Exam Prep

Grammar is the system that organizes a language and allows people to communicate meaningfully.

Grammar tells us how words fit together

• Dog chase cat

• The dog chased the cat

1. The language system itself = the rules speakers unconsciously follow

2. A grammar book = a description of those rules

3. A branch of linguistics = the scientific study of grammar

4. Our unconscious knowledge of language = native speakers usually know grammar without studying it

difference between knowing grammar and knowing about grammar —> She goes to school (I know it sounds correct, but can I explain why “-s” is required?)

1. Syntax = study of sentence structure

• The cat ate the fish ——-> Syntax studies how these words are arranged into a sentence

1. Morphology = study of word structure

• happy -> happiness ——-> Morphology studies how words are built

Inflection adds grammatical information but does NOT create a new word class

• walk -> walked

• cat -> cats

Derivation creates a new word (often a new word class) and creates a new lexeme

• happy -> happiness (Adjective -> noun)

Collogations = words that frequently occur together (native speakers expect these combinations)

• make the bed

• do homework

• blonde hair

Colligations = words that regularly appear with a grammatical pattern (focus is on the grammar around the word)

• depend on

• good at

• run to

Prescriptive = tells people how they should speak

• right/wrong

• e.g.: never split an infinitive

Descriptive = describes how people actually use language

• formal/informal

• appropriate/inappropriate

• Linguists usually prefer this approach

• Introspection = “How would I say it?”

  • Researcher examines their own language use

• Elicitation = “How would you say it?”

  • Ask speakers directly

• Corpora = “How do people generally say it?”

  • Study huge collections of real language data

communicative competence = knowing a language means more than grammar

• What is grammatical? —> She likes coffee

• What is possible? —> Humans have memory limits - very ling sentences become impossible to process

• What is appropriate? —> who am I speaking to?

• What do people actually use? —> real communication matters

Grammaticalisation = a process where a normal content word gradually becomes a grammatical word or grammatical marker over time

Example: “going to”

1. movement word -> I’m going to the mall (physical movement)

2. intention -> I’m going to buy milk (still movement, but also future action)

3. future meaning -> You are going to love this movie (no movement, future prediction)

Concrete meaning —> Less conrete meaning —> Grammatical function

Languages and words have different variations...

• Historical variation — language changes over time

• Regional variation (dialects, accents)

• Social variation (age, gender, sociolects)

• Stylistic variation (formal, informal) — depends on context

Sentence —> Clause —> Phrase —> Word —> Morpheme

• Sentence = complete unit, can contain one or more clauses

• Clause = built around a verb, usually contains a subject and predicate

  • independent clause = Alice laughed

  • dependent = because Alice laughed

• Phrase = a group of words around a head (most important word in a phrase)

• Word = Smallest unit of syntax (e.g. dog, run, beautiful)

  • content words: carry lexical meaning

  • function words: carry grammatical meaning

• Morpheme = smallest meaningful unit (e.g. cats -> cat + s)

A constituent is a group of words that behaves as one unit

• “The old man ate his broccoli.”

  • “The old man” acts as one constituent

constituents are represented by using square brackets or tree diagrams

1. Substitution Test

• Replace words with a pronoun

• The old man ate broccoli —> He ate broccoli

  • If replacement works, it is probably a constituent

1. Question Test

• Ask a question

• What did the old man eat? —> His broccoli

  • If it can answer the question, it is probably a constituent

1. Movement Test

• Move the words

• The old man ate his broccoli —> It was his broccoli that the old man ate

  • Ir movement works, it is probably a constituent

Parsing = identifying grammatical structure

“The cat chased the mouse”

You identify: NP, VP, subject, object

Lexical ambiguity = one word has multiple meanings

• bank

  • river bank

  • money bank

Structural ambiguity = different sentence structures create different meanings

• Sherlock saw the man using binoculars

  • Sherlock used binoculars

  • The man used binoculars

Open classes = new words can easily be added

• Nouns

• Verbs

• Adjectives

• Adverbs

—> selfie, google (verb)

Closed classes = rarely get new members

• Pronouns

• Prepositions

• Determiners

• Conjunctions

• Auxiliary verbs

1. Semantic Criteria (Meaning)

• Nouns = people, places, things

• Verbs = actions, events, states

• Adjectives = qualities

• Adverbs = manner, degree, frequency

• Prepositions = relationships (place, time, etc.)

