ENGLISH GRAMMAR - MORPHOLOGY AND SYNTAX

Morphemes are classified into free morphemes and bound morphemes: - Can stand alone with a specific meaning - Can be used as a word - Must be attached to another element.. If an affix i

ENGLISH GRAMMAR

MORPHOLOGY AND SYNTAX

Group members:

Lecturer:

Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION TO GRAMMAR

I Introduction

- Grammar is the system of sounds, of meaningful units; and sets of rules

and principles that allow speakers to combine them into larger units and

understanding their language

- Linguistic competence (Mental Grammar): the human's ability to

understand and produce an unlimited number of utterances, including many that are novel and unfamiliar

- Grammar is divided into components: phonetics, phonology,

morphology, syntax and semantics.

II English grammar

Types of grammar

1 Prescriptive Grammar

Prescriptive grammar aimed to lay down the rules on how language

should be used and to set up a standard of correct usage.

Example: what do you want to eat the meat with?

Rule: Don’t end a sentence with a preposition.

with what do you want to eat the meat?

2 Descriptive Grammar

Descriptive grammar aims to present the grammar that underlies the

actual usage (the way people actually speak and write the language) of speakers

of the language, i.e it describes the system of grammar of the language

3 The Immediate Constituent Grammar – the IC grammar:

This grammar ue the immediate constituent (IC) analysis This approach

works through the different levels of structure within a phrase, or a sentences in

a series of steps At each level, a construction is divided into its major

constituents, and the process continues until no further divisions can be made.

For Example: The // girl / chas///ed // the /// dog

The / little / girl / invent/ed / the / story / about / the /accident

4 Phrase Structure Grammar – PS grammar:

This types of grammar names, or labels, the constituents that emerge each time

a sentence is segmented; each label abbreviates a formal category, e.g., we have

NP for Noun Phrase, VP for Verb Phrase, PP for Prepositional Phrase, S for

sentence, and so on.

For example: The old man went into the store with a crowbar

Phrasal categories are named according to the most important word of the phrase

Phrase Structure is the division of a sentence into parts, or constituents, and the division of those constituents into subparts

The girl chased the dog

The girl chased the dog

The bear went over the mountain

Prep NP

Art N

The bear went over the mountain

5 Transformational Generative Grammar – TG grammar:

aims to find out mechanisms, which account for generation of the variety of sentences of a language out of a few kernel sentences

6 Pedagogial Grammars or Teaching Grammar:

assume the students already knows one language and compares the grammar of the target language with the grammar of the negative language

7 Grammar Units:

SENTENCES  CLAUSES  PHRASES  WORDS  MORPHEMES

8 Syntatic relations:

° Subject Predicate relations.

Our class bought a new computer

A word is a linguistic sign, i.e am arbitrary union of sound (form) and

meaning A word is a minimal free form

A free form is an element that can occur in isolation and whose

positionwith respect to neighboring elements is not entirely fixed

- The hunters chased the elephant

- The elephant chased the hunters

- The elephant, the hunters chased

Example: 1 Teach and taught are different word forms -1 lexeme [TEACH].

2 A Nam walked home

B Nam has walked home

1 lexeme [WALK]

2 different word forms : walked+past tense (1);

walked+past partiple (2)

3 The man lost the rings on the way to the wedding

8 different words: the, man, lost, rings, on, way, to, wedding

4 we went to Saigon last week and we intend to go to Hoi An this week

13 different words: we, went, to, Saigon, last, week, and, intend, to, go, Hoi, An, this

REVISION CHAPTER 1&2

1 How many different words are there in this sentence:

“She walked to town yesterday she has walked there this morning?”

