INTRODUCTION TO GRAMMAR

- Internal Grammar or Grammatical Competence as linguistic knowledge

about a L1 (or L2) formed in our brains by exposure to linguistic data. A
sort of software.

- Can be subdivided into several subsystems: Phonology, Morphology, Syntax

(and sentence semantics: grammatical aspects of semantics). Distinction
between lexical words (lexemes) and grammatical morphemes (free or
bound). The lexicon.

- I ab eg la i ie f regula) in general, as different from (lexical)

irregularities. Language is learned as regular and tends to regularity, as can
be seen from childhood into adulthood. Irregularities are kept by education,
literacy and frequency.

- Its computations are not accessible to introspection. It is described through

indirect means (grammaticality and ambiguity judgements) by Descriptive
grammar. Different from Prescriptive and Pedagogical grammars.

- Syntax is structure dependent: its operations are structure-related not

linear word order dependent:

The dog is a pointer Is the dog a pointer?

The dog that is at home is ready *Is the dog the at home is a pointer? (by
analogy)

- It d e e ae d b h a e with different functions within the

sentence, the unit of syntax:

Though word order is important as well: John saw Mary vs Mary saw John

Syntax is recursive or self-embedding:

John said that Peter thought it was time that we all went away

Independent of meaning:
The slar truffed several snarps into the twale
Colourless green ideas sleep furiously
No creo que tienes razón

G a a ical C e e ce Li g i ic C e e ce Se a ic
Communicative Competence (+Pragmatics or sociolinguistic competence,
Discourse competence and strategic competence)
 (a) You should have saw that movie.
(b) I forced that he leave.
(c) The data is not conclusive.
(d) She was laying in the sun all day.
(e) Have finished your homework when I get home.
(f) Do you feel badly about the outcome?
(g) I saw the man coming from the bank get robbed.
(h) We thought for him to win.
(i) There’s too many people in the elevator.
(j) We cleaned up it.
(k) Abe has invited you and I to come to dinner.
(l) Wearing nothing but a sweater, the cold wind chilled me.
(m) When the bone stuck in his throat, he stopped to breathe.
(n) The wet campers tried to quickly light the fire.

Exercise 1.2 Laurel J. Brinton The Structure of Modern English

Workbook, Page 4 © John Benjamins Publishing Company
 INTRODUCTION TO SYNTAX

- Work with variety standard written English.

- Pedagogical grammar: T e re likely to know some English = It is likely that

they know some English.

Descriptive grammar: approximate mental grammar or rules a native speaker works

with implicitly, only indirectly observable through intuitions about
grammaticality and ambiguity.

- sounds/phones ----> segments, words/morphs ----> strings/sentences.

- Syntax: study of order/arrangement of words in larger hierarchical units &

relationships between elements in the units. Structure and types of sentences,
clauses and phrases. Grammar= Morphology and Syntax. Closely related to sentence
semantics or study of grammatical meaning of sentence.

- Syntactic Rs: word order---> sentence interpretation: I want you to marry vs I

want to marry you. Not always meaning difference: They came late vs Late they
came.
- Structure of sentences depends also on individual meaning or words & word
groups:

He looked up the number vs He looked up the chimney

She was waiting for a friend vs He was waiting for two hours

- Ambiguity may depend on structure: Flying planes can be dangerous.

---> Structure (relation between words and word groups) has to be made visible:
diagrams or bracket notation: [[Paul] [[caught] [a cold]]].

- Inmediate Constituents (ICs): NPs, VPs,.. made of word(s) which can be

analyzed in their own right. Different word classes or categories---> different
word phrases (XPs), as ICs. N, Adj, V, P, Adv, Conj. Minimal XP=one word,
minimal word=one morpheme.

