1. Phrases and Sentences: Grammar
Chapter 8

2. Grammatical or Ungrammatical:
1. The boy found the ball
2. The boy found quickly
3. The boy found in the house
4. The boy found the ball in the house
5. Disa slept the baby
6. Disa slept soundly
Find: Transitive verb (with object)
Sleep: Intransitive verb (no object)

3. Grammar English has strict rules for combining words into phrases.
Languages have different ways of forming grammatical phrases and sentences.

4. Types of grammar
Mental grammar- a form of internal linguistic knowledge- subconscious
Linguistic etiquette- proper or best structure to be used in a language
Traditional grammar- originally from Latin and Greek

5. Syntactic Categories (parts of speech) (1)
Lexical categories
Noun (N)
Verb (V)
Adjective (A)
Preposition (P)
Adverb (Adv)
Examples
moisture, policy
melt, remain
good, intelligent
to, near
slowly, now

6. Syntactic Categories (2)
Non-lexical categories
Articles
Degree word (Deg)
Qualifier (Qual)
Auxiliary (Aux)
Conjunction (Con)
Examples
A, an, the
very, more
always, perhaps
will, can
and, or

7. Indicate the category of each word in the following sentences.
a. The glass suddenly broke.
b. A jogger ran towards the end of the lane.
c. The peaches never appear quite ripe.
d. Gillian will play the trumpet and the drums in the orchestra.
Det / N / Adv / V
Det / N / V / P / Det / N / P / Det / N
Det / N / Qual / V / Deg / A
N / Aux / V / Det / N / Conj / Det / N / P / Det / N

8. Phrases NP : Noun Phrase The car, a clever student VP : Verb Phrase
study hard, play the guitar
PP : Prepositional Phrase
in the class, above the earth
AP : Adjective Phrase
very tall, quite certain

9. Other categories E.g. Tom likes his dog
Number- singular or plural
Person- first, second or third person
Tense- present, past, or future
Voice- active, passive
Gender- natural (English) & grammatical (Arabic)
The role of these categories becomes clearer in describing language structure when we consider them in terms of Agreement
E.g. Tom likes his dog

10. Grammatical Gender Natural gender is based on sex (male or female)
Grammatical gender is on the type of noun (masculine or feminine)
Arabic, French and German
Spanish el son (the sun) and la luna (the moon)
Le livre (the book) is grammatically masculine but not biologically.

11. Approaches Prescriptive approach Examples
Sets out rules for the correct or ‘proper’ use of English.
Examples
You must not end a sentence with a preposition - Who did you with?
You must not split an infinitive - to never ever go
Latin’s influence

12. Approaches The descriptive approach Two types of analysis:
Describes the regular structure of the language as it is used not how it should be used.
Characterizes the structure of different languages.
Two types of analysis:
Structural analysis
Immediate constituent analysis

13. Structural Analysis
Investigates the distribution of forms in a language
Test-frames
The _________ makes a lot of noise
I heard a __________ yesterday
A lot of nouns can fit here e.g. dog, donkey, monkey, child, boy, girl, man, radio, etc. but NOT Sara, the dog, a car.

14. Structural Analysis The child ___________
slept, saw a clown, a bird, smart, found the cake, found the cake in the cupboard, is smart, realized that the earth is round
Only VPs fit here.

15. Immediate constituent analysis
How small constituents (or components) in a sentence go together to form larger constituents.
Her father brought a shotgun to the wedding
NPs – VPs – PPs
Hierarchical organization

16. Immediate constituent analysis
More examples:
The child found a puppy in the garden
Sam kicked the ball.