What it is
A phrase structure change alters the internal composition of a phrase while leaving the phrase's function in the clause untouched. Inside a noun phrase this covers number, definiteness, and the form and position of modifiers; inside a verb phrase it covers person, tense, aspect and mood. The phrase goes on filling the same slot and the clause around it is undisturbed. Only the construction of the constituent itself comes out different.
The label is Chesterman's, who lists it as G5 among his syntactic strategies, ordered roughly by the size of the unit affected. G5 falls between unit shift, which moves material across ranks, and clause structure change, which reorganizes the phrases within a clause. The inventory is descriptive rather than prescriptive: it records operations translators are observed to perform, and Chesterman is explicit that his strategies overlap and combine.
The nearest neighbours are transposition and Catford's intra-system shift. Transposition turns one word class into another, and a phrase structure change may leave every word class intact and still alter number or tense. Intra-system shift is narrower and differently motivated: Catford is interested in cases where source and target possess formally corresponding systems, such as number or article, and the translation nonetheless selects a non-corresponding term inside one of them. Where a plural answers a singular, both descriptions fit; where a premodifying participle becomes a postmodifying relative, or a present becomes a perfect, only Chesterman's does.
When it applies
- The two languages run incompatible article systems: an obligatory indefinite article on one side, a bare noun or a suffix on the other.
- Countability is lexicalized differently, so a source plural corresponds to a target mass noun, or the reverse.
- Tense and aspect do not map one to one, and the target needs a different form to express the same temporal relation.
- Modification runs in the other direction, so material that precedes the head in the source must follow it in the target.
Examples
NL>EN
- Source: Hij is leraar.
- Target: He is a teacher.
- Comment: Dutch takes a bare noun for professions; English requires the indefinite article. Nothing moves in the clause and no word changes class. The change is definiteness marking inside the noun phrase, and it is obligatory.
DE>EN
- Source: Ich wohne seit drei Jahren in Berlin.
- Target: I have lived in Berlin for three years.
- Comment: German expresses a state running into the present with a simple present; English uses the perfect. Carrying the present tense across yields either an ungrammatical sentence or one in which the three years lie ahead.
TR>EN
- Source: Türkiye'nin başkenti
- Target: the capital of Turkey
- Comment: Turkish builds the possessive relation with a genitive premodifier and a suffix on the head noun; English postmodifies with a prepositional phrase. Both phrases do identical work in the clause.
FR>EN
- Source: Il a les cheveux noirs.
- Target: He has black hair.
- Comment: French counts hair and marks it definite; English treats it as a mass and takes no article. Two changes inside one noun phrase, number and definiteness, neither of them available as a choice.
Watch out for
Most phrase structure changes are forced by the target grammar, which is why they attract little attention. The professional risk sits with the ones that are not forced, because an optional change at this level looks like housekeeping and can carry information.
- Definiteness is reference. A document and the document identify different things in a clause that imposes an obligation, and in contract text the difference is litigable.
- Number can be substantive. Singular and plural in operative provisions determine how many instances a duty covers, and target idiom is not a reason to change them.
- Tense and mood reach past form into commitment. Rendering a conditional as an indicative in a witness statement converts a hedged claim into an assertion.
Where the target grammar leaves a genuine choice, prefer the form that preserves the determinacy of the source.
References
- 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.
- Catford, J. C. (1965). A Linguistic Theory of Translation: An Essay in Applied Linguistics. London: Oxford University Press, p. 80.