Curs Gramatica

8/3/2019 Curs Gramatica

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Lesson 1Chapter 1

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Transcript:

Hello. You know it's sad but true that grammar is often misunderstood. But because weteachers teach something as we understand it, naturally it's very important that weunderstand grammar. In this lesson and this course, we'll see that grammar is actuallyan incredibly rich system for making meaning in a language. We'll begin this lesson byconsidering seven definitions of grammar, all of which I'll draw on later in this course.We'll also see that grammar consists of both patterns and rules. And we'll talk about whysecond language learners benefit from appropriate teaching of patterns and rules thatthey receive in the classroom. Grammar and its teaching are important. By the end ofthis lesson, you'll see why!

Introduction

Welcome to this courseTeaching Grammar for ESL/EFL! My name is Diane Larsen-Freeman,and I'll be your instructor. I am very pleased to be teaching this course because it combines twosubjects that are important to megrammar and teaching ESL/EFL students.

Grammar is a subject that many people misunderstand, and that's something we should all beconcerned about because if we don't see fully how grammar contributes to communication, thenour students won't either. When students misunderstand grammar, they'll often develop anegative attitude toward studyinggrammar.

Most people have strong feelings about grammar. Many fear it, some love it, but few are neutral.Those who fear it might be concerned that they don't know all the grammar rules that they thinkthey should know. Many have never studied grammar seriously before and are afraid this willmake them appear ignorant in front of their peers. Others might have memories of homeworkassignments returned with an overwhelming number of red marks highlighting their grammaticalmistakes.

Others study grammar enthusiastically because they think they need to understand it to besuccessful second language learners. Knowing grammar rules makes some students feel secure.
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They think that once they master the rules, they'll know what is correct and what isn't. Others maythink of grammar simply as the ordeal they have to go through in order to communicate effectivelyin another language.

While all these feelings are quite understandable, one of my goals for this course is todemonstrate that while grammar is necessary to learn, mastering it doesn't have to be such a

struggle. In fact, studying grammar can be enjoyable. While it's not our job as teachers toentertain our students, it is important to engage them. If students are bored while they're studyinggrammar, they'll have a difficult time learning. On the other hand, when they're engaged, learningis easier. This course will help you create engaging grammar lessons.

Before we get too far along, let me tell you a little bit about myself. I have spent many yearsteaching English to ESL/EFL students, working with ESL/EFL teachers, and thinking about andwriting books on English grammar and its teaching.

What I hope to do in this course is to challenge the way you think about grammar as youexperience its contribution to communication for yourself. You might believe that grammar is a setof unchanging rules about structure, but you'll soon see that it's actually much more flexible anddynamic than that. It's also a rich resource for creating context and meaning in communication. In

other words, learning grammar is essential for effective communication.

In this first lesson, we'll begin to examine the nature of grammar by going over seven commondefinitions of the word grammar, all of which I'll draw on later in this course. This will help usarrive at a broad view of grammar that we can use throughout the course. We'll also discuss whyteaching grammar is so important. By the end of this first lesson, you'll have a broadunderstanding of grammar and why we teach it.

In order to be a skillful grammar teacher, you'll also have to be the manager of your students'learning. So throughout the rest of the course, we'll look at how students learn grammar andexamine how students acquire grammatical structures as we discuss learning styles andstrategies.

Finally, we'll talk about how a broader understanding of grammar can be useful in developing anapproach to teaching. We'll look at how to create engaging activities, whether or not to usegrammatical terminology with students, and how to give them feedback when they makemistakes. There's a lot to learn, but the rewards are great. In the end, you'll see what fun teachinggrammar can be. I hope that by the end of the course, you will come to a greater appreciation ofthe power of grammar.

Let's begin. Please turn to Chapter 2.

Lesson 1Chapter 2

The Many Definitions of Grammar

It may surprise you that there are at least seven definitions of grammar that people use inlanguage teaching and learning. At one time or another, the term grammarhas been used in thefollowing ways:


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1. An internal mental grammarallows speakers of a language to understand and to create

new sentences. This is the kind of grammar that we develop as we acquire our nativelanguage.

2. Aprescriptive grammarcontains rules about what is and what isn't acceptable in any

given language. For example, a prescriptive English rule says, "Do not end a sentencewith a preposition."

3. A descriptive grammartells us how people actually use a language, not how they are

supposed to use it. You'll notice that English speakers sometimes end sentences withprepositions.

