English Grammar support Guide for the beginners

Basic facts about the English grammar, page 1
CSI 4106, Winter 2005
Basics of the grammar of English
• Words, phrases, clauses
• Words
 Open classes; nouns and verbs
 Distribution patterns
 Nouns, pronouns, verbs, tenses
 Inflection
• Noun phrases
• Simple clauses, categories
 Questions
 Roles
 Prepositional phrases
 Clausal subjects / complements
 Verb phrases
 Modifiers
• Compound clauses
• Relative clauses

Words, phrases, clauses
The building blocks of expressions in natural
languages are words, phrases, clauses.
There is a semantic motivation for some of
these fundamental constructions:
noun phrases correspond to entities that have
properties (expressed by adjective phrases,
relative clauses,and so on);
verb phrases correspond to situations with
roles (noun phrases, prepositional phrases)
and qualities (adverbial phrases).

Words, phrases, clauses (2)
The clause level
• Simple and compound clauses.
• Coordinate clause.
• Major and subordinate clauses.
The word level
• Morphology: book  books, make  making.
• Derivation: white  whiteness, quick  quickly.
We bought him a book because he likes to read
simple clause simple clause
compound clause
major clause subordinate clause

Words
Criteria for distinguishing words are quite
arbitrary, though the simplest test (groups of
letters between non-letters) works okay.
Words are not the lowest level of description.
Morphemes, e.g., pre+book+ing, un+glue+d.
antidisestablishmentarianism
There are four open classes of words (noun,
verb, adjective, adverb) and closed classes
(including articles, conjunctions, prepositions,
numerals, pronouns).

Words (2)
There are two criteria for word classification.
• Semantics: situations - roles - properties.
• Distribution: words in the same class can
often be interchanged.
Distribution can be tested by diagnostic
contexts, positive and negative.
Example: adjectives.
+ This is a ________ book.
+ The book is very ________.
- This ________ is new.
- I want to ________ it to you.

Words (3)
A word may fit more than one pattern. This
happens quite often, because word classes
are not disjoint. Examples:
compound is an adjective, a noun, a verb;
bar is a noun, a verb, a preposition.
(The verb-noun ambiguity is frequent in English.)
Classify various Ω in these sentences:
John decided to Ω a big, Ω and juicy Ω.
Put your Ω Ω the table.

Words (4)
Nouns
Proper nouns: Jimmy, Greece, IBM
Common nouns:
• mass nouns (sand, milk, ...)
• count nouns (all others)
Pronouns
Personal (I, him, ...)
Possessive (its, hers, ...)
Interrogative/relative (whom, which, that, ...)
Demonstrative (this, those, ...)

Words (5)
Nouns and personal pronouns have clear
distributional differences (* marks incorrect
expressions).
a man is running ⇔ * a Jim is running
a box of sand ⇔ * a box of book
the book is mine ⇔ * the book is which
a white elephant ⇔ * a white he

Beyond words
Verb groups
In English, there are five basic forms:
infinitive eat, drink, walk
present 3rd person eats, drinks, walks
simple past ate, drank, walked
progressive (present participle) eating, drinking, walking
perfective (past participle) eaten, drunk, walked
In French, there are about sixty forms.
There also are at least 48 English tenses, most of them
expressed analytically, that is, using auxiliary verbs (all
forms of be, have, do, plus will, would and so on).

Beyond words (2)
Selected English tenses
Tense Example Example—continuous
present go / goes am / are / is going
past went was / were going
future will go will be going
present perfect have / has gone have / has been going
past perfect had gone had been going
future perfect will have gone will have been going
How would we add negation?

Inflection
Words usually have forms with the same meaning
and different functions in a sentence. Examples:
he — him was — were
long — longer book — books
Such forms have different inflectional categories.
Nouns can be inflected by case and number;
adjectives by case, number, gender and degree;
verbs by person, number, gender and tense.
Inflection in English is quite simple, compared with
such languages as Russian, and even French.

