TASK 1: Victor Requena Requena
1.- Text:
(1) This spring, I received a long distance telephone call from Dean Samuel Miller. (2)
A S P Od
He was in Denmark. (3)Three days later, Dean Miller was dead. (4) When I heard the
S P AC A S P Cs ACl
sad news, I began to think about the way he had influenced me, especially during my
S P Od ACl
theological training here at Harvard Divinity School.
(5) One of my most vivid memories was a point which he emphasized in his class on
S P Cs
Religion and Literature. (6) Sam Miller felt strongly that in our modern 20th century two
S P A Od
of the most profound and important experiences of human life are becoming more and
more insulated from everyday existence. (7) This two experiences, birth and death, have
S P
the potential for affecting the character and quality of the rest of life.
Od
From Psychedelic Review, Mystical Experience in the Human Encounter With Death.
i. Analyzing the sentences in the text we can discover some of the properties
of its syntactic constituents such as optionality, position … We will
enumerate clause constituents from the most central to the most peripheral.
• Predicator:
• As we see they are obligatory in all cases. Any of them can be
removed, if we deleted any of them, the sentence would be
ungrammatical. It would have no sense. For example: sentence (2)
would have no sense if we don’t use the verb: *He in Denmark.
• They determine the type of clause, since each of them require
different complementation (Od, Oi, Cs, Co, A). For example: in
sentence (1), the verb “receive” is transitive, so it needs the presence
of an object “a telephone call”. These clauses would be incomplete if
one of these obligatory complements is omitted: *This spring, I
received.
• They are always realized by Verb Phrases.
• They determine the finite / non-finite character of the clause.
Consequently, finite verbs in the text such as received (1), was (2,
3,5), heard (4), began (4), emphasized (5), felt (6), are becoming (6),
have (7) make these main clauses, whereas non-finite verbs such as
to think (4) or affecting (7) determines their subordination.
• It agrees in number with the Subject.
• Subject:
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