4. A linguistic grammaris a grammar associated with a particular linguistic theory. Some

linguistic grammars are more concerned with describing grammatical structures. Theseare called formal grammars. Other linguistic grammars are more concerned with the useof grammatical structures. These are called functional grammars.

5. A reference grammaris a comprehensive collection of the rules that apply to a particular

language. In other words, it is to grammar what a dictionary is to words.

6. Apedagogical grammar is usually a subset of the total number of rules, ones that have

been compiled for teaching grammar to language students. A pedagogical grammarusually draws on a number of different linguistic theories. In other words, it's eclectic.

7. A teacher's grammaris also a pedagogical grammar, but it is usually more

comprehensive and detailed than a student's pedagogical grammar.

In this course, we'll consider an approach to grammar and its teaching that relates to types 6 and

7, but we'll also incorporate what we know about types 1-5.

Note that all of these definitions explicitly mention rules. Indeed, rules are what we most oftenassociate with grammar. Can you think of other associations? How would you complete thefollowing phrase?

Grammatical _________________________

Grammatical _________________________

Grammatical__________________________

What did you think of? Did you automatically fill in the blanks with words like rules, structures,errors, drills, and exercises? Did you come up with others?

These associations aren't wrong, but they can give the misleading impression that this is all thereis to grammar. It's true that grammar is concerned with rules and structure, but those aren't theonlyconcerns. Grammar also is concerned with accuracy, but again, it's not onlyabout accuracy.Some of these associations also imply that grammar teaching has to be somewhat mechanical.But there's much more to teaching grammar than drills and exercises.


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People often associate grammar with prescriptive rules, too. Aprescriptiverule tells us how we should speak or write. For example, English speakers are told not to splitinfinitives or end sentences with prepositions. These rules influence writing more than they dospeaking, and we don't necessarily follow these rules in everyday, informal language use. In fact,many prescriptive grammar rules were created based on written texts.

There's a grammar of speaking, too. Certainly, for any given language, the rules of speaking andthe rules of writing overlap. But they aren't exactly the same. For example, speakers sometimesput certain English adverbs at the end of a sentence, where they wouldn't go in a written form ofthe sentence:

Speech: We have saved enough money almost.

Writing: We have almost saved enough money.

In this course, we'll challenge the idea that grammar consists solely of prescriptive rules thatstudents must drill in order to learn. This view limits our understanding of grammar. If ourunderstanding of grammar is limited or compromised, then our students won't get the qualityinstruction they want and deserve. We'd lose out, too, because, as you'll see, studying grammar

can be absolutely fascinatingnot boring at all!

Lesson 1Chapter 3

Grammar as Rules and Patterns

Grammar rules can help to describe the grammar of a language. You can also describe it as a setof patternssequences of words that are commonly used together.

Let's start with what first comes to mind when you hear the word grammar: grammar rules. Forexample, "subject-verb agreement" is a common rule of English grammar that most people are

familiar with. This rule is limited because it only applies to present tense verbs, and only to verbsthat have a subject that's in the third person and is singular. It also applies to the verb to be in thepresent and past tenses.

Singular Plural

First person I take We take

Second person You take You take


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Third person He, she, it takes They take

As you can see, the rule is to add an s to a third person singular present tense verb in order tohave the verb agree with its subject.

We walk to school every day, but he takes the bus.

If you don't apply this rule, you'll end up with an ungrammatical sentence. And by the way,throughout this course, I'll use an asterisk to show you when something is ungrammatical, likethis:

*We walk to school every day, but he take the bus. (incorrect)

Of course, one problem with rules is that they always have exceptions!

Even this common rule of subject-verb agreement doesn't always apply to every situation.Sometimes, a plural subject can take a singular verb. For instance, it's grammatically correct in

English to say or to write:

Ten miles is a long way to walk.

S V

At the same time, it also is grammatically correct to say or write

Ten miles are being added to the highway.

S V

Even though there are exceptions to rules, it's still important that we teach them. Once studentsunderstand (and they will soon enough!) that rules have exceptions, the rules become helpful"rules of thumb"rules that don't always apply, but that apply often enough to be useful guides.

We just talked about exceptions to rules. It's also important to understand that even if you followthe rules, you can create sentences that are grammatical, but are never used.

In the examples below, you'll recognize 1 and 2 as marriage proposals. Examples 3-6 are alsogrammatically correct, but you might not be accustomed to hearing proposals worded this way. Ifyou used one of these proposals, you might not be successful!

