Grammatical structure of the sentence "There is no dinosaur skin left to study."

There is no dinosaur skin left to study

The types of word in the sentence are:

there, pronoun
is auxiliary verb
no determiner *
dinosaur noun
skin noun,
left adjective
to [very contentious word] 'subordinator'
study verb, infinitive

[*Determiners are words like: a, the, this, that, my, your, no, one, two.]

This sentence is an example of an existential construction.

The subject of the sentence is [there], the predicate is [is no dinosaur skin left to study]. The predicate consists of the auxiliary verb [is] and two complements, which are the noun phrase [no dinosaur skin to study] and the adjective [left]. Further below I will show what has happened to this noun phrase and why it has broken into two sections.

The noun phrase can be represented like this:

[[no][dinosaur skin to study]]

It has an external modifier, the determiner [no], and an 'inner noun phrase', sometimes called a nominal: [dinosaur skin to study]. The nominal, and indeed the whole noun phrase is headed by the noun [skin]. [Skin] is being premodified by another noun [dinosaur], giving us the compound noun [dinosaur skin]. The noun has a post-head modifier, the infinitival clause [to study]. Depending on which grammar you read, this could have different structures. In CaGEL, the analysis would be that the head of the clause is the verb [study]. This is marked by the subordinator [to].

In this sentence we see something called 'extraposition from noun phrase movement. Sometimes, if a noun phrase is very 'heavy', if it is very long, we can move part of it to the end of the sentence. We could build the sentence like this:

There is no dinosaur skin to study left.

But this is a little bit difficult to understand, because we have to wait a long time to hear the second complement left. We can move that section to study 'out of the noun phrase and put it at the end of the sentence. (Extra in extraposition means 'out; position means something like putting). This gives us the Original Poster's example:

There is no dinosaur skin left to study.

The CaGEL is the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language by Huddleston & Pullum, Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Hope this is helpful!

[[Analysis Note: The grammatical structure of this sentence might be a little ambiguous. This is an existential construction. For the purposes of this analysis I have taken the non-existential version of this sentence to be: [No dinosaur skin to study was left]. The following alternative is not felicitous: [* No dinosaur skin left was to study] (wrong). This last fact accounts for the extraposition analysis. However, there is always: [No dinosaur skin was left to study]. The most natural reading of this sentence, does not have the same meaning as the existential counterpart.]]

Araucaria - Not here any more.

Posted 2014-11-12T08:49:32.317

Reputation: 25 536

Why don't we say "*There's no left food"? – Tᴚoɯɐuo – 2014-11-12T12:33:59.587

Wow! That's made an impression on me! – Denis Kulagin – 2014-11-12T12:37:33.633

How about "There's no real difference"? – Tᴚoɯɐuo – 2014-11-12T12:57:25.077

@TRomano What about it? 'Is' only has one complement there, the noun phrase 'no real difference'. There's nothing to move any of the noun phrase past ... :) Does that make sense? – Araucaria - Not here any more. – 2014-11-12T12:58:01.817

@TRomano Sorry just realised this :-/ EDIT: because the 'nominal', *food*, is only one word long! The noun phrase is of course two words: no food. With extraposition from noun phrase movement, the main section of the noun phrase which includes the head noun stays in the normal position - the rest of it moves to the end of the senetence. But there is no rest of the noun phrase to move with the single word food! :) – Araucaria - Not here any more. – 2014-11-12T13:21:00.377

Sorry, I'm not understanding. What prevents "left" from being placed before the noun "food", as "real" is placed before the noun "difference"? Are "left" and "real" adjectival in different ways? – Tᴚoɯɐuo – 2014-11-12T13:55:42.113

@TRomano I right. I wondered if that was going to come up, i was waiting for F.E. for that one! If left is an adjective, then it's not able to be used attributively, a bit like the adjective alive ... (continued) – Araucaria - Not here any more. – 2014-11-12T14:37:54.887

@TRomano ... There is of course an argument that left is a verb. It would pass some of the tests for verb-hood in comparison to adjective-hood. The reason I take it to be an adjective and not a verb is that there seems to be a distinction between the two meanings of one cup was left yesterday afternoon in the same way that there is a distinction between the verb and adjective readings of two clocks were broken yesterday afternoon (someone left one or broke one yesterday afternoon, versus they were in the state of being broken/remaining yesterday afternoon). But not everyone'll agree! – Araucaria - Not here any more. – 2014-11-12T14:50:30.223

@TRomano The other complicating factor here is that left is not modifying dinosaur skin in the OP's example. It is a complement of the verb BE. In 'there were three plates left' it looks like it's postmodifying 'plates', but it isn't. – Araucaria - Not here any more. – 2014-11-12T17:52:19.603

EDIT NOTE: there will be a complete rewrite of this post later this afternoon. <-- Wot? – F.E. – 2014-11-15T06:25:07.650

Er, where be that promised "afternoon" rewrite? – F.E. – 2014-11-15T21:07:48.463

I've been in hospital :( long story. Will get onto it later this eve ... – Araucaria - Not here any more. – 2014-11-15T21:18:10.527

Then what is really confusing, is word order for that particular case: left to study follows noun, instead of preceding it. – Denis Kulagin – 2014-11-12T11:35:17.353

Is there a name for grammatical construction: adjective derived from verb? – Denis Kulagin – 2014-11-12T11:36:01.090

Usually adjectives are placed before the nouns they modify, yet there are exceptions: see postpositive adjectives

– Lucian Sava – 2014-11-12T11:47:28.913

Grammatical structure of the sentence "There is no dinosaur skin left to study."

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