B ENI C ULTURALI E S PETTACOLO Università degli Studi di Cagliari Lingua Inglese 1

I NTRODUCTION Grammar is the study of how words combine to form sentences. John has been ill Conversely: Ill John been has Based on: Gerald Nelson, English an essential grammar, Routledge, 2011

G RAMMAR RULES What is grammar, then? Prescriptive rules were designed to provide guidelines for writers of formal prose. - Never split an infinitive - Never end a sentence with a preposition - Never omit the subject… - «to boldly go», «Who do you live with?», «(he) came yesterday»…

Descriptive approach = the rules that native speakers of English follow every time they speak. STANDARD ENGLISH (SE) is the variety of English used in public institutions, including government, education, the judiciary and the media (radio, television, newspapers, magazines…). Ex. I was ill last week (SE) I were ill last week (NSE) Using SE involves making choices of grammar, vocabulary and spelling and it has nothing to do with accent. SE is the variety with the greatest value in social terms.

E NGLISH AS A WORLD LANGUAGE English speakers throughout the world are around 800 million. English is the mother tongue of an estimated 380 million people. Its importance in international communication and trade is unquestioned. The 20 th century witnessed an important development: the decline of British English and the rise of American English as the dominant variety.

B RITISH ENGLISH VS AMERICAN ENGLISH

S POKEN LANGUAGE …

G RAMMAR …

Despite their differences, American English and British English share a very extensive, common core of vocabulary, spelling and grammar which makes them mutually intelligible.

T HE G RAMMATICAL HIERARCHY

T HE BASIC SENTENCE ELEMENTS A sentence is any sequence of words that begins with a capital letter and ends with a full stop (period), a question mark or an exclamation mark: Paul plays football. Who lives in the house next door? What a silly thing to say! SIMPLE SENTENCES These are SIMPLE SENTENCES.

andbutorso We can combine two simple sentences together using a conjunction like and, but, or, and so : Paul plays football. Amy prefers tennis. Paul plays football and / but Amy prefers tennis. COMPOUND SENTENCE This is called COMPOUND SENTENCE.

CLAUSE

S UBJECT AND PREDICATE Simple or complex

The Subject is usually the first element in the sentence, while the rest of the sentence, which includes the verb, is the Predicate.

H OW CAN WE IDENTIFY THE SUBJECT ? Who? What? 1) Who? What? Amy laughed Q: Who laughed? A: Amy ( = subject) The inversion test 2) The inversion test Declarative: James is at school Interrogative: Is James at school? The tag question test 3) The tag question test Paul is getting big, isn’t he ? The children seem busy, don’t they ? It was Paul who sent the note, wasn’t it ?

The agreement test 4) The agreement test The subject of the a sentence agrees in number with the verb that follows it: The dog barks all night The dogs bark all night This test only applies when the verb has a present- tense form and a third-person subject. I sleep all night We sleep all night

EXERCISE Rewrite each of the sentences below as questions and underline the Subject in the question: He is her brother. The flight is great. They are excited. You are in England. This is his friend. It was Tom who made the suggestion. His Facebook account is closed.