1. Will you marry me?2. I want to marry you.3. I wish to be wedded to you.4. I desire you to become married to me.5. Your marrying me is desired by me.6. My becoming your spouse is what I want.

All six of these sentences are grammatical, but only the first and second examples could becalled conventional. So it should be clear that, as important as grammar rules are, they aren't thewhole picture. Acceptable language isn't just grammatical, it's also conventional.


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Corpus linguistics helps us to understand conventional patterns inlanguage. Corpus linguists gather large numbers of instances ofwritten or spoken language, and then search them for language

patterns. These days, computers make discovering patterns much easier! Computersearches often reveal that a grammatical sentence has a basic form with variations. Forexample, the following three sentences are both grammatical and conventional ways of

apologizing for being late in English:

1. I'm sorry to keep you waiting.2. I'm so sorry to have kept you waiting.3. Mr. Smith is sorry to keep you waiting all this time.

A corpus linguist would look for the pattern in these three examples. The corpus linguist wouldsay that each apology begins with an apologizer, symbolized by X in the pattern below. Theapologizer is followed by some form of the verb to be. In the first two sentences, the form is am,and in the third sentence, it is is. The be verb is followed by an intensifier, such as the so insentence 2. The intensifier is optional in an apology. Notice that in sentences 1 and 3, there's nointensifier.

Next comes some form ofsorry to keep you waiting. Finally, it seems that some phrase can followwaiting. In sentence 3, for example, what follows waitingis the phrase all this time, symbolized byY. The parentheses show that the intensifier and the phrase Y are optional.

X be (intensifier) sorry to keep you waiting (Y)

The purpose of analyzing an example like this is to show how important varying patterns are tolanguage. In other words, if we stick to the idea that grammar only consists of a set of rules, we'llbe ignoring the findings from corpus linguistics that show that language is fundamentally a set ofrecurring variable patterns.

These patterns can also be fixed, where the words and their order are always the same. Fixedpatterns are often referred to as formulas. For example, you might use the following formula if you

want to tell someone that you understand what he or she is saying.

I see what you mean.

However, as we saw with the apology above, patterns don't have to be fixed. They can also varyin the words that make them up. For example, you could use the following pattern with differentwords to mean a rate or amount of something over time:

one by one, day by day, bit by bit

Of course, while most of these patterns follow the rules of grammar, not all do. Let's look at thisexample:

by and large

This fixed phrase or formula is an exception, in which the preposition byis followed by theconjunction andand the adjective large. Its word order doesn't follow any rule of English grammarwhich I am aware of (or should I say "of which I am aware?").

Another important point about grammar is that it doesn't operate just at the sentence level. You'veseen many examples of how it applies to sentences, such as the subject-verb agreement rule, but


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grammar also applies below the level of sentences by determining the order of words in thepattern day by day.

An example of how grammar operates above the level of the sentence is the rule that calls forusing a pronoun to replace the second mention of a noun phrase. This rule can operate abovethe level of the sentence, in that it can connect two or more sentences.

My sister has never loved peas. When she was little

Now that you understand that grammar comprises both rules and patterns, we can go on to seewhy teaching grammar is necessary.

Lesson 1Chapter 4

Why Teaching Grammar Is Necessary

If I seem to be making grammar more complicated than you thought, you might understand whysome researchers argue that we shouldn't even teach students grammar. They say that grammaris too complex and that even if we give students the rules, they won't be able to apply them in realtime.

Some suggest that it's better to teach a second language similar to the way that people acquirefirst languages. They say that teachers should create situations where the meaning is clear tostudents and then the students will figure out the rules on their ownimplicitlyjust as childrendo when learning their native language.

Let me highlight the problems with this position.

Critical period: First of all, research in second language acquisition suggests that there's acritical period for learning a language. It begins at birth. After it ends, usually around puberty,

students experience limitations when learning another language. Such limitations are oftenapparent in the accents that people have when speaking a second language.

Research also suggests that older learners have a harder time learning grammar implicitly, theway that younger learners pick it up by experiencing the language. Older learners may needexplicit instruction in the grammar of the second language in order to learn it. Of course, youngerlearners may also benefit from explicit instruction in grammar when it comes to the academiclanguage they have to use in school.


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Conditions of learning: Second, many older learners don't have theluxury of time necessary to acquire a second language fully. Childrenspend thousands of hours immersed in their native language. Often thelanguage they're learning is anchored in the here and now. In otherwords, the context makes the meaning clear. This isn't always the casewith older learners who are asked to report on events that aren't part of

the immediate context. For example, they might be asked to talk about what they did the previousweekend or what their plans will be for the next weekend. Adults are also more intellectuallymature and want to be able to express complex opinions and thoughts. Grammar instruction canhelp them do this.

