REVIEWER (ENGL 103)  Contemporary English (present and

onwards) According to Meyer (2009),

LESSON 1 - English is the most widely spoken
language around the world (Australia,
LANGUAGE - expression and communication of Canada, Ireland, Great Britain, New
emotions/ideas between human Zealand, and the United States).
beings
- means of speech and hearing, the LANGUAGE VARIATIONS (Lobeck & Denham,
sounds spoken or heard being 2014)
systematize. • Scots English: That’s me away. (I’m going
- conventional spoken or written now).
• Varieties of British English: That house looks
ENGLISH - West Germanic language that was a nice one.
first spoken in early medieval England • Appalachian English: They went a- hunting
and is now a global lingua franca. yesterday.
• Varieties of Southern US English: We might
Language family: Indo- European (relating to should do that.
the family of languages spoken over • Indian English: I asked him where does he
the greater part of Europe and Asia as work.
far as northern India. • Australian English: She’ll be right. (Everything
Germanic: English, German, Dutch, Swedish, will be all right.)
Danish
Italic: Latin*, Spanish, French, Italian, GRAMMAR - is the system of a language.
Portuguese People sometimes describe grammar
Celtic: Irish, Welsh as the "rules" of a language; but in fact
Balto- Slavic: Russian, Polish, Czech no language has rules. If you use the
Hellenic: Greek word "rules", it is suggested that
Indo- Iranian: Sanskrit*, Hindi, Bengali, Persian somebody created the rules first
(Farsi)
Albanian: Albanian TWO KINDS OF GRAMMAR
• Descriptive grammar: a set of rules about
Note: * Languages that are considered dying or language based on how it is actually
dead used. there is no right or wrong
language.
5 STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT (language • Prescriptive grammar: a set of rules based on
change) ENGLISH HAS GONE how people think language should be
THROUGH: used.
ORIGINS OF PRESCRIPTIVE GRAMMAR
 Old English (400- 1100 AD) : Hwaet! We - Between the 15th and 18th centuries scholars
Gardena in geardagum (Listen! We of set out to “fix” and “improve” English
the Spear- Danes in days of yore) -
Beowulf For a prescriptivist, grammar covers a broad
 Middle English (1100- 1500 AD) : range of rules:
Experience, though noon auctoritee 1. punctuation rules (where to put commas and
(Experience, though no authority) - The apostrophes, for example)
Wife of Bath’s Tale 2. vocabulary rules (avoid “slang”; use
“academic” vocabulary)
 Early Modern English (1500- 1800 AD): 3. spelling rules (don’t mix up they’re, their, and
That flesh is heir to? ‘Tis a there)
consummation Devoutly to be wish’d. 4. other injunctions such as “Never start a
To die, to sleep -Hamlet sentence with because;” “Never end a sentence
 Modern English (1800- present) with a preposition;” “Don’t split infinitives;” “Use I
instead of me and whom instead of who,” and so
on.
REVIEWER (ENGL 103) be divided into smaller independent grammatical
parts.
LESSON 2
How many and what are the morphemes of
THE COMPONENTS OF GRAMMAR “resealable” and “resealed”
Answers:
1. SYNTAX - Knowledge of grammar includes Resealable: 3 morphemes ( re: a prefix;
how one arranges words in sentences seal: the root or main word; -able: a suffix)
(rules of syntax) in patterns recognized
as English. But there is more to syntax Resealed: 3 morphemes (re: a prefix; seal: the
than word order. root or main word; -ed: a
Example: The flonkish warziles blorked six suffix indicating past form
yerkons
Prefixes and suffixes are affixes; morphemes
( Answer: Determiner: The attach to words or roots of words (and
Adjective: flonkish, six languages have infixes, affixes that
Noun: warziles, yerkons occur within words, or circumfixes,
verb: blorked affixes that attach to the beginning and
end of a word)
(Q2: How do we divide the sentence into its two
main parts/phrases?) There are two types of affixation:
Answer: The flonkish warziles/ blorked six derivational and inflectional
yerkons.The 1st phrase is a Noun
Phrase (the head or main word The morphemes re- and –able are derivational
“warziles” is a noun); the 2nd phrase is affixes because adding them derives a
a Verb Phrase (the head or main word new word or dictionary entry (reseal,
“blorked” is a verb). sealable, resealable).
Inflectional affixes don’t create new words, but
NOTE: The NP (Noun Phrase) may be labeled attach to existing words, adding
as SUBJECT, the VP (Verb Phrase) as grammatical information (e.g., the plural
PREDICATE.The VP could be even be –s, the comparative –er).
divided into verb (blorked) and It is noted that, for instance, only rat and
complement (six yerkons) cold, but not rats and colder,
have dictionary entries.
2. MORPHOLOGY - is the study of words, how
they are formed (word structure), and Some English derivational affixes:
their relationship to other words in the Nouns (-ity, -ment, -ion, ex-)
same language. Further, it analyzes the Verbs (-ize, -ate, -ify, en-, dis-)
structure of words, such as root words, Adjectives (-ly, -ish, -ful, nonAdverbs (-ly, -wise, -
prefixes, and suffixes.The two like)
branches of morphology are inflectional English inflectional affixes (exactly 8 of them):
morphology and lexical or derivational Nouns (possessive –s, plural –s)
morphology.warziles and yerkons end in Verbs (3rd sing. –s, past tense –ed, pres.
plural –s and blorked ends in –ed, a participle –ing, past
suffix found on verbs but not nouns. participle –ed/en)
The adjective flonkish ends in-ish, an ending Adjectives (comparative –er, superlative –est)
found on other adjectives (pinkish,
childish). Suffixation and prefixation is Other word formation rules (applicable only to
one way to build words.Parts of words lexical categories ---noun, verb, adjective,
are called morphemes. As defined by adverb)
Webster’s, a morpheme is any of the • COINING- inventing words not related to other
minimal grammatical units of a words (bling, quiz)
language, each constituting a word • COMPOUNDING- two or more words behaving
meaningful part of a word, that cannot as one word (backlash, bailout,
Facebook, undertake, voiceover)
• BLENDING- telescoping two words together the study of the anatomy, physiology, neurology,
(brunch, spork) and acoustics of speaking.
• CONVERSION- assigning one word more than
one syntactic category (father, tweet,
email)
• ACRONYMS- words from abbreviations (WAC,
ROTC)
• EPONYMS- words from names, often brand
names (xerox, kleenex, google)

3. SEMANTICS - is the branch of linguistics and

logic concerned with meaning. It is the study
and analysis of how language is used to
produce meaning. Grammatical
knowledge does not only rely on syntactic and
morphological evidences but also includes
rulesby which meanings of words and
sentences are constructed and
understood.

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

This sentence is recognized to be syntactically

and morphologically grammatical (the words
are all English words, arranged in English word
order), but it is anomalous or nonsensical.
Thus,

(a) grammatical knowledge includes knowledge

of how to construct meaning from words
and sentences and (b) the component
of grammar that governs meaning is in
certain ways separate from other
components of grammar. So, just as
one can study syntax and morphology
as separate (but interacting)
components of grammar, one can also
study semantics as a separate
component of our knowledge of
grammar, one which overlaps with s
yntax and morphology.

4. PHONOLOGY and PHONETICS - is the

system of rules used to combine
sounds, or phonemes, together to
form syllables, words, and larger
units; study of the sound patterns that
occur within the language.Some
linguists include phonetics, the study
of the production and description of
speech sounds, within the study of
phonology.Phonetics is the inventory of
sounds in a language; the study of
speech sounds and their physiological
production and acoustic qualities;