Grammaire

Introduction

              Languages are systems; that is, they are characterized by purposeful regularity. As little children, we acquire language over time by constructing rules from data supplied by the speakers around us. Nobody teaches us rules; we arrive at them ourselves. The amazing thing is that we all construct the same rules. This collection of rules is itself the system that underlies the language; (the grammar of the language). By the time that children start to school, they have become adapt at using the language, often creating grammatically complex sentences with no formal instruction. They know the rules of the language (that is, they know how to use the rule), but they are incapable of explaining how they do and what they do. Consequently, this grammar book primarily came as a response to explain and justify the teaching and learning the grammatical categories and usage throughout both intermediate and advanced levels.

             In traditional grammar, words are the basic units of sentence. Grammarians classify words according to their parts of speech and identify and list the forms that words can show up in different sentences. Although the matter is really very com­plex, for the sake of simplicity we will begin with the assumption that we are all generally able to distinguish words from other linguistic units. It will be sufficient for our initial purposes if we assume that words are the main units used for entries in dictionaries. In the subsequent units, we will describe some of their distinctive characteristics of words under the file Parts of Speech.

Definition of Grammar

         In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the compositions of clauses, phrases and words in any given natural language. Dictionaries define grammar as the rules and explanations which deal with the forms and structures of words (morphology), their arrangement in phrases and sentences (syntax), and their classification based on their function (parts of speech).

Like many dictionary definitions, this makes the term grammar in a broad sense means the system and structure of a language. The rules of grammar help us decide the order we put and change words and in which forms of a word to use. Grammar in a strict sense can be defined as “the rules by which words change their forms and are combined into sentences, the study and use of these rules”. “Flaguni Desai,” According to this definition, there are two basic elements;

        The rules of grammar, as the above definition suggest, are about how words change and how they are put or arranged together into sentences. Grammar, then, is the way in which words change in form and group together in order to make correct sentences. Grammar of any language is about how words change or modify their forms in order to construct a correct use of them in terms of both form and meaning. So English is not just a collection of words but it is about the ways words are put together to form sentences.

Syntax	Morphology	Parts of Speech
The arrangement of words in phrases and sentences. Syntax is about the structure, patterns and relationship of words, phrases and clauses. Syntax attempts to uncover the underlying principles, or rules for constructing well-formed sentences.	It studies word structures, especially morphemes, which are the smallest units of language. They can be base words or components that form words, such as affixes. A morpheme is a distinct linguistic form which is not divisible or analyzable into its constituents or smaller forms/units.	There are eight parts of speech in the English language. They indicates how the word functions in meaning as well as grammatically within the sentence.  Understanding parts of speech is essential for determining the correct definition of any word.

 

           There are plenty of changes and modifications that can occur to English words when they are arranged into sentences in order to use them in a correct, meaningful and functional way. Among the different grammatical patterns that are available in English with their possible changes are:

§  The affirmative form: “subject + verb + object”

§  The negative form: “subject + do + not + verb + object”

§  The plural meaning: “noun + s”

§  The making of questions: verb+ subject + object + question mark”

§  The making of negative questions…

§  The particular word order of joining two clauses to make one sentence: “first clause + connector + second clause”

§  The description of dead actions,

§  The description of completed actions: “subject + have or has + past participle,

§  The description of actions in progress,

§  The description of the states, action, and so on through statue and action verbs,

§  The use of passive and active voice,

§  The description of definite and indefinite objects,

§  The direct and indirect speech,

§  The description of real actions through conditional statement,

§  The description of unreal actions through conditional statement,

§  The expression of ability, possibility, ……through appropriate modals,

§  The descriptions of obligation, absence of obligation,

§   The division of English words into Eight parts of speech,

§  The multiple available combinations of the parts of speech,

§  …………………………………………………………and so on

Reminder Grammar is often defined as the system and structure of a language which help us to decide the order we put words in and which form of a word to use, but it is also useful to think of it as a resource for expressing meaning. For example, when we talk of someone ‘knowing’ the Present Perfect in English, we mean that they know how to form it (by combining the auxiliary verb have with the past participle of the relevant main verb), but more importantly in which situations it is used and which meanings it can convey. Thinking of grammar as primarily ‘rules’ tends to make people think that there is a one-to-one relationship between grammar and meaning. ‘Grammar is the way that words make sense. It is a code or set of rules accepted by any community who share a language.’

