In linguistics

Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....

, Relational Grammar (RG) is a syntactic theory which argues that primitive grammatical relations provide the ideal means to state syntactic rules in universal terms. Relational grammar began as an alternative to transformational grammar

Transformational grammar

In linguistics, a transformational grammar or transformational-generative grammar is a generative grammar, especially of a natural language, that has been developed in the Chomskyan tradition of phrase structure grammars...

.

Term Relations

In Relational Grammar, constituents

Constituent (linguistics)

In syntactic analysis, a constituent is a word or a group of words that functions as a single unit within a hierarchical structure. The analysis of constituent structure is associated mainly with phrase structure grammars, although dependency grammars also allow sentence structure to be broken down...

 that serve as the arguments to predicates

Predicate (grammar)

There are two competing notions of the predicate in theories of grammar. Traditional grammar tends to view a predicate as one of two main parts of a sentence, the other being the subject, which the predicate modifies. The other understanding of predicates is inspired from work in predicate calculus...

 are numbered. This numbering system corresponds loosely to the notions of subject

Subject (grammar)

The subject is one of the two main constituents of a clause, according to a tradition that can be tracked back to Aristotle and that is associated with phrase structure grammars; the other constituent is the predicate. According to another tradition, i.e...

, direct object and indirect object. The numbering scheme is subject → (1), direct object → (2) and indirect object → (3). A schematic representation of a clause in this formalism might look like:

1	P	3	2
John	gave	Mary	a kiss

Universals

One of the components of RG theory is a set of linguistic universal

Linguistic universal

A linguistic universal is a pattern that occurs systematically across natural languages, potentially true for all of them. For example, All languages have nouns and verbs, or If a language is spoken, it has consonants and vowels. Research in this area of linguistics is closely tied to the study of...

s stated in terms of the numbered roles presented above. Such a universal is the Stratal Uniqueness Law which states that there can be "at most one 1, 2, and 3 per stratum.

Further reading

• Blake, Barry J. (1990). Relational grammar. London: Routledge.
• Perlmutter, David M. (1980). Relational grammar. In E. A. Moravcsik & J. R. Wirth (Eds.), Syntax and semantics: Current approaches to syntax (Vol. 13, pp. 195-229). New York: Academic Press.
• Perlmutter, David M. (Ed.). (1983). Studies in relational grammar 1. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
• Perlmutter, David M.; & Rosen, Carol G. (Eds.). (1984). Studies in relational grammar 2. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
• Postal, Paul M.; & Joseph, Brian D. (Eds.). (1990). Studies in relational grammar 3. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Sources

• Johnson, David E. (1974/1979). Toward a Theory of Relationally-based Grammar. Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics Series, ed. Jorge Hankamer. NY: Garland Publishing, Inc. ISBN 978-0824096823
• Johnson, David E. and Paul M. Postal (1980). Arc Pair Grammar. Princeton: PUP. ISBN 0-691-08270-7
• Newmeyer, Frederick (1980). Linguistics in America. New York: Academic Press. ISBN 978-9027712905
• Postal, Paul M. (1974). On Raising - An Inquiry into One Rule of English Grammar and Its Theoretical Implications. Mass.: MIT Press. ISBN 978-0262660419

External links

• RG SIL bibliography