English structure revision for the exam (0)

Terms

• Pragmatics ( studies the use of language → interested in the gap between the sentence’s meaning and the speaker’s meaning).
  
• Semantics (concerned with the meaning of the language aspects and the way they change , also how objects and language and thinking and language are related ).
  
• Syntax (concerned with the rules [grammar] and how sentences and words are formed ).
  

• Prescriptive grammar → Prescribes rules that tell to the speaker the way the language should be written or spoken in order for the speaker to appear correct or educated. It could be said that this is an academic and strictly correct language use. For example:
  

• Never use ain’t
  
• Don’t split an infinitive (To quickly run)
  

• Descriptive grammar → Underlies the actual usage of speakers of the language.
  

• Phonetics → The study of the acoustic detail of speech sounds and how they are articulated.
  

• Phone is a smallest unit of sound in human speech. Phones can be represented with IPA symbols (International Phonectic Alphabeth).
  

• Phonology - The subfield of linguistics that studies the structure and systematic patterning of sounds in human language.
  

• Allophone is a sound form of a phone.
  

• Phoneme is a smallest unit in language which distinguishes meaning. With other phonemes it can form morphemes and words. For example: The difference between words in English call and fall is a result of the exchange of the phoneme c and f.
  

• Morphology - The study of word formations and the internal structure of words.
  

• Morphemes – the smallest units of language that have their own meaning or grammatical function .
  

• Morph – The concrete realisation of a morpheme. For example: outrageous- Out/ rage /ous consists of three morphs which represent morhpemes.
  
• Allomorph – Is a variant of a morpheme. It can occur inside a morpheme and concerns pronunciation and shape while not affecting the meaning of the word. For example: morpheme that shows plurality is s. In words cat+ plural , bus+plural, man + plural the meaning of the word stays the same but the pronunciation varies between /s/ and /ez/. In the word man the shape of the word changes because its plurality is irregular men. So zero plurality is the allomorph of the plurality morpheme.
  

• Types of affixes → Affix is a morpheme that is attached to the root of a word.
  

• Prefixes – A morpheme that is attached in front of the stem of the word. For example: rearrange /re/ is a prefix .
  
• Suffixes – A morpheme that goes in the end of the word stem. For example: cleverly /ly/ is a suffix .
  
• Infixes – A morpheme that is inside of the root word. English doesn’t have these types of affixes.
  
• Circumfixes – Morphemes that surround the word stem. English doesn’t have these morphemes either.
  

• Derivational affix – It may change the meaning in a word by changing the grammatical class of the root. For example: consider (a verb ), inconsiderate ( adjective ), consideration ( noun ).
  
• Inflectional affix – It produces different word forms , not new grammatical classes and although it can change the grammatical shape of the word, the meaning of the word stays the same. For example: consider, considered , considers.
  

• Syntax is the study of how sentences are formed in a language. For example what is the word order ( in English it’s usually subject , verb object ) or how words relate to each other in sentences etc.
  

• North Germanic languages → Swedish , Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic and Faroese.
  
• West Germanic languages → English, German , Dutch , Frisian, Afrikaans and Flemish.
  

How to classify words into different word classes?

• Noun is the name of a person, place or a thing . (I love this place).
  
• A verb expresses an action , process or a state. (I love this place).
  
• An adjective describes a noun. (This place is lovely).
  

• Kim is an engine driver. → Engine could mean either happy or a mechanical object.
  
• Kim seems engine
  

• Noun can have a plural ending s
  
• Noun can have a possessive form. Boys’
  
• Nouns usually go with determiners: an apple , a ball, the red car
  
• We can determine an adjective if it has a degree of comparison . For example: most beautiful, smaller.
  

Grammatical categories

• Inherent categories → are the properties that a word naturally has or does not have.
  
• Agreement categories → show syntactic links between words.
  
• Relational categories → mark the relationship a word or a phrase has to the whole sentence.
  

Nouns

• Inherent → Number. Dog- dogs
  

• Relational → Cases . For example Estonian has 14 cases (allatiiv, elatiiv etc).
  

2.3.2 Verbs

• Inherent → Tense (Shows time in a sentence) For example: He walked a mile. He walks a mile every day.
  

• Indicative (kindel kõneviis ) – I am going home.
  
• Imperative (käskiv kõneviis) – Go home!
  
• Subjunctive ( tingiv kõneviis) – I should go home.
  

• A transitive verb - can take a direct object and transitive verbs are kiss , throw etc.
  
• An intransitive - verb does not take a direct object. For example words as sleep , cry.
  

• Relational → Voice (Describes the action between the verb and subject/object)
  

• Active voice – When the subject is an agent (the doer of the action), the verb is in an active voice.
  

• Passive voice – When the subject is patient (the person who is influenced by the action, the verb is in the passive voice. For example: The mouse was eaten by the cat.
  

