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Grammar II Introduction Gralrevision

The document discusses the nature of grammatical units and their hierarchy. It defines words as the basic units of grammar, distinguished by internal stability and external independence. Words are made up of morphemes and can be classified based on their morphological, syntactic, and semantic properties. The major word classes are nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. Function words indicate relationships between lexical words and units. Phrases are groups of words that form grammatical constituents.

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Abigail Landa
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16 views

Grammar II Introduction Gralrevision

The document discusses the nature of grammatical units and their hierarchy. It defines words as the basic units of grammar, distinguished by internal stability and external independence. Words are made up of morphemes and can be classified based on their morphological, syntactic, and semantic properties. The major word classes are nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. Function words indicate relationships between lexical words and units. Phrases are groups of words that form grammatical constituents.

Uploaded by

Abigail Landa
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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All grammars leak (Edward Sapir, American linguist)

Grammar II Introductory class


The nature of grammatical units
The essence of grammatical units is that they are meaningful and combine with each other in systematic
ways. We may distinguish a hierarchy of units as shown below:
Discourse
Sentence If I wash up all this stuff, somebody else can dry it.
Clause If I wash up all this stuff, somebody else can dry it.
Phrase If I wash up all this stuff, somebody else can dry it.
Word If I wash up all this stuff, somebody else can dry it.
Morpheme If I wash up all this stuff, somebody else can dry it.
Phoneme/grapheme

Can you identify them?

a. Structure
Units can be characterized in terms of their internal structure (eg words in terms of bases and affixes, etc)
b. Syntactic role

Units can be described in terms of their Syntactic role, ie their role in building up larger syntactic
units.

c. Meaning
They can also be described in terms of meaning, but there is no simple relationship between structure and
meaning, or between syntactic role and meaning.
Words and their characteristics
Words are characterized by some degree of internal stability (ie insertions can never be made within words),
and external independence (ie. they may be preceded or followed by pauses, they are separated by means of
spaces and they may be used alone as a single utterance).
Orthographic words: word forms separated by spaces in written text (they can be grouped together to form
one lexeme: was/are)
Grammatical words: sometimes, one form must be regarded as representing different grammatical words in
different contexts: the orthographic word “that” can be a demonstrative or a complementizer Sometimes in
spoken text we find single orthographic words that have to be analysed as representing a sequence of two
grammatical words: “that’s”. Also, there are sequences of orthographic words that function together as
single grammatical words: “sort of”
The three major word classes:
a. Lexical words: the main carriers of meaning. In speech they are generally stressed. They are
member of open classes, they often have a complex internal structure and they can be heads of
phrases.
b. Function words: they are members of closed systems. They are characteristically short and they lack
internal structure. They have a wide range of meanings and indicate relationships between lexical
words or larger units.
c. Inserts: they are inserted rather freely, they carry emotional and interactional meaning and are
frequent in spoken texts. (mm. yeaah, bye). Also interjections.
Closed system: contains a limited number of members and new members cannot easily be added (aux, conj,
and prep)
Open systems: membership is indefinite and unlimited (retiree, periodize, crabwise)
The structure of words: morphology
Lexical words may consist of a single morpheme but they are often more complex in structure: their
complexity results from three main processes:
a. Inflection: these suffixes signal meaningful relations similar to those expressed by function words or
word order (the girl’s mother vs the mother of the girl)

How many inflections can you mention in English?

b. Derivation: while inflection does not change the identity of a word (ie, the word remains the same
lexeme), derivation is used to form new lexemes, either by adding prefixes or suffixes which change
either meaning or word class.

Can you provide examples of both prefixes and suffixes that fulfill both functions?

c. Compounding: independently existing bases are combined to form new lexemes. Their unity is
shown by their tendency to be pronounced with unity stress (on the first element) and their meaning
is frequently unpredictable from their individual parts

Can you provide examples for these?


N+N:
Adj+N
V+N
N+adj

Survey of Lexical words: complete with the morphological, syntactic and semantic features of:
Nouns: * Morphological features: inflect for……

 Syntactic features: can function as……..

 Semantic features: ……………………………


Verbs: *
*
*
Adjectives: *
*
* Semantic features: descriptive adj: describe qualities (big) normally gradable
Classifiers (criminall law) non gradable and nonpredicating
Identifiers or intensifiers: the identical car / utter nonsense – non
gradable - non-predicating
Adverbs: *
*
*Semantic characteristics: As modifiers, they express degree: totally wrong, just outside
As adverbials (clause elements), they can:
* specify circumstance: tomorrow (circumstance adverbials)
*They can convey the speaker’s attitude: honestly (stance
adv)
* They express connection between clauses: nevertheless
(linking adv)
Survey of function words: complete

 Determiners: articles, demonstrative and possessive determiners, quantifiers


 Pronouns: personal, demonstrative, reflexive, reciprocal, possessive, indefinite, relative and
interrogative
 Other pro-forms: so, do (recapitulate neighbouring expressions with the effect of reducing
grammatical complexity)
 Primary auxiliaries: be – have - do
 Modal auxiliaries
 Prepositions: Simple (about, after)
Complex: two-word prep, end in simple prep (such as, apart from, according to, together
with)
Three-word: prp+N+prep: as far as, by means of, in contact with, as opposed to
Four-word prep: include an article: as a result of, on the grounds of

 Adverbial particles: a small group of short invariable forms with a core meaning of motion and
result: about, across, up.
They are not adverbs: cf: bring in the accused / bring here the accused
They are not prepositions: they staggered up the mountain / they staggered up.

 Corrdinators: and, but, or


 Subordinators:
 Wh-words: interrogatives, relativizers
PHRASES AND THEIR CHARACTERISTICS: Fill in this chart

NOUN PHRASES
VERB PHRASES
ADJECTIVE PHRASES
ADVERB PHRASES
PREPOSITIONAL PHRASES

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