year for a holiday is a village spot this year, is high up in the high up in the mountains. mountains.
- 2, Anyone who calls himself a 2. | called my brother-in-law, who doctor will do. és a doctor, immediately.
3. Aman whom!'ve heard speak 3. Sir William Plumtree, whom/'ve very often has a voice like heard speak very often, talks
yours, like that.
4, | don’tlike spinach that’s been 4, Idon'tlike hot-pot, which is just boiled into a mush. bailed mutton and potatoes.
5. The remarks made by the first 5, | must apologise for that remark, speaker were very well which I made in the heat of the
received, moment.
6. Llove the season when aff the 6, | love April, when afl the flowers flowers begin to bloom. begin to bloom.
Fig. 18.1. Rankshift
and season respectively. The person required in a2 is not just anyone, but one of a particular group of people —- those who call themselves doctors. In A4 the speaker may like spinach very much indeed ~ except in one case, namely, when it has been boiled into a mush. But in B4 the speaker does not like hot-pot at all any time. In a5 we do not know how the remarks were received except in the case of the first speaker. So it is clear that the headwords in Column 8 have to identify their referents without the aid of a following clause, whereas the headwords in Column ô need the qualify- ing clause to help in the identification.
In many grammar books the q-clauses of Column a would be called
‘defining relative clauses’ or ‘restricting relative clauses’, as against the bound clauses of Column B which would be called ‘non-defining/non- restricting relative clauses’.
Note the commas that isolate the adding clauses of Column s, and remember from Section 3 that there are clear differences in intonation in the spoken language.
There are two other types of rankshift related to nominal groups that must be mentioned here, now that the principle has been explained. Rank- shift does not occur throughout the grammar — it is typical of only a few places in the structure of a language.
(a) At the place d in structure ~at the beginning of the nominal group, there is the structure with ’s, where any nominal group can be a modifier in the structure of another:
S§EOTION 18 - 145
(4) hư best friend’s mother called
(5) the man’s curious behaviour was noticed (6) the girl next door’s cat comes into our house
Here the three groups her best friend’s, the man’s, the girl next door’s are complete nominal groups. But they occupy the place of a single deictic (e.g. his, this, a) in the structure of the larger groups. Consider the first example of a nominal group in this chapter: all my lovely green cushions and note that the three possessive groups of (4), (5) and (6) can all replace my above; e.g.
(7) all the girl next door’s lovely green cushions
There is an interesting point to be made briefly in support of this argu- ment. There are paraphrases of the three sentences above, where the ’s structure changes to a prepositional qualifier with of
(8) The mother of her best friend called.
(g) The curious behaviour of the man was noticed.
(10) The cat of the girl next door comes into our house.
Sometimes they sound a bit clumsy and pompous, because the ’s structure is common in conversation. But notice that in each case there is an extra the at the beginning of the sentence. It has to be added to fill the place din structure, vacated by the possessive group. An extreme example will show how this always happens, and it is set out in Fig. 18.2.
(6) Aclause can be subject of another clause. Examples:
(t1) Running a big house keeps me pretty busy.
(12) To rush off like that was bad manners, really.
(13) Filling in all these forms is a full-time job nowadays.
(14) To finish off the edge like this takes a lot of practice.
This type of rankshift is only loosely connected with. nominal group structure —the clauses occupy a place where we would expect, in the simple rank-scale, a nominal group. They look very like the p-bound cont.
clauses of Section 7 but with more restrictions on their structure. There are others which look like rep. clauses:
(15) What he does is none of your business.
(16) That you even thought of it was dreadful.
These clauses are called, simply, subject-clauses. They should be distin- guished carefully from FB rep. structures with initial i. Note the examples below and the discussion in Section 11, page 84, particularly Fig. 11.6.
146 NOMINAL GROUP STRUCTURE
A. The girl’s mother's family’s jewellery was passed down
d h
bo ` -
đ. hoy
Each of the possessive dh groups is d to the next outer layer.
B, The jewellery of the family of the mother of the girl was passed down, .
No less than three the’s have to be put into the paraphrase !
Fig. 18.2. Rankshift of Possessive Structures
(17) It keeps me pretty busy, running a big house.
(18) It was bad manners, really, to rush off like that, (1g) It’s a full-time job nowadays filling in all these forms.