—> sometimes meanings don’t fit perfectly (destruction refers to an action, but is a noun, the verb would be destroy)

1. Morphological Criteria (Word Form)

• What endings can this word take?

• Nouns often take:

  • plural -s

  • derivational endings like:

    • -ness

    • -tion

    • -ment

• Verbs often take:

  • -ed

  • -ing

• Adjectives often take:

  • -er and -est

1. Syntactic Criteria (Sentence Position)

• Where can the word appear in a sentence?

• Adjectives usually before nouns

• Determiners before adjectives

• Drepositions before noun phrases

Syntactic Category —> What kind of word or phrase is this?

• Noun = dog

• Verb = eat

• Adjective = happy

Syntactic Function —> What job does that word or phrase perform in this sentence?

• Subject

• Predicate

• Direct Object

• Adjunct

Alice likes chocolate.

• Categories

  • Alice = Noun Phrase

  • likes = Verb

  • chocolate = Noun Phrase

• Functions

  • Alice = Subject

  • likes = Predicator

  • chocolate = direct object

Every sentence usually has a subject (who/what the sentence is about) and a predicate (everything that says something about the subject

Alice ate the cake.

Subject: Alice

Predicate: ate the cake

1. doer of the action —> The dog chased the cat (dog = S)

2. Usually first position —> In English, word order is very important

3. Usually a noun phrase

• The old man

• My friend

• Those students

1. Question Formation

• Subject swaps with auxiliary

• The dog is sleeping —> Is the dog sleeping?

• Helps identify the subject

  
  

Predicate = everything said about subject

Pedicator = the main verb

• Alice ate the cake —> ate

Direct Object (Od) = receives the action

• Alice ate the cake —> the cake

• Ask: What did Alice eat?

Indirect Object (Oi) = receives something

• Alice gave Bob a book —> Bob

• Od —> a book

Subject Complement (SC) = gives information about the subject

• usually follows linking verbs (be, seem, feel, appear)

• Alice is clever —> clever (describes Alice)

Object Complement (OC) = gives information about the object

• They called Alice clever —> clever (object = Alice)

• Describes the object, not the subject

• Intransitive = no object

  • He laughed

  • S + V

• Monotransitive = one object

  • She opened the door

  • S + V + Od

• Ditransitive = two objects

  • She gave him a gift

  • S + V + Oi + Od

• Copulative = subject complement required

  • She is happy

  • S + V + SC

• Complex-Transitive = object + object complement

  • They called him a fool

  • S + V + Od + OC

• Prepositional Complements = a prepositional phrase that is required by the verb

  • verb and preposition belong together

  • “I depend on my parents”

    • Subject = I

    • Verb = depend

    • Prepositional Complement = on my parents

  • How to recognize them: does the verb normally require a particular preposition? —> PP completes the verbs meaning

• Adjuncts = optional information

  • She sang beautifully —> beautifully = optional, sentence still works without it

• Obligatory Adjuncts

  • Normally, adjuncts are optional

  • Alice sang (beautifully).

  • Some verbs need information about place, direction, or position

    • Alice put the book on the table (can’t remove the PP, otherwise it would be an incomplete sentence)

  • Why obligatory adjuncts? -> they look like adjuncts (usually PP) but are required

• Clause Complements = sometimes a verb is completed by an entire clause

  • To-Infinitive Complements

    • I want to leave

  • -ing Clause Complements

    • She enjoys reading

  • That-Clause Complements

    • I think that she is right

  • Wh-Clause Complements

    • I know what you did

    
    

A phrase is a group of words built around a head

• The head determines:

  • What kind of phrase it is

  • how the phrase behaves grammatically

  • “the very old house” —> hesd = house —> Noun Phrase (NP)