-RANKSCALE: Text = Cl(ause)s = XPs = words = morphs = sounds

Stop!: 1 Cl = 1 XP = 1 W = 1 Morph

- RANKSHIFT (from to shift, move: linguistic units play roles within others):

Rankshifted Cl: She thinks you are right (Cl ‫ ﬤ‬Cl)

Rankshifted Cl: I'm happy to be stuck with you (AdjP ‫ ﬤ‬Cl)

Ranshifted XP: I'm on the top of the world (PrepP ‫ ﬤ‬PrepP)

Rankshifted W: Sweatshirt (W ‫ ﬤ‬W)

- Different participants in a predication (called arguments, like actors in a

play) can play different semantic roles (agent, patient, theme, instrument,
goal, stimulus,location) and the syntactic units that realize them (NPs,
VPs,...) can have different syntactic functions (subject, object..): there is
not a one to one correspondence between functions and syntactic categories, one
category can have different functions and one function can be realized by
different categories but most categories have a typical function associated: NPs
as Subjects or Objects, VPs as Predicators.
LINGUISTIC UNITS

Tests for constituent boundaries (to reinforce our intuitions):

Ex: Jack saw the man in blue

2 possible readings: 1) NP ‫ﬤ‬ PP (...the man who was dressed..)

2) Cl ‫ﬤ‬ PP (... in such colour using some filter)

a) Pronoun substitution: 1) Jack saw him

2) Jack saw him in blue

b) Coordination: 1) ....and the tall woman

2) ...and the tall woman in blue

c) Wh-questions: 1) Who did John see?

2) How did John see the man?

d) Clefting: 1) It was the man in blue that Jack saw

2) It was in blue that Jack saw the man.

e) Wh (pseudo)Clefting: 1) What/The one Jack saw was the man in blue

2) The colour Jack saw the man in was blue

f) Passivisation: 1) The man in blue was seen by Jack

2) The man was seen in blue by Jack

g) Fronting: 1) The man in blue Jack saw

2) The man Jack saw in blue

h) Deletion: 1) Who saw the man in blue? Jack did

2) Who saw the man? Jack did (in blue)

A stretch of language may resist these operations and still be a unit:

Jack saw the man often: *It was often that Jack saw the man

If two of more of these tests work we can be sure that the stretch belongs
to a larger unit. Language is patterned into linguistic units.

Linguistic Unit: a stretch of language which constitutes a semantic whole and

has a recognised pattern repeated regularly in speech and writing.
 Specific constituency tests

(1) Pronominalization: a complete constituent is replaceable by a single word (a pro-form or

word of the same category):

(a) a personal pronoun replaces a noun phrase:

The fat man ate a hamb rger didn t he

(b) the dummy verb do replaces a verb phrase:

Jacques likes hamburgers, and Monique does too.

*Jacques likes hamburgers, and Monique does fries too.

(c) the adverbs there and then replace prepositional phrases:

Dylan went to the store after school and Dudley went there then too.

(2) Interrogation: a complete constituent serves as an answer to a wh-question:

(a) a noun phrase:

What did Jacques eat for dinner? A large, juicy hamburger. *A large, juicy.

Who ate a hamburger for dinner? Jacques. *The fat.

(b) a prepositional phrase or adverb phrase:

When did Jacques eat a hamburger? At noon/yesterday.

Why did Jacques eat a hamburger? Because he was hungry.

(c) sometimes a verb phrase (this is not a particularly good test):

What did Jacques do? ?Ate a hamburger.

(3) Movement: a complete constituent can be moved or can occur in different positions in a
sentence, but it retains its integrity or configuration; its unity cannot be disrupted. If we begin
with the sentence Jacques ate a hamburger for dinner, the following types of permutations can
occur:

(a) fronting (preposing) of a noun phrase or an adverbial prepo-sitional phrase:

A hamburger, Jacques ate for dinner (not a steak).

For dinner, Jacques ate a hamburger.

(b) movement of noun phrases in a passive sentence:

A hamburger was eaten by Jacques.

- The man rang the bell of the church.

 The bell of the church was rung by the man.

*The bell was rung of the church by the man.

(c )Inversion of the subject noun phrase and the auxiliary verb in a question:

Did Jacques eat a hamburger for dinner?

(d) Focusing of a noun phrase or an adverbial prepositional phrase in a cleft sentence

It was Jacques who ate a hamburger for dinner.

It was a hamburger that Jacques ate for dinner.

It was for dinner that Jacques ate a hamburger.

- It was the bell of the church that the man rang.

*It was the bell that the man rang of the church.

*It was of the church that the man rang the bell.

(e) Focusing of a noun phrase or a erb phrase in a pseudocleft sentence

- What Jacques ate for dinner was a hamburger.

