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Linguistica Inglese - Longman
Lingua e Linguistica Inglese I (L-LIN/12)
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Summaries: Longman, grammar of spoken and written
English
Grammatical units are meaningful elements which combine with each other in a structural pattern.
Grammar is the system which organizes and controls these form-meaning relationships. The types of grammatical units can be graded according to size of unit: sentence – clauses – phrases – words – morphemes.
Four factors help in describing grammatical units: 1- Structure
2- Syntactic role
3- Meaning
4- Use for discourse functions.
1- Words in term of bases and affixes, phrases in terms of heads and modifiers and clauses in terms of clause elements. 2- Units can be described in terms of their syntactic role. 3- Units can be described in terms of meaning. 4- Use of units in different registers, their frequency in those registers and the factors which influence their use in speech or written texts. Different senses of “word”:
1- Orthographic words: words separated by spaces. 2- Grammatical words: a word falls into one grammatical word class or another. 3- Lexemes: a set of grammatical words which share the same basic meaning, similar forms and the same word class. Word tokens: the total number of words in a text, regardless of how often they are repeated.
Word types: the number of distinct words in a text.
Three major families of words:
1- Lexical words: nouns, lexical verbs, adjectives and adverbs. They are the main carriers of information, they can be composed of several parts, they can be heads of phrases and they are generally the words that remain if a sentence is compressed in a newspaper headline.
2- Function words: prepositions, coordinators, auxiliary verbs and pronouns. They indicate meaning relationships and they show how the units are related to each other. (4 coordinators: and, or, but, nor). 3- Inserts: inserted freely in a text, they express a speaker’s emotional response to a situation. (Used more in spoken language: oh, ah, wow, well, hm-hm). Closed classes and open classes:
limited number of members and new members cannot be easily added (coordinators, pronouns);
indefinitely large membership which can be extended by users of the language (nouns, adjectives).
LEXICAL WORD CLASSES
There are four main classes of lexical words: nouns, lexical verbs, adjectives and adverbs. To decide what class a word belongs to we will use three kind of tests: 1-Morphological (forms)
2-Syntactic (roles)
3-Semantic (meanings).
NOUNS:
They have inflectional suffixes for plural number and for genitive case. Anyway, there are many nouns which are uncountable, so they cannot have a plural form. Nouns often contain more than one morpheme. They can occur as the head of a noun phrase and proper nouns rarely have any modifiers. Nouns refer to concrete, physical entities, but they can also express abstract entities such as qualities and states.
LEXICAL VERBS:
They have different forms signalling tenses, aspect and voice. They often have a complex form with more than one morpheme. They occur on their own, as a single-word verb phrase acting as the central part of the clause. Also, they can occur in the final or main verb position in verb phrases. Lexical verbs indicate actions, processes and states of affairs that happen or exist in time. They also define the role of human and non-human participants in actions or states.
Determiners: they normally precede nouns and are used to help clarify the meaning of the noun. The most important are: the definite article, the indefinite article, demonstrative determiners, possessive determiners and quantifiers. Pronouns: they fill the position of a noun or a whole noun phrase. They are: personal pronouns, demonstrative p., reflexive p., reciprocal p., possessive p., indefinite p., relative p., interrogative p. Auxiliary verbs: there are primary auxiliaries and modal auxiliaries and they are added to a main verb to help build verb phrases. Primary a.: be, have and do. They show how the main verb is to be understood. “Have” is used to form the perfect aspect, “be” is used for the progressive aspect and for the passive voice, and “do” is used in negative statements and in questions. Modal a.: will, can, shall, may, must, would, could, should, might. They express possibility, necessity, prediction and volition and they occur as the first verb in a clause. Also, they are followed by the base form of the main verb.
