I respond to both Martha and Bob in this post.

I just checked out Huddleston and Pullum (the new Cambridge Grammar of
the English Language) and looked up the terms we have been discussing.

They do not use the term 'independent clause', preferring 'main clause'.

They use 'dependent' and 'subordinate' as I do in my scheme and as most
people do (a clause which fills a grammatical role such as adverbial or
subject) within a larger clause,. But they present interesting data
showing that dependent clauses sometimes are not always 'dependent' in
the sense of filling a grammatical role in a larger clause:

P. 950:

ii.That it should have come to this!
iii. He took advice from his daughter, who was manager of the local bank.

ii exemplifies a special exclamatory construction; in iii, "the ...
relative clause functions as supplement rather than dependent, but it
has subordinate clause form by virtue of containing the relative pronoun _who_."

They use 'main clause' in the same sense as I propose for 'independent
clause'--any sentence. They use 'matrix clause' as I use 'main
clause'--a clause within which there are dependent or subordinate clauses.

With regard to Martha's treatment of participial and infinitive phrases
such as in "this tool is very easy to use" (Huddleston & Pullum 47).
They describe 'to use' as a clause "with both subject and object left unexpressed".

I like Martha (and others') practice of not using the term 'clause' for
such phrases, reserving it for subject/predicate pairings. I do think
that the grammar presented in teaching grammars does not have to conform
to a linguistic theory; and this could be impractical, because
linguistic theories change and vary greatly across analysts. But I also
think, and Martha seems to agree with me here, that we should use
terminology to make important distinctions, and conflating 'main' and
'independent' clause seems to miss a distinction. We have several
choices; perhaps the best would be to use either 'main' or 'independent'
for clauses that do not fill a grammatical role in a higher clause (I
would prefer 'independent' because, as Martha points out, 'main' implies
a contrast with 'non-main'), and use either 'matrix' or 'main' for a
clause within which another is embedded.

I also think it's a good idea to stay as close to traditional
terminology as we can while still being accurate. Traditional grammar is
still so dominant in aducation that it serves educators well to stick
with familiar terms and terms in widespread use as much as possible.

To respond to Bob, I did, rather unfortunately, address my response in
part only to him and in part to all others on the list, and did not make
this clear. Bob and I have sort of a running discussion on generative
vs. Cognitive Grammar, and I keep hoping that he will read Cognitive
Grammar so that he can see the abundance of data that support the
theory. I will look up setting-subject constructions and see if I can
summarize the argument and present some data. 

The sources I was referring to are mainly Ronald W. Langacker's work; he
has two large volumes setting out Cognitive Grammar and a few smaller
volumes that are collections of papers on individual topics like passive
and nouns/verbs. The two volumes are from Stanford U Press and the
smaller ones from Mouton.

As to finding out what guides subject choice, I am not as hopeless about
this as Bob is, who says that no one will ever be able to determine what
governs subject choice. I recently read an article entitled "Discourse
Analysis and Grammar Instruction" by M. Celce-Murcia, which appears in
an anthology of linguistics articles entitledd _Linguistics at Work_, by
Dallin Oaks. She states "there are relatively few rules of grammar that
are completely [discourse-]context-free" (687). She lists these as being context-free:

subject-verb agreement
determiner-noun agreement
gerund use after prepositions
reflexive pronominalization (although she cites some data that indicates
this is sometimes discourse-relevant)

Among discourse-context dependent constructions she lists (p.688):

passive voice (which certainly involves subject choice)
indirect object alternation
particle movement in phrasal verbs
pronominalization across independent clauses
article/determiner selection
position of adverbials in the sentence
existential 'there'
tense-aspect-modality choice
question formation (choice of type)
relative clauses
complement selection (that-clause, infinitive, gerund)

She goes in on the article to cite various research articles that give
support for the context-dependence of such structures. To give just one
example, here is a datum that she uses to support context-dependence of
indirect-object movement (p. 688):

"What did you give Jim?"

has as a reply

"I gave him a/the tie"  rather than

"I gave a/the tie to Jim".

Placement of the IO after the verb gives the sentence-end focus position
to the new information, which is 'a/the tie'.

She does not mention that the second reply is possible for the question,
but in that case, focus will be marked by intonation and stress rather
than position; the appropriate marking would be

"I gave THE TIE to Jim." 

Notice that in the most typical response, 'I gave him a tie', the
stronger stress and pitch shift will be on 'tie'.

But this would be appropriate only in the circumstance when 'the tie' is
serving contrastively, as in a discourse such as:

I bought a couple of things to give to Jim and Bill. I got a wool scarf
and a silk tie.

What did you give Jim?

I gave THE TIE to Jim.

This isn't actual discourse data; it's my intuition. But the research
Celce-Murcia cites is based on corpus studies of actual language use.
Several schools of discourse analysis (notably the Santa Barbara school,
esp. Susanna Cumming and Sandra Thompson) will not base any of their
conclusions on data derived solely from intuition. It has to come from
corpus studies, examples of actual language use.

One desires, of course, underlying principles that explain the
context-dependence. The ones in operation here are focus and given/new
information. Another one that I know less about, but that was presented
by John DuBois at a conference in Santa Barbara a few years ago (and has
appeared in print, I believe), is the freqency of repetition in
discourse; the gist is that people often repeat part or all of the
structure in the utterance they are responding to; in this case the
relevant part would be "to Jim"; the responder is parroting 'give to
Jim' with appropriate additions and tense marking. I do not recall what
motivation DuBois gives for this repetition.
 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Johanna Rubba   Associate Professor, Linguistics 
English Department, California Polytechnic State University
One Grand Avenue  • San Luis Obispo, CA 93407 
Tel. (805)-756-2184  •  Fax: (805)-756-6374 • Dept. Phone.  756-2596
• E-mail: [log in to unmask] •      Home page: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
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