Capítulo 5 Mezcla de mercadotecnia
5.1.5 Empaque y embalaje
English has something which we can describe as an IMPERATIVE PARTICLE
(sometimes called a FIRST PERSON IMPERATIVE).
Well let’s go eh? (AUS#54:10)
But let’s not get carried away with fear and loathing. (AUS#47:8)
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Let’s take shooting them. Unless you’re an expert marksman, you end up maiming and causing a lot of damage to the animal. (AUS#51:16)
As you can see from these examples, this imperative is formed with a con-tracted form of let us in which us functions as the object of the verb let. But in these examples, you is not the understood subject as we saw earlier for the ordinary imperative. Compare the examples above with the ordinary imperative example below:
Let me back on the computer – PLEASE!!? (AUS#56:38) [= ‘You let me back on the computer, please’]
Where the imperative particle is involved, the understood subject is us;
in other words, the first person plural. Try substituting let us for let’s in the first example above and the difference between these two imperatives becomes clearer.
Well let us go eh?
Out of context, there is potential ambiguity between the first person imperative reading ‘I suggest that we go’ and the ordinary second person imperative reading ‘You let us [i.e. allow us to] go, will you?’ But there is no ambiguity with the contracted form let’s – it must be the imperative particle.
Interesting things are currently happening to this form, which confirms that let’s should no longer be analysed as a contracted form of let us but as one word – indeed a kind of grammatical particle. Have a look at the following sentences which Hopper and Closs Traugott (1993: 11) have recorded from Midwestern American English speech. As they point out, the construction has expanded beyond first person subjects – well, at least for Midwestern American English speakers. In these examples, we could not replace lets with let us. We suspect other dialect speakers might find them rather peculiar.
Lets you go first, then if we have any money left I’ll go.
Lets you and him fight.
But there are Standard English examples too that suggest that let’s is no longer a simple contraction of let us, and is more appropriately written as the single word lets.
Lets you and I go then/Lets you and me go then.
What is significant about our example is that you and I/me appear to func-tion as the object of lets. (Compare the first line of T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ – Let us go then, you and I.) What this suggests is that the first person plural pronoun us has lost its status as a separate mor-pheme and is simply part of a single mormor-pheme lets. This word can then take its own object, which in these examples is you and me. In fact, in col-loquial speech you will find that let us is usually even more reduced and is better represented as some sort of affix on the remaining verb.
’Sgo guys!
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Imprecatives
The following examples illustrate another curious sub-type of imperatives, the so-called IMPRECATIVES:
Damn them and everyone who feeds the myth of these gangsters, villains, thieves and hustlers. (British actor Lennie James quoted in AUS#306:9) Bugger it! (AUS#56:19)
Curse this damn faulty umbrella – waterproof my arse! (AUS#55:38) These are of course used for making insults, curses and abusive comments.
The reason we don’t simply include them as straightforward imperatives is that they show an interesting difference. Like imperatives they clearly lack an overt subject. But remember, imperatives have an implicit you subject and this becomes evident when you form imperative tags. But try forming tag questions here – *Bugger it, will you. What is the understood subject here?
It clearly can’t be you. The models for these are probably earlier English expressions like God damn X. These invoke God (or the Devil) as agent of malfeasance, but have been abbreviated to Damn X (to avoid explicit blasphemy or profanity). Expressions like Damn X are probably providing the model for these more potent modern expressions and account for their curious structure.
5.5 Exclamatives
ExCLAMATIVES have a very distinctive structure:
Exclamatives: what or how-phrase Subject Predicate
Note that what and how in examples like the following are not information-seeking, however, and exclamatives differ from their interrogative counter-parts in that that they lack the subject–operator inversion characteristic of English interrogatives. Some examples are (’scuse the language):
What a bunch of wankers you lot are! (AUS#47:38)
How well I remember the old days when malted milks had real ice cream in them, and the milk bar bloke gave you a free straw to get into it! (AUS#56:19) The exclamative function is also often filled by just the initial what/
how-phrase:
What a spiteful, vindictive bloody sheep! (AUS#47:7)
If the what/how-phrase is the subject of the clause, then ambiguity can arise. This is because even though wh-interrogatives normally have sub-ject–operator inversion, they don’t when the wh-constituent is the subject.