Prepositions: they are linking words that introduce prepositional phrases. Most of them are short, invariable forms: about, after, around, as, at, by, down, for, from, into, like, of, off, round, since, than, to, towards, with, without. We have also complex prepositions which have a meaning that cannot be derived from the meaning of the parts: such as, as for, apart from, because of/instead of, according to/due to. Adverbial particles: they are a small group of words with a core meaning of motion. They are: about, across, along, around, aside, away, back, by, down, forth, home, in, off, on, out, over, past, round, through, under, up. Adverbial particles are closely linked to verbs: they usually follow verbs and are closely bound to them in meaning (go away). (They resemble both prepositions and adverbs). Coordinators: they are used to indicate a relationship between two phrases, such as phrases or clauses. They link elements which have the same syntactic role and are at the same level of the syntactic hierarchy. The main c. are: and, but, or, nor. Also, each simple coordinator can be combined with another word to make a correlative coordinator (both.., either.., not only.. also, neither..).
Subordinators: they are linking words that introduce dependent clauses (they cannot stand alone without the main clause).
The subordinator shows the connection of meaning between the main clause and the subordinate clause. We have three subclasses of subordinators: 1- Those which introduce adverbial clauses, adding details of time, place, reason, etc. to the main clause (after, as, because, if, since, although, while). 2- Those which introduce degree clauses (as, than, that). 3- Those which introduce complement clauses (if, that, whether). The subordinators indicate meaning relationship such as time, reason, condition and comparison. Subordinators may consist of more than one word and most of these complex subordinators end with as or that.
SPECIAL CLASSES OF WORDS
A few classes of functional words have special qualities: wh-words, existential there, negator not, the infinitive marker to and numerals.
Wh-words they don’t form an independent class, instead, they are members of word classes such as determiners, pronouns and adverbs. They begin with wh, with the single exception of how and they are used at the beginning of an interrogative clause, and at the beginning of a relative clause. Furthermore, they are also used at the beginning of a complement clause and at the beginning of an adverbial clause. Existential there is often called an anticipatory subject. It expresses existence and it shouldn’t be confused with the place adverb there. Negator not is somehow like an adverb and its main use is to make a clause negative. Infinitive marker to is used as a complementizer preceding the infinitive form of verbs. Also, it occurs as part of two complex subordinators expressing purpose. Numerals are usually used in the role of determiners or heads in noun phrases. There are cardinal and ordinal numbers. Cardinals answer the question “how many?” and are most commonly used like determiners with a following noun. Ordinals answer the question “which?” and serve to place entities in order or in a series. They are also used to form fractions, also, ordinals such as fifth, tenth and hundredth, if treated as regular nouns, can take a plural -s ending.
WORD CLASS AMBIGUITIES
SYNTACTIC ROLE OF PHRASES
Phrases types differ both in their internal structure and in their syntactic roles. Recognizing syntactic roles, like subject and object is very important for the interpretation of phrases.
TYPES OF PHRASES In a phrase the head is the principal, obligatory word. In fact, each phrase type can often consist of just the head.
In order to describe phrase types, it is necessary to recognize 3 factors:
1- Form; 2- Syntactic role; 3- Meaning. We will talk about five types of phrases which are:
NOUN PHRASES: they have a noun as head. The head can be preceded by determiners and can be accompanied by modifiers (elements which classify whatever the head refers to). An abstract head noun can also be followed by complements, which complete the meaning of the noun, especially “that-clauses” or “infinitive to- clauses”. Besides common nouns, noun phrases can be headed by proper nouns, pronouns and adjectives. Noun phrases can take the role of subject or object in a clause and they can also take the syntactic role of predicative, adverbial, or complement.
VERB PHRASES: the main verb can stand alone or be preceded by one or more auxiliary verbs. (Auxiliaries define action, state, or process denoted by the main verb). Finite verb phrases show distinctions of tense (present/past) and can include modal verbs. Non-finite verb phrases do not show tense and cannot occur with modal verbs, and that’s why they have fewer forms. Verb phrases are the essential part of a clause and they are often discontinuous. This happens, for instance, in questions, where the subject is placed after the first auxiliary verb. Furthermore, the parts of a verb phrase can be interrupted by adverbs or other adverbials.
