Zahir Shah, Lecturer English UGS NUML Grammar – Frank Palmer

Chapter – 2
Some Traditional Concepts
 Traditional grammars - use of a fairly wide technical vocabulary (to describe the concepts they use -
words like 'noun' , 'verb', 'agreement' , 'plural', 'clause' and even 'word' itself.)
 Unfortunately, the usual practice in the grammar is to give some kind of definition of most of the words,
but never to question the whole justification of their use.

2.1: Words - There have been three main approaches to study “What a word is and how it can be defined?”

1. Word - A Semantic Unit:

The semantic definitions of the term ‘word’ are very notional, and fail to stand valid. For instance,
 The word is said to be a linguistic unit that has a single meaning. BUT, the problem lies in deciding
what is meant by a single meaning.
 Words cannot be defined in terms of units of meaning due the following points.
 Single Words - Cover Not One but Two or More 'Bits' Of Meaning.
‘Sing’ - a single meaning BUT ‘Sang’ - both ‘sing’ & 'past time'
 One Meaning - Covered Not By One But Two or More 'Bits' Of Words
Lam (baby), ewe (mother) and ram (father) - single meanings [They all mean 'sheep']
 Arbitrariness Between Words And Meaning
Two words to distinguish between ‘passenger train’ and ‘goods train’, BUT for a similar
distinction with road vehicles single words are used such as ‘bus’ and ‘lorry’.
 Arbitrariness in the Number of Words While Translating
The Eskimo has four words for different kinds of snow. Similarly, the Bedouin has many words for
all the different kinds of camel. In order to translate these into English we have to use more than one word.

Eskimo Aput Qana Piqsirpoq Qimuqsuq

English Snow On The Ground Falling Snow Drifting Snow A Snowdrift

 Morphological – Semantic Imbalance (Compound Words)

A single concept can be represented by two or more words.
For example, Table Tennis (Isn’t it semantically one word but morphologically two?)
 One Morphological Unit – Several Semantic Units (Homographs)
Bank (1. Riverside, 2. Institution), Book (1. To reserve, 2. A book)
 One Semantic Unit – Several Words In A Sequence (Phrases & Idioms)
The meaning of phrases and idioms cannot be stated in terms of the individual meanings of each word.
For example, Put up with (tolerate), Make up, put off,
Daddy longlegs (A flying insect with very long legs)
Mother-in-law's tongue
These are expressions whose meaning cannot be derived from the meaning of the individual words.
 Word Division Does Not Correspond To Meaning Division Always
 For instance, ‘heavy smoker’ cannot be divided into heavy and smoker as far as meaning is concerned.
Similar is the case with ‘criminal lawyer’.

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Zahir Shah, Lecturer English UGS NUML Grammar – Frank Palmer

 In these examples, division into meaningful elements seem to be, not at word division, but within the
second word – heavy smok/er, artificial fior/ist, criminal law/yer.
 Words That Do Not Have Meaning Until They Are Used In A Context:
Words such as ‘the’, ‘a’, ‘on’, etc.
 The Concept Of ‘Mohmil’ In Some Languages:
In some languages such as Urdu and Pashto etc, words are accompanied by ‘mohmil’. For example,
Gol Mol, Theek Thaak, Dhoom Dhaam, Chup Chaap (in Urdu)
Kitab Mitab (book), Jenai Menai (girl), Sabaq Mabaq (lesson), Khabare Mabare (talk/chat) (in Pashto)

