“The greater part of this world’s troubles are due to questions of grammar.” (Montaigne)

 

“Grammar is an example of a ’descrete combinatorial system’. A finite number of descrete elements (in this case, words) are sampled, combined and permuted to create larger structures (in this case, sentences) with properties that are quite distinct from those of their elements.” (Pinker, 1994)

 

“Another noteworthy descrete combinatorial system in the nastural world is the genetic code in DNA, where four kinds of nucleotides are combined into sixty-four kinds of codons, and the codons can be strung into an unlimited number of different genes.” (Pinker, 1994)

 

“Most of the complicated systems we see in the world, in contrast are blending systems like geology, paint mixing, cooking, sound, light, and weather. In blending system the properties of the combination lie between the properties of its elements, and the properties of the elements are lost in the average or mixture.” (Pinker, 1994)

 

“…. the brain must contain a recipe or program that can build an unlimited set of sentences out of finite list of words. That program may be called ‘a mental grammar’. …. Therefore, he argued, children must innatelu be equipped with a plan common to the grammars of all languages, a Universal Grammar….” (Noam Chomsky)

Parts of speech :  a family of expressions that can substitute for one another without loss of grammaticality; Noun, Pronoun, Verb, Auxiliary verb, Adverb, Prepositional Phrase, Determiner, Adjective.

* ”She is in stay.”  -  Slots

Being ungrammatical : using form sor structures not generally used.

Prescriptive Grammar vs. Descriptive Grammar

Form / Structure / Function / Use

 

* ”Our grammar teacher is boring.” : source / ”Our grammar teacher is  bored.” : experiencer

 

* “Bob Marley smiled at the sherriff.”  vs.  “Bob Marley smiled the sherriff.” (direct impact)

 

* “Aristotle flew the plane.” vs. “Aristotle flew in the plane.” ( Linguistic and Conceptual Distance )

Context

“There’s a woman in a supermarket. She meets a friend with a small child. They stop and chat. Then the child takes a bottle from the shelf and puts it in the first woman’s bag.”

New information vs. Given information

“… speakers and writers organize the information structure of their message on the basis of predicting how familiar the listener or reader will be, at any point, with what is the focus of attention….”

 

“Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught. “ (Oscar Wilde)

 

Eliza to Higgins in Pigmalion ( B. Shaw) : “ I don’t want to talk grammar. I want to talk like a lady in a flower shop.”

 

The framework of English: A Lexical Overview

Content and Function Words

1) Pronouns

• Personal ( I, me, her, we, they)
• Reflexive ( myself, themselves, oneself)
• Possessive ( mine, yours, hers, his)
• Relative ( who, that, whose)
• Interrogative ( Who? What? Which? How? )
• Demonstrative ( this, that, these, those)
• Indefinite (someone, no one, anybody, everything)
• Impersonal ( one)

2) Determiner

• Possessive ( my, your, his, her, one’s, our)
• Demonstrative (this, that, those)
• Interrogative (which, what, whose)
• Quantifier ( no, both, several, many, every, all, each, few)
• Numeral ( one, two, first, second)

3) The Connective

• Coordinatior ( and, or, but, yet)
• Subordinator (after, whenever, if, in case, since, unless, until)
• Conjunct ( however, nevertheless, next, therefore, now)

4) Preposition (about, apart from, as far as, at, because of, on behalf of)

5) The Degree Modifier (intensifier) ( a bit, a little, rather, so, extremely)

6) Auxiliary Verb ( am, is, are, was, have, had, do, did)  

7) Word classes: Nouns: proper and common, count and mass, concrete and abstract; Verbs, Adjectives; Adverbs.

8) Sentence Types:  Simple ( one independent c.), Multiple (two or more clauses), Compound (two or more independent c.), Complex (one independent+ one or more dependent c), Compound-Complex ( two or more independent c. + one or more dependent c.)

Dummy Subject: “it” : “It’s me.”

 “Long time no viddy, droog.”

“So down I ittied, slow and gentle, admiring in the stairwell grazhny pictures of old time – devotchkas with long hair and high collars, the like country with trees and horses, the holy bearded veck all nagoy hanging on a cross. There was a real musty von of pussies and pussy-fish and starry dust of this domy, different from the flatblocks. And then I was downstairs and I could viddy the light in this front room where she had being dolling moloko to the kots and koshkas. More, I could viddy these great overstuffed scoteenas going in and out with thier tales waving and like rubbing themselves on the door-bottom. On a like big wooden chest in the dark hall I could viddy a nice malenky statue that shone in the light of the room, so I crasted this form my own self, it being like a young thin devotchka standing on one noga with her rookers out, and I could see this was made of silver. So, I had this when I ittied into the lit-up room, saying: “Hi hi hi. At last we meet. Our brief govoreet through the letter-hole was not, shall we say, satisfactory, yes?” (Anthony Burges, A Clockwork Orange)    

1. Identify the nadsat words that have an actual meaning, specify their meaning, next identify their classes.
2. Identify the sentence types in the text.

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