And the rest of that one...

[major_kerina]

 (129) What exploded violently?
The answer to such a constituent question will always be just the NP  or other nominal that is the subject:
 (130) Krakatoa
If the sentence happens to have a sentence adverbial in initial position, it will never be part of the answer as demonstrated below:
 (131) *in August 1893 Krakatoa
Declarative Sentences with Predicate Adverbs.  As discussed above, the first word of the predicate of a simple declarative sentence is  usually the first auxiliary of the verb group.  However, some sentences have predicate adverbs that can appear before the first auxiliary as in the example below:
 (132) Napoleon never should have invaded  Russia.
In this example the subject is Napoleon and the predicate is the rest of the sentence.  That Napoleon is the subject is obvious because the sentence is a declarative statement, and Napoleon is the only NP before the verb group.  Never cannot be part of the subject because it is not part of the NP.  This can be proved by substituting a pronoun for the NP:
 (133) He never should have invaded Russia.
In addition, the adverb, never, can be moved to different locations in the sentence, with the effect that the predicate now begins with the first word of the verb group:
 (134) Napoleon should never have invaded Russia.
 (135) Napoleon should have never invaded Russia.
As mentioned previously, adverbs such as never are called predicate adverbs because they appear exclusively in the predicate of a sentence.  You can also determine that a predicate adverb is never part of the subject by again asking a constituent question with who or what as in (136):
 (136) Who should have invaded Russia?
The answer again will be just the NP that is the subject:
 (137) Napoleon
The answer will never include a predicate adverb as indicated in (138):
 (138) *Napoleon never
Declarative statements with dummy subjects.  Up to this point, the subject has been identified as the NP or other nominal before the predicate; in other words subject has been defined by its location in the sentence.  Because this type of subject occupies a specific position in the sentence, it is better known as the grammatical subject.  English has two words, it and there, that can be the grammatical subjects of sentences as in (139) and (140);
 (139) There is a fly in my soup.
 (140) It is obvious that Republicn politicians pander to the wealthy.
Though there and it in the sentences above are the grammatical subjects, they are also devoid of semantic content; in other words, they cannot be defined.  Because these words are devoid of semantic content, they cannot be the logical subjects of their sentences.  The logical subjects have been moved to another location in their  sentences, and it and there are  two words that  are inserted into a sentence under special grammatical circumstances to fulfill the function of grammatical subject.  For example, sentence (139) started out as the following:
 (141) A fly is in my soup.
The subject then inverts with the main verb as in (142):
 (142) *is a fly in my soup.
(142) is of course an ungrammatical sentence in English because it does not have a grammatical subject.  Consequently, the grammar of the language demands the insertion of a dummy subject, in this case there, to make the sentence grammatical.
 (143)  There is a fly in my soup.
The point is that in most sentences in English, such as (141), the grammatical subject and the logical subject are identical, but with sentences that begin with there, there is the grammatical subject and a  NP moved to the other side of the main verb is the logical subject, which can be found by simply rewriting the sentence as (141).  The same is true for sentences beginning with the dummy subject it.  Example (140) began as (144), but then the that clause, that Republican politicians pander to the wealthy, was moved to the other side of the adjective as in (145).  This left an empty subject position, which is disallowed in English, consequently inducing the insertion of the dummy subject it as in (146):
 (144) That Republican politicians pander to the wealthy is obvious.  
 (145) *is obvious that Republican politicians pander to the wealthy. 
 (146) It is obvious that Republican politicians pander to the wealthy.
In sum, dummy subjects are the grammatical subjects of their sentences, but they are not the logical subjects.  To find the logical subject of a sentence with a dummy subject, simply rewrite the sentence as was done in (141) and (144).
Declarative statements with inversions.  Rarely in English  will a sentence have a phrase in normal subject position that is not a NP, some other nominal, or a dummy subject (though of course I had to make the previous sentence an example of one of these exceptional sentences.  Can you find the subject? It is a sentence).  Examine the following quote:
 (147) Behind every successful man is a surprised woman.  (Maryon Pearson).
Previously, the grammatical subject has been defined as the NP or other nominal that occupies the position before the predicate.  However, in (147) a PP occupies that position, and the only NP in the sentence is the one found after the main verb.  This NP is the logical subject of the sentence as can be seen by rewriting it as in (148):
 (148) A surprised woman is behind every successful man.
English permits such order reversals as found in (147) when the main verb is an intensive verb such as be and appear.

