Introduction to Grammar

Topic 1: What is Grammar?

• Grammar can be a system organizing language or a book of rules about this system.
• Grammar is a branch of linguistics closely related to phonology and lexicon.
• Grammar is the unconscious knowledge of using language to communicate.
• Knowing grammar is an unconscious process, while knowing about grammar is a conscious reflective process.
• Syntax and morphology are the 2 main components of grammar
• Syntax is sentence structure while morphology is the analysis of word structure.
• Inflectional morphology expresses grammatical information using suffixes and does not change word class.
• Derivational morphology creates new lexemes by adding prefixes and/or suffixes.
• Collocations are word combinations that frequently co-occur like "do homework" or "make the bed."
• Colligations are a subtype of collocation where words co-occur with a grammatical feature, such as specific prepositions with certain verbs.
• Grammaticalization is morphosyntactic change, where content words evolve into function words.
• Examples illustrate grammaticalization with the "going to" construction changing from movement in space to intention and future tense.
• Prescriptive grammar imposes fixed rules and judges language use as correct or incorrect, while descriptive grammar describes how language is actually used without value judgments.
• Language and words vary historically, regionally (dialects, accents), socially (age, gender, sociolects), and stylistically (formal, informal).
• Knowing a language (grammar) means having communicative competence, which includes knowing the rules of the system, what is feasible, and how language is appropriately used in different situations.
• Grammatical rules are established through introspection (examining mental processes), elicitation (gathering responses from participants), and corpora analysis (examining large bodies of text).

Topic 2: The Grammatical Landscape

• Grammar units include sentences, clauses, phrases, words, and morphemes.
• Sentences comprise one or more clauses and express a complete thought, starting with a capital letter and ending with a full stop.
• Clauses are built around a lexical verb and consist of a subject and a predicate, forming a whole sentence or part of one.
• Phrases group words around a head (the most important element) and may nest in other phrases, creating a hierarchical relationship.
• Words combine morphemes, are marked by spaces, and are the smallest syntax units.
• Function words (prepositions, coordinators, etc.) serve primarily for grammatical and structural purposes, while content words (nouns, adjectives, etc.) carry meaning.
• Morphemes, the smallest meaningful units of language, are dealt with in morphology.
• Constituents are word strings that syntactically behave as a unit in a larger construction.
• Immediate constituents are each syntactic unit at the next level down in the hierarchy.
• Nesting occurs as constituents exist within other constituents
• Parsing is the process of identifying and analyzing the grammatical structure of a sentence.
• Constituency tests, like substitution, help determine if a group of words is a constituent by replacing it with a single word. If the sentence still makes sense, it is likely a constituent.
• Sentence fragments can also act as a test, forming a question and using the sentence fragment as the answer allows you to figure out what words behave as a constituent
• Movement can identify constituents by moving a string of words to another position in the sentence.
• Representing constituent structure can be done using square brackets or tree diagrams.
• Ambiguity can be lexical (words with multiple meanings) or syntactic/structural (constructions with unclear meanings).
• Syntactic/structural ambiguities can be represented with several different tree diagrams.
• Syntactic categories (parts of speech) are divided into closed word classes (determinatives, coordinators, prepositions, etc.) and open word classes (nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs).
• Semantic criteria classify words based on their meaning (e.g., nouns denote persons or objects).
• Morphological criteria classify words based on typical morphemes (e.g., nouns often have plural inflectional endings).
• Syntactic criteria classify words based on their position in a sentence (e.g., adjectives precede nouns).
• Phrases are categorized based on the word functioning as their head (e.g., NP, VP, AdjP, AdvP).
• Syntactic categories are nouns, verb, adjectives and adverbs.
• Syntactic functions are Subject and Predicate.

Topic 3: Syntactic Functions

• Sentences require at least 2 functions.
• These 2 key functions the Subject (the topic of the clause)
• Also the Predicate which provides additional information on the subject)
• Sentences all have subjects, except for imperatives
• Subjects take the from of noun phrases Recognizing subjects involves four main criteria:
• Semantic clues (the doer of the action)
• Position (often the left-most constituent)
• Word changes in other languages like German.
• Behavior when asking questions
• Analyitic languages emphasize word order.
• Synethic languages use morphology.
• Analytic languages indicate grammatical concepts using unbound morphemes
• Synthetic languages add words and use bound morphemes
• Subjects are typically noun phrases
• English prefers short subjects
• Predicate contains Predicator and Complements
• Predicates give all the sentence words, describing the subject.
• Predicators are main verbs showing the action or subject state.
• Complements describe the meaning of verbs Types of complementation:
• Direct objects affected by the action
• Indirect receiving the action
• Subject complements follow copular verbs for descirbing the subject.
• Object Compoements give info about the object Transitivity is based on how many objects or complements a verb can take.
• The verb's properties determine how many subjects can be used Five types of Transitive verb.
• Intransitive (no objects of complements)
• Monotransitive (one object)
• Ditransitive (two objects).
• Copulative (always with subject)
• Complex-transitive (always with subject and object) Adjuncts elements have the following traits
• Optional to the overall sentence Located in more then one postion
• Add details to the sentence
• Adjuncts realized verb parts of the sentnce such as phrases

