Grammar

Grammar

• The process of describing the structure 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

• Traditional grammar has its origins in the description of languages such as latin and Greek – their grammar was taken to be the model for other grammars

The parts of speech

Adjectives, nouns – labels forms in the language as the parts of speech or word classes

1. Nouns – refers to people, objects, places, phenomena, abstract ideas as if they were all “things”

2. Articles (a, an, the) – used with nouns to form noun phrases to identify them, or identify them as already known (the apple)

3. Adjectives – used with nouns to provide more information about the things referred to

4. Verbs – are words used to refer to actions and states involving people and things in events

5. Adverbs – used typically with verbs to provide more information about actions, states and events, or they can also modify information about things

6. Prepositions – used with nouns in phrases providing information about time, place or other connections

7. Pronouns – words used in place of noun phrases, typically referring to people and things already known (you, she)

8. Conjunctions – are words (and, but, because, when) used to make connections and indicate relationships between events

Categories

• Agreement – the grammatical connection between two parts of a sentence, as in the connection between a subject (Cathy) and the form of a verb (loves chocolate)

• It is based on the category of number (singular/plural), person (first, second, third person)

• Category tense = the grammatical category distinguishing forms of the verb as present tense and past tense

• Active/passive voice (what Cathy does/what happens to her)

• Gender = a term used in more ways

• a biological distinction between male and female, also called natural gender

• a distinction between classes of nouns as masculine, feminine (or neuter), also called grammatical gender

• Based on a type of a noun (German – three genders der, die, das) not based on gender distinction

The prescriptive approach

• The prescriptive approach = an approach to grammar that has rules for the proper use of the language, traditionally based on Latin

• Some examples of the prescriptive rules for English sentences:

You must not split an infinitive. (Captain Kirk – to boldly go)

You must not end a sentence with a preposition. (Who did you go with?)

The descriptive approach

• The descriptive approach = an approach to grammar that is based on a description of the structures actually used in a language, not what should be used, in contrast to the prescriptive approach

One type of descriptive approach is called structural analysis

• the investigation of the distribution of grammatical forms in a language

• Involves the use of “test frames” – sentences with empty slots in them

• A lot of words can fit the sentence, so they are thought as one grammatical category

• By this, we can produce a description of some aspects of the sentence structure of a language