GRAMMATICAL TERMS / WORD CLASSES

What is grammar?
- the rules of a language; rules for forming words and combining them
into sentences (to have a good understanding of grammar)

- a book containing a description of these rules for a particular language

(I’m writing a grammar of modern English)

- a person’s knowledge and use of a language (I’m trying to improve my

grammar)

PRESCRIPTIVE GRAMMAR
Rules about how language should be spoken or written
Advice on how to speak and write good English
Concerned with ”right” or ”wrong”
Conservative in nature; does not welcome new ideas

DESCRIPTIVE GRAMMAR
Description of how language is used in speech and writing by native speakers
Observes linguistic changes – does not try to stop them

TERMINOLOGY

Phonology lydlære
Phoneme vowels and consonants (/b/, /e/, /d/, /i/)

Morphology formlære
Morpheme the minimum unit of meaning ({bed}+{s}
{un}+{friend}+{ly}
prefix suffix

Syntax setiningslære

Semantics betydningslære

Pragmatics the nature and intention behind a speech act / rules that must be
followed to achieve successful interpersonal communication
PARTS OF SPEECH
 Function words
Closed classes, occur frequently, grammatical words: have little meaning, short
and simple

Determiners Indefinite article (a)

Definite article (the)
Possessive determiner (your, my, our)

Pronouns Personal (I, you, she)

Interrogative (who, which)
Possessive (yours, mine, his, theirs)
Relative (who, that)
Reflexive (myself)
Reciprocal (each other)

Verbs Auxiliary (have, be) She is going

Modal auxiliary (can, may, must)

Prepositions at, over, under

Conjunctions and, but, that, if

Negator not

Infinitive marker to

Lexical words
Open classes: new words can be coined, words that carry meaning, may be
complex or compound

Nouns man, house, water melon,

Verbs Copular (be) They are here

Transitive (buy)
Intransitive (talk)

Adjectives happy, big, beautiful

Adverbs happily, beautifully

THE SENTENCE

Phrase group of words which are part of a sentence

Noun phrase: a boy in my class
Prepositional phrase: in the morning
 Adverbial phrase: late last night
Verb phrase: may have gone

Clause one or more phrases

Main clause: ’hovedsetning’
Subordinate clause: ’leddsssetning’
Finite: writes, is writing (conjugated)
Non-finite: writing, written, to write

Sentence one or more clauses / a complete unit of meaning / from capital

letter to final stop

A sentence consists of one or more clauses. A clause consists of one or more

phrases. A phrase consists of one or more words. A word consists of one or
more morphemes. A morpheme consists of one or more phonemes.

TYPES OF SENTENCES

Statement declarative sentence

Question interrogative sentence
Command imperative sentence

SENTENCE ELEMENTS

Subject

Verb

Object (direct, indirect, oblique)

Predicative (subject-, object-)

Adverbial (time, place, frequency, manner…)

GRAMMATICAL TERMS / WORD CLASSES

• Try to explain the meaning of these words and give examples if you can:

Grammar
Morpheme
Syntactic
Determiner
Relative pronoun
Possessive pronoun
Conjunction
Adjective
Adverb
Clause
Declarative sentence
Indirect object
Subject predicative
Adverbial of time

• Identify the parts of speech in the following two sentences:

Peter is a man who lives in London

She has cleaned the house carefully

• Which word classes does round belong to in the following phrases:

A round table

A round of golf

To round the corner

To dance round a tree

To turn round