Inflection (2)
French English
donnais, donnais, donnait gave, gave, gave
donnions, donniez, donnaient gave, gave, gave
dernier, derniers last, last
dernière, dernières last, last
English cases Russian cases
Water is good. ... voda ...
There is no water. ... vody ...
I wonder at water. ... vode ...
I see water. ... vodu ...
I wash with water. ... vodoy ...

Inflection (3)
Case: nouns and pronouns
The mansubjective spoke. Hesubjective spoke.
We saw the manobjective. We saw himobjective.
Person and number: verbs
I walk/walked1st, sg I am/was1st, sg
yousg walk/walked2nd, sg yousg are/were2nd, sg
he walks/walked3rd, sg he is/was3rd, sg
we walk/walked1st, pl we are/were1st, pl
youpl walk/walked2nd, pl youpl are/were2nd, pl
they walk/walked3d, pl they are/were3d, pl
sg = singular, pl = plural

Noun phrases
Terry Winograd, Language as a Cognitive Process: Syntax, Addison-Wesley, 1983
Segment Function Examples
Determiner Pre-determiner half; both; all
sequence Determiner the; a; those; every
Ordinal first; second; last
Cardinal one; three; many
Modifiers Describers big; blue; enchanted
Classifiers stone; singing
Head Head walls; people; ones
Qualifiers Restrictive qualifier in town; who fly
Nonrestrictive qualifier , which you know
------------------ Possessive marker ‘s

Noun phrases (2)
Examples, short and long, with head marked
• he
• Jimmy
• a man
• all the first three big stone walls in town, which you know
• all those many enchanted blue singing people who fly
Elements that precede the head
Specifiers describe definiteness, cardinality, and so on.
Modifiers (adjectives, nouns) narrow down the meaning.
Elements that follow the head
Postmodifiers: relative clauses, prepositional phrases.

Simple clauses
A “simple” clause is not really simple. It is, however,
usually built around a single verb, though with many
additional elements — more in a while.
A clause can be in one of three moods:
declarative I will buy it.
interrogative Will I buy it? What will I buy?
imperative Buy it!
A clause has a tense — the same as the verb.
Finally, some clauses can be active or passive:
John hit Jim  Jim was hit [by John]
John felt sick  * Sick was felt [by John]
John slept  ???

Questions
There are two types of interrogative clauses. They
are, in a sense, derived from declarative clauses.
He bought two books today.
He did buy two books today.
Yes/no questions
Did he buy two books today?
Wh-questions
[Who]  bought two books today?
[What] did he buy  today?
[When] did he buy two books ?

Roles
A clause consists of a verb group surrounded by noun
phrases that serve as role descriptors.
One syntactic role that is always present in an English
clause is the subject. It may not be the agent or the
experiencer (see conceptual graphs).
Yesterday John gave Mary a book. subject
Yesterday John gave Mary a book. indirect object
Yesterday John gave Mary a book. direct object
Yesterday John gave Mary a book. modifier

Roles (2)
The number of roles depends on the verb.
Intransitive verbs have one role [subject]:
Jim has laughed. The child is sleeping.
Transitive verbs have two roles [subject, direct object]:
The man rode a pony. He should wash his face.
Bi-transitive verbs have a subject, direct object, indirect object:
Tom gave Mary flowers. Tom gave flowers to Mary.
Verbs with ≥ 4 roles: move [who what from-where to-where].
A verb may have several role patterns:
Tom bought flowers. Tom bought flowers for Mary.
Examples of incorrect clauses (too many / too few roles):
* Jim sold. * Jim slept a book.

Roles (3)
Four most common syntactic forms of roles
• Noun phrase in a specific position:
• subject
• direct object
• indirect object
• Prepositional phrase
• Embedded clause
• Modifier
Examples of the last three follow shortly.
All “role-fillers” are jointly called complements.

