Elamur Research⌕
☰
home / papers / 2018 / Synonymous Structures in English Syntax

Synonymous Structures in English Syntax

Paper · 2018 · Jemma Militonyan

Summary

This article is a theoretical review rather than an empirical study. It asks what counts as a syntactic synonym and how synonymy between constructions can be established. The author surveys definitions from Russian, Armenian, German, and American traditions. Some ground synonymy in shared grammatical meaning, others in shared content or in transformational equivalence between deep and surface structures, as in Chomsky's notion of cognitive synonymy. From these sources she distills five criteria, with interchangeability in an identical syntactic environment as the central test. She then catalogues English synonymous structures, illustrated with sentences from Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities. Examples include active vs. passive, sentences with or without introductory it/there, and finite clauses vs. non-finite equivalents (gerunds, infinitives, participles). Her conclusion is that syntactic synonyms keep the same predicate-argument structure and function but differ in grammatical form and in the speaker's subjective modality. Because of that difference, no grammatical synonymy is absolute, and switching between variants usually shifts style. The work matters as a principled inventory of meaning-preserving structural alternations.

Key points

  • The term "grammatical synonyms" is credited to A.M. Peshkovsky (1930), who divided them into morphological and syntactic types.
  • The five proposed criteria are:
    • substitutability in the same syntactic environment
    • identical semantic meaning despite different structure
    • matching grammatical meaning and syntactic function
    • a common overall structure
    • a large class of words able to fill the models
  • Active and passive count as synonyms only when all arguments are kept. An agentless passive does not qualify, even if the agent is recoverable from context.
  • Finite subject, object, attributive, and adverbial clauses have simple-sentence counterparts:
    • gerundial phrases
    • accusative + infinitive or participle
    • for-to infinitives
    • absolute participle constructions
  • Opposing views are also cited. Bolinger holds that any difference in form implies a difference in meaning. Piotrovsky treats syntactic variants as stylistic synonyms.

Interesting ideas

  • I1. Active and passive are equivalent only when the agent is overtly present, so a missing by-phrase breaks the synonymy rather than being silently restored.
  • I2. Substituting one construction for another in the same environment serves as the operational test of synonymy.
  • I3. A finite subordinate clause and its non-finite counterpart (gerund, accusative + infinitive, for-to infinitive, participle) encode the same proposition.
  • I4. Sentences with and without introductory it/there are treated as structural variants of one content.
  • I5. Synonymous constructions share propositional content but differ in style and speaker attitude, so the choice of variant itself carries information.

For Mova

How these ideas could serve Mova, our small open language model — its files, stages and tests:

  • I1 (frames): Map active and full passive to one who-did-what-to-whom frame, but leave the agent slot explicitly empty for agentless passives. Any contextual agent guess should be recorded as a separate, flagged inference.
  • I2 (learn): Build metamorphic evaluation pairs (active/passive with agent, there-insertion, clause vs. gerund) and require identical frames. Agentless passives serve as negative controls that should yield a different frame.
  • I3 (frames): Normalize ccomp/xcomp/advcl variants and gerundial or participial structures into the same proposition frame, so that "their withdrawing" and "that they withdraw" produce one event.
  • I4 (tree): Add explainable rules that relink expl subjects to the notional subject in UD trees, so later stages see the same predicate-argument structure for both forms.
  • I5 (back): Keep a style/variant tag on the meaning graph so the generator and the text → graph → text compressor can reproduce the original construction rather than a default one.

Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.

 Institutions

🎓Yerevan State UniversityYerevan · Armenia4 works · 10 citations

📚 Shelves 3The field of science this work belongs to (OpenAlex fields).Arts and Humanities · 9,296 worksLanguage and Linguistics · 9,206 worksPhilosophy · 211 works

🧭 Topics 2Research subjects and languages the work is about.English · 1,373 worksSyntax & grammar formalisms · 161 works

Cite

Cite as Jemma Militonyan. 2018. Synonymous Structures in English Syntax. Armenian Folia Anglistika 14.

