Phrases and Sentences: Grammar Chapter 8

Grammatical or Ungrammatical: 1. The boy found the ball 2. The boy found quickly 3. The boy found in the house 4. The boy found the ball in the house 5. Disa slept the baby 6. Disa slept soundly Find: Transitive verb (with object) Sleep: Intransitive verb (no object)

Grammar English has strict rules for combining words into phrases. Languages have different ways of forming grammatical phrases and sentences.

Types of grammar Mental grammar- a form of internal linguistic knowledge- subconscious Linguistic etiquette- proper or best structure to be used in a language Traditional grammar- originally from Latin and Greek

Syntactic Categories (parts of speech) (1) Lexical categories Noun (N) Verb (V) Adjective (A) Preposition (P) Adverb (Adv) Examples moisture, policy melt, remain good, intelligent to, near slowly, now

Syntactic Categories (2) Non-lexical categories Articles Degree word (Deg) Qualifier (Qual) Auxiliary (Aux) Conjunction (Con) Examples A, an, the very, more always, perhaps will, can and, or

Indicate the category of each word in the following sentences. a. The glass suddenly broke. b. A jogger ran towards the end of the lane. c. The peaches never appear quite ripe. d. Gillian will play the trumpet and the drums in the orchestra. Det / N / Adv / V Det / N / V / P / Det / N / P / Det / N Det / N / Qual / V / Deg / A N / Aux / V / Det / N / Conj / Det / N / P / Det / N

Phrases NP : Noun Phrase The car, a clever student VP : Verb Phrase study hard, play the guitar PP : Prepositional Phrase in the class, above the earth AP : Adjective Phrase very tall, quite certain

Other categories E.g. Tom likes his dog Number- singular or plural Person- first, second or third person Tense- present, past, or future Voice- active, passive Gender- natural (English) & grammatical (Arabic) The role of these categories becomes clearer in describing language structure when we consider them in terms of Agreement E.g. Tom likes his dog

Grammatical Gender Natural gender is based on sex (male or female) Grammatical gender is on the type of noun (masculine or feminine) Arabic, French and German Spanish el son (the sun) and la luna (the moon) Le livre (the book) is grammatically masculine but not biologically.

Approaches Prescriptive approach Examples Sets out rules for the correct or ‘proper’ use of English. Examples You must not end a sentence with a preposition - Who did you with? You must not split an infinitive - to never ever go Latin’s influence

Approaches The descriptive approach Two types of analysis: Describes the regular structure of the language as it is used not how it should be used. Characterizes the structure of different languages. Two types of analysis: Structural analysis Immediate constituent analysis

Structural Analysis Investigates the distribution of forms in a language Test-frames The _________ makes a lot of noise I heard a __________ yesterday A lot of nouns can fit here e.g. dog, donkey, monkey, child, boy, girl, man, radio, etc. but NOT Sara, the dog, a car.

Structural Analysis The child ___________ slept, saw a clown, a bird, smart, found the cake, found the cake in the cupboard, is smart, realized that the earth is round Only VPs fit here.

Immediate constituent analysis How small constituents (or components) in a sentence go together to form larger constituents. Her father brought a shotgun to the wedding NPs – VPs – PPs Hierarchical organization

Immediate constituent analysis More examples: The child found a puppy in the garden Sam kicked the ball.