Syntactic Movement and Markedness in English

Understanding syntactic movement and markedness in English is crucial for anyone delving into advanced grammar. This topic explores how sentence structure can be altered from its basic, unmarked form to emphasize certain elements, adding layers of meaning and communicative dynamism. These alterations, or 'marked structures,' allow speakers and writers to highlight specific information, create contrast, or establish a topic.

Exploring Syntactic Movement and Markedness in English Grammar

At its heart, syntactic movement and markedness in English refers to the ways we manipulate the typical subject-verb-object (SVO) word order for stylistic or communicative effect. While English is often considered a fixed word order language, these movements demonstrate its flexibility.

The Notion of Markedness: Core vs. Periphery

In linguistics, the concept of markedness helps us distinguish between typical and atypical structures:

• Unmarked Order: This is the basic, neutral, or canonical form of a sentence. It represents the propositional content without added emphasis or special pragmatic function. For example: "he enjoyed the movie."
• Marked Order: This structure conveys the propositional content along with metadiscourse or pragmatic nuances, often making it emphatic or contrastive. These are achieved through various movement operations.

Marked structures transform the way information is presented, even if the core meaning remains similar. Consider how "he enjoyed the movie" can become a marked structure like:

• "it was the movie he really enjoyed" (clefting)
• "what he enjoyed was the movie" (pseudo-clefting)
• "the movie he enjoyed" (fronting)

How to Achieve Emphasis in English Sentences

There are several linguistic strategies to introduce emphasis and create marked structures:

• Phonetic Prominence: Simply emphasizing a word by speaking it louder or with a higher pitch, like "he enjoyed THE MOVIE". This method does not disrupt the basic SVO word order.
• Basic Word Order Disruption: Directly altering the typical SVO sequence, as seen in fronting constructions. For example, "the movie he enjoyed". This actively changes the sentence's grammatical arrangement.
• Re-organization of Information: This involves more complex grammatical constructions that restructure the sentence to highlight certain parts without necessarily disrupting the SVO order of the main clause. Clefting, for instance, maintains SVO in the main clause while drawing attention to a specific element: "it was the movie he really enjoyed". These structures often carry a "heavy grammatical load."

Movement operations are broadly categorized into initial position phenomena (where elements move to the front of the sentence) and final position phenomena (where elements move to the end).

Initial Position Phenomena: Fronting, Clefting, and Pseudo-clefting

These phenomena involve moving an element to an initial position in the sentence to give it prominence. This makes the moved element the topic or establishes a direct link with preceding information.

Understanding Fronting in English Grammar

Fronting, also known as topicalization, is an A'-movement, meaning a non-argumental movement to a position where arguments are not typically generated. The moved element becomes the sentence's topic due to its initial placement. This can create parallelism or contrast.

Structures that can be fronted include:

• Objects: "all these ideas I will take into account"
• Subject Complements: "clever she is not"
• PP Complements: "to John I will not say anything"
• Adjuncts: "before lunch I talked to John"

Fronting often triggers verb auxiliary (Vaux) movement or 'do' insertion, especially with negative adverbs or for emphasis:

• Fronting of Negative Adverbs + Vaux movement: "at no time must this door be left unlocked", "never would I talk to his sister about this"
• Fronting + Vaux movement and 'be': "especially remarkable was her oval face", "more important have been the moral objections"
• Fronting + 'do' insertion: "only then did I realize my mistake", "I didn't see the accident and neither did Mary"

What is Clefting in English Sentences?

Clefting uses the structure "it is A that B", where 'A' is the element being marked for emphasis, and 'B' is the rest of the sentence. This creates a Subject-Verb-Complement (SVC) structure and is particularly effective for focusing different parts of a sentence.

Examples of clefting and its focus types:

• Unmarked: "John wore a white suit at the dance last night"
• Subject focus (DP): "it was John that/who wore a white suit at the dance last night"
• Object focus (DP): "it was a white suit that John wore at the dance last night"
• Time adjunct focus (DP): "it was last night that John wore a white suit at the dance"
• Place adjunct focus (PP): "it was at the dance that John wore a white suit last night"

Pseudo-Clefting Examples and Usage

Pseudo-clefting typically uses the structure "what B is A" or its reversed form "A is what B", both forming an SVC. Again, 'A' is the marked element, and 'B' is the rest of the sentence.

