GRAMMAR

Definition

Grammar can be defined as the process of

describing the structure of phrases and
sentences in such a way that we account for all
the grammatical sequences in a language and
rule out the ungrammatical sequences.
Traditional
grammar
• The study of grammar based on the
description of languages such as Latin and
Greek.
• We use this model to describe the basic
grammatical components (parts of speech)
and how they connect to each other
(agreement).
 NOUNS
The parts of Words used to refer to people (girl), objects
(pencil), creatures (dog), places (cinema),
speech qualities (strength), phenomena (hurricane), and
abstract ideas (peace).

ARTICLES
Words (a, an, the) used with nouns to form noun
phrases classifying these nouns (I have a
sandwich and an apple) or identifying them as
already known (I ordered the special menu).
 ADJECTIVES
The parts of Words used, usually with nouns, to provide more
information about the things referred to
speech (hardworking person, Colonial architecture)

VERBS
Words used to refer to different types of actions
(go, run) and states (know, own) involving people
and things in events (Eva was learning Japanese
over the last decade and now she has a
proficiency level).
 ADVERBS
The parts of Words used, usually with verbs, to provide more
information about actions, states and events
speech (logically, tomorrow). Some adverbs (really,
very) are also used with adjectives to modify
information about things (The pandemic situation
was very critical last year).

PREPOSITIONS
Words used with nouns in phrases providing
information about time (at 9 am), place (under
the sky, near my place) and other connections
involving actions and things (with a hammer,
without protection).
 PRONOUNS
The parts of Words used in place of noun phrases, usually
referring to people and things already known
speech (She got the job. She got it after years of
hardworking).

CONJUNCTIONS
Words (and, but, because, when) used to make
connections and indicate relationships between
event (Mary got the job because she had been
working hard for many years).
 Agreement can be defined as the grammatical
Agreement connection between two parts of a sentence.
For example, between the subject and the form
of a verb (Jack always plays hard).
 Number:
Types of The grammatical category of nouns as singular or
plural.
agreement
Person:
Grammatical category that covers the distinctions
of first person (the speaker), second person (the
hearer) and the third person (any others
involved). They can be singular (I, you, he/she/it)
or plural (we, you, they). When we use the third
person singular, the verb must agree with the
subject (Chloe makes excellent speeches).
 Tense:

Types of
 Present tense: active voice where the subject does the
action (Chloe makes excellent speeches) and passive
voice where the subject doesn’t do the action (Chloe is

agreement admired).
 Past tense: same as above but in the past.
 WARNING: if we use that past tense in the third person
singular, it is usually implied that the subject is dead.

Gender:
There is agreement between the natural gender of the subject
and their pronouns and possessive adjectives (determiners).
The subject can be male (he/his), female (she/her) and
neutral for things or creatures, when the sex is unknown or
irrelevant (it/its).
 Chloe makes good speeches. She is an excellent orator.
 Chloe makes good speeches. Her expositions are clear
and easy to understand.
 Whereas natural gender is based on sex (male
Grammatical and female), grammatical gender is based on
the type of noun (masculine or feminine) and

gender is not tied to sex.

Spanish, French and German are languages
that contain this grammatical gender. Their
articles and adjectives agree with the
grammatical gender of the noun.
For example: La cama del hotel es incómoda.
THIS DOESN’T HAPPEN IN ENGLISH
WHERE OBJECTS ARE NEUTRAL, AND
ARTICLES AND ADJECTIVES HAVE NO
GENDER.
 Based on the analysis made for Latin, it
Traditional classifies pronouns and verbs according to
gender, number and inflections (for verbs).

analysis This type of analysis doesn’t make much sense

in English, since they only have one inflection
for the third person singular (-s). The
categories only apply to pronouns and
possessive adjectives (I, me, my, mine; you,
your, yours; he, him, his; she, her, hers; we,
our, ours; you, your, yours; they, them, their,
theirs).
 It is a claim that establishes that English
The sentences should be like the structure of
sentences in Latin. So, we can describe the

Prescriptive prescriptive approach as the set of rules

imposed for the proper use of a language.

Approach Example:
 You must not end a sentence with a
preposition.
 Who did you go with? – According to the
rule, this sentence should be corrected as
“With whom did you go?” (¿con quién
fuiste?)
 Another prescriptive grammatical rule claims
The the following:
 You must not split an infinitive.
Prescriptive  Captain Kirk, a Star Trek’s character, broke
this rule every time he said: “to boldly go”.
Approach In fact, it is very common in Modern
English to constantly break this rule.

(Captain Kirk’s Examples: to better know, to boldly say, to

clearly understand, and so on.

Infinitive)
 Structural Analysis
The Descriptive The investigation of the distribution of
grammatical forms in a language.
Approach For this purpose, we use fill-in-gaps exercises.
 I heard a ______ yesterday. (more restricted
choices)
 I heard _______ yesterday. (wider choices)
 The _______ makes a lot of noise. (more
restricted choices)
 ___________ makes a lot of noise. (wider
choices)
 Constituent Analysis
The Descriptive It shows how small constituents go together to
form larger constituents.
Approach In the previous unit we saw how morphs
combined to form words. Now we are going to
see how words of different categories combine to
form phrases. The combination of these phrases
results in a sentence.
Example: (NP) The wise woman (VP) taught
(NP) the new students (NP) a lesson (PP) with
passion.
 Subjects and objects
The Descriptive We use the terms subject and object to describe
the different functions of noun phrases (NP) in a
Approach sentence.
We can normally identify the subject as the first
NP before the verb and the object as the NP after
the verb. The other phrase at the end of the
example is an adjunct, usually an adverb or
prepositional phrase (PP), which provides
additional information such as where, when and
how the subject verbed the object.
Example: (Subject) (NP) The wise woman (Verb)
(VP) taught (Object) (NP) a lesson (Adjunct)
(PP) with passion.
 Subject Object

The Descriptive the first NP

controls the verb (singular
the NP after the verb
no influence on verb

Approach or plural)
often performs the action often undergoes the action
Pronouns: I, he, she, we, me, him, her, us, them
they
 • Order of constituents: NP-V-NP
Word Order • Order of grammatical functions: Subject-
Verb-object (SVO)
Word order can be defined as the linear order of
constituents in a sentence, used in language
typology to identify different types of language.
 Language Typology
Word Order Language typology can be defined as the
identification of a language as one of a specific
type, often based on word order such as SVO
(English) or SOV (Japanese).
This allows us to classify languages that share the
same word order pattern.
The main four patterns are:
1. SVO (English)
2. SOV (Japanese)
3. VSO (Gaelic)
4. VOS (Malagasy)
Source

Yule, George. (2020) The Study of Language (7th Edition). CUP