(20) It takes a lot of practice to finish off the edge like this.
(21) It’s none of your business what he does.
(22) It was dreadful that you even thought of it.
Exercise 18.2
Consider the italicized portions of each of the following sentences. Say whether you think they are clauses or groups, whether they are rankshifted or not, and what place they occupy in the structure of a higher unit.
SECTION 18 147
Catching trains is always a hectic rush.
The cinema that used to show continental films is closed now.
Among the foods which must be avoided are starches and sugars.
. Mr Plumtree, who was an expert in these matters, advised caution.
My best friend’ s hat blew off!
Hydrofluoric acid is a substance which must always be handled with great care.
7. Why he drinks so much beats me.
8. I suppose an island in the South Seas is everpone’s ideal.
g. Everyone J meet tells me to have a holiday.
io. Pm afraid a matter that I couldnt leave till tomorrow cropped up.
11. He agreed to come at once, which was very good of him.
12. Aman you used to know called to see you this morning.
OP POPs
Finally in this section on rankshift, there is a ragbag of nominal group qualifiers that must be listed. A fuller analysis would relate each one by its internal structure to various clauses and groups, but here the concern is mainly with their occurrence at g, and we shall notice only the surface structure of them; all are common varieties in spoken English.
(23) A hat dhis size won’t fit anyone.
(24) The meeting next week terrifies me.
(25) The passage quoted caused a lot of interest.
(26) The best man to see is Mr Plumtree. verbal groups (27) The bit showing can’t be helped.
(28) A cottage in the country is my dream.
(29) An appointment right away would help.
} nominal
} adverbial groups In English, the greatest amount of rankshift is found in the nominal group. In fact, almost everything that occurs at q is rankshifted.
Exercise 18.3
Pick out any rankshifted material in the following examples and note:
(a) what structure it is rankshifted into;
(0) what structure it has in itself.
. [teach two nights a week.
. Ascrew the same length should do.
. [spoke to the vicar, whom I hadn’t met before.
. Whatever he said, I can’t do it.
. To discuss the matter, a meeting the next day was agreed on.
. Tripe occasionally is my mút.
au
mem oO Nk
148 NOMINAL GROUP STRUCTURE
7. The car approaching veered sharply left, 8. What he thinks doesn’t matter,
g. The person you saw-was just a clerk.
10, Have-you any books to read?
ri. Yesterday, Bill’s cousin got married.
12. All he said was ‘bother’.
13. The books recommended were unobtainable.
14. We met a man in a green suit.
15. People’s complaints are the limit.
Note on Prepositional groups
Rankshift could be used to describe the structure of prepositional groups, and frequently is. It is argued that any nominal group can occur within a prepositional group, so it must be ‘group-within-group’ rankshift. An alternative, which is accepted here, is that a prepositional group is a com- pounding of an adverbial and a nominal group without either of them being rankshifted. There are several important differences between the prepositional group and the cases of rankshift that have just been des- cribed ; in particular:
(a) the nominal group is essential to the structure of a prepositional group, whereas the rankshifted elements in the other cases are optional;
(4) there are no special restrictions on the nominal group in a prepositional group structure. In all the cases of rankshift, there is some restriction, as this section has shown.
Another alternative is to regard prepositional groups as a set of cases for nominal groups. Many languages have a choice of several cases for nomi- nal groups—we can see the remains of the English one in the personal pronouns, e.g. they, them, theiy, theirs, chosen according to the syntactic function of the pronoun. Some modern approaches to English grammar
describe prepositional groups in this way. .
This book is not the place to follow the arguments for and against different analysis; but in Section 25, page 209, there is some more detailed analysis of the structure of prepositional groups.
Summary
In general, the structure of grammatical units of a language can be stated in terms of the occurrence of structures of the unit next below. The only
SEQTION: 19 149 important’cases where this is not so are cases of rankshift, where units are found in the structure of a unit of the same rank or a higher one. In each language there are a few.cases of rankshift; in English the typical ones are:
(a) where a clause is subject of another clause (one type of traditional noun clause) ;
(6) where a possessive nominal group is deictic to another nominal group;
(c) where a group or 4 clause is qualifier toa nominal group.
Prepositional groups are analysed in several different ways in current grammars. In this -one they are described as a compounding of an ad- verbial group and a nominal group.