2. Word - A Phonetic or Phonological Unit:

Number of Words in a Phonological unit:
 As a result of stress pattern,
Blackbird - /ˈblækbɜːd/, blackboard /ˈblækbɔːd/, greenhouse /ˈɡriːnhaʊs/, are single words
Whereas black bird, black board, green house are two.
 Same phonological Unit:
beat her - beater
kissed her rhymes with sister
 English also has what is commonly known as 'juncture'. This is illustrated by the fact that even in normal
speech it is possible to distinguish between:
that stuff - that's tough
a nice cake - an ice cake
keep sticking - keeps ticking
grey day - Grade A
 The vowels and consonants of each pair are identical. How, then, do they differ? They differ in juncture.
 Unfortunately, word division is not always signaled by juncture. For example, there is no difference
between a tack and attack.
 Similarly in the potato the division is between ‘the’ & ‘potato’ rather than between ‘the po’- and – ‘tato.’
 Moreover, for many people at all is pronounced as if it were a tall - in other words the juncture feature
suggests the wrong word division. The reason here is that at all is treated as if it were a single word like
nearly, wholly, etc.; as a single word it would be phonetically identical with a tall.
 A simple and plausible definition is in terms not of pause, but of potential pause (where we can pause if
we so wish). i.e.: ‘1 saw John’ three words because we can divide by pausing, into 1, saw and John.
 Moreover is it really true that we can only pause between words? Surely we can pause, in deliberate
speech, between the parts of postman, sleepless and even discuss and consider.
 We can even invent situations in which we can divide speech into syllables or even into letter-sounds,
c - a - t. Do these then become words?
Conclusion: Phonetic definitions of the word are, perhaps, as irrelevant as semantic ones.

Word - Linguistic (an isolable and indivisible Unit):

 There are similar difficulties with any definition of the word as an 'indivisible unit'.
 Word is a linguistic unit which does not permit the insertion of any other linguistic material. For instance,
we know that little boy is two words because we can insert English -little English boy - but we cannot
insert anything within the word ‘singing’.

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Zahir Shah, Lecturer English UGS NUML Grammar – Frank Palmer

 Though, we cannot insert any other linguistic item within the word ‘singing’, but we can divide it into
‘Sing – ing.’
 American linguist Leonard Bloomfield defines word as a 'minimum free form' (the smallest bit of speech
that can occur in isolation).
 What about ‘the’, ‘a’, ‘my’, and ‘in’?? [We need to provide context for them – without context how can
they be words??]
 Similarly, what about: ‘re’ in reject?
‘’s’ in boy's?
‘Less’ in harmless
Are ‘re’, ‘’s’, and ‘less’ words??
 Solution cab be that the English possessive's as in fohn's is like of, and the prefix in- in intolerable is like
not, but this would not be a good argument for treating them as words.
 Moreover, some of these forms are not used in isolation because the language has a different form for use
there. We have no form in isolation to correspond to the and a, but we have mine and yours for my and your.
 In conclusion, sadly, we have to say that the word is not a clearly definable linguistic unit.

2.2 Inflection and Syntax

 Words - many different forms.
 In English, for instance, the verb 'to take' is said to have the forms take, takes, took, taking and taken (and
perhaps taker). Similarly, the word 'cat' has the two forms cat and cats.
 The term 'word' is used in two different senses.
cat and cats as words
cat (a singular form) and cats (plural form) as two forms of the word ‘Cat (lexeme or lexical item).’
[In the former usage, cat and cats are different words, while in the latter they are forms of the same word.]
Forms/ States of Verbs in English:
Base Form Infinitive Present Form Past Form Past Participle Present Participle
(bare infinitive) (To infinitive) (1st Form) (2nd Form) (3rd Form) (-ing Form)
take to take take, takes took taken taking
play to play play, plays played played playing
eat to eat eat, eats ate eaten eating
do to do do/ does did done doing
be to be is/ are /am was/ were been being
have to have have/ has had had having

 Problems: We run into difficulties if we try to refer to the auxiliary verbs by a TO ('infinitive') form.
 A French scholar once referred to the English verbs 'to will' and 'to shall', but no such forms exist in English.
 Same for the other model auxiliaries 'to can' , 'to may' , 'to must' and 'to ought' – no such form exist
 In fact, except for 'to ought', such verbs exist in English, though they are totally unrelated to the auxiliary
verbs of English - 'to can' is 'to put into cans', 'to may' is 'to celebrate May day', 'to must' is 'to go musty'.
 The way in which the verb is referred to in grammar books varies according to the language.
I come . . . . . and He comes . . . . [English]
‘Wo jata hy . . . .’ and ‘Wo jati hy . . . .’ [Urdu]
 Most of the languages with which we are familiar have a far more complex morphology than English.

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Zahir Shah, Lecturer English UGS NUML Grammar – Frank Palmer

 Latin, for instance, has about 120 forms of the verb.

