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Modern English Grammar

Dr. Dian Ekawati, M, Pd

The assignment of Modern English Grammar, Summary Chapter 1-5

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

This book is used for the English teacher. By reading this book the teacher is expected to have
some points: 1) you are expected to have good grasp of teaching language methodology. 2) the
teacher should be familiar with the suitable material for the class. 3) the teacher should have a
good model linguistics.4)as the teacher, they have to know the subject matter. You must have
conscious knowledge of the rules of English language.

English teacher should have known about some various models in grammar such as traditional,
structural, transformational, tagmemic, sysmemic, etc. but the most common one use is
transformational. Transformational means the sentences can be transform into different types
such as positive, negative statement and interrogative. This kind on transformational can be
applied into both nominal sentence and verbal sentence. Here is the example of nominal
sentence:

Jhon is a student….. we can explain that jhon here comes as a subject/agent of the statement,
meanwhile is a student as a predicate. How do we transform this one into another form?

Jhon is not a student. The core of the sentence can be changed into negative form by simply put
not after the tobe. How this sentence can be put in interrogative?

Firstly just put the tobe or part of the predicate in the beginning of the statement and the rest is
still the same. Finally the sentence will be like this, Is Jhon a student?

The next is verbal sentence. Basically, transforming sentences of verbal sentences have the same
ways in transforming nominal sentence. We just need to understand about the modal auxiliaries.
Modal auxiliaries can be got by seeing the type of the tenses used in that statement. Here is the
example:

Jhon writes a letter. Jhon is subject and writes is a verb. Change this one in to negative just by
putting the modal auxiliary/helping verb of present tense after the subject, modal auxiliary is
Does. So negative sentence will be, Jhon does not write a letter. And for interrogative will be
Does jhon write a letter?
In conclusion, type of the tenses used in the statement really influence the way to transform the
sentence and also influence the type of helping verb used. For example for present tense will be
do/does, past tense will be did, etc.

CHAPTER TWO

WORD ORDER AND PHRASE STRUCTURE RULES-PART 1

English has its own rules, it cannot be used according to our mood or the user of the language.
what does it mean by “its own rules”? well rules in this case is some requirement that have to be
followed, it is like law that need to be upheld in order to have a good one.

The first part that needs to make is subject. Subject is the doer of the sentence, or the mover
commonly the subject will be posited in the beginning of the sentence. The second rule we call
as verb, verb should be appeared after the subject. It can not be preceded by subject. The usage
of the verb is influenced by the tenses used in that sentence. Sometimes the verb will be added
by s/es, sometimes by using v2, or will plus v1. And the next part is object. Object in this case is
optional, some sentences require object but some sentences don’t. How can It be? The answer is
based on the verb used in that sentence. Verb can be divided into two kinds, the first intransitive
verbs and transitive verbs. Intransitive verbs are the kind of verbs that does not need any
existences of object, in other had transitive verbs need objects.

Talking about object, object can be divided in to two also, Direct object. Is the object for
unliving things. The second is indirect object, this kind of object is applied for living object.

In conclusion, the rules of Subject followed by Verb and then followed by object should be
fulfilled. These are the arrangement of making a good sentence structurally.

Subject of the sentence is not only obtained by using pronoun, but it can be got also by using
some combination between two or more word, called as phrase. Phrase is the copombination of
two or more words that bring a new meaning, the combined meaning.

The phrase can be got by pairing two or more words, for example possessive pronoun and noun,
adjective and noun, reposition and noun,etc. Having subject is almost same as having object also.
Object is the victim. Object also can be attained by combining several word as applied in subject.
 CHAPTER THREE

PHRASES STRUCTURE RULES- PART II

The structure of the English verb system

The verb system of English can be discussed in terms of its forms – the inflections and structures it
makes use of-or it can be discussed in terms of how it expresses “real time” distinctions such as the past,
the present, and the future. The system is selective because tense, in the structural sense, refers only to
the inflections one can use with finite verbs to express past, present, or future time.

