What it is
A clause structure change reorganizes the phrases that make up a clause: the order of the constituents, whether the clause is active or passive, whether its predicate is finite or non-finite, and which participant surfaces as subject. The phrases themselves may be built exactly as before. What changes is their arrangement and the roles they occupy.
Chesterman lists the operation as G6, one step above phrase structure change and one below sentence structure change, and gathers under it constituent order, voice, finiteness and transitivity. Catford had described the same territory twenty years earlier as a structure shift: a change in the ordered configuration of clause elements, subject, predicator, complement and adjunct. He considered it the most frequent shift of all, occurring at every rank.
The overlap is worth stating plainly, because the two labels name one event from two theoretical positions. Catford works inside a systemic model in which structure is one of four grammatical categories alongside unit, class and system, and a shift is a departure from formal correspondence. Chesterman works with a descriptive checklist of things translators are seen to do under the pressure of norms. The standard illustration, English "I like jazz" against Spanish "me gusta el jazz", where the two arguments exchange grammatical roles, is a structure shift in Catford's terms and a clause structure change in Chesterman's, and nothing turns on the name. Catford's category is the broader one, since it also applies at group and word rank, whereas Chesterman divides that ground by size across G5, G6 and G7. A revision report should pick one framework and hold to it.
When it applies
- Constituent order is fixed differently, as with verb-final subordinate clauses or verb-second main clauses.
- The source subordinates by non-finite means the target has no counterpart for, so a nominalized or participial complement must become a finite clause.
- The nearest target verb takes its arguments in the opposite arrangement, so subject and object must be exchanged.
- Information structure requires a different constituent in subject position for the clause to be read in the intended order.
Examples
DE>EN
- Source: Gestern hat der Ausschuss den Bericht angenommen.
- Target: The committee adopted the report yesterday.
- Comment: German holds the finite verb in second position, so a fronted adjunct pushes the subject behind it and the participle to the end. English has no such constraint and returns the adjunct to final position. The fronting is unmarked in the source, whereas a fronted English adverbial would be marked, which is why reproducing the order misreports the emphasis.
TR>EN
- Source: Toplantıya katılamayacağımı bildirdim.
- Target: I gave notice that I would not be able to attend the meeting.
- Comment: Turkish subordinates by nominalizing: the entire complement is a case-marked noun phrase headed by a participle carrying person and negation. English has no such construction and must build a finite clause with its own subject and its own tense.
FR>EN
- Source: Tu me manques.
- Target: I miss you.
- Comment: The French verb makes the absent person the subject and the person who feels the absence the object; English reverses both roles, and keeping the arrangement states the opposite of the source. Note the boundary against converses: here only the mapping of arguments changes, whereas converses turn on a lexical pair such as buy and sell.
Watch out for
Because most clause structure changes are compelled by the target grammar, they are performed without deliberation, and the habit carries over into the cases that are optional. The failure mode is reorganizing a clause for readability where its arrangement was doing work.
- Constituent order carries emphasis. Fronted adjuncts, clefts and marked thematic positions signal focus, and restoring canonical order flattens it.
- Making a non-finite construction finite supplies tense, and often person, that the source left open. Nominalized complements can be genuinely vague about time; an English finite clause cannot be.
- In binding text the order of constituents governs scope. Where a condition, an exception or a time limit attaches to one element of a clause, moving it can extend or restrict what it qualifies.
References
- Catford, J. C. (1965). A Linguistic Theory of Translation: An Essay in Applied Linguistics. London: Oxford University Press, p. 77 and Ch. 12.
- Chesterman, A. (1997). Memes of Translation: The Spread of Ideas in Translation Theory. Benjamins Translation Library 22. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, Ch. 4. Revised edition (2016), Benjamins Translation Library 123, Ch. 4.