GRAMMAR AND STYLE

I. Introduction

Grammar is complex set of interlocking categories, units and structures:

in effect, the rules of that language. In the academic study of language, the
expression ‘rules of grammar’ does not refer to prescriptive niceties, to the sorts of
proscriptions that forbid the use of, say, a double negative or a split infinitive.
Genuine grammatical rules of a language are the language insofar as they stipulate
the very bedrock of its syntactic construction in the same way that the rules of tennis
or the rules of chess constitute the core organizing principles of those games. This
makes grammar somewhat of an intimidating area of analysis for the beginning
stylistician because it is not always easy to sort out which aspects of a text’s many
interlocking patterns of grammar are stylistically salient. We will therefore use this
unit to try to develop some useful building blocks for a study of grammar and style.

II. Basic Model of Grammar

As the arrangement below suggests, the rank scale sorts units in a ‘consists of’
relationship, progressing from the largest down to the smallest:

Sentence (or clause complex)

Clause

Phrase (or group)

Word

Morpheme

As the rank scale indicates, the morpheme is the smallest unit in grammar simply
because it has no structure of its own; if it did, it would not be the bottom-most unit on
the scale. Arguably the most important unit on the scale is the clause, The clause is
especially important because it is the site of several important functions in language:
it provides tense; it distinguishes between positive or negative polarity ; it provides
the core or ‘nub’ of a proposition in language; and it is where information about
grammatical ‘mood’ (about whether a clause is declarative, interrogative or
imperative) is situated.
• Basic Elements of Clause Structure

Subject. Predator. Complement. Adjust

1. The woman feeds. those pigs regularly.

2. Our bull terrier was chasing the postman. yesterday
3. The Aussie actress looked. great in her latest film.

• Tests for Clause Constituents

We can test for the Subject, Complement and Adjunct elements of clause structure
by asking various questions around the verb – assuming of course that we can find
the verb.

Finding the Subject: it should answer the question ‘who’ or ‘what’ placed in

Front of the verb.

Finding the Complement: it should answer the question ‘who’ or ‘what’ placed

After the verb.

Finding the Adjunct:. it should answer questions such as ‘how’, ‘when’,

‘where’ or ‘why’ placed after the verb.

• Variations in Basic Clause Structure

Whereas most of the examples provided so far exhibit a basic SPCA pattern of
clause structure, it is important to note that this configuration represents only one of a
number of possible combinations. Other types of grammatical mood, for example,
involve different types of clausal patterning. A case in point is the imperative, which
the form typically used for requests and commands. Interrogatives, the form typically
used for asking questions, do contain Subject elements. Declarative clauses may
themselves display significant variation around the basic SPCA pattern. Pared down
to its grammatical bare bones, as it were, a clause may realize S and P elements
only, as in ‘The train arrived’ or ‘The lesson began’ occasionally a clause may contain
two Complements. This occurs when one of the C elements is a ‘direct object’ and
the other an ‘indirect object’, as in ‘Mary gave her friend a book’ or ‘Bill told the
children a story’.
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