Grammar Nuha Alwadaani

What is Grammar? Note the below examples, identify well formed and ill formed phrases: 1. *Boys the lucky. 2. *Lucky the boys the. 3. The Lucky boys. It is a fact that words can only be combined in a limited number of patterns. In order to make this sentences grammatical, this phrase must have the sequence article+adjective+noun (and NOT *noun+article+adjective).

What is Grammar? Grammar is the process of describing the structures 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.

Types of Grammar: Traditional Grammar It is “traditional” because its origin in the grammatical description comes from traditional languages such as Latin and Greek which were the languages of scholarship, religion, philosophy and knowledge. In the Traditional Grammar, it seemed appropriate to adopt the existing categories from these description as “models” and apply them in the analysis of newer languages such as English.

Traditional Analysis has provided: The Parts of Speech Technical terms such as “adjective” and “noun” are used to label forms in the language as parts of speech. Simple definitions of each term is listed on page 82.

Traditional Analysis has provided: Agreement Traditional grammatical analysis has also given us a number of other categories, including number, person, tense, voice and gender in terms of agreement. For example, we say that the verb “loves” agrees with the noun “Cathy” in Cathy loves her dog.

Cathy loves her dog Agreements In: Number  whether the noun is singular and plural. Person  the distinction of first person (involving the speaker “I”), second person (hearer “you”), and third person (any others “she, he, it”). Tense  whether present, past or future. Voice  active voice and passive voice, for example, Cathy is loved by her dog. Gender  in English, we use gender according to natural gender (male, female or unknown). For example, the agreement of Cathy and her, she and her, he and his, it and its.

The Prescriptive Approach The prescriptive approach views grammar as a set of rules for the proper use of language. For example: Do not split infinitives (To boldly go). You must not end a sentence with a preposition (Who did you go with?). P. 85.

The Descriptive Approach In descriptive grammar, analysts collect samples of the language they were interested in and attempt to describe the regular structures of the language as it was used, not according to some view of how it should be used.

Types of Descriptive Approach Structural Analysis The main concern of the structural analysis is to investigate the distribution of forms in a language. The method used to investigate the distribution of forms is called test-frames that can be sentences with empty slots in them, for example: The ____________ makes a lot of noise. Any forms that fit in these slots to produce GOOD GRMMATICAL SENTENCES are likely to be examples of the same grammatical category. What is the grammatical category that fills the slot in the test- frame above?

The ____________ makes a lot of noise. The answer is noun, e.g (car, child, donkey, dog, radio). And not (*The Cathy, the dog, a car) What about: I heard _____________ yesterday. Read P.87, last para.

Types of Descriptive Approach Constituent Analysis The technique employed in this approach is designed to show how small constituents/components go together to form larger constituents. The basic step in the constituent analysis is determining how words go together to form phrases (from the word level to phrase level).

Types of Descriptive Approach Constituent Analysis-Diagram Group the following sentence to larger constituents: An old man brought a shotgun to the wedding brought wedding the to shotgun a man old An

Types of Descriptive Approach Constituent Analysis By using this diagram, we can determine the types of forms that can be substituted for each other at different levels of constituent structures. Proper nouns and names (Gwen, Kingston) and pronouns (I, him, her), though they are single words, can be used as noun phrases and fill the same constituent space as longer phrases (e.g. an old man). See figure 7.3, page 88.

Types of Descriptive Approach Constituent Analysis-Labeled Brackets The first step of the labeled brackets is to put brackets (one of each side) round each constituent, and then more brackets round each combination of constituents. For example, [[ [The] [dog] ] [ [loved] ] [ [the] [girl] ]] With this procedure, the different constituents of the sentence are shown at the word level [the] or [dog], at the phrase level [the dog].

Types of Descriptive Approach Constituent Analysis-Labeled Brackets We can then label each constituent using these abbreviated grammatical terms: Art (=article) V (=verb) N (= noun) VP (=verb phrase) NP (=noun phrase) S (=sentence) See Figure 7.5