 

Finding the Subject in Yes/No Questions
Finding the subject in a yes/no question is a little different from finding one in a declarative statement, but fortunately just as simple. In yes/ no questions the first auxiliary of the verb group and the subject invert, resulting in the subject occurring between the first auxiliary and the rest of the verb group:
 (149) Do most Israelis speak Hebrew?
 (150) Should people taking antibiotics drink alcohol?
 (151) Has the bill to eliminate the marriage penalty passed?
You can easily see that the bolded constituents are all nominals and the subjects of their sentences by transforming them into statements:
 (152) Most Israelis speak Hebrew.
 (153) People taking antibiotics should drink alcohol.
 (154) The bill to eliminate the marriage penalty has passed.
One  verb is capable of forming yes/no questions without the use of an auxiliary--the copula, be.  This verb is unique in  American English because it has the features of both a lexical verb and an auxiliary. Like any other lexical verb, it can be the sole member of a verb group, and like an auxiliary it can attract the negative particle and invert with the subject to form questions as indicated  below in  (156):
 (155)   Naples is not in the south of Italy. 
 (156)   Is Naples in the south of Italy?
To find the subject of a yes/no question that has some form of the copula as the main verb as in (156), simply change the question into a statement as in (157), and then locate the verb group as you have done previously.  The subject of the original question will be the nominal before the verb group in the statement.
 (157) Naples is in the south of Italy.
Finding the Subject in Content Questions
Content questions are those that begin with a WH word such as who, what, or why.  For most of these questions, subject/auxiliary inversion occurs with the consequence that the subject will be found between the first auxiliary and the rest of the verb group, just as it was for yes/no questions:
 (158) What time does the opera start?
 (159) How many pages should you have read today?
 (160) Why did Hitler bomb civilian centers rather than RAF bases?
In the three example sentences the subjects are bolded, and each occurs between the first auxiliary and the rest of the verb group: does...start in (158), should...have read in (159), and did...bomb in (160). 

 

For some types of content questions the subject is not found between the first auxiliary and the rest of the verb group even though the verb group may have auxiliaries.  This happens when the WH word questions the subject of the sentence as indicated below:
 (161) Who wrote a novel about the French invasion of Russia?
 (162) Who is teaching the course in linguistic theory?
To determine that the WH words above are  truly the subjects of their sentences, simply answer the questions by replacing them  with NPs as done below:
 (163) Tolstoy wrote a novel about the French invasion of Russia.
 (164) Chomsky is teaching the course in linguistic theory.
In examples (163) and (164), Tolstoy and Chomsky are clearly the subjects because they are the only NPs before the verb groups wrote and is teaching.  Also, because the NPs substitute for the WH words, they consequently have the same grammatical function as do the WH words.
One last type of content question needs to be described, the one with the copula be as the main verb.  The subject may be a little difficult to find in this type of question because of two movement rules of English.  First, the WH word is fronted to the beginning of its clause, and second the main verb inverts with the subject.  Look at the following question: 
 (165) What is the significance of the Rosetta Stone?
At first glance you might think that what is the subject, but this is not the case.  The actual subject is the significance of the Rosetta Stone, which actually appears after the verb group, a location in which it has not appeared in any other examples.  How can the subject be in that position?  Quite simply, the verb inverted with the subject and the WH word was fronted from its original position.  An appeal to a structure called an echo question will show that both the WH word and the verb were moved.  Imagine that you had actually asked (165) to someone and they had replied with the following:
 (166) The significance of the Rosetta Stone is that it yielded great recipes for bouillabaisse. 
Now you may not know what the real significance of the Rosetta Stone is, but you surely would be skeptical that it had anything to do  with bouillabaisse, so with incredulity in your voice you shoot back with the following question:
 (167) The significance of the Rosetta Stone is what?
Example (167) is called an echo question,  a question form we sometimes use when we are suspicious of a statement that we have heard.  The interesting feature about echo questions is that all the constituents remain in situ (in their original position); no movement rules are involved even though the echo question contains a WH word.  In (167) the subject is the significance of the Rosetta stone, and the predicate is is what; note that the WH word is part of the predicate and therefore was never the subject of the original question (165).

