Marianne Celce- Murcia Diane Larsen- Freeman

The grammar book

Two approaches to teaching language It is important to define grammar in a way that suits both purposes, the structure of the target language and its communicative use. In order to do so, is necessary to take into consideration how grammar operates at three levels: The subsentencial or morphological level verbs are described through the use of verb tense morphology, which consists of auxiliary verbs and certain suffixes or words endings such as ing. Example: be (past tense) plus base form of verb plus ing (was / were walking) The sentencial or syntactic level describes the syntax of the English sentence on its word order. One basic word-order rule in English is that verbs normally follow subjects and come before adverbials (She was walking home from school). Sentence-level grammarians would also take into account the placement of the be verb in questions, which it is inverted in yes/ no questions (Was she walking home from school?); and they would also discuss the formation of negative sentences, which are formed by adding the not, following the be verb and it can be contracted as well. ( She wasnt walking home from school) The suprasentential or discourse level takes into consideration the analysis of how the morphology and syntax are deployed to effect certain purposes at this level, which is important in communication. For example, one discourse rule is that narratives often begin with the present perfect tense as a scene setter, and then the past and past progressive are used to relate the specific actions. On the nature of Grammar rules There are two qualifications Murcia and Freeman make to the use of the term rule in connection with grammar. The first one is that rules always have exceptions and the second one they make is that rules often appear to be arbitrary formulations. The three dimensions Grammar is not merely a collection of forms but rather involves the three dimensions of what linguistics refer to as morpho (syntax) , semantics, and pragmatics. Grammatical structures have a morphosyntatic form and they also used to express meaning (semantics) in contextappropriate use (pragmatics); the three of them are interrelated, which means that a change in one will involve a change in another. FORM: How is it formed? Accuracy MEANING what does it mean? Meaningfulness USE When/why it is used? Appropriateness The three of them are important for teaching language, so, language teachers cannot only be satisfied that their students achieve a certain degree of formal accuracy, they also must help them to use the structures meaningfully and appropriately as well

A pedagogical Grammar, not a linguistic grammar Linguistics grammars strive for internal consistency, which means that they based on a theory, on a one perspective; while pedagogical grammars are ecletic, so that they feel that insights into the structure of English can be gleaned from different types of analysis, and they choose what they feel is more comfortable.

Grammatical metalanguage

Subsentential Terminology
Three Criteria: Semantic, Structural, and Functional Parts of speech they are usually divided into 2 categories: the major and the minor word classics. They are called Mayor because they carry most of the content or meaning of a sentence( nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs) while the minor words plays a more structural role in a sentence and each of its classics is more closed since no new words are added. (Auxiliary verbs, prepositions, pronouns, determiners and conjunctions)

Sentential Terminology
Simple sentence contains at least one subject and one verb and can stand alone as an independent clause. Possible patterns: Subject- verb Subject verb- direct object Subject verb- indirect object-direct object Subject verb- subject predicate Subject verb-object predicate Compound sentence contains at least two o more clauses of equal grammatical importance, connected by coordinating conjunctions. Complex sentence formed by a main clause with one o more subordinate clauses, which are often introduced by adverbial subordinators. An there is also a second type in which a dependent clause is included or embedded in an independent clause. Sentence moods : different forms according to their function, so, they convey speaker s attitude. The three main/major moods are -declarative -interrogative -imperative And the minor moods are -exclamatory -subjunctive

Theme/Rheme (According to Halliday) The Theme provides the point of departure of the message, which means that provides the framework for interpreting what follows and what follows is always the Rheme, the remainder of the message in the clause. As every English sentence is composed of two constituents, a subject and a predicate, it is commonly the case that the subject in English will be the theme and the predicate the rheme. Markedness Linguistics use the term marked to refer not only to such instances of thematization of nonsubjects but also to refer to any exceptions from what is very typical, very predictable. Voice (active or passive) is another linguistic device that languages employ to allow for different constituents to function as themes. In the case of active voice, the subject functions

as the theme and is most often the actor of the action, while in the passive voice the thing acted upon by the agent is the theme.

Suprasentential Terminology
Backgrounding: has to do with general background information Foregrounding: has to do with carry the main storyline. The main difference between them is their verb tense. Cohesion hast to do with an organizational structure of the text (unit of spoken or written language at the suprasentential level). There are five linguistic mechanisms for texts to have cohesion: -reference -ellipsis -substitution -conjunction -lexical cohesion (synonymy) Register has to do with the level of formality of language. According to Halliday, register involves three variables: field (refers to the social activity in which the language is being used and what is being talked about) tenor (is concerned with the roles and the relationships of interlocutors) and mode (refers to the channel of communication; whether the language is written or spoken, and regarding the latter, whether it is face to face or more remote) Genre refers to linguistic variation, which is due to the communicative purposes to which the language is put. For instance, there is a big difference between the language used in a scientific research paper from the one used in a recipe.

Given /New Given information is that which is assumed by the writer to know by the reader; this assumption can be made because the given information has been mentioned before, or because it is in some way shared between the writer and reader. On the other hand, new information is newsworthy, which means not something the writer can take for granted that the reader knows. The Lexicon has been characterized as a mental inventory of words and productive word derivational processes. Murcia and Freeman prefer to view vocabulary and grammar as one component of language, so, they prefer to think in terms of lexicogrammar. There are three reasons for their preference. First, is the interlingual argument: that which is accomplished grammatically in one language can be realized lexically in another. Second, from an interlingual perspective, in keeping with our broader scope of the lexicon, we note that many multiword lexical unit conform to the grammar of a language, which means that adhere to acceptable word order. (by the way, not way by the) Third, when we focus on the extremes at the ends of the continuum, the dichotomy between grammar and lexicon seems to hold. Content words vary enormously in their concreteness of meaning and in their semantic specificity. Furthermore, the grammatical units express meaning, as well as having form and use. This is no less true of lexicogrammatical units. Murcia and Freeman treat lexical units at three levels: that of the individual words and its components that of word compounds and co-occurrences, and

that of conventionalized multiword phrases. To know a word, one needs to know its Spelling, that has to do with the orthography Phonetic representation, which has to do with pronunciation, syllabification and stress Morphological irregularity has to do with the knowledge of the plural form of each word. For example, in the case of child; the plural form will be children, which is not generated by the regular rules for forming plurals in English. Syntactic features and restrictions include the word s part of speech. In the case of child, it is a common countable noun. Common derivations and collocations this noun child has common derivatives such as childlike, childish and childhood and common collocations like childs play, child labor. Semantic features and restrictions include the concept human; for example, the fact that we know that the adjective afraid can be only used for people. Pragmatic features and restrictions has to do with the use perspective, which means that the speaker would be able to contrast the word child with other words with the same meaning, such as kid. Morphological Affixation The bound morphemes consist of two kind of affixes, derivational (prefixes and suffixes), which are more lexical in nature, because it occurs when a morpheme is added to a word and the result is a change of the part of speech (happy-happiness), or a same part of speech with a different lexical meaning (happy- unhappy) and inflectional which are more grammatical in nature, because it occurs when a morpheme adds some element of meaning, required by the grammar, and changes the form, without changing the part of speech (play-plays).