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Playing around in my head with the different positions that a subject, verb, direct object, and indirect object can be positioned in one sentence, I ended up with 16 sentences using only the simple past tense.

The sentences which are preceded by a question mark indicate my uncertainty about their grammaticality.

  1. I gave Peter a book
  2. Peter I gave a book.
  3. I gave to Peter a book.
  4. I gave a book to Peter.
  5. To Peter I gave a book
  6. ? To Peter I gave a book to.
  7. Peter I gave a book to.
  8. To Peter a book I gave.
  9. A book to Peter I gave

    Passive voice
  10. To Peter a book was given (by me).
  11. ? To Peter a book was given to.
  12. A book was given (by me) to Peter.
  13. To Peter was given a book.
  14. ? Peter was given a book to
  15. Peter was given a book (by me).
  16. A book to Peter was given (by me)*

    *suggested by @Merk
  • Are there 16 different sentence patterns? Or is the passive voice a separate entity not to be included? In which case are there 9 sentence patterns in the English language?
  • Which sentences or sequence of words are ungrammatical and why?
  • Do these patterns or structures have names?
Mari-Lou A
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    Also 'A book to Peter I gave.' and 'A book to Peter was given (by me).' are acceptable. Even 'A book I gave to Peter' would be acceptable -- but it would only really be acceptable in response to the question "What did you give Peter?" and it would be pretty unnatural outside of poetry, as would some of these other examples. – Merk Sep 29 '13 at 08:41
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    3 is ok, but only just -- opportunities to use it are limited. Some are very Yodaspeak! – Andrew Leach Sep 29 '13 at 08:45
  • 10 sounds passable. I can imagine some hoary lawyer and an accountant discussing some the Duke of Whatever's testamentary disposition: —I think we are almost finished. And, yesss, the last one. Uhm... the butler. Peter. —To Peter, a book was given. —Ah, good-good. Very good. – Talia Ford Sep 29 '13 at 09:28
  • Grammaticality and idiomaticity are not necessarily the same thing. Some orderings may look fine when compared with other examples, but may not normally be encountered. And some fragments (eg 'Gave Peter a book. / Gave a book to Peter.) may be more acceptable in some contexts than some apparently well-constructed sentences. – Edwin Ashworth Sep 29 '13 at 12:30
  • @EdwinAshworth I understand some structures are more commonly used than others, and I am pretty certain I included instances which are rare, outdated or considered stilted by native speakers. In fact I hesitated before writing them up, I was basically amazed by how many different combinations I could think up. I don't think this is common for all simple sentences and not being an expert in linguistics I wanted to know if this myriad of patterns has a name. I'd also appreciate if you could confirm which phrases are defintely ungrammatical or quasi ungrammatical. Thank you for commenting. – Mari-Lou A Sep 29 '13 at 12:41
  • Surely "Gave Peter a book. / Gave a book to Peter." Is the same as saying *I gave Peter a.../ I gave a book to..." The subject is inferred within the context. With the omission of the pronoun, the sequence is identical. – Mari-Lou A Sep 29 '13 at 12:48
  • @ M_L Comment 4: Surely you're looking for different surface structures rather than deep structures in your whole post? Isn't eliding a subject as worthy of consideration as switching say SVO to OVS? On which subject The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language has (condensing): '...in English, we will encounter such sequences as SVO (the boy saw the man); OVS; VSO; OSV and SOV. However, only the first of these is the natural, usual, 'unmarked' order in English; the others all convey special effects of an emphatic or poetic kind.' You consider S/V/DO/IO (possibly transformed) (& inc passive) ex's. – Edwin Ashworth Sep 29 '13 at 14:41
  • The choice of DO etc - including almost certainly the actual ditransitive / benefactive verb involved - also has an effect on grammatical acceptability. One can have 'I gave him it', 'I gave it him' (at least in BrE), but not 'I gave Peter it'. 'I picked her a bunch of flowers' but ??'I picked her it'. Trying to make a list - or separate lists - of acceptable permutations is, I feel, something for a doctorate thesis, and so off topic here. – Edwin Ashworth Sep 29 '13 at 14:59
  • @EdwinAshworth It's direct object, DO. I was reading about dative cases and I mixed the two. Anyway, I wish to be enlightened, even if it means someone telling me my question is irrelevant, as long as it is explained why. – Mari-Lou A Sep 29 '13 at 17:16
  • I'm assuming that you're looking for meaningful ways of arranging words, rather than a list of arranging 3 (To Peter was given a book) or 4 (I gave Peter a book) of: S, V, DO, IO, PP (which looks more like a maths question). I was pointing out that it would be artificial to exclude "Gave Peter a book" which, though I wouldn't use it, might be used by a teenager and conveys a clear meaning. Sentence fragments are not taboo nowadays. I think you're trying to simplify the structure of all sentences into say 16 patterns - while 'English Syntax and Argumentation' (Bas Aarts 2013) has 360 pages. – Edwin Ashworth Sep 29 '13 at 19:58
  • @EdwinAshworth you assume correctly, and I do not imagine in the slightest that the 16 patterns are the only possible ones in the English language. I limited myself to a simple sentence, which a subject, an indirect object and a direct object, put in the simple past. I surprised myself at how many different, and grammatically comprehensible, combinations I came up with. – Mari-Lou A Sep 29 '13 at 20:19
  • A few, I admit, I am not entirely convinced with. I am not trying to condense or simplify anything, I'm trying to understand why and how these patterns exist. – Mari-Lou A Sep 29 '13 at 20:20
  • I'm not sure that Aarts, in his monumental work (and he's written quite a few other related pieces) claims to succeed in answering those problems – Edwin Ashworth Sep 29 '13 at 22:25
  • See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_order, especially the sections 'Constituent word orders' and 'Other issues'. – iterums Sep 30 '13 at 14:24
  • @Mari-LouA The non-SVO sentences are generally said to have a marked word order. In particular, some of the sentences you listed are OSV by a process called topic-fronting. – iterums Sep 30 '13 at 14:30
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    “For unto Peter a book is given…” ;-) – Janus Bahs Jacquet Feb 02 '14 at 00:15