Students want to study grammar: Sometimes teachers give grammar lessons because theirstudents want them. As I mentioned before, some students like the security of knowing thegrammar rules even though knowing them may result in a false sense of security because of all ofthe exceptions. Nonetheless, students often insist on grammar instruction, and accommodatingtheir request has positive consequences for instruction.

Transfer: Of course, one of the major differences between first and second language acquisitionis that learners have already learned their first language. While they've been successful and

demonstrated that they know how to learn a language, they've also developed a particular way ofthinking and expressing themselves in their first language that's different from their secondlanguage.

The way learners think and express themselves in their first language can sometimes interferewith learning a second language. Learners may transfer the rules of their native language to thesecond language, sometimes resulting in ungrammatical sentences, such as when a nativespeaker of Chinese says, "I am student," leaving out the "a." Explicit grammar lessons helpstudents understand the differences in the grammar between the first and second languages.

Second versus foreign language: English is an international language, spoken natively in manydifferent countries of the world. In countries such as the United States, Canada, and Britain,English is considered a second or additional language to those who speak a different language at

home. There are also many countries, such as India, Malaysia, and Singapore, where English isone of several languages spoken natively.

In other countries, English is rarely used outside of the English language classroom. In suchplaces, English is said to be a foreign language, not a second language. While second versusforeign language isn't an easy distinction to make these days (there are parts of the United Stateswhere the language of the community is more likely to be Spanish than English), in places whereEnglish is truly a foreign language, exposure to English is likely to be limited outside of theclassroom. Thus, learning English needs to be efficient, and proper instruction can do that. Ofcourse, students may encounter English outside of their classrooms, through pop music andvideos, but not in a way that allows them to discover the grammar of English.

Motivation, attitude, aptitude: Little is said about motivation when it comes to learning a native

language. Children with normal faculties and with normal exposure to their native language willacquire it.

However, that isn't the case with all second and foreign language learners. Not all of theselearners are successful in acquiring a new language. Motivation, attitude, aptitude and thecombination of these and other factors greatly influence students' ability to acquire a language.Such factors can be influenced positively by appropriate instruction.


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There's no doubt that some motivated, positive, and gifted language learners will succeedwhether grammar is taught or not. However, most teachers see their mission as teaching alltheirstudents and getting them to the most advanced level of proficiency they can possibly achieve.Our job as teachers is to help all our students to learn, not just the gifted ones! Furthermore, our

job is to accelerate the process for all learners. Even if students can learn language outside of theclassroom by themselves, we should be helping students to learn faster than they would on theirown. The key, though, is to teach grammar effectively. This is what I'll help you to do in thiscourse.

Lesson 1Chapter 5

Summary

In this lesson, you learned about the definitions of grammar and why teaching grammar isimportant. First, we discussed the seven different definitions of grammar and we examined somecommon associations with the word grammar. The common associations aren't wrong, but theyonly tell part of the story.

Then you learned about grammar as a set of rules and patterns. We talked about helpful rules ofthumb, as well as why these rules have exceptions. We also discussed convention, which is whyyou might never use a perfectly grammatical sentence that follows all the rules, like a marriageproposal phrased as, "Your marrying me is desired by me."

We also touched on the fact that grammar operates at levels below and above the sentence levelin speaking as well as writing. At the very least, we need to consider a definition of grammar thatallows it to refer to a set of patterns that exist in language, not only to a set of rules that guideaccurately written sentences.

Grammar may be more complicated than you thought, but that doesn't mean you should avoidteaching it! We talked about six reasons why it's necessary to teach grammar. English is complexand students need to notice the differences between it and their native language. That means

that teachers bear all the more responsibility for helping their students learn grammar. To do this,you need to understand grammar fully, as well as how students learn it, and what instructionaloptions you have. We'll talk a lot more about all of it throughout this course.

We often teach grammar as forms that have meaning, but students don't might not understandwhen or why to use particular structures. They wind up overusing them, underusing them, orusing them inappropriately. Students need to understand that there are three dimensions ofgrammarform, meaning, and useand that's what we'll discuss in our next lesson. See younext time!

Next Steps

After every lesson in this course, you can test your knowledge bytaking a short, multiple-choice quiz. To access your first quiz, clickthe word Quizzes at the top or bottom of any page in thisclassroom. When the quiz form comes up, select Lesson 1 Quiz.