ADJECTIVE PHRASES: they have an adjective as head, and optionally modifiers which can precede or follow the adjective. (Modifiers generally answer a question about the degree of a quality). Adjective heads can also take complements which often answer the question “in what respect is the adjectival quality to be interpreted?”.
The most important roles of adjective phrases are as modifier and subject predicative. Before a noun, where the adjective is called an attributive adjective. Often following the verb be.
ADVERB PHRASES: they are like adj. phrases in structure, except that the head is an adverb. They might be preceded by optional modifiers which express degree. It is important to distinguish adverb phrases from adverbials because the first ones are structures, while the second ones are clause elements. (Adverb phrases, prepositional phrases and adverbial clauses can function as adverbials). Adverb phrases can have two main syntactic roles: 1. As a modifier in adjective or adverb phrases; 2. as and adverbial on the clause level.
PREPOSITIONAL PHRASES: they consist of a preposition followed by a noun phrase, known as the prepositional complement. The preposition is like a link relating the noun phrase to preceding structures. Prepositional phrases are often embedded in larger phrases and can be “extended” by an initial adverbial particle which adds a meaning such as place, direction, or degree. They vary in how closely they are connected with the surrounding structure. There are two major syntactic roles: 1. As an adverbial on the clause level; 2. As a modifier or complement following a noun. A preposition is “stranded” if it is not followed by its prepositional complement (which is generally identified as a previous noun phrase). Stranded prepositions are usually found in clauses that do not follow normal order (direct questions, interrogative clauses and relative clauses). They frequently occur in conversation.
A PREVIEW OF CLAUSE PATTERNS
The clause is the key unit of syntax and it can stand alone as an expression of complete thought (a complete description of an event or state of affairs.
Basic clause patterns:
a. S+V
I: it occurs after ditransitive verbs such as “give” and “tell” and comes before the direct object. It conforms to the other criteria for objects, including the formation of passives.
Predicative: it can be an adjective phrase, a noun phrase or occasionally a prepositional phrase. It follows the verb phrase and the direct object. It characterizes a preceding noun phrase. Subject predicative: characterizes or specifies the subject noun phrase. It immediately follows the verb phrase. The main verb has to be a copular verb such as: be, seem and become. Object predicative: characterizes or specifies the direct object noun phrase. It generally immediately follows the direct object. The main verb has to be a complex transitive verb such as: make, find, consider and name. Adverbials: some verbs take adverbials to complete their meanings. This is the case of obligatory adverbial which can occur with 2 patterns: the copular pattern and the complex transitive pattern. They usually express place or direction, although they can also express time or manner meanings. Clause patterns: S+V+A // S+V+DO+A. On the other hand, we have the optional adverbials, which occur widely in clauses as optional elements. They can be added to clauses with any type of verb. They are usually adverb phrases, prepositional phrases or noun phrases. They can be placed in different positions within the clause and more than one of them can occur in a single clause. They are loosely attached to the rest of the clause. They add additional information to the clause (place, time, manner, extent and attitude). Clause patterns: S+(A)+V+DO+(A) // S+V+A+(A)+(A) // S+(A)+V+(A)+(A).
The optional adverbial can be omitted without making the clause structurally incomplete.
TRULY PERIPHERAL ELEMENTS There are some elements which are attached to the clause in a loose way, but do not form part of the main message of the clause. They are often set off from the rest of the clause by punctuation, intonation or by being placed immediately before or after the clause. These elements are: Conjunctions: coordinating and subordinating conjunctions are fixed in initial position in the clause, ahead of other peripheral adverbials. Parentheticals: they are set off from the surrounding clause by parentheses or dashes. Prefaces: they are noun phrases placed before the subject, which typically have the same reference as a personal pronoun in the clause.
