Chapter 7

Grammar
 INTRODUCTION

We have already considered two levels of description

used in the study of language..What are they?

Phonological ðəlʌkibɔjz

Morphological

The luck -y boy -s

functional lexical derivational lexical inflectional

 GRAMMAR

• the lucky boys

• * boys the lucky

• * lucky boys the

asterisk * = unacceptable or ungrammatical

• English has strict rules for combining words into phrases.

• article + adjective + noun

• noun + article + adjective 

 GRAMMAR

So, what is GRAMMAR?

One way of defining grammar
•The process of describing the structure of phrases

and sentences in such a way that we account for all

the grammatical sequences in a language and rule
out all the ungrammatical sequences.
 TRADITIONAL GRAMMAR

• Concepts and ideas about the structure of language that Western

societies have received from ancient Greek and Latin sources.

• These two languages were known as the languages of

scholarship, religion, philosophy and knowledge;

• So, the grammar of these languages was taken to be the model

for other grammars.

• The best known terms from that tradition are those used in

describing the parts of speech.

 THE PARTS OF SPEECH (SYNTACTIC CATEGORIES)

• The lucky boys found a backpack in the park and they opened it carefully.

The lucky boys found a backpack

article adjective noun verb article noun

in the park

preposition article noun

and they opened it carefully

conjunction pronoun verb pronoun adverb

For more information, read pp. 82 & 83.

 THE PARTS OF SPEECH (SYNTACTIC
CATEGORIES)
• Noun N • boy, backpack, dog, school, roughness,

earthquake, love.

• Articles Art • a, an, the

• Adjective Adj • happy, large, strange

• Verb V • go, talk, be, have

• Adverb Adv • slowly, yesterday, really, very

• Preposition Prep • at, in, on, near, with, without

• Pronoun Pro • she, herself, they, it, you

• Conjunction Conj • and, because, when

For more information, read pp. 82 & 83.

 AGREEMENT

• Traditional grammar has also given us a number of other

categories:

• Number
• Person
• Tense
• Voice
• Gender
 AGREEMENT

Cathy loves her dog

The verb loves agrees with the noun Cathy

• loves not love

• Number (singular or plural)

• Person
• 1st person = speaker
• 2nd person = hearer
• 3rd person = others
 AGREEMENT

• The different forms of English pronouns can be described in terms

of person and number.

• We use:

• I for 1st person singular

• you for 2nd person singular
• he, she, it (or Cathy) for 3rd person singular.

• So, in the sentence Cathy loves her dog, we have a noun Cathy,

which is 3rd person singular, and we use the verb loves (not love) to
agree with the noun
 AGREEMENT

Cathy loves her dog

The form of the verb must be described in terms of:
• Tense (Loves = present tense NOT past tense)

• Voice (active or passive)

• Gender (Cathy & her)

 GRAMMATICAL GENDER
• Some languages use grammatical gender: •

• Natural gender is based on sex (male & female)

• masculine (el sol = the sun)
• feminine (la luna = the moon)
•
•
Grammatical gender is based on the type of noun
(masculine & feminine)
• Nouns are classified according to their
•masculine (der Mond = the moon) Articles and adjectives have different forms
gender class
• • feminine (die Sonne = the sun)
to agree with the gender of the noun. •

• neuter (das Feuer = the fire) Arabic

• masculine ‫ﺧﺎﺗﻡ ﺛﻣﻳـﻥ‬

• feminine ‫ﺳﺎﻋﺔ ﺛﻣﻳﻧﺔ‬

 PRESCRIPTIVE VS. DESCRIPTIVE
APPROACH

• Prescriptive grammar refers to the structure of a

language as certain people think it should be used.

• Descriptive grammar refers to the structure of a

language as it is actually used by speakers and

writers.
 THE PRESCRIPTIVE APPROACH

• It is one thing to adopt the grammatical labels to categorize

words in English sentences.

• it is quite another thing to go on to claim that the structure

of English sentences should be like the structure of

sentences in Latin.

• That was an approach taken by a number of influential

grammarians, mainly in 19th century England, who set out

rules for the “proper” use of English.
 THE PRESCRIPTIVE APPROACH
• Some familiar examples of prescriptive rules for English sentences are:

• You must not split an infinitive.

• You must not end a sentence with a preposition.

• Following these types of rules, traditional teachers would correct

sentences like

• Who did you go with? 

to
• With whom did you go? ‘

making sure that the preposition with was not at the end of the
sentence.