Once you've taken the quiz, apply what you've learned by doing thislesson's assignment. The assignments that accompany everylesson in this course will reinforce and expand your learning. Toaccess your first one, click Assignments at the top or bottom of


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any page in the classroom. Then, scroll down to the section forLesson 1.

Also, since learning something new usually raises questions, everylesson in this course comes with a Frequently Asked Questions(FAQs) section. You'll find the link that goes to this lesson's FAQsby clicking the Resources link at the top or bottom of any page inthis classroom.

Within the Resources link, you'll also find the course index, which

many students like to print and use as a detailed table of contents.Also, you'll find books and other resources that I've found helpfuland would like to pass along to you in the book recommendationsand recommended resources sections. These aren't required, butthey're excellent sources for further learning.

Lesson 2Chapter 1

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Transcript:

Hello. Grammar structures are usually thought of as forms in a language, the s on theend of a plural noun, for instance. While there are indeed grammatical forms such as theplural s, there's more to grammar than its form! In this lesson, you'll learn that grammarstructures have meanings, and they have uses as well. This is very important tounderstand because grammar does not relate only to accuracy. It also relates tomeaningfulness and appropriateness. Many times grammar is taught as forms that havemeaning, but what students are not taught is when or why to use particular structures.
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They wind up overusing them, underusing them, or using them inappropriately. It's thethree dimensions of grammartheir form, meaning, and usethat I'll introduce you to inthis lesson.

Introduction

As we discussed in Lesson 1, grammar consists of rules, but it's wrong to associate grammarexclusively with rules. For one thing, rules can generate sentences that we'd never actually use.That's why we observed that grammar also deals with patterns.

However, even knowing about both rules and patterns is inadequate. This is because rules andpatterns relate to grammatical form or structurethe fact that a verb agrees with the subject ofthe sentence in person and number, for instance. But saying that grammar relates only to form orstructure is also insufficient. In fact, in the previous lesson, we saw that the form-based rule ofsubject-verb agreement couldn't account for the differences between the two following sentencesbecause in both cases their verbs agree with their subjects. The difference is in the way we thinkofmiles. Can you tell what it is?

1. Ten miles are being added to the highway.S V

2. Ten miles is a long way to walk.S V

In sentence 1, the subject is made up of more than one mile, so using a plural verb is correct. Butin sentence 2, the subject comprises a single unit, a hike, so the singular form of the verb iscorrect. This contrast between seeing the miles as many individual units or all together illustratesthe fact that grammar relates to meaning as well as to form. How grammar connects withmeaning is an important focus of this lesson.

Even adding meaning doesn't help us to explain grammar. For example, neither form normeaning explain the difference between these two sentences:

3. A teacher is hardworking.4. Teachers are hardworking.

Both forms are accurate their word order is correct and their subjects agree with their verbs.Both sentences refer to teachers in a general way, so the meaning isn't very different. But Englishspeakers often prefer sentence 4 over sentence 3 because they can follow it with they(the pluralsubject pronoun form) instead ofhe (the singular masculine form).3a. He works long hours.4a. They work long hours.

In other words, people will choose to use sentence 4 in order to avoid having to use a form they

consider sexist (he) or untrue (not all teachers are male) in the statement that follows. Thisdecision relates to the dimension ofuse, which is the third dimension of grammar. In this lessonwe'll talk about all three dimensions of grammar, including form, meaning, and use.

Lesson 2Chapter 2

Form, Meaning, Use


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Before we jump in, let's quickly define the three dimensions of grammar:

Form: This is what gives structure to grammar. We have three types of grammatical formgrammatical morphemes, word order patterns, and function words.

Meaning: This consists of two types. One type is grammaticalmeaning, such as the -ingthat

signals that an action or event has duration. The other type is lexical, such as the dictionarydefinition of a function word, such as a preposition.

Use: This has to do with choosing between grammatical structures that have more or less thesame meaning, with one being more contextually appropriate.

One way to capture the idea that grammatical structures have forms, meanings, and uses is todraw a pie chart with three wedges, one forform (which deals with accuracy), one formeaning(which relates to meaningfulness), and one foruse (which deals with appropriateness). Thearrows connecting the wedges indicate that the three dimensions are interconnected and thateach dimension is always present. Nevertheless, as you'll see later in this course, the threedimensions present different challenges to students. Because students learn them differently,teachers should teach them differently.