Tags: they are normally added at the end of a clause, and can be either noun phrase tags, question tags, or declarative tags. Noun phrase tags are comparable to prefaces, except that they follow the main part of the clause. Inserts: grammatically, they are extra words which can be included into spoken discourse, mainly to convey interactive meanings. They can occur as stand-alone elements, or as peripheral elements in a clause. Vocatives: they are nouns or noun phrases which generally refer to people, and serve to identify the person being addressed.
MAIN TYPES OF NOUNS
Nouns can be grouped into a small number of classes which differ in meaning and grammatical behaviour. First, we have a distinction between common and proper nouns. Common nouns can be either countable or uncountable.
Countable common nouns refer to entities which can be counted. They have a singular and plural form and both in the singular and plural there is a contrast between indefinite and definite, signaled by articles. Uncountable common nouns refer to something which cannot be counted. They cannot occur with the indefinite article “a”, but they allow a contrast between definite and indefinite. Proper nouns have no contrast for number or defniteness: they are singular and definite. Countability is a matter of how we view the world rather than how the world really is. Proper nouns name an individual, meanwhile common nouns denote a class. Also, proper nouns are generally used in situations where the speaker and the addressee know which individual is meant, without further specification. CONCRETE VS. ABSTRACT NOUNS Concrete nouns refer to physical entities or substances, meanwhile abstract nouns refer to abstractions such as events, states, times and qualities. The distinction between these two kinds of nouns is purely semantic: it has no real grammatical role, since concrete and abstract nouns can be countable, uncountable, common or proper. Countable refers to persons, objects, places // uncountable refers to substances, materials, liquids, gases
The same noun as countable or uncountable
Collective nouns: They refer to groups of people, animals or things (army, family, flock, team). These nouns behave like ordinary countable nouns, varying for number and definiteness. One special class of collective nouns often comes before an of-phrase describing the members of the group. Nouns like group, crowd and flock are called “of-collectives” because they generally precede of + plural noun. Some of-collectives, such as “group”, are quite general in meaning, whereas others have a more specific application. Some typical collocations are: bunch of, crowd of, flock of, gang of, group of, set of. This suggests the range of meaning that a collective noun can cover. There are also some points to cover: Bunch, group and set are the most general words, allowing the widest range of collocations. Although many of these collectives have a specific range, they can be extended, for special effect, to other nouns. Some of the collectives frequently have a negative effect, especially bunch, gang and pack. Unit nouns: they allow us to cut up a generalized mass or substance into individual units or pieces. They are countable nouns, but they are usually followed by an of-phrase containing an uncountable noun. Each unit noun has a specific meaning: a bit of, a chunk of, a grain of, an item of, a lump of, a piece of, a sheet of. Other unit nouns are illustrated by: scrap of paper, slice of bread, speck of dirt, strip of cloth. Also, one uncountable noun can combine with a variety of unit nouns, for example, paper can follow ball of, bit of, fragment of, heap of, length of, mound of, piece of, pile of, roll of, scrap of, sheet of, wad of, etc. depending on the meaning required.
Quantifying nouns: they are used to refer to quantities, which are usually specified in a following of-phrase containing either a plural noun or an uncountable noun. We have seven kinds of quantifying nouns:
- Nouns for a type of container: basket of, box of, cup of.
- Nouns for shape: heap of, pile of.
- Measure words: foot, inch, yard, metre of, ounce, pound, gram, kilo of, ton, tonne of.
- Plural numeral nouns: hundred, thousand, million, dozen and score (nouns for precise numbers which can be used in the plural to express an indefinitely large number).
