Anna university
Technical English I & II Lecture Notes
GRAMMATICAL TERMS / WORD CLASSES
GRAMMATICAL TERMS / WORD CLASSES
What is grammar?
- the rules of a language; rules for forming words and combining them into sentences (to have a good understanding of grammar)
- a book containing a description of these rules for a particular language (I’m writing a grammar of modern English)
- a person’s knowledge and use of a language (I’m trying to improve my grammar)
PRESCRIPTIVE GRAMMAR
Rules about how language should be spoken or written
Advice on how to speak and write good English
Concerned with ”right” or ”wrong”
Conservative in nature; does not welcome new ideas
DESCRIPTIVE GRAMMAR
Description of how language is used in speech and writing by native speakers
Observes linguistic changes – does not try to stop them
TERMINOLOGY
Phonology lydlære
Phoneme vowels and consonants (/b/, /e/, /d/, /i/)
Morphology formlære
Morpheme the minimum unit of meaning ({bed}+{s}
{un}+{friend}+{ly}
prefix suffix
Syntax setiningslære
Semantics betydningslære
Pragmatics the nature and intention behind a speech act / rules that must be followed to achieve successful interpersonal communication
PARTS OF SPEECH
Function words
Closed classes, occur frequently, grammatical words: have little meaning, short and simple
Determiners Indefinite article (a)
Definite article (the)
Possessive determiner (your, my, our)
Pronouns Personal (I, you, she)
Interrogative (who, which)
Possessive (yours, mine, his, theirs)
Relative (who, that)
Reflexive (myself)
Reciprocal (each other)
Verbs Auxiliary (have, be) She is going
Modal auxiliary (can, may, must)
Prepositions at, over, under
Conjunctions and, but, that, if
Negator not
Infinitive marker to
Lexical words
Open classes: new words can be coined, words that carry meaning, may be complex or compound
Nouns man, house, water melon,
Verbs Copular (be) They are here
Transitive (buy)
Intransitive (talk)
Adjectives happy, big, beautiful
Adverbs happily, beautifully
THE SENTENCE
Phrase group of words which are part of a sentence
Noun phrase: a boy in my class
Prepositional phrase: in the morning
Adverbial phrase: late last night
Verb phrase: may have gone
Clause one or more phrases
Main clause: ’hovedsetning’
Subordinate clause: ’leddsssetning’
Finite: writes, is writing (conjugated)
Non-finite: writing, written, to write
Sentence one or more clauses / a complete unit of meaning / from capital letter to final stop
A sentence consists of one or more clauses. A clause consists of one or more phrases. A phrase consists of one or more words. A word consists of one or more morphemes. A morpheme consists of one or more phonemes.
TYPES OF SENTENCES
Statement declarative sentence
Question interrogative sentence
Command imperative sentence
SENTENCE ELEMENTS
Subject
Verb
Object (direct, indirect, oblique)
Predicative (subject-, object-)
Adverbial (time, place, frequency, manner…)
GRAMMATICAL TERMS / WORD CLASSES
· Try to explain the meaning of these words and give examples if you can:
Grammar
Morpheme
Syntactic
Determiner
Relative pronoun
Possessive pronoun
Conjunction
Adjective
Adverb
Clause
Declarative sentence
Indirect object
Subject predicative
Adverbial of time
· Identify the parts of speech in the following two sentences:
Peter is a man who lives in London
She has cleaned the house carefully
· Which word classes does round belong to in the following phrases:
A round table
A round of golf
To round the corner
To dance round a tree
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