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GRAMMATICAL TERMS
Recommended reading:
P, Ladefoged, A course in phonetics, New York, 1982.
A, C, Gimson, An introduction to the pronunciation of English, London [Edward
Arnold], 1987,
T. McArthur (ed.), The Oxford Companion to the English Language, Oxford, 1992
(contains short entries on phonetic and grammatical terms).
Words
Grammar books often do not define the term word. The chief reason is that in the written
language, words are clearly identified by the spaces between them. Are there words also in
the spoken language? There are no spaces between words in speech. Breaks come at the
end of groups of words – phrases, clauses, sentences. Nevertheless the existence of words
in written languages has been recognized since ancient times and written words appear to
correspond to some kind of linguistically justified unit. In reality the word is not a clearly
definable linguistic unit. There is a certain conventionality about written word
division, which can be only partially correlated with linguistic definition. Word
division in languages other than English also exhibit a certain amount of conventionality,
which is not always definable on linguistic grounds.
Inflection and syntax
One may say that the word `cat' has two forms cat and cats. But cat and cats are also
words. To avoid this terminological confusion `cat' is sometimes referred to as lexeme, i.e.
an abstract unit underlying sets of grammatical variants such as cat/cats [forms of the
lexeme CAT], take/takes/taking/took/taken [forms of the lexeme TAKE]
big/bigger/biggest [forms of lexeme BIG].
The variations in the forms of a word was called inflection in traditional grammar. In
more recent linguistics it is referred to as morphology ‘the study of forms’.
There are three levels of grammar: PHONOLOGY (the sound system), MORPHOLOGY
(the system of word formation), SYNTAX (the combination of words in sentences).
Many languages have a far more complex morphology than English, Latin has about 120
forms of the verb (English never has more than five take, takes, taking, took, taken) and
Latin nouns have seven or eight different forms (English has two cat, cats).
Classification of languages: isolating, agglutinative, inflectional
Some languages, such as Chinese, have no inflection, no morphology. These are known as
isolating languages.
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In some languages the forms are made up of clearly identifiable parts, e.g. Swahili a-li-kuona ‘he saw you’ he-PAST-you-see a-ta-ku-ona ‘he will see you’ he-FUTURE-you-see, nili-ku-ona ‘I saw you’ I-PAST-you-see. These are known as agglutinative languages.
Japanese is an agglutinative language. Contrast Latin where each grammatical element cannot
be clearly separated; amo ‘I love’, amabam ‘I loved’. Languages such as Latin are known as
inflectional languages.
In most cases these terms refer only to predominant tendencies in language, since most
languages exhibit some features of all types.
English: Prepositions by, near, to are invariable, so isolating; see/saw is inflection; the
forms love/loves/loved/loving could be defined as agglutinative.
What about distinction between belief and believe. This is usually treated as a derivation,
one word being derived from the other resulting in two different words. Inflection, on the
other hand, is reserved for those morphological features that more obviously involve syntax,
i.e. a change of form in different syntactic contexts (e.g. subject of clause vs. object of clause).
In traditional grammar morphology is presented by setting out all the forms in lists:
Lists of forms of verbs are known as paradigms, e.g. amo, amas, amat, amamus,
amatis, amant. To conjugate a verb = to cite the paradigm of a verb.
Lists of forms of nouns are known as declensions of cases. Cases are different
inflectional endings according to syntactic function.
nominative: subject of sentence.
accusative: object of sentence.
genitive: possessive relationship.
dative: recipient or beneficiary of an action.
ablative: movement away from.
Parts of speech
Traditional grammars divide language into parts of speech. According to most grammars
there are eight parts of speech.
Part of speech
Typical examples
Noun
wolf, flock, terror, howling
Pronoun
I, you, he, which
Adjective
this, the, fourth, each, untidy
Verb
see, retire, laugh
Preposition
on, in, to
Conjunction
and, but, because
Adverb
much, deservedly, partly, merely
Interjection
alas
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The definition of the word class is established in terms of formal and functional
criteria. By describing the characteristic morphology, if this exists, and the
syntactic functions of particular word the grammar provides a definition of a word
class.
