Some common terms

Familiarizing yourself with the following terms will help you read descriptions of grammar
and to communicate about grammar. This does not necessarily mean, of course, that your
ESL / EFL learners also need to be familiar with such terminology. Whether or not they
benefit from knowledge of metalinguistic terminology will obviously depend on the
objectives of the course and the needs of the particular student population.

Syntax = sentence structure, i.e., word order (or, more broadly, constituent order) of the
sentence. For example, in English declarative sentences, the subject comes before the verb
(Nancy plays the flute; You can leave now), but in interrogative sentences, the verb usually
precedes the subject (something we call ‘inversion’) (Does Nancy play the flute? Can I leave
now?). Compared to many languages, English has a relatively fixed word order. (Compare
with other languages that you have knowledge of.)

Morphology = word formation (‘morphemes’ are the smallest meaningful units that words
are made up of). Many words are combinations of a root and an affix (spot+less;
success+ful; re+action). Affixes that change the word’s word class are derivational affixes.
For example, the noun creation is a derived from the verb create by means of the affix -ion.
Other affixes are inflectional affixes. For example, the plural –s ending in creations is
inflectional. So are the verb’s –s ending in She plays well and the verb’s –ed ending in You
played well last night. Compared to many languages, English has a relatively poor
inflectional morphology. (Compare with other languages that you have knowledge of.)

Syntax and morphology interact, which is why linguists often talk about morpho-syntax.
Function words (a.k.a. ‘grammatical words’), as opposed to ‘content words’, are a closed-
class of words such as articles (a, the), pronouns (you, his, who), prepositions (of, at), and
auxiliaries (e.g., the use of have in I’ve finished).

Compared to ‘content words’ (such as nouns, e.g., girl, and adjectives, e.g., cute), function
words are less meaning-bearing on their own. That does not mean they are devoid of
meaning, however. They both wanted the muffin has different implications from They both
wanted a muffin. As far as ‘meaningfulness’ goes, the distinction between ‘function’ and
‘content’ words is therefore certainly not black-and-white, but rather a matter of degree.
Besides, some words can serve as content words and as function words (e.g., the two uses of
do in Did she do a good job?).

It is nonetheless a relevant distinction from a pedagogical standpoint. For one thing, as a

group, function words are far more frequent than content words (e.g., of is the most frequent
word of English). For another, these are all short, easily confusable words, with little salience
and thus relatively unlikely to draw the learner’s attention.
At a finer-grained level, words are distinguished by word class (a.k.a. ‘part of speech’).

Nouns: These refer to ‘things’ in a broad sense (objects, people and other creatures,
concepts), e.g., chair, lions, volcano, activity, politics, president, Obama.

Adjectives: These ‘modify’ the ‘things’ denoted by nouns, e.g., large, excellent, blue, dark,
hot, horrible, difficult, strange, soft, successful, disastrous, good. They can precede the noun,
as in You have a pretty daughter, or come later as in Your daughter is pretty.

Determiners: articles (the, a), demonstratives (e.g., this, those), quantifiers (e.g., all, any,
very, some, most, five).

Verbs: e.g., sing, drive, understand, believe, happen, try, suggest, be, stay, know, cry, find,
feel, must, feel, do, may.

Notice that one word may serve as a noun and a verb: e.g., elbow is a noun, but is turned into
a verb in He elbowed his way through the crowd; stay is usually a verb, but functions as a
noun in I hope you enjoyed your stay here. Even if a word looks like a verb form (e.g.,
because of an –ing ending), it may be performing the role of a noun in a given sentence, as in
Teaching is hard, or the role of an adjective, as in a boring topic.

Adverbs: These can modify (a) verbs (She sings well; She sings beautifully), (b) adjectives
(She has a remarkably deep voice), or (c) whole propositions (I’ll never get married). Many
adjectives can be turned into adverbs by adding –ly to them (e.g., soft  softly).

Prepositions: e.g., in, at, over, under, behind, between, beyond, after, around.

Pronouns: e.g., I, you, it, they, me, us, him, her, their, mine, its, who, which.

Conjunctions: These are connectors, e.g. and, but, or, when, because, however, since (e.g.,
She bought me a new shirt but I didn’t like it; I couldn’t go to the concert because I had to
work late).

Nouns are often ‘modified’ by other words, which is why linguists talk about noun phrases.
For example, my most disastrous holiday constitutes one noun phrase. In the same vein, they
talk about verb phrases. For example, has been drinking is one verb phrase. Similarly, on the
dining table, at school and over the phone are prepositional phrases.
Words have their own grammar.

