RANKSHIFT AND EMBEDDING

Qualifiers are typically prepositional groups, although they may also be adverbial, nominal or verbal groups, and relative clauses. This phenomenon whereby a group actually functions as a word is known as RANKSHIFT or EMBEDDING. This means that a unit of a certain complexity behaves in terms of its function in the total structure of the sentence as if it were a unit of a "lower" rank. In the above example, a prepositional group "of French history", which consists of three words, is functioning as if it were a single word, which then forms part of a nominal group as "q". Rankshift embedding is very common in English, and there are for example many other instances where groups of words may function as a single item. You can think of common phrases such as "out-of-the way", "ready-to-wear", "made-to-measure" etc which can appear at "m" in the nominal group, and which must be interpreted as a single item.
e.g.	a	ready-to-wear	suit;	an	out-of-the way	place
	m	----- m -----	h	m	------ m -----	h

Looking again at the example "a French history textbook" it may then be argued that "French history" should be interpreted as a rankshifted single item at "m", since the word "French" actually modifies "history", which is itself a noun and therefore forms the nominal group:-
French	history
m	h

When "history" then becomes a modifier for "textbook", the nominal group "French history" becomes a rankshifted unit which is embedded in the main nominal group, and the preferred structural analysis thus becomes:-
a	French history	textbook
m	------ m -----	h

This is better because it helps to explain some of the restrictions concerning word order, since it would not be possible to say: a history French textbook  û  Thus we see that "French" must precede "history" because it initially modifies the latter word. You will remember that prepositional groups also contain a nominal group which functions as the completive to the preposition. We can thus analyse the prepositional group as consisting of PREPOSITION ("p") + COMPLETIVE ("c") as follows:- of French History p --------c--------

We can now recognise this as a further instance of rankshift in which the nominal group (in this case "French History") functions as a single unit "c". As we saw above, the entire prepositional group is then rankshifted to act as "q" in the nominal group:-
a	book	of French History
m	h	--------q---------
The analysis of group structure may be shown in such a way as to illustrate how rankshift occurs, where a group consisting of various constituent units functions as a single structural element in terms of a more complex level of organisation. In the above example we can see that rankshift occurs where the nominal group "French History" functions as "c" in the prepositional group "of French History", and the prepositional group then itself functions as "q" in the nominal group "a book of French History". We can represent this in a way which shows the segmentation as proceeding in stages from the smallest number of segmental units to the further structural segmentation of rankshifted units, so as to show at each level their various structural forms. The following diagram shows the rankshifting as a sort of "stepped" effect:-

We have also mentioned that whole clauses may be rankshifted in a similar way, and function as qualifiers. This will be described more fully later, when we discuss clauses. However, we should note that in addition to the sort of prepositional and adverbial groups discussed above which act as qualifiers, there are also nominal group and verbal group structures which function as qualifiers. e.g. You don't need a house that big. The man to ask is Mr Amir. The oldest man living is Japanese.

These forms clearly have some relationship to dependent clauses, as we shall see in later sections which deal with verbal groups and clauses. There is also a special relationship between qualifiers which indicate possession and possessive pre-modifiers. e.g. (a) Amir and Dhea arrested the husband of the injured woman. (b) Amir and Dhea arrested the injured woman's husband.

Summary

In conclusion of this section we may summarise what has been said so far on the nature of nominal groups by analysing the latter examples in terms of their structural components. Example (a) consists of a sentence which consists of a single clause. The group structure of the clause is nominal group, verbal group, nominal group, prepositional group.

The prepositional group "of the injured woman" contains a rankshifted nominal group "the injured woman" which forms the prepositional completive ("c"):- of the injured woman p --------- c ---------- The nominal group at "c" can in turn be analysed structurally as follows:- the injured woman m m h The entire prepositional group is itself a rankshifted unit functioning as "q" in the nominal group "the husband of the injured woman":- the husband of the injured woman m h ---------- q ----------- The clause itself can be analysed as subject, predicate, and object:- Amir and Dhea arrested the husband of the injured woman. S P ---------------- O ------------------- The whole structural relationship can then be shown as follows:- Example (b) can also be represented, this time with the rankshifted group embedded at "m":-