Technical English I & II - GRAMMATICAL TERMS / WORD CLASSES

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

To turn round

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