DEPARTMENT OF HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES

PROGRAMME: BACHELOR OF EDUCATION

COURSE OUTLINE
CREDIT HOURS: _3_________________ CONTACT HOURS _45___________
Unit Code & Title ENGL 415: ADVANCED DESCRIPTION OF MODERN ENGLISH
Prerequisite ENGL 104 INTRODUCTION TO THE STRUCTURE OF ENGLISH
Lecturer Name DR. SAFAI NTALALA
Contact [Link]@[Link] Phone: 0720580659
Course Purpose
This course will provide the learners with skills to undertake an in-depth analysis of a variety of
English grammatical structures and constructions.
Expected Learning Outcomes
By the end of the course, the learner is expected to:
 Explain the rationale for structural analysis and undertake an in-depth analysis of a
variety of English grammatical structures and constructions.
 Analyze a variety of English phrases, clauses and sentences.
 Analyze complex sentences containing clefts and topics.
 Identify and use grammatical categories in various ways.
Course Content
Rationale for structural analysis. Revisiting structure of phrases and clauses. Brief description
internal structure and complexity of English phrases. The internal structure and complexity of
English noun phrases. Relative clause as a type of noun phrase; types of relative clauses in
English; analysis of relative clauses (Adjunction, modification and the complement analysis);
event and result adjectives; Prepositional phrases in English: classification of prepositions,
internal structure of complex prepositional phrases. Adjectives in English; attributive,
predicative, resultative and depictive use of adjectives, and analysis; Fragments and clauses.
Verbless clauses and clausal ellipsis. English clefts, topicalization in English. English clefts,
Agreement and concord. Sentence patterns and constructions, Question tags, reported speech
and Structural relations.
Course Schedule

Week Topic Specific learning outcomes Learning Experiences

Physical/Virtual
1 Explain the Explain the rationale for structural Interactive enquiry-based lectures, group
rationale for analysis. Revisiting structure of work, demonstrations, taking notes, and
structural phrases and clauses. grammar exercises
analysis.
2 -3 Internal structure Describe the internal structure and Interactive enquiry-based lectures, group
and complexity of complexity of English phrases; noun,
English phrases verb, adjective and adverb work, demonstrations, taking notes, and
grammar exercises

4 Prepositional Define the prepositional phrases in Interactive enquiry-based lectures, group

phrases in English English: classification of
prepositions, internal structure and work, demonstrations, taking notes, and
uses of PPs. grammar exercises

5 &6 Analysis of Re-examining clauses; Types, Interactive enquiry-based lectures, group

clauses and their function, analysis of relative clauses
uses and their uses. CAT 1 work, demonstrations, taking notes, and
grammar exercises

7 Fragments and Describe fragments and clauses. Interactive enquiry-based lectures, group
clauses.
work, demonstrations, taking notes, and
grammar exercises

8 Verbless clauses Classify clause types; Verbless Interactive enquiry-based lectures, group
and clausal clauses and clausal ellipsis.
ellipsis. work, demonstrations, taking notes, and
grammar exercises

9 Agreement and Explain and illustrate different forms Interactive enquiry-based lectures, group work
concord. of agreement and concord. demonstrations, taking notes, and grammar
exercises

10 Sentence patterns Describe sentence patterns and Presentations, interactive enquiry-based

and constructions constructions CAT 2 lectures, group work, demonstrations, taking
notes, and grammar exercises

11-12 Question tags, Analyze question tags, reported Presentations, interactive enquiry-based
reported speech speech and voice lectures, group work, demonstrations, taking
and voice notes, and grammar exercises

13 Topicalization Explicate the role of topicalization Presentations, interactive enquiry-based

and English and English clefts. lectures, group work, demonstrations, taking
clefts. notes, and grammar exercises

14-15 End of semester examination.

Instructional Materials
White board, Power point, Flip charts, Hand-outs, you tube and Felt Pens.

