Transcript Phrases and Sentences: Grammar

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
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English has strict rules for combining words
into phrases.
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Languages have different ways of forming
grammatical phrases and sentences.
Types of grammar
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Mental grammar- a form of internal linguistic
knowledge- subconscious
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Linguistic etiquette- proper or best structure
to be used in a language
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Prescriptive approach
–
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Sets out rules for the correct or ‘proper’ use of
English.
Examples
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You must not end a sentence with a preposition Who did you with?
You must not split an infinitive - to never ever go
Latin’s influence
Approaches
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The descriptive approach
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Describes the regular structure of the language as
it is used not how it should be used.
Characterizes the structure of different languages.
 Two
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types of analysis:
Structural analysis
Immediate constituent analysis
Structural Analysis
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Investigates the distribution of forms in a
language
Test-frames
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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
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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
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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.