The Study of Language: Chapter 07 - Grammar

Natural Gender

A biological distinction between male and female

Structural analysis

A type of descriptive approach that seeks to investigate the distribution of forms in a language.

How is constituent analysis performed?

Breaking the largest components of a sentence into progressively smaller boxes.

Traditional grammar Agreement

Categories: number person tense voice (active/passive) gender

Traditional grammar The parts of speech

Definition of the technical terms nouns, articles, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions -> THE SEQUENCE MATTERS

Why must we attempt another way to look at parts of speech besides basic definitions?

Definitions are likely to be inconsistent when they are applied to different languages.

What are the two levels of description covered so far in studying language?

Describing Linguistic Expressions as sequences of sounds (phonology), describing linguistic expressions as sequences of morphemes (morphology)

English grammar

Describing the structure of phrases and sentences article+adjective+noun

How are labelled brackets used to perform constituent analysis?

Each constituent is bracketed and labelled, and each combination of consituents is further bracketed and labelled.

Person

Grammatical category indicating the relationship between the speaker and the noun in question (1st; speaker is noun . 2nd; speaker is addressing noun; 3rd; speaker is talking about noun).

Number

Grammatical category indicating whether a noun is singular or plural

How has traditional analysis been centred on classical languages?

In traditional grammar books, English has had the structure and characterstics of the latin language imposed on how it is taught and learned.

Traditional grammar

Label words in grammatical categories (noun,verb,..)

The descriptive approach Structural analysis

Method involves the use of test-frames: The______ makes some noise. I heard a _____ yesterday. ..car..child..dog.. -> lot of forms fit in the gaps -> we can propose that they are likely to be examples of the same grammatical category. -> BUT: many forms do not fit those test-frames!

Traditional grammar Grammatical gender

Natural gender-> based on sex Grammatical gender-> based on type if noun (masculine/feminine) and NOT tied on sex -> NOT IMPORTANT CATEGORY FOR ENGLISH

Traditional grammar Traditional analysis

Often used for the analysis of English verbs -> makes sense in Latin but not too much for English because the English verb forms are mostly the same -> it don't really describes different verb forms in English

Active Voice

Referring to what a noun does

Passive Voice

Referring to what is done to a noun

How is structural analysis performed?

Structural analysis usually involves the use of 'test-frames' that can be sentences with empty slots. Various different words that would intuitively seem to fit the slot are grouped together under a grammatical classification.

Syntagmatic ordering Paradigmatic ordering

Syntacmatic ordering-> follows the sequence (horizontal->) Paradigmatic ordering-> Vertikale Unterteilung

Task: what is aspect?

The aspect is expressed with the verb form. 1.completed action -> I've eaten 2.in progress -> She's writing 3.habitual aspect -> perspective

Heirarchical Organization

The examination of sentence constituents which shows which constituents are 'highest' and composed of the most structures.

Why were the classical languages and their structure appropriated for the study of modern languages?

These languages were the languages of knowledge and scholarship and were a logical choose for comparison with other languages.

Prepositions

Words that provide information about time, place, and other parameters

agreement

a grammatical connection between two parts of a sentence, as in the connection between a subject (Cathy) and the form of a verb (loveS chocolate)

noun phrase

a phrase such as "the boy" or "an old bicycle"

Pronouns

a word referring to a person or thing, used in place of a noun phrase (he, she, they, herself, you)

conjunctions

a word such as "and" or "because", used to make connections between words, phrases and sentences

adverbs

a word such as "slowly" or "really", used with a verb or adjective to provide more information

grammatical gender

based on the type of noun (masculine and feminine) and is not tied to sex

grammar

the analysis of the structure of phrases and sentences

tense

the grammatical category distinguishing forms of the verb as present tense and past tense

The descriptive approach Labeled and bracketed sentences

(((The)(dog))((loved)((the)(girl))) Word level (the) (dog) Phrase level (the dog) ( loved the girl) Sentence level ( the dog loved the girl) Art. - article N - noun NP - noun phrase V - verb VP - verb phrase S - sentence Structure English: NV-VP-NP

Constituent Analysis

A type of descriptive approach that shows how small constituents of a sentence form larger constituents.

Prescriptive Approach

A view of grammar as a set of rules for 'proper' use of a language.

Descriptive Approach

An approach to grammar as a set of patterns to be described.

The descriptive approach Constituent analysis

An old man brought a shotgun to the wedding. -An old man, a shotgun, the wedding-> noun phrases -to the wedding-> prepositional phrase -brought a shotgun-> verb phrase -> check page 86

What is the advantage of constituent analysis?

It is the useful for describing the structure of sentences in different languages. It can help understand the difficult language learners face when learning new languages that have a fundamentally different structure.

What is the problem with the prescriptive approach?

It may impose arbitrary rules on expression that have little rationality and stem mainly from conformation with the grammars of other languages. It also is narrow and can result in a bigoted view of other languages being 'incorrect'

Categorization of English verbs

Transitive- one or more objects Intransitive- doesn't need an object Distransitive- requires two objects

Verbs

Words that refer to actions

gender

helps us to describe the agreement between "Cathy" and "her" in our example sentence

The descriptive approach Hierarchical organization

sentence (S)-> phrase -> word A Gaelic sentence: example of the difference in structure between languages. Gaelic(V-NP-NP)

articles

words (a, an, the) used with nouns to form noun phrases classifying those "things" (you can have A banana) or identifying them as already known (I'll have AN apple)

adjectives

words that provide information about the things referred to: happy (people), large (objects), strange (experience)

nouns

words to refer to people (boy), objects (backpack), creatures (dog), places (school), qualities (roughness), phenomena (earthquake) and abstract ideas (love) as if they were all "things"