From a structural point of view, English has no grammatical future tense, since future time is
expressed using auxiliary verbs or adverbs of time in combination with the present tense instead of a
grammatical future tense. The verb BE is more highly inflected than other verbs in English and can
express the present through three forms: am, is, are, and the past through two forms: was, were.

English has two structural aspectual markers the progressive aspect and perfective aspect that
can be described in grammatical terms. The progressive aspect is marked by the presence of the
auxiliary BE plus the present participle (-ING) suffixed to the verb.

Phrase structure rules for the auxiliary

The English verb has many potential auxiliary elements that must be accounted for in the phrase
structure rules. Thus, as we previously mentioned, nonimperative English sentences obligatory take
grammatical tense or a modal. If some auxiliary verb other than a modal is present, it carries the tense.
If no tense-bearing auxiliary verb present, the main verb will carry the tense. Four different optional
auxiliary verbs may be present, a periphrastic modal, the perfective aspect, and the progressive aspect.
Sometimes more than tense or a modal auxiliary occurs in the AUX of a single sentence.

Here the auxiliary is AUX. It is made up of tense (T) or a modal (M) followed by the other optional
auxiliary elements. ESL/EFL students will need ample practice using the various past participles in order
for them to master the many forms. In most cases various changes must be made on the output of the
phrase structure rules in order to produce grammatical English surface structures.

In order to have a basic structure like the one in the preceding tree diagram become a surface
structure, we have to apply a special transformational rule called affix attachment. When this rule is
applied, every dependent auxiliary inflection attaches to the immediately following lexical element to
produce an inflected lexical item.

Phrase structure rules for the verb phrase

A phrase structure rule that would allow us to account for all such structural possibilities follows:
 NP

BE AP

8 VP PP

V (NP) (PP)

(AP refers to an adjective phrase)

13 AP (intens)n Adj (PP)

 CHAPTER FOUR

THE COPULA AND SUBJECT-VERB AGREEMENT

ESL/EFL learners are exposed to the forms of the copula and the third person singular inflection
almost immediately in their earliest English classes or in any English speaking environment they happen
to experience. In this chapter, we will take a close look at these problem areas.

The copula BE

The functions of BE

NP

VP BE AP

PP

V (NP) (PP)

This function of BE is distinct from the use of BE in the progressive aspect, where BE combines
with-ING to make the meaning of the verb more concrete and limited. This BE always occurs in
conjunction with a main verb, and it is thus referred to as an auxiliary verb.

Why the copula is different from other verbs

The rule for expanding the verb phrase makes a clear distinction between copula BE and all other
verbs in English. First, the copula has more distinct forms with respect to person, number, and tense
than any other verb in English. Second, the copula is freely allowed by adjectives, whereas other verbs
are followed by noun phrase or prepositional phrases, but not by adjective phrase.

Third, the syntactic behavior of the copula, which acts like an auxiliary verb with regard to
question formation, negation, and other constructions, is different from that of other verbs like walk,
which require the addition of a DO auxiliary. Finally, the copula does not occur in all languages but all
languages have verbs. This lack of universality of the copula is understandable if we consider that
semantically it is not necessary form; it is a syntactic marker in English, a linking element that carries
tense and subject – verb agreement. In fact, children learning English as their mother tongue often omit
the copula in their early speech as do many second language learners of all ages when they are learning
English. Second language learners have been observed to omit the copula regardless of whether or not
their native language has an equivalent form.

Subject – verb agreement

Third person singular present

For verbs other than BE, subject-verb number agreement poses a problem only in the present
tense, where third person singular forms are explicitly inflected while other forms are not.

Some typical grammatical errors

Occasionally, however some learners will over generalize the inflection and apply uninflectable
forms such as modal auxiliaries or use it in agreement with subjects of inappropriate person and/or
number. Yet another reason why learners overuse this form is that they interpret the-s ending as plural
marker on the verb to be used in agreement with plural subjects. Finally, it has also been observed that
Spanish speakers tend to initially overuse this inflection with the second person singular pronoun
because a similar form is used in their language for this person.