• General phrase structure

  • Pre-head dependent(s) + Head + Post-head dependent(s)

  • “The very old house on the hill”

    • the, very old = Pre-head dependents

    • house = Head

    • on the hill = Post-head dependent

1. Noun Phrase (NP)

• head = noun

• NP structure: Determiner + Adjective(s) + Noun + Postmodifier

  “The beautiful old house on the hill” — the = determiner, beautiful old = adjectives, house = head noun, on the hill = postmodifier

• NPs can function as: Subject, Direct Object, Indirect Object, Subject Complement, Object Complement, Object of a Preposition

1. Verb Phrase (VP)

• Head = lexical verb (can contain auxiliaries, lexical verb)

  • might have been eating — might = modal auxiliary, have = perfect auxiliary, been = progressive auxiliary, eating = lexical verb

• The predicator of a clause is realized by a VP:

  • Alice has been reading

    • VP = has been reading

    • Predicator = the whole VP

1. Adjective Phrase (AdjP)

• Head = adjective

• AdjP structure: Pre-head modifier + Adjective + Postmodifier

  • very proud of her son — very = modifer, proud = head, of her son = postmodifier

• Functions: AdjP often function as

  • attributives (before noun) — a happy child

  • redicates (after linking verbs) — The child is happy

1. Adverb Phrase (AdvP)

• Head = adverb

• AdvP structure: modifier + Adverb

  • extremely quickly

• Functions: Adverb phrases modify

  • verbs

  • adjectives

  • other adverbs

  • whole sentences

1. Prepositional Phrase (PP)

• Head= preposition

• PP Structure: Preposition + Complement

  • in the garden; under the table; after lunch

• Functions:

  • Adjunct — We met in the garden

  • Modifier — the girl in the garden

  • Complement — rely on your friends

A phrase contains:

• Head = most important element

• Dependents = elements that modify or complete the head

Example: “The very old house”

Head = house

Dependents = the, very, old

Endocentric phrase = Phrase behaves like its hear

“the old house” — The whole phrase behaves like a noun

—> Most phrases are endocentric

Exocentric phrase = Phrase behaves differently from its parts

“in the house” — head = in; whole phrase PP but not equivalent to the preposition alone

—> PPs are traditionally analyzed as exocentric

Valency counts:

• obligatory arguments, not just objects

• Monovalent: sleep (needs subject only)

• Divalent: meet (needs subject + objects)

• Trivalent: give (needs subject + indirect object + direct object)

Transitivity counts complements

Valency counts all required arguments, including subject

• Proper nouns

  • Capitlized

  • places and people

• Common nouns

  • Count (singular + plural) vs. mass/non-count nouns (no a/an, no plural)

• Invariably singular:

  • concepts/ideas (“information”, “advice”);

  • words looking plural but aren’t (“news”, “linguistics”)

• Summation plurals:

  • “clothes”, “trousers” (always plural)

• Pluralia tantum:

  • “damages”, “brains” (plural ≠ singular meaning)

• Zero plural:

  • “police” (same form)

• Collective nouns:

  • “team”, “committee” — can take singular or plural verb

• Personal:

  • I/me, we/us, he/him,…

  • Anaphoric (refers back) or cataphoric (refers forward)

• Possessive

  • Strong: mine, yours

  • Weak: my, your

  • Weak possessives before nouns = determiners!

