Scribd
Upload
829 views

Advanced Syntax Notes

The document discusses several key grammatical concepts: modification, which describes how modifiers accompany and provide information about other elements like nouns; coordination, how clauses can be joined together with conjunctions; subordination, how independent clauses can be made dependent; complementation, how complements complete the meaning of expressions by providing information about subjects or objects; and types of determiners, which clarify nouns and include articles, demonstratives, possessives, quantifiers, numbers, and ordinals.

Uploaded by

Mahnur Naqvi
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
829 views

Advanced Syntax Notes

The document discusses several key grammatical concepts: modification, which describes how modifiers accompany and provide information about other elements like nouns; coordination, how clauses can be joined together with conjunctions; subordination, how independent clauses can be made dependent; complementation, how complements complete the meaning of expressions by providing information about subjects or objects; and types of determiners, which clarify nouns and include articles, demonstratives, possessives, quantifiers, numbers, and ordinals.

Uploaded by

Mahnur Naqvi
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 3

Modification:

Modification is a syntactic construction in which one grammatical element (e.g., a noun)


is accompanied (or modified) by another (e.g., an adjective). This accompanying element
is called a modifier.

Modifiers that appear before the headword are called premodifiers. Modifiers that
appear after the headword are called postmodifiers.

Example:

 She was wearing a purple scarf.


 The scarf that she bought was purple.

Coordination:

In linguistics, coordination is a frequently occurring complex syntactic structure that links


together two or more elements. We can use coordinating conjunctions or punctuation to
combine independent clauses into a sentence.

Example:

 It was raining. The basketball match got postponed.


 It was raining so the basketball match got postponed.

Subordination:

Syntactic structure that transforms independent clauses into dependent clauses.

Example:

 She was late. She missed the meeting.


 Because she was late, she missed the meeting.
 She missed the meeting because she was late.

Complementation:

Complement (linguistics) in grammar, is a word, phrase or clause that is necessary to


complete the meaning of a given expression. It gives more information about either the
subject or the object.

Example:

 She was ill. (Subject Complement)


 Everybody at the party knew that she was ill. (Object Complement)

Types of Determiners

Determiners are used with nouns to clarify the noun.

The type of determiner used depends on the type of noun.

 Singular Nouns - always needs a determiner


 Plural Nouns - the determiner is optional
 Uncountable Nouns - the determiner is also optional (e.g. furniture, rice, money,
flour, milk, butter, times etc)

There are about 50 different determiners in the English language they include:

 Articles - a, an, the


 Demonstratives - this, that, these, those, which etc.
 Possessives - my, your, our, their, his, hers, whose, my friend's, our friends', etc.
 Quantifiers -few, a few, many, much, each, every, some, any etc.
 Numbers - one, two, three, twenty, forty
 Ordinals - first, second, 1st 2nd, 3rd, last, next, etc.

You might also like