IFDC Lenguas Vivas Descriptive Grammar · Let´s now revisit the notion of mental grammar and after that put forward a few further considerations on a specific type of descriptive

IFDC Lenguas Vivas Descriptive Grammar

Unit 1A

2014

Author: Prof. Mónica A. Bisso Tutor: Prof. Germán Zárate Sández

2nd term

IFDC Lenguas Vivas Bariloche

Subject: Descriptive Grammar

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Unit 1 A: Introduction to Grammar

Sections + contents

1. Introduction Preview. Check what you know.

2. The lessons Grammar: Prescriptive and descriptive

Grammaticality: grammatical vs “makes sense”

Components of grammar. A definition of grammar.

Other kinds of grammar: mental and transformational-generative grammar

Pragmatics. Structural and lexical ambiguity.

3. Figure it Out! Disambiguating.

4. Theory revision Activity 1: (Reading.)

Activity 2: Kinds of grammar. (Matching/Designing a table)

Activity 3: Miscellaneous. (Glossary)

Activity 4: Linguistics; components of grammar. (Matching)

Activity 5: Miscellaneous. (True/false)

Activity 6: Miscellaneous theory revision questions.

5. Practice

6. Bibliography

Welcome to the Descriptive Grammar Module!

As a starting point, it sounds like a good idea if you could get familiar with some concepts relevant to

our subject, by doing some previous research work in order to find out what the concepts on the left-hand

column of the table below mean.

You can consult: “The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English” and other dictionaries; Jacobs

(1995); the Web

If you are not in the mood of working your fingers to the bone, an alternative and more

relaxing type of work consists of matching the definitions on the right with the concepts

on left.

1 Morphology A The study of language in general and of particular languages, their

structure, grammar, history, etcetera



3

2 Syntax B Rules and principles that are acquired in childhood and are “in the

heads” of native speakers. Internal unconscious knowledge of

grammar.

3 Lexicon C The set of words, suffixes and prefixes

4 Transformational Generative

Grammar – (Chomsky)

D Rules that have the status of scientific observations, and are

intended as true and insightful generalizations about the way that

human language is, rather than how it ought to be used.

5 Semantics E The study of meaning.

6 Mental / universal grammar F The study of the way words and phrases are used in conversation to

express meanings, feelings, and ideas which are sometimes

different from the actual meaning of the words used

7 Descriptive grammar G Rules that make statements about how people ought to use

language.

8 Prescriptive grammar H The study of the morphemes of a language, and of the way in which

they are joined together to make words

9 Linguistics I The grammatical principles that determine the kinds of units the

language can have, the orders in which these units can be arranged

and the relations or functions1 they participate in.

10 Pragmatics J A grammar that seeks to identify rules or transformations2 that

govern relations between parts of a sentence, on the assumption that

beneath such aspects as word order a fundamental structure exists.

After this warm up, are you in a position to work out your own definition of Grammar, including some of

the concepts already introduced?

What field of studies do you think grammar belongs to? Pragmatics? Linguistics? …

What are the components of grammar?

What are the different kinds of grammar that have been introduced?

In the next section – The lesson – we will try to find the answers to these questions together.

LESSON 1

What do we mean by “Grammar”? What kind of grammar shall we deal with in this

module?

1 Subject, object, complement are examples of functions.

2 Such as the movement of the object noun phrase after the verb to the subject slot, when turning a sentence into

passive voice



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The first problem we are faced with is that there is an everyday sense of the term “grammar” and a quite

different sense in which the term is used in linguistics. We, as teachers – or prospective teachers – of

English, should be aware of the difference.

In the everyday sense, “grammar” refers to a collection of rules concerning what counts as socially

acceptable and unacceptable language use. Some of these rules, like the one in (1) below, make reference

to particular words and apply to both spoken and written language.

(1) Don't use ain't.

(You probably recall being taught rules like this one!)

Someone who composes sentences in accordance with rules like that in (1) is said to have good

grammar, whereas someone said to have bad grammar doesn't apply the rules when they ought to be

applied, thus producing sentences like (2).

(2) Over there is the guy who I went to the party with3

Now, if rules like that in (1) were the only ones that were used to form English sentences, then people

who didn't follow them should produce rampantly variable and confusing sentences, leading in extreme

cases to a complete breakdown of communication. However, even people who routinely produce

sentences like that in (2) do not produce any like the one in (3).