• Reflexive

  • myself, herself

  • Subject and object are same entity

• Reciprocal

  • each other, one another

  • Meaning applies mutually to 2+ people

• Demonstrative

  • this, that, these, those

  • Before a noun -> determiner

  • Standalone -> pronoun

• Interrogative

  • who, whom, whose, which, what

  • Used to ask questions

• Relative

  • that, which, who, whom, whose

  • Relate to previously mentioned noun; inside a relative clause

• Indefinite

  • any, some, each, every, none

  • Indefinite reference — not identifiable to addressee

Pre-head dependents + head + post-head dependents

• 
  

  POSITION	WHAT GOES HERE	EXAMPLE
  Pre-head determiners	Predeterminer (all, both) Central det. (the, this, my) Postdeterminer (cardinal numbers, many)	all my many friends
  Pre-head modifiers	Adjectives in order: General -> Size -> Age -> Color -> Class 1 -> Origin -> Origin 2	odd small old dark brick church
  Head	Noun (or pronoun)
  Post-head complement	Completes meaning; close semantic link to head; limited head	interest in sports
  Post-head modifier	Restricts meaning; many heads possible, can be left out	students in the classroom
  Post-head peripheral dependent	Extra info; comma-separated; appositions or non-restrictive clauses	my sister, who works at the shop

• Restrictive (defining)

  • Function: modifier

  • No commas

  • “that” and zero relative allowes

  • Necessary info

  • “The man who lives beside us is ill.”

• Non-restrictive (non-defining)

  • Function: peripheral dependent

  • Commas!

  • No “that” or zero relative

  • Extra info

  • “The man, who lives beside us, is ill".”

• Zero relative:

  • relative pronoun omitted — “The video you recommended”

  • reduced relative: no pronoun + nonfinite verb — “The man living beside us”

• Sentential relative: related to a whole sentence — “The party was a success, which is amazing”

Auxiliaries occur in fixed order before main verb:

modal -> perfect (have) -> progressive (be) -> passive (be) -> main verb

“I may have been working.” / “I should be working”

Aspect refers to how a situation unfolds over time, rather than to

its actual location in time. 3 examples as an overview:

He fell in love -> simple past tense

He has fallen in love -> perfect aspect

He is falling in love -> progressive aspect

He has been falling in love -> perfect progressive aspect

• Duration:

  • lengthens time for activities/accomplishments

• Limited duration:

  • shortens time for state verbs (signals temporality)

• Not necessarily complete

  • especially with transitional verbs (die, stop, drown)

Verbs incompatible with progressive:

• State verbs of having/being (*I am being human — but I am having a bath, OK - dynamic)

• Verbs of inert cognition: believe, forget, think, know

• Verbs of attitude: prefer, refuse

• Verbs of inert perception: fear, hear, smell, taste (but I am tasting the soup = OK)

Ellipsis:

• Main verb omitted in response.

• “Can you sing?” — “Yes, i can.”

• Auxiliary appears to stand alone but the main verb is ellipted

Semi-auxiliaries:

• Multi-word auxiliary verbs: “be going to”, “be about to”, “have to”, “used to”, “be supposed to”

• Tense = grammatical expression of time — realized by verb inflection.

  • English has only 2 tenses:

    • past & present

    • No future “tense” (no inflection)

• Time = semantic category

  • past, present, future

Past tense also expresses distance:

• Temporal: “They talked about grammar yesterday.”

• Social: “I wanted to ask if you could help me.” (polite)

• Hypothetical: “If I had a garden, I would get a dog.”

• Present simple

  • habits, generalizatioins, instructions

  • Infinitive + -(e)s

• Present progressive

  • happening now; fixed plans

  • to be + -ing

• Past simple

  • Finished action in the past

  • Infinitive + -ed

• Past progressive

  • Ongoing in past; interrupted action; emphasizes duration

  • was/were + -ing

• Past perfect

  • Ended before a specific past point

  • had + -ed

• Past perfect progressive

  • Ongoing over time before another past event

  • had + been + -ing

• Present perfect

  • Past with connection to present (continuatice, indefinite, resultative, repetitive)

  • has/have + -ed

• Present perfect progressive

  • Started in past, just stopped or still ongoing

  • has/have + been + -ing

• Continuatice

  • Started in past, still true

  • “Jess has lived here for 3 months.”

• Indefinite

  • Action ended before now; exact time unspecified

  • “I have been to China.”

• Resultative

  • Present result of past event (transitional verbs)

  • “Winston has passed this test.”

• The speaker’s attitude towards the factual content expressed by the main verb/sentence.

• A semantic concept.

• Modal sentences don’t represent situations as facts, but as possible, probable, necessary, etc.