While many nouns denote things that are considered to be discrete and thus countable (in the
given language), others are considered uncountable. This affects whether or not they can be
‘pluralised’. For example, chairs, books, stories, spiders, toes, activities, governments,
investigations, songs and operas are all pluralised by adding the suffix –s, but that would not
work for, e.g., music, air, milk, information, vermin and research.

It also affects the determiners they go with. For example, countable nouns can be preceded by
the indefinite article (e.g., a chair, a song, a government, an investigation), while
uncountable ones cannot as such (e.g., *a music, *an information, *a research). To construe
the latter as discrete and thus countable concepts, they need ‘a _ of _’ structures such as a
piece of information, two bottles of milk, a bit of fun.

Some verbs usually require an object to follow them in declarative sentences (She needed a
drink; He’s preparing breakfast) while others don’t (e.g., They always argue; She cried). The
former are called transitive verbs; the latter intranstitive. Many verbs can be used both
ways (e.g., They’re playing; They’re playing our song).

Post-verb objects can be constituents with a verb, too. For example, I suggest going to the zoo
or I suggest we go to the zoo. However, verbs have different preferences for the kind of
verbal object they wish to precede. For example, I don’t want to go out is fine while *I don’t
want going out isn’t. Conversely, I don’t fancy going out is fine, but *I don’t fancy to go out
isn’t. Restrictions on these kind of combinations are called ‘colligations’ (reminiscent of the
term ‘collocations’ in the domain of vocabulary) or ‘valencies’.

As you can imagine, the fact that words have their own grammar in the sense illustrated here
adds considerably to the challenge of mastering L2 grammar. It also demonstrates that
equating grammar learning with ‘system learning’ is a simplification. Grammar learning
cannot really be divorced from vocabulary (or ‘item’) learning.
Clause structures

A clause is minimally a subject and an intransitive verb (e.g., She’s watching)

The subject is the topic that the clause is about. In active sentences, it is often the ‘agent’,
i.e., the entity that performs the action. Many clauses have the structure subject + verb +
complement. The complement says something about the nature or state of the subject. For
example, She is beautiful, He looks tired, He’s a teacher; They are getting angry; Billy seems
a nice guy; I’m feeling sick.

Other clause constituents are direct objects (typically the ‘patient’ or the thing that the action
happens to), e.g., He threw the ball, indirect objects (typically the ‘receiver’), e.g., He threw
her the ball, and adverbials (e.g., She slept all day). The latter are often prepositional
phrases (e.g., The plane landed on the highway).

Combining all these constituents can result in clauses like She reads her son a story every
night.

In English the distinction between direct and indirect object is not so pertinent, because it
does not affect the form of the words that occupy these slots (e.g., the pronoun / noun phrase
is the same in She kissed me and She gave me a kiss. In many other languages (languages
with a richer ‘case’ system than English) the distinction does affect the choice of pronouns
and inflection, however. English used to be like that, too, with the direct object taking the
‘accusative’ case, whereas the indirect objective took the ‘dative’ case. In contemporary
English, only the genitive, signalled by apostrophe –s, is a remnant of the old case system
(e.g., Nancy’s birthday; The King’s speech).
Complex sentences

Combining clauses results in ‘complex sentences’. These are of two types, called
coordination and subordination.

The most common co-ordinating conjunctions are and, but and or (e.g., She got into her car
and drove off; She got into her car but couldn’t get the engine started; You can drive to work
or you can take the bus).

In the case of subordination, a distinction is made between the main clause and the
subordinate clause (a.k.a. the dependent clause). In the following sentence, for example, the
second clause is the subordinate clause:
I didn’t dare to come home, because I knew you’d be angry.

Several types of subordination are known to be potentially problematic for learners of

English. These include:

If/unless/when-clauses (or conditional clauses and time clauses), which do not usually take
will or would: e.g., Unless you tidy up, there will be no pudding for you tonight; If I’d known,
I would have tried to come home early; If only she cared for me.

Relative clauses, which require the appropriate choice of relative pronoun: e.g., My brother,
who used to be a maths teacher, is now helping my son; He’s written several books, some of
which are bestsellers.

Indirect (or reported) speech, which differs from direct speech: e.g., Can you lend me a
hand?  She asked if I could lend her a hand.

Choosing between that-clauses (I promised that I would help her), bare infinitive clauses
(She saw me come home), to-infinitive clauses (She wanted me to tidy up again), –ing form1
clauses (She kept on nagging) and –ed clauses (she should have her head examined).