What Jacques did was eat a hamburger for dinner.

What Jacques did for dinner was eat a hamburger.

- What the man rang was the bell of the church.

*What the man rang of the church was the bell.

What the man did was ring the bell of the church.

(4) Omission: a complete constituent, if it is optional, may be deleted, but not all constituents
are optional:

Jacques ate (a hamburger) (for dinner).

*Jacques ate a (hamburger) for (dinner).

(5) Conjunction: complete constituents are joined by conjunctions such as and or or:

The cat and the mouse ran away.

She read the newspaper and ate lunch.

The quite large and smoothly rounded stone.

He runs very quickly and extremely gracefully.

 Exercice

Using these tests, determine whether the underlined sequences are

constituents or not. (Not all tests will work in each case, nor will any

one test necessarily be conclusive.)

(a) The workers lowered the desk from the balcony.

(b) The workers lowered the desk from the estate auction.

(c) She worked with two other people on the project.

(d) She worked with great diligence on the project.

(e) I saw the children with the glasses.

CLASSES OF UNITS

1. CLAUSE:
- INDEPENDENT (MAIN)/DEPENDENT:
They went home after the concert finished

- FINITE/NON-FINITE
They went home after finishing the concert (-ing Cl)
I saw him enter the shop (bare infinitive)
It is necessary to speak loud here (to infinitive)
Exausted by the hike, they stopped for a while (-ed Cl)

- EMBEDDED/MATRIX (SUPERORDINATE):
I saw that the people were having fun

- MINOR CLAUSES (Clm): lacking subj & fin. Element (Mood elem.)
Call home as soon as possible
Although a bit expensive, the bar was excellent
- Wh-q without finite verb: How about a beer?
- Command adjuncts: Hands up!
- Proverbs: Out of sight, out of mind

- ABREVIATED CLAUSES: only the mood element. (rest ellipted)

- I think she has come
- Has she? (responses or initiators in conversation)

2. PHRASES
- According to class of word: NP, VP, AdjP, AdvP, PrepP
- Endocentric: round one main non-omissible elem which may have the same
syntactic function as whole phrase.
- Exocentric: PrepP: neither el. subordinated to the other.

3. WORDS: made up of 4. MORPHEMES

- determiners, nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs,
prepositions, conjunctions.

UNIT STRUCTURE: RELATION BET. SYNTACTIC ELS OF UNITS

1. ELEMENTS OF CLAUSES
S, P, Od, Oi, OPrep, Cs, Co, Cp, A, D, C

2. PHRASE ELEMENTS
- Head (h), Modifier (m, preceding), Qualifier (q, postm),
Determiner (d, specifies N in definit, quant, poss.)
Those great songs from the film are very difficult to sing
----- ----- ----- ----------- --- ------- ------
d m h q m h q
He ran very fast indeed
--- --- ------
m h q
- VP: o(x)(x) V: He may have been traveling then
auxiliaries o x x v
- Phrasal & Prepositional verbs
- PrepP: h
c(ompletive) obligatory: governed by h, not subord
m, optional (degree adv or NP): right over the fence
two floors above me
- Any structure or category of the rankscale (Cl, XP)= (synt.) elements or
functions:
semantic (agent, process, affected)--> propositional semantics.
syntactic: SPOd; mhq, etc.
Identify each of the uncontextualised clauses listed below as (a) independent; (b)

dependent finite; (c) dependent non-finite; (d) abbreviated; (e) verbless. Punctuation and

capitals have been omitted.

(1) the complacency of the present government amazes me

(2) although presumed dead

(3) not being a tele-viewer myself

(4) as I am the principal at a large boarding-school for girls

(5) her future husband she met on a course for playleaders

(6) I certainly will

(7) while on vacation in Bali

(8) because he is over-qualified for this job

(9) just when he was starting to get himself organised

(10) we’ll probably get only a fraction of the factory’s worth

Say to which class of group each of the following belongs:

(1) the anti-terrorist laws

(2) not quite hot enough

(3) within three quarters of an hour

(4) pretty soon

(5) aren’t playing

(6) wide awake

(7) his departure from Moscow

(8) in spite of the bad weather