Problems in subject-verb agreement

Since subject-verb agreement is a problem for learners at all levels and even puzzles native
speakers at times, many reference grammar or style handbooks include a discussion of this topic. One of
the most comprehensive treatments is in Crews (1980). However, Crews tends to be more prescriptive
than descriptive in his account, he tells the readers what to do rather than telling the reader what
educated native speakers do.

The general rule

In the most straightforward cases the subject-verb agreement rule tells us to use the third person
singular inflection if the subject is a singular proper name, a singular common noun, a mass noun, or a
third person singular pronoun.
Rules for words and phrase ending in –s that are singular rather than plural

1. Some common and proper nouns ending in –s- including –ics nouns –are singular and
take singular inflections.
2. Plural tittles of books, plays, operas, films, etc, take the singular.
3. Nouns occurring in sets of two take the singular when the noun pair is present, but the
plural when pair is absent-regardless of whether one pair or more is being referred to.
4. A number of takes the plural, but the number of takes the singular.
5. Fractions and percentages take the singular when they modify a mass noun and the plural
when they modify a plural noun; either the singular or the plural may be used when they
modify a collective noun.
6. Conflicting rules for none and problems with all, each, and every.
7. Confusion with majority and minority.

Rules for subjects of measurement and number

1. Plural unit words of distance, money, time, etc, take the singular.
2. Arithmetical operations take singular

The proximity principle

Personal pronouns pose special problems when used with the correlatives, where the rule of
proximity would have us produce either you or I am, neither you nor he is, etc. The immediately
preceding example is especially interesting because are is a gap-filling substitute for am in some other
constructions. One other case where the proximity principle does in fact apply and where traditional
grammar would not prescribe its use is in sentence beginning with their followed by conjoined noun
phrases.

The principle of nonintervention

Many reference grammars make a point of emphasizing that a singular subject noun or pronoun
should take a singular verb inflection. Subject-verb agreement is particularly problematic in certain types
of relative clauses.

The clausal subject rule

Traditional grammar tell us that when a clause functions as a subject-verb agreement is singular-
regardless of any plural noun phrases that occur as part of the subject clause or the verb phrase.
 CHAPTER FIVE

THE LEXICON

All lexical items belong to a part of speech. That is to say, they are nouns, auxiliary verbs, verbs,
adjectives, adverbs, determiners, intensifiers, or prepositions. The other part of speech, constitute
closed lexical categories, since they contain far fewer items than the open ones and they do not readily
add new items or discard old ones.

Types of lexical information

First of all, every lexical item in the language must be entered in the lexicon and represented on a
number of levels. Semantic information would include the concept human and also information
indicating that the word be neutral regarding the male or female distinction. Semantic information is
used when we accept lexical item in certain constructions.

Compounding

Compounding is a word-formation process that occurs in some languages but not in others.

Morphological affixation

There are two kinds of morphological affixes in English. An inflection carries grammatical meaning
and changes the form of a word without changing its basic part of speech.

Incorporation

The third important lexical process is incorporation. This occurs when some element in the
sentence becomes a part of another element.

Determiner – noun restrictions

Within noun phrases, determiner – noun restrictions are important since a view determiners co-
occur only with uncountable nouns, other determiner co-occur only with singular countable nouns, and
still others co-occur only with plural countable noun.
Verb-noun restriction

The phrase structure rules for our grammar do not distinguish between verbs that take objects
and verbs that do not take objects. There are of course, verbs that occurs both transitively and
intransitively with little or no change of meaning. Such verbs are, nonetheless, consistently transitive
and would be marked as such in the lexicon with the added specification that a recoverable object often
does not appear in the surface structure or a sentence containing such a verb.

Adjective-PP restrictions

Adjective that follow the verb BE like verbs, are either transitive or intransitive; however, when an
adjective take an object. Frequently, a verb or transitive adjective must be followed by a particular
preposition or a given noun phrase must be preceded by a particular preposition.

Lexical collocation

Other information that should ideally be provided in a lexicon designed to serve ESL/EFL learner
are collocations, syntactic relationship. In other words, if a particular noun, this fact should be noted
because it would be difficult for a learner to use. Such collocation relationships also occur in patterns
other than subject-verb one and are often subtle and not at all obvious to the learner. Certainly it would
be useful for ESL/EFL learners to have access to the significant collocates of all the lexical items they are
expected to acquire and use. Much additional research, however, will have to be carried out before such
information will be readily available.

