Practical Grammar 13

When it rains, it pours

Implement the analysis of weather verbs that is given on p. 107 of the textbook. Your grammar should predict the following facts:

(1) It rained.
(2) *Ingrid rained

For (1), your grammar should produce the Argument Structure below as the only grammatical output:

As (1) shows, weather verbs demand the meaningless form it as their SUBJ. Such meaningless words are called expletives. Thus, English has both an expletive it (= meaningless) and a referential it (a third person singular pronoun, as in I saw it.

Existential sentences

English has a second expletive, namely the word there in sentences like (3):

(3) There arose a storm

These sentences are called existential sentences, because they express that an instance of the concept named by the postverbal NP exists or comes about. Sentence (3), for instance, says that a storm came into existence. This can also be expressed by "A storm arose", but (3) stresses the existential aspect more strongly.

Existential sentences require the expletive there as a SUBJ, because the existence is expressed by the verb arise and there contributes no meaning to the sentence. In this usage, there is a noun. In its usage as a locative element (which we are not dealing with here), it is an adverb.

From what was said above, the constrast between (3) and (4) follows. Implement these two sentences:

(4) *Ingrid arose a storm

Sentence (3) should get a single Argument Structure, namely the following one:

Weather verbs and existential verbs in functional control constructions

Now, we are going to test whether your solution to the exercise in Unit 9 and your solutions to the two problems above work together correctly.

Add the following test items to your grammar and parse all items:

(5) *There bought olives
(6) *Ingrid rained
(7) *There rained
(8) *Ingrid arose a storm
(9) *It arose a storm
(10) *It tried to rain
(11) *There tried to arise a storm
(12) It seemed to rain
(13) There seemed to arise a storm

The data above together with the data from Unit 9 illustrate the following generalizations:

a. The verb buy tolerates as its SUBJ the word Ingrid but not the expletives it and there.
b. The verb rain tolerates as its SUBJ the expletive it but not the words Ingrid and the expletive there.
c. The verb arise in its existential use tolerates as its SUBJ the expletive there but not the words Ingrid and the expletive it.
d. The verb buy can serve as the head of the complement of the control verb try, but the verbs rain and arise cannot. In other words, you cannot embed a verb under try if that verb requires an expletive as its subject.
e. All three verbs buy, rain and arise can serve as the head of the complement of the raising verb seem.

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