Mode of delivery

The course will be delivered through lectures, class discussions, group work
illustrations/demonstrations, question and answer among other methodologies

Course Assessment

Type Weighting (%)

Continuous Assessment Tests (CATs) 15
Other Assessments (Practicals, Assignments, Projects etc.) 15

End of Semester Examination 70

References
Adger, David. 2003. Core Syntax. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Borjars, K. &Burridge, K. 2010. Introducing English Grammar. UK. Routledge.
Carnie, Andrew. 2013. Syntax: A Generative Introduction. UK: Blackwell
Huddlestone, R. 1984. An Introduction to the Grammar of English. London. Cambridge
Leech, G. &Vartrik, J. 1984. A Communicative Grammar of English. London. Cambridge
University Press
Quirk, R. &Greenbaum, S. 1973. A University Grammar of English. London.

Professional Ethics
 Punctuality is paramount and all students are expected to be in class before the
designated time for the lecture.
 All students are expected to attend classes regularly and actively participate during the
lecture.
 Plagiarism of any manner is prohibited and any form of plagiarism will be penalized.
 Decency in dress and character is highly encouraged and should be upheld.
 All students must promptly submit assignments when due.

Prepared by: Dr. SAFARI NTALALA SIGNATURE: DATE 02/09/2024

LECTURER

APPROVED BY: Dr. KIMATHI MUEMBU SIGNATURE…………..DATE…………

CHAIR OF DEPARTMENT (COD)
TOPIC 1: OVERVIEW OF LEXICAL AND FUNCTIONAL CATEGORIES.
Topic Objectives
By the end of this topic you should be able to:
a) Describe the criteria for classifying words
b) Distinguish morphological distribution, syntactic distribution and semantic criteria in
determining parts of speech.
c) Compare and contrast lexical and functional categories.
d)
1.0 Introduction.
A part of speech is a category of words (or, more generally, of lexical items) that have similar
grammatical properties. Words that are assigned to the same part of speech generally display
similar syntactic behavior—they play similar roles within the grammatical structure of sentences
—and sometimes similar morphology in that they undergo inflection for similar properties.
A distinction has been maintained between lexical categories pertinent to the classes within the
lexicon, such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, functional categories as pronouns,
prepositions, articles, conjunctions, interjections and grammatical categories, relevant for
grammar in its most precise sense, involving tense, aspect, person, definiteness, number, case,
etc.
Lexical categories should be considered only as items that have a certain lexical meaning, and
functional categories as classes of items from the lexicon with definite formal and functional
properties. In this segment we shall introduce different parts of speech. Principally, we shall
define parts of speech, criteria for determining parts of speech, review different parts of speech
and stress on the auxiliary.
Determining the Lexical Categories
The first important observation about words is that they come in different kinds. This is usually
stated as the fact that words come in categories, where categories are nouns, verbs, adjectives,
prepositions, adverbs, determiners, complementizers, and other things. Some of these are
familiar from traditional grammar (e.g. nouns, verbs), others probably less so (complementizers,
or determiners).
Open class categories: (new words can be freely created in these categories)
Noun (N) table, computer, event, joy, action
Verb (V) run, arrive, laugh, know, love, think, say, spray
Adjective (A) big, yellow, stable, intelligent, legal, fake
Adverb (Adv) badly, curiously, possibly, often
Closed categories:
Preposition (P) on, of, by, though, into, from, for, to
Determiner (D) the, a, this, some, every
Numerals (Num) one, two, three, ten, thirteen
Complementizers (C) that, if, whether, for
Auxiliaries (V) have, be
Modals (v or M) will, would, can, could, may, might, shall, should
Coordinators (Coord) and, or, but
Negation/Affirmation (Neg/Aff) no ,too
The basic units of syntax are words. The first question is then what kinds of words (also known
as parts of speech, or lexical categories, or grammatical categories) does English have? Are they
simply noun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, and maybe a few others? Most of us would not
be able to come up with simple definitions to explain the categorization of words. For instance,
why do we categorize book as a noun, but kick as a verb? To make it more difficult, how do we
know that virtue is a noun, that without is a preposition, and that well is an adverb?
The part of speech of a word is determined by its place in the sentence, by its morphology and
sometimes by its meaning. In traditional grammar, part of speech is determined by meaning
(semantic criteria). Commonly listed English parts of speech are noun, verb, adjective, adverb,
pronoun, preposition, conjunction, interjection, numeral, article, or determiner. Other terms than
part of speech—particularly in modern linguistic classifications, which often make more precise
distinctions than the traditional scheme does—include word class, lexical class, and lexical
category. The term form or class is also used, although this has various conflicting definitions.
Words can be classified into different lexical categories according to three criteria:
i) morphological form /distribution,
ii) syntactic function/ distribution.
iii) semantic criteria/meaning.
Determining the category of a word is an important part of morphological and syntactic analysis.
A category of words or morphemes is a group that behaves the same way as one another, for
grammatical purposes.
If you ever learned that a noun is a “person, place or thing”, or that a verb is an “action word”,
these are semantic tests. However, semantic tests don’t always identify the categories that are
relevant for linguistic analysis. They can also be hard to apply in borderline cases, and
sometimes yield inconsistent results; for example, surely action and event are “action” words, so
according to the semantic definition we might think they’re verbs, but in fact these are both
nouns!
In linguistics we’re interested in making generalizations about where different categories of
words or morphemes can occur, and how they can combine with each other. We therefore define
categories based on the grammatical contexts in which words or morphemes are used—their
distribution.
i) Semantic criteria.