• Modal auxiliaries

  • can, could, will, would, shall, should, may, might, must, ought

• Stance adverbials

  • apparently, unfortunately, as one might expect,…

• Stance subordinate clauses

  • “it seems to…”, “I hope that…”, “there is a chance that”

• Central (core) modals — one word

  • can/could, must, will/would, may/might, shall/should

  • Not inflected in 3rd person (no -s)

  • Followed by bare infinitve (no “to”)

  • Have a past form (except “must”)

  • Subject-auxiliary inversion for questions

  • Can express politeness/remoteness

• Peripheral (marginal) modals — multiple words

  • be able to, be allowed to, have to, ought to, dare to, need to, be supposed to…

  • Behavior can switch between lexical verb and auxiliary verb

• Epistemic

  • personal beliefs, possibilities, deductions

  • possibility, necessity, probability, prediction

  • “He may be ill.” - possibility

• Deontic/root

  • Obligation and permission

  • permission, obligation, volition/willingness

  • “You can come” - permission

  • “You must come.” - obligation

• Dynamic/subject-oriented

  • description of the subject (ability, etc.), less frequent

  • “Jack can run faster than anyone.” - ability

• must vs. have to

  • must = speaker’s personal feelings

  • have to = impersonal rule/obligation

• ought to vs. should

  • ought to = general beliefs (stressed)

  • should = speaker’s opinion of what’s best for (unstressed)

• shall vs. will

  • shall = formal alternative for 1st person; offer of service; firmal obligation/prohibition

• will vs. would

  • would = typical behavior in past OR tentative/hypothetical meaning

• used to vs. would

  • used to = finished habits in past

  • would = similar but also hypothetical

Another way to express modality (necessity/obligation)

—> Requires: a “trigger” verb (suggest, insist, demand, recommend) + a base form verb (unconjucated)

“I demand (that) he leave immediately.” — not leaves

• Attributive

  • before the noun

  • “The bad husband”

• Predicative

  • after a copular verb

  • The husband is bad

• Postpositive

  • after the noun

  • The attorney general

• Inflectional

  • 1-syllable adjectives

  • strong - stronger - strongest

• Periphrastic

  • 3+ syllables

  • interesting - more interesting - most interesting

• Mixed

  • 2-syllable adjectives

  • gentle - gentler or more gentle

5 criteria for prototypical adjective

• Predicative use

• Attributive use

• Gradeability

• Comparative/Superlative

• Adverb formation

—> The more criteria fit, the more prototypically adjectival

• Circumstantial

  • describes circumstances of a situation

  • “They are carefully driving home”

• Degree

  • introduces a gradient to an adjective

  • “The weather was extremely cold”

• Sentence adverb

  • modifies the entire sentence

  • “However…”

Structure:

• preposition + complement (typically an NP)

• Exocentric - the preposition is not the same as the whole phrase

Stranded preposition

• preposition is not followed by an NP (object comes before)

• “This is the film John talked about.”

Key tests:

• Can you front it? —> preposition yes, particle no

• Can you reorder it with NP object? —> particle yes, preposition no

• Present participle

  • Funcions as a verb in progressive tenses/participal phrases

  • “She is writing a letter.”

  • “Running down the street, he spotted his his friend.”

• Gerund

  • Functions as a noun (subject, object, object of preposition")

  • “Swimming is her favourite activity.”

  • She enjoys reading.”

• Simple

  • 1 independent clause

  • “She walks to the park.”

• Compund

  • 2+ independent clauses joined by coordinator (and/but/or) or semicolon.

  • “She walks, and he rides.”

• Complex

  • 1 independent & 1+ dependent clause (subordinator or relative pronoun)

  • “Although it’s raining, she walks.”

• Compound-complex

  • Both coordinator and subordinator

  • “I was cooking and Maria was working, while Thomas wrote.”

Noun clauses

• Introduced by: that, who/m, what, whether, when, where, how, why, which-ever

Adverbial clauses

• Function as adverbs

• provide info about manner, time, place, reason, or condition

• often begin with subordinating conjunctions (because, although, while, since, if, unless…).