 Similarly, French, German, Italian and most other European languages have far more forms than English.
 In English, (except with the verb ‘to be’: be, is, are, am, was, were, been, being) never has more than five
different forms of the verb, e.g. take, takes, taking, took, taken, and often only three, e.g. hit, hits, hitting.
Forms of Noun
 Some languages have many forms of the noun. e possessive forms,
 English has never three (3) forms of the noun - possessive forms, the singular and the plural.
 But Latin nouns have seven or eight different forms. The way that they are set out in the grammar books (in
'paradigms') suggests that there might be twelve different forms, but some of the forms appear more than
once, e.g.:
SINGULAR PLURAL
Nominative amicus ('friend') amici
Vocative amice amici
Accusative amicum amicos
Genitive amici amicorum
Dative amico amicis
Ablative amico amicis
 In Urdu, a noun has different forms: singular, plural, Ism e Musaghir and Ism e Mukabir etc.
 In Pashto, ending of a noun changes when calling someone’s ‘name’.

Forms of Adjectives
 In English, the adjective has three degrees (Positive, Comparative & Superlative), but no change in the form
of adjectives with either masculine or feminine.
 The Latin adjectives have considerably more forms because adjectives can be masculine, feminine or neuter.
 Same is the case with Urdu adjectives which can be masculine, feminine. (acha, achi, and payara, payari)
 Other languages, such as Chinese, as we saw in the first chapter, have no distinct forms of words at all. They
have no inflection, no morphology.
 There are other languages, however, which, though they have many forms of the same word, have a
morphology - the forms are always made up of clearly identifiable parts.
 In Swahili, for example, the translation of
a. alikuona 'he saw you' (composed of four parts a 'he' , Ii past tense, ku 'you' and ona 'see' ).
These can be replaced by similar elements, e.g. ni for 'I' or 'me', or ta for future, so that we can form the words

b. atakuona 'he will see you',

c. nilikuona 'I saw you',
d. ataniona 'he will see me' and so on. Correct order of words is extremely important.

 Wilhelm von Humboldt’s Classification of Languages:

Humboldt divided all the languages of the world into three types:
1. Inflectional Languages: Latin
2. Agglutinative Languages: Swahili and Turkish
3. Isolating Languages: Languages with no morphology such as Chinese

Palmer’s Criticism: This classification is not very useful because of two reasons.

i. First, it refers only to one aspect of the language, the word formation.
ii. Secondly, most languages have characteristics of all three types.

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Zahir Shah, Lecturer English UGS NUML Grammar – Frank Palmer

 Swahili is not wholly agglutinative, but has some inflection as well.

 In English there are words exhibiting all three types. The prepositions, e.g. by, near, to, are
'invariable' and so might have belonged to an isolating language, see/saw is an example of
inflection, while the forms love/loves/loved/loving could all be handled in terms of agglutination.

Palmer’s Conclusion: Humboldt’s division into inflectional, agglutinative and isolating cannot then be a
division of language types, but only of the morphological characteristics of parts of languages.

Syntax
 Syntax refers to the rules that govern the ways in which words combine to form phrases, clauses, and
sentences.
S (Subject) + V (Verb) + O (Object)
‘Birds sing’ rather than *Sing birds
John saw Bill is different from Bill saw John.
* Soon saw happily John (Incorrect)
‘Time flies’ and ‘Flies time’ (Correct - as both time and flies can be either verbs or nouns)
Similarly, British bitter wins in Europe.
(‘bitter (N) wins (V)’ = ale wins or ‘bitter (adj.) wins’= unhappy victories)
 Concord and government – in the form of subject and verb agreement is another feature of English syntax.
 It deals with the occurrence in specific linguistic contexts of one form of a word rather than another i.e.:
He takes a bath every day. (Correct)
He take a bath every day. (Incorrect)
The cat sits on the mat. (Correct)
The cats sit on the mat. (Correct)

Derivation versus Inflection

 In morphology, derivation is the process of creating a new word out of an old word, usually by adding
a prefix or a suffix i.e.: fame and famous, man and manhood, serene and serenity, black and blacken.
 Inflection is a process of word formation in which items are added to the base form of a word to
express grammatical meanings.
 Inflectional features involve only one word class (the number/person forms of the verb are all verbs/ degrees
of adjectives), whereas derivation often (but not always) changes the word class, from noun to verb, from
verb to noun, from noun to adjective, etc.
 Problem: there is much greater irregularity in both the formal pattern and the meaning relations.
 The adjectives formed from fame - famous, president - presidential, man - manly, phoneme - phonemic
and mass - massive are irregular.
 Similarly, on the semantic side the suffix -able has a variety of meanings: drinkable is 'that can be drunk',
commendable 'that should be commended', readable 'that can be easily read with pleasure', lovable 'that is
naturally loved'.

