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In linguistics, a pro-form is a type of function word or expression (linguistics) that stands in for (expresses the same content as) another word, phrase, clause or sentence where the meaning is recoverable from the context. [1] They are used either to avoid repetitive expressions or in quantification (limiting the variables of a proposition).
Tests for constituents are diagnostics used to identify sentence structure. There are numerous tests for constituents that are commonly used to identify the constituents of English sentences. 15 of the most commonly used tests are listed next: 1) coordination (conjunction), 2) pro-form substitution (replacement), 3) topicalization (fronting), 4) do-so-substitution, 5) one-substitution, 6 ...
The ICA for a given sentence is arrived at usually by way of constituency tests. Constituency tests (e.g. topicalization, clefting, pseudoclefting, pro-form substitution, answer ellipsis, passivization, omission, coordination, etc.) identify the constituents, large and small, of English sentences. Two illustrations of the manner in which ...
English function words may be spelled with fewer than three letters; e.g., 'I', 'an', 'in', while non-function words usually are spelled with three or more (e.g., 'eye', 'Ann', 'inn'). The following is a list of the kind of words considered to be function words with English examples. They are all uninflected in English unless marked otherwise:
Some examples: replacing "the taxi driver" with the pronoun "he" or "two girls" with "they". Another example can be found in formulaic sequences such as "as stated previously" or "the aforementioned". Cataphoric reference is the opposite of anaphora: a reference forward as opposed to backward in the discourse. Something is introduced in the ...
Thus, when a pro-form precedes its antecedent, the antecedent is not literally an antecedent, but rather it is a postcedent, post-meaning 'after; behind'. The following examples, wherein the pro-forms are bolded and their postcedents are underlined, illustrate this distinction: a. When it is ready, I'll have a cup of coffee. - Noun as postcedent b.
A substitution table is used while teaching structures of English. [1] [2] Substitution tables were invented by Harold E. Palmer, [3] who defines substitution as "the process by which any authentic sentence may be multiplied indefinitely by substituting for any of its words or word-groups others of the same grammatical family and within certain semantic limits".
Many languages use a replacement verb as a pro-verb to avoid repetition: English "do" (for example, "I like pie, and so does he"), French: faire, Swedish: göra. [2] The parallels between the roles of pronouns and pro-verbs on language are "striking": both are anaphoric and coreferential, able to replace very complex syntactic structures.