2011 Descriptive Grammar of English Marcin Cinciała - Serwis ...

Descriptive Grammar of English
Syntax & Morphology - summer semester 2011
Duty hours: Monday 18:15-19:15
Aims
Marcin Cinciała
marcinc@ifa.amu.edu.pl
The aim of the course is to introduce the students to English syntax, both from the
descriptive perspective and the perspective of generative syntax
Content
Supplementary coursebooks
O'Grady, W., M. Dobrovolsky, and M. Aronoff (1989) Contemporary Linguistics:
An Introduction. New York: St. Martin's
Quirk, R. and S. Greenbaum (1990) A Student's Grammar of the English
Language. Harlow, Essex: Longman.
Radford, A. (1988) Transformational Grammar. Cambridge: CUP.
Tajsner, P. (2003) Lectures on Structure and Derivation.Poznań: Wydawnictwo
Poznańskie.
1. Theories of grammar, descriptivism vs. prescriptivism
2. Morphology
3. Classification of lexical categories
4. Nouns and pronouns
5. Verbs and auxiliaries
6. Adjectives, adverbs and prepositions
7. Noun phrases and their modifiers
8. Verb phrases: aspect, tense, voice and modality
9. Prepositional and Phrasal Verbs
10. Predicates and theta roles
11. Prepositional, adverb and adjective phrases
12. Clauses and sentences
DOs and DON’Ts
• You are kindly asked not to miss more than two classes per semester;
otherwise a make-up-test will be administered.
• In order to complete the course you need to pass two tests. These are good
for you, as they will deal with issues, which will appear on the final exam.
Main coursebooks
Wardhaugh, R. (1995) Understanding English Grammar. A Linguistic Approach. Oxford:
Blackwell.

THEORIES OF GRAMMAR
I. Descriptive grammar
1. Morphology
2. Syntax
II. Other types of grammar
1. Pedagogical
2. Prescriptive
3. Generative
III. E-linguistics vs. I-linguistics
IV. Competence vs. Performance
V. Grammaticality vs. Acceptability
Classification into parts of speech
I. Notional definitions of word classes
Problems:
II. Structural criteria for classification
1. Formal characteristics
2. Distributional properties
1. The mission if USS Enterprise is to boldly go where no man has
gone before
2. Hopefully, the weather will clear up tomorrow.
3. It’s me who gets the blame for everything.
4. It was the most unique event in the history of the town.
5. Finding the door unlocked, the opportunity to escape revealed itself.
Issues to remember from the exercise:
- Dangling infinitive,
- Sentential vs. VP adverbs
- (non)gradability of adjectives
- Split infinitive
Key words
- language,
- linguistics,
- grammar,
- prescriptive grammar,
- descriptive grammar,
- language faculty,
- competence vs. performance.
III. Typical vs. peripheral lexical items
IV. Problem: Circularity
Exercises:
What is wrong with the following sentences according to prescriptivists.

MORPHOLOGY
1. Words and morphemes
(a) morphemes – the minimal meaningful units of language,
(b) words – minimal free forms.
2. Morphology
2. What does morphology deal with
3. Enumerate the major lexical categories.
4. What is the difference between a bound and a free morpheme
5. Exemplify and name types of affixes.
6. What is the difference between derivation and inflection Name
three criteria distinguishing derivational affixes from the
inflectional ones.
7. What are nouns morphologically marked for
8. What are verbs morphologically marked for
(a) simple vs complex words,
(b) closed vs open classes,
(c) morphemes and allomorphs,
(d) free vs bound morphemes,
(e) derivation through affixation: prefix – stem – suffix
(f) zero derivation (conversion),
(g) ablaut,
(h) stress shift.
3. Word formation
(a) derivation and derivational rules,
(b) compounding,
(c) clipping, blending and backformation.
4. Inflection
(a) inflection vs derivation,
(b) nominal inflection,
(c) verbal inflection (Wardhaugh 1995: 51-60, 64).
Questions:
1. What does it mean that words are arbitrary

WORD CLASSES
Parts of speech and their divisions.
primary auxiliary
concrete
countable
abstract
common concrete
VERBS
auxiliary
semi-auxiliary
Lexical
modal auxiliary
uncountable/mass
NOUNS abstract
proper
intransitive
linking S V L NP/AP (pred.)
intransitive (pred.) S V I (AdvP/PP)
VERBS
personal (subject/object)
central
reflexive/reciprocal
possessive (attributive/absolute)
transitive
monotransitive S V T O DIR
complex-transitive S V C O DIR O COMP
PRONOUNS
relative
ditransitive S V G O INDIR O DIR
interrogative
attributive/postpositive
demonstrative
indefinite
ADJECTIVES
predicative

