Metalanguage and Parts of Speech

• The chapter introduces metalanguage as a tool to describe language
• It acknowledges that grammatical terminology can be a learning burden for students
• However, it highlights the efficiency of using terminology to draw attention to specific grammar aspects
• Knowing grammatical terms helps teachers conceptualize grammar and access linguistic resources

Three Criteria for Identifying Parts of Speech

• Identifying parts of speech can be difficult, even with standard definitions
• The semantic criterion defines a noun as naming a person, place, or thing
• This definition is problematic for words like "blue," which can be both an adjective and the name of a color
• The structural approach identifies word classes by position, adjacent function words, and constituents
• Common nouns are preceded by function words like "the" or "their"
• A simple noun like "book" has one morpheme, while "books" has two ("book" and "-s")
• Grammatical morphemes mark nouns for plural ("boy" vs. "boys") and possession ("girl" vs. "girl's")
• Derivational morphemes can mark nouns from other word types, such as "-ness" in "sadness"
• Structural criteria can be unreliable, as some nouns lack typical morphemes or function differently in compounds
• The functional criterion defines a part of speech by its grammatical function in a sentence
• A noun can function as the subject of a verb
• A noun can precede a verb without being the subject or can act as an adjective
• A cluster of criteria determines a part of speech, because no single definition is complete
• Cross-linguistic differences in parts of speech exist, for example, "tall" is a noun in some West African languages
• Identifying a word as a noun or verb in isolation is impossible
• Learners identify parts of speech inductively, even if definitions are elusive

Parts of Speech

• Parts of speech are grouped into major and minor word classes
• Major classes (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs) carry the main meaning and are "open" to new words
• Minor classes (auxiliary verbs, prepositions, pronouns, determiners, conjunctions) have structural roles and are "closed"
• Function words are structure words
• Content words carry the meaning
• Minor word classes convey some meaning
• Not all major word classes are truly open

Nouns

• Nouns name a person, place, thing, or idea
• Nouns have derivational morphemes (like "-ness") and grammatical morphemes for plural and possessive forms
• They are frequently preceded by determiners
• Nouns can function as:
• Direct objects of verbs
• Subject noun predicates
• Object noun predicates
• Indirect objects of verbs
• Appositives
• Objects of prepositions
• Vocatives
• The most frequent nouns are common nouns, or nouns referring to a kind of person, thing, or idea
• Count nouns take plural inflections
• Mass, or noncount nouns do not take plural inflections
• Proper nouns name unique individuals or places
• Collective nouns refer to groups
• Gender is not an important feature of English grammar

Verbs

• Verbs denote an action or state of being
• Verb morphology includes four inflections
• -s marks third-person singular present tense verbs
• -ed marks past tense verbs
• -en marks past participle
• -ing marks present participle
• Verbs follow nouns and precede adjectives, adverbs, or other nouns
• Verbs can complete a sentence

Verb Types

• Intransitive verbs take no object
• Transitive verbs require an object
• Ditransitive verbs take two objects (indirect and direct)
• Linking verbs relate back to the subject
• Complex transitive verbs relate what follows the object back to the object
• Prepositional verbs require a prepositional phrase
• Verbs have tense and aspect
• Tense refers to the time of an event
• Aspect denotes whether the event has finished or is in progress
• Verbs are marked for number with third-person singular subjects and the verb "be"

Adjectives

• Adjectives describe or denote qualities
• Adjectives commonly occur between a determiner and a noun or after linking verbs
• Adjectives do not agree in number or gender with nouns
• Certain adjectives have inflectional morphemes for comparative and superlative forms
• Attributive adjectives precede nouns
• Predicative adjectives follow linking verbs

Adverbs

• Adverbs modify verbs with meanings of direction, location, manner, time, and frequency
• Adverbs are flexible in their location in a sentence
• Manner adverbs take the -ly ending
• Adverbs modify a whole sentence
• Traditional grammars distinguish adverbs of degree, which modify adjectives and other adverbs
• Modifiers are called intensifiers because they signal the degree of intensity of the following word
• Multiword constructions, due to their function in the sentence, that have the same function can be called adverbials

Pronouns

• Pronouns refer to or replace nouns and noun phrases
• There are many kinds of pronouns, including
• Subject pronouns
• Object pronouns
• Reflexive pronouns
• Possessive pronouns
• Demonstrative pronouns
• The forms within each category are distinguished by number, person, gender, and proximity

Determiners

• Older grammars incorporated determiners into the adjective class
• Determiners limit the nouns that follow them
• Types of determiners include:
• Articles
• Demonstratives
• Possessive determiners
• They precede an adjective if one is present; otherwise, they are positioned directly in front of a noun

Prepositions

• Prepositions connect words to other parts of a sentence and have a close relationship with the word that follows, which is usually a noun
• Prepositions and nouns form prepositional phrases
• Prepositions typically signal spatial relationships
• Prepositions can signal the grammatical category of case

