Grammar I

LV/ JVG

Graciela Palacio
2012 (revised 2015)

LESSON 2:
THE FIVE GRAMMATICAL UNITS
When we deal with syntax, we have to focus on grammatical units. Which are the
grammatical units? And how many grammatical units are there?
According to Halliday (1961), a British linguist, in English grammar there are five
grammatical units:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

the sentence
the clause
the phrase
the word and
the morpheme

The sentence is the largest or "highest" unit. Its beginning is marked by the use of capital
letters and its end by a full stop. The morpheme is the smallest or "lowest" unit. Halliday
arranges all five units on a scale of rank, saying that units of higher rank are composed of or
made up of units of lower rank. The relation between the five units is, therefore, one of
composition or constituency.
The sentence is composed of one or more clauses, for example:
[(Mr. Funny lived in a teapot).]
is one sentence made up of one main, free or independent clause. In this case sentence and
clause coincide. A sentence may consist of a single clause. We will use square brackets to
mark the beginning and end of sentences, and round brackets to mark clauses within
sentences but this is just a convention.
However, if we consider the second sentence of the text:
[(It had two bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen and a living room) and (it suited Mr.
Funny very nicely).]
what we find is one sentence made up of two main, free or independent clauses. If we
dropped the word and, and wrote a full stop instead, each of the main clauses could stand on
its own, e.g.:
[It had two bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen and a living room.] [It suited Mr. Funny
very nicely.]
If we consider the sentences:
[Delicious, he murmured to himself <as he finished his funny lunch>.]
[Have you ever seen a car <that looks like a shoe>?]

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We will see that the units as he finished his funny lunch and that looks like a shoe cannot
stand on their own. We will also call them clauses but they are not main, free or independent
clauses. We will call them subordinate or dependent clauses. Subordinate clauses are not
free or independent as main clauses are.
TO SUM UP:
Clauses can be classified into a. Main, free or independent and b, Subordinate or dependent.
Main, free or independent
Clauses
Subordinate or dependent
Now lets go back to the five grammatical units. We have said so far that according to
Halliday the sentence is made up of clauses. What is the clause made up of?
The clause is composed, or made up, of one or more phrases. For example the sentence:
[Mr. Funny lived in a teapot.]
is made up of two phrases, a noun phrase1 Mr. Funny and a verb phrase lived in a teapot.
What is the phrase made up of? The phrase is composed of one or more words.
What is the word made up of? The word is composed of one or more morphemes. By
morpheme we understand a minimum unit of form and meaning.
Morphemes may be free or bound. A free morpheme is one that can stand on its own. There
may be cases where word and morpheme coincide. In the case of live we have one word and
one free morpheme. In the case of teapot we have one word made up of two free morphemes
tea and pot. A bound morpheme is one that cannot stand on its own. It may be an inflection
such as ed in suited, or a word formation affix (prefix or suffix) such as -ly in nicely. If
they are inflectional, they help us define the type of word we have, i.e. they help us define
the category. If they are word formation affixes, they are called derivational and their
function is to create or derive new words.
TO SUM UP:
Morphemes can be classified into a. Free and b. Bound:
Free
Morphemes
Bound
Bound morphemes in turn can be a. Inflectional or b. derivational:
Free
1

Traditional Grammar calls this a noun phrase. We will later refer to these phrases as determiner phrases. This
other label comes from the framework of Generative Grammar.

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Morphemes

Inflectional
Bound
Derivational

What is the morpheme made up of? Nothing. The morpheme has no grammatical structure
precisely because it is the smallest unit. And the sentence, which is the largest, does not enter
into the structure of any unit. There is nothing above the sentence at the level of grammar. It
is the largest unit of syntactic description.
What we have done so far is called a "top to bottom" analysis. However, instead of saying
that a sentence can be broken down into smaller and smaller units we might also look at the
sentence the other way around, that is "from bottom to top", and say that the units can
combine to form increasingly larger units. One or more than one morpheme may constitute a
word, one or more than one word may form a phrase, one or more than one phrase may form
a clause, one or more than one clause may form a sentence.
Lesson 2 Activity 1:
Be ready to answer the following questions in class:
1. Which are the five grammatical units according to Halliday?
2. What is the relation between them?
3. What is a morpheme?
4. How can morphemes be classified?
Lesson 2 Activity 2: (To be handed in as Assignment 2)
The words and, or and but are called coordinating conjunctions and they link main clauses.
Look at the following sentences and state how many main clauses they are made up of. Use
square brackets to mark the beginning and end of each sentence, and round brackets to mark
main clauses. Use angle brackets, if there should be any subordinate clauses. Consider the
following example:
[(John plays basketball) but (Mary says <that he plays tennis>).] One sentence made up of
two main clauses and one subordinate clause within the second main clause.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

I got up at seven this morning.

I got up at seven and I had breakfast.
I got up at seven and had breakfast.
Jane is at home but her husband isnt.
Dont make a move or Ill shoot.
Ann was tired so she decided that she would have an early night.

REFERENCES:
Halliday, M. (1961) Categories of the theory of grammar. Word 17, 242-92. Reprinted as
Chapter 2 in M. A. K. Halliday (2002), On grammar, Volume 1 of The collected works of M:
A. K. Halliday edited by Jonathan J. Webster. London & New York: Continuum.

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