3 Which of the following rules is prescriptive ?

A In English, only pronouns display distinction in case

B Definite and indifinite articles come before their nouns in English

C The word like should not be use as a conjunction

D Adverbs such as very modify adjectives and other adverbs

4 Which of the following rules is descriptive?

A The preposition but should be followed by an object pronoun

B The most common way of expressing future meaning is with will

C In formal speech, the subjective pronoun is used after the verb be

D Split an infinitive is unacceptable in suh example as “ to completely disagree”

5 Which of the following sentences does not seem to be grammatically correct?

A All of us has a good time

B A good time was had by all of us

C It easy to see what she means

D What she means is easy to see

6 Which of the following sentences is prescriptively incorrect?

A That person looked hard

B Never will be the hunger be eliminated

C He was wrong to be quiet leave his home

D There are cookies for everyone

7 Which of ghe following is a component of grammar?

A Linguistsic

B Pragmatics

C Semiotics

D Semantics

8 The word “ grammar” in a complete sense means :…

(a) the grammar that speakers have internalized when they acquire the language

a linguistic performance b Linguistic experience

c linguistic competence d Language acquisition

10 Describe the syntactic relations that could be found in each

ofthefollowing sentences

- Mary had a little lamb

- My friends and I went home and held a welcome party

- The girl visited the place where she was born

- This is the maiden that milked the cow

- I don’t know who I should call for help

- What you see is what you get

11 how many different words are there in the sentence ‘Not many banks have branches on the banks of the Avon?

Chapter 3 MORPHEME AND TYPES OF MORPHEME

I Elements smaller than the word

 A morph, is a unit which is a segment of a word-form It has a constant form and realizes or is related to a constant meaning.

II Allomorphs and Morphemes

 Allomorphs are morphs which realize a particular morpheme and

which are conditioned

Phonetically conditioned : a, an and the Lexically conditioned: foot – feet, tooth – teeth, mouse – mice, man

– men, woman – women,

Grammatically conditioned: have – has, is – am – are

* Every allomorph is a morph.

 Morphemes, are abstract units They are the minimal (smallest)

meaningful units of a language

Morphemes are classified into free morphemes and bound morphemes:

- Can stand alone with a specific

meaning

- Can be used as a word

- Must be attached to another element.

- Is never a word, always a part of word.

Ex

ample: Tourists: -tour (one minimal unit)

-ist (meaning “person who does something”)

-s (a third unit of grammatical function indicating plurality)

+ Morphemes can vary in size: neither the number of syllables nor the length of a word can indicate what is a morpheme and what isn’t.

For example: Albatross is a long word but a single morpheme, -y (as in dreamy ) is

also a single morpheme.

+ Just as linguists have had success dissecting phonemes into combination of

distinctive features, so they have viewed morphemes as made up of combination of semantic features.

For example: we can analyze a word like girls in terms of both its morphological and

its semantic structure:

Morphological: girls = girl + s

Semantic: girl = {-adult; -male; -human, } + {s} = {PLU} = {plural}

+ Two different morphemes may be pronounced ( and even sometimes spelled) the

same way For example: the –er in buyer means someting like ‘the one who’, while the –er in

shorter means something like ‘to a greater degree than’ The first –er always attaches to a

verb, while the second –er always attaches to an adjective It makes sense to consider these

two different morphemes that just happen to sound the same

+ We can’t always hold to the definition of a morpheme as having unchanging form

For example, when we consider words like boys, girls, shirts, books, we conclude that –s is the plural morpheme But what about words such as men or women? Here plurality is

indicated not by adding –s but by morphologically, {man} + {PLU}, even though the form of

{PLU} is quite different in this case.

In the same way, it seems sensible to say that went = {go} + {PAST}, just as walked

={walk} + {PAST}, even though in the first case {PAST} involves a morphological change in

form quite different from the usual adding of –ed.

1 Root

Any morph which can realize a word ( lexeme) and which is not further

analyzable is termed A ROOT.

For example: undesirability  [un-desire-able-ity]

Bound morphs which do not realize words and which are attached to roots to produce word-forms are called AFFIXES.