 

Excursus on simple subject and simple predicate.  Many textbooks used in schools ask students to find the subject and predicate of sentences, but often these exercises require students to do something different from what we have been doing here.  Instead of requiring students to identify the actual subject and predicate, they ask students to identify the simple subject (the head of the NP that functions as the subject) and the simple predicate (the head of the verb phrase that functions as the predicate).
 (168) Many countries have sent food to combat famine in Ethiopia.
 (169) The people of Mexico celebrate their day of independence on May 5.
In the two sentences above, the complete subjects are many countries and the people of Mexico, and the complete predicates are have sent food to combat famine in Ethiopia and celebrate their day of independence on May 5.  In contrast, the simple subjects are countries and people, and the simple predicates are sent and celebrate. 
Finding just the simple subject and the simple predicate really does not make much sense linguistically.  As discussed before, all clauses in English can be divided into a subject and a predicate; they are the two immediate constituents of the clause.  In contrast, the simple subject and the simple predicate are no more than the head noun of the NP that has the grammatical function of subject and the main verb of the verb phrase that has the grammatical function of predicate.
In addition, sentences exist in English whose subjects are not NPs at all,  but rather some other nominal such as a noun clause or a that clause, which of course do not have a head noun at all as revealed in the examples below:
 (170) Whoever submitted this article did not supply a return address.
 (171) That linguists are not pedantic is obvious.
The subjects in the two sentences above are whoever submitted this article and that linguists are not pedantic, which as you now know can be demonstrated in three ways.  First, they appear before the first word of the verb groups--did and is.  Second, a pronoun can substitute for the two subjects:
 (172) They did not supply a return address.
 (173) It is obvious.
Third, the subjects answer constituent questions with who or what:
 (174) Who did not supply a return address?
 (175) Answer:  whoever submitted this article
 (175) What is obvious?
 (176) Answer:  that linguists are not pedantic
The point is that neither of the subjects of the sentences is a NP, and, therefore, does not contain what some textbooks call the simple subject.

 

Excursus on pedagogical grammars.  The section above contains some very simple testing procedures for finding the subject in declarative sentences, yes/no questions, and content questions; by using those procedures and practicing on representative sentences, students quickly develop the ability to divide sentences into their two main constituent parts.  In contrast,  some professionally published grammar books used in junior and senior high schools usually provide much less information on how to divide a sentence into the subject and predicate, and some of the information is quite vague, such  as telling the students that the subject of the sentence is 'what the sentence is about.'  Unfortunately, such a  description of the subject is not very useful for students; for example, in (147) 'what is the  sentence about,' a surprised woman or a successful man?   You might retort that  a surprised woman cannot be the subject because it is the object of a preposition, and you would be correct, but the pedagogical grammars that I have reviewed never point out that the subject is not found in a PP; most do not even point out that the subject is a NP or other nominal, instead they just point out that the subject is 'what the sentence is about.'
Such a definition as 'what the sentence is about' does not provide the students with any practical information about the normal position of subjects in different types of sentences, nor do most books provide the students with procedures for finding the subject when it is not in its normal position. 
In addition, most pedagogical grammars used in the schools do not make a distinction between the grammatical subject and the logical subject, giving the impression that the subject  of the sentence can be found just about anywhere in the sentence.  Another consequence of not identifying both the grammatical and logical subject is that students do not learn how to reconstruct sentences so that the two types of subjects coincide.  In other words, testing procedures are again ignored, depriving the students the opportunity of doing any actual syntactic analysis that they can later apply independently.
Many of these textbooks also contain very poorly conceived exercises that can only frustrate students who are  led to believe that they should be able to cope with them.  One currently available textbook offers students a set of exercises on subjects and predicates that contains subordinate clauses even though the textbook has not yet introduced those structures.  Subordinate clauses also contain a subject and predicate, but the exercise requires students to find the subject and predicate of the matrix sentence. Consequently, sentences such as the following are used instead of simple clauses:
 (177) The students know that school dismisses early today. 
The example above contains a that clause, which of course also contains its own subject and predicate.  Given that students have been only told that the subject is what the sentence is about, how can they know whether the students or school is the subject given that the sentence contains two clauses with two subjects. 

Textbooks that present the students with poor definitions, deprive them of testing procedures, and test their knowledge on sentences containing structures that have not been previously introduced are pedagogically unsound and actually prohibit students from acquiring basic knowledge of the grammar of English.