At first glance, it seems that words can be classified depending on their meaning. For example,
we could have the following rough semantic criteria for N (noun), V (verb), A (adjective), and
Adv (adverb):
a. Noun: referring to an individual or entity
b. Verb: referring to an action
c. Adjective: referring to a property
d. Adverb: referring to the manner, location, time or frequency of an action
Though such semantic bases can be used for many words, these notional definitions leave a great
number of words unaccounted for. For example, words like sincerity, happiness, and pain do not
simply denote any individual or entity. Absence and loss are even harder cases.
There are also many words whose semantic properties do not match the lexical category that they
belong to. For example, words like assassination and construction may refer to an action rather
than an individual, but they are always noun. Words like remain, bother, appear, and exist are
verbs, but do not involve any action.
Consider the following;
The destruction of the forest bothered the minister.
The meaning of destruction is not a “person, place or thing.” It is an action. By semantic criteria,
the word should be a verb. However, native speakers of English will unanimously identify it as a
noun.
ii) Morphological distribution.
A more reliable approach is to characterize words in terms of their forms and functions. The
‘form-based’ criteria look at the morphological form of the word in question. It involves the kind
of affixes (prefixes and suffixes) and other morphology that appear in a word. For example;
a. Noun: + plural morpheme -(e)s
b. Noun: + possessive ’s
c. Verb: + past tense -ed or 3rd singular -(e)s
d. Verb: + 3rd singular -(e)s
e. Adjective: + -er/est (or more/most)
f. Adverb: + -ly (to create an adverb)
According to these frames, where the word in question goes in the place indicated by;
Nouns allow the plural marking inflectional suffix -(e)s to be attached, or the possessive ’s, and
in English nouns often end in derivational endings such as; -ment,-ness-, -ion,--ism-hood,-ation
etc.
Verbs can allow inflectional suffix in the past tense -ed or the 3rd singular form -(e)s. they may
also end in derivational endings such as -ate or -ize.
Adjectives can be inflected into comparative and superlative endings -er or -est, or combine with
the suffix -ly. They may often end in derivational endings such as; -ing, -ive, -able or -al.
Many adverbs end in -ly.
Below are some examples.
a. Noun: trains, actors, rooms, man’s, sister’s, basement, devotion, socialism, employer, etc.
b. Verb: devoured, laughed, devours, laughs, dissipate, regularize etc.
c. Adjective: fuller, fullest, more careful, most careful, dancing, indicative, readable, formal etc.
d. Adverb: fully, carefully, diligently, clearly, etc.
The morphological properties of each lexical category cannot be overridden; verbs cannot have
plural marking, nor can adjectives have tense marking. Nevertheless, the morphological (form-
based) criterion, though reliable in many cases, is not a necessary and sufficient condition for
determining the type of lexical categories. Each definition has its limitation.
iii) Syntactic function or distribution
The most reliable criterion in judging the lexical category of a word is based on its syntactic
distribution. Syntactic distribution refers to what other words appear near a word. For example,
nouns typically appear after determiners such as the, those, these, many etc. and can appear after
adjectives. Nouns can also follow preposition. Additionally, all these conditions can appear
together (in the small hall). Nouns can appear as the subject, object or complement in a sentence.
Nouns can also be negated by no. In a nutshell, one easy way to see if a word is a noun is is try
replacing it with another word that is clearly a noun.
On their part, verbs can follow auxiliaries and modals and the special non-finite marker to. Verbs
can be negated with not and follow subject while they may be modified by adverbs.
Adjectives can appear between determiners and nouns and may follow auxiliary verbs. They may
also be modified by adverbs.
Adverbs are very flexible in sentences. However, they can’t appear between determiner and a
noun. Frequently, they can be modified by fellow adverbs.
The distribution of different categories varies from language to language. Let us check some of
the main distributional tests for lexical categories (nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs) and see
what each of these criteria means and how reliable each one is;
Nouns (N)
 Syntactic tests for nouns:
o Can follow a determiner
 As in: an event or the proposal
o Can be modified by adjectives
 As in: a happy event or the new proposal
o Can be the subject or object of a verb
 As in: Events occurred. or We made proposals.
o Can be replaced by a pronoun
 As in: Events occurred. becoming They occurred.
o Do not allow objects (without a preposition).
 Morphological tests for nouns:
o Have singular and plural forms: e.g. books, governments, happinesses
 Note: The plurals of some abstract nouns can seem odd! Think outside the
box to find contexts where they might naturally occur.
Verbs (V)
 Syntactic tests
o Can combine with auxiliary verbs (e.g. can, will, have, be)
o Can follow the infinitive marker to.
o Can take an object (without a preposition):
 As in: kick the ball.
 Morphological tests
o Have a third person singular present tense form with -s
 As in: (she/he/it) kicks, goes, proposes
o Have a past tense form, usually (but not always) with -ed
 As in: (she/he/it) kicked, went, proposed
o Have a perfect / passive form, usually with -ed or -en
 As in: (she/he/it) has kicked, gone, proposed
o Have a progressive form with -ing.
 As in: kicking, going, proposing
Adjectives (Adj)
 Syntactic tests:
o Modify nouns (occur between a determiner and a noun)
 As in: a happy event or the new proposal
o Can be modified by very (but so can many adverbs!)
 As in: very happy, very new
o Do not allow noun phrase objects (if objects are possible, they must be introduced
in a prepositional phrase)
 Morphological tests:
o Can often be suffixed by -ish
o May have comparative and superlative forms (e.g. happier, happiest)
Adverbs (Adv)
 Syntactic tests:
o Modify verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs (anything but nouns!)
o Cannot appear alone between a determiner and a noun.
o Can be modified by very (but so can adjectives!)
 Morphological tests:
o Many (not all) adverbs end in -ly