Most roots are free morphemes, but some are not: euro-crat, octo-pus, phon-ic, wis-dom, and so on

quadra-For example: deal.ing.s, fool.ish.ness,

- A root is the part of a word that cannot be changed, and when added to

creates different forms of the word:

+ "Walk" is a root, and can be changed in many ways: walking, walked, walker,

walkie-talkie, sidewalk, walk-light, walks etc You will never have a word related to walking where the "walk" part gets changed, so it is a root.

+ Most of the time the root forms a word on its own, but sometimes they do not

Complete, replete, expletive: these all have the root "plete", which happens to not be a

word on its own.

2 Base

Anything we attach affixes to, whether it is just a root or something bigger than

a root is called a BASE

If an affix is attached before a base it is called a prefix, if it is attached after a

base it is called a suffix (and if it attached in the middle of a base it is calles an

infix)

Pre.pack.ed

For example: Nation

Nation-al (-al attached to Noun-base to form Adjective)

National-ize (-ize attached to a Adj-base to form Verb)

Nationaliz-ation Nationalization-al

- A base is any part of a word that you can add inflections to, or that you

can add prefixes/suffixes that change the meaning/part of speech

So "walk" is also a base, because it can have inflections (walking) and can be turned into different words (walker is a noun) Walker is also a base, because you can modify

it inflectionally (walkers is plural), and because it can have things added to derive new words (dog-walker).

- So all roots are bases because they are the smallest chunk that stays the same despite additions.

- Not all bases are roots though, because sometimes the root + inflection or root + derivation goes on to take additional changes (Walker is a base, but the root is

still walk).

3 Stem

STEM is the actual form to which an inflectional affix is attached to

( consisting of more than one morpheme).

For example: the form sing is the stem of the word sing.s

but singer is the stem of the word singer.s

- A stem is the form of a word that inflections get added onto Most of the

time this will be the root

"Walk" is the form that all the inflections (grammar-affecting changes) get added to, when you add ~ing to it, it turns into a progressive verb or a gerund ~ed turns it perfect ~s makes it a plural noun, or makes it agree with a singular subject.

II Free And Bound Morphemes

Free morpheme: morpheme that can constitute a word by itself.

Bound morpheme: morpheme which must be attached to another element to

make up a word

1 Derivation and Inflection

1.1 Derivational morphemes : are (bound) morphemes that *add new

meaning to an existing word.

(*) + the derived words may be in a different grammatical class: nation-al

+ the derived words may be in the same grammatical class:

Prefix re-write

Super-manSuffix Vietnam-ese

Mouth-ful

o There are an indefinite number of derivational morphemes.

+ For example, the following are some derivational suffixes:

- {ize} attaches to a noun and turns it into a verb: rubberize

- {ize} also attaches to an adjective and turns it into a verb: normalize

- {ful} attaches to a noun and turns it into an adjective: playful, helpful

- {ly} attaches to an adjective and turns it into an adverb: grandly, proudly

- A different {ly} attaches to a noun and changes it into an adjective: manly, friendly

+ English also has derivational prefixes, such as:

- {un}, {dis}, {a}, {anti}, all of which indicate some kind of negation: unhappy, dislike,

atypical, anti-aircraft

1.2 Inflectional morphemes are bound morphemes that are purely

grammatical markers, representing such concepts as tense, number, gender,

person, case,

* Inflectional morphemes do not change the syntactic/grammatical

category of the word or morphemes to which they are attached.