Definitions of parts of speech:
Nouns: traditionally ‘the name of a person, place or thing’. Sometimes referred to
as substantives (referring to substances). Formal and functional definition: Items
that display certain types of inflection (e.g. case or number), have a specific
distribution (e.g. they may follow prepositions) and perform specific syntactic
functions, e.g. as subject or object of sentence.
Proper nouns: names of persons (John), places (India) and periods of time
(August). The reference is unique.
Common nouns: what is not a proper noun.
Generic noun: refers to a class: The lion is a powerful animal.
Collective noun: refers to a number of things regarded as a whole, e.g. fleet,
army.
Noun phrase, nominal group: Phrases consisting of a noun and its modifiers
that have same syntactic function as noun by itself: Johnlthe man with a red
cap came into the room.
Pronoun: Elements that substitute for a noun or noun phrase, e.g. John came into the
room/He came into the room. Strictly, pronouns should be defined as closed sets of
items (i.e. whose membership is fixed or limited, new items cannot be added) which
can be used to substitute for a noun or noun phrase. They must be defined as `closed
sets' since otherwise they would include any substitutions of noun: John/The
man/The aforementioned came into the room.
There are different types of pronouns:
Personal pronouns, I, you, me...
Possessive pronouns, my/mine...
Demonstrative pronouns, this/that...
Interrogative pronouns, who, which,
what?
Reflexive pronouns, myself/yourself
Indefinite pronouns,
anyone/nobody Relative pronouns,
who/whom/that
Verb: traditionally ‘doing’ or ‘action’ words. But many verbs do not ‘act’ in any
obvious way, e.g. seem, be. Formal definition: an element that can display
morphological contrasts of tense, aspect, voice, mood, person and number.
Functionally: the element that is used as the minimal predicate of a sentence, e.g. he
came.
Transitive verb: < Latin transitivus ‘passing across’. A verb that takes a
direct object, i.e. a person or thing directly affected by the action of t h e verb,
‘Directly affected by’ includes several different relations, e.g. The dog bit the
cat (patient); She paced the room (object of place); He said that he had
resigned (sentential object); They enjoy singing,
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Intransitive verb: A verb that does not take a direct object. It expresses an
action that is complete in itself: They shouted.
In some languages there is no clear lexical distinction between nouns and verbs,
but all lexemes may occur freely as either nouns (subjects, objects) or verbs
(predicates), e.g. Nootka: The woman is coming OR The coming is woman/The
come womans.
Adjective: Items that specify the attributes of nouns. Divided into
Attributive adjectives/Epithet, the big man.
Predicative adjectives, the man is big.
In some languages the distinction between attributive and predicative
adjective is not clear, e.g. ‘the big man’ is expressed as ‘the man who is
big’, cf. Persian, Neo-Aramaic, Japanese.
Degrees of comparison: rich, richer, richest – positive degree, comparative
degree, superlative degree.
The traditional term adjective may include words that are never used predicatively,
e.g. the, a, my. These are best defined as determinatives.
Adverb: Heterogeneous group of items whose most frequent function is to specify the
mode of acting of the verb, often marked by -ly in English.
One can relate adverbs to such questions as how?, where?, when?, why? and
classify them as adverbs of ‘manner’, ‘place’, ‘time’. One comes across terms
adverb phrases and adverb clauses which are functionally equivalent with
adverbs, e.g. A: When is he going? B: Now (adverb)/In five minutes (adverb
phrase)/When the bell rings (adverb clause). The term adverbial subsumes all
these categories.
Verb modification is traditionally said to be the central syntactic role of
adverbials, but they can also function as sentence modifiers or sentence
connectors: Moreover/Frankly, 1 think he was right. Sometimes intensifiers
(very, awfully) are brought under heading of adverbials.
Preposition: Items that precede a noun phrase that express some relation. The man
in the corner, After the meal.... Some languages, e.g. Japanese, Amharic have
postpositions, i.e. placed after the noun.
Conjunction: an item whose primary function is to connect words or clauses.
Co-ordinating conjunction: and, or, but
Subordinating conjunction: marking a clause as embedded within the
sentence: because, when, unless.
Interjection: word ‘thrown among’ other words to express an emotion, It plays no
part in the construction of the sentence. Ah, you are back!
Affix: an element added to a word, base, or root to produce an inflected or derived form,
e.g. -s added to house to form houses, re- in re-write. Affixes are subdivided into prefix,
suffix and infix according to their position (beginning, middle, or end).