Moreover, word classes may be classified as open or closed: open classes (like nouns, verbs and
adjectives) acquire new members constantly, while closed classes (such as pronouns and
conjunctions) acquire new members infrequently, if at all. There are two kinds of lexical items
(words). lexical categories are open class, in that there is an unlimited number of them, and new
words are added all the time both to the language as a whole, and also to individual speaker’s
mental lexicons. Functional categories, on the other hand are closed class in that they have a
small and fixed number of items. These are also the words that traditional grammar usually
doesn’t give semantic definitions for either. Lexical categories include; nouns, verbs, adjectives
and adverbs while functional categories are determiners, pronouns, prepositions,
complementizers, conjunctions and modals.

A grammatical category is a class of units (such as noun and verb) or features (such as number
and case) that share a common set of characteristics. They are the building blocks of language,
allowing us to communicate with one another. One of the simplest ways to create grammatical
categories is by grouping words together based on their class. Classes are word sets that display
the same formal properties, such as inflection or verb tense.
Put another way, grammatical categories can be defined as sets of words with similar meanings
(called semantics.)
There are two families of classes:
 lexical
 functional
The lexical class includes:
 nouns
 verbs
 adjectives
 adverbs
The functional class includes:
 determiners
 particles
 prepositions
 modals
 qualifiers
 question words
 conjunctions
 other words denoting position or spatial relationships
A word can be classified into more than one grammatical category depending on use or structure.

STUDY QUESTIONS
1 a) Distinguish between distributional and semantic definitions of parts of speech.
b) Using semantic, morphological and syntactic criteria determine the parts of speech in the
sentence below;
The destruction of the tourism industry bothered the minister.

2. a) distinguish between lexical, functional and grammatical categories.

b) With examples describe the lexical and functional categories in English.
3. Distinguish the following terms;
a) Lexical and functional categories.
b) Open and closed words.