Small Clauses

Linguistics 222

A small clause is the syntactic equivalent of the basic proposition. Small clauses occur in sever constructions. Some examples are shown below. The small clauses are enclosed in square brackets. The clause called small clause is usually the complement of a lexical verb (a cognitive verb):

  1. John considers [ Mary intelligent ].
  2. Bob thinks [ Sal an exceptional person].
  3. Mary found [ syntax an exceptionally hard subject ].
  4. Egbert believes [ Letitia a fool].
  5. Pauline prefers [her steaks rare].
  6. Zachary discovered [his son proud of his parents] after all.
  7. Bill saw [ Jacqueline play the piano ].
  8. Polly saw [ a deer in the park ].
  9. Mabel heard [ Sally scream at her kids ].
  10. Kyle felt [ an arachnid climb up his arm ].
  11. Someone smelled [ the toast burn in the toaster ].
  12. Edith tasted [ ice cream melt in her mouth ].
  13. George remembers [Agnes burning the stew ].
  14. Reid noticed [ Carmen throwing a memorable fit].

If a normal clause contains a copular verb (be), the copular verb is omitted in the small clause:

  1. Mary is intelligent.
  2. Sal is an exceptional person.
  3. Syntax is an exceptionally hard subject.
  4. Letitia is a fool.
  5. A deer is in the park.
  6. Her steaks are rare.
  7. His son is proud of his parents.

Note also that the ending '-s' is missing in the verb when the subject is third person singular. This ending occurs in normal clauses:

  1. Jacqueline plays the piano.
  2. Sally screams at her kids.
  3. An arachnid climb sup his arm.
  4. The toast burns in the toaster.
  5. Ice cream melts in her mouth.

And in the last two sentences the verb ending in '-ing' is in the progressive aspect. The auxiliary verb 'be' is missing here, too. It occurs in normal clauses:

  1. Agnes is burning the stew.
  2. Carmen is throwing a memorable fit

These two facts are typical of small clauses. The first NP in the small clause is a subject. The evidence for this depends on materials covered in L322.

Note that the verb, adjective, or preposition in the small clause assigns the argument in the subject positon and assigns a theta role to it, which corresponds with the same in major clauses:

  1. <Mary> intelligent. (theme)
  2. <his son> proud <of his parents>. (experiencer, theme/source)
  3. <deer> in <the park> (theme, location)
  4. <Sally> scream <at her kids>.

The small clauses is dominated by S:

 

To return to course outline Click here.