Appunti per Linguistica inglese, prof Ulrych, libro consigliato A Handbook of present-day English

A handbook of present-day English

1. Definitions of grammar

Grammar refers to a set of rules which allow the production of well-formed sentences. Educated native speakers of a language intuitively follow those rules, while foreign learners study them in a more explicit way.

• Descriptive grammar: describes how the language works, drawing from traditions.
• Theoretical grammar: analytical models elaborated by linguists which introduce new ways of looking at a language and its structures and factors, with the introduction of a new metalanguage.

The main core of grammar consists in:

• Morphology: the study of the internal structures of words according to the grammatical context in which they occur.
• Syntax: the study of the way in which words combine to form larger units such as phrases, clauses, and sentences. The notion of word order is essential.

1.1. The units of grammar

Each unit of grammar combines with other elements to form a larger unit. Grammatical units can be ordered according to a hierarchy/rank scale: text, sentence, clause, phrase, word, morpheme (top-down) (bottom-up).

A text consists of one or more sentences, which consist of one or more clauses, which consist of one or more phrases, which consist of one or more words, which consist of one or more morphemes.

• Morpheme: smallest linguistic unit of meaning or grammatical function (un-happy, 2 morphemes).
• Word: a linguistic unit phonologically preceded and followed by pauses, (orthographically preceded and followed by spaces or punctuation marks), and carrying a single meaning.
• Phrase: linguistic unit which is made up of a word or a group of words. NP (noun phrases), VP, AdjP, AdvP, PP.
• Clause: linguistic unit made up of one or more phrases, and which typically contains at least one VP.
• Sentence: largest linguistic unit, can consist of one or more clauses. There can be sentences consisting of a single main clause, or more complex sentences consisting of more clauses.
• Text: a sequence of sentences which is coherent and cohesive.

1.2. Word, word form, lexeme

Orthographic word: a linguistic unit which in written form is preceded by a space and followed by a space or a punctuation mark. A sequence of uninterrupted letters. There are some problems, though, regarding hyphenation or apostrophes, or different spellings of compounds which have a unified referent (weekend, brother-in-law).

According to Plag, a word can be defined in terms of:

• Phonological criteria: the word can be defined as the linguistic unit surrounded by pauses, and having only one main stress. In this way, compounds consisting of two phonological words can be considered as one single phonological word, as it does have only one main stress, and even the possessive, Mary's.
• Criteria of wordhood of internal integrity: a word is an indivisible unit which cannot be interrupted by inserting other material in it; insertions can only be made between words. But there are exceptions, for example, to form the plural of ‘brother-in-law’ we add –s inside the word: brothers-in-law.
• Of meaning: a word is a linguistic unit that expresses a single concept. However, there are cases in which a long string of words may refer to one concept or one referent only (the man who left the office) but cannot be considered as one word. This definition is improper because there are words such as: by, as, for which don’t carry any meaning.

To summarise: a word can be seen as a linguistic unit, orthographically preceded and followed by spaces or punctuation marks, phonologically preceded and followed by pauses, having one main stress and internal stability, and expressing a single meaning.

Lexeme: an abstract unit of vocabulary which underlies different variants known as word forms. The word form is the physical realization of a lexeme, its concrete expression. Lexemes are represented by using italics, word forms by using CAPITAL LETTERS: dog and dogs are word forms for the lexeme DOG. TEACH is realized by the word forms teach, teaching, taught…

(I asked him to list all the books=I ASK HE TO LIST ALL THE BOOK)

The technical words to refer to the abstract dictionary unit are: entry, headword, and lemma. The entry is the independent lexical unit listed in the dictionary. The entry consists of the main word selected as representative of the lexical unit. The citation form is the word-form conventionally chosen to represent a lexeme in a dictionary. For example, in English singular is a citation form.

There are cases in which the same word-form expresses different lexemes: walk, for example, can represent the lexeme WALK, a verb or WALK, a noun (they generally have different entries in the dictionary).

1.3 Word classes

Parts of speech: Words are grouped in different categories: nouns, lexical verbs, adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions, prepositions, determiners, pronouns, and auxiliary verbs. They can belong to an open class or a closed class (or can be an insert).

• Open classes: can admit new members as new words are often created. Nouns, lexical verbs, adjectives, adverbs. They are content words because they are the main carriers of meaning in a text.
• Closed classes: smaller number of items and new words are rarely added. They don’t carry lexical meaning but signal the links between different words. Conjunctions, prepositions, determiners, pronouns, auxiliary verbs.
• Inserts are used mostly in the spoken language and have interactional/emotional meaning (hey, yeah, right, well…)

Nouns (N): lexical words which refer to concrete objects or entities. They can be common nouns or proper nouns, countable or uncountable.

Verbs (V): express actions, events, states, processes and show the relationship between the participants in what is referred to by the verb. There can be lexical verbs and auxiliary verbs.

Adjectives (Adj): lexical words which describe qualities and properties of things or people and states of affairs. Provide information about the noun or pronoun. They can be gradable or non-gradable.