Prepositional phrases
The syntax is very simple: a preposition followed by a
noun phrase. The meaning tends to be quite complex,
and there are many roles, jointly determined by the
preposition and the noun phrase.
Examples of relations between roles and prepositions:
with instrument, accompaniment
He ate cake with a spoon.
He went home with them.
by agent, location
He was hit by a stranger.
He sat by the door.

Prepositional phrases (2)
More examples:
in ???
at ???
on ???
for ???
(there are many more prepositions, but not all
that many roles).
Prepositional phrases also qualify nouns:
I met a man with a dog.
I met a man in a coat.

Embedded clauses
Clausal subjects
Honour means much to him.
To jump over the lazy dog means much to him.
Jumping over the lazy dog means much to him.
Clausal direct objects
John wants peace.
John wants to give Mary a book.
John wants Jim to give Mary a book.
John considers the consequences.
John considers giving Mary a book.
Clausal indirect objects
John sent a note to Mary.
John sent a note to whom it may concern.

Verb phrases
Verb phrases also have a deceptively simple top-
level syntax: a verb with complements. The
complexity arises from the richness of the structure
of complements.
We can now define the syntax of a declarative
clause. (In the example grammars, we will call them
“sentences”.) We keep the noun phrase in the subject
position separate.
clause  nounPhrase, verbPhrase.
All other noun phrases, prepositional phrases and
so on are part of the verb phrase.
verbPhrase  verb, complements.

Modifiers
Much of the interesting complexity comes from
modifiers — expressions that introduce place,
time, manner and many other additional elements
of a situation. Here are examples of structures
and their meaning.
Adverb
Obviously, he wants to go.
Prepositional phrase
He wants to go for a walk.
Embedded -ing clause
He wants to go whistling a tune.
Noun phrase
He wants to go tomorrow.

Modifiers (2)
Ordinal
First, he wants to go.
A comparative construction
He wants to go as soon as possible.
Another embedded clause
He wants to go as if he danced.
In theory, we can have as many modifiers as
we please, but there are practical limits. This is
an almost unrealistic example:
More than ever, tomorrow he wants to go
quickly for a walk whistling a tune.

Modifiers (3)
Examples of simple clauses with subjects, qualifiers and
modifiers:
A man is walking.
A man with a cane is walking down the lane.
A man who seems tired is walking slowly.
A man is walking and whistling a tune.
A man with a cane who seems tired is slowly
walking down the lane and whistling a tune.
In the last two examples there is the complication of
“and”, but it is still a simple clause — it has one subject
and one, though far from elementary, verb phrase.

Compound clauses
There are co-ordinate clauses and subordinate
clauses, constructed using conjunctions.
X and Y are simple clauses.
Subordinate conjunctions — a few examples
“X if Y”
“X when Y”
“X because Y”
Co-ordinate conjunctions
“X and Y”
“X or Y”
“either X or Y”
“neither X nor Y”

Compound clauses (2)
Co-ordination is a difficult construct, expensive to
recognize, because a conjunction may appear between
any two constituents.
Hansel saw the witch.
Hansel and Gretel saw the witch.
Hansel and Gretel saw the witch and her house.
Hansel and Gretel saw and killed the witch.
Hansel and Gretel saw the witch and killed her.
Hansel and Gretel saw the witch and ran.
Hansel and Gretel saw the witch and her house and ran.

Relative clauses
the man who ∆ went for a walk
the man he knows ∆ best
the book that you gave ∆ to Mary
the book that you gave Mary ∆
the fair everybody went to ∆
the book that Bill promised he would tell John
to remember to give ∆ to Mary
Note how similar this is to questions.

Relative clauses (2)
But not everything is possible. We cannot “lift” a
noun phrase just from anywhere. These are
examples of incorrect “lifting”.
* the book John gave ◊ and the golden magic
ring to Mary
* the book I read a note that John gave ◊
to Mary
Relative clauses are hard to analyze, especially
if we want to reject such incorrect structures.
Not to worry: we will manage, at least partially.
Stay tuned.

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