ENGLISH GRAMMAR 1

2015

Juan Luis Stamboni

juanstamb@yahoo.com

ENGLISH GRAMMAR 1
2015

Randolph QUIRK; Sidney GREENBAUM; Geoffrey LEECH; Jan SVARTVIK

(1972). A Grammar of Contemporary English. UK, Longman
Randolph QUIRK; Sidney GREENBAUM; Geoffrey LEECH; Jan SVARTVIK
(1985). A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. UK/US, Longman
Andrew RADFORD (1997). Syntactic Theory and the Structure of English. A
Minimalist Approach. UK, Cambridge University Press
Andrew RADFORD (2004). Minimalist Syntax. Exploring the Structure of English.
UK, Cambridge University Press
Andrew RADFORD (2009). Analising English Sentences. A Minimalist Approach.
UK, Cambridge University Press

LINGUISTICS

is

the scientific study of language

Its investigation is done by means of
a) controlled and empirically verifiable
observations
b) with reference to some theoretical
framework

Linguistics studies human language

focusing on 3 general areas:
the nature of human linguistic knowledge
LINGUISTIC COMPETENCE
the development of this knowledge in
children
LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
the use of this knowledge in communicative
contexts
LINGUISTIC PERFORMANCE

Semantics
analyses the logical aspects of language as
used in thought, in science or in art

Pragmatics
specifies the uses which the elements of
language are put to in social interchange

Sociolinguistics
establishes the degree of variability in the use
of language according to age, sex, social class
and ethnic, religious or regional characteristics.

Chomskyan linguistics
tries to gain insight into
the patterns of human thought
and linguistic competence
in order to discover
the abstract principles
governing their structures.

History of the language studies

the origin of the elements of language
and
the changes they undergo in history

Grammar
is the branch of linguistics which
deals with
a) the form and structure of words
(morphology)
b) their interrelation in sentences
(syntax)

MORPHOLOGY
1)How do we explain or justify the existence
of
word clases (i.e. grammatical
categories:
NOUNS, VERBS, ADJECTIVES, PREPOSITIONS, DETERMINERS,
etc.) ?

2) What motivates or determines

grammatical accidence on lexical items
i.e.: CASE, PERSON, NUMBER, GENDER, TENSE, ASPECT,
DEGREE, etc. ?

SYNTAX
What motivates or determines
the organisation of
lexical items in the sentence?
i.e.: TRANSITIVITY, AGREEMENT, WORD ORDER,
etc.

Grammar

is simply
the collection of principles defining
how to put together a sentence.
Every language has restrictions on
how words must be arranged
to construct a sentence.
Such restrictions are principles of
syntax

Grammar
a)defines the elements of
language
b)formulates the principles
underlying
their order and arrangement
The study of grammar reveals how
language works

If linguistic expressions consist of

pairings of FORM and MEANING

Grammar
can also be regarded as the
study of
THE GRAMMATICALISATION OF
MEANING
insofar as MEANING is conveyed
partly by LEXICAL ITEMS (i.e. words and
affixes),
partly by SYNTACTIC STRUCTURE

the study of GRAMMAR

involves building new
concepts

describing units of analysis

defining categories for

those units

explaining the phenomenon

of language

In the following sentence,

identify the subject and the predicate.
______________________________________________________________________________________

Ive been watching

them
for quite a long while.

In the following sentence,

identify the subject and the predicate.
______________________________________________________________________________________

That nothing else is good

enough
shouldn't come as a
surprise.

In the following sentence,

identify the subject and the predicate.
______________________________________________________________________________________

The man who is standing

over there
told me that
he has just bought a ticket
to Hull.

In the following sentence,

identify the subject and the predicate.
______________________________________________________________________________________

Whoever ignores discipline

despises himself, but
the person who heeds
warning
gains understanding.

In the following sentence,

identify the subject and the predicate.
______________________________________________________________________________________

Be aware when you're planning to

present your cake,
the final cake will be 4-5 cm wider than
your template.

It is a miracle
that such a small country has won the
war.

In the following sentence,

identify the subject and the predicate.
______________________________________________________________________________________

What was to be done, Orlando could not

think.
They considered it inconvenient
to have to remember a user name and
password.
They forced us to remember their user
name and password.

What do these terms refer to?

SUBJECT
PREDICATE
OBJECT

 terms associated with a semantic

as
well as syntactic analysis of the
sentence.
semantically speaking, a PREDICATE
describes an event or state
SUBJECT and OBJECT(s) are
PARTICIPANTS in the event or state
expressed by that PREDICATE

In dictionaries, lexical entries

for VERBS specify whether they
are

TRANSITIVE
or

INTRANSITIVE
transitive verbs take 1 or 2
OBJECTS intransitive verbs may be
OBJECTLESS

 Peter sent a letter

yesterday.
Peter sent her a letter.
Peter sent a letter to
Madrid.
Peter didnt send us a
letter.

She hung the receiver and

vomited copiously on the floor.
He shut the book and put it carefully on the
floor.
His eye fell on the fragments of the glass
paperweight.
Some Eurasian prisoners, guilty of war crimes,
were hanged in the Park that evening.
In another room someone with a comb and a
piece of toilet paper was trying to keep tune
with the military music which was still issuing
from the telescreen.

PREDICATES are realised by

verbs, adjectives, nouns or
prepositions
PARTICIPANTS are realised by
noun expressions
(denoting animate or inanimate entities)

or

(finite or non-finite)

clauses

(denoting propositions)

Which participants are realised

by a noun construction and which by a
clause?
(noun or nominal constructions include pronouns)
_________________________________________________________________________________________________

O'Brien might know that he had been

arrested.
They can be granted intellectual liberty
because they have no intellect.
He did not know whether the thing was
really happening, or whether the effect was
electrically produced.
She knew when to cheer and when to boo.
What you told me hasn't changed the way I
feel about what I want to do.

Syntactically speaking, the

PREDICATE
involves:
a
its

HEAD
OBJECT(S)

ADJUNCTS
(not every predicate contains
objects;
adjuncts are generally optional)
and

The identification of a predicate and

its participants results from the
analysis of the meaning of the
sentence
or
clause
(semantic
analysis).
Generalisations such as the idea that
the subject is always in initial
position might be misleading.

Recognise:

PREDICATES
PARTICIPANTS
[ Subject

and

Object(s) ]

ADJUNCTS

distinguish between:
a) Participants in subject and object
position
b) Verbal, Adjectival, Nominal, and Prepositional
predicates
c) Different verbal predicates
d) Objects, including Locatives,
and Adjuncts

Ive been watching them for quite a long

while.
The man who is sitting over there told me
that he has just bought a ticket to Tahiti.
Whoever ignores discipline despises himself,
but the person who heeds warning gains
understanding.

What was to be done, Orlando could not

think.
That nothing else is good enough
shouldn't come as a surprise.