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. Grammar and Vocabulary

         Before learning a language, what learners must understand is the vocabulary of the target language as well as the types. This is because words give us a significant idea in our ability to speak a target language. A language researcher one said, “Without grammar, one may still be able to communicate, but without vocabulary, there will be no communication that can take place.” Based on that knowledge, you should then know that Parts of Speech are the categorization of words. Learning about the parts of speech is the first step in grammar study just as learning the letters of the alphabet is the first step to being able to read and write. From learning the parts of speech, we begin to understand the use or function of words and how words are joined together to make meaningful communication. Communication generally means putting words together to express your thoughts in context. Before you can put words together effectively, you must comprehend basic language concepts. This book emphasizes an understanding of key grammatical concepts over the memorization of individual words.

        Grammar is essential for learning, comprehending and producing a language. The development can be described as a child’s ability to move from using single words to combining word structures and sequences based on a set of rules of a given language to create grammatically correct sentences.

1. Parts of Speech

           Although English has hundreds of thousands of words, every words can be placed into at least one of eight groups, or classifications. The system of classifying words based on their function in a sentence. In this respect, all English words perform different functions in a sentence. They convey different meanings as per their position in the sentence. Based on their use and functions, words are categorized into several types under what is known as the parts of speech. The eight parts of speech are as follows:

The Main Eight Parts of Speech are the labels in English terminology-: 1.     Nouns 2.     Pronouns 3.     Verbs 4.     Adjectives 5.     Adverbs 6.     Prepositions 7.     Conjunctions 8.     Interjections Every word in the English language acts as one of these parts of speech when in a sentence not in isolation.

 

Parts of speech are sentence elements that work together to make up a sentence. Just as a car is not a functioning car without all of its synchronized parts working together, a sentence is similar to car, is not a functioning sentence without the correct usage and combination of its essential parts of speech. The only difference between the car and the sentence is that not all basic sentence parts –or parts of speech- have to be all included to make up a complete, correct, meaningful and functioning sentence, but its parts do have to work together accurately for a writer or a speaker to convey his or her intended ideas. So the speaker must be selective when he or she intends to produce a correct, meaningful and functional sentence.

           Learning about the parts of speech is the first step in grammar study just as learning the letters of the alphabet is the first step to being able to read and write. From learning the parts of speech, we begin to understand the use or function of words and how words are joined together to make meaningful communication. (Suswati, 2009: 2). Consequently, knowledge about the eight parts of speech helps students understand the grammar explanations of words and help learners to develop the working vocabulary necessary to study and use the language. Because some words can be used in several different ways, you have to look at what a word is doing in a specific sentence before you can classify it (name its part of speech).so the learners especially need to recognize the parts of speech in the context of the sentence “not in a separate or isolation way”. That’s because many words function in more than one part of speech. Only by analyzing the word in relation to its neighboring words in a sentence you can see how a given word functions. In short, the eight parts of speech are recognized and used to classify thousands of English language words. Consequently, parts of speech represent large amount of information they give a bout a word and its neighbors. See the examples below:

Ø Our mail is late today. “Noun-serves as subject of sentence”.

Ø This pile of mail must be derived today. “Noun-serves as object of preposition”.

Ø Mail the letter today. “Verb-serves as action word in sentence”.

Ø Your voice mail box is full. “Adjective-used with voice to describe box, which the subject of sentence”.

 

Ø Select yes on the ballot. “noun”

Ø Cast a yes vote. “adjective”

Ø He voted yes. “adverb”

Ø Yes! “interjection”

 

Ø My love gave me a ring. (The word “ring” is a noun.)

Ø I will ring the doorbell. (The word “ring” is a verb.)

Ø Have you a ring holder? (The word “ring” is an adjective.)

Reminder: One Word = Multiple Classes One word may belong to more than one class “several different ways”. In most instances, we can only assign a word to a word class when we encounter it in context. Consequently, students have to look at what a word is doing in a specific sentence before you can classify it (name its part of speech). For example, look at these sentences. ·        He ran fast so he wouldn’t be late for his classes. (describes how he ran...adverb) ·        They will fast to raise money for the charity organization. (tells about an action...verb) ·        Their fast lasted for whole one month. (names a thing...noun) §  It is worth to mention that the word “fast” is spelled the same way, but it functions differently in each sentence. Academic Studies, 1998 For one thing, we cannot study a word’s functions without viewing it in a larger setting.

