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.
Det / N / Adv / V

b. A jogger ran towards the end of the lane.

Det / N / V / P / Det / N / P / Det / N

c. The peaches never appear quite ripe.

Det / N / Qual / V / Deg / A

d. Gillian will play the trumpet and the drums in the

orchestra.
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

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

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
Latins influence

Approaches

The descriptive approach

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.

See you next class

Read Chapter 9