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MOUNT KENYA UNIVERSITY

SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES

DEPARTMENT OF LANGUAGES AND HUMANITIES

UNIT CODE: BLA 4115

UNIT TITLE: ADVANCED THEORETICAL STUDIES IN GRAMMAR

CAT 1

LECTURER’S NAME: DR. STELLA WANGARI

STUDENT’S NAME: WAMBUA R. KATHINA

REG.NO. BEDA 2024/31376

DATE: 24/10/2024
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Question 1.
Describe the major contributions of traditional grammars to Modern English grammar.
(10 marks)
Traditional grammar especially Latin and Greek have a great influence on Modern English
grammar in the following ways.
a) Traditional grammar lays a foundation in the classification of the parts of speech.
It categorized words into parts of speech, for example, nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.
This has originated from classical grammar. For example the works of Plato, he further gave the
definition of each part which is still used up to date. Nouns he defined as forms that could
function as subject in sentences of a subjection. He also defined verbs as terms that express
action. The above definitions are used in modern English grammar.
b) Introduction of the prescriptive rules in modern formal and academic standards.
The normative rules are stated to ensure standard usage based on the correct forms. The
prescriptive rules are mostly used in academic and formal forms of writing. (Çiftci, & Özcan,
2012). Those rules include; no use of double negation or ending a sentence with a preposition.
They also help in emphasizing the proper syntax usage.
c) Traditional grammar helps in syntax and sentence structure.
It gives a framework to understand how sentences are constructed that is the subject–verb–object
order. (SVO). It also helps in understanding the above structure by defining the relationship
between the subject, verb, and object. (Burton-Roberts, 2021).
d) Traditional grammar provided modern grammar with terminology.
The modern English borrows directly from the traditional grammar. Terms like nouns, verbs,
adjectives, and adverbs were borrowed from Latin and Greek grammar.
e) It provided the framework for understanding the grammatical category of tense.
Traditional grammar provides the time of an action, event, or state as presented by the verb. It
provides rules on how verbs change to reflect different tenses. For example, the addition of ‘ed’
‘d’ to form the past tense of a given verb. Also, it explains how the verbs change to reflect
different tenses. It also guides on how tense should align across the tense.
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Question 2.
Explain the tenets of phrase structure grammar. (5 marks)
Phrase structure was introduced by Noam Chomsky. It is assigned to each sentence that
generates a structural description that is, a constituent structure analysis. (van, 2012)
The key principles include;
I. Hierarchical structure presentation.
The phrase structure grammar shows the sentence representation whereby the larger constituents
which is the sentence is made up of the smaller ones, for example, noun phrases (NP) and verb
phrases (VP), and can be further broken down.
II. The constituency.
Each phrase functions as a single-unit structure. For example, ‘The boy kicked the ball.
The NP is ‘the boy’ which functions as the subject of the sentence and ‘kicked the ball’ which
functions as the predicate, the verb phrase.
III. The phrase structure grammar also contains the re-write rules.
The phrase structure rules describe how each constituent can be expanded. For example, the NP
in the sentence ‘The boy kicked the boy’ ‘The boy’ is the NP containing the determiner (Det)
and noun (N), and the verb phrase is ‘kicked the ball’ which is also referred to as the predicate.
IV. The lexical categories.
In phrase structure grammar, words are further categorized into parts of speech like determiner
(Det), nouns (N), verbs (V), adjectives(Adj), adverbs (Adv), and prepositions(P), which combine
to form a complete sentence. These parts of speech are important in determining how words
function syntactically and their relationship within a sentence. (Dik, 2021)
V. The concept of recursion.
This is the ability of certain grammatical rules to be applied repeatedly, to allow the infinite
generation of structures which makes language flexible and generative. This enables one to
generate many sentences which express unlimited number of ideas. For example, NP → NP PP
means that the noun phrase consists of a noun phrase followed by a prepositional phrase.
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References

Burton-Roberts, N. (2021). Analysing sentences: An introduction to English syntax. Routledge.

Çiftci, H., & Özcan, M. (2021). A Contrastive Analysis of Traditional Grammar Teaching and
Communicative Language Teaching in Teaching English Grammar and
Vocabulary. International Online Journal of Education and Teaching, 8(2), 709-729.

Dik, S. C. (2021). Functional grammar (Vol. 7). Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG.

van Rijt, J. H. (2021). Understanding grammar: The impact of linguistic metaconcepts on L1