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. DOI 10.46991/afa/2018.14.1-2.029

@inproceedings{militonyan2018synonymous,
  title = {{Synonymous Structures in English Syntax}},
  author = {Jemma Militonyan},
  booktitle = {Armenian Folia Anglistika 14},
  year = {2018},
  doi = {10.46991/afa/2018.14.1-2.029},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2018.14.1-2.029}
}

References

20 references, 0 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

  1. Bolinger, D. (1968) Aspects of Language. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World. devices. Knowledge of synonymic find
  2. Chomsky, N. (1965) Aspects of the Theory of Syntax . Cambridge: MIT. ↗
  3. Curme, G.O. (1931) A Grammar of the English Language. Syntax . New York: Heath and Co. find
  4. Galkina-Fedoruk, Ye.M. (1959) Sinonimy v russkom yazyke . / Russkiy yazyk v shkole. N 1.-S. 6-13. 41. M.: Uchpedgiz. find
  5. Jackson, H. & Amvela, E. Zé (2000) Words, Meaning and Vocabulary (An Introduction to Modern English Lexicology). London: Continuum. find
  6. Jespersen, O. (1933) Essentials of English Grammar . London: Allen & Unwin. find
  7. Kovtunova, I.I. (1955) O sintaksicheskoy sinonimike / I. I. Kovtunova // Voprosy kul'tury rechi. Vyp. 1. – S. 25–30. Moskva. find
  8. Milykh, M.K. (1945) Voprosy grammaticheskoy stilistiki. // K sinonimike chastey rechi. «Russkoe yazykovedenie». Vyp. 1. S. 31–96. Rostov n/D. find
  9. Peshkovskiy, A.M. (1930) Printsipy i priemy stilisticheskogo analiza i otsenki khudozhestvennoy prozy. // Voprosy metodiki rodnogo yazyka, lingvistiki i stilistiki. M.; L.: Gosizdat, S. 133–161. find
  10. Piotrovskiy, R.G. (1960) Ocherki po stilistike frantsuzskogo yazyka. Morfologiya i sintaksis Tekst . / R.G.Piotorvskiy. L.: Nauka. find
  11. Porzig, W. (1962) Das Wunder der Sprache , 3 Aufl. Bern: Franke Verlag. find
  12. Rikhter, G.I. (1937) Sintaksicheskaya sinonimika v sovremennom russkom literaturnom yazyke (stilisticheskie nablyudeniya) . // Russkiy yazyk v shkole. N 3. S. 14-33. find
  13. Sukhotin, V.P. (1960) Sintaksicheskaya sinonimika v sovremennom russkom yazyke. Glagolnye slovosochetaniya . Moskva. find
  14. Trier, J. (1932) Der Deutsche Wortschatz im Sinnbezirk des Verstandes , Hdlb: Carl Winter Universitatverlag. find
  15. Wales, K. (2014) A Dictionary of Stylistics. 3 rd edition. Routledge, New York. ↗
  16. Wells. R. (1957) To What Extent Can Meaning be Said to be Structural . / Reports for the eighth international congress of Linguists. Oslo: Oslo University Press, pp.216-232. find
  17. Yezekyan, L.K. (2003) Hayots lezvi votchagitutyun. Yerevan: YPH. find
  18. Zhilin, I.M. (1974) Sinonimika v sintaksise sovremennogo nemetskogo yazyka . Krasnodar. find
  19. Parnasyan, N.A. (1970) Sharahyusakan homanishnery zhamanakakits hayerenum. Yerevan: HSSH GA hrat. find
  20. Poghosyan, P. (1959) Bayi yeghanakayin dzeveri votchakan kirarutyunnery ardi hayerenum. Yerevan: YPH. Sources of Data: 1. Dickens, Ch. (1989) A Tale of Two Cities. New York: Bantam Dell. Անգլերենի շարահյուսության հոմանշային կառույցները Հոմանշությունը լեզվի հարստացման ամենակարևոր աղբյուրներից է և սերտորեն կապված է ոճագիտությանը, խոսքի մշակույթին, լեզվի փոփոխմանն ու զարգացմանն առնչվող հարցերի հետ: Լեզվագիտական գրականության մեջ ‹‹հոմանշություն›› տերմինը ավելի ու ավելի հաճա-խակի է գործածվում լեզվական տարբեր տարրերի՝ հնչյունների, բառա-ձևերի, ձևույթների և շարահյուսական կառույցների հետ: Քերականական հոմանշության վերաբերյալ ուսումնասիրություն-ներում վերջին զարգա-ցումները հանգեցրել են շարահյուսական հոմանշության շուրջ նոր հետաքրքրության առաջացմանը: Սույն հոդվածի նպատակն է ուսումնա-սիրել շարահյուսական հոմանշության վերաբերյալ հետազոտություն-ները՝ հաշվի առնելով ‹‹շարահյուսական հոմանշության›› սահմանման համար տարբեր լեզվաբանների մոտեցումները, որոշել հոմանշության չափանիշը և քննել հոմանիշ շարահյուսական կառույցներն անգլերենում: find

Updated

↑ back to top

This page in Markdown → https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/militonyan-2018-synonymous-structures-english-syntax/