1 Answers1

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I've made some basic observations above, but here are some others...

Have I correctly identified 14 different sentence patterns? Or is the passive voice a separate entity not to be included? In which case there are 8 sentence patterns.

Well, your original sentences can be made into questions...I gave a book to Peter? To Peter I gave a book? etc.

Also, there are two form of the passive: static and dynamic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_voice#Dynamic_and_static_passive), so each of your passive sentences can be modified by inserting the word 'being' before given. The difference in sense is one of greater 'activity', a sense of something being pictured as happening or in progress.

Which sentence or sequence of words are incorrect and why?

3, 6, 11, 14 seem wrong. I cannot imagine a native English speaker using #3 except by mistake, or perhaps in poetry in order to meet the metrical demands of the line. With the verb 'give' you can only do #1. #3 is the sort of thing I can picture myself hearing foreign language learners saying. You cannot invert the direct object and indirect object after the subject without dropping 'to.' This is the same with the verbs offer or send. Some verbs, like report, can't even do the inversion in the first place.

Do these patterns have names? And please share any interesting or curious grammar facts which I may have overlooked in my question.

The examples in 1 through 9 that do not begin with the subject (i.e., I) are called 'inversions.' Inversion is a technique for changing the focus of the sentence. Focus, as a grammatical phenomenon, was largely ignored by traditional linguistics, but has become of great interest to today's linguists (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focus_(linguistics))

Besides changing the focus of the sentence, these inversions also serve poetic purposes. In florid and formal writing, they provide variety, and they provide an additional way to meet the demands of the meter.

Note that sometimes inversion is grammatically required. For example, the place of "Had" cannot be changed in "Had I given Peter the book, he would have known what to do." -- unless the whole sentence is restructured: "If I had given Peter the book, he would have know what to do."

Finally, the remaining examples in the passive have their own 'feeling' to them. Although the passive is much more common in English than in many other languages, the effect of using the passive is to diminish attention to the agent (the person/thing doing the action) in favor of the person/thing being acted upon (the patient, in Latin). Much has been said about this. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_passive_voice#Style_advice)

Merk
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  • I made a mistake...passive is a voice, not a mood...so I am deleting some of the above. There is only active and passive voice in English.--though you can do two kinds of passive... – Merk Sep 29 '13 at 09:43
  • The questions are dictated by intonation, by the rise of pitch at the end of a sentence, the actual word order is unchanged. But should I include the different question forms? And what about the negative forms? I don't think I will; the 12, 14 or 16 patterns (?) are plenty for the time being. – Mari-Lou A Sep 29 '13 at 10:11