 

2. Word Class Formation

       Class formation in all languages refers to a word class is a set of words that display the same formal properties, especially their inflections and distribution. In English grammar, the term "word class" is similar to the more traditional term, part of speech which can be divided into two broad sub-categories: major word-lasses and minor word-classes. Broadly speaking, the basic division of the parts of speech includes two broad sections; the content “lexical words” and functional “grammatical words” while the strict division of the parts of speech includes the following eight parts: nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections. See the table below for more details.

2. 1. Content Word

         There are four major open classes that occur in the languages of the world; nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs which carry the content of the speakers message, both spoken and written. For this reason, they are referred to as the content words of the language. It turns out that English has all four of these, although not every language does. They are generally called open class words since “they accept and add new members in principle by borrowing or inventing words” and large “comprising hundreds or thousands of words”, and content words tend to have a specific, concrete meaning. They tend to be fairly long “often disyllabic or longer”, and their text is frequency is fairly low. By contrast major class like nouns and verbs are open classes because new nouns and verbs are continually coined or borrowed from other languages. See the table below for more details.       

 

Important Note Since the English inflections are applied to nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs, we can assign a word to one of these four open classes if it can take the inflections characteristics of that particular class. Because no language is completely regular including English, we will find some words that can fit into more than one class, and we will discover that some words belong to one of these four classes although they do not take the inflections characteristics of that class. For a word that does not accept the inflections of a certain class, we can still assign it to that class based upon other characteristics that it shares with the members of the class, such as its position in a phrase or sentence, the function words which accompany it, and how it functions in the larger unit of which it is a part.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. 2. Functional Words

       In linguistics, function word (also called functor) is a word that expresses a grammatical or structural relationship with other words in a They signal the structural relationships that words have to one another and are the glue that holds sentences together. Function words are also called grammatical words that have little lexical meaning or have ambiguous meaning, but instead serve to express grammatical relationships with other words within a sentence. Function words are closed-class words. Languages do not easily add new words to this set. They are always relatively few and resistant to change. They are lexically unproductive and are generally invariable in form. Thus they form important elements in the structures of sentences. In traditional grammatical technology, both these form words and function words are known as Parts of Speech.

         By contrast to content words,  functional  word are generally closed and small, and function words tend to have abstract, general meaning “or have no or very little lexical meaning at all, but they have only a grammatical function and express various grammatical relations in specific constructions”. In short, pronouns, prepositions and conjunctions are called function words because they are used to avoid repetition of content words or to connect them to other words in a sentence.

           Closed words are also generally function words like of, it, and, or you, which tend to be very short, occur frequently, and function words often have structuring uses in grammar. They tend to be quite short “rarely longer than a syllable”, and their text frequency is high. Minor or closed classes are those that have relatively fixed open class membership. For example, prepositions are a closed class because there is a fixed set of them in English; new prepositions are rarely coined. It should be noted that since functional classes words are relatively few and closed, students have simply to memorize lists of them. “International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences” See the table below for more details.        

Major Word-classes	Minor Word-classes
Content, Lexical, or Open Words	Functional, Grammatical or Close Words
·        Nouns: Algiers, Stephan, London, freedom ………………………….. ·        Min Verbs: visit, go, travel, take, see, agree ………………………… ·        Adjectives: red, old, young, blue, beautiful, good, bad …………… ·        Adverbs: fast, always, slowly, seldom, quickly …………………..	·        Prepositions: on, under, over, near, by, at, from, to, with ·        Determiners: a, an, the ·        Pronouns: she, who, I, others ·        Conjunctions: and, but, or, as, if, when ·        Auxiliary verbs: can, may, should, are ·        Particles: up, down, on, off, in, out, at, by, ·        numerals: one, two, three, first, second, third

 

·        Note 1: Ø All English words are classed into eight categories according to their uses in a sentence in different contexts. Ø In developing a working notion of what a particular part of speech is, it is crucial to realize that a particular word is not a noun, or adjective. In a very real sense, a word only has a part of speech when it is used in a sentence or phrase. If one were to ask what part of speech the word “fast” is, it is very hard to answer without knowing how it is used “this refers to its place in a sentence and function”. See the examples below ·        In the fast runner. “It is an adjective.” ·        He runs fast. “It is an adverb.” ·        I fast during Ramadan. “It is a verb word.” Ø A complete sentence is a group of words that expresses a complete thought and idea. In case the idea is not complete, this piece of writing is called a clause instead of a sentence.