(3) Over there is guy the who I went to party the with

The sentence in (2) may be an instance of bad grammar in the everyday sense, but it is still an English

sentence. By contrast, we don't need to rely on rules learned at school to tell us that the example in (3) is

not an English sentence, even though it contains exactly the same words as that in (2).

Since native speakers of English do not produce a variable mishmash4 of words, including “word salad”

like (3), they must be composing sentences using rules of some other sort than that in (1). We can

determine what some of these rules are by examining the sequences in (3) to see what it is that makes

them into word salad. In (3), the article the is in the wrong order with respect to guy and party, the nouns

that it belongs with. The sentence in (3) does not follow the rule in (4).

(4) Articles precede the nouns they belong with Rules like that in (4) have a quite different intention from that in (1). The rule in (1) is normative or

prescriptive, whereas that in (4) is descriptive.

PRESCRIPTIVE RULE (1) Don't use ain't. DESCRIPTIVE RULE (6) Articles precede the nouns they belong with

Rules of prescriptive grammar have the same status as rules of etiquette (table manners or dress codes)

or of the laws of society, which divide the entire spectrum of possible human behavior into correct,

socially acceptable, or legal behavior, on the one hand, and incorrect, socially unacceptable, or illegal

behavior, on the other. Rules of prescriptive grammar make statements about how people ought to use

language.

In contrast, rules of descriptive grammar have the status of scientific observations, and they are

intended as true and insightful generalizations about the way that human language is, rather than how it

ought to be used. Descriptive rules are more general and basic than prescriptive rules in the sense that all

3 This sentences violates two prescriptive rules: Don't end a sentence with a preposition and Use whom, not who, as the

object of a verb or preposition. And it should be: Over there is the guy with whom I went to the party. 4 Informal “a mixture of a lot of very different things that are put together in a way that is not organized; hodge-podge”.

(From the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English)



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sentences of a language are formed in accordance with them, not just the subset of sentences that count as

correct.

PRESCRIPTIVE How people ought to use language. DESCRIPTIVE How people really use the language

We can think of prescriptive rules as filtering out some (relatively small) portion of the entire output of

the descriptive rules of a language.

In syntax, as in linguistics more generally, we adopt a resolutely descriptive perspective concerning

language. In particular, when we say that a sentence is grammatical, we don't mean that it is correct from

a prescriptive point of view, but that it conforms to descriptive rules like that in (4). More examples of prescriptive rules

Don't use seen as the past tense of see.

Don't start a sentence with a conjunction.

Don't use contractions. More examples of descriptive rules

Articles precede the nouns they belong with.

Relative clauses follow the noun that they modify.

In short, we could conclude that for most people “grammar” means “the rules I'm supposed to follow to

avoid looking like a dolt in print.” Many of these rules, made up by prescriptive grammarians, are the

least observed. As some grammarians have noted, (e.g. Williams (1994)5) a distinction should be made

between these faddish rules and the real ones (descriptive grammar), ie those observed by native

speakers.

NOTE: In order to indicate that a sequence is ungrammatical (in the descriptive sense), we will prefix it with an asterisk. Grammatical sentences are usually not specially marked.

To make things still clearer:

Consider the variable subject-verb agreement pattern in (5). In (5a), the singular verb is agrees in

number with the preverbal expletive subject there, whereas in (5b), the plural verb are agrees with the

postverbal logical subject some boxes. (The bold typeface of the verb indicates which of the two subjects

it agrees with.)

(5) a. There's still some boxes that need to be brought in

b. There are still some boxes that need to be brought in

The prescriptive and descriptive rules concerning this pattern are given in (6).

In a sentence containing both the singular expletive subject there and a plural logical subject …

(6) a. Prescriptive rule the verb should agree in number with the logical subject

b. Descriptive rule the verb can agree in number with either subject

5 WILLIAMS, Joseph M. 1994. “Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace”. 4th ed. New York: HarperCollins. Williams is

quoted in “Using Transformational Grammar as an Editing Tool”: http://infohost.nmt.edu/~cpc/trangram.html#u14

http://infohost.nmt.edu/~cpc/trangram.html#d14

http://infohost.nmt.edu/~cpc/trangram.html#u14



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LESSON 2

What is grammaticality?

The notion of grammaticality is basic to syntactic theory, and it is important to distinguish it from

notions with which it is easily confused.

First of all, “grammatical” needs to be distinguished from “makes sense”. The sentences in (7) “make

sense” in the sense that they are easily interpreted by speakers of English. Nevertheless, as indicated by

the asterisks, they are not grammatical.

(7). a. * Me no like drink coffee.

c. * I slept late because of that my alarm clock didn't go off.