* Although in real-life communication, both of them are correct!

 THE PRESCRIPTIVE APPROACH

• Traditional teachers would also correct:

•
Mary runs faster than me
to
• Mary runs faster than I.

and
• Me and my family
to
• My family and I

• According to them, in ‘proper’ English writing, one should

never begin a sentence with and!

 THE PRESCRIPTIVE APPROACH

• It may, in fact, be a valuable part of one’s education to be made

aware of this ‘linguistic etiquette’ for the ‘proper’ use of the language.

• If it is a social expectation that someone who writes well should obey

these prescriptive rules, then social judgments such as ‘poorly

educated’ may be made about someone who does not follow these
rules.

• However, it is worth considering the origins of some of these rules

and asking whether they are appropriately applied to the English

language.
 THE PRESCRIPTIVE APPROACH

• Please read p. 86 – Captain Kirk’s infinitive.

• It would be appropriate in Latin grammar to say you cannot

split an infinitive. But is it appropriate to carry this idea over

into English where the infinitive form does not consist of a
single word, but of two words, to and go?
• There are structures in English that differ from those found

in Latin, rather than think of the English forms as ‘bad’

because they are breaking a rule of Latin grammar.
 THE DESCRIPTIVE APPROACH

• It may be that using the grammar of Latin is:

• a useful guide for some European languages (e.g. Italian or
Spanish)

• less useful for others (e.g. English)

• misleading for some non-European languages
• Toward the end of the 19th century, this became clear to

linguists. The categories and rules that were appropriate

for Latin grammar just did not seem to fit these
languages.
 THE DESCRIPTIVE APPROACH

• As a consequence, for most of the 20th century, a

rather different approach was adopted.

• Analysts collected samples of the language they were

interested in and attempted to describe the regular

structures of the language as it was used, not
according to some view of how it should be used.

• This is called the descriptive approach.

 STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS

• One type of descriptive approach is called structural analysis.

• Its main concern is to investigate the distribution of forms in a language.

• The method involves the use of “test-frames” that can be sentences with empty slots
in them.
• e.g
.• The makes a lot of noise.
• I heard a yesterday.
• car, child, donkey, dog, radio

• Because all these forms fit in the same test-frame, they are likely to be examples
of the same grammatical category (i.e. nouns N)
• How about: Cathy, someone, the dog, a car ?

• They don’t fit

 STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS
• for these forms, we require different test-frames

• makes a lot of noise.

• I heard yesterday.

• It, the big dog, an old car, the professor with the Scottish accent, Cathy, someone, the

dog, a car
• These forms are likely to be examples of the same category. (i.e. noun phrase NP)

• In the older, Latin-influenced, analysis of pronouns, they were described as

"words used in place of nouns"

• More accurately, pronouns are words used in place of noun phrases (not just nouns).
 CONSTITUENT ANALYSIS
• Another type of descriptive approach is called constituent analysis.

• It shows how small constituents (components) in sentences go together to

form larger constituents.

• e.g. An old man brought a shotgun to the wedding

• At the word level, how many constituents do we have?

• Nine constituents

• How do those nine constituents go together to form constituents at the

phrase level?

• An old man brought brought a shotgun to to the

• Is this right? Are they proper English phrases?
 CONSTITUENT ANALYSIS

• An old man brought a shotgun to the wedding

• An old man, a shotgun, the wedding = Noun phrases (NP)

• to the wedding = Prepositional phrase (PP)

• brought a shotgun = Verb phrase (VP)

• This analysis can be represented in different types of diagrams.

• See p. 88
SYMBOLS USED IN SYNTACTIC ANALYSIS

r
 LABELED AND BRACKETED SENTENCES

• An alternative type of diagram is designed to show

how the constituents in sentence structure can be

marked off by using labeled brackets.
 LABELED AND BRACKETED SENTENCES
This can be done by following the following steps:
1. Put brackets round each constituent

2. Put more brackets round each combination of constituents.

For example:

The dog loved the girl

• Try it!
• At the word level: [the] or [dog]
• At the phrase level: [the dog] or [loved the girl]
• At the sentence level: [The dog loved the girl]
 Labeled and Bracketed Sentences
3. Label each constituent using these abbreviated
grammatical terms.
 LABELED AND BRACKETED SENTENCES

In performing this type of analysis, we have not only labeled all the
constituents, we have revealed the hierarchical organization of those

constituents.

• S is higher than and contains NP

• NP is higher than and contains N
• S is higher than and contains VP
• VP contains V + NP