This document discusses English grammar and its traditional rules. It covers parts of speech like nouns, verbs, adjectives. It also discusses agreement between parts of a sentence in number, person, tense and gender. Traditional grammar was prescriptive and based rules like not ending sentences with prepositions. Descriptive grammar describes how language is actually used. Structural and constituent analysis are used to investigate sentence structure and how constituents are organized hierarchically. An example shows how an English sentence translates to Gaelic with different word order.

1. GRAMMAR
Pamela Dibi anak John Linggir
( 2015149951 )
Stephanie Gloria binti Jug
( 2015145863 )

2. English Grammar
• In order to know the proper way of learning English, we have to
understand the English grammar.
• From the previous chapter, the lucky boys is a well-formed phrase.
e.g : *boys the lucky
*lucky boys they
• English has strict rules for combining words into phrase
e.g : article + adjective + noun
A beautiful rose
• Grammar is the process of describing phrases and sentences in such
a way that we account for all the grammatical sequences in a
language and rule out all the ungrammatical sequences.
unacceptable/ungrammatical

3. Traditional Grammar
• Initially based on European languages, especially Latin and Greek
• Often taken to be the best model for other grammars
Traditional
Grammar
The Parts of Speech
Agreement
Grammatical Gender

4. The Parts Of Speech
Nouns To refer to : people, objects,
creatures, places, qualities,
phenomena, abstract ideas
*Proper noun, begin with capital
letter
Girl, pencil, cat, university, roughness,
rainbow, happiness
*Hannah, Kuala Lumpur
Articles Used with nouns to form noun
phrases : a, an, the
Hannah bought a ticket to the zoo.
Hannah saw an elephant at the zoo.
Hannah patted the elephant.
Adjectives Used with nouns to provide
more information about things
referred to
e.g : large, beautiful
They live in a large and beautiful
house.
Verbs Words that refer to actions.
e.g : hurt, walk
James hurt his feet, so he can’t walk for
a few days.

5. Adverbs Words that provide
information about actions,
states, and events
e.g : loudly, yesterday
She sang loudly.
We saw them at the park yesterday.
Prepositions Words that provide
information about time, place,
and other parameter.
e.g : at, in, into, on
At 1 o’clock, in the afternoon, John
poured the milk into the bowl and
placed it on the floor for the cat to
drink.
Pronouns Words that replace a noun
phrase.
e.g : she, they, them
Hannah likes pancake. She eats it
for breakfast every morning. She
gives pancake to John and James
because they like them very much.
Conjunctions Words that connect and
indicate relationships between
events.
e.g : and, because
Jack and Jill went up the hill to
fetch a pail of water.
I like cats because they are cute.

6. Agreement
• Traditional grammatical analysis has provided us a number of other
categories : - number
- person
- tense
- voice
- gender
Joanna loves her cat.
• The verb loves “ agree with ” the noun Joanna.
– Number : whether the noun is singular or plural

7. – Person : - 1st person (speaker) singular = I
2nd person (hearer) singular = you
3rd person (others) singular = he, she, it, Joanna
So, we have a noun Joanna, which is a 3rd person singular, and we
use the verb loves to agree with the noun.
– Tense : loves present tense
– Voice : active Joanna loves her cat
: passive Joanna is loved by her cat
– Gender : Joanna and Her

8. Grammatical Gender
• Grammatical gender ≠ Natural gender
• Natural gender is based on sex (male and female)
• Grammatical gender is based on the type of noun (masculine and
feminine).
• Nouns are classified based on their gender class while articles and
adjectives have different forms to agree with the gender of the noun
e.g : Spanish : - masculine = el sol (the sun)
- feminine = la luna (the moon)
German : - masculine = der Mond ( the moon)
- feminine = die Sonne ( the sun)
- neuter = das Feuer (the fire)

9. The Prescriptive Approach
• Grammar as a set of rules for the proper use of language.
1. You must not end a sentence with a preposition.
e.g : Who did you go with? X
With whom did you go? ✓
2. You must not split an infinitive = Captain Kirk’s Infinitive
– In Star Trek, Captain Kirk, “To boldly go where no man has gone
before.” (Split Infinitive)
– The infinitive form of any English verb almost always consists of 2
words : “to go”, “to eat”, “to walk”, but can be used with and adverb
such as boldly.
– If Captain Kirk had been a Roman, he would have said ire (to go) and
audacter (boldly).

10. The Descriptive Approach
• Describes the language as it is used, not on how it should be used.
Structural Analysis
• To investigate the distribution of forms in a language.
• Method used : test-frames that can be sentences with empty slots in them.
e.g : The _______ gets wet when it rains. (field,child,road,etc)
• Since all this forms fit in the test-frame, they are likely to be examples of
same grammatical category. (i.e. nouns)
• Other forms that do not fit (Joanna, her cat)
• A different test-frame will be required:
e.g :_______gets wet when it rains. (Joanna, her cat) ✓

11. Constituent Analysis
• To show how small constituents or components go together to form larger
constituents.
e.g : The police caught the thief in the market.
• Noun phrases (NP) = the police, the thief, the market
Prepositional phrase (PP) = in the market
Verb phrase (VP) = caught the thief
The police caught the thief in the marke
t

12. Labelled and Bracketed Sentences
• To show how the constituents in sentence structure can be marked
off by using labelled brackets.
• Put brackets (one on each side) round each constituent, and then
move brackets round each combination of constituents.
e.g : The dog loved the girl
– Word level = [the ] or [dog]
– Phrase level = [the dog] or [loved the girl]
– Sentence level = [the dog loved the girl]
Art = article
N = noun
NP = noun phrase
V = verb
VP = verb phrase
S = sentence

13. • Based on the labelled and bracketed sentence, we have revealed the
hierarchical organisation of those constituents.
• S is higher than and contains NP
• NP is higher than and contains the N
• S contains VP (V + NP)

14. A Gaelic Sentence
• English Scottish Gaelic
• The boy saw the black dog Chunnaic an gille an cu dubh
Chunnaic an gille an cu dubh
saw the boy the dog black
V Art N Art N Adj

15. VIDEOS
• Chalking Points - To Boldly Split Infinitives
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNGh0JF8VcE
• Italian Grammar- Adjective Positions
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDptg7wD8uE