For example: SING {sing – sang – sung – singing}

8 English inflectional morphemes:

–‘s (possessive)

–s (plural)

–s (3rd person present singular)

–ing (present participle)

–ed (past tense)

–ed (past participle)

–en (past participle)

–est and –er (superlative and comparative degree)

- Notice that, as noted above, even irregular forms can be represented

morphologically using these morphemes E.g: the irregular plural sheep is

written as {sleep} + {PLU}, even though the typically form of {PLU} is not used here

Similarly, better = {good} + {COMP}; drove = {drive} + {PAST}

 Lexical and grammatical morphemes

Lexical morphemes are those that having meaning by themselves (more

accurately, they have sense)

Grammatical morphemes specify a relationship between other

morphemes But the distinction is not all that well defined

For example: - Nouns, verbs, adjectives ( {boy}, {buy}, {big}) are typical

lexical morphemes

- Prepositions, articles, conjuntions ( {of}, {the}, {but}) are grammatical morphemes

Lexical morphemes

Free morphemes

Functional morphemes Morphemes

Derivational morphemes Bound morphemes

Inflectional morphemes

1 Derivational affix the grammatical category and the meaning found in

the word to which it applies

a Changes b.Doesn’t change c Converses d.Can be

(a)&(b)

2 The form to which an inflectional morpheme is attached is called

3 How many different words are there in the sentense “She walked to town

yesterday and she has walked there this morning”?

4 How many morphemes are there in the sentense “The hungry wolves have

attacked their enemies fiercely”?

5 Which is the root of the word lukewarm

6 Which of the following is the base of the word uncomfortable?

a Comfort b Uncomfort c Comfortable d

uncomfortable

7 Which is the following is the base of the word unpredictability?

a Predict b Unpredict c Predictable d unpredictable

8 The word ‘householders’ has

a One root and one suffix c One root and two suffixes

b two roots and one suffix d Two roots and two suffixes

9 How many morphemes are there in the word ‘relationship’?

10 How many morphemes are there in the word ‘incompatibilities’?

11 The form to which an inflectional morpheme is attached is called a/an

12 Identify the root, base and affixes (prefix and suffix) of the following

CHAPTER 4 WORD CLASSES

I Introduction:

1 (Open) Lexical words: Nouns, Adjectives, Verbs, Adverbs

2 (Close) Function words: Pronouns, Determiners, Conjuntions, Auxiliaries, Complementizers

II Characteristics of word classes:

1 Nouns :

A word (other than a pronoun) that names a person, place or thing, functions as a subject and complement

1.1 Formal characteristics:

A word may be a noun if it

ends in two noun inflections: plural (-s or –es) and gentitive (‘s or s’)

Example: children, women,

end in a nominal derivational suffix:

-age baggage, carriage, cartage, damage, etc.

-ance/-ence importance, significance, dependence, etc.

-cy bankruptcy, captaincy, democracy, privacy, etc.

-dom : earldom, freedom, kingdom, etc.

-er/-or actor, creator, hatter, geographer, etc.

-ness happiness, sadness, darkness, conceiteness, etc

-hood childhood, falsehood, sisterhood, brotherhood, etc.

-ism baptism, criticism, organism, heroism, etc.

-ist chemist, dramatist, economist, etc.

-ity purity, authority, dubiety, majority, etc.

-ment enhancement, axcitement, fragment, etc.

-th bath, birth, death, etc.

-tion nation, pollution, suggestion, etc

-ure closure, picture, etc.

preceded by Determiners

+ Articles: a, an, the

+ Gentitives: my, our, your, his, her, its, and genitive nuons phrases

(eg., the girl’s mother, )

+ Demonstratives: this, that, these, those

+ Quantifiers: some, any, all, many, much, no, every, numerals(one,

two, ), ordinals(first, second, ),

+ Most adjectives: good, ridiculous, excellent, pretty,

+ count nouns: concrete:

Abstract: advantages, duties,

2 Verbs:

words that designate actions (walk, build, ), process (grow, turn,

develop, ),experiences (feel, see, know, ) or state of being (be, have)

Verbs can likewise be categorized along a number of dimensions

Some important dimensions:

The dimensions in which type of verb is concerned

Verbs

Intransitive verb Transitive verb Ditransitive verb

Intransitive verb ( nội

động từ )

Transitive verb ( ngoại động từ )

Ditransitive verb ( động từ có 2 bổ ngữ ) Definitio

n Intransitive verbs are

English verbs that

cannot or do not take

objects

Transitive verbs are English

verbs that take direct

objects

Ditransitive verbs are

English verbs that take

both direct objects and indirect objects

 Sit down!

