Johanna Rubba says:

     As to Burkhard Leuschner's analysis of a participle as a
     'very short sentence', he seems to be appealing to a
     transformationalist analysis under which participles have to
     be viewed as the product of some kind of ellipsis operation
     which deletes the rest of the sentence.

Oh, dear, no. Not transformational (in the sense of Transformational
Grammar). This analysis is based on the VALENCE metaphor, first suggested,
and a long time ago that was, too, by the French linguist Tesniere. It
seems that this model is not widely known in the English-speaking
linguistic world. Therefore forgive me for explaining it in some detail.

The valence model is helpful in explaining sentence grammar - which is the
basic part of any grammatical model. And it is (to my mind) extremely
simple, so simple, in fact, that it can be used with 12-year-olds, and they
can work with it.


A.
The basic idea is taken from chemistry. In school, I learned that the
oxygen atom has two valences, therefore it needs two hydrogen atoms to form
a molecule of (regular) water.

Similarly, verbs are said to have valences. The valences of the verb in the
verbal part of a sentence determine the basic structure of the sentence,
the kernel sentence, to borrow a term from TG.

There are three types of verbs in English: one-valence verbs (e.g. shine),
two-valence verbs (fold), and three-valence verbs (put). In German there
are also four-valence verbs, and Latin, I seem to remember, has also five-
and six-valence verbs.

All the valences of the verb must be satisfied (if this is the right term)
to make a proper sentence: 'You put' is not a sentence, nor is 'He put it'.

Examples:
The sentences are from a graded reader, written by a Brit. This has the
advantage that sentences are simple enough for illustrating the basics.
If my terminology is not modern enough for you - I try to use traditional
terms wherever possible.

[You should use a fixed font, like Courier, for the tables.]


  S             VP
The sun        shone.
----------------------------------------------------------
                         SC
His clothes    were      wet.
                           A
It             was       on a bank of sand.
                          O
He             folded    it.
-----------------------------------------------------------
                           O                      A
He             put       one hand              in the air.
                           O                       O
He             told      the man               everything.

                           O                       OC
He             called    his boat              'the Wanderer'.
-----------------------------------------------------------

This makes seven basic sentence types in English:

S VP O
S VP SC
S VP A
S VP O  O
S VP O  OC
S VP O  A


[VP=verbal part
SC= subject complement
OC= object complement
A= adverbial]


B.
From a valence point of view, we can distinguish three types of
sentence parts:

     1. The verbal part (which contains the full verb) is the
     CENTRAL part.

     2. The other parts (subject, objects and so on) are the
     NECESSARY parts (necessary because the verb demands them).

     2. There are also FREE parts.

E.g. in the text the S VP O sentence is really:

     He / folded / it / carefully.

'Carefully' is an adverb that fills an adverbial of manner slot
in the sentence. The adverbial is not necessary from a structural
point of view (only from a communicative one).

The S VP O A sentence in the text:

 When he saw the boat again, /  he / put / one hand / in the air.

'When he saw the boat again' is a wh-sentence that fills an
adverbial of time slot.

The S VP sentence:

     Above him,/  the sun / shone / brightly.

'Above him' is a prepositional phrase which fills an adverbial of
place slot.
'brightly' is an adverb that fills an adverbial of manner slot.


Thus, sentences have a minimum length (which is determined by the
valences of the full verb), but more sentence parts can be added
freely (i.e. when they are needed for the speaker's communicative
purpose). All free parts are adverbials in English (in German we
have also free dative objects).

(But there are also adverbials that are necessary!
 When he saw the boat again, /  he / put / one hand / in the air.
contains a necessary adverbial ('in the air') and a free one
('When he saw the boat again').


NOTE:
It is helpful (for beginning grammar learners) to add the slot-metaphor to
the valence metaphor. When we say that a verb opens up slots, then it is
easier to understand that (e.g.) objects can have various structures (He
saw: the woman/that it was snowing outside/what no human being had ever
seen before/it/, etc..

C.
The influence of the verb on sentence structure is three-fold:

     1. The verb determines the number of parts a sentence must have.

     2. The verb determines the kind of parts a sentence must have ('fold'
     opens up an object slot, while 'go' needs an adverbial.

     3. The verb limits the slotfiller types that may fill a slot. For
     example the object slot in a sentence with 'suggest' cannot be be
     filled by a to-infinitive sentence.

Ok, I suppose that's the valence model in a nutshell - a rather big
nutshell - I'm sorry.

We have, however, not touched yet on the problem of participle sentences
that look like words, but are not. But this is easily explained on the
basis of the above.

See following message.




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Burkhard Leuschner -  Paedagogische Hochschule Schwaebisch Gmuend, Germany
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