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. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Burkhard Leuschner - Paedagogische Hochschule Schwaebisch Gmuend, Germany E-mail: [log in to unmask] [h] Fax: +49 7383 2212 HTTP://WWW.PH-GMUEND.DE/PHG/PHONLINE/Englisch/index.htm