 The man tore the paper

 Rabbits destroy my garden every year

 My cat kills rabbits

 He closed the door

 My husband bought me some flowers

 The police caught themselves a criminal

 Please pass me the rice

2.1 Formal characteristics:

A word may be a verb if it

can take the four verb inflections: V-s, V-ing, V-ed, V-en

Examples:

+ She travels to work by train

+ David is singing in the room

+ We walked five miles to a garage

+ I’m so worried that she will frighten me again

begins or ends in a verbal derivational affix



 Suffixes:

-ate Abdicate, accelerate, calculate, calibrate, capitulate, captivate,

castigate, celebrate, debilitate, decorate, educate, elaborate, elevate, eliminate, participate,

-fy (ify, efy) Beautify, classify, crucufy, rarefy, stupefy,

-ize Categorize, characterize, civilize, criticize, economize, emphasize,

equalize,

-en Awaken, batten, blacken, brighten, broaden, burden, enlighten,

fasten, frighten, harden, lengthen, listen, open, quicken,

 Prefixes:

Dis- Disagree, disappear, disapprove,

Un- Undo, untie, unfit, unarm,

Mis- Misinterpret, mistake, misunderstand, misuse, mistake,

Mal- Maltreat, malfunction,

Out- Outlive, outdistance,outbalance, outdo,

Over- Overwork, overload, overflow,overact,

Under- Underbid, understand,undercut, underfeed,

Fore- Forecast, forehead, foresee, foreword, forego, forerun,

Re- Return, reunite, rediscover,rewrite, recount,

En-, em- Embrace, encode, embed, enclose,enlarge, enchant,

Be- Behave, befriend,

De- Devalue, derail, demotivate,deform, de-emphasize,

preceded by words typically precede verbs,

i.e., have the potential to occur immediately following:

1 Auxiliaries ( be and have)

2 Modal ( do, did, will, would, can, could, may, might, shall, should, must)

3 To ( infinitival)

4 Not

agrees with subject, tense & aspect of action

2.2 Functional characteristics: Head of the verb phrase

 Subclasses of verbs: Verbs are subdivided into transitive, instransitive and linking verbs.

3 Adjectives:

words that refers to the nature, extent, scope, etc of a person or thing

A adjective modifies a noun

3.1 Formal characteristics:

A word may be an adjective if it

allow comparison through the audition of the inflectional suffixes –er and – est or being preceded by more and most

ends in adjectival derivational suffix

-ish Foolish, childish, selfish,

-al National, international,

-ful Successful, painful, thoughful,

-y Funny, sunny, daily,

-ic Energetic, economic, domestic,

-able/-ible Reliable, liable, manageable, possible,

-ing Amazing, breaking, overwhelming,

-ed Frustated, seated, preferred,

3.2 Functional characteristics: head of AP

3.2.1 Attributive adjective: modifies nouns by preceding or following them

Example: They are sick children

She is a person unusual for her knowledge of astrology

However, there are some special cases such as:

a Adjectives that follow a phrase are indicative of measurement:

Example: A girl 21 years old

b Stand behind: something, anything, nothing, everything.

