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

and Greek

grammar- originally from Latin

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.

d. Gillian
the trumpet
and the
Det / will
N /play
Qual
/ V / Deg
/ A 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.