Introducing English Linguistics

Form and function
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foreign
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INTRODUCING ENGLISH LINGUISTICS

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English has far fewer functions, and these functions are restricted to
elements occurring within clauses (both main and subordinate). Thus, the
functions below are often referred to as 
clause functions
:
Subject
Predicator
Complement (subject and object)
Object (direct and indirect)
Adverbial
Since constituent forms and functions are key components of syntax, the
next two sections provide an overview of some of the important form
classes in English and the particular clause functions that these particu-
lar forms can have.
Word classes and phrases are very closely linked. First of all, a phrase is
named after the word class that acts as head of the phrase. A head is a
word upon which everything in a phrase is centered. In a phrase such as
full of hope, for instance, all parts of the phrase are associated with the
adjective  full. Therefore, this construction is called an adjective phrase.
Likewise, in the phrase might have mattered, everything is associated with
the lexical verb mattered, making this a verb phrase. In fact, word classes
and phrases are so closely linked that there are cases where a single word
can constitute a phrase. In the sentence Necessity is the mother of invention,
necessity is both a noun and a noun phrase. It is a noun, as will be demon-
strated in the section immediately below, because it contains the suffix -ity,
one of a series of suffixes that occur on nouns. It is a noun phrase
because it is functioning as subject of the sentence, one key function of
noun phrases that will be described more fully in a later section on
clause functions.
To describe both word classes and phrases, the discussion in this section
will focus on two of the more important phrase types – noun phrases and
verb phrases – and the other types of phrases (such as prepositional phras-
es) that can occur within them.
Noun phrases
All noun phrases (NPs) are centered on either a head noun or pronoun
(more on pronouns later in this section). One key characteristic of nouns
is that most exhibit number: they have a singular or plural form often
marked in writing by orthographic s. (In speech, as will be demonstrated
in Chapter 7, there are actually three different pronunciations of -s.)
However, as Table 5.1 illustrates, not all nouns fit into this pattern.
Nouns have traditionally been distinguished as being count or  non-
count
. Count nouns are literally “countable”: we can think of a table as
either a single (one) or plural (more than one) entity. Although most count
nouns take the regular plural ending, some like ox take an irregular plural
ending (oxen); others exhibit a change in vowel going from the singular to