For example:
Boy, how many people can do this of a day! (AUS#56:17) [Exclamative = ‘what a lot of people can do this’]
[Interrogative = ‘what’s the number of people that can do this’]
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The function of an exclamative sentence is much more restricted than that of any of the other sentence types we have discussed here.
Exclamatives are used to make an exclamation (not surprisingly!). It there-fore has a very expressive or emotive component. As you would expect from what we have said previously in this chapter, other sentence types can also be used with an exclamative meaning. Compare the following with the earlier version.
How well do I remember the old days when malted milks had real ice cream in them, and the milk bar bloke gave you a free straw to get into it!
This is clearly a wh-interrogative in structure – it has the characteristic subject–operator inversion. However, given the meaning of the sentence it is most likely to be used as an exclamation here (after all, we do not normally ask others how well we remember things). This sort of exclama-tion has a rather archaic and literary flavour. In fact, it is possible to form exclamatory messages by simply using appropriate intonation on all sorts of sentence types. For example, the message can be expressed with a declar-ative structure as in the following sentences:
It’s lovely here! (AUS#47:21)
You’re alive, you stupid bastard! (AUS#51:16)
The following has the structure of a wh-interogative, but is clearly intended here as an exclamation. (Note that this is not a rhetorical question, since the answer is not assumed to be obvious; on the contrary, it is a bit of a mystery.)
Why can’t he get his dirty-bloody socks into the laundry basket – just once!
(AUS#54:9)
Exclamatory meaning can also be expressed by using intensifying words like wow, the hell, surely, so, such, and so on. The first example below has the structure of a declarative; the second is a wh-interrogative structurally and the third has the structure of a yes–no interrogative.
But you surely never plotted for months to dance with Michael Jackson!
(AUS#62:33)
What the hell was I thinking doing that last job? (AUS#56:16) Wow, are they pissing in my pocket or what? (AUS#54:28)
Since the exclamative structure is so narrow, for some of these examples there is no corresponding true exclamative structure to express the same exclamatory meaning.
5.6 Echoes
On p. 112 we described wh-interrogatives. Two of the key characteris-tics of this sentence type were the substitution of a wh-constituent and
121 the fronting of this constituent. We will now show that there is another important use of wh-constituents, namely, in structures where they are not fronted, but left in their original place. This leads to an echo construction.
An example is the one found in the following mini-discourse.
Have I ever what, Brandy? Heard 263 R & B ballads that sound exactly like this brown-coloured puree of cliches and spineless studio backing music?
Oh yes, my dear, most certainly. (AUS#65:26)
Here we see that the wh-word replaces a VP which is the complement of have. We can imagine a corresponding non-wh-construction Have I ever heard 263 R& B ballads that sound … In this case, there is subject–operator inversion, but we can also use echo constructions without inversion, in which case we can describe it as a declarative echo construction. In fact, it is possible to leave a wh-constituent in its place in all construction types:
DECLARATIVE: CORRESPONDING ECHO:
This cartoon has been cancelled. This cartoon has been what?
(AUS#43:4)
YES–NO-INTERROGATIVE:
Is there any point to Bruce Willis at all? Is there any point to who(m)?
(AUS#54:36)
WH-INTERROGATIVE:
What did it cost them? (AUS#54:3) What did it cost who?
IMPERATIVE:
Pay no taxes! (AUS#45:20) Pay no what?
ExCLAMATIVE:
How well I remember the old days! How well you remember what?
The meaning of echoes is normally exclamatory. This was particularly clear in the first example we gave in this section, since the speaker then went on to fill in the constituent: Heard 263 R& B ballads that sound … It is, then, clear in this example that the speaker is not asking for information.
However, echoes can also be used as questions. Imagine a conversation in the pub, where the noise drowns out the second part of somebody’s sentence. The hearer can then reply
Sorry, you did what yesterday?
Echoes are also an integral part of ‘knock-knock’ jokes, and we can’t resist the temptation to give an example here:
Knock, Knock Who’s there?