Conversely, there are English sentences that are grammatical, that is, they conform to the rules defined

by a certain grammar, but they do not make sense because their meaning is anomalous. Some fairy tale or

science fiction sentences are of this type6. Two further examples are given in (8). Since such sentences are

grammatical, they aren't preceded by an asterisk. However, if necessary, their anomalous status can be

indicated by a prefixed pound sign (#).

(8) a. # Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. (Chomsky 1965:149)

cf.7 Revolutionary new ideas appear infrequently

Components of grammar:

In the definition of grammar below, you can clearly identify its components: morphology (form), syntax

(relations), semantics (meaning).

Grammar is the study of the rules by which words change their forms8 and are combined into sentences

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that construct meaning10

.

Remember: GRAMMAR = FORM + MEANING.

Other kinds of grammar:

Two of the senses in which the term “grammar” is used – prescriptive and descriptive – have already

been clarified. Let´s now revisit the notion of mental grammar and after that put forward a few further

considerations on a specific type of descriptive grammar: transformational generative grammar, which

reflects Chomskyan perspectives on the subject.

Mental grammar refers to the rules and principles native speakers use in producing and understanding

their language. These rules are almost all acquired in childhood.

6 E.g. Tomatoes eat children. (In: "The attack of the GM tomatoes")

7 cf = compare

8 Which is studied by Morphology

9 Which is studied by Syntax

10 Semantics



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Transformational-generative grammar, one of the several types of descriptive grammar, is a ...

“linguistic theory associated with Noam Chomsky, particularly with his Syntactic Structures (1957), and

with Chomsky’s teacher Zellig Harris. Generative grammar attempts to define rules that can generate the

infinite number of grammatical (well-formed) sentences possible in a language. It starts (...) from (...) a

rationalist assumption that a deep structure underlies a language, and that a similar deep structure

underlies all languages. Transformational grammar seeks to identify rules (transformations) that govern

relations between parts of a sentence, on the assumption that beneath such aspects as word order a

fundamental structure exists. Transformational and generative grammar together were the starting point

for the tremendous growth in linguistics studies since the 1950s”.11

A word on pragmatics. Solving structural and lexical ambiguity.

Pragmatics is the study of the way our real world knowledge influences our interpretations of

utterances.

The following classified advertisement is a humorous illustration of the phenomenon of structural

ambiguity, which can be solved via our pragmatic, rather than grammatical, knowledge.

Wanted: Man to take care of cow that does not smoke or drink

World knowledge tells us that the intent of the advertiser is to hire a clean-living man to take care of a

cow. But because of the way the advertisement is formulated, it also has an unintentionally comical

interpretation-namely, that the advertiser has a cow that does not smoke or drink and that a man is wanted

to take care of this clean-living cow. The intended and unintended interpretations describe sharply

different situations; that is why we say that the sentence is ambiguous, and not merely that it is vague.

Speaking of ambiguity, there is another type, called lexical ambiguity:

Our bikinis are exciting. They are simply the tops.

Its ambiguity is based on its containing a lexeme that happens to have two distinct meanings.

In the previous example, on the other hand, the words themselves have the same meanings in each of the

two interpretations, and the ambiguity depends on how the reader groups the words in interpreting the

sentence. In the intended interpretation, the relative clause that does not smoke or drink modifies man,

whereas in the unintended interpretation it modifies cow.

NOTE: This module does not deal primarily with pragmatics, but with English grammar, whose main unit of analysis is the sentence.

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The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Copyright © 2004 Columbia University Press



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After reading about ambiguity,

can you explain whether the

example below is lexically or

structurally ambiguous, or a

mixture of both. (Apply the

notions of grammaticality, “makes

sense” and ambiguity to the

caption) Material in parentheses is

not itself ambiguous.

“One morning I shot an elephant in

my pajamas. (How he got into my

pajamas I'll never know.)”

(Groucho Marx, in Animals

Crackers)12

ACTIVITY 1: Re-read the presentation of this topic, and have a go at the exercises below!.

ACTIVITY 2:

KINDS OF GRAMMAR:

Design a table showing the differences between prescriptive and descriptive grammar. Avoid full

sentences. Write short phrases and / or keywords instead. Use the material from this digitalized unit.

Alternative activity:

What are the differences between descriptive and prescriptive grammar? Transcribe the key expressions

below to the right slot in the table.

