similarly, it is not clear at present whether tense markings should be introduced as part of an aux­iliary constituent or as features of verbs and adjectives, which are later inserted before the adjective or verb by spelling rules. I will assume the latter, though again the arguments to follow will be independent of this assumption.

It seems highly significant that the a and b sentences of (A-1) and (A-2) are understood in the same way and this fact seems to be a consequence of the presence of the same grammatical relationships in each pair of sentences. For exam­ple, in the sentences I like John and I am fond of John, fond seems to bear the same relation to like as it does to fond. But, in order for like and fond to bе involved in the same grammatical relations, they would have to bе members of the same lexical category.

Of course, just because the а and b sentences of (A-l) and (А-2) are synonymous and seem to bе understood in the same way, it does not necessarily follow that the same grammatical relations hold in each pair of sentences. It might very well be the case that the semantic component of а grammar of English might have projection rules that interpret two different sets of grammatical relations as though they were identical. Thus, it might be the case that the projection rules of English interpret the following two structures in exactly the same way:

a. S(A-4)