Conjunctions

• Conjunctions are words that join
• Coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or) join grammatically equal elements
• Subordinating conjunctions (because, although) join a subordinate clause to a main one

Phrases

• Phrases are a group of words that function together and are another grammatical concept at the sub-sentential level
• Clauses have a subject-verb relationship

Clauses

• Clauses have a subject-verb relationship
• Clauses that stand independently as sentences are independent, or main, clauses
• Clauses that cannot are called dependent, or subordinate, clauses.
• Subordinate clauses are preceded by an adverbial subordinator

Sentential Terminology

• Simple sentences contain one subject and one verb that can stand alone as an independent clause
• There are five basic simple sentence patterns in English:
• Subject + verb
• Subject + verb + object
• Subject + verb + indirect object + direct object
• Subject + verb + subject predicate
• Subject + verb + object + object predicate
• Compound sentences have multiple clauses of equal grammatical importance
• Coordinating conjunctions connect the multiple clauses
• Complex sentences contain a main clause and subordinate clause(s)
• Subordinate clauses are often introduced by an adverbial subordinator
• Dependent clauses can be included in an independent clause
• When moving beyond simple sentences coordination, subordination and embedding may be at work

Sentence Moods

• English sentences have three main moods:
• Declarative, to indicate something
• Interrogative, to ask something
• Imperative, to get someone to do something
• And two minor moods:
• Exclamatory
• Subjunctive
• Mood conveys the speaker's attitude toward the factual content of the sentence, also uncertainty or the hypotheticality of the prepositional content, or meaning of die clause
• The subjunctive mood can indicate a speaker's uncertainty or the hypotheticality of the prepositional content, or meaning of die clause
• Declarative sentence type: statement
• Interrogative sentence type: question
• Imperative sentence type: command
• Exclamatory sentence type: exclamation
• Sentences of the subjunctive use the uninflected base form or were

Theme/Rheme

• English has fixed word order
• Theme provides the point of departure of the message
• Rheme is the remainder of the message in the clause
• English uses word order to assign theme and rheme
• English is a grammatical subject-predicate language
• The subject in English will often be the theme and the predicate the rheme
• Other languages mark the theme with special particles
• Chinese is a topic-comment language where the topic establishes that with which the clause is concerned
• English does not forbid such word orders, so these speakers avoid using them too mcuh

Markedness

• English thematizes something other than the subject
• English uses the adverbial prepositional phrases a theme
• Marked refers to exceptions of typical cases, and may also be thought of as continuum

Voice

• English has the active and passive voice
• Sentence (a) is in the active voice; sentence (b) is in the passive voice
• Voice is a linguistic device for different constituents to function as themes
• The passive allows speakers/writters to thematize noun phrases other than agents

Sentential Terminology

• Sentential Terminology describes subsentence and sentence-level phenomena
• Terminology applies to the suprasentential, or discourse, level of language

Backgrounding and Foregrounding

• Discourses provides background and foreground information to carry the main storyline
• Discourses are distinguished by using either the past or present tense

Cohesion

• A quality of English grammar is that words are suprasentential
• Suprasentential texts have an organizational structure
• Sentences cannot be move around as this changes the meaning
• Five linguistic mechanisms of discourse
• Reference
• Ellipsis
• Substitution
• Conjunction
• Lexical cohesion

Register

• Register a the level of formality of language
• Register involves three variables: field, tenor, and mode.
• Field refers to the social activity in which the language is being used and what is being talked about
• Tenor is concerned with the roles and relationships of interlocutors
• Mode refers to the channel of communication

Genre

• Genre refers to linguistic variation
• Variation is due to communicative purposes
• Genre for a scientific research paper is different from that of a recipe or letter of recommendation
• Genre refers to patterns of words, structures, and voice
• Legal documents are characterized by "very long sentences containing numerous and elaborate qualifications
• Teachers teach English for special professional and academic purposes or ESL/EFL purposes

Given/New

• Given/New visits theme-rheme distinction
• Theme-rheme has to do with the structure of clauses
• This pair has a relationship with how information is distributed among sentences
• Written texts are of the common pattern to introduce new information in the rheme of the first sentence can then treat it as given information
• Given information is known by the reader because it has been previously mentioned or because it is in some way shared between the writer and reader
• Information flows from rheme to theme, from sentence to sentence, from new to given.
• With end focus, new information is placed toward the end of a clause
• While the focus is typically at the end, it need not be
• Halliday describes that Theme is the speaker, Given is audience, and while while given/new and theme/rheme are related, they arise from a different perspective
• The speaker's (writer's) choices are predicated on what has gone before and what is to come
• Grammar and discourse have relation in that grammar with lexis is a resource for creating discourse, while the discourse context shapes grammar to accomplish very specific communicative goals