Modulo di Lingua, Lingua e Traduzione Inglese 2

HE STRUCTURE OF NGLISH

Grammar is a study of the organisation of language: it involves taking language structures apart in

order to see the ways in which we can communicate effectively in a range of situations. A native speaker

knowledge about the patterns and rules which underpin English is implicit. The aim of linguistic as we

study it is to make them explicit. Linguists are interested in the structures of words and sentences in

both spoken and written discourse. Language is said to have a rank scale because the levels can be

arranged hierarchically: words (made up of a group of letters), phrases (group of words), clauses (group

of phrases, sentences (groups of clauses).

The categories of words are called word classes; the major ones are nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs,

pronouns, determiners, auxiliaries, prepositions and conjunctions. There are two minor word

classes: interjections (ouch, phew or wow) and particles (to be or not to be). One group of words which is

treated in different ways by linguists is the group of numerals (ordinal and cardinal). Nouns, verbs,

adjectives and adverbs are open class words (lexical or content words); pronouns, determiners,

auxiliaries, prepositions and conjunctions are closed class words (grammatical or function words).

Grammatical words typically contain just one or two syllables.

- The simplest way to test whether a word is a noun is to isolate it and then see if it is possible to

place the (the definite article) in front of it. There are common nouns (subdivided into

concrete nouns and abstract nouns) and proper nouns (they name something or someone

unique). Nouns are the most common kind of word and are used to name or label concrete things

and abstract concepts; the main function of nouns is to act as either: the subject; the object (direct

or indirect); the complement of a verb and in adverbial phrases (I saw one of his films the other day,

for the first time). Some nouns are countable (books, exams), others are uncountable (money,

California – determiners of quantity (not articles) are often used before these nouns when we are

speaking in general – ‘some good advice’; ‘a lot of equipment’, ‘a little knowledge’ – or the

quantifier “a piece of ”. Some nouns are found only in the plural and take the plural verb:

congratulations, clothes… There are also a series of words which have a concept ‘of two’ or ‘two

part’ (glasses, scissors) and they are all used in the plural, with a plural verb, but can be used in the

singular when preceded by ‘a pair of ’.

- Verbs which refer to physical processes (stroll, relax) are referred to as dynamic verbs, in contrast

to stative verbs. We divide verbs in lexical and auxiliary verbs.

- Central adjectives are able to appear in two positions: attributive (before a noun – lucky Jim)

and predicative (after copular verbs – the boy is extraordinary). Most adjectives are gradable (we

can indicate to what extent the quality referred to by an adjective applies).

- If a word cannot appear in attributive position then it is an adverb. Adverbs have the ability not

only to give information about how, where and when, but also to allow you to comment on whole

utterances. They can be divided into adjuncts (they give additional information either about a

particular element of a sentence or about the event referred to in a sentence), conjuncts (they

relate one sentence or one part of a sentence to another) and disjuncts (they relate only to

complete sentences).

- Pronouns can function as substitutes for nouns or noun phrases, or in order to refer to what is

unknown (somebody, nothing). All the primary pronouns occur in several forms as personal

(subjective and objective form), possessive (dependent and independent form) and reflexive. A

further pronoun is the generic pronoun one. Relative pronouns are used to introduce relative

wh

clauses. Nominal relative pronouns introduce nominal relative clauses. Conditional -

pronouns introduce wh-conditional clauses. There are then the indefinite pronouns, the

demonstrative pronouns (they are deictic: their meaning depends on the situation and the

speakers).

- Determiners are only found in noun phrases. They can be subdivided into predeterminers,

central determiners and postdeterminers.

- Auxiliary verbs are a very small group of verbs; they occur before lexical verbs. There are

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primary auxiliaries (have, be, do – they’re used to indicate whether the action of a verb is complete

or on-going and in the construction of questions and for negation) and modal auxiliaries (can,

could, shall, should, will, would, may, might, must – they provide shades of meaning relating to the

lexical verb).

- Prepositions form prepositional phrases. They are used to show the relationship between two

elements.

- Conjunctions are used to join linguistic elements; they are subdivided into coordinating and

subordinating conjunctions.

- Wh-words can be adverbs, pronouns and determiners, but they perform similar grammatical

functions.

