Grammar

The analysis of the structure of the phrases and sentences

 Traditional Grammar: Modeled on Greek and Latin; adopting categories devised for the description of
Latin to analyze English.
Parts of Speech: functional parts of a sentence
 Noun: Naming word; people, objects, creatures, places, qualities, phenomena and abstract ideas
 Pronoun: In the place of noun (phrase); Referring already mentioned nouns; 1st, 2nd, 3rd Person
 Adjective: Noun qualifying word: gives information about the noun
 Article: Noun determiners: a, an, the. Used with noun to form noun phrases classifying those „things‟
(You can have a banana or an apple) or identifying them as already known (I‟ll take the apple).
 Verb: Action & State: Action verb, linking verb (state), helping verb (auxiliary & model verbs)
 Adverb: Verb qualifying words: also qualifies adjectives and other adverb. Used to provide more
information about actions, states and events.
 Preposition: are words (at, in, on, near, with, without) used with nouns in phrases providing
information about time, place and other connections involving actions and things (with a knife,
without a thought)
 Conjunction: Connectors between words, phrases & clauses. Words used to make connections an
indicate relationships between events.
 Agreement: the grammatical connection between two parts of a sentence, as in the connection between
a subject (Cathy) and the form of a verb (loves chocolate)
Agreement of noun & Verb in categories of “number,” “person,” “tense,” “voice” “gender”
Number: the grammatical category of nouns as singular or plural
Person: the grammatical category distinguishing first person (involving the speaker, me), second
person (involving the hearer, you) and third person (involving any others, she, them)
Tense: the grammatical category distinguishing forms of the verb as present tense and past tense
Voice: Active Voice & Passive Voice
Active voice: the form of the verb used to say what the subject does (e.g. He stole it)
Passive voice: the form of the verb used to say what happens to the subject (e.g. The car was
stolen)

Gender: a term used in three ways:

(1) a biological distinction between male and female, also called natural gender;
(2) a distinction between classes of nouns as masculine, feminine (or neuter) called grammatical
gender
(3) a distinction between the social roles of men and women, also called social gender

 The prescriptive approach: an approach to grammar that has rules for the proper use of the language,
traditionally, based on Latin grammar, in contrast to the descriptive approach.
Rules of English Language should be in accord with Latin & Greek languages.
You must not split an infinitive.
You must not end a sentence with a preposition.
Captain Kirk’s infinitive: Kirk used „To boldly go‟….. Splitting the infinitive is not allowed in Latin…
the prescriptivist would prescribe (based on Latin rule) to not to split the infinitive. They would
prescribe it to use it as boldly to go, or to go boldly…. But we find structures like to boldly go, to
solemnly swear, to never ever get back together quite frequently in English. So instead of considering
them bad and prescribing the correct forms based on Latin, we should simply consider English to be a
different language that cannot always be analyzed on the basis of Latin grammatical rules.
 The descriptive approach: an approach to grammar that is based on a description of the structures
actually used in a language, not what should be used, in contrast to the prescriptive approach.
Linguists took sample of utterance and came out with certain rules.
Structural analysis: the investigation of the distribution of grammatical forms in a language. It uses
“test-frames” with empty space to do this.
The ____________ makes a lot of noise
I heard ____________ yesterday
____________ makes a lot of noise
I heard ______________ yesterday.
From the analysis done with test frames, we come to know:
Traditional/Latin influenced grammar: Pronouns are words used in place of nouns
Descriptive approach improves the definition: Pronouns are words used in place of nouns or noun
phrases.
Constituent analysis: a grammatical analysis of how small constituents (or components) go together to
form larger constituents in sentences.
Determining how small constituents or components go together to form larger constituents, i.e. how
words combine to form phrases.
The following figure shows a common constituent structure of many English sentences.

The above figure show how smaller constituents (words) form larger constituents (phrases). We can also
determine different functions of these phrases. The above phrases can be categorized as Subject (the
grammatical function of the noun phrase typically used before the verb to refer to who or what performs
the action of the verb) or Object (the grammatical function of the noun phrase after the verb that
typically undergoes the action of the verb) and adjunct (a part of a sentence, typically an adverb or a
prepositional phrase, that provides additional information about where, when or how).