Take, for example, the English non-referential there. We call it non-referential because it doesn'treally refer to anything. It occupies the subject position in a sentence. The true subject of thesentence, the one that determines the form of the verb, follows the verb, usually some form of theverb to be. For example, in sentence 1 below, the true subject of the sentence is a pencil, so theverb is is singular. In sentence 2, the true subject of the sentence ispencils; so its verb is theplural are.

1. There is a pencil on the table.

2. There are pencils on the table.

As I have said, grammar is about accuracy. If I were to scramble the words in sentence 1, thesentence would become ungrammatical.


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*is a table pencil on the there (remember, I'm using the asterisk as a symbol to show youa grammatically incorrect form)

This is because its word order (also known as syntax) is mixed up. Sentence 3 is alsoungrammatical. The true subject of this sentence is a pencil, which in sentence 3 doesn'tagree with the verb.3.*There are a pencil on the table.

It isn't accurate in English to say *a pencil are because the subject (pencil) and theverb (are) don't agree. The form of the subject is singular and the form of the verb is

plural. So it's true that rules of word order and subject-verb agreement do relate to grammaticalaccuracy. But that's not the whole story.

Let's compare the following:


5. It is a pencil on the table.

There might not refer to anything in particular, but that doesn't mean that it contributes nomeaning. When it's in initial position in a sentence, as it is in sentence 4, the sentence asserts theexistence of something and often includes a phrase that tells us of the location of that something.

Asserting the existence is different from the meaning of sentence 5 with itin subject position.Sentence 5 identifies an object, or distinguishes one object from another (It is a pencil on thetable, not a pen.). So there can indeed be associated with a meaning.

It's not uncommon for grammarians (people who study grammar) to talk about the form andmeaningof a grammatical structure. It's less common (but no less important) to understand thatthere are also considerations ofuse in grammar.

Compare the following two sentences:


7. A pencil is on the table.

Take a minute to see if you can figure out the difference between them. It's unlikely that they'llboth exist in English without there being some difference between them.

Both sentences are accurate in form because they follow the rules of word order and subject-verbagreement. Both sentences are meaningful. In fact, both mean more or less the same thingthey

tell us about the existence of a pencil and its location. But as we just discussed, it's not likely thattwo structures in any language will have the same meaning and the same use, so there must besomething distinctive about their use.

Well, imagine a situation where you need something to write with. You might tell someone, I needsomething to write with. If the other person wishes to be helpful, he or she might say sentence 6,but probably not sentence 7. Can you figure out why?

The answer is because sentence 7 implies that you should have known that a pencil was on the


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table. If you'd known this, of course, you'd have simply picked up the pencil and not saidanything. So 6 is more helpful and polite than 7 in this situation. That's because the function ofthere is to introduce new informationinformation that you wouldn't expect your listener to have.

The point is that a pedagogical grammar (a subset of grammar rules used to teach grammar tolanguage students) needs to explain not only how a grammar structure is formed and what it

means, but also when to use it appropriately.

As I've already suggested, one way to display the three dimensions of grammarform, meaning,and useis to use a pie chart with the information about a grammatical structure in each wedge.Let's look at the form, meaning, and use of sentences with there, and draw a pie chart with thisinformation.

Can you see how helpful the pie chart can be? You can ask the three questionsHow is itformed?; What does it mean?; When or why is it used?about any grammar structure. When youdo so, you have a complete picture of the grammar structure: how it's formed, what it means, andwhen and why it's used. For the remainder of this lesson, we'll investigate these three dimensionsfurther.

Lesson 2Chapter 3

Form

Let's first look more closely at form, or structure. There are three ways that grammatical form ispresent in a language: through word order patterns, grammatical morphemes, and functionwords.


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The first way is word order. Linguists refer to this as syntax. There are three basic word orders inhuman languages. English is an S-V-O (subject, verb, object) language. The subject precedesthe verb, which in turn precedes the object.

1. The batter hit the ball.S V O

2. The ball hit the batter.S V O

This word order tells us who or what did what to whom or what. The batter (who) did what (hit) towhat (the ball).

Other languages follow other sequences. For instance, Japanese is an S-O-V (subject-object-verb) language. In Japanese, the verb is last. Hebrew and Arabic are examples of V-S-O (verb-subject-object) languagesthe verb comes first in a sentence. The particular sequence in asentence has implications for other word order phenomena. For instance, in S-V-O languages,such as English and Spanish, prepositions precede their objects. In S-O-V languages,prepositions follow their objects, so they're calledpostpositions instead.