Kanga.
Kanga who?
No, kangaroo.
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5.7 Trees
The structure of a declarative should be familiar by now since we have dealt with declaratives and functions. We will use categorial labels from now on, since these are more commonly used unless functions are specifically of interest. The advantage of category labels is also that we can go into more details when this is appropriate. Remember that trees with function labels can provide only a broader picture of constituent structure. The outline of a simple declarative structure would be as follows:
1
The interrogative structures pose a special problem, since we have moved out an element from the predicate, namely, the operator. At this stage, we will assume that this inverted auxiliary is still part of the same sentence, so that we get a tree like the following for a yes–no interrogative:
2
We should warn those of you who intend to carry on with syntactic theory that this particular type of sentence has been the subject of a lot of discus-sion in the literature and you are likely to encounter other ways of looking at it.
Turning now to wh-interrogatives, we have the same structure as in this tree, since we have subject–operator inversion, but we also have the added complexity of the fronted wh-constituent. Remember the sentence from p. 112:
Why do these trailers have to be so loud?
Here we have subject–operator inversion since do precedes the subject these trailers. Before this we have the wh-constituent, which can be phrasal. This needs to go above the whole sentence in the tree. We then get a tree like the following:
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We haven’t labelled either the root node or the node above the wh-constit-uent yet. Let’s look at the root node first. When we added disjuncts and conjuncts to an S in Section 4.7, we called the resulting mother an S too, but that was different since several disjuncts or conjuncts could be added to one S. In this case we can only have one wh-constituent and hence the position should be unique. Anticipating the discussion in Chapter 8, we will call this category S′ (S-bar), so that the question mark for the root node in this tree can be replaced by S′. As for the label for the wh-constituent, again we anticipate the discussion in Section 8.5 and refer to it as COMP
for complementizer. As we have seen, the wh-constituent can be a whole phrase, so you might think that it should have a phrasal name, rather than just comp. This is a fair point, but we will still stick to comp here. There are more detailed analyses of these constructions, but for the time being, we just want you to have an idea of where in the sentence tree to put the wh-constituent.
When we described how a wh-interrogative is formed, we said that some part of the clause has been substituted by a wh-constituent and this con-stituent has been fronted (if it wasn’t already at the front by virtue of being the subject). This means that there is a gap somewhere in the clause. In this case it is an adverbial (adjunct) which has been substituted. Especially when the fronted phrase is an obligatory constituent of the sentence, some people prefer to mark this position with a zero in order to make clear where the wh-constituent came from. Below, when we look at an example in which the wh-constituent comes from a position which is obligatory, we will show you how this is done.
In this example, the wh-constituent consists of one word only, but in the examples we saw above, there are examples of complex wh-constituents:
whose side, which one of you and on whose side. Hence the COMP position must be able to host a phrasal element.
We turn now to a wh-interrogative in which the subject has been replaced by a wh-constituent, like Which came first? (see also p. 113). At first blush, this does not look very different from the example above. However, there is clearly no subject–operator inversion; this is obvious since we can have a question without having an auxiliary. Since there is no inversion, the sub-ject is initial as always. How could we then tell whether or not the subsub-ject has been fronted to COMP or whether it is still in its old subject position?
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Depending on which view is taken, we could get either of the following two trees:
4 5
In order to decide on this one, we need to go back one step: why is there no subject–operator inversion? Well, if we assume that the subject has moved into the COMP position, then we could say that there is no subject–operator inversion, because there is no subject in that S for the operator to invert with. Hence we feel that the first of the two trees best represents the struc-ture of wh-interrogatives in which the wh-constituent functions as subject.
Whether or not you feel it makes sense to indicate the position of the subject we leave for the moment as a matter of taste. In this tree, we have indicated the missing subject with a dotted line. We prefer to avoid B (a zero symbol, as explained on p. 172) in our trees, but have inserted it here since it is quite common to do so, and it also helps indicate that the wh-constituent still functions as the subject of the sentence.
