GRAMMAR I
GRAMMATICAL ELEMENTS
Grammatical units are meaningful elements which combine with each other in a structural
pattern. Essentially, grammar is the system which organizes and controls these form-meaning
relationships. The types of grammatical units can be graded according to size of the unit. In
the simplest cases, a unit consists of one or more elements on the level below:
1. a clause consists of one or more phrases.
2. a phrase consists of one or more words.
3. a word consists of one or more morphemes.
Morphemes are parts of words i.e. stems, prefixes and suffixes. For example un + friend + ly
contains three morphemes: a prefix un-, a stem friend and suffix –ly. The part of grammar
dealing with morphemes is morphology. The grammar dealing with other types of
grammatical units (words, phrases, clauses, sentences) is known as syntax. Semantics
refers to the meaning the words convey.
Grammatical units can be combined to form longer written texts or spoken interaction which
is known as discourse. Language can also be analyzed in terms of phonemes (the
individual sounds which make up a language) and graphemes (the written symbols we use
to communicate language).
In general, grammatical units are described in terms of four factors: their structure (e.g. words
in terms of base and affixes, phrases in terms of heads and modifiers and clauses in terms of
clause elements), their syntactic role (e.g. a phrase can have the role of object, subject or
adverbial in a clause) , their meaning (adverbs for example give information about time, place
or manner) and the way they are used in discourse function (use in different registers,
frequency and what they refer to as for example the pronouns).
INTRODUCTION TO WORDS:
Words are considered the basic element of language. They are relatively fixed in their
internal form but they are independent in their role in larger units. In the following example we
can see how they can be inserted between but not within words.
There were two pedal-bins against the wall.
There were two (large new) pedal-bins (standing) against the (side) wall.
There are three major families of words:
Lexical words: are the main carriers of information in a text or speech, they can be divided
into different word classes: nouns, lexical verbs, adjectives and adverbs. They are the most
numerous and belong to open classes which means that they are being added to or
changed all the time for example: privatize, retiree, brownish, fanwise, etc. They often have a
complex internal structure for example un + friend + li + ness. They can be heads of phrases
and they are the ones that are generally stressed in speech. They are the ones that remain if
a sentence is compressed as in newspaper headlines e.g. HOUSE DESTROYED BY FIRE,
MISSING BOY FOUND UNHARMED. This is called BLOCK LANGUAGE.
Function words: they can be divided into word classes such as prepositions, coordinators,
auxiliary verbs and pronouns. They usually relate the lexical words to each other and help us
interpret the separate units. They belong to closed classes because they are limited and
fixed (for example the coordinators: and, or, but, nor). They occur frequently in any kind of
text.
Inserts: They are found mostly in spoken language and tend to be freely inserted in
discourse. They generally carry emotional or discoursal meanings and are used to express
the speaker’s emotional response to a situation such as: oh, ah, wow, yeah, no, okay, hm,
uh-huh.
There are 8 major classes of inserts: interjections (oh); greeting / farewells (hi, bye);
discourse markers (well); attention-getters (hey); response-getters (okay?); response forms
(right): polite formulas (thank you), and expletives (damn), which are taboo words and can
sometimes be offensive.
In the following sentence, “It was a dark night and the wind was blowing strongly”, we
can classify the parts of speech or grammatical elements like this:
It: personal pronoun.- LEXICAL WORD
Was: lexical verb.- LEXICAL WORD
A: determiner (indefinite article) -FUNCTION WORD
Dark: determiner (adjective) -LEXICAL WORD
Night: noun- LEXICAL WORD
And : coordinating conjunction.-FUNCTION WORD
The: determiner (definite article)- FUNCTION WORD
Wind: common noun-LEXICAL WORD
Was: auxiliary verb- FUNCTION WORD
Blowing: lexical verb.-LEXICAL WORD
Strongly: adverb.- LEXICAL WORD
PARTS OF LEXICAL/CONTENT WORDS FUNCTION /STRUCTURE
SPEECH WORDS
NOUNS refer to people,animals, objects, AUXILIARY VERBS lack
substances, states, feelings. meaning and are added to a
They can be the subject or object of a main verb . They can be
verb. They can be countable, uncountable, subdivided in primary
common, proper and collective nouns : auxiliary verbs (be, have, do)
apples, water, Margaret, family. and secondary –or modal
auxiliary verbs (will/would,
LEXICAL VERBS or main verbs carry can/could, shall/should,
meaning related to actions( walk) , mental may/might, need, dare).
activities (think), states (be) and feelings
(love) . PRONOUNS fill in the position
of a noun or a whole noun
ADJECTIVES modify nouns or pronouns. phrase. They can be classified
They describe the qualities of people , as : Subject pronouns (I , you,
things and abstractions: He is guilty. This he,etc), Object pronouns ( me ,
is a heavy box. The situation looks you, him, etc.), Possessive
serious. pronouns (mine ,yours, his,
hers, etc.) , Reflexive
ADVERBS modify verbs, adjectives and pronouns (myself, yourself,
other adverbs: I learned English fast. You himself. etc.) , Indefinite
are totally wrong. She can run really pronouns (nobody, somebody,
quickly. anybody, etc..) Reciprocal
pronouns (each other, one
another, etc.) . Intrrogative
pronouns( who, which, where,
etc…)
NOUN DETERMINERS are
Articles, (The-A/An) ,
Possessive Determiners (My,
your, his,her, its, our and
their),Demonstrative
Determiners (this,that,these,
those), Quantifiers ( some,
much, many , few, Little, a lot,
three , second , etc.)
CONJUNCTIONS link and
indicate the relationship
between clauses in a
[Link] can be
Coordinating ( and, but, or ) or
Subordinating (
When, because, Although, etc)
AUXILIARY VERBS
PREPOSITIONS are linking
words that introduce
prepositional phrases ( a
preposition+ a noun/noun
phrase): about, after, by,
down, from, into, towards,
around, without, because of,
due to, apart from , despite,
etc