GENERALIZATIONS AND EXCEPTIONS

RULES

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You can find more examples at: http://www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/Spring_2001/ling150/glossary.html#recursive

DESCRIPTIVE GRAMMAR PRESCRIPTIVE GRAMMAR



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NORMATIVE HOW A LANGUAGE IS ACTUALLY USED

OBSERVATIONAL HOW A LANGUAGE OUGHT TO BE USED

ACTIVITY 3:

Start a Grammar Glossary. Upload your contributions to the forum. My suggestion is:

Include the words and phrases presented in the introduction. Use your English dictionary/ies, consult

reference material and do research on the web.

ACTIVITY 4:

LINGUISTICS. COMPONENTS OF GRAMMAR.

Match the definitions on the right with the words on the left.

LEXICON (a) the study and science of speech sounds.

MORPHOLOGY (b) the study of the meaning of words and other parts of language

PHONETICS (c) the rules of grammar which are used for ordering and connecting words to form

phrases or sentences

SEMANTICS (d) the study of the morphemes of a language, and of the way in which they are

joined together to make words (morpheme= the smallest meaningful unit in a

language. E.g. gun-fight-er contains three morphemes)

SYNTAX (f) 1a) a dictionary 1b) a list of words with their meanings. 1c) all the words and

phrases used in a particular language 1d) an alphabetical list of words with their

meanings, especially on a particular subject or in a particular language

ACTIVITY 5:

MISCELLANEOUS:

Are the following statements True or False?

1. Morphology, Syntax and Semantics are part of Linguistics.

2. Syntax has to do with meaning.

3. Word-formation is studied by morphology.

4. A mental grammar is a set of rules and principles that native speakers acquire mainly in childhood.

5. Descriptive grammar is normative.

6. Pragmatics is the study of the way words and phrases are used in conversation to express meanings,

feelings, and ideas which are sometimes different from the actual meaning of the words used.

ACTIVITY 6:

MISCELLANEOUS THEORY REVISION QUESTIONS. Answer:

1. What is Linguistics? What fields of knowledge does it include?

2. What is Grammar? Mention the components of grammar.

3. What are prescriptive and descriptive grammar? Give examples.

4. Explain the notion of grammaticality.

5. What kinds of grammar (apart from prescriptive and descriptive) do you know?. Explain each type

briefly. Provide examples.



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6. What is pragmatics? How does pragmatic knowledge contributes to disambiguating utterances?.

Explain lexical and structural ambiguity. Give examples.

[Source exercises 1 to 4: Jacobs exercise set 1 (pp 7 and 8)]. EXERCISE 1: State whether each of the following rules is prescriptive and / or descriptive.

a. The single-word form maybe is an adverb meaning “perhaps”. The two-word combination may be

consists of an auxiliary verb followed by the copula verb, be.

b. The possessive forms for everyone are his and her. So do not say, “Everyone brought their own

lunch”, but rather “Everyone brought his (or her) lunch.”

c. The infinitive form of a verb is always uninflected. It should follow immediately after the infinitive

marker to. No word should intervene between to and its verb. So this sentence:

The Fourth Armored Division tried to totally destroy the hideout.

should really be:

The Fourth Armored Division tried to destroy the hideout totally.

d. Present tense verbs with a third-person singular subject take the suffix –s; e.g., Freud understands.

EXERCISE 2: It is said that native speakers of a language know the rules of their language. How is this

kind of knowing different from the knowledge needed to pass the written part of a driver´s license test?

EXERCISE 3: Read the dialogue below and answer the questions.

a. What generalizations about grammar does the child appear to have worked out?

b. What is the adult trying to do, and how effective is it? What does this dialogue suggest to you

about first language acquisition?

Child: My teacher holded the baby rabbits and we petted them.

Adult: Did you say your teacher held the baby rabbits?

Child: Yes.

Adult: What did you say she did?

Child: She holded the rabbits and we petted them.

Adult: Did you say she hold them tightly?

Child: No, she holded them loosely.

EXERCISE 4: How, in your opinion, should English grammar instruction for students planning to

study literature in English in their own country differ from instruction for students who will later be

working in their own country for an Australian company selling computers?

EXERCISE 5: Check the form and meaning of the following sentences. Are they grammatical? Do

they make sense?

My intelligent flower opened the door for me.

The doorman opened door.

Is our children learning?

I plan to travel there last year.

Gasoline was rationed while the war.



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INTRODUCTION: 1-h; 2-i; 3-c; 4-j; 5-e; 6-b; 7-d; 8-g; 9-a; 10-f

THEORY REVISION:

ACTIVITY 2:

ACTIVITY 4:

LEXICON: (f)

MORPHOLOGY: (d)

PHONETICS: (a)

SEMANTICS: (b)

SYNTAX: (c)

ACTIVITY 5:

1. True.

2. False. It has to do with the order of constituents in the sentence, with grammatical relations or

functions.