A knowledge of morphology will be useful when studying a language. The area of linguistics which is

concerned with the internal structure of words is morphology. Morphology is normally divided into

two branches – lexical (or derivational) and inflectional morphology. When considering word

formation, we can divide words into two categories: simple (they cannot be analysed into smaller units

of meaning), compound (constructed from two free morphemes) and complex (constructed from a

root morpheme plus at least one bound morpheme) words. Sometimes, however, it will not be clear to

us whether a word is simple or complex (repel).

The smallest unit of meaning in a word is a morpheme. Words which are indivisible into smaller

elements of meaning such as cat and rubbish comprise a single element only. Morphemes can be

subdivided into two types: free (that can stand alone as a word in its own right) and bound (that cannot

stand alone) morphemes. In-, im-, il- and ir- are not distinct morphemes, but different forms of the same

bound morpheme: they are allomorphs. Two further terms which are useful when studying morphology

are root (the part of a complex word which is at the heart of the word’s construction and its meaning –

expel, compel, repel) and base (a unit to which other morphemes may be added to create a new word or

words – original).

- Many words are constructed by the addition of bound morphemes either word-initially or word-

finally. This process is known as affixation; two further strategies which are also very productive

are compounding and conversion. Affixation is the process by which bound morphemes are

added to bases to form new words; a bound morpheme which is added in this way is an affix

(prefix – normally class-preserving, suffix – equally likely class-changing, infix). Both nouns and

adjectives can be formed by the addition of the suffix –ing and adjectives can also be formed by

the addition of –ed (they’re called deverbal nouns and adjectives).

- A construction which consists of two roots (and, in fact, two pre-existing words) is a compound.

Compound words are often written as one element or hyphenated, but they can be written as two

separate elements (world power). In some morphemes it is not easy to find the roots and the affixes

(tecnophobe): we call them combining forms.

- Multi-word verbs (or phrasal verbs) are very common in English; their meaning is idiomatic.

- Conversion consists in the class-change of words (co-star – to co-star). Back-formation results in

a change of word class, but it involves the modification of the word (television – to televise).

- An acronym is an economical way of expressing a phrase since the first letter is placed in

sequence to form a new word (AIDS). Clipping involves reducing a longer word to one or two

syllables (combination – combo). A blend is a kind of compound although the base words are not

joined in their entirety: part of one word is merged with part of another (breakfast and lunch –

brunch). Eponymy is the use of a proper name to refer to an object (hoover). Onomatopoeia is

when a noun or verb refers to a sound and supposedly imitates that sound (crash). Reduplication

involves the doubling of the first element of the word (no-no). Borrowings are words which are

adopted into English from another language; most of these have been anglicised.

- A word’s denotative meaning is normally the person, object, quality etc. to which a word refers;

many words also have connotative meanings, and these refer to the emotions and attitudes which

a particular word may evoke.

- An agent noun denotes a person who performs an action; most agent nouns end in either –er

(standard) or –or (for words derived directly from Latin). Words in -ee mark the passive recipient

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of an action, or a person affected in some way by the action of the verbs from which they have

been formed. the suffix –ee, which technically means one to whom.

Syntax operates on a level higher than the word since it is concerned with the rules by which words are

combined into larger units. It is possible to identify three larger units of construction: phrases, clauses

and sentences. Initially, the rules operate on a phrase level, then on a clause level and then on a sentence

level. In every phrase there is a head word; there are then five types of phrase: noun, verb, adjective,

adverb and prepositional phrase.

A noun phrase may consist of a single lexical item, but it can also be very long and complex. Head nouns

can be postmodified by both phrases and clauses. It is very common for prepositional phrases to

postmodify head nouns but adverb phrases occasionally occur postnominally when referring to time or

place.

Like noun phrases, verb phrases may consist merely of the head word. The primary auxiliaries be and have

are used to construct different aspects and voices. One of the features which verb phrases may possess

is tense (past and present – the future is expressed using particular structures). The main purpose of

primary auxiliaries is to indicate aspect: progressive (-ing) or perfect (-ed). The voice can be active or

passive.

Very occasionally, a head adjective or head adverb is postmodified by an adverb such as enough or indeed

but this is fairly unusual and often sounds quite formal. More typically, head adjectives and head adverbs

will be post-modified by a prepositional phrase or by one of a range of clauses.

Prepositional phrases differ from the other four types of phrase in that a preposition cannot stand alone

as the head word of a phrase – it needs to be accompanied by a prepositional complement if the

phrase is to be complete. Prepositional phrases can also consist of the preposition followed by an adverb.