Example: There is nothing new

c After the noun has a modified group for the word

Example: She showed me into a room full of people

d In the case of multiple adjectives, some nouns can be placed behind

Example: She is a girl both beautiful and intelligent

3.2.2 Predicative adjective:

a Adjective modifiers when combined with a verb as the predicate of a sentence

Example: She becomes famous

b Adjectives can also be followed by verbs and adjectives that modify the object

Example: He makes me sad

- Adjective used as a noun:

Example: The rich get richer

- Adjectives are used as pronoun:

Example: They catch the first

3.2.3 object complement Adj: (verb ) – NP – adj (AP)

Cut (X)short, push (X) open, drain (X) dry

Put (X) straight, keep (X) loose, set (X) right

Leave (X) clean, shake (X) free, make (X) plain,

4 Adverbs:

A word that describes or gives more information about a verb, adjective orphrase

Types of adverbs:

- adverb of time: yesterday, tomorrow, ago,

- adverb of place: above, below, here, outside, over there, there, under,

upstairs

- adverb of manner: badly, happily, sadly, slowly, quickly,

- adverb of degree: almost, much, nearly, quite, really, so, too, very

- adverb of frequency:

+ Again, almost, always, ever, frequently, generally, hardly, ever, nearly + Always, never, occasionally, often, rarely, seldom, sometimes, twice, usually, weekly

4.1 Formal characteristics:

A word may be an adverb if it

undergoes comparision by the addition of suffixes –er and –est or being preceded by more and most

ends in adverbial derivation suffix: -ly, –wise, -ward

-ly quickly, frequently, beautifully, seriuosly,

-wise otherwise, likewise,

-ward forward, westward,

tends to be relatively movable in a sentence

Frequently, Harriet was a visitor

Harriet was frequently a visitor

Harriet was a visitor frequently

4.2 Functional characteristics: Head of adverb phrases

Sentence modifiers

Disjuncts Apparently/obviously/clearly, Joan of D’Art is a heroine.

Hopefully, the book will inspire readers to a wider interest in weather Frankily/honestly, my dear, I don’t love you

Luckily/Unfortunately, she regained control of her mind

Conjunct The boy came and eventually he wear the suit

Summer arrived; however, the weather remained poor

He gambled away his inheritance, and consequently had to work for a living

Adjunct They are waiting outside

She talked to me about it slowly and carefully She really came here

5 Prepositions:

Relate objects, people or events in space or time,

5.1 formal characteristics

Single-word prepositions

About above across after against

Along amid(st) among around astride

At before behind below beneath

Beside(s) between beyond but (=except) by

Concerning down during except from

In inside into like of

On onto out outside over

Since through throughout till to

Towardunder underneath until unto

Up upon with within without

Multiword prepositions

According to alongwith apart from as for as to

because of except for inside of instead of out of round about,

5.2 Functional characteristics: head of prepositional phrases

6 Pronouns:

A word used in place of one or more nouns Pronouns bear the

grammatical functions of person, case, gender and number.

Pronouns are closely related to nouns, as they both function as NPs

Pronouns are traditionally characterized as ‘substitutes’ for noun or as ‘standing for’ noun

6.2 Demonstrative pronouns:

Examples:

- This is a book that she need to buy

- Those are some friends of my elder sister

6.1 Personal pronouns:

Accusative Genitive

I Me My mine

We Us Our ours

Accusative Genitive

You You Your yours

You You Your yours

Gender Masculine Feminine Neutral

Accusative Genitive

He Him His his

She Her Her Hers

It It Its Its

They Them Their Theirs

Examples:

- Yesterday, I had dinner with my family in a famous restaurant

- Her room is bigger than mine

6.3 Reflexive ( and intensive) promouns:

Herself Itself

themselves

- I myself will present the prizes

- The children can look after themselves for a couple of hours

6.4 Indefinite pronouns:

All, another, any, both, each, either, few,

many, most, neither, other, several, some,

such

Anybody, anyone, everybody, everyone, nobody, none, no one, others, one, somebody, someone

7 Wh- words:

Wh-words occur in three distinct functions:

a Introducing information questions

b Introducing relatives

c Introducing noun clauses

Examples:

a Who is the woman in the black hat?