- Nouns for large quantities: a load of, loads of, a mass of, masses of (they can be used emotively and vaguely to refer to
large quantities. Also, load is found in conversation, while mass in written language). 6. Nouns ending in -ful: the noun suffix -ful can be added to almost any noun that can denote some kind of container (bowful, fistful, handful, mouthful, pocketful, spoonful). In their basic meaning, these nouns are similar to measure nouns, but they can be used more imaginatively. 7. Pair and couple: these are both nouns referring to two people, things, etc. But they are quite different in the way they collocate with other nouns. The main difference is that pair of applies to two things which occur together, meanwhile couple of is used more vaguely, to mean “two or three”. A couple of is similar to a few and can be considered a plural quantifier. Like many vague expressions, a couple of is colloquial: it hardly occurs at all in academic writing. Species nouns: they are often followed by an of-phrase, but they refer to the type rather than the quantity of something. Species nouns can be followed by countable or uncountable nouns and the most common are: sort of + noun and kind of + noun. The first one is frequent in conversation, meanwhile the second one in fiction. Other species nouns, such as type of and species of are used only in academic writing.
DETERMINERS
They are function words used to specify the kind of references a noun has and they vary in the kind of noun head they occur with: countable singular noun, countable plural noun and uncountable plural noun.
How determiners combine with nouns
Determiner type Countable nouns Uncountable nouns(sing) Singular/plural nouns Zero article - / books Milk Indefinite article A book / - - Definite article The book / the books The milk Possessive My book / my books My milk Demonstrative This book / these books That book / those books
This milk That milk Quantifier Every-each book / -
- /all(the)books
- / many books
-
All (the) milk Much milk
The indefinite article a/an is used only with singular countable nouns and it is often used to introduce a new specific entity into the discourse.
It is also used where the noun phrase doesn’t refer to any specific individual and it can also serve to classify an entity, or to refer generically to what is typical of any member of the class.
Indefinite meaning with the zero article
The zero article signals indefiniteness with uncountable nouns and plural countable nouns. Zero article phrases commonly express non-specific or generic reference, but there are also some special uses of the zero article with singular countable nouns, where otherwise we expect the or a/an to occur:
Meals as institutions
Places as institutions
Predicatives with unique reference (when a predicative noun phrase names a unique role or job, either a zero article or the is used)
Means of transport and communication (the zero article is found mainly after by)
Times of the day, days, months and seasons
Parallel structures (the zero article sometimes occurs in parallel structures: “He travelled from country to country”)
Block language (the zero article is normal with abbreviated language used in newspaper headlines, labels, lists, notices...)
Vocatives (the zero article also occurs in forms of address).
The definite article the
The goes with both countable and uncountable nouns and it marks the noun as referring to something or someone assumed to be known to speaker and addressee.
Anaphoric use of the: after unknown entities have been introduced, they can be treated as “known” and named by the in later references. (Anaphora: the phrase with the refers back to a previously mentioned item). This is common in all the registers.
Indirect anaphoric use of the: the earlier noun is not repeated, but an associated noun is used with the.
Use of the with synonyms: sometimes, indirect anaphora involves the use of a different noun referring to the same thing or person.
Cataphoric use of the: cataphora can be thought of as the opposite of anaphora. Here definite reference is established by something following later in the text, especially some modifier of the noun. It is associated with complex noun phrases.
Situational use of the: the often occurs because an entity is known from the situation: either the immediate situation in which speech takes place, or the wider situation which includes knowledge of the national situation, the world, or even the universe. Anyway, sometimes a speaker assumes situational knowledge that the hearer does not have. It is common only in conversation, where speakers rely on the context that they share with hearers.
Some uses of the are idiomatic, as part of a fixed phrase. Also, the can be used for generic reference.
Generic reference
Reference is generic when a noun phrase refers to the whole class, rather than just one or more instances of the class.
In English all three articles can be used for generic reference: indefinite article, zero article and definite article.
OTHER DETERMINERS
We have several other subclasses of determiners:
Possessive determiners: they specify the noun phrase by relating it to the speaker, writer or other entities. They correspond to personal pronouns an are: my, your, his, her, its, our, their.
