TOPIC 3 THE SYNTACTIC LEVEL

One important level of linguistic analysis is the syntactic level. At this level, just like any
other level of language description, significant statements of meaning can be made based on the
observation of the choices that a writer/speaker has made, and, of course the genre of literature or the
peculiarities of the text involved.

OBJECTIVES

At the end of this unit, you should be able to:

 mention the grammatical elements relevant to a syntactic analysis of a text
 state the elements of the clause in English
 describe the structure of the nominal group in English
 carry out a stylistic analysis of the syntactic features of a text.

3.1 Units of Grammar

Language is a structural entity as its elements exist and function in a hierarchical order. Such
units or elements include morpheme, word, group (phrase), clause and sentence. The morpheme is the
smallest unit while the sentence is the highest or the largest. In order to do a stylistic analysis at the
syntactic level, you should be familiar with the group (or phrase), the clause and the sentence, among
other relevant syntactic elements.

3.2 The Group

A group or phrase is a stretch of grammatically coherent words without a subject and a finite
verb, unless it is a verbal group (i.e. a verb phrase). This means that only the verbal group or verb
phrase can contain a finite verb. The sentence below contains three groups:

“He/is walking/along the road.”

“He” is the subject, “is walking” is a verbal group (or verb phrase), “along the road” is an
adverbial group (you may also call it a prepositional phrase).
As you must have seen above, a group can contain one or more words and it functions
like a single lexical item. In English, the nominal group (i.e. noun phrase) has (M)H(Q) structure. This
means Modifier, Head, Qualifier. The most important word in the group is the “head”; the element
that comes before the “head” is a modifier while the element that comes after the “head” is a
qualifier. Out of the three i.e. modifier, head and qualifier, only the head is obligatory; hence (M)
and (Q) are put in brackets in the notation.
Again, there can be more than one modifier before the “head” just as there can be more than
one qualifier after the “head”.

Can you identify the head, the modifier(s) and the qualifier(s) in each of the following?

 The beautiful girl

 A woman to watch
 An influential man to watch in our political circle.

The verbal group (i.e. the verb phrase) is also important. It may be a lexical verb alone or an
auxiliary plus a lexical verb. The underlined expressions are examples of the verbal group:

 Bola will go to school.

 We should have been there.
 We danced merrily.

In doing a stylistic analysis at the syntactic level, you will do well to pay a close attention to
the choices which a writer/speaker has made at the level of group/phrase. With the nominal group,
for example, you may note the use of modifiers and qualifiers with the head-words and bring out
the stylistic effects of such.

3.3 The Clause

 A clause is higher in rank than a group. It may be defined as a group of grammatically coherent
words with a subject and a finite verb. The underlined expressions in the following are examples:

• They left / when we did not expect.

• Unless you guide him / he won’t know what to do.

A clause that can stand as a sentence is called main or independent clause e.g. the first clause of
our example (a) and the second clause of our example (b). On the other hand, a clause that cannot
stand on its own is regarded as a dependent or subordinate clause e.g. the second clause of example
(a) and the first clause of example (b). In addition, we can have noun clause, adjectival clause and
adverbial clause. Look at these examples:

(a) I don’t know what he means. (noun clause)

(b) Those who like us are many. (adjectival clause)
(c) When he came we saw him. (adverbial clause)

You should note that although we have said that a clause should contain a finite verb, the verb
may be omitted in some instances to give us what we call verbless clauses. Consider this: “If possible,
let the man leave now.” A form of the verb “be” together with “it” is omitted here. The full
form is “If it is possible, let the man leave now.” This omission is a case of grammatical ellipsis.

Furthermore, note the following elements of the clause: Subject (S), Predicator (P), Object
(O), Complement (C) and Adjunct (A). Look at this example:

S P O C A
Many people / are painting / their houses / white / these days./

You also need to note these:

• The predicator is the only element, which is a verb phrase.
• The subject normally precedes the predicator (in a normal sentence in the indicative mood).
• The object is closely tied to the predicator in terms of meaning and it denotes the person
or thing most intimately affected by the action or state, etc denoted by the predicator.
• The complement can look superficially like an object (both can be NPs). But in terms of
meaning, it provides a definition or characterization of the subject or object. Objects and
complements normally follow the predicator.