Labeled and bracketed sentences: constituents in sentence marked off by using labeled brackets
[[ [The] [dog] ] [[loved] [the] [girl]]]
 The labeled and bracketed sentence shown above also indicate the hierarchical organization: S – NP
(Art & N), VP (V & NP)
Word order: the linear order of constituents in a sentence (e.g. Subject–Verb–Object), used in language
typology to identify different types of languages.
The basic linear order of constituents in English is Noun Phrase–Verb–Noun Phrase (or NP V NP) and
their typical grammatical functions are Subject–Verb–Object (or SVO).
Word order can be different in different languages of the world (SOV, OSV, OVS)
Language typology: the identification of a language as one of a specific type, often based on word order
such SVO or SOV

Syntax
 Syntax (Greek: „a putting together‟ or „arrangements‟: The analysis of structure of the phrases and
sentences. Recently, the interest in syntax has shifted to the underlying rule system that we use to
produce or “generate” sentences.
 Syntactic Rules: while providing analysis of syntax of a language, we adhere to ‘all & only’ criterion
(our analysis must account for all the grammatically correct phrases and sentences and only those
grammatically correct phrases and sentences in whatever language we are analyzing.) In other words, if
we write rules for the creation of well-formed structures, we have to check that those rules, when applied
logically, won‟t also lead to ill-formed structures.
E.g. near + London = near London Rule: Preposition (P) + Noun (N) = Prepositional Phrase (PP)
Anomaly: near + tree = *near tree or near (P) + the tree (NP)= (P)(NP)
Revision: Preposition (P) + Noun Phrase (NP) = Prepositional Phrase (PP)
This discussion defines the goal of syntactic analysis which is to have a small and finite (limited) set of
rules that will be capable of producing a large and potentially infinite (unlimited) number of well-formed
structures (phrases and sentences).
 Generative Grammar: small and finite set of rules capable of generating infinite sentence structures.
Generative grammar should also be capable of revealing the basis of two other phenomena: first, how
some superficially different phrases and sentences are closely related and, second, how some
superficially similar phrases and sentences are in fact different.
 Surface Structure: the structure of individual sentences in contrast to deep structure
Different syntactic forms (of a same deep structure) as individual English sentences
Ali broke the window (NP+V+NP)
The window was broken by Ali. (NP+V+NP)
 Deep structure: “underlying” level; basic components (Noun Phrase +Verb + Noun Phrase) shared by
two sentences; abstract structural organization of sentences.
A single deep structure can produce many surface structures (Statement, question, etc.)
It was Ali who broke the window. (Move operation)
Was the window broken by Ali? (Move Operation)

Grammar must be capable of showing how a single underlying abstract representation can become different
surface structures.

 Structural ambiguity: Vague or more than one possible meanings of a surface structure
Ali bumped into a man with an umbrella

Structural ambiguity occurs when two different underlying structures are presented with the same
surface structure.
The two underlying structure (deep structure) in the above sentence can be expressing the idea that:
 Ali had an umbrella and he bumped into a man with it.
Ali bumped into a man and that happened to be having an umbrella.

Lexical Ambiguity:

„The child has grown another foot.‟

The ambiguity here is because of the meaning of the word foot and is, therefore, a concern of semantics.

 Syntactic Analysis:
Abbreviations and Symbols used in Syntactic Analysis:
We use some abbreviations for the analysis of different constituents, for example: N (=noun), Art
(=article), Adj (=adjective), V(=verb), Adj (=adjective), Pro (=pronoun), Prep (P=Preposition) and
Similarly, NP (=Noun Phrase), VP(=verb Phrase) etc. In English, VP (usually) consists of (V) plus the
following (NP). Thus, by using these abbreviations, we can analyze a syntactic structure.
Following figure presents the analysis of a single sentence.

The syntactic information (analysis) can also be presented in a more dynamic way as:
NP → Art N
Here (→) stands for „consists of‟ or „rewrites as‟.
NP → Art (Adj) N
Here the round brackets () indicate and element that is optional in this structure.
Another common symbol is in the form of curly brackets {}. These indicate that only one of the elements
enclosed within the curly brackets must be selected.
NP → Art (Adj) N
NP → Pro NP → {Art (Adj) N, Pro, PN}
NP → PN
Tree diagrams:

 Phrase Structure Rules: rules stating that the structure of a phrase of a specific type consists of one or
more constituents in a particular order.
S → NP VP
NP → {Art (Adj) N, Pro, PN}
VP → V NP (PP) (Adv)
PP → Prep NP
 X' schema:

Heads: obligatory nucleus of phrase, they can be nouns (N), Verbs (V), adjective (Adj), Prepositions (P)
etc.
Specifiers:

Complements: are always phrases, provide information about entities and locations implied by the meaning
of the head. For example, the meaning of protect implies something that is protected (protect the
environment); the meaning of in implies a location (in the house); the meaning of map implies an area that is
depicted, as in a map of Canada

Complement options for different categories:

Sentence structure:

Merge Operation: to combine words in a manner compatible with X' Schema.

Recursion: The application of an operation to its own output to create an ever more complex structure is
called recursion and it‟s an essential part of our ability to build sentences.

Sub-categorization: The classification of words in terms of their complement options.

Move Operation: A syntactic operation that transports an element to a new position within syntactic
structure.
 Deep VS Surface Structure:

 Lexical Rules: rules stating which words can be used for constituents generated by phrase structure
rules.