Sergio Fernando Navarro Lopez

English 5110: Grammar for Teaching ESL

Dr. Zaid Mahir
09/17/2018
Report 1 Grammar Class

Grammar rules are very similar to the rules of musical creation. It seems that they have

been here waiting to be discovered, they show clear intrinsic relationship with the human brain.

However, while they are related, grammar shares different features with the art of composition of

music. First, music starts with sounds that are tempered in a specific frequency. In language,

although phonetic elements are not tempered, they work in a specific manner depending on the

language. The musical sounds, or melodic notes, work together with rhythmic notes, and with the

combination of both, composers create beautiful melodies. Although music is primarily sounds

and rhythm, it relies on other features to become pleasant melodies. The same thing happens with

language. By the pure existence of the phonetic elements, language cannot exist; it needs a

complex element to create an intelligible dialogue.

The rules of music are called rules of form. For every musical piece, there is always a

smaller part that connects with other elements to create something bigger. This bigger element

then creates something even bigger until a symphony, song, sonata etc, is created. For language,

grammar is the system that helps convey ideas in a structured way. Everything starts with a

smaller part, and this smaller part connects with a bigger part and so on, so that communication

may be clear. For instance, in music, specifically at the beginning the 5th symphony of

Beethoven, one can hear four melodic notes with a specific rhythmic pattern. If one of these

notes is played in isolation, it would not communicate anything. After these four notes,

Beethoven repeats the same rhythmic pattern but with different melodic notes, and these new

four notes create something bigger with the former four. Beethoven keeps using the same
rhythmic notes with different melodic notes until he finishes introducing the theme of the

symphony. The first four melodic notes and their rhythmic pattern are called a motif, and this

motif creates a bigger component called a phrase. This phrase connects with other phrases that

are related to the former motif to create a bigger sequence, which is called a theme. These small

components are interconnected, and by this process, a whole idea is created, just as words,

phrases, and clauses do in language.

Words consist of morphemes, and these words create phrases and these phrases make

clauses which help convey thoughts by the creation of dialogues. Biber, Conrad, & Leech (2010)

state that words “are generally considered the basic elements of language” (p. 14). Words cannot

function in an isolated manner; just by their nature, they need to rely on some other elements that

helps them communicate ideas. Just by uttering the word table can create various possibilities of

meaning and confusion. If a speaker just says the word table, listeners would not necessarily

understand the speaker’s intent. Does the speaker want the table to be brought to him or her?

Does the speaker want to look at a table? There is no way to fully communicate ideas by just

uttering single words in an isolated way. To express ideas, words need to connect with other

words to create bigger units of communication. Here is where grammar aids in understanding the

connection among words to express ideas. For instance, the uttering of table needs something

else to become an idea or expression. Here is where language, by the rules of grammar, needs

other words to complete an idea. If someone says, “look table,” the idea becomes clearer. There

is a different word with a different function that is affecting the former word. Biber, Conrad, &

Leech (2010) classifies these words in the three following families: “lexical words, function

words, and inserts” p. 15. Although the classification offers a structured way to understand

words, it does not satisfy the need of creating. Here is when thinking of words as musical notes,
when combined in a certain form, facilitates communication just as motifs in music help to create

a bigger unit of a musical idea.

In grammar, phrases consist of one or more words. Even if phrases are a bigger part

created out of words, they still need each other to form a complete expression of an idea. Not all

words can be the main part of a phrase, just as all notes cannot be part of a musical phrase.

Phrases depend of the lexical words as Biber, Conrad, & Leech (2010) state, “for each class of

lexical word, there is a major phrase type with an example of that class as the head: noun phrase

… verb phrase .... adjective phrase ... adverb phrase ... and prepositional phrase” (p. 41). It is

apparent that phrases need words to exist, a phrase cannot exist if words are not there, but they

can have meaning.

A phrase can express an idea, like The White House. If someone utters that phrase, one

might recall the place of where the president of the United States resides. Therefore, the idea, or

the image of something is conveyed but the speaker needs to give more information. If the idea is

bigger or deeper, it might need to have more phrases. The White House is a noun phrase because

the head of the phrase is a lexical word noun, House, and it has determiner, The, and it has an

adjective White which it makes it as an embedded phrase called adjective phrase. If a speaker

says, “The White House is an interesting place to learn about the American culture,” it is relying

on more than one phrase. The phrase is communicating a deeper thought; it is not only pointing

to the White House, but it is expressing that this White House offers knowledge about the

American culture. The first phrase relied on some other phrases such as a verb phrase (is), an

adjective phrase (an interesting place to learn), and a prepositional phrase (to learn about the

American culture). All these phrases ended up creating something bigger than just a phrase. They

created a clause which is a bigger part in the grammar area.

 Biber, Conrad, & Leech (2010) explain what a clause is: “it is useful to think [it]... as a

unit that can stand alone as an expression of a 'complete thought'-that is, a complete description

of an event or state of affairs” (p. 46). The bigger part of an utterance, the complete idea comes

to the clause. Words create phrases, phrases with other phrases create clauses, just how musical

notes create motifs and these motifs create themes. Although clauses depend on phrases, they

also rely on words, specifically in verbs as Biber states: “the verb phrase is the central element of

the clause, because it expresses the action or state to which other elements relate, and it controls

the other kinds of elements and meanings that can be in the clause” (p. 48). There are other

elements in the clause that are also important such as the subject. if there is no subject, the action

is in isolation. A subject is needed in order to know to whom the action is being referred.

Although the subject is there, and if the idea is longer or deeper, the clause will need some other

elements to convey the main idea. All these elements rely on phrases. For instance, if a

predicative element is needed, it can be either an adjective phrase, a noun phrase, or occasionally

a prepositional phrase. There is no escape for the clause to rely on phrases and their

classification, just as phrases rely on words and their classification.

The interconnectedness of words, phrases and clauses is undeniable. One cannot

understand clauses if there is no understanding of phrases, and one cannot understand phrases if

someone does not understand words and its classification. There is no way, as it was stated

before, that clauses exist by themselves, just as phrases cannot; they both rely on the existence of

words. At the beginning of this paper, an analogy with music was offered. One can see that this

analogy is correct because just as musical pieces rely on themes, and these themes on musical

phrases, and these musical phrases on motifs and motifs on musical notes, the same phenomenon

happens with the presented grammatical features, and the interconnection is inherent in all three.
 References

Biber, D., Conrad, S., & Leech, G. N. (2010). Longman student grammar of spoken and written

English. Longman.