If there is both an object and a complement in the clause, normally the complement follows the object,
e.g.
S P O C
/ John /called /Mary / a fool./

Adjunct fills out the clause by adding extra circumstantial information of various kinds, which
may relate to time, location, speaker’s attitude e.t.c.
There is no fixed number of adjuncts that can occur in a clause. In this wise, they are like
modifiers in the nominal group.
(Adjuncts are the most mobile element of the clause).

There are two kinds of objects: direct object (Od) and indirect object (Oί).

There are also two kinds of complement: subject complement (Cs) and object complement
(Co). Consider these.
S P Cs
(1) He / was / a great statesman./
S P O Co
(2) They / regarded / him / a great statesman

A careful study of the arrangement of the elements of the clause can illuminate your stylistic
analysis. A writer or speaker can deviate from the normal order to create foregrounding e.g.

A S P S P A
“Here / he / comes” instead of “He /comes / here.”
Can you explain the stylistic importance of that foregrounding?

3.4 The Sentence

The sentence is the highest or the largest of the grammatical units mentioned at the beginning
of this unit. But the difference between the clause and the sentence is a matter of degree rather than
kind. Simply put, a sentence is a group of grammatically related words that expresses a complete
thought.
Both structural and functional criteria are taken into consideration in classifying sentences.
Structurally, we can have simple, compound, complex and compound – complex sentences. In
functional terms, we have such sentence types as declarative, interrogative, imperative, exclamatory,
requests. Find out examples of these functional sentence categories and examine closely their stylistic
values.

When a sentence makes one statement and contains one finite verb, it is said to be a simple sentence
e.g.:

1. The consultants at the University College Hospital are resourceful.

2. The University College Hospital is a pacesetter in tertiary health.

When a sentence makes at least two statements, (i.e. contains at least two finite verbs)
and the two ideas/statements made are of equal status, the sentence is said to be compound e.g.

3. The consultants at the University College Hospital are resourceful and they enjoy regular
refresher courses.

But if the two ideas/ statements are linked in such a way that one is subordinate to the other,
then we have a complex sentence. See this example:

4. The consultants at the University College Hospital are resourceful because they enjoy regular
refresher courses.

A compound-complex sentence combines the features of both compound and complex

sentences. This is an illustration:

5. The consultants at the University College Hospital are resourceful because they enjoy regular
refresher courses and they use modern equipment.

The sentence types that we have discussed have their stylistic significance. Simple sentences
are used to create emphasis, compound sentences are deployed for balancing of ideas, while complex
sentences express dependency relationships e.g. cause and effect. A writer/speaker who intends to
blend balanced ideas with dependency relation at a stretch will use a compound-complex sentence.

3.5 Some other Syntactic Features

What we have implied in our discussion in this unit is that your stylistic analysis of the syntactic
features of a text should include the description of the group, the clause and the sentence. But in
addition to this, there are other syntactic tactics that a writer or speaker can engage in. Such
syntactic tactics include ellipsis, parallelism (i.e. repetition of a grammatical structure), references and
other grammatical ties such as co-ordination and subordination. You will learn more about this in unit
8 which deals with cohesion and coherence.

3.6 The Notion of Rankshifting

The units of grammar mentioned in 3.1 exhibit a hierarchical order. The order is also called the
English rank scale. It could be viewed from the ascending order perspective or the descending order
perspective. “A unit of a higher rank”, as Tomori (1977: 47) puts it “may rank shift, that is, go one or
more places down the scale to function in the next lower unit”. In the tradition of American linguistics,
Tomori notes that the rankshifting phenomenon is referred to as “down-grading”. The two units of
grammar that could rankshift are the group and the clause. The National Group for instance, can
rankshift in the Adverbial Group. Farinde and Ojo (2000: 49 – 50) itemize five manifestations of
rankshift: Clause can rankshift to operate at ‘q’ (qualifier) in the nominal group structure e.g. The
man (who drove the car) has run away.
 Clause can rankshift to operate as a whole nominal group (either at the subject position or the
complement position) e.g. (who stole the meat) is still unknown.

