George Yule_Phrases and sentences grammar.pdf

Phrases &
Sentences :
Grammar
Grammar

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Intro
We have already considered two levels of
description used in the study of language.
The previous chapter has described linguistic
expressions as sequences of sounds that can
be represented in the phonetic alphabet and
described in terms of their features.

The luck-y boy-s
functional lexical derivational lexical inflectional
With these descriptions, we could characterize all the words
and phrases of a language in terms of their phonology and
morphology.
Based on morphemes

❌boys the lucky
❌lucky the boys
From these examples, we can see that English has strict rules
for combining words into phrases.
The article (the) must go before the adjective (lucky), which
must go before the noun (boys). So, in order to be grammatical,
this type of phrase must have the sequence
article+adjective+noun+article+adjective, for example

So. what is 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

The terms ‘article’, ‘adjective’ and ‘noun’ that we used to label
the grammatical categories of the words in the phrase the “lucky
boys” come from traditional grammar, which has its origins in the
description of languages such as Latin and Greek.
Since there were well-established grammatical descriptions of
these languages, it seemed appropriate to adopt the existing
categories from these descriptions and apply them in the
analysis of ‘newer’ languages such as English.

After all, Latin and Greek were 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.

Nouns
Articles
Verbs
Adjectives

Adverbs
Prepositions
Conjunctions
Pronouns

Number
Person
Active/
passive
voice
Tense
Gender

The type of biological distinction used in English is quite
different from the more common distinction found in
languages that use grammatical gender. Natural gender
is based on sex (male and female), grammatical gender is
based on the type of noun (masculine and feminine) and
is not tied to sex. In this latter sense, nouns are classified
according to their gender class.

Tables such as the following were often presented for
English verbs, constructed by analogy with similar tables
of forms in Latin grammars.
Each of the Latin verb forms is different, according to the categories of
person and number, yet the English verb forms are (with one
exception) mostly the same. Thus it makes sense, in describing a
language such as Latin, to have all those descriptive categories to
characterize verb forms, but they don’t really describe verb forms in
English.

It is one thing to adopt the grammatical labels (e.g. ‘noun’, ‘verb’)
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. This view of grammar as a
set of rules for the ‘proper’ use of a language is still to be found
today and may be best characterized as 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.
However, it is worth considering the origins of some of these rules
and asking whether they are appropriately applied to the English
language. Let’s take one example: “You must not split an
infinitive.”

The infinitive in English has the form to + the
base form of the verb
Example: to go, and can be used with an adverb
such as boldly.
But, Captain Kirk (the main character in Star
Trek) used the expression to boldly go, this is an
example of a split infinitive. Modern
grammarians are comfortable with this, but
sometimes it’s better not to split the infinitive.

Analysts collected samples of the language
they were interested in and attempted to
describe the regular structures of the
languages as they used, not according to
some view of how they should be used.
This is called the descriptive approach.

Structural analysis is one type
of descriptive approach and its
main concern is to investigate
the distribution of forms in a
language. The method involves
the use of ‘test-frames’. For
example:
The ___________ makes a lot of
noise.
I heard a ___________
yesterday.
There are a lot of forms that can fit
into these slots (e.g. car, child,
donkey, dog, radio). The label we give
to this grammatical category is a
noun. However, many forms don’t fit
those ‘test-frames’. (e.g. Cathy,
someone, the dog, a car, etc). For
these forms, the ‘test frames’ could
look like this:
________ makes a lot of noise.
I heard _________ yesterday.
The common label for this category is
a noun phrase.

In the older analysis (Latin-influenced), pronouns
were described as ‘words used in place of nouns’.
We can see now that it’s more accurate to say
that pronouns are used in place of noun phrases
(not just nouns).

Immediate
constituent analysis

Immediate constituent
analysis
The immediate constituent analysis approach aims to show how small
constituents (or components) in sentences form larger ones. This technique
involves determining how words come together to form phrases. For
example, in the sentence "Her father brought a shotgun to the wedding,"
there are eight constituents at the word level. How do those eight
constituents go together to form constituents at the phrase level? Does it
seem appropriate to put the words together as follows?

Immediate constituent
analysis
brought a father brought shotgun to to the
We don't usually see these combinations as phrases in English. Instead,
we identify them as noun phrases like "Her father," "a shotgun," and
"the wedding," a prepositional phrase like "to the wedding," and a verb
phrase like "brought a shotgun." There are different diagrams that can
show the structure of the sentence.

This analysis of the constituent structure of the sentence can be represented in
different types of diagrams. One type of diagram simply shows the
distribution of the constituents at different levels
This diagram shows how different forms can replace each other at various levels of
structure. Proper nouns (or names) such as Johny and pronouns such as it, though
single words, can both function as noun phrases.

Labeled and
bracketed sentence

An alternative type of diagram is designed to show
how the constituents in sentence structure can be
marked off by using labeled brackets. Start by
putting brackets around each constituent, and then
more brackets around each combination of
constituents. For example:
With this procedure, the different constituents of the
sentence are shown at the word level [the] or [dog],
at the phrase level [the dog], or [loved the girl], and
at the sentence level [The dog loved the girl].

We can then label each constituent using abbreviated grammatical terms
such as ‘Art’ (= article), ‘N’ (= noun), ‘NP’ (= noun phrase), ‘V’ (= verb),
‘VP’ (= verb phrase) and ‘S’ (= sentence). In the following diagram, these
labels are placed beside each bracket that marks the beginning of a
constituent. The result is a labeled and bracketed analysis of the constituent
structure of the sentence.
In this hierarchy, the sentence (S) is
higher than and contains the noun
phrase (NP). The noun phrase (NP) is
higher than and contains the noun (N).
We can also see that the sentence (S)
contains a verb phrase (VP) which
contains a verb (V) and another noun
phrase (NP).

Here is a sentence from Scottish Gaelic which would be translated as ‘The
boy saw the black dog’
The Gaelic sentence structure differs from English by placing the verb at the
beginning and the adjective after the noun. We can represent these structural
observations in a labeled and bracketed diagram.
The diagram makes it clear
that this Gaelic sentence is
organized with a V NP NP
structure, which is rather
different from the NP V NP
structure we found in the
English sentence analyzed
earlier.

The diagram shows us how English sentences are structured
and how they're made up of phrases and words. By looking at
how other languages structure sentences, like Gaelic, Japanese,
and Spanish, we can see the differences. This can help us
understand why Spanish learners of English might make
mistakes like saying "the wine red" instead of "the red wine."
using a structural organization of constituents that is possible
in Spanish, but not in English.

George Yule_Phrases and sentences grammar.pdf

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