ADJECTIVES
stative/dynamic
gradable/non-gradable
inherent/non-inherent
1. How does distribution of words in a sentence help in their classification
into the parts of speech categories
2. There are two expletive subjects in English: what are they and how do
they differ
3. Give examples of parts of speech which have suppletive forms.
4. What does it mean that an adjective is non-gradable
pure adv.
ADVERBS compound adv.
derived adv.
copulative
5. How do nouns and pronouns differ in terms of their morphological
marking (open/closed class, Case marking, person distinction, gender
contrast, number forms morphologically related/unrelated).
6. What is the difference between Saxon and Periphrastic Genitive Refer
to their form, meaning and use.
coordinating disjunctive
adversative
CONJUNCTIONS
Subordinating
Morphological marking (inflection) of different parts of speech
Case, number and gender of nouns and pronouns,
(a) Saxon vs. periphrastic Genitive (form, meaning and use),
(b) tense, aspect, mood and voice of verbs,
(c) subject/verb agreement,
(d) grading of adjectives and adverbs,
(e) suppletive forms,
(f) verb forms: infinitive, tensed and participial.
Exercises:

PHRASES
Constituents and constituency
1. What is a constituent
2. Tests for constituency:
• Pronominalisation
• Do-so test
• Elypsis
• Passive
• Topicalization
• Questions
• Pseudo-cleft formation
• Cleft test
• Adverb Placement
• Sentence fragment test
Phrase Structure
1. Head/pre-head/post/head
2. Endocentricity
3. Complements vs. adjuncts
Noun Phrases
1. Modifiers within NPs
• Determiners
• Pre-/post-determiners
• Adjectives and their order
• Nouns
• Adverbs
• PPs
• Relative/appositive clauses
2. The relation between meaning and position
A man accused of the crime vs. *an accused of the crime man
Someone intelligent vs. an intelligent person
Verb Phrases
EXERCISES
1. Grammatical systems within the VP
• Tense
• Aspect
• Voice
• Modality, types of modality
• Polarity
2. The Structure of VPs
• Complements and Adjuncts
1. Draw Phrase markers of the following phrases:
• Your reply to my letter
• A student of English with long hair
• A French English teacher
• The fight after the match
• Her dislike of men with big egos
• The house in the wood near the park
• Wrote the letter in the morning
• Hit the man with an umbrella
2. Label the functional projections
• The fence may have been being painted
• He may have been painting the fence

• She may still have been being operated on
EXERCISES
Draw phase markers of the following phrases
Prepositional Phrases
1. The function of prepositions
2. The semantics of prepositions
• Purpose
• Direction
• Time
• Stimulus
• Possession
• Accompaniment
3. The syntactic function of prepositions, oblique case.
4. The structure of PPs
5. Prepositions and particles, the difference between prepositional and
phrasal verbs Tests:
• movement
• question formation
• relative formation
• adverb placement
6. Phrasal-prepositional verbs
• Very fond of Mary in some ways
• Extremely keen on fishing
Test whether the following constructions are phrasal or prepositional
verbs
• Blow up
• Bring up
• Come across
• Call up
• Call on
Adjectival and adverbial phrases
1. The structure
2. Complements and adjuncts
3. Intensifiers
4. Types of adverbial phrases

BASIC CLAUSES
Clauses:
Sentence
Simple Sentence
Compound sentence Complex sentence
Compound-complex sentence
Predicates and thematic roles:
1. Types of theta-roles:
• Agent
• Patient
• Experiencer
• Instrument
• Theme
• Goal
• Source
• Location
• Benefactive
• Temporal
2. Unaccusative and ergative verbs
EXERCISES
1. Verb Complementation
2. Passive
1. Label the thematic roles in the constructions below
Bob ate the cake with this fingers
Jenny likes vodka drinks
Sally grows roses
The car struck the wall
2. Identify the type of verb and the categories that follow
Mary made me happy
Marry made me some soup
She appears every night
She appears angry
We consider the idea the solution to all our problems
Subjects
Complements
1. Location
2. Definitions
3. Subject-verb agreement
4. What can function as a subject
5. Expletives

COORDINATION AND EMBEDDING
Coordinate constructions
3. Extraposition
4. Topicalisation
1. Coordinating and correlating conjunctions, conjunctive adverbs
2. Types of constituents that can be coordinated
3. Coordinate Construction Constraint
4. Irreversible binominals
Types of embedded clauses
1. Nominal clauses
• Subject noun clauses
• Object noun clauses
• Subject Complement NCl
• Object Complement NCl
• Declarative vs. Interrogative
• Imperative clauses
EXERCISES
1. Identify and describe the embedded clauses
• The exam was more difficult than expected
• It’s easy to say that someone else will do it
• What happened, I do not know
• I hate the idea that we should work together
• The fact that he succeeded is surprising
2. Label the sentences as compound, complex, compound complex
• I came, I saw, I conquered
• I’ll do it when I’m ready
• What you see is what you get
2. Relative clauses
• Restrictive
• Non-restrictive
• Appositive clauses
3. Adverb clauses
Transformations
1. Clefting
2. Pseudo-Cleft formation