He liked (what she gave him).

Adverbial group can rankshift to operate at ‘q’ (qualifier) in the nominal group structure e.g.

The tree (by the roadside) will soon fall.

Nominal group can rankshift to operate as completive in a prepositional headed adverbial group
e.g.

The boy in (the class)) is sleeping.

Nominal group can rankshift as deictic in the nominal group structure. e.g. (The Vice-Chancellor’s)
office has been renovated.

3.7 The Grammatical Category of Voice

Voice as a grammatical category in relation to the Verbal Group relates to whether the subject
acts or is acted upon. Voice in this sense can be active or passive. When it is active, the subject of the
verb acts. Examples are:

• Mary killed a goat.

• John saw the boy.

In (1) above, Mary (the subject) performed the action, while in (2) John (the subject) performed
the action. Can you identify the entities on which the actions were performed? What do we call the
entity on which an action is performed?
In the passive voice, the action is performed on the subject. We can turn the examples (1) and
(2) above into passive as follows:

• A goat was killed by Mary.

• The boy was seen by John.

There are two types of passive: agented passive and agent- less passive. In the agented passive,
the agent of the action is indicated- it is introduced by the preposition “by”. Our examples (3) and
(4) show agented passive. With the agent- less passive, the agent is not indicated. Look at the
following:

• A goat was killed.

• The boy was seen.

In a text, a writer or speaker can choose between active and passive voice and when this is
the case, you should be able to explain the stylistic effect. The choice may relate to the desire to
express thematic meaning- that is, a way of organizing a message to indicate focus and/ or emphasis.
This explains the difference in the information structure between:

John saw the boy (active)

and
The boy was seen by John (passive).

The difference is illustrated below:

Theme Rheme
John saw the boy
The boy was seen by John

The theme indicates the “GIVEN” (i.e. what is already known) while the rheme states the “NEW” (i.e.
the new information). The active form of the sentence above can be taken as an answer to the
question: “Whom did John see?” Remember that in Chomsky’s (1965) Aspects model of
Transformal-Generative Grammar, both the active and the passive forms of a sentence are said to
have the same deep structure (i.e. meaning) despite their different surface structures, because
transformation is said to be meaning- preserving. However, in the Extended Standard Theory (EST)
of the grammar, a review of the Aspects model, there is the realization that the surface structure has
some input into semantic determination; hence, transformation may not altogether be meaning-
preserving.
CONCLUSION
Stylistic analysis at the syntactic level calls for a good understanding of the grammatical units
of group, clause and sentence and how they function in a text. In other words, the ability to identify
the units of grammar is not enough; one should be able to describe the stylistic significance of the
units.

SUMMARY
What we have demonstrated, so far, are the general syntactic features that can be looked at in
a text. However, the deployment of the features may not be exactly the same across the different genres
of literature and non-literary texts. For example, while sentence description may be productive in the
analysis of prose fiction, it may not be in poetry. Therefore, it is important for you to be familiar
with the form and the register of each text you study. You will learn more about register later in this
course.

TUTOR-MARKED ASSIGNMENT
1. What are the grammatical units relevant to a stylistic analysis at the syntactic level?
2. Mention and explain the elements of the English clause.
3. What is the structure of the English Nominal Group?
4. Undertake a stylistic analysis of the syntactic features of the following drama passage:

Drama Passage:

Pilkings: Joseph, are you a Christian or not?

Joseph: Yessir
Pilkings: Now Joseph, answer me on the honour of a Christian - What is supposed to be
going on in town tonight?
Joseph: Tonight sir? You mean that chief who is going to killing himself
Pilkings: You do mean he is going to kill somebody don’t you?
Joseph: No master. He will not kill anybody and no one will kill him. He will simply die
Jane: But why Joseph?
Joseph: It is native law and custom. The king die last month. Tonight is his burial. But
before they can bury him, the Elesin must die so as to accompany him to heaven.

[Soyinka, W. (1975), Death and the King’s Horseman. Ibadan: Spectrum. pp 26-
27].