 

Distinguishing Form From Function
In this chapter, an attempt has been made to clearly distinguish the form of phrases from their grammatical functions.  Table 1 contains descriptions of the internal structures of the five basic phrases.  Table 2 lists the five basic phrases again and shows their grammatical functions.  The list of grammatical functions in Table 2 is a first approximation.  In later chapters further grammatical functions will be given for some the phrases.
Although the distinction between form and function was made previously by demonstrating six different grammatical functions for the single NP, the Duke of Wellington, let's reinforce the idea by examining two different grammatical functions for the same PP.  The same exact prepositional phrase by form can have two different grammatical functions in two sentences:
 (178) The man in the park fell.
 (179) The man fell in the park.
Both sentences above contain the PP, in the park, but in the first sentence, it is an adjectival because it is a constituent in a NP, and in the second sentence it is an adverbial. Again, we can prove that the PP in (178) is a postmodifier of a noun by pronoun substitution:
 (180) He fell.

Table 2.  The Grammatical Functions of the Five Basic Phrases
Type of Phrase Grammatical Functions

 

Noun Phrase Subject of Verb
Subject Complement
Direct Object
Indirect Object
Object Complement
Object of Preposition
Verb Phrase Predicate
Adjective Phrase Adjectival
Adverb Phrase Adverbial
Prepositional Phrase Adjectival
Adverbial

Because the pronoun substituted for the entire structure, the man in the park, we know that the PP is part of the NP and consequently a modifier of the noun.  In turn, we know that the same NP in (179) is an adverbial because it provides the answer to the following constituent question:
 (181) Where did the man fall?
Because questions with where always elicit adverbial responses, we know that the PP is functioning adverbially in (179).
Summary
This chapter covered the internal structure of phrases, their role as constituents in clauses, tests for determining the boundaries of constituents, and the grammatical functions of phrases. 
A phrase consists of a word or sequence of words that has a particular word as its head.  The five basic phrases in English are built on the five lexical word classes: noun, verb, adjective, adverb, and preposition, meaning that the five basic phrases are the NP, VP, AP, AdvP, and PP.  The internal structures of phrases follow specific patterns that always conform to the grammar of the language.  The general structure for each type of phrase can be explicitly and succinctly stated as a phrase structure rule (see Table 1).
When phrases are in the context of other phrases or clauses, they become constituents in the larger structures, so, for example, a PP can be a constituent in a NP or an AP. Constituents can be either optional or obligatory; optional constituents can be deleted from a clause and the remaining structure will remain grammatical. In contrast, if an obligatory constituent is deleted from a clause, the remaining structure will be ungrammatical.  Most optional phrases are modifiers:  adjective phrases, adverb phrases, and prepositional phrases.  In contrast, NPs and VPs are almost always obligatory constituents and consequently cannot be deleted from a sentence.
Tests are available for determining the boundaries of constituents, the three most common being deletion, movement and substitution.  If a sequence of words in a clause can undergo deletion, movement, or substitution by a single word, then that sequence comprises a constituent in the clause.  Deletion is useful for finding optional modifiers in sentences; movement is especially useful for finding adverbials; and substitution with a pronoun is useful for finding NPs.
When phrases become constituents, they also take on grammatical functions.  APs, AdvPs, and PPs have the general grammatical function of modifier.  More specifically, APs function adjectivally; AdvPs function adverbially, and PPs can function either adjectivally or adverbially.  NPs, in turn, have six basic grammatical functions--subject of verb, direct object, indirect object, subject complement, object complement, and object of preposition.  The VP has a single grammatical function, that of predicate.
Other grammatical structures can perform the same functions as APs, AdvPs, and NPs.  Any structure performing the functions of an AP is an adjectival; any structure performing the functions of an adverb is an adverbial;  and any structure performing the functions of a NP and can be replaced by pronoun is a nominal.

Comments

[cowbellman.livejournal.com]

Nooo! Make it stop!! x_x *dies*

[major-kerina.livejournal.com]

I was gonna give the paragraph breaks...but the lecture just ate my soul so much...

[cowbellman.livejournal.com]

Maybe you can use an eraser to get rid of all those words . That way you would get rid of all your problems but you probably would get new ones.

You would save your soul at least. ^_^