Demonstrative determiners: they are this/these and that/those and they are similar to the definite article the in conveying definite meaning. They also specify whether the referent is singular or plural and whether the referent is near or distant in relation to the speaker. The highest frequency of this/these is in academic writing, where these forms are useful especially for anaphoric reference. Also, the demonstrative determiners can make the reference clear either by pointing to the situation, or by referring to the neighbouring text (either preceding or following).
Situational reference: it is very common in conversation, where the choice between this/these and that/those reflects the speaker’s perception 0f whether the referent is near or distant. Also, the choice of determiners can reflect emotional distance: this/these can express greater sympathy than that/those.
Numerals as determiners: cardinal numbers are similar to quantifiers, while ordinal numbers are similar to semi-determiners. Like most quantifiers, numerals can occur in determiner position or in head position in a noun phrase. When the two types occur together in one noun phrase, ordinal numerals normally precede cardinal numeral. Also, numerals can follow the definite article and this is normal with ordinal numerals. The alphabetic form is most common with number under ten, and with round numbers such as “hundred”, the digital form is more common with higher numbers, and, in the end, we can say that ordinal numbers are more commonly written with the alphabetic form.
Semi-determiners: words like same, other, another, last, ad such have some adjective characteristics and some determiner characteristics. These forms lack the descriptive meaning that characterizes most adjectives and, like most determiners, they can also double as pronouns.
Wh- determiners: they are used to introduce interrogative clauses and relative clauses.
NUMBER: SINGULAR AND PLURAL
Number is the term for the contrast between singular and plural, and it is a contrast in English grammar which affects nouns, pronouns, determiners and verbs.
Regular plurals: the majority of nouns form their plural by adding the ending –(e)s.
a) Pronunciation: add / / after consonants / /, Add /s/ after voiceless consonants (except / /), Add /z/ after vowels and voiced consonants (except / /).
b) Spelling: the normal spelling is -s, but if the word ends in s, z, x, sh, or ch, the spelling is -is. If the singular ends in a consonant letter+-y, the spelling is -ies. If the singular ends in a vowel letter+-y, the spelling is -s. If the singular ends in -o, the spelling of the plural is sometimes -os and - sometimes -oes.
Native irregular plurals: a small number of native English words have irregular plurals and they can:
Change the vowel (men, women, feet, teeth, geese, mice). Add –(r)en (children, oxen). Last consonant /f/ becomes /v/ (knives, calves, leaves, lives, shelves, thieves, wives, wolves). However, most nouns ending in -f, have a regular plural (beliefs, chefs, chiefs, proofs, reefs, roofs). Latin and Greek plurals: some words borrowed from Latin and Greek keep their original plurals, although often the regular plural is an alternative (alumni, syllabi, curricula, formulae, appendices, axes, crises, diagnoses, criteria, phenomena).
Zero plurals: they do not change from singular to plural and they are: - some animal nouns (fish, sheep, deer, salmon);
some quantifying nouns (dozen, hundred, foot, mile when they are used as part of a numeral quantity);
a few other zero plural nouns: aircraft, dice, series, species.
The sign of a zero plural is that the same form can be used with singular and plural concord.
Plural-only nouns and singular nouns in -s: 1) they look singular but are actually plural (people, police, staff); 2) they look plural but are actually singular (news, measles, checkers).
CASE: THE GENITIVE
The genitive ending in ‘s is the only case that has survived in modern English.
It varies in pronunciation in the same way as the plural ending: - add / / after / /;
add /s/ after voiceless consonants except / /;
add /z/ after vowels and voiced consonants except / /;
with regular plural nouns ending in -s, the genitive is not pronounced.
The genitive is written with an apostrophe –‘s. With regular plural nouns ending in -s, it is marked by a final apostrophe; for irregular plurals not ending in -s, it is like singular forms (-‘s) and for singular names ending in -s, the regular genitive is usual.
Linguistica Inglese - Longman
Corso: Lingua e Linguistica Inglese I (L-LIN/12)
Università: Università degli Studi di Napoli L'Orientale
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