• Agreement → He/she/it is sleeping. I am/ you/we are sleeping.
  

Adjectives

• Inherent → Degree of comparison. ( Comparative and superlative) For example: cold -
  

• Agreement → Attributive adjectives go with the head noun and predicative adjectives go with the subject. For example: The white door
  

Nouns and noun phrases

• The noun phrase typically consists of the head which is usually a noun and other linguistic elements which determine or modify the head.
  
• (Determiners) (Premodifiers) HEADnoun (postmodifier)
  

• [The old man who is driving the red car.] is the noun phrase
  
• The [determiner] old[premodifier] man[Head] who is driving the red car [postmodifier].
  
• [The red car] is another noun phrase.
  

• The subject. For example: The book is on the table. [The book]
  
• Object. For example: Have you seen the book? [The book]
  
• Complement
  

3.1 Lexical subclasses

• Common nouns – proper nouns
  

• Common nouns – Describe a class of entities. For example: planet , dog, man, picture etc. Common nouns classify into:
  

• Countable nouns – Nouns that are individual and can be counted. For example: pen, chair , bag etc.
  
• Uncountable nouns – Nouns that belong to a mass or are not individual. For example: sugar , water, money , furniture
  

• Proper nouns – Are actual names of people, places, objects etc.
  

• Abstract nouns – concrete nouns
  

• Abstract nouns – Are nouns that stand for objects that can’t be touched. They are not physical , they are ideas or concepts. For example: love, hate, justice etc.
  
• Concrete nouns – Are nouns that have a physical appearance. They can be observed with at least one of the senses. For example: dog, cat, apple, table etc.
  

• From proper nouns into common nouns. For example: I know two Evas.
  
• From countable into uncountable. For example: Are you reading today ’s paper ?
  
• A different lexical item. For example: a laugh – laughter, a poem – poetry
  
• From common nouns into proper nouns. For example: Do we have any cheese left? Yes, we have Cheddar and Danish blue.
  

3.2 Grammatical categories

• Number → In English the number categories are singular and plural. Majority of nouns in Germanic languages have plural forms which distinguish them from singular. The contrast is:
  

• Singular VS Plural.
  

• Singular – meaning one
  
• Plural – meaning two or more. Most common attribute for expressing plurality in English is suffix /s/.
  

• There are three main number classes of nouns.
  

• Plural has three broad categories →
  

• Vowel change. For example: man – men, foot – feet , mouse – mice
  
• Suffix /–en/. For example: Child – children
  
• Plural is the same as singular.
  

• Some nouns ending with /-f/ or /-fe/ take /-ves/. For example: wife – wives, wolf-wolves
  

• -on → -a For example:
  

• -is → -es For example: crisis – crises
  
• Etc.
  

• Gender → Is a grammatical classification of nouns, pronouns or other words in the noun phrase. Grammatical gender can be found
  

• in German. For example: das auto, das Mädchen, die Packung, der Mann .
  
• Also in French . For example: le musique, le travail, la table. In these cases there are articles to tell us whether the words are masculine, feminine or natural. The rest of the structure of the sentence depends a lot on whether the word is masculine, feminine or neutral .
  

• Some 3rd person pronouns in English express gender distinctions. For example: He (masculine), she (feminine), it (neutral). But also herself, himself , hers etc.
  
• There are morphologically unmarked nouns that have gender distinctions. For example: bachelor – spinster, mother – father , uncle – aunt etc.
  
• There are morphologically marked nouns that have gender distinctions. For example: prince – princess, god – goddess
  

• Case → Case is a grammatical category that shows a syntactic and semantic relation between the word the case applies to and the rest of the elements of the sentence.
  

• This case can be recognised by the ending –‘s. Some of the semantic functions of –s’ are:
  

• Possessive genitive. For example: The boy’s car.
  
• Genitive of measure. For example: An hour’s walk .
  
• Genitive of origin . For example: The student ’s letter.
  
• Etc
  

• Because the ‘s attaches itself in the end of the noun phrase, not to the head noun. For example: the King of England ’s daughter .
  

• Another analysis is that nouns in English do not inflect for case, because the ‘s is not lexical but it’s a phrasal suffix.
  

Pronouns

4.1 Pronoun subclasses

• Personal pronouns – Subject pronouns are used when the person or thing is the subject
  

• I, you, he, we, you, they
  

• Object pronouns are used when the person or thing is the object.
  

• Me, you he, us, you them
  

• Reflexive pronouns are used when a person or thing acts on itself
  

• Singular: myself, yourself, himself, itself
  

• Plural: ourselves, yourselves, themselves
  

• Possessive pronouns – Indicate possession or ownership.
  

• Mine, yours , his, hers, ours, yours, theirs.
  

