Lecture One

Introduction

What is grammar?The term of grammar can be understood as(1) the rules of the structures of a language (grammar in its narrow sense); (2) all the rules of a language, including phonetic, phonological , syntactic , semantic and pragmatic rules ， which is equivalent to linguistics (grammar in its broad sense); (3) the study of the rules of a language (equivalent to Chinese语法学 ).

Two varieties of grammar

A. grammar for a speaker to speak a language; B. grammar for people to speak about a language.GrammarA refers to the competence of the speaker of a language.Grammar B refers to the explicit theory constructed by the linguist and proposed as a description of the speaker’s competence.We are unconscious of GrammarA (linguistic rules) that enable us to speak, understand, and make judgments about sentences.

The role of grammar in language learning

Grammar is the structual system of a language.

meaning – grammar – pronunciation

Syntax, morphology

Three types of Grammar B

Descriptive grammar is the grammar describing language as it is.

Prescriptive grammar is the grammar prescribing rather than describing the rules of grammar.

Teaching grammar is used to learn another language or dialect.

Teaching grammar states explicitly the rules of the language, lists the words and their pronunciations and aids in leaning a new language.

Although it might be prescriptive in the sense that they attempt to teach the students what is or is not a grammatical construction in the new language, their aim is different from grammars that attempt to change the rules or usage of a language already learned.

How does grammar come into being?

Today’s grammar is yesterday’s discourse (Givon, an American linguist working at Oregon University). Grammar is emergent. a. I think….b. be going to ---- gonna to (1)Bill is going to dance. (2) Bill is going to go to school. (3)Bill’s gonna go to school.

(4)﹖ Bill ‘s gonna school. be coming

Grammaticalization

the phenomena in which lexical items and constructions come in certain linguistic contexts to serve grammatical functions or grammatical items develop new grammatical functions.

Can—could(past tense)---could (pure modal)

The aims of this course

to find out grammatical rules

to explore possibe motivations

Three topics dealt with in this course

Sentence making

Sentence expanding

Sentence contracting

Sentence makingThe grammatical hierarchy of the English language

e.g. Paul is one of the nicest school boys I know.

Sentence

Clause

Phrase

Word

Morpheme

Morpheme

1. Free morpheme

e.g. kind: kindness, unkind, kindly

2. Bound morpheme

Inflectional affix

e.g. -ing, -ed, -es

Derivational affix

e.g. unlucy, movement

Word

Open-class words

Noun, verb, adjective, adverb

Closed-class words

Preposition, pronoun, determiner, conjunction, auxiliary

Phrase

The noun phrase(determiner) + (premodifier +) noun (+ postmodifier)e.g.I remember Alice. I remember that girl with the red hair. I remember a better story. I remember the best film that I have seen.

The verb phrase(Modifier +) main verbe.g. The ship sank. The ship was sinking. . They fully appreciated my problems.Finite verb phrase: indicated by a finite verb form that changes according to tense or subjectNon-finite verb phrase e.g. We went there to see a film. Having seen the film, we had a discussion.

Painted by a famous artist, the portrait is invaluable.

The adjective phrase

(modifier+) adjective (+postmodifier)

e.g. The weather was pleasant.

The weather was too hot.

The weather was too hot to be enjoyable.

The adverb phrase

(modifier+) adverb (+ postmodifier)

e.g. I spoke to him yesterday.

I spoke to him quite often.

I spoke to him as clearly as I could.

The prepositional phrase

(modifier+) preposition +complementation

e.g. I met her for lunch.

I met her on Sunday morning.

clauseFive clause elements: subject (S), verb (V), complement (C), and adverbial (A) Basic clause patternsSV: The baby is crying.SVC: He is innocent.SVA: They live in Los Angeles.SVO: She bought a skirt.SVOA: He put the coin in his mouth.SVOC: All of us believed him honest.SVOO: He gave her a rose.

Sentence Statement e.g. John is taller than any other student in the class.Commande.g. Keep your mouth shut.Question e.g. What’s your name?Exclamation e.g. What a fine day!

Sentence expanding1. Simple sentencee.g. You throw a stone at the window. I’ll scream. 2. Compound sentence: coordinatione.g. You throw a stone at the window and I’ll scream. 3. Complex sentence: subordination, main clause, subordinate clausee.g. If you throw a stone at the window, I’ll scream. 4. Cohesion and coherence in the text

Sentence contracting

Non-finite clauses

Verbless clauses

Substitution

Ellipsis

A list of reference books for further reading

Quirk, R. & S. Greenbaum (1973) A University Grammar of English, London: LongmanQuirk, R. etal (1985) A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, London and New York: LongmanHalliday, M.A.K. (1985) An Introduction to Functional Grammar, London: Edward Arnold张道真《实用英语语法》商务印书馆章振邦《新编英语语法》上海外语教育出版社