Semantic restriction

Common nouns are concrete and abstract, and concrete nouns are-in addition-living or nonliving,
animate or inanimate, and human or nonhuman. Verbs, likewise, are often very specific concerning the
kinds of subject or subject nouns they can co-occur with. Several other useful generalizations about
these verbs were made by Fillmore, but these examples demonstrate that to understand a lexical item
entails knowing precisely how it diffe~rs from other similar item
 CHAPTER EIGHT
NEGATION

Negation in English is very broad topic. When syntactic negation is applied into a sentence so it
uses particle NOT in the sentence. sometimes negation also can be simply introduce by using
semantically expression, in this case by using NO. in the other hand negation also can be apply by simply
using prefix, exactly negative prefix. let us see the example of them.

Jhon is not at home (NOT)

No one is at home (NO)

She is unkind (Prefix Un)

Those three sentences bring negation but they are totally different especially sentence number
three. To know their difference we may apply them in to the question tag.

Jhon is not home, Is he?

No one is at home, are they?

She is unkind. Isn’t she?

From the elaboration in form of question tag above, we can take conclusion that sentence
number three is not syntactically negative even it brings negative particles. So the thing that we discuss
here only the material that is shown in the First sentence only in which when we try to apply negation so
we have to use NOT or sometimes contracted into N’T

In applying negation in sentence, it depends on the language itself. Every language has different
position in using negation. For example in German, they tend to use negation after the verb or we can
call as postverbal. But in English, it uses postauxiliary. Postauxiliary means that negation NOT is always
posited after the auxiliary or before the verb that has no auxiliary (ex: will, can, should, may, etc) in that
sentence. for further understanding we can see the examples below:

Jhon will see me soon (Using auxiliary will) the negation will be:

Jhon will NOT see me soon. ( see the negation NOT is placed after will).

Not all the sentences use modal auxiliary, sometimes they just use verb. How to make the
negation in case we find like this, the explanation will be available below through the examples:

Jhon sees a bird ( no auxiliary).

To make the negation we have to find the helping verb. Helping verb can be found by seeing the
type of tense used. Here the tense is present tense , so we use helping verb DO (plural) and DOES
(Singular). (Past tense DID). The helping verb should be posited after the subject before verb. So the
negation for the sentence above will be:
 Jhon DOES NOT see a bird. ( can be contracted into Jhon DOESN’T see a bird)

Jhon has sent me a message (other case)

Jhon has NOT sent me a message (negation form)

Other case that can be confusing in Negation is so called Suppletion. Suppletion is the term to describe
grammatically related form but not etymologically related. Example the words Good and Better, go (v1)
and went (v2). This kind of case will be clearly seen when we discuss about negation. The common case
seen is between Some and Any. See the example below:

Jhon wants some books

If we intend to make negation into this sentence so there will be some changes happened, suppletion.

Jhon DOES NOT want ANY books.

Any will be used rather than some. But remember this will take place if the sentence contain some is
negated. Other case that can be troublesome is about Emphatic negative (focused). It happens when
we want to emphasizes our sentence into particular noun. See example below:

Jhon wants some books

Jhon DOES NOT want ANY books ( after being negated, suppletion takes place)

Jhon wants NO books (this is used when we try to emphasize that NOUN in this case is BOOKS)
 CHAPTER NINE

YES-NO QUESTIONS

The main intention of making question is to reach the information that we can call as the answer of the
question. Question can be divided into two kinds. The first we call as yes no question and the second is
wh-question. Yes-no question is the question that the possible answer only yes or no. in the other hand,
wh-question is the question that needs further explanation. For this time we are going to discuss only
about yes-no question.

To make a question is simple if the affirmative sentence has used TOBE or COPULA. See the example
below:

She is smart (affirmative)

She is NOT smart (Negation)

IS she smart? (Question)

As seen in the example above, yes no question can be formed simply by moving the TOBE/COPULA in
front of the sentence. the problem emerges when we are faced by the sentence in which the sentence
(affirmative) does not use COPULA or Auxiliary yet verb. See the example of sentence below:

They studied the old English.