Adverbs (Adv): lexical words which can comment on an adjective by expressing degree (very), or give information about the circumstances of an action (circumstance adverbs), or express the writer’s attitude (luckily… stance adverbs), or provide linking between clauses or sentences (however…)

Conjunctions (Conj): function words which link linguistic items. They can be divided into coordinators and subordinators.

Prepositions (Prep): are function words that link words and express the relationship between them. They can show a relation in time, space… there can be simple propositions (before, to, for…) or complex prepositions (next to…). The same word can behave as a preposition and adverb: I was walking around/I walked around the city.

Determiners (Det): are used before a noun to indicate the type of reference the noun has. Can indicate indefiniteness (the, a), quantity (some, any), possession (my, your). The main determiners in English are: definite article, indefinite article, demonstrative determiners (this, that…), possessive determiners, quantifiers (some, many…).

Pronouns (Pron): are used to replace nouns when we want to refer to a person, an object, a situation… which has been mentioned before or whose referent can be deduced from the context of the situation surrounding the text. A pronoun can be: personal, possessive, demonstrative (this, that), reflexive, reciprocal (each one, both), indefinite (all, someone), relative (which, who), interrogative (who? What?).

Auxiliary Verbs (Aux): a small class of verbs which accompany a lexical verb and cannot usually occur alone. There are primary auxiliaries (can function as lexical verbs, too) and modal auxiliaries (used to express degrees of certainty and necessity).

Wh-Words: words which begin with wh- (and how, and that) and introduce an interrogative or relative clause.

Numerals: a set of words referring to numbers or quantity which are used as determiners, or sometimes as head in noun phrases (Two of the boys left). Can be cardinal or ordinal.

1.4 Grammatical functions

The grammatical function of a word within a clause is the role they have in relation to the other words surrounding them.

• Subject (S): what the sentence is about: its topic. Precedes the verb and determines its number.
• Verb (V): predicator, what is said about the subject.
• Object: can be Direct (O_d) or Indirect (O_i). I’ve given Mary (O_i) my scarf (O_d).
• Complement: provides information about the subject (subject complement C_s) or the object (object complement C_o). You look wonderful (C_s), I consider you a friend (C_o).
• Adverbials: usually optional, can be of different types: circumstance adverbials (adjunct adverbials) provide information about the circumstances and are those of time, place, manner..., stance adverbials (disjunct adverbials) express the speaker’s attitude or comments (frankly, actually, fortunately…), linking adverbials (conjunct adverbials) have a linking function (however, nevertheless…)

2 Morphology

Morphology is the area of linguistics that deals with the structure or form of words. The ways in which elements (morphemes) can combine to make up words and contribute to the construction of meaning and the creation of new words.

• Inflectional Morphology, dealing with the changes in the form of words according to the grammatical context.
• Derivational Morphology, dealing with the process of word formation.

A morpheme is the smallest linguistic unit of meaning or grammatical function. They are the minimal, indivisible elements of words that are capable of carrying semantic content (‘un’ before an adjective carries the meaning of ‘not’) or grammatical function (plural, past tense, gender…). Words composed of more than one morpheme are called polymorphemic or complex words (student+s, play+ed, care+ful…), while others consisting of only one morpheme are called monomorphemic or simple words (play, the, girl…).

2.1 Morphemes, morphs and allomorphs

Morphemes are abstract entities, while morphs are their concrete realization; a morpheme is realized by a morph. Morphemes are written in {}, lexeme in italics, the abstract features specified by the morpheme (tense, negative, possibility, adjective) are written in normal letters. The verb played consists of play+ed=the two morphemes {PLAY}+{past}; unhelpful=un+help+ful={negative}+{HELP}+{adjective}.

An allomorph is one of the different phonetic realizations of a morpheme. {past tense} in English is –ed realized phonetically in different ways: [d][t][id] (all allomorphs of the past tense. {plural} the allomorphs [s],[z],[iz]. {not} the allomorphs [in],[im],[il],[ir]. Indefinite article: graphic allomorph which has two orthographic shapes: a/an.

2.2 Types of morphemes

Two types of morphemes:

• Free morphemes: can stand alone as words (the, in, student), free morphemes that carry the semantic context of the word (student, party...) are called free roots, whereas the others (which don’t carry semantic content) are called grammatical morphemes.
• Bound morphemes: cannot occur on their own as separate words but need to be attached to other morphemes. They can be: affixes (prefixes, suffixes) which precede or follow another morpheme; or bound roots, roots which cannot occur on their own as independent words but need to be attached to other morphemes (-ceive: deceive, conceive, receive... dent-: dental, dentist...).

Affixes are attached to the root, stem or base of a word. Affixes can be divided into derivational morphemes (used for deriving new words, -ness as in sadness), and inflectional morphemes (always suffixes in English, with a grammatical function, -ed, -s).

