An Overview of the Grammar of EnglishOutlineu Grammatical, Syntactic and Lexical Categories – Parts of Speechu Major Constituents – Noun Phrases – Verb Phrases – Sentencesu Heads, Complements and AdjunctsGrammatical Categoriesu The dimensions – along with constituents can vary, and – to which the grammar of the language is sensitive, are call grammatical categories. u E.g., in English, nouns and demonstratives have a “number” property.– These have to agree (“this book”, “*these book”).– We must mark nouns for number, even if it is irrelevant.u Grammatical categories tend to be grammaticizedsemantic/pragmatic distinctions.– The number across all languages is very small.u Other frequently occurring grammatical categories are gender, case, tense, aspect, mood, voice, degree, and deictic position.Syntactic Categoriesu These are the formal objects we will associate with constituents.u Traditionally, they are the non-terminals of our grammar.– As such, they are atomic, unanalyzed units.– However, most theories today give them some structure, making them a bundle of grammatical categories.»We will return to this point later.Lexical Categoriesu Most words of most languages fall into a relatively small number of grammatically distinct classes, called– lexical categories or– parts of speech (POS), or– word classesu The lexical category describes the syntactic behavior of a word wrt the grammar.u These correspond to pre-terminals in a grammar, – i.e., non-terminals that appear on the left-hand side of those rules that have terminals on the right. u Most (other) grammar rules will make reference only to POSs, and not to individual words.Classes of Lexical Categoriesu Useful to divide POSs into two groups:– Open classes » let new words into them rather casually» and, therefore, tend to be very large.» Major ones are noun, verb, adjective and adverb. – Closed classes» change very little u Indeed, to a closed class is viewed as language change.» include “function” words, i.e., terms of high grammatical significance» Examples are prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions.What Are They?u Traditional grammar tells us that European languages have eight.u Today, a few more are generally recognized by linguists.u There isn’t complete consensus on what these are– but there isn’t a large divergence either.– There is some disagreement about exactly what should go in which category.u However, when we actually develop a grammar, it can be argued that we will need many more distinctions than these provide.u And, often, pragmatically-oriented computer scientists postulate lots more POSs than would be linguistically justified.A More or Less Typical Modern List of (Basic) Lexical CategoriesNoun Verb Adjective Adverb PrepositionDeterminer Pronoun ConjunctionSubordinatorComplementizerIntensifier Infinitive marker Foreign wordsPossessive marker Punctuation SymbolNoteu Some of these (specifically, symbol and punctuation) are just for written language.– Similarly, “possessive marker” is just a tokenizing artifact.u All of these have important (i.e., grammatically significant) subclasses.– Some are true subtypes– Some are classes we can create by deciding to include other grammatical category distinctions within the lexical category.– Whether or how we include the subclasses is a major source of variation.Nounsu Nouns have a number of differentiating dimensions:– Proper vs common»Proper nouns are “Jan”, “Moscow”, “New York City”?– Singular vs plural (the “number” grammatical category)»boy, boys, man, men– Count vs mass»“too many cats”, “too much water”»“Wine can be red or white.”, “Tigers have stripes.”Verbsu Types– auxiliary (closed)» List: do, have– modal (closed)»List: can, might, should, would, ought, must, may, need, will, shall (dare?)»copula (List: be)– main (open)Verbs (con’t)u Verbs have lots of forms:– Finite forms: »Can be the only verb in a sentence»Tends to have lots of (morphological) markings bearing lots of information. – Non-finite forms: »Doesn’t show any variation.Finite Verb Formsu Always marked for tense.u May carry other “agreement markers”– E.g., person, number u Tenses– PresentExamples: u {I/we/you/the girls/they} {hit, go, cry}; u {He/the girl} {hits, goes cries} u I am; {You, we, they, the boys} are; He is.– Past» Examples: u {I/we/you./the girls/he/the boy} {hit, cried, went}u {I,he,the boy} was; {We, you, the girls} wereNon-Finite Verb Formsu Infinitive– The “base”, in English.– E.g., be, go, hit, cryu Participles: Verbs qua modifiers (or to make an aspect)– Present (imperfective) participle» He {is, was, has been, will be} crying» The woman lighting the cigarette …– Past (passive) participle» The boy rescued from the well….» The man, {exhausted, gone for three weeks,}– Perfect participle (not quite the same thing)» He {has, will have, had} {cried, been, gone}» Always the same as the passive participle in English.Gerunds, BTWu Note that you can use the imperfective participle as a so-called “verbal noun”:Throwing stones at glass houses can be hazardous.u This is called a gerund.– It looks like a verb internally, but a noun externally.u Note there is an “more nominal” form:The throwing of stones at glass houses …– This uses the same base form, but internally it looks just like any other NP.Determinersu Types– articles: the, a, (unstressed) some– demonstratives: this, that– possessives: my, your– quantifiers: many, few, no, some– misc.: either, both, and maybe, which:»No matter which door you chose, you lose.»The plane landed, at which time, the passenger disembarked.u Some propose that quantifiers are a separate lexical category.Pronounsu Types:– Personal (you, she, I, it, me)– Reflexive (herself)– Demonstrative (this)– Indefinite (something, anybody)– Wh-pronouns (what, who, whom, whoever)» which sometimes divided into interrogative (when used in questions) and relative (e.g., which, in relative clauses)u Note that so-called “possessive pronouns” (my, your, his , her, its, one’s our, their) are more properly regarded as determiners– Sometimes called possessive adjectivesPrepositions and Particlesu One commonly distinguish a class called particles.u In English, these combine with verbs to make so-called phrasal verbs:Jan threw upmade up that storylooked the word upput me
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