It will be confusing to have a sentence like this. This example and the previous one are totally different.
We cannot just simply move one part of the sentence in front. This problem can be solved through the
finding of helping verb. Different tense will have different helping verb. Example present tense uses
DO,DOES. Past tense uses DID, etc. here the tense is past tense, so we may apply helping verb DID.
Remember when we apply the helping verb in sentence the verb used should be form into verb base or
verb 1. See the example below:

They studied the old English (past tense)

DID they study old English? (form of yes-no question in past tense).

In English, the verb HAVE can be fronted to form a yes no question. For example:

I have a book

Have i/you a book?

In American language, it is considered as ungrammatical or not common.

How to answer yes-no question?

It is easy to give the answer of yes-no question. It is just simply choosing the answer first whether yes or
no and the followed by subject used and then the modal auxiliary. It the answer is no, so we have to put
not in the last part. See the example below:

IS she smart?

Yes, she is (for yes)

No, she is not (for no)

Another example for sentence that uses modal auxiliaries.

WILL she come on time?

Yes, she will

No, she will not (will not can be contracted into won’t)

By using helping verb

DO you have friends?

Yes, I/you do

No, I/You do not (don’t)

 CHAPTER TEN

PRONOUNS AND POSSESSIVES

There are two kinds of personal. The first is definite pronoun or personal pronoun and the second
indefinite p[pronoun or sometimes called as impersonal pronoun. Firstly we will discuss about personal
pronoun.

Personal pronoun is the pronoun that we use for person or something that we have known. For
further information, see the information below:

1st person I (Singular) we (plural)

2nd person You (singular) you (plural)

3rd person he/she/it (singular) They (plural)

There are different kinds of pronoun. It can be as subject, object, possessive adjective, possessive
pronoun and reflexive. Each position has different usage also. Pronoun commonly use to substitute the
noun, pronoun is used to avoid repetition. See example below:

1. Jhon has a car. HE drives IT to school every day.

2. The students are studying English. THEY are wearing white and red uniform
3. Jhon has a car. HIS car is new
4. He is my teacher. I saw HIM yesterday in the library.
5. She found a pen on the floor. It was JHON’S pen

From the sentence above, the application of personal pronoun (sentence 1) is applied in the
second sentence. where JHON is changed by pronoun HE and the CAR becomes IT. The number 2, the
students is replaced by THEY. In sentence number 3, it is clearly seen that possessive adjective is used,
in this case is HIS. HIS refers to the possession of Jhon in this case Jhon possesses a car. The next is the
application of pronoun as object. HIM refers to HE in this case is my teacher. In sentence number five, to
show the possession is not only shown by the application of either possessive adjective and pronoun but
we can sometimes use Apostrophe S. How to use is just by putting it after the noun as applied in
sentence number 5.

In conclusion, to understand the application of pronoun we have to know the function of each
position in pronoun, when subject is used, when object should be posited, etc.
 Impersonal pronoun is pronoun that we have not know yet. It is unclear. The example of
impersonal pronoun can be seen below:

Some any No Every

-Body somebody anybody nobody everybody

-One someone anyone no one everyone

-Thing something anything nothing everything

All the impersonal pronoun requires the singular verb. ONE and BODY are used for person meanwhile
thing is for inanimate or abstract concept.

Demonstrative pronoun refers to pronoun that demonstrates the noun. Example and usage of
demonstrative pronoun can be seen below:

Singular Plural

Near this these

Far that those

Other pronoun can be ONE. ONE is informally used. It is used commonly to replace HE/SHE/HIM/HER.
The others member of impersonal pronoun can be seen here.

OTHER Is used for singular which we have not known, It can be followed by noun, singular or plural.
OTHERS is used for plural which we have not known. THE OTHER Is used for singular which we have
known. It can be followed by noun, singular or plural. THE OTHERS is used for plural which we have
known. For the OTHER and THE OTHER which can be followed by singular and plural noun, the noun can
be substituted by ONE (Singular) and ONES (plural).