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I argued that it would be a mistake. (I argued my (a.) The Cub Scouts held the carwash despite the
position) rain.
(b.) The carwash was held by the Cub Scouts despite
When we move beyond the simple or the rain.
monoclausal sentence , three processes are (c.) Despite the rain, the Cub Scouts held the
involved: carwash.
a. Coordination- the joining of two clauses of What is the difference among these three word orders?
equal grammatical stature The sentence appears to have the same propositional
b. Subordination- of one clause to another content, or core meaning, so what purpose does word
c. Embedding- when a dependent clause is order variation serve?
included within a main or independent
clause. This is where the term theme and rheme will be
SENTENCE MOODS put to use.
English sentences are said to display three main According to Halliday (1985:38) the theme
moods- declarative (sometimes called provides the point of departure of the message.
indicative), interrogative, and imperative- and It provides the framework for interpreting what
two minor moods: exclamatory and subjunctive. follows.
Mood conveys the speaker’s attitude toward The rheme is the remainder of the message in
the factual content of the sentence the clause.
Subjunctive mood can indicate the speaker’s In other words, the Theme is simply the subject,
uncertainty or the hypotheticality of the while the rheme is the predicate.
propositional content, or the meaning of the
clause. SUPRASENTENTIAL TERMINOLOGY
The subjunctive mood is signaled by the use of Backgrounding and Foregrounding
the base form of the verb be rather than the It has been observed that in the
inflected form is. discourse narrative, certain sentences
provide background information while
If that be so, I’ll leave now. others function in the foreground to
If I were a bird, I wouldn’t eat a worm. carry the main story line.
What often distinguishes one from
Declarative (statement sentence type) another are their verb tenses.
Today is Monday.
Interrogative (question sentence type) Yesterday I went to the market. It has lots of fruits that I
What are you going to wear to the party. like. I bought several different kinds of apples. I also
Imperative (command sentence type) found that plums were in season so I bought two pounds
Pass the milk, please. of them…
Exclamatory (exclamation sentence type)
Structure of English Lecture # 1
Jesullyna C. Manuel Grammatical Metalanguage
In this bit of discourse, the forgrounded past GENRE
narrative is interrupted by the second sentence Genre refers to linguistics variation.
with a present tense verb. Rather than the variation is due to the level of
The sentence provides information, here formality, however, the variation is due to the
statement about the market, that is the general communicative purposes to which the language
background of the story. is put.
For example, the language used in a scientific
COHESION research paper is different from that in a recipe,
or in a recommendation letter.
Another quality of English grammar at the They differ in their patterns of words, structures
suprasentential level that we might illustrate in and voice.
the given short discourse is the fact that texts,
units of spoken or written language at the
suprasentential level, have an organization
structure of their own.
It is not possible to put the second sentence
first in the above narrative for example, and
have it mean anything.
For the most part, we cannot move sentences
around in a paragraph without making some
other modifications.
a. Reference
The boy wanted a new bike. He… (he refers
back to the boy)
b. Ellipsis
A: Who wrote the letter?
B: Marty (The response Marty elliptically
signals that Marty wrote the letter.
c. Substitution
I plan to enter college next year. If I do…
(do substitute for enter college)
d. Conjunction
Peter needed some money. He, therefore,
decided to get a job. (Therefore makes
explicit the causal relationship between the
first and the second sentences)
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