Examples of pseudo-clefting:

• Unmarked: "I shall ignore his cruelty"
• Pseudo-cleft: "what I shall ignore is his cruelty"
• Reversed pseudo-cleft: "his cruelty is what I shall ignore"

Pseudo-clefting can also occur when the focalized element is not introduced by "what" but by other relative pronouns or determiners:

• "the person who spoke to you must have been the manager"
• "somebody whose writing I admire is Jill"
• "the way you should go is via Cambridge"

Clefting vs. Pseudo-Clefting: Key Differences

Both clefting and pseudo-clefting achieve the same general effect of focalization. However, they differ in the placement of the main focus:

• Clefting: The main focus is typically in the initial position (e.g., "it was the movie he really enjoyed").
• Pseudo-clefting: The main focus is typically in the final position (e.g., "what he enjoyed was the movie").

Final Position Phenomena: Postponement and Extraposition

These operations involve moving 'heavy' or focused elements towards the end of the sentence, guided by two important principles:

• The End-Focus Principle: This principle states that new or focused information tends to appear at the end of the sentence.
• The End-Weight Principle: This principle suggests that syntactically 'heavy' or complex constituents are preferred at the end of the sentence for easier processing.

Postponement in English Sentence Structure

Postponement involves moving heavier elements to the end of the sentence. For example: "they pronounced guilty everyone of the accused".

Partial postponement occurs with discontinuous phrases, where part of a phrase is moved while another part remains earlier in the sentence:

• "a rumour circulated widely that he was secretly engaged to her" (DP)
• "he was too hot despite the air conditioned to do his work" (AdjP comparative)

Extraposition with 'It': How It Works

Extraposition combines postponement with the insertion of the expletive pronoun 'it'. This is commonly used when subordinate clauses act as subjects and are considered 'heavy items'. They are moved to the end, and 'it' fills the original subject position to maintain sentence structure.

• Unmarked: "to hear him say that surprised me"
• Extraposition: "it surprised me to hear him say that"

Obligatory extraposition occurs with certain verbs like seem, appear, or happen. For example: "it happened that he left."

Extraposition can involve various syntactic patterns, with 'it' acting as a placeholder for the moved subject:

• SVC: "it is a pleasure to teach her"
• SVO: "it surprised me to hear him say that"
• SVA: "it was on the news that income tax is to be lowered"
• SV: "it doesn't matter what you do"
• SVO SC [main clause]: "it makes her happy to see others enjoying themselves"
• SVO SC [subordinate clause]: "he considers it important to explain his reasons"

Summary: Movement and Markedness Operations

Multiple Movements in a Single Sentence

It's possible for a single sentence to undergo more than one movement operation. For instance, in the sentence "she is a pleasure to teach", the analysis reveals two types of movement:

1. Extraposition: This is an emphatic movement, where a clausal subject like "to teach her" is moved to the end, and 'she' is a trace of this movement, making the original sentence "to teach her is a pleasure."
2. Raising: This is a syntactic movement where 'she' has raised from an embedded position to the subject position of the main clause.

FAQ: Common Questions about Syntactic Movement and Markedness

What is markedness in English grammar?

Markedness in English grammar refers to deviations from the basic, neutral (unmarked) word order or structure of a sentence. These marked structures are used to add emphasis, highlight information, or serve specific pragmatic functions, making the sentence more emphatic or contrastive than its unmarked counterpart.

What are initial position phenomena in syntax?

Initial position phenomena are grammatical operations where an element is moved to the beginning of a sentence. This fronting or preposing places emphasis on the moved element, establishing it as the topic or creating a direct link to preceding discourse. Examples include fronting, clefting, and pseudo-clefting.

How does extraposition differ from postponement?

Both extraposition and postponement move 'heavy' elements to the end of a sentence following the end-weight and end-focus principles. However, extraposition specifically involves the movement of a subordinate clause (often a subject clause) to the end of the sentence, coupled with the insertion of the expletive pronoun 'it' in the original subject position. Postponement is a broader term for moving any heavy item to the end, without necessarily inserting 'it'.

Can you give an example of fronting a negative adverb?

Certainly! An example of fronting a negative adverb is: "Never would I talk to his sister about this." Here, the negative adverb "never" is moved to the front of the sentence, triggering an inversion of the auxiliary verb ("would") and the subject ("I"). The unmarked version would be "I would never talk to his sister about this."

What is the purpose of clefting and pseudo-clefting?

The primary purpose of both clefting and pseudo-clefting is to focalize or emphasize a specific part of a sentence, drawing the listener's or reader's attention to that element. They achieve this by restructuring the sentence into two clauses, highlighting one piece of information over another, thereby manipulating the information structure of the utterance.