Chapter 7 Flashcards
Grammar
The process of describing the structure of phrases and sentences
Eight parts of speech :
Nouns- refer to people, objects, creatures (dog), places (school), qualities(roughness), phenomena (earthquake) and abstract ideas (love) as if they were all ‘things’
Articles are words (a, an, the) used with nouns to form noun phrases classifying those ‘things’ (You can have a banana or an apple) or identifying them as already known (I’ll take the apple)
Adjectives are words used, typically with nouns, to provide more information about the things referred to (happy people, large objects, a strange experience).
Verbs are words used to refer to various kinds of actions (go, talk) and states (be, have) involving people and things in events (Jessica is ill and has a sore throat so she can’t talk or go anywhere).
Adverbs are words used, typically with verbs, to provide more information about actions, states and
events (slowly, yesterday). Some adverbs (really, very) are also used with adjectives to modify
information about things (Really large objects move slowly. I had a very strange experience
yesterday).
Prepositions are words (at, in, on, near, with, without) used with nouns in phrases providing
information about time (at five o’clock, in the morning), place (on the table, near the window) and other connections (with a knife, without a thought) involving actions and things.
Pronouns are words (she, herself, they, it, you) used in place of noun phrases, typically referring to
people and things already known (She talks to herself. They said it belonged to you).
Conjunctions are words (and, but, because, when) used to make connections and indicate
relationships between events (Chantel’s husband was so sweet and he helped her a lot because she
couldn’t do much when she was pregnant).
Agreement
the proper grammatical match between words and phrases
natural vs grammatical gender
Natural gender: biological gender male vs female
Grammatical gender: type of noun masc vs fem
Prescriptive approach in grammar
Grammar viewed as a set of rules like
You must not split an infinitive.
You must not end a sentence with a preposition.
Descriptive approach in grammar
Language described as it is used not according to how it should be used / rules
Structural Analysis
- type of descriptive approach
- investigates the distribution of forms in a language.
The method involves the use of ‘test-frames’ that can be sentences with
empty slots in them
Constituent analysis
- descriptive approach
- techniques employed in this approach is designed to show how small constituents (or components) in sentences go together to form larger constituents. One basic step is
determining how words go together to form phrase
Word order
SOV
Identify all the parts of speech used in this sentence: The woman kept a large snake in a cage, but it escaped recently.
The =article
Woman = noun
Kept = verb
a = article
large = adj
snake= noun
in = preposition
a = article
cage =noun
but = conjunction
it = pronoun
escaped =verb
recently = adverb
How many adverbs are there in the following sentence?
Really large objects move very slowly.
Really, very, slowly
What is the tense and voice of the verb in the following sentence?
My parents were married in Rome.
Past tense and passive voice
What is the difference between grammatical gender and natural gender?
One’s biological and the other depends on the type of the noun
What prescriptive rules for the “proper” use of English are not obeyed in the following sentences and how would they be “corrected”?
(a) The old theory consistently failed to fully explain all the data.
(b) I can’t remember the name of the person I gave the book to.
a ) split infinitive
b) to whom
What was wrong with the older Latin-influenced definition of English pronouns?
pronouns were described as “words used in place of
nouns.” If this was correct, we could use he instead of man and it instead of sandwich, and rewrite The man ate the sandwich as *The he ate the it. Because we usually say He (= The man) ate it (= the sandwich), it would be better to
define pronouns as “words used in place of noun phrases.”