Topic 4: The Noun Phrase

• Noun properties are semantics (people, places, things), morphological (derivational and inflectional), and syntactic (head of NP, subject, object, etc.).
• Main pronoun types include Proper nouns, pronouns(personal, possessive, relative reflexive and reciprocal), and common nouns.
• Proper nouns are capitalized and stand for particular entities.
• Common nouns are non-specific and can be count or mass.
• Personal pronouns replace nouns.
• Nominative (I, we, you, he, she, it, they) and accusative (me, us, etc.).
• Anaphoric reference is when the pronoun refers back to the subject, while Cataphoric reference is when the pronoun refers to something later in the sentecne.
• Possessive pronouns say who something belongs to
• Reflexive emphasize the subject and verbs
• Reciprocal shows when a verb applies to multiple people at the same time.
• Demonstrative reference objects or concepts specifically.
• Interogatives ask questinos. Relatives provide context for nouns, words or phrases
• Indefinite reference concepts with indefinte addressee.
• Determiners are a word class
• Determiners act pronouns when they appear alone otherwise they are determiners
• Noun structure consists of pre-head dependents (determiners & modifiers), a head, and post-head dependents (complements & modifiers).
• Pre-head dependents include determiners while Post-head dependents are prepositional Phrase, Noun Phrase, or clauses
• Determiners can be predeterminers, central, or postdeterminers.
• Modifiers modify the phrase from odd to specific.
• Post help complete the head meaning and narrow down the head
• Dependents give details but do not complete or restrict
• Peripheral dependent provide extra info and consist of an annotation or restrictive clause.
• Clauses come in the form of subordinate, main adn dependent Modalities come in the form of Finite and non-finite clauses.
• Relative pronouns are who, whose, when, where, that, and which.
• Zero-value relative clauses are the exception Sub clauses help classify verbs
• Use adjectives that modify nouns The basic principles are
• Using short sentences
• Ensuring topic relevance Countable and uncountable both use nouns The types of pronouns are determined by the
• Subject pronoun
• Object pronoun
• Pronoun agreement

Topic 5: The Verb Phrase

• Four situation types:
• Stative (state) verbs describe conditions or states.
• Activity verbs describe an ongoing action.
• Accomplishment verbs describe actions with an endpoint.
• Achievement verbs describe punctual actions that happen immediately.
• Transitivite is based on Direct object
• Intransitive verbs doesn't require this object.
• Extended verb phrases (EVP) consist of the sentence's finite verb and its arguments.
• AUX verbs (or helpers) go with primary verbs: Be, do, have Modal auxillaries can, could, ,may might, shall, should will, would,
• Modlaity means can, could, ,may might, shall, should will, would
• passive aux. describes forms
• Auxiliary form progressive sentences as well
• Auxiliary use perfect to demonstrate relevance.

Topic 6: Tense

• Tense is a grammatical expression of actions that will be done in the past, present or the future.
• Present is used for things happening that second or fixed for the now
• Past is in finitive
• External factors involve planning for things to happen based on what you want to achieve The verb tense is to express a time expression for which something happened
• Time expressions describe certain moments of time, such as time of day. Used for time in what tense describes temporal or social
• Is to explain events and use verb tenses for reference.
• Perfect or past tense expression for the past.
• Explain with external forces influencing.
• Using auxiliary express planning, desire action
• In complex forms using perfect, progressive future continuous,
• Used after a subject to state action or what the person wants to achieve.

Topic 7: Modality

• Modality is speakers attitude to express the verbs and express feelings.
• Ways to do this through action, modals adjectives
• Expressing ideas, options with verbs Verbs have 2 types, with cores and peripheral or margical moral ideas.
• Central for one word expression.
• Some verbs have have some past forms but not all of them Verbs have auxiliary form the be as the main helper
• Modalities verbs have to express feelings with impersonal, such as cleaning verbs.

Topic 8: AdjP. AdvP. PP

• Adjective and adverb phrases modifies the words they are connected in the sentences
• Adjective phrase expresses the head of noun,
• Adv expressions of the sentence or the head and how it is working
• Prepositions show connection to to the head,
• In terms of adjective, it is to modify with more detail
• Adb verbs provide more of the verbs
• Prepros modify nouns Most of the properties are semantic and syntactic properties,
• This is a form of how the sentence comes to the head verb. Participles are either present and verbs can have adjectives in order express certain actions
• The basic functions are to express ideas that are modified through with action or a sense of direction.
• This explains the head is doing is the verb.
• Prepositions can be modified with adverb or phrase modifying preposition itself
• Conjuctions help link prepositions together.
• Adjective and adverbs connect nouns.
• Phrases can be joined and modify the original to show the action.

Topic 9 + 10: Complex Sentences.

• Main sentence typs are complex ,compouns and simple sentece. Subordination is key for understanding complex sentences
• All components connect the subverb to a main object
• This relies on understanding how many clauses are in action How to write complex sentences:
• Noun Clause; the what question of who and what is action. Relative verbs: Express what nouns and objects do

Topic 11: Information Packaging

• Basic words and how to package the words to explain actions
• Words follow and include other subjects.
• Words actions can be added with adjactions
• Basic terms for packaging are cohesion and coherence.
• This means how links come from how the phrases connect
• Coherne shows how the text comes to the reader.
• Packaging is to focus towards the reader. How to do this, Highlight important terms
• Focus from start and finish.
• Basic rules include the subject.
• The most basic is understanding past.
• All points should include an active voice and passive
• The last can use direct objects through prepositions. Most steps help what is going to be the topic and how they are connected.