NON-CLAUSAL ELEMENTS

DIANA BANITOIU LAURA NISIPASU ANCA TRANCA ANDREEA VIDRIGHIN

Prof. Dr. Christiane Meierkord

NON-CLAUSAL ELEMENTS
1.1 CLAUSE MATERIAL A clause is a unit structured around a verb phrase. The verb in the verb phrase can denote an action (drive, run, shout, etc) or a state (know, seem, resemble, etc.). The verb phrase can take one or more elements which may denote the participants involved in the action, state, etc. (agent, affected, recipient, etc), the attendant circumstances (time, place, manner, etc.), the attitude of the speaker/writer to the message.These are the clause elements (together with the verb phrase). The clause elements are expressed by phrases or by embedded clauses. E.g: I was more independent than any farmer in Concord, for I was not anchored to a house or farm, but could follow the bent of my genius, which is a very crooked one, every moment."1 (Henry David Thoreau) 1.2NON-CLAUSAL MATERIAL

Non-clausal material is defined as the parts of the text which do not consist of clauses. The Non-Clausal elements resist analysis in terms of combinations of subject and verb, or subject_verb_object, etc: Chris: Its a nice area. Doris: Bardwell Park. Mark: Is it? Gary: Its pretty dead. Its only a small shopping centre. Chris: Oh yeah, well you dont really go to that shopping centre.Where I live its the worst shopping centre in Sydney. They opened a new dress shop and I could see the pink carpet going in and all and I thought gee a nice trendy dress shop. Thank goodness. Cause theres nothing there. You know what it is? A middle-class boutique for the middle-age set. Gary: Yuck. And everybody wears brown boots. Doris: Yeah? Chris: Nothing worse. You know too, too dressy.2 We may conclude that Non-clausal material consists on the one hand of a large class of items called inserts (Biber), which include response words (Oh yeah), discourse markers (well), back-channel devices (yeah?), and interjections (gee, thank goodness, English Grammar- A university Course; Angela Downing, Phillip Locke; Routledge , London, 2006, p 27
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Publishing

Conversation : From Description to Pedagogy; Scott Thornbury, Diana Slade; Publishing Cambridge University Press, New York, 2006, p 77
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yuck). 3We may define the inserts as stand-alone items, which do not enter into syntactic relations with other structures. Besides inserts we encounter also a second class of nonclausal material , which consists of isolated phrases or clausal fragments which are capable of forming elements of clause-and-sentence structures.4 Biber calls them syntactic nonclausal units .Examples include answers to questions (A middle-class boutique for the middle-age set), repetitions or elaborations of previous content (Bardwell Park), and evaluative comments (nothing worse).5 Therefore we conclude that non-clausal elements can be expressed by means of:
a) adverbial phrase - A word group with an adverb as its head. This adverb may be accompanied by modifiers or qualifiers. E.g: When do we have to pay the rent? As quickly as possible. b) adjective phrase - A word group with an adjective as its head. This adjective may be accompanied by modifiers, determiners, and/or qualifiers. Adjective phrases modify nouns. E.g : What was the colour of the briefcase? Dark brown c)prepositional phrase - A group of words made up of a preposition, its object, and any of the object's modifiers. Prepositional phrases can modify nouns, verbs, phrases, and complete clauses. E.g: Where was the deep-dish berry cobbler? On the counter near the stove in a silvery pan. d) Noun phrase-A word group with a noun or pronoun as its head. The noun head can be accompanied by modifiers, determiners (such as the, a, her), and/or complements.

E.g: What are you wearing? A new dress. a), b), c), d) form the area of syntactic non-clausal units . e) back-channel devices -a noise, gesture, expression, or word used by a listener to indicate that he or she is paying attention to a speaker. We demonstrate our attention by giving backchannel signals, such as yes, uh-huh, mhm, and other very short comments. f) Discourse marker-a discourse marker is a word or phrase that is relatively syntax independent and does not change the meaning of the sentence, and has a somewhat empty meaning.Examples of discourse markers include the particles "oh", "well", "now", "then", "you know", and "I mean", and the connectives "so", "because", "and", "but", and "or" .6 Conversation : From Description to Pedagogy; Scott Thornbury, Diana Slade; Publishing Cambridge University Press, New York, 2006, p 78 4 Conversation : From Description to Pedagogy; Scott Thornbury, Diana Slade; Publishing Cambridge University Press, New York, 2006, p 78 5 Conversation : From Description to Pedagogy; Scott Thornbury, Diana Slade; Publishing Cambridge University Press, New York, 2006, p 78 6 http://www.englishforums.com/English/FragmentedSentences/bvqrd/post.htm
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g)interjections- Ah!; Ouch!; Yuck; Phew!;Hurrah e),f),g) form the area of inserts.

In this short exchange, syntactic non-clausal units are italicized, whereas inserts are underlined: Jessie: Can I borrow a biro, please? Di: Pardon? Jessie: A pen. Di: Yeah. Judy: How are you Jessie? Jessie: Good. How are you? Judy: Fine, not bad.7 Vocatives that means that the speaker addresses an interlocutor by name, such as Jessie, or by an endearment (sweetie), or some other familiar term (dad, mate) are considered to be syntactic non-clausal units, because they can be incorporated into sentence structure (Jessie didnt come home last night). Inserts, however, do not enter in syntactical structures with other parts of a sentence. Biber uses the term C-units for both clausal and non-clausal units, and considers that such non-clausal elements are more frequent in spoken language. Non- clausal elements can appear before or after after the body of the message, therefore they are known as heads and tails.8

1.3 Conclusion:
If we analyse a complex sentence, we will find both clausal and non-clausal elements. Non clausal elements appear, however, in spoken language rather than in written language and they are expressed by means of a fragmented phrase , that is syntactic non-clausal units and by inserts. The difference is one of degree, however, rather than absolute. In context, ellipted material can often be recovered. With other units, such as fax in the example Fax. Worth making a song and dance about., it is not possible to recover any material with certainty. Consequently this unit cannot in this context be considered clausal.

Conversation : From Description to Pedagogy; Scott Thornbury, Diana Slade; Publishing Cambridge University Press, New York, 2006, p 78
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Conversation : From Description to Pedagogy; Scott Thornbury, Diana Slade; Publishing Cambridge University Press, New York, 2006, p 80
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Descriptive Adequancy of Early Modern English Grammars; Uto Dons; Publishing Mouton de Gruyter, New York, 1971, p 140
An Introduction to English Grammar; Sydney Greenbaum, Gerald Nelson; Publishing

Longman , Great Britain, 2002, p 126

Conversation : From Description to Pedagogy; Scott Thornbury, Diana Slade; Publishing

Cambridge University Press, New York, 2006, p 75-81

Grammar of Spoken and Written English ; Douglas Biber, Stig Johansson; Publishing

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English Grammar- A university Course; Angela Downing, Phillip Locke;

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Routledge , London, 2006, p 27

Pharetenticals; Nicole Dehe; John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2007, p 34. http://grammar.about.com/od/c/g/clauseterm.html http://www.google.de/url?

sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&ved=0CDoQFjAD&url=http%3A%2F %2Fenglish6uftm20102.wikispaces.com%2Ffile%2Fview%2FExploring%2Bthe %2Bgrammar%2Bof%2Bthe %2Bclause.ppt&ei=SLOWUP7oOOjN4QShu4DwAQ&usg=AFQjCNEPoGSOg1xlQIYAae 9kYRsh21wrMw

http://www.englishforums.com/English/FragmentedSentences/bvqrd/post.htm English Grammar In Use; Raymond Murphy; Publishing Cambridge University Press,

New York, 2004, p 196