3. True.

4. True.

5. False. (Cf. table above, in activity 2)

6. True. Pragmatics takes into account the context.

ACTIVITY 6:

The answers are to be found in the present unit (1A).

PRACTICE:

EXERCISE 1:

a. Descriptive

b. Prescriptive

c. Prescriptive

d. Descriptive EXERCISE 2:

The knowledge of a language possesed by native speakers is implicit, unconscious knowledge of the

rules, as evidenced by the grammaticality of their utterances and their ability to distinguish between

grammatical and ungrammatical structures (except, perhaps, for some borderline constructions). But

native speakers cannot specify explicitly what the precise rules are. However, for example, a driver must

be able to specify the traffic rules, that is, he must have an explicit conscious knowledge of those rules. EXERCISE 3:

a. The child has unconsciously formulated an overgeneralized rule that the past tense of a verb is

formed by adding to the ase form the past tense suffix (spelled “-ed”)

b. The adult is trying to correct the child’s overgeneralization by modeling the correct form. The data

from the dialogue suggest that acquisition of one’s native language occurs in ordered stages and

that it is futile to try to force acquisition of a rule when the child is not ready for it. The adult in

the dialogue is focusing on the form, while the child is paying attention just to the content.

DESCRIPTIVE GRAMMAR PRESCRIPTIVE GRAMMAR GENERALIZATIONS AND EXCEPTIONS RULES HOW A LANGUAGE IS ACTUALLY USED HOW A LANGUAGE OUGHT TO BE USED

OBSERVATIONAL NORMATIVE



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EXERCISE 4:

A number of reasonable answers are possible for this question. Here is one:

Both groups of students need to know basic sentence structures in the language and the grammatical

requirements imposed by lexical items; for example, the fact that tell can take two objects, as in tell Jack

a story. The prospective literature students may need to spend time on complex sentence formation,

including many constructions that occur in novels, poems, and essays but are rare in conversation. The

computer company students probably need more work on grammatical structures common in informal

spoken English, especially Australian English, since they may be working with Australian supervisors.

The grammar of imperatives, requests, prohibitions, and instructions is likely to be important for their

English, both spoken and written.

EXERCISE 5:

1. # My intelligent flower opened the door for me: It´s grammatical but makes no sense.

2. The doorman opened door: It´s ungrammatical, but makes sense.

3. * Is our children learning?: It makes sense but it´s not grammatical.

4. *# I plan to travel there last year: It´s ungrammatical and makes no sense.

5. * Gasoline was rationed while the war: It makes sense but it´s not grammatical.

JACOBS, Roderick A. 1995. “English Syntax: a Grammar for English Language Professionals”. New

York. Oxford University Press. Chapter 1.

KING, Judith, RIDOUT, Ronald and SWAN, D. K. “The Book of British Humour”. Longman Group

Limited. 1981

“Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English”. New ed. 2003.

WILLIAMS, Joseph M. 1994. “Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace”. 4th ed. New York: Harper

Collins

Websites consulted:

“Foundational issues”. http://www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/Spring_2001/ling150/ch1.html#notes-prep-

stranding

(For prescriptve and descriptive grammar, ambiguity, universal grammar, generative grammar,

grammaticality)

“Using Transformational Grammar as an Editing Tool”:


“Lecture #2: Two Types of Grammar”:

http://www.ling.udel.edu/colin/courses/ling101_f99/lecture2.html

Trujillo, Fernando. “E-lecture:Teacher training in the digital area”.

http://www.ugr.es/~ftsaez/morfo.html

“Ambiguity”. http://online.sfsu.edu/~kbach/ambguity.html

http://www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/Spring_2001/ling150/ch1.html#notes-prep-stranding

http://www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/Spring_2001/ling150/ch1.html#notes-prep-stranding


http://www.ling.udel.edu/colin/courses/ling101_f99/lecture2.html

http://www.ugr.es/~ftsaez/morfo.html

http://online.sfsu.edu/~kbach/ambguity.html



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BBC “h2g2 - Prescriptive vs Descriptive Approaches to Grammar Study”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A655599#footnote2

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A655599#footnote2

Documents

IFDC Lenguas Vivas Descriptive Grammar · Let´s now revisit the notion of mental grammar and after that put forward a few further considerations on a specific type of descriptive