Enclitic (< Greek ‘leaning on’): A word attached to a preceding word, sometimes in a
reduced form, lacking its own stress: Latin -que (‘and’) in Senatus populusque Romanus
the Senate and the Roman people.
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Proclitic. A word attached, usually in reduced form and lacking its own stress, to a following
word: 'twas < it was.
Sentence, clause, phrase.
In writing, sentences end in full stop. Traditional grammars define it as the expression of
complete thought. It contains a subject and predicate – it indicates something that we are
talking about and says something about it.
Subject and predicate. Traditionally there is a two-fold distinction in sentence analysis
between subject and predicate. The subject is what the sentence is about. The predicate is a
statement about the subject. The subject is traditionally associated with the ‘doer’ of an action,
e.g. The cat bit the dog. Not all subjects are ‘doers’ of action: Dirt attracts flies. The books
sold well. It is easiest to define a subject in terms of grammatical features, e.g. word order
(before the verb), inflection.
Sometimes a distinction is made between the grammatical subject (treated. by syntax
and inflection as subject) and logical subject the doer of the action referred to by the
sentence, e.g. the cat was kicked by the dog (grammatical subject = cat, logical subject
= dog).
Topic: The person or thing about which something is said in the sentence. It may coincide
with grammatical subject and logical subject: The dog bit the man, with the grammatical
subject but not the logical subject The man was bitten by the dog, or with neither: Your
thesis, have you finished it yet?
In some languages such as Japanese and Samoan the topic is marked by a special particle. In
Chinese the notion is important because there is no inflectional morphology marking
grammatical subjects.
Object: Traditionally the ‘receiver’ or ‘goal’ of action: The cat bit the dog. Distinction
between:
Direct object: The person or thing directly affected by the action of a transitive verb.
The action of the transitive verb passes directly over to it: 1 have done the work.
What are you doing?
Indirect object: It is usually animate and the recipient of the direct object. The person for
whom or to whom the action is done: recipient, beneficiary, someone adversely
affected. The contrast between the two types of object is marked in English by
prepositions or word order: The man gave a letter to the boy/the man gave the boy
a letter. John showed Jane the letter. She refused him his offer. In inflecting
languages the distinction between objects is marked by a different case (accusative,
dative).
Cognate object: An object formed from same root as verb: I knocked a loud knock.
Complement: A component of clause structure, which is traditionally associated with
‘completing’ the action specified by the verb.
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In a broad sense it subsumes all features of the predicate other than the verb, e.g.
object: he kicked the ball; adverbial: He was in the garden,
Sometimes complement is used to refer only to the ‘completing’ function of what
follows the verb to be: He is a doctor (subject-verb-complement). Which is your
house? What a work of art it is!
A further distinction may be made between complements of the subject and
those of the object: He is a doctor (subject complement); He called me a fool
(object complement).
Adjunct. An optional or secondary element in a sentence, which can be removed without
the construction being rendered ungrammatical: John kicked the ball yesterday, but not
*John kicked yesterday.
Apposition: Two consecutive, juxtaposed nouns or noun phrases are in apposition when
they refer to the same person or thing, and when either can be omitted without seriously
changing the meaning or the grammar of a sentence: John, the chairman of the club, led
the way.
Definiteness. This is status of a noun and is often marked in languages by some element,
usually called an article. In English it is marked by the definite article and the lack of it by
the indefinite article. A noun is definite if the speaker/writer assumes that the
hearer/reader can identify the entity the noun is referring to: I live in the house over there.
I live in a house.
Coordination
Two sentences linked together with equal status: John stood still and Mary ran away.
Cf. coordinating conjunctions.
Subordination
One sentence functions as part of the other. A sentence takes the place of a part of the
sentence: He said that he was coming. that he was coming functions as object.
Subordinate clauses (vs. main clause) are further classified in traditional grammar as
nounclauses, adjective-clauses, adverb-clauses, according to whether they have function of
nouns, adjectives or adverbs in the main clause:
Noun clause: He said that he was coming.
Adjective clause: The boy who was standing there ran away. Also known as
relative clause.
Adverb clause: While I was standing there, I saw John; cf. Yesterday, I saw John.
