English Syntax Course I

What is Grammar?
The word grammar is used variously, both in everyday language and as a technical term.

It may refer to a book or to the contents of a book. Its scope may be restricted to syntax (the ways in which words combine into structures of phrases, clauses, and sentences) or it may include many other aspects of language. Grammars may be primarily intended as reference works or as textbooks; they may be aimed at native speakers or foreign learners. The most influentialand controversialfigure in theoretical linguistics in recent times

has been Noam Chomsky, who conceives the goal of linguistics to be a description of the mental grammar of native speakers: the system of rules and principles that characterize the mental structures that underlie their ability to speak and understand their language. Chomsky hypothesizes that human beings have an innate language faculty that enables children to acquire a mental grammar quickly when they are exposed to a particular language. The object of research is the linguistic competence of the ideal native speaker, who knows the language perfectly, which is to be distinguished from linguistic performance. Grammaticality is related to competence, whereas acceptability is related to performance.

Descriptive vs. Prescriptive Grammar

A distinction is often made between descriptive grammar and prescriptive grammar. o Descriptive grammar attempts to describe the rules of the language objectively, accounting for what actually occurs. o Prescriptive grammar is evaluative, guiding readers as to what is correct or incorrect. For example: a prescriptive grammar may prescribe that none takes a singular verb or it may allow either singular or plural; it may proscribe the adverb badly after a copula verb as in We

feel badly about it (insisting on the adjective bad), can in the permission sense as Can I leave now? (requiring may instead), and like as a conjunction in They behaved like they know me (prescribing as if). Prescriptive grammar focuses on

English Syntax Course I

phenomena that are in divided usage in standard English, such as whether data is to be treated as singular or plural, or features that occur chiefly in non-standard usage, such as the multiple negation in I didn't say nothing about nobody (corresponding to I

didn't say anything about anybody in standard English).

Theories of grammar
Every grammatical description presupposes an underlying theory, though many

descriptions do not make their theoretical basis explicit and some are eclectic in drawing on more than one theory. In one technical sense, a grammar is a theory of language description. Grammatical theories make assumptions about the nature of natural languages (the languages that human beings acquire naturally, as opposed to artificial languages, such as computer languages), present goals for describing them, and develop methods of argumentation, formulation, and explanation. Universal grammar concerns the properties that are common to all human languages

(including potential languages) and that may therefore be taken to be defining and necessary properties of human language. In another approach, requiring studies of large numbers of languages, language universals may be absolute without exceptions (for example, that all languages have nouns), or there may be universal tendencies that admit a relatively few exceptions (for example, that the basic word order is for the subject to appear before the object in a sentence, in the sequences subject-verb-object or subject-object-verb or verb-subject-object). Typological linguistics is the study of the characteristics shared by groups of languages

(for example, that in one language type the subject normally precedes the verb whereas in another type it normally follows the verb) even though the languages are not necessarily related historically. On the other hand, historical linguistics (also called comparative grammar) deals with the characteristics of languages that are related historically, and traces the development of families of languages from a common source or traces the development of individual languages. Traditional grammar adopts the approaches and descriptive categories used,

particularly in school grammars, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Traditional

English Syntax Course I

grammars describe solely, or chiefly, the written language and are indebted to Latin grammars for some of their analyses of English. Scholarly reference grammars of the first half of the twentieth century, such as the major work by Otto Jespersen (cf. n. 1), have also been considered traditional grammars. Traditional grammars typically make use of notional criteria; for example, defining a noun as the name of a person, place, or thing rather than by formal criteria such as that nouns typically take plural inflections or that they typically may be introduced by the. Grammars that make frequent use of notional definitions are notional grammars. A distinction is sometimes drawn between formal grammars and functional

grammars. Formal grammars describe the formal rules and structures of the language. Functional grammars also describe how the language is used, taking account of communicative purposes and of stylistic and social factors.

Syntax:

In linguistics, the study of the rules that govern the ways in which words combine to form phrases, clauses, and sentences.

Syntactic, Semantic, Pragmatic

Syntactic relates to the structure of sentences Semantic relates to the meaning of words, sentences Pragmatic relates to the function of a sentence (utterance) inside discourse In the following example,

(1) Give Susan the money and then send her away!

Syntactically we are dealing with a compound sentence (where two main clauses are coordinated by and), semantically the two sentences are perceived as sequential (the event in the first

English Syntax Course I

sentence is followed by the one in the second) and pragmatically, we are dealing with a directive (i.e. an order given to an interlocutor).

Parts of a sentence

Every complete sentence contains two parts: a subject and a predicate. The subject is what (or whom) the sentence is about The predicate tells something about the subject. In the following sentences, the predicate is enclosed in braces ({}), while the subject is highlighted. Judy {runs}. Judy and her dog {run on the beach every morning}.

Unusual Sentences

Imperative sentences (sentences that give a command or an order) differ from conventional sentences in that their subject, which is always "you," is understood rather than expressed.

Stand on your head. ("You" is understood before "stand.") Be careful with sentences that begin with "there" plus a form of the verb "to be." In such sentences, "there" is not the subject; it merely signals that the true subject will soon follow.

There were three stray kittens cowering under our porch steps this morning. If you ask who? or what? before the verb ("were cowering"), the answer is "three stray kittens," the correct subject.

Simple Subject and Simple Predicate

Every subject is built around one noun or pronoun (or more) that, when stripped of all the words that modify it, is known as the simple subject. Consider the following example:

English Syntax Course I

A piece of pepperoni pizza would satisfy his hunger. The subject is built around the noun "piece," with the other words of the subject -- "a" and "of pepperoni pizza" -- modifying the noun. "Piece" is the simple subject.

Likewise, a predicate has at its centre a simple predicate, which is always the verb or verbs that link up with the subject. In the example we just considered, the simple predicate is "would satisfy" -- in other words, the verb of the sentence.

A sentence may have a compound subject -- a simple subject consisting of more than one noun or pronoun -- as in these examples:

Team pennants, rock posters and family photographs covered the boy's bedroom walls. Her uncle and she walked slowly through the Inuit art gallery and admired the powerful sculptures exhibited there.

The second sentence above features a compound predicate, a predicate that includes more than one verb pertaining to the same subject (in this case, "walked" and "admired").