b The postman comes at 6.30 in the morning, at which time I’m usually fat asleep

c Whether you come or not is no concern of mine

c’ What makes me mad is his ignorance

8 Minor categories:

Quantifiers, as the label implies, express quantity-related concepts

English quantifiers include every, each, all, many and few, as well as the

numberals one, two, three, etc, e.g: everybody, many, books, the seven sisters

Conjunctions ( or conjuncts), like and, but and or, serve to link the

elements in a conjoined expression All major lexical categories can be linked byconjunctions to form conjoined expression

a Coordinating conjunctions

- Single word coordinating conjunctions

For And Nor But Or yet So

- Multiword coordinating connjunctions

both and, not only but (also)

either or, neither nor, whether or

b Subordinating conjunctions ( or adverbial conjunctions)

Time After, as, as long as, as soon as, before, just as, now that, since, until, till,

when, whenever, while Place Where, wherever

Manner As, as if, as though

Reason or

cause

As, because, in as much, since Result So that, so that, such that,

Comparision As, as as, just as, so as, than

Purpose In order that, lest, so, so that, that

Condition As long as, if, on ( the) condition that, provided, provided that, unless Concession Although, even if, even though, though, whereas, while

c Relative conjunctions:

The Wh-word class and the word that

Example:

Anyone [who knows the answer]will receive a prize

The cat [that caught the mouse] was jubilant

2 Which of the following adjectives cannot stand before (attribute) a noun?

3 Which of the following word classes belongs to lexical categories?

a Conjuntion b Preposition c Determiner d none of them

4 Which of the following indefinite pronouns has a plural form?

5 Which of the following words cannot stand before a noun?

6 Which of the following verbs can have an objective complement?

7 What is the type of the adverb in the sentence “The children decided to do

their homework quickly”?

8 What is the type of the adverb in the sentence “Finally, he found a way to

get out of the jungle”?

a Attributive adjective c Subjective complement

b Predicative adjective d Objective complement

11 The suffix –wise in crabwise and clockwise is an affix to form in

english

a nouns b Adjectives c Adverbs d b and c

Chapter 5 WORD FORMATION

I Words

A word is an arbitrary union of sound form and meaning.

1 Simple, compound and complex words

- Simple words are those made up of only one stem and cannot be broken down into smaller meaningful units

Ex: house, money, book, …

- Complex words are those made up of stem(s) and one or more

inflectional and/or derivational affixes Complex words can be broken

down /analyzed into constituent part

Ex: teach.er.s, house.s, drink.ing, mouth.ful, prison.er.s, eat.s,

- Compound word: composed from the combination of two or more free morphemes

Ex: classroom, hotdog, boyfriend, sunflower, …

2 Closed and open word categories

 The closed categories are the function words:

Pro (you, she, he…)

Conj (and, if, because, but, for, or, when,…)

Det (a, an, the, some, this, that,…) and a few others.

 The categories of words that are open are the major lexical categories:

N (happiness, beauty, nation,…)

V ( include, compare, beautify, …)

Adj ( happy, beautiful, national,…)

Adv ( happily, beautiful,…).

II Word formation

1 Derivation: is the process by which a new word is built from a base,

usually through the addition of an affix (prefix and suffix)

N

1.1 Derivational English Affixes

Prefixes

1.2 Affixation is the process of coining new words from the existing ones

by adding affixes, obligatorily bound morph, to a base Affixation is

classified into prefixation and suffixation

 Prefixation: The process of coining new words from the

existing ones by adding a prefix to a base, with or without a change of word class

Ex: appear (v)  re-appear (v), defense (v) self-defense (v), slave (n)  enslave (v),…

 Suffixation: The process of coining new words from the

existing ones by adding a suffix to a base, with or without a

change of word class

Ex: develop (v) development (n), free (adj)  freedom (n),

2 Compounding is the process of forming new words by adding one base

A+A: deaf-mute, icy-cold, red-short,

V+N: playboy, cry-baby, playroom, playbill,…

N+A: blood-thirsty, lifelong,

A to V: goofproof, brown, black, slow…

V to N: fear, feel, hope, attack, alert, laugh, drive, import/export, …

4 Clipping/ Abbreviation: is a process whereby a new word is created by

shortening a polysyllabic word.

