Lecturer: Abrar Mujaddidi LANE 321 P HRASES AND S ENTENCES : G RAMMAR

I NTRODUCTION  We have already considered two levels of description used in the study of language: - Phonology - Morphology  Try to analyze the following expression in terms of phonology and morphology : The lucky boys

G RAMMAR  In the previous example, in the phrase the lucky boys, the words can only be combined in a limited number of patterns: the lucky boys * boys the lucky * lucky boys the  The fact that there are possible (grammatical or well-formed) and impossible (ungrammatical and ill-formed) ways to form the phrase can help us arrive at a definition for the word grammar.

CONT.,  Grammar: The process of describing 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.

T RADITIONAL GRAMMAR  Traditional grammar was used to describe old languages such as Latin and Greek.  The grammars of these languages was taken to be the model for other languages.  The best-known terms from that tradition are the terms used in describing parts of speech.

T HE PARTS OF SPEECH  See pg  It is important to note that the definitions of certain parts of speech may apply to some languages but not other languages. e.g. nouns in Arabic and English.

A GREEMENT  In addition to parts of speech, traditional grammar provided other terms such as gender, number, person, tense, and voice.

G RAMMATICAL GENDER Gender natural gender grammatical gender Indicates sex: indicates type of Male or female noun: masculine or feminine

T YPES OF P HRASES  NP: Noun phrase the pretty girl  VP: Verb phrase clean the table  AdjP: Adjective phrase very cute  AdvP: Adverb phrase very quickly  PP: Prepositional phrase in the bag

T HE PRESCRIPTIVE APPROACH  The prescriptive approach views grammar as a set of rules for the ‘proper’ use of English.  E.g. -You should never split an infinitive: to boldly go

T HE DESCRIPTIVE APPROACH  How did we arrive at the descriptive approach?  The descriptive approach describes the regular structures of the language as it was used, not as how it should be used.

S TRUCTURAL ANALYSIS  Investigates the distribution of forms in a language.  Test-frames  The _________ makes a lot of noise  I heard a __________ yesterday

I MMEDIATE CONSTITUENT ANALYSIS  An approach with the same descriptive approach.  The technique of this approach shows how small constituents (or components) in a sentence go together to form larger constituents.  e.g. Her father brought a shotgun to the wedding

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