Finally, the tree for a wh-interrogative in which the wh-constituent func-tions as the object of a preposition is:
6
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5.8 Points to remember
❑
❑ There are four main sentence types: declaratives, imperatives, interrog-atives and exclaminterrog-atives. These four types can be defined in structural terms:
Declarative: subject predicate
Interrogative: operator subject rest of predicate Imperative: (subject 2nd person) predicate
Exclamative: what/how phrase subject predicate
❑
❑ There are two major types of interrogatives: yes–no interrogatives (where only subject–operator inversion has applied) and wh-interrogatives (in which subject–operator inversion has taken place and in which a wh-constituent has been fronted).
❑
❑ There are also four major meaning types (or illocutionary force): state-ment, question, directive and exclamation.
❑
❑ For each sentence type there is a corresponding meaning type which is typically expressed by that sentence type:
Declarative: making a statement Interrogative: posing a question Imperative: issuing a directive Exclamative: making an exclamation
❑
❑ There are many instances of how a particular sentence type is used to express a meaning type other than that typically associated with that sentence type. By the same token, each meaning type can be expressed by more than one sentence type.
Exercises
1. Sentence types
Are the sentences declarative, interrogative, imperative or exclamative?
(a) Why is anyone interested? (AUS#43:8)
(b) Is that love in your eyes, or just obsession? (AUS#45:23) (c) C’mon, tax me out of here! (AUS#45:3)
(d) Try to get a look on your face that hints you might whip out a wad of cash at any moment, for the right price. (AUS#61:39)
(e) Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz. (AUS#55:10)
(f) God damn it kid – just put the kayak under my arm and roll me off the grandstand! (AUS#61:38)
(g) Let’s keep these people permanently where they belong! (AUS#47:8) (h) You’ve seen that? (AUS#55:34)
(i) Who needs movies when Arsenal is enjoying such a wicked season?
(AUS#60:29)
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(j) Rollins does hate women far more than he hates everyone else.
(AUS#45:30)
2. Sentence types and meaning
For any five of the sentences in exercise 1, discuss at least two plausible interpretations, that is, give at least two possible meaning types.
3. Types of interrogatives
The extracts below contain questions posed by an attorney during an actual trial (as reported by the Massachusetts Bar Association Lawyers Journal and reproduced in The Big Issue AUS#60:9). Examine these and then answer the two questions which follow.
Extract 1
Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
[No.]
Did you check for blood pressure?
[No.]
Did you check for breathing?
[No.]
So then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?
[No.]
How can you be so sure, doctor?
[Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.]
But could the patient have still been alive nevertheless?
[It is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law somewhere.]
Extract 2
Mr Slattery, you went on a rather elaborate honeymoon, didn’t you?
[I went to Europe, sir.]
And you took your new wife?
[Ummm, yeah …]
How was your first marriage terminated?
[By death.]
And by whose death was it terminated?
[Ahhh, my wife’s.]
That would be your first wife?
[You got it.]
Right. So the date of conception [of the baby] was August 8th?
[Yes.]
And what were you doing at that time?
[Ummm, can I have a glass of water please? …]
In each of his lines, the lawyer asks a question; identify the type of struc-ture he uses to do so each time.
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4. Colloquial and regional English?
The following sentences are forms found in different parts of the English-speaking world. Some illustrate variations in the grammar of English which we would place together as dialectal non-standard, and some, from our stash of Big Issues, are colloquial and for some speakers will hover some-where on the border between standard and non-standard. Identify and describe each of the constructions and say why they differ from main-stream Standard English sentence types.
(a) She ain’t got to bother, have she?
(b) Who you have come to see?
(c) You are going home soon, isn’t it?
(d) What you got? Where you live?
(e) I’m going out with my sheila now, ain’t I.
(f) He’ll might could do it for you. [= ‘he might be able to do it for you in the future’]
(g) Be you quiet! Come you on!
(h) You’re going to struggle with no money, in’t ya? (AUS#40:9) (i) How about you play one for us? (AUS#60:22)
(j) How come I’m here? (AUS#56:13)
(k) Children, on the other hand … well, they don’t have the blinkers on yet. (AUS#54:9)
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