• Possessive adjectives –
  

• My, your, his, her, its, our, your, their
  

• Reciprocal pronouns – Refer to recionship
  

• Each other, one another
  

• Relative pronouns – Refer back to people or things that were previously mentioned.
  

• Who, whom , whose, that, what, which
  

• Interrogative pronouns – Ask which person or thing is meant.
  

• Who, whom, whose
  

• Demonstrative pronouns – They point to something .
  

• This, these, that, those
  

• Indefinite and negative pronouns – Indicate to non-existence of people or things.
  

• No seires, neither, nothing, no one
  

• Indefinite, positive , universal
  

• All, both, each, every
  

• Indefinite, positive, assertive
  

• The some series, one, half , several , enough, other, another
  

• Indefinite, positive, non-assertive
  

• The any series, either
  

4.2 Grammatical categories of person, case, number and gender

• Masculine pronouns: He, him, his, himself
  
• Feminine pronouns: She, her, hers, herself
  
• Neutral pronouns: It, its, itself
  

The English verbal system

5.1 Main verbs

5.2 Helping verbs

• Negation
  

• Inversion
  

• Code
  

• Emphatic assertion
  

• Helping verbs do not take ‘-s’ in the the 3rd person. *He cans come.*
  
• Helping verbs can’t be used in future or past tenses.
  

• Auxiliary verbs can express tense, modality, voice etc.
  

• Modal verbs are auxiliary verbs that express modality. May, might, could, can, will etc.
  

5.3 What are the differences and similarities between modal verbs and auxiliary verbs?

• Differences:
  

• Modal verbs lack present and past participles which means that they do not show tense. In order to show tense they need paraphrasing. For example: Canning playing the piano pleases him.* → Being able to play the piano…. Canning, musting, maying*
  
• Modal verbs are always finate!
  
• Modals do not have an ‘s form. Can’t say coulds, mights* while auxiliaries can have an ‘s form. For example: He does his job very well.
  

5.4 Types of main verbs

• Linking verbs → These are verbs that describe or rename the subject.
  

• Intransitive verb → Does not have an object aka it is not done to something or someone .
  

• Monotransitive verb → Has a subject and a single direct object (noun phrase).
  

• Ditransitive verb → Has a direct object and an indirect object.
  

• Complex transitive verb → Has two objects following . (Two noun phrases).
  

Adjectives and adjective phrases

6.1 Four properties of adjectives

• Attributive adjectives – An adjective is attributive when it comes before a noun. For example: An ugly painting, an old man
  
• Predicative adjectives – An adjective is predicative when it comes after a noun. For example: He looks unwell. I am afraid.
  
• Postpositive adjectives – Adjectives that come immediately after a noun.
  

• Modification and inflection – Adjectives can take modifying words before them such as very, less, extremely etc. Adjectives have three different forms which indicate the degree of the adjective. The three forms are positive, comparative, superlative. For example: heavy, heavier, heaviest.
  

6.2 The structure of the adjective phrase

6.3 Functions of an adjective phrase →

• Premodifiers in noun phrases. For example: My former friend .
  
• Subject complement. For example: This puppy is cute.
  
• Object complement. For example: She painted her room bright pink .
  
• Postmodifier in a noun phrase. For example: The people responsible.
  

6.4 Syntactic subcategorisation of an adjective→ Adjectives can be classified into two main categories which are attributives and predicatives and the can be in turn also classified into lower categories.

• Intensifying adjectives are adjectives that intensify the noun.
  

• Emphasizers. For example: A real winner , a sure sign .
  
• Amplifiers. → Inherent adjectives are adjectives that show the quality of a
  

• Restrictive adjective is an adjective clause that cannot be separated from the main clause without the sentence changing its meaning.
  

• Adjectives related to adverbs are non-inherent, neither restrictive or intensifying.
  

• Denominal adjectives are adjectives that are derived from nouns. For example: A wooden boat , biological father
  

Semantic classification of adjectives

• Stative/dynamic.
  

• Gradable/nongradable.
  

• Inherent/noninherent
  

Comparison of adjectives

• With suffixes –er or –est. For example: simple , simpler, simplest
  
• Using more and most. For example: beautiful, more beautiful, most beautiful
  

Adverbs and adverb phrases

7.1 Morphological structure of adverbs

• Simple adverbs. Soon, here , now, well
  
• Derived adverbs are adverbs that derive from adjectives usually by suffix –ly.
  

• – wise (clockwise)
  
• - ward (s) (onwards)
  
• -like (warlike)
  
• -most (innermost)
  

• Compound adjectives are adjectives that consist of more than only one word.
  

• Composite phrasal adverbs. A great deal, soon enough.
  

