Grammar Grammar analysis

Grammar The process of describing the structure of phrases and sentences in such a way that we account for all the grammatical sequences in a language and rule out all the ungrammatical sequences is one way of defining grammar

Grammatical traditions Latin and Greek traditions in describing language grammar have been used to describe other languages, esp. European langauges. Grammar terminology: morphology, syntax, grammatical categories, part of speech, grammar forms, number, grammatical gender, tense, aspect, person, voice, mood, phrase, sentence, grammar analysis, agreement: coordination and subordinations. Grammatical analyses proceeds from word and sentence to text and discourse structure (forms) and functions.

Descriptive grammar Description of non-European languages American linguists described native languages of North America, Structural analysis is a type of the descriptive approach. One of the methods was test –frames: sentences with slots. Forms fitting the same slots could be related to the same grammatical category (noun, verb etc.) Constituent analysis – the analysis of the constituent structure of the sentence (different diagrams)

English Syntax Syntax (from Greek )-put together, arrange Traditional approach to describe sentence parts in linear structure. Recent approaches in grammar focus not only on the structure but the process of sentence production, rule system that people use to produce sentences

Generative grammar One of the most influential syntactic theories of the XX century developed by Noam Chomsky The work on syntactical theories started in the mid of 1950s and followed by the developing of transformational generative grammar (TG) His work was considered revolutionary and did not comply with orthodox approach to grammar Chomsky declared Grammar as an autonomous system, independent of the study of language use in situations and of semantics, it should be formalized as a system of rules to generate an infinite set of sentences.

Grammar studies Functional grammar – various functional theory, studies of language functions to understand language process and structures. Structuralist functionalism of Prague School Danish functional grammar Hjelmslev (focus on pragmatics and discourse)

Grammar functions Semantic functions (Agent,patient, recipient etc.) description of the roles in the actions presented in the sentence Syntactic functions (Subject, Object etc.) – Functional sentence perspective Pragmatic functions (Theme and Rheme, Focus)- focused on information type of sentence constituent and its pragmatic context

Cognitive grammar Congitive Grammar by Langacker (1995), according to him all linguistic meaning resides in conceptualisstion: all conceptual entities are reduced to two – they are either things (book, science) or relations (about, know); Things and relations are joined together, linguistic expression always imposes a choice amongst various conceptual content (Scope and perspective). Scope relates to which aspects of the situation are to be included and which elements are excluded; Perspective involves 1)choice of vantage point 2) objective construal (setting) and subjective construal (Reference point)

Scope and perspective Scope relates to which aspects of the situation are to be included and which elements are excluded; Perspective involves 1)choice of vantage point 2) objective construal (setting) and subjective construal (Reference point) Scope relates to which aspects of the situation are to be included and which elements are excluded; Perspective involves 1)choice of vantage point 2) objective construal (setting) and subjective construal (Reference point) 3) the choice of a direction of the mental scanning (e.g. upward, downward)