• “[Although it was cold], she went for a swim.”

• Zero Conditional

  • Truths, habits, facts

  • If + present simple / present simple

  • “If I get sich, I go to the doctor.”

• First Conditional

  • Possible/likely future — predictive

  • If + present simple / will + infinitive

  • “If I get sick, I will go to the doctor.”

• Second Conditional

  • Hypothetical present — unreal

  • If + past simple / would + infinitive

  • “If I got sick, I would go to the doctor.”

• Third Conditional

  • Counterfactual past — unreal

  • If + past perfect / would have + past perfect

  • “If I had been sick, I would have gone to the doctor.”

Subordinate clause = protasis/antecedent (expresses condition)

Main clause = apodosis/consequent (expresses consequence)

• Present participle (-ing)/gerund

  • -ing form

  • “I love reading.”/“Eating ice cream makes me happy.”

• Past participle (-ed)

  • -ed form

  • “Having finished his work, he went home.”

• Infinitive

  • to + verb

  • “I want to become a lawyer

• Dangling non-finite clause

  • The non-finite clause doesn’t share its subject with the main clause — logically unrelated.

  • “Walking down the street, the trees looked beautiful.” (trees aren’t walking) —> “Walking down the street, I thought the trees looked beautiful.”

• Catenative verbs

  • Verbs that require another verb afterwards — forming a chain

  • “She wants to help make the yearbook.”

• To-infinitive vs. -ing

  • Some verbs take only to-infinitive: decide, ask, happen

  • Some take only -ing: consiger, finish, admit

  • Some take both with meaning difference:

    • “She stopped dancing/to dance.”

  • Some take both with no meaning difference:

    • “She started talking/to talk.”

• -ing

  • “Martin saw her talking to her supervisor.” —> action not necessarily finished; Martin saw them while it was happening

  • “I heard Lisa shouting my name.” —> repeated action

• bare infinitive

  • “Martin saw her talk to her supervisor.” —> finished action; Martin witnessed the whole event

  • “I heard Lisa shout my name.” —> singular action

Standard (unmarked) English word order:

SVOCA — Subject - Verb - Object - Complement - Adjunct

—> also called “canonical” word order. Adjuncts are flexible: can go at the end, beginning, or before a lexical verb

• Cohesion

  • Grammatical and lexical devices linking sentences/paragraphs within a text

  • Textual level, text-internal

  • Formal links: pronouns, coordinators, …

• Coherence

  • Overall unity, clarity, and logical structure of a text

  • Meaning-level, text-external

  • Logical connections between ideas

• End-focus

  • New/important information placed at the end of a sentence (given-before-new principle)

  • “I saw a beautiful bird in the garden yesterday.”

• End-weight

  • Heavier/more complex constituents appear towards the end —> avoids long subject (light subject constraint).

  • “After finishing her homework, the student went to bed early instead of watching TV.”

• Theme-Rheme

  • Theme = given/known info -> ideally at beginning

  • Rheme = new/focused info -> ideally at end

  • “John Green wrote The Fault in Out Stars.” (text about John Green)

Thematic progression

• Using the comment of one sentence as the topic of the next

• Keeping the same topic across several sentences (pronoun reference).

• “Short” passive

  • Agent omitted; object of active = subject of passive

  • “The book was read”

• “Long” passive

  • Agent included with “by”

  • “The book was read by her.”

• Ditransitive passive

  • Direct or indirect object in subject position

  • “She was given a gift by him.”

• Prepositional passive

  • PP complement becomes subject; preposition at end

  • “The matter is being looked into.”

• “Get” passive

  • “get” instead of “be”

  • “She got her hair cut.”

• Omission of agent — irrelevant/obvious; focus on process not doer

• Distribution of information — allows end-focus, end-weight, theme-rheme

• Topic-comment — maintain topic across sentences

• Avoidance of personal pronoun — more impersonal/formal

• Allocation of semantic roles — agent and patient switched