7.2 Structure of the adverb phrase

Functions of adverbs

• Modifiers of adjectives- Means that adverbs can intensify the adjective. There are three different functions of intensifiers.
  

• Modifiers of noun phrases. For example: We had quite a party.
  
• Modifier of adverbs – Pretty soon, smoke very heavily
  
• Postmodifying adverbs – Adverbs that follow the word it modifies.
  

• Modifier of pronouns, predeterminers, and numerals-
  

• Modifier of particles , prepositional adverbs, and prepositions-
  

• Adverbs as complements of preposition
  

• Adverbs as an adverbial
  

• Adjuncts – When an adverb is nicely integrated into a sentence.
  

• Subjuncts – Expresses a condition or hypothesis and it can make other clause elements more intense or diminish the weight .
  

• Disjuncts – A disjunct frequently acts as a kind of evaluation of the rest of the sentence. Although it usually modifies the verb, we could say that it modifies the entire clause, too.
  

• Conjuncts – Serve a connector function within the flow of the text, signalling a transition between ideas.
  

Comparison of adverbs

• Comparison to the same degree. For example: as ... as/ not as/so ... as: She dances as well as her friend./She can’t dance as well as her.
  

Semantic classification of adverbs

• Adverbs of place: abroad, downstairs , here, underneath
  
• Time: now, afterwards, already , just, lately, nowadays
  
• Manner : suddenly, dryly, backwards, in a friendly manner
  
• Frequency: once , twice, always, sometimes
  
• Degree: almost, altogether, barely, enough, fairly, hardly, quite, rather
  
• Intensifiers: very, quite, pretty, indeed
  
• Focus: even , just, merely, only, really , too, as well
  
• Viewpoint: clearly , evidently, frankly, honestly, generally, normally, briefly
  

Types of phrases

• Noun phrases
  

• Verb phrases
  

• Adjective phrases
  

• Adverb phrases
  

• Prepositional phrases.
  

8.1 Clause structures

• Subject (S)
  
• Verb (V)
  
• Object (O)
  

• direct (Od)
  
• indirect (Oi)
  

• Complement (C)
  

• subject complement (Cs)
  
• object complement (Co)
  

• Adverbial (A)
  

• subject-related (As)
  
• object-related (Ao)
  

8.2 Verb complementation

• Complements, which are needed to make the sentence ‘complete’.
  

• He wanted a new car.
  
• He wanted to drive the car.
  

• Adjuncts, which provide additional information but are not indispensable.
  

• He laughed aloud.
  
• He laughed at his classmate ’s mistake.
  

Syntactic functions of clause elements

• Form: normally a NP or a nominal clause (a subordinate clause that functions as a noun phrase)
  
• Position: normally occurs before the verb in declarative sentences, and after the operator in yes-no interrogative clauses. In wh-interrogative clauses: subject-operator inversion, except where the wh-element is itself the subject
  
• Syntactic functions:
  

• obligatory in finite clauses except in imperative clauses
  
• determines the number and person, where relevant , of the verb in finite clauses
  
• determines the number of the subject complement when that is a NP
  
• determines the number and, where relevant, the person and gender of the reflexive pronoun
  
• as direct object, indirect object or prepositional complement
  
• the subjective form of pronouns
  
• the active-passive correspondence
  
• the subject is repeated in a tag question by a pronoun form
  

• Semantic properties:
  

• typically refers to information that is regarded by the speaker as given
  

• the objective form for pronouns
  
• in case of co- reference with the subject, the object usually requires a reflexive pronoun which agrees with the subject in person and, where relevant, in number and gender.
  

• Od an entity that is affected (patient/theme) by the action denoted in the clause;
  
• Oi: to an animate being that is the recipient of the action (recipient/beneficiary).
  

• If it is a NP, the Cs has concord of number with the subject, and the Cs has concord of number with the direct object.
  
• If it is a reflexive pronoun, the Cs has concord of number, person, and, where relevant, gender with the subject.
  
• The complement cannot become the subject of a corresponding passive clause. The Co becomes the subject complement in the passive clause.
  
• If the Cs is a pronoun, there is a distinction between subjective and objective forms; the subjective form is more prevalent in formal use.
  

• The attribute: identifies or characterises the referent of the clause element to which it is related.
  

• the circumstances of the situation (adjuncts and subjunct);
  
• comments on the form or content of the clause (disjunct);
  
• provides a link between clauses (conjunct).
  

Characteristics of clause elements

8.5 Semantic/thematic roles of clause elements

Main semantic roles for clause elements

• Semantic roles of subject:
  

Simple and multiple sentences

• A simple sentence contains only one clause. I love you.
  
• A compound sentence contains two or more independent or main clauses. I love you and you love me.
  
• A complex sentence contains two or more clauses, at least one of which is subordinate. It is a multiple sentence built up on the principle of subordination. I love you while you love another.