The term clause is usually used in the context of subordination to refer to a sentence that is
a component of a larger sentence, Sometimes also coordinated sentences are referred to as
clauses linked together to form a larger sentence.
Compound sentence: A sentence consisting of two or more main clauses: The
power failed for the third time that day, and once again we sat in darkness.
Complex sentence: A sentence consisting of one main clause in which are
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embedded one or more subordinate clauses: (subordinate clauses in bold italics) I
know where she lives. When 1 asked for his opinion, he said that he could not say
anything at present.
Conditional sentence: A sentence containing a conditional clause, which is
generally introduced by a conditional subordinating conjunction such as if. This
type of sentence is divided into two parts:
Protasis (< Greek ‘proposition’) the conditional clause and Apodosis (< Greek
‘answer’) = the main clause: If you come tomorrow (protasis), I'll help you
look for them (apodosis).
The condition expresses the fact that one situation is dependent on another, This
conditional relationship can be expressed by other constructions, e.g. generic nouns
modified by relative clauses: Employers who do not consult their staff cannot
expect cooperation from them (= if employers do not consult their staff, they cannot
expect cooperation from them).
Conditions may be open or hypothetical.
Open conditions are neutral, leaving open the question of the fulfillment
of the condition: If he apologizes I shall forget the whole thing.
Hypothetical conditions imply that the fulfillment is doubtful or has not
taken place: If he apologized tomorrow, 1 would forget the whole thing
(but the expectation is that he will not apologize).
Relative clauses:
Adnominal relative clauses. Modifies a noun like an adjective. Introduced by a
relative pronoun/word. The noun it modifies is the antecedent. Two types.
Restrictive relative clause: defines more closely what the noun modified by
the clause is referring to: My uncle [antecedent] who lives in Brazil is coming
to see us. This restrictive modification distinguishes this uncle from any others
who might have been possible referents.
Non-restrictive relative clause: adds information not needed for identifying
what a modified noun is referring to: My uncle, [antecedent] who lives in Brazil,
is coming to see us. Provides information about the uncle, the identity of the
uncle is presumed to be known.
Sentential relative clause: Does not modify a noun. It may refer back to part of a
sentence: She exercises for an hour, which would bore me, i.e. the exercising would
bore me; or to a whole sentence: He kept on bragging about his success, which
annoyed all of us.
Nominal relative clause, The relative word has no antecedent. The antecedent is fused
with the relative ward: Whoever comes must register. I found what you were
looking for. He says whatever he likes.
Grammatical categories
Gender: masculine, feminine, neuter: There is no complete one-to-one relation between
grammatical gender and biological sex. cf. French la sentinelle ‘the sentinel’, la vigie ‘the
night watchman’, das Mädchen, das Fraülein. It is a linguistic method of dividing nouns
into classes. Gender exists in Indo-European and Semitic but in many African languages,
e.g. Swahili, the word class system has nothing to do with sex but is concerned with the
distinction between living and non-living creatures and between big and small. Gender,
therefore, distinguishes classes of noun with which adjectives and sometimes verbs agree,
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parallel to other word class systems in languages that have no relation to biological sex.
In languages without inflection, such as Chinese, classes of nouns are marked by
separate words known as classifiers, e.g. liang used with vehicles, kuan used with
slim, long objects such as pencils, tubes etc.
Number: singular, plural, dual. In some languages a distinction made between a ‘little
plural’ and ‘a big plural’, e.g. Semitic.
Person: classification of pronouns:
1st – person speaking; 1, we
2nd – person spoken to; you.
3rd – person or thing spoken about; he, she, it
In some languages these three categories are represented in the inflection of the verb. As
is familiar from European languages, 2nd person sing. is avoided in polite forms of
address, substituted by 2nd person plural, or 3rd person forms. There is a complex
pronoun system in South-East Asia, e.g. Japanese, according to the relative rank of the
speakers and people spoken to.
Tense: Refers to the way the grammar marks the time at which the action took place: Past
tense, present tense, future tense. In most languages, however, forms of verbs called
‘tenses’ can be used to signal meanings other than temporal ones, e.g. 1 wish 1 knew (=
‘know now’).
Aspect: a category referring primarily to the way the grammar marks the duration or type
of activity denoted by the verb.
Perfective aspect: expresses completion of an action, viewing a situation as a single
whole, without distinction of the various separate phases that make up that situation:
John went out and bought some bread. John will go out and buy some bread.
