Editing English language (section)

=== Syntax ===

[[File:Constituent structure analysis English sentence.svg|right|thumb|In the English sentence ''The cat sat on the mat'', the subject is ''the cat'' (a noun phrase), the verb is ''sat'', and ''on the mat'' is a prepositional phrase (composed of a noun phrase ''the mat'' headed by the preposition ''on''). The tree describes the structure of the sentence.]]

Modern English syntax language is moderately [[Isolating language|analytic]].{{sfn|McArthur|1992|pp=64, 610–611}} It has developed features such as [[English modal verb|modal verbs]] and [[word order]] as resources for conveying meaning. [[Auxiliary verb]]s mark constructions such as questions, negative polarity, the [[Grammatical voice|passive voice]] and progressive [[grammatical aspect|aspect]].

==== Basic constituent order ====

English word order has moved from the Germanic [[V2 word order|verb-second (V2) word order]] to being almost exclusively [[subject–verb–object]] (SVO).{{sfn|König|1994|page=553}} The combination of SVO order and use of auxiliary verbs often creates clusters of two or more verbs at the centre of the sentence, such as ''he had hoped to try to open it''.

In most sentences, English only marks grammatical relations through word order.{{sfn|König|1994|page=550}} The subject constituent precedes the verb and the object constituent follows it. The example below demonstrates how the grammatical roles of each constituent are marked only by the position relative to the verb:

{| style="text-align: center;"
|-
| ''The dog'' || ''bites'' || ''the man''
|-
| S || V || O
|-
| ''The man'' || ''bites'' || ''the dog''
|-
| S || V || O
|}

An exception is found in sentences where one of the constituents is a pronoun, in which case it is doubly marked, both by word order and by case inflection, where the subject pronoun precedes the verb and takes the subjective case form, and the object pronoun follows the verb and takes the objective case form.<ref>{{cite web |title=Cases of Nouns and Pronouns |url=http://guidetogrammar.org/grammar/cases.htm |website=Guide to Grammar and Writing |access-date=24 November 2019 |archive-date=16 November 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191116081858/http://guidetogrammar.org/grammar/cases.htm |url-status=live }}</ref> The example below demonstrates this double marking in a sentence where both object and subject are represented with a third person singular masculine pronoun:

{| style="text-align: center;"
|-
| ''He'' || ''hit'' || ''him''
|-
| S || V || O
|}

[[Indirect object]]s (IO) of ditransitive verbs can be placed either as the first object in a double object construction (S V IO O), such as ''I gave <u>Jane</u> the book'' or in a prepositional phrase, such as ''I gave the book <u>to Jane</u>''.{{sfn|König|1994|page=551}}

==== Clause syntax ====
{{Main|English clause syntax}}

In English a sentence may be composed of one or more clauses, that may, in turn, be composed of one or more phrases (e.g. Noun Phrases, Verb Phrases, and Prepositional Phrases). A clause is built around a verb and includes its constituents, such as any NPs and PPs. Within a sentence, there is always at least one main clause (or matrix clause) whereas other clauses are subordinate to a main clause. Subordinate clauses may function as arguments of the verb in the main clause. For example, in the phrase ''I think (that) you are lying'', the main clause is headed by the verb ''think'', the subject is ''I'', but the object of the phrase is the subordinate clause ''(that) you are lying''. The subordinating conjunction ''that'' shows that the clause that follows is a subordinate clause, but it is often omitted.{{sfn|Miller|2002|pages=60–69}} [[Relative clause]]s are clauses that function as a modifier or specifier to some constituent in the main clause: For example, in the sentence ''I saw the letter that you received today'', the relative clause ''that you received today'' specifies the meaning of the word ''letter'', the object of the main clause. Relative clauses can be introduced by the pronouns ''who'', ''whose'', ''whom'' and ''which'' as well as by ''that'' (which can also be omitted.){{sfn|König|1994|page=545}} In contrast to many other Germanic languages there are no major differences between word order in main and subordinate clauses.{{sfn|König|1994|page=557}}

==== Auxiliary verb constructions ====
{{Main|Do-support|Subject–auxiliary inversion}}

English syntax relies on auxiliary verbs for many functions including the expression of tense, aspect, and mood. Auxiliary verbs form main clauses, and the main verbs function as heads of a subordinate clause of the auxiliary verb. For example, in the sentence ''the dog did not find its bone'', the clause ''find its bone'' is the complement of the negated verb ''did not''. [[Subject–auxiliary inversion]] is used in many constructions, including focus, negation, and interrogative constructions.

