Chapter 7

GRAMMAR
Introduction

We have already considered two levels of description used

in the study of language
• What are they?
• ðəlʌkibɔjz
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
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
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)
• Grammatical gender is based on the type of noun (masculine & feminine)
• Nouns are classified according to their gender class
• Articles and adjectives have different forms to agree with the gender of the
noun.

• Spanish
• masculine (el sol = the sun)
• feminine (la luna = the moon)
• German
• masculine (der Mond = the moon)
• feminine (die Sonne = the sun)
• neuter (das Feuer = the fire)
• Arabic
Masculine ‫ﺧﺎﺗم ﺛﻣﯾـن‬
• feminine ‫ﺳﺎﻋﺔ ﺛﻣﯾﻧﺔ‬
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 claims 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? ×
• 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
• Mary runs faster than I.
and
• Me and my family
• 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
● 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.
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
• 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
THE END