Imperfective aspect: expressing duration without specifying completion. It puts the
focus on the internal structure of the situation, viewing it from within. It expresses
habitual and continuous: John used to work here (habitual), John was working when
I entered (continuous).
We can say that there is an aspectual distinction in English between progressive I am
going and the non-progressive I go.
Some languages make further aspectual distinctions: iterative (regularly occurring
action), inchoative (referring to the beginning of an action)
In some languages only aspectual distinctions are made in the verb. Some languages
express both differences of aspect and tense, e.g. English.
English tense/aspect system
Perfect: Denotes completeness of action. Present perfect I have gone, I have broken
it: completeness of action [aspect] in the present time [tense]. Action performed in the
past whose effects extend to the present. Contrast I broke it, which does not imply
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that it is still broken.
Past perfect (pluperfect) 1 had gone: completeness [aspect] of action some time in
the past [tense]. I saw that he had broken it. Two degrees in the past. The ‘breaking’
preceded the seeing but the effect of the breaking extended to the time of ‘seeing’
Future perfect 1 shall have gone: completeness of action [aspect] some time in the
future [tense]. When you return, I shall have broken it. Two degrees of future
‘breaking’ precedes ‘returning’, but the effect of ‘breaking’ extends to the time of
‘returning’.
Other tenses in English:
Past, present, future simple [tense]: I walked, I walk, I shall walk
Past, present, future continuous/progressive [tense, aspect]: I was walking, 1 am
walking, I shall be walking.
Future tense of indirect speech: Future in the past: Simple: he said that he would break
it (future relative to the time of saying [tense]); continuous he said that he would be
breaking it up when we arrive (future relative to the time of saying [tense] expressing
incompleteness of action [aspect]);
perfect: he said that he would have broken it up when we arrive (future relative to the
time of saying [tense] expressing completeness [aspect]).
Auxiliary verb: verbs that accompany the main verb to make distinctions of mood, aspect
and voice. English:
Primary auxiliaries: be, have, do: he is coming, does he know?, he has taken.
Modal auxiliaries: can, could, may, might, shall, should, will, would, must.
Copula:
1. A verb that joins a subject to its complement, with little independent meaning.
Mainly used to refer to the verb to be: he is a doctor.
2. In some grammars used to refer to a co-ordinating conjunction such as and.
Finite. Classification of types of verbs and clauses, In English grammar a finite verb is a form
that can occur on its own in an independent sentence and is inflected for grammatical features
such as person, number and tense. A non-finite verb is a form of the verb that is not inflected
for grammatical features such as person, number and tense and occurs on its own only in
dependent clauses. In English a non-finite verb is either an infinitive or participle. A finite
clause is a clause containing a finite verb.
Infinitive: non-finite verb that has the uninflected form of the verb, to be, be,
Participle: a non-finite form of a verb. < Latin participium, translating Greek µetoch ‘part-taking’, i.e. part verb and part noun. In English there are two types:
-ing participle: present participle. It combines with the auxiliary be for the
continuous: James is playing cards, James was playing cards, etc.
-ed participle; according to function either:
past participle: Combines with the auxiliary have for the perfect: James has
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visited me recently.
passive participle: Combines with the auxiliary be for the passive: Jane was
helped by Jeremy.
Participles can be used:
1. Like an attributive adjective: running water, missing link, broken heart.
2. In a participial clause/phrase:
(a) Functioning like relative clauses: The t r a i n n o w s t a n d i n g a t
p l a t f o r m 5 is for London only. The food served on the plane was
disgusting.
(b) Functioning like finite subordinate clauses, with or without a
conjunction. Expressing time: While running for the train, he lost his
wallet, Reason: Jostled by the crowd, he did not really see what had
happened. Result: The train . started suddenly, throwing an elderly
passenger to the floor.
Such clauses, which do not contain a subject, refer grammatically to
the subject of the main clause. If they do not, the result is a
hanging/dangling participle, which is often ambiguous and frowned
upon: After travelling by road all day, the 123-room Sahara
Palace is an air-conditioned all-mad-cons watering hole (Daily
Telegraph, 22/9/84).