Ex:

5 Back formation is the process whereby a word whose form is similar to that of a derived form that undergoes a process of de-affixation.

Ex: babysit from babysitter

Biograph from biography

Edit from editor

Laze from lazy

Act from actor

Insert from insertion

Enthuse from enthusiasm

6 Acronymy: are words formed from the initial sounds or letters of a string

of words

Ex:

CEO - Chief Executive Officer

WWW-World Wide Web

IT- Information Technology

IELTS - International English Language Test System

HTML - HyperText Markup Language

UNESCO - United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural OrganizationWHO – World Health Organization

7 Blending: are words that are created from parts of two already existing

lexical items.

8 Reduplicating :

Some compounds have two or more elements which are either identical or

only slightly different; the difference between the two elements may be in

the initial consonants; most of the reduplicatives are highly informal or familiar

Ex: blah-blah, poo-poo, tom-tom, chop-chop, knock-knock, pee-pee…

9 Onomatopoeic words:

These are the words created to sound like the thing to which refer.

Ex: cook-a-doodle-doo, ping pong, pow pow, buzz, hiss, meow, zap, zing,

tick-tock…

1 Which of the following words does not have plural form?

2 The process of forming of the word “hotdog” is called

a Compounding b Suffixation c Conversion d Prefixation

3 Which of the following words has derivational affix?

a Childhood b Blackboard c Submit d onion

4 Which of the following word classes belongs to lexical categories?

a Conjunction b Preposition c Determiner d None of them

5 The word goodbye is formed by ‘god+be+(with)+ye’ This word

formation is called

a Compounding b Derivation c Blending d Zero-derivation

6 Which of the following words belogs to the Determiner word class?

7 Which of the following words has derivational affix?

a Westward b Diplomatic c Submit d Cupboard

8 Which of the following suffix is (commonly) used to form or recognize verbs?

9 Which of the following suffix is commonly used to form or recognize adjectives?

10 Which of the following suffix is commonly used to form or recognize nouns?

11.Which of the following suffix is commonly used to form or recognize Adverbs?

12.Which of the following prefix is used to form or recognize verbs?

Out-13.Which of the following describes the type of the word ‘babysitter’?

14.Which of the following is the rule of word formation of the word

‘modem’?

a affixation b Compounding c Blending d conversion

15.Which of the following is the rule of word formation of the word

‘HTTP’?

a acronymy b Abbreviation c Back formation d conversion

Chapter 6 SYNTAX

I Introduction

1 Definition

-SYNTAX is the study of how words are combined to form sentences in a

language Thus, syntax concerns the system of rules and categories that underlies sentence formation; and, the internal structures of sentences

2 Grammaticality and Ungrammaticality

- Grammatical sentences are those that conform to the rule and principles of

the syntax of a particular language

- Ungrammatical sentences violate one or more syntactic rules or principles.

 Grammatically judgments do not depend on whether the sentence is meaningful or not

 Grammatical sentences may be uninterpretable if they include

nonsense strings

 Grammatically does not depend on the truth of sentences

- Thus syntactic rules in a grammar must at least account for:

+ The grammaticality of sentences

+ The ordering of words and morphemes

+ Structural ambiguity

+ The fact that sentences with different structures can have the same meaning

+The grammatical and logical relations within a sentence

+ Speaker’s creative ability to produce and understand any of an infinite set of possible sentences

3 Syntactic Categories or Word Classes

3.1 Aspects of syntactic structure

- The function of elements as subject and direct object in a sentence It encompasses relationships like modifier-modified and possessor-possessed.

- The organization of the units: the words are organized into units which are

then organized into larger units These units are called constituents, and the hierarchical organization of the units in the sentence is called its constituents structure.