I thank Burkhard Leuschner for his explanation of 'valence grammar'.
Valence is a big part of all current syntactic theories that I know of.
I also think of verbs in the same way -- the analogy I use is puzzle
pieces; verbs are puzzle pieces with one, two or three 'plug-in'
indentations, and their subjects and complements contain the bulbous
projections which hook into the indentations, and complete the puzzle.
Still, some caveats:
This _model_ of grammar (once again, one shouldn't present a model as
fact; it is a _model_, and we always need to know that the claims made are
made within the model, not being claimed as objective fact) uses the term
'sentence' in a way that would seem very odd to a lot of people who study
or teach grammar (and even linguistics) in the USA. Given that the
students we teach face a public that believes that a sentence is a very
specific structure (e.g., 'a fragment is not a sentence'; 'a sentence
must have a subject and a predicate') such a broad definition of
'sentence' has the potential to confuse American readers. English
punctuation rules are formulated around the traditional-grammar notion of
'sentence', so it might be useful for us to maintain the more-specific
definition.
One nice thing that the valence model does capture is the way that valence
carries over into 'reduced-clause' modifiers, so that a gerund as subject
can still have its own direct object: 'Eating _peas_ makes me sick.' And
participles as modifiers can also carry along their complements and
modifiers: 'Munching _the Cheetos gleefully_, he mumbled his praise of the
ski jump.'
" [I can't see any reason for distinguishing 'present participles'
and 'gerunds' and 'gerundivums' and what not - except to torment
grammar students.]"
I can. Gerunds function as heads of noun phrases (they act like nouns).
Present participles don't. They are modifiers, or they are part of
periphrastic verb constructions such as 'was eating'. As such, they
perform two very different discourse functions: referring (pointing to a
particular referent in the world or the previous discourse) vs. modifying
(expanding upon the meaning of the word being modified).
participles (written)
[if there is no 'present' participle, there need not be a 'past'
participle - and what, may I ask, might be the difference
between
'past' and 'passive' participles???]"
It surely is clear that I believe in present participles. I also believe
in past participles, and I gave a Cognitive Grammar explanation of how
they differ in meaning in a previous message. A past participle includes
the beginning and end points of the process in its meaning (e.g.,
'fallen'), while a present participle does not include the endpoint: a
tree that is 'falling' is not yet a 'fallen' tree. We can say something is
'in the process of 'falling'', but not that something is '*in the process
of 'fallen''. Present participles combine more felicitously with
adverbials that indicate a step-by-step process: 'Their
pages disintegrating bit by bit, the old books had to be discarded.' vs.
'???Their pages disintegrated bit by bit, the old books had to be
discarded'.
I also believe in a difference between past and passive participles. Verbs
have valence; a transitive verb has a slot for subject and a slot for
direct object; a passive participle, however, has only one slot, for
implicit subject, and that subject fills the role of 'undergoer' of the
process named by the verb. A non-passive past participle's implicit
subject is not 'undergoer', but 'agent'. Under Cognitive Grammar, all this
is part of the meaning of the participle in question.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Johanna Rubba Assistant Professor, Linguistics ~
English Department, California Polytechnic State University ~
San Luis Obispo, CA 93407 ~
Tel. (805)-756-2184 Fax: (805)-756-6374 ~
E-mail: [log in to unmask] ~
Office hours Winter 1999: Mon/Wed 10:10-11am Thurs 2:10-3pm ~
Home page: http://www.calpoly.edu/~jrubba ~
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