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UNIT 7: GRAMMAR

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It is the set of rules that govern the structure of a language, including how words are combined to form phrases and sentences.

Traditional Grammar

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It is based on analyzing the Latin and Greek languages, focusing on the parts of speech, the agreement rules, and the "proper" usage.

The Prescriptive Approach

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It involves setting strict rules for the "proper" usage of a language, often based on older traditions. This approach was popular among 18th-century English grammarians, and it prescribed rules such as not splitting infinitives or ending sentences with prepositions.

The Descriptive Approach

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The descriptive approach focuses on studying how languages are used in real-world contexts, rather than imposing strict rules on how they should be used. This approach acknowledges that the rules of different languages may vary, and applying the grammar of one language to another can be misleading.

Subjects and Objects

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In English grammar, we use "subject" and "object" to describe the roles of noun phrases in a sentence. The subject usually comes before the verb and is the person or thing the sentence is about, often performing the action.

Word Order

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In English grammar, we usually place the subject before the verb and the object after it, known as the Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) order; however, across languages, it may vary.

Why Study Grammar?

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Understanding how language works is crucial and studying grammar can help us achieve that. It teaches us the rules of how words combine to form sentences which is particularly beneficial for second-language learners. Additionally, it helps explain why certain languages have word orders that differ from those of English.

The parts of the speech

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The traditional categories used to classify words, such as nouns (computer, school), articles (a, an, the), verbs (cook, have), adjectives (a "nice" class, "cold" water), adverbs (slowly, yesterday), prepositions (of, in), pronouns (me, he, they), and conjunctions (and, because).

Question 1

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How many adverbs are there in the following sentence? Really large objects move very slowly.

Answer: There are three adverbs: really, very, and slowly.

Note: “Really” modifies the adjective "large," “very” modifies the adverb "slowly," and “slowly” is being modified by the adverb "very."

Question 2

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Identify all the parts of speech used in this sentence (e.g. woman = noun): The woman kept a large snake in a cage, but it escaped recently.

Agreement

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It corresponds to where words like verbs match the nouns they relate to based on the number (singular or plural), person (first, second, or third), tense (past, present, or future), voice (active or passive), and gender (male or female).

Question 3

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What is the tense and voice of the verb in the following sentence? My parents were married in Rome.

Answer: The tense of the verb is past simple, and the voice is passive.

Grammatical Gender

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It is based on a noun type (masculine, feminine, or neutral), not biological sex (male or female) as in the natural gender, and the articles and adjectives must agree with the gender class of the noun for an accurate language description.

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In English, there are three genders: the cellphone (masculine), the computer (feminine), and the teacher (neutral).
In Spanish, there are two genders: masculine “el caballo” (the horse) and feminine “la vaca” (the cow).
In German, there are three genders: masculine “der Tisch” (the table), feminine “die Stuhl (the chair), and neutral “das Fenster” (the window).

Question 4

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What is the difference between grammatical gender and natural gender?

Answer: Natural gender refers to the biological distinction between males and females (e.g., she/her for females, he/his for males). On the other hand, grammatical gender is a classification system where nouns are assigned genders (e.g., masculine, feminine, neutral based on their type or class.

Traditional Analysis

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It usually applies categories from Latin to analyze English, like person and number for verbs. However, English verbs are mostly the same, unlike Latin where each form is different; therefore, there is a mismatch when applying these Latin-based categories to English, as they are more suited to describing pronouns rather than verb forms.

Question 5

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What prescriptive rules for the “proper” use of English are not obeyed in the following sentences and how would they be “corrected”?

(a) The old theory consistently failed to fully explain all the data.

(b) I can’t remember the name of the person I gave the book to.

Answers:

(a) The old theory consistently failed to fully explain all the data.

Prescriptive rule for English: You must not split an infinitive

Correction: The old theory consistently failed to explain all the data fully.

(b) I can’t remember the name of the person I gave the book to.