Note: when an –ing form functions as a noun (e.g. I love cooking), it is often called a gerund.
Negation

The most common word to express negation is, of course, no and it immediately follows the
(first) verb: e.g., He isn’t very handsome; I’m not going to do this; I cannot do this exercise;
Peter won’t be coming tonight; You shouldn’t do that; She may not be re-elected.

The above examples have either a form of be or an auxiliary verb. Auxiliary verbs are forms
of: be, have, do, can, will, may; shall; must (and sometimes ought, need, dare, used). If the
clause does not have one of these, then a form of do is used to perform this role: e.g., I don’t
want to go home yet; She doesn’t like mushrooms; We didn’t agree.

Apart from embedding no, other lexical means are available to express negation: e.g., Nobody
seemed interested; I’ve never been to Vietnam; She rarely smiles.

Interrogative sentences

So far, we have talked mostly about declarative sentences. Other types are imperatives
(Listen to me!) and interrogatives (Will you listen to me?). There are basically two kinds of
interrogatives: yes-no questions and open questions (or wh-questions).

Interrogatives in English main clauses involve inversion of subject and verb, i.e., the verb
comes first: e.g., Will you marry me? Are you pregnant? Can I go now? When are you
leaving? What’s your name? How are you today?

As is the case for negation (see above), when the verb is not an auxiliary, then a form of do
will be called upon to perform that function: e.g., Do you like her? Does she play rugby? Did
your parents travel a lot? Why did you try to run away? What did you do next?

Questions in subordinate clauses, such as indirect speech, however, look like declaratives (no
inversion): e.g., She asked me if I was pregnant; She asked me if I liked her; I asked whether
she played rugby; I don’t know why he tried to run away? I wonder what they did next.

Given these intricacies, it is not surprising that question formation can be quite challenging
for learners of English.
Tense, aspect, voice, and mood

Tense is the way verb forms can be marked to indicate time reference. For example, She
plays chess is present tense, while She played chess is past tense.

Tense is combined with aspect. In English there are two choices to be made: +/- progressive
(also called continuous) and +/- perfective. She was playing chess is an example of the
progressive aspect (combined, in this case with the past tense, which makes this verb phrase
‘past progressive’, or ‘past continuous’). She’s played chess since she was five is an example
of the perfective aspect (combined, in this case, with the present tense, which makes the verb
phrase ‘present perfect’). The combinations of tense and aspect can be tricky for language
learners, because not all languages express the same dimensions of aspect or express them by
the same means.

Voice refers to the distinction between active and passive clauses. In active clauses, the
subject is typically the ‘agent’ (i.e., the entity that performs an action), as in They elected her.
In passive clauses, the subject is the ‘patient’, as in She was elected, or the ‘receiver’, as in
I’ve been offered a new job. English signals the passive voice by using a form of be as
auxiliary followed by the –ed form of the main verb. Failing to recognize this may lead to
misinterpretation of passive sentences, because the learner may assume the subject must be
the agent of the activity. The addition of the auxiliary be also adds to the formal complexity
of the verb phrase (e.g., We are being followed; The other guests have already been helped to
drinks).

Mood is about the distinction between indicative (factual; this is the usual mood in English)
and subjunctive (imaginary, hypothetical). In many other languages subjunctives are
common, but in contemporary English the subjunctive mood has survived in only a small
number of ‘frames’, such as wish + subjunctive (e.g., I wish you were here) and If only +
subjunctive (If only I’d known you were in town). The subjunctive form coincides with the
past tense form, and so learners are typically told that, e.g., if only is followed by a past tense
(no need to add to the learning burden by introducing the extra term ‘subjunctive’).
Modal verbs

Modal verbs express notions such as obligation, necessity, permission, prohibition, advice,
certainty, probability, possibility, and ability.

The challenging thing about learning these verbs is that the same verb can express different
notions.

Some examples:

You must come home before midnight (obligation) – You must be exhausted (certainty)

You may leave the table now (permission) – They may win after all (possibility)

You can have an ice cream (permission) – It can get very windy in Wellington (possibility)

(Note: historically, the obligation/permission meanings of these verbs probably came first,
and the ‘epistemic’ meanings were derived from them through inferences. For example, if
you order someone to do something, then it is highly to get done. Hence, the obligation and
the certainty senses of must).

Further potential confusion is added by the observation that the meaning of the negated forms
is not always predictable:

You may not yet leave the table (prohibition) – They may not win after all (still possibility)

I must try harder (obligation) – You mustn’t tell lies (prohibition)

vs.
You need to tidy up first (obligation) – You needn’t have done that (absence of obligation)

At the level of ‘form’ learning, verb phrases with modal auxiliaries can get quite complex,
too: e.g., She may not have been cheating on me after all.