The verb ''do'' can be used as an auxiliary even in simple declarative sentences, where it usually serves to add emphasis, as in "I ''did'' shut the fridge." However, in the negated and inverted clauses referred to above, it is used because the rules of English [[syntax]] permit these constructions only when an auxiliary is present. [[Modern English]] does not allow the addition of the negating adverb ''not'' to an ordinary [[finite verb|finite]] lexical verb, as in ''*I know not''—it can only be added to an auxiliary (or [[copular verb|copular]]) verb, hence if there is no other auxiliary present when negation is required, the auxiliary ''do'' is used, to produce a form like ''I do not (don't) know.'' The same applies in clauses requiring inversion, including most questions—inversion must involve the subject and an auxiliary verb, so it is not possible to say ''*Know you him?''; grammatical rules require ''Do you know him?''{{sfn|Huddleston|Pullum|2002|page=114}}

Negation is done with the adverb ''not'', which precedes the main verb and follows an auxiliary verb. A contracted form of not ''-n't'' can be used as an enclitic attaching to auxiliary verbs and to the copula verb ''to be''. Just as with questions, many negative constructions require the negation to occur with do-support, thus in Modern English ''I don't know him'' is the correct answer to the question ''Do you know him?'', but not ''*I know him not'', although this construction may be found in older English.{{sfn|Huddleston|Pullum|2002|pages=786–790}}

Passive constructions also use auxiliary verbs. A passive construction rephrases an active construction in such a way that the object of the active phrase becomes the subject of the passive phrase, and the subject of the active phrase is either omitted or demoted to a role as an oblique argument introduced in a prepositional phrase. They are formed by using the past participle either with the auxiliary verb ''to be'' or ''to get'', although not all varieties of English allow the use of passives with ''get''. For example, putting the sentence ''she sees him'' into the passive becomes ''he is seen (by her)'', or ''he gets seen (by her)''.{{sfn|Miller|2002|pages=26–27}}

==== Questions ====

Both [[yes–no question]]s and [[wh-question|''wh''-questions]] in English are mostly formed using [[subject–auxiliary inversion]] (''Am I going tomorrow?'', ''Where can we eat?''), which may require [[do-support|''do''-support]] (''Do you like her?'', ''Where did he go?''). In most cases, [[interrogative word]]s (''wh''-words; e.g. ''what'', ''who'', ''where'', ''when'', ''why'', ''how'') appear in a [[Wh-movement|fronted position]]. For example, in the question ''What did you see?'', the word ''what'' appears as the first constituent despite being the [[grammatical object]] of the sentence. (When the ''wh''-word is the subject or forms part of the subject, no inversion occurs: ''Who saw the cat?''.) [[Prepositional phrases]] can also be fronted when they are the question's theme, e.g. ''To whose house did you go last night?''. The personal interrogative pronoun ''[[who (pronoun)|who]]'' is the only interrogative pronoun to still show inflection for case, with the variant ''whom'' serving as the objective case form, although this form may be going out of use in many contexts.{{sfn|Huddleston|Pullum|2002|pp=7–8}}

==== Discourse level syntax ====
While English is a subject-prominent language, at the discourse level it tends to use a [[Topic and comment|topic-comment]] structure, where the known information (topic) precedes the new information (comment). Because of the strict SVO syntax, the topic of a sentence generally has to be the grammatical subject of the sentence. In cases where the topic is not the grammatical subject of the sentence, it is often promoted to subject position through syntactic means. One way of doing this is through a passive construction, ''the girl was stung by the bee''. Another way is through a [[cleft sentence]] where the main clause is demoted to be a complement clause of a copula sentence with a [[dummy subject]] such as ''it'' or ''there'', e.g. ''it was the girl that the bee stung'', ''there was a girl who was stung by a bee''.{{sfn|Huddleston|Pullum|2002|pages=1365–70}} Dummy subjects are also used in constructions where there is no grammatical subject such as with impersonal verbs (e.g., ''it is raining'') or in existential clauses (''there are many cars on the street''). Through the use of these complex sentence constructions with informationally vacuous subjects, English is able to maintain both a topic-comment sentence structure and a SVO syntax.

[[Focus (linguistics)|Focus constructions]] emphasise a particular piece of new or salient information within a sentence, generally through allocating the main sentence level stress on the focal constituent. For example, ''the girl was stung by <u>a bee</u>'' (emphasising it was a bee and not, for example, a wasp that stung her), or ''<u>The girl</u> was stung by a bee'' (contrasting with another possibility, for example that it was the boy).{{sfn|Huddleston|Pullum|2002|page=1370}} Topic and focus can also be established through syntactic dislocation, either preposing or postposing the item to be focused on relative to the main clause. For example, ''That girl over there, she was stung by a bee'', emphasises the girl by preposition, but a similar effect could be achieved by postposition, ''she was stung by a bee, that girl over there'', where reference to the girl is established as an "afterthought".{{sfn|Huddleston|Pullum|2002|page=1366}}

[[Cohesion (linguistics)|Cohesion]] between sentences is achieved through the use of deictic pronouns as [[anaphora (linguistics)|anaphora]] (e.g. ''that is exactly what I mean'' where ''that'' refers to some fact known to both interlocutors, or ''then'' used to locate the time of a narrated event relative to the time of a previously narrated event).{{sfn|Halliday|Hasan|1976}} [[Discourse marker]]s such as ''oh'', ''so'' or ''well'', also signal the progression of ideas between sentences and help to create cohesion. Discourse markers are often the first constituents in sentences. Discourse markers are also used for [[Stance (linguistics)|stance taking]] in which speakers position themselves in a specific attitude towards what is being said, for example, ''no way is that true!'' (the idiomatic marker ''no way!'' expressing disbelief), or ''boy! I'm hungry'' (the marker ''boy'' expressing emphasis). While discourse markers are particularly characteristic of informal and spoken registers of English, they are also used in written and formal registers.{{sfn|Schiffrin|1988}}