2.3 Morphological analysis

Analyzing the word unhelpful means saying that it consists of 3 morphemes, each carrying a specific meaning. {negative}+{HELP}+{adjective}, bound morph un (prefix)+free morph help+bound morph ful (suffix).

2.4 Inflectional morphology

It deals with changes in the form of words according to the grammatical context. It is concerned with the inflections that carry grammatical meaning and thus allows us to form plurals, past tenses, or the comparative degree. Words change their forms to express specific categories such as number, tense, superlative.

• Noun inflections: gender, number, case. English has number and partially cases.

Number: count-nouns have two forms: singular and plural. The plural is formed by adding -s to the singular form of the lexeme, (-s can have different allomorphs). Not all nouns have plural forms, and there are some with irregular inflections.

Case: express possession by using the genitive case 's. cars = car+s = {CAR}+{plural}

• singers = sing+er+s = {SING}+{ER}+{plural}
• teeth = {TOOTH}+{plural} (process of vowel mutation)
• sheep = {SHEEP}+{plural} (plural morpheme expressed by a zero morph)

Verb inflections: English lexical verbs have 5 word forms:

• 3^rd person singular, present simple, -s inflection
• simple past, -ed inflection
• past participle, -ed inflection (for regular verbs)
• present participle, gerund, -ing inflection

Irregular Verbs: zero morph (cut-cut-cut), vowel mutation (swim-swam-swum), replacive morphs (build-built-built) suppletion (go-went-gone) which takes place when two or more forms of a lexeme are phonetically different.

Auxiliary Verbs: undergo the process of suppletion, and the modal verbs do not inflect for person and number and have only 2 forms.

• cooking = cook+ing = {COOK}{present simple}
• taken = {TAKE}+{past participle}
• went = {GO}+{past}

Adjectives and Adverbs inflection: most adjectives and some adverbs can be graded. Gradable adjective and adverbs can be inflected to express comparative (formed by adding the suffix -er) and superlative degree (formed by adding the suffix -est).

• small, smaller, smallest.

But not all adjectives form the comparative and superlative by just adding inflectional suffixes. Some adopt periphrastic forms with more and most. Some others form the comparative in an irregular way: the forms of the comparative and superlative can be considered suppletive forms, as those forms greatly differ from the positive degree: good, better, best.

• colder=cold+er={COLD}+{comparative degree}
• worst={BAD}+{superlative degree}

Determiners and Pronouns inflection: Determiners such as the demonstratives have the inflection of number (this, these). Pronouns express the grammatical category of number, but also those of gender and case. Personal pronouns show person, gender, number and subject/object case. We can also add the genitive case, expressed by possessive adjectives such as yours, hers…

him = {HE}+{3^rd person}+{singular}+{masculine}+{object}

3 Syntax

Syntax deals with how words interact and combine to form larger units. Deals with the structure of larger linguistic units such as phrases, clauses, and sentences.

3.1 Word order

Grammatical relations and meanings are expressed to a great extent by syntax and word order than by inflectional morphology. The order of constituents specifies and signals their syntactic function. The function of subject in English is not expressed by case, but by the position of the word and its relation with other constituents.

Inverting the order of constituents changes the meaning of a clause, since the function of the two noun phrases varies according to their position within the clause:

Mark beat Luca at tennis ≠ Luca beat Mark at tennis

Other changes of meaning determined by the order of the constituents can change a statement into a question:

She is happy ≠ Is she happy?

Subject is typically placed before the verb, while the object goes after the verb. This is the unmarked order of constituents. Unmarked means typical, most common, while marked means untypical, less frequent. In nowadays English, the SVO order is quite fixed, unmarked I really liked this book. Some variations are possible, but considered ad marked: this book, I really liked.

3.2 Types of phrases

Words combine with other words and are arranged into larger constituents, or phrases. The identification of phrases can be considered intuitive, as we tend to put together words which we think ‘go together’: ‘the young lady’, ‘the interesting book’...

A phrase (sintagma) is a meaningful syntactic unit which is made up of one or more words. There are accompanying words, modifiers, which define and modify the head. There are pre-modifiers (precede the head), post-modifiers (follow the head). The head is the most important word of the phrase, without which the syntactic unit would not make sense.

There are 5 types of phrases, determined by the headword.

3.2.1 The noun phrase

Consists of a noun head, with determiners, pre-modifiers or post-modifiers. Sometimes a pronoun can replace the noun in the noun phrase. (Mary, that man with a gun, she).

Determiners= articles, demonstratives, possessives, quantifiers, numerals.

Pre-modifiers= Adjectives, or AdjP, NS or NPs (a cute little collie dog)

Post-modifiers=PP (apartment in New York), relative clause, non-finite clause (a solitary man walking alone), AdjP (something similar), AdvP (holiday abroad), that-clause (belief that I am going to spend a lot of money), appositive NP (and usually has an equal status with the head: Obama, the President of the USA).

Ambiguous NPs: young men and women, only the men are young or both? In English, we use the NPs as pre-modifiers of other NPs.