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Descriptive statement and serial relationship

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2026

Randolph Quirk
Randolph Quirk*
Affiliation:
University College London
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Extract

When the aims and methods of the Survey of English Usage were preliminarily drafted, analysis was envisaged as focussing upon ‘the plotting of variables’. The purpose of the present paper is to consider what types of variable need to be distinguished and what kinds of relevance the variables have for descriptive statement.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 41 , Issue 2: April-June , June 1965 , pp. 205 - 217
Copyright
Copyright © 1965 by Linguistic Society of America

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References

1 R. Quirk, ‘Towards a description of English usage’, TPS 1960 51.

2 I am grateful to several colleagues, notably H. T. Carvell, D. Davy, J. Godfrey, S. Greenbaum, J. Mulholland, and J. Svartvik, for help and criticism.

3 The arguments for and against taking negative correspondences into consideration are conveniently summarised in R. R. Sokal and P. H. A. Sneath, Principles of numerical taxonomy 128–31 (San Francisco, 1963), modifying Sneath's earlier views as expressed in ‘Some thoughts on bacterial classification’, J. of general microbiology 17.194 (1957), and ‘The application of computers to taxonomy’, ibid. 202; see also A. Ellegård, ‘Statistical measurement of linguistic relationship’, Lg. 35.136 ff. (1959). The question of applying taxonomic procedures in linguistic analysis is examined in J. Svartvik and H. T. Carvell, ‘Linguistic classification and numerical taxonomy’ (mimeograph, 1964).

4 Briefly discussed in Quirk, ‘Substitutions and syntactic research’, Archivum linguisticum 10.37–42 (1958); cf. also TPS 1960 59 f.

5 Cf M. A. K. Halliday on ‘microclasses’ in ‘Class in relation to the axes of chain and choice in language’, Linguistics 2.11 (1963).

6 ‘Categories of the theory of grammar’, Word 17.272 (1961).

7 Awareness of an SV degree of identity distinct from SVX is apparently what permits special stylistic effect in such an utterance as My father drank—so my mother ate. An experiment in establishing degrees of identity by investigating speakers' implicit awareness of ‘sames’ is reported in R. Quirk and D. Crystal, ‘On scales of contrast in connected English speech’ (mimeograph, 1963), to appear in the J. R. Firth memorial volume.

8 See especially his Generality, gradience, and the all-or-none (The Hague, 1961).

9 Cf K. L. Pike, ‘Dimensions of grammatical constructions’, Lg. 38.221–44 (1962), and R. E. Longacre, Grammar discovery procedures esp. 59 and 139 f. (The Hague, 1964).

10 For example, cf the recent accounts in W. F. Twaddell, The English verb auxiliaries (Providence, 1960); B. M. H. Strang, Modern English structure, esp. Ch. 8 (London, 1962); W. Diver, ‘The chronological system of the English verb’, Word 19.141–81 (1963); M. Joos, The English verb: Form and meanings (Madison, 1964); and F. R. Palmer, A linguistic study of the English verb (London, 1965).

11 Quirk and Crystal, op.cit.

12 A. Martinet, ‘Réflexions sur la phrase’, Language and society 117 (Copenhagen, 1961).

13 A similar approach is outlined by H. Hiz, who speaks of sentence affiliation and of sentences entering ‘a set of related sequences at the same sequence’ or of being ‘congrammatical’ by virtue of other sets of related sequences: ‘Congrammaticality, batteries of transformations and grammatical categories’, Proceedings of symposia in applied mathematics 12.47 (Providence, 1961). Computer programs for mechanically sorting and clumping distinctive features so as to show the kind and extent of interrelationship between grammatical structures are discussed by Svartvik and Carvell, op. cit.

14 Cf R. B. Lees, The grammar of English nominalizations 63 (Bloomington, 1961).

15 R. Jakobson, ‘Linguistics and communication theory’, Proceedings of symposia in applied mathematics 12.248 (Providence, 1961).

16 Note that It's too hot to eat has been taken as demonstrating ‘the existence of overlapping series with eat a member of more than one such series’ by T. F. Mitchell, ‘Some English phrasal types’ (mimeograph, 1964), to appear in the J. R. Firth memorial volume.

17 Sneath, ‘Some thoughts on bacterial classification’, loc.cit. 187, 196.

18 ‘Linguistic elements and their relations’, Lg. 37.52 (1961).

19 Proceedings of symposia in applied mathematics 12.220–36 (Providence, 1961).

20 ‘Syntactic blends and other matters’, Lg. 37.366–81 (1961).

21 G. A. Miller, ‘Some psychological studies of grammar’, American psychologist 17.756 (1962).

22 For a full consideration of the problems presented by the English passive, see Svartvik's forthcoming book, On voice in the English verb (The Hague, 1965).

23 Cf. N. Chomsky, Third Texas conference on problems of linguistic analysis 172 (Austin, 1962).

24 ‘A multiply ambiguous adjectival construction in English’, Lg. 36.207–21 (1960).