Another way grammar takes form in language is through grammatical morphemes. A morphemeis the smallest bit of grammatical matter with meaning. For example, plurality in English is markedwith an -s on a count noun. The -s is one of eight grammatical morphemes for English. There arefour grammatical morphemes for verbs, two for nouns, and two for adjectives.

8 Grammatical Morphemes of English

VerbsThird personsingular presenttense(-s)

Past tense(-ed)Perfective aspect(-en) Progressive aspect(-ing)

Nouns Plural (-s) Possessive(-s)

Adjectives Comparative(-er) Superlative(-est)

Let me point out a few things on this table. First of all, the dash before each morpheme in thetable indicates that this morpheme is attached to the word that precedes it. Morphemes don'tstand on their own. Second, what appears in parentheses symbolizes the common way that you'dwrite this morpheme. In other words, the English plural is usually spelled with an s. But we knowthat sometimes the plural is spelled es, as in boxes, and sometimes it's completely irregular, as in


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oxen, not *oxes. We also know that we'd pronounce it differently depending on which noun it'sattached to.

Here are some example sentences with each of the eight grammatical morphemes in Englishhighlighted. Each of the eight grammatical morphemes contributes to the grammatical meaning ofthe sentence. The verb morphemes tell us something about the time or some quality of an action

or event. The noun morphemes mark plurality or possession. The adjective morphemes allow usto compare people or things.

Verbs Nouns Adjectives

He drives to work. They have two car s. John is tallerthan Mark.

Yesterday, he walked. Mark's car is red. Sue is the tallest in the class.

She has eaten her lunch.

She is sleeping.

Compared with other languages in the world, modern English doesn't have manygrammatical morphemes. Instead, English relies more on word order to signal

grammatical relations.

The third way that grammar takes form in language is through function words. Function words arewords that fulfill a grammatical function. For example, a pronoun has the function of referringback to a particular noun. They're usually short words, such as the articles a, an, and the,pronouns, conjunctions, and prepositions. Unlike the major parts of speech (nouns, verbs,adjectives, and adverbs), the function words (sometimes called structure words) are a closedcategory, which means that new words are rarely added. The function words are underlined andlabeled in the following example.

A cat is under a chair, and a dog is on it.Article preposition article conjunction article preposition pronoun

See if you can label the function words in the following sentence.Debbie is reading a book, and she is listening to music.

Modern-day English uses prepositions to signal many grammatical relationshipsrelationshipsthat other languages convey through word order or grammatical morphemes. For instance, youcan sometimes use the most common preposition in English, of, instead of the -s to showpossession.3. The arrival of the plane has been delayed.4. The plane's arrival has been delayed.

Now that we've surveyed the three elements of formword order, grammatical morphemes, andfunction wordslet's talk about the other two dimensions of grammar: meaning and use.

Lesson 2Chapter 4

Meaning

When we talk about meaning in grammar, we're speaking both of grammatical meaning andlexical meaning. Lexical meaningis meaning that you'd find in a dictionary. For example, themeaning of the function word underis beloworbeneath. We'll talk more about lexical meaning in


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Lesson 5. For now, let's talk about the grammatical meanings of morphemes, function words, andword order.

For example, the meanings of grammatical morphemes include time (as expressed throughtense) and the quality or duration of an action (as expressed through aspect, such as ing), as youcan see in sentence 1.

1. Michelle was looking at the moon.

The verb was is marked for past tense (not with -edbecause it's irregular), which tells us that thisaction took place in the past. The verb lookhas an -ingto show that Michelle's gaze has durationthat it took place over time.

2. Michelle looked at the moon.

Notice that if I had said sentence 3 instead, you'd still know that the action took place in the past(here marked with -ed). But rather than the action having duration, it may have been that Michelletook a quick single glance and then looked away. And, if I had changed the function word fromthe in sentence 2 to a in sentence 3, you might have inferred that I wasn't speaking of the Earth's

moon, but a different moon.

3. Michelle was looking at a moon. (say, one of Jupiter's)

This may seem like a strange sentence, but notice the grammarin this case, the function wordaforces us to find a meaning for the words.

There are also grammatical meanings to word order patterns.

4. John sent Gretchen a package.

Underlying sentence 4 is the meaningful patternX causes Y to receive Z. This pattern has a

general meaning that can be transferred to word order in other sentences.5. Gretchen sent John a thank-you note.

In fact, you can even generalize this pattern to new verbs.6. He faxed her a reply.