Prescriptive rule for English: You must not end a sentence with a preposition.

Correction: I can't remember the name of the person to whom I gave the book.

Captain Kirk’s Infinitive

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In English, the infinitive form of a verb is typically "to" followed by the base form of the verb, for example, "to go." There is a “rule” against splitting infinitives, which prohibits adverbs from being placed between the particle "to" and the verb (e.g., "to boldly go" instead of "to go boldly"). However, the second construction of the example has been used by native English speakers, as evidenced by its frequent appearance in the popular media “Star Trek.”

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People may use “gonna” instead of “going to,” “wanna” instead of “want to”, “´cuz" instead of “because,” and so on.

Structural Analysis

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It involves studying the distribution of forms in a language. This analysis aims to understand the grammatical categories of words and phrases using "test-frames." These are sentences with empty slots in them that allow for the testing of different grammatical structures.

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In English, words like "desk," "book," and "computer" can fit into the same test-frame ("The _______________ is on the table"), indicating they belong to the same grammatical category, a noun (N).
The Latin-influenced analysis refers to the traditional understanding that pronouns can replace nouns, but in English, pronouns can replace entire noun phrases (NP), not just single nouns. For example, it is on the table. The pronoun “it” can replace the noun phrases “the desk,” “the book,” and “the computer” from the previous example.

Question 6

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What was wrong with the older Latin-influenced definition of English pronouns?

Answer: The older Latin-influenced definition of English pronouns was limited because it stated that "pronouns are words used in place of nouns."

Constituent Analysis

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It is an approach with similar descriptive aims, and it is considered a technique that helps linguistics to demonstrate how smaller constituents, or components, combine to create larger constituents.

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In the phrase "the big red car," "the," "big," "red," and "car" are small constituents that combine to form the larger noun phrase "the big red car." As we can see, there are four constituents.

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The object typically comes after the verb and represents the person or thing that undergoes the action.
Pronouns like "I" and "she" are used as subjects, while "me" and "her" are used as objects.
Adjuncts are often prepositional phrases that add additional information to the sentences like where or when an action happened.
There are also noun phrases that act as subjects to determine the form of the verb (singular or plural), while those as objects do not.

Question 7

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How many noun phrases are there in the following sentence? Robert brought a small puppy to the party and we all wanted to keep it.

Answer: There are two noun phrases: “a small puppy” and “the party.”

Question 8

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What is the grammatical function of the proper noun in the following sentence? The professor and her students visited Berlin during the summer.

Answer: The proper noun "Berlin" functions as the object in the sentence because it is a noun after the verb “visited.”

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Japanese uses (VSO), Scottish Gaelic uses (VSO), and Malagasy uses (VOS). Something interesting about Gaelic and Malagasy is the placement of adjectives because they go after the noun, for example, “food delicious” as in Spanish.

Question 9

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Is Malagasy a VSO language or something else?

Answer: No, it isn’t. Malagasy does not follow the Verb-Subject-Object (VSO) word order. Instead, it follows the Verb-Object-Subject (VOS) word order, which means that the verb comes first, followed by the object, and then the subject.

Question 10

cr15093 — 2024-05-13 02:59:47 UTC

Given these other Gaelic words, translate the following sentences into English: beag (“small”) bhuail (“hit”) dubh (“black”) duine (“man”) gille (“boy”)

Answers:

Gaelic sentence: Bhuail an gille beag an cu dubh

English translation: The small boy hit the black dog.

Gaelic sentence: Chunnaic an cu an duine mor

English translation: The dog saw the big man.

Language Typology

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Language typology involves studying the grammatical structures of languages to classify them into different types or groups based on similarities.

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English follows the SVO (Subject-Verb-Object) pattern, while Gaelic uses VSO (Verb-Subject-Object).
OSV and OVS, two less common word order patterns, are found in a limited number of languages spoken in South America.

References

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Yule, G. (2017). The Study of Language. Sixth Edition U.K: Cambridge University Press