The participial clause may contain its own subject, in which case it is
an absolute clause (Latin absolutus ‘cut off, free’), the clause/phrase
standing apart from the usual relations with other elements in a
sentence: Weather permitting, we'll go sailing this weekend; The
dinner having been prepared, I had time to take a nap before
the guests arrived.
Gerund: A noun derived from a verb ending in –ing. They appreciate my visiting their
parents regularly. Like a noun it can be introduced by genitive (cf. my visit to their
parents), but like a verb it takes the direct object (cf. I visit their parents).
Verbal noun: A noun derived from a verb ending in -ing. Unlike the gerund, which combines
syntactic features of both noun and verb, the verbal noun is syntactically a noun.
It does not take a direct object, e.g. in the more formal construction, They appreciate my
visiting of their parents, visiting is a verbal noun not a gerund. Other examples of verbal
noun: the writing has taken too long; his hearing is defective.
Nominalization:
1. Forming a noun from a word belonging to another word class, e.g. sanity from
sane (adjective), shavings from shave (verb).
2. Transforming a finite clause into a noun phrase: their rejecting my complaint/their
rejection of my complaint from they rejected my complaint.
Mood, modal(ity): refers to a set of syntactic and semantic contrasts signaled by the
inflection of the verb. Sometimes it expresses the attitude of speaker towards the factual
content of his utterance, e.g. uncertainty, definiteness, vagueness, possibility. These
contrasts may be expressed by alternative inflectional forms of the verb or by auxiliary
verbs. English uses mainly modal auxiliaries, e.g. may, cart, shall, must, occasionally
inflection: if I were you vs. I was ,.
Indicative: verb forms/clause types expressing statements. Declarative.
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Subjunctive: (Latin subiunctum ‘bound together’) verb forms and clause types used
in the expression of many types of subordinate clause, usually expressing uncertainty
or non-factuality. The subjunctive mood in Latin, Greek and other languages is
mainly used in subordinate clauses.
In English it is disappearing. It is still found in hypothetical constructions: if he
were coming, we could go, and in some subordinate noun clauses introduced by
that following a noun expresses a wish: e.g. I insist that he go to town.
Imperative: expresses commands.
Voice: The voice of a verb shows the kind of relationship that exists between the subject
and the verb,
Active and passive. The object of the active is the subject of the passive. The hunter
shot the tiger: The tiger was shot by the hunter. Active voice represents the subject
as the agent/actor. Passive voice represents the subject as being the patient, being
acted upon. A passive verb in English, therefore, is transitive.
Both the direct and the indirect object can be made the subject of the passive verb:
Bill gave John the book.
John was given the book by Bill.
The book was given to John by Bill.
We can identify two functions of the passive. (1) By making the object the subject, a
passive construction makes the object also the topic of the sentence, i.e. what the
sentence is about. (2) Passive is sometimes used when the agent of the action is
unknown or the speaker wishes not to specify him, e.g. The tiger has been shot. In
theory these two functions of the passive need not restrict it to transitive verbs, as in
English, In some languages passives are found also with intransitive verbs, either (1)
to make someone or something involved in the action of the verb other than the
subject the topic or (2) to avoid specifying someone or something involved in the
action of the verb, e.g. Arabic 'utiya ‘someone/some people came’.
Middle: expressing the performance of an action for oneself.
Causative: expressing the causing of an action to take place, e.g. he eats (noncausative) he causes someone to eat (causative). In English this is often expressed by
lexical contrast: to eat vs. to feed. In some languages it is a regular feature of verb
morphology, e.g. Semitic, Japanese, Turkish (the last two are agglutinative languages
and employ affixes rather than inflection).
Concord. Agreement of verb with subject in person, number, etc, agreement of adjective
with noun it modifies in number, gender, case etc. Sometimes, e.g. in some Semitic
languages, there is agreement of verb with both subject and object. Neo-Aramaic: gora
ilbaxta gtil-le-law ‘the man killed-her the woman’, baxta ilgora qtil-la-leu ‘the woman
killed-him the man’.
Government: The way in which the use of one word requires another word to take a
particular form, especially in highly inflected languages. In Latin, prepositions and verbs
are said to govern nouns in a certain case, ad villam ‘towards the villa’ (accusative) a
monte ‘from the mountain’ (ablative); hominem videre ‘to see a man’ (accusative),
hominis meminisse ‘to remember a man’ (genitive).
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