So you see that the grammatical forms of morphemes, function words, and word order all havemeanings, too. And as you know, you also need to consider the use of grammatical structures.

Use

Many grammar books deal with form and meaning. What they often overlook is use. Theyconsider use to be something different from grammar. But knowing a grammar structure involves

knowing not only how to form it and what it means, but also knowing when to use it. This isespecially important to recognize because knowing when to use a grammar structure is certainlysomething that challenges language learners.

When it comes to use, here's the fundamental question to answer: What does the contextrequire? Various factors influence whether you'll choose to use one structure over another in acontext: Which information is in focus in the context? How formal is the situation? Is this grammarstructure used more in speech or in writing? And what level of politeness does this situationrequire?


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Using a grammar structure answers the question about when or why a speaker or writer choosesone particular grammar structure over another when both express approximately the samemeaning. Remember the sentence we considered earlier:

1. John sent Gretchen a package.

You can preserve the same meaning by using a different word order but adding the function wordto:

2. John sent a package to Gretchen.

If these two sentences mean more or less the same thing, then the difference must have to dowith use. Which word order you use depends on which of the twoGretchen or the packageisthe focus or new information in the sentence. In sentence 1, the focus is onpackage. In sentence2, the focus is on Gretchen. A word order difference like this involves the dimension of use.

The formality of the situation is another factor that influences use. For example, a two-word orphrasal verb such asput offmight be more appropriate in an informal context than its single verbcounterpart,postpone.

3. The CEO put off the meeting. (informal)

4. The CEO postponed the meeting. (formal)

Whether you're speaking or writing will also influence the structure you choose to use. Forexample, when you're writing, you might use relatively longer subjects than you'd use whenyou're speaking.5. Speaking: Robert quit his job. He left because he wanted to make more money.

6. Writing: Robert's quitting his job was because he wanted to make more money.

As for other factors, such as politeness, it's important to note that we have a number of form andmeaning combinations available for the same function. Choosing one is often a matter ofchoosing something that's socially appropriate.

For example, you can choose between present and past forms of the verb in polite questions andstatements. You can make a question or a statement less direct and therefore more polite whenyou put it in the past tense.


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7. Who do you wish to speak to?

8. Who did you wish to speak to?(using the past tense makes this more polite)

Of course, you can make it more formal by using whom rather than who.

Using the future tense can also make a sentence more polite. For example, aclerk might use the wording in sentence 9 with a customer rather than thewording in sentence 10.9. That will be a dollar ninety-five.

10. That is a dollar ninety-five.

I hope I've convinced you that grammar involves much more than form. The meaning and use ofstructures are also importantwe can't overlook any of them when we're teaching grammar.

Lesson 2Chapter 5

Summary

In today's lesson, you learned that grammar has three dimensions: form, meaning, and use, andwe talked about drawing a pie chart as a good way to capture these three dimensions ofgrammar.

We discussed morphemes, word orders, and function words, and you saw that these three typesof forms also can have meaning. Meaning can be grammatical(like using a tense marker to showtime) or lexical (the meaning you'd find in a dictionary).

We also considered usethe appropriateness of grammar structures within a particular context.The question of use comes in when two grammar structures mean more or less the same thing.

In fact, the main point of this lesson has been that grammar doesn't only have to do with formitalso deals with meaning and use. This isn't just true of grammar structures, of course. Forexample, a word also has a form, meaning, and use. A word like friend, for instance, has the formof a singular common count noun and the meaning of someone with whom you have a warm,non-familial relationship. Remember the question of use relates to when you choose one formover the other when the meanings are more or less the same. So, in the instance offriend, we'dwant to know when friendwould be used as opposed to colleague, companion, associate,acquaintance,pal, buddy, mate, etc.

Getting back to grammar, it's clear that knowing grammar affects more than being able to speakor write accurately. Using word order, morphemes, and function words skillfully can make adifference in how successful a person's communication is. Is it meaningful? Does it convey the

meaning I intend? Is it appropriate? Will my request be received the way I would wish?

And it's not as though everything about grammar is neat and predictable. Speakers have a greatdeal of choice in the grammar forms that they use, and what they choose to use depends on theirmessage and how they want to present themselves. Is it any wonder why our students demandwe teach grammar?

As I hope you've seen in this lesson, I'd like us to take a broader view of grammar than othershave taken. In our next lesson, I'll also challenge another way that people usually think of


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grammar. I'll make the case that grammar is much more dynamic than people usually suppose. Irefer to this dynamism as grammaring, and I'll tell you all about it next time. See you then!

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