2.3 Parts of Speech (Word Classes)

 English has 08 parts of speech.
Origin of Eight (08) Parts of Speech
 The classification goes back to the Greek personalities: Plato, Aristotle and Dionysius Thrax.

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Zahir Shah, Lecturer English UGS NUML Grammar – Frank Palmer

 Dionysius Thrax wrote grammar of Greek in about 100 B.C. – in which he recognized eight parts of speech.
 He placed noun and adjective in the same class, because in Greek both have case endings.
Dionysius Thrax’s Classification Modern Classification
1 Noun & Adjective 1 Noun
2 Participle & Article 2 Adjective

3 Pronoun 3 Pronoun 
4 Verb 4 Verb 
5 Preposition 5 Preposition 
6 Conjunction 6 Conjunction 
7 Adverb 7 Adverb
8 Interjection 8 Interjection
Why these parts of speech are chosen for English?
 Answer: they are simply taken over from the classical grammarians.

Objections to this classification:

Firstly, Definitions are Largely Notional and Extremely Vague
Secondly, the number of parts of speech in the traditional grammars seems to be quite arbitrary
1. First Objection: Definitions are Largely Notional and Extremely Vague
a. Noun: Nesfield's definition of a noun ‘A word used for naming anything' and notes that 'thing' in the
definition stands for person, place, quality, action, feeling, collection, etc.!
Palmer’s Criticism: This is clearly a notional definition at its worst. For how do we know what a thing
is? Is fire a thing? Is peace? Is hope or intention?
Moreover, what about the word ‘red’? Isn’t it the name of a colour? Thus, it is a noun according to the
definition. But it is not a noun, in fact, it is an adjective.
 Nesfield talks about qualities as things i.e.: beauty, but what about the words that show the following
qualities, - brave, foolish, good, etc. They are not nouns but adjectives.

b. Verb: Definition of the verb is utterly uninformative - 'a verb is a word used for saying something about
something else.'
Problem: Do not most words say something about something else?

c. Pronoun: 'A pronoun is a word used instead of a noun'.

Problem: This definition is not precise enough - many kinds of word may be used instead of the noun ‘John’:
John came this morning.
A man/Someone/You-know-who/The aforementioned came this morning.

d. Adjective: 'An adjective is a word used to qualify a noun.'

Problem: what does 'qualify' mean? Precede? Either precede or follow?
Is John's an adjective in John's book or there in the people there?
2. Second Objection: the number of parts of speech in the traditional grammars
 The number of parts of speech in the traditional grammars seems to be quite arbitrary.
 Why eight? Probably because Dionysius Thrax had eight.

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 Eight parts of speech are not enough – Because:

 The adverb - 'rag bag' or 'dustbin'.
 The class into which words that do not seem to belong elsewhere are placed. For instance, the words
‘very’ and ‘quickly’ are traditionally considered ‘adverbs’.
 BUT They have almost nothing in common.

Correct Use in a sentence Incorrect Use in a sentence

He ran away quickly. *He ran away very.
He is very good. * He is quickly good.
He has a very fast car. *He has a quickly fast car.

Solution to this Problem: by recognizing two different classes of adverbs.

• Adverbs: quickly, beautifully, etc.

Adverbs • Intensifiers: very, fairly, quite, etc.

Form (Function) Words: little semantic content

 Need More Classes Than Eight: and indicate grammatical function. E.g.: articles,
 The American scholar C. C. Fries suggested: prepositions, & Conjunction.
i. Four parts of speech ‘Content Words’: ‘nouns’, Content Words: a word, typically a noun,
‘verbs’, ‘adjectives’ and ‘adverbs’ verb, adjective, or adverb, that carries semantic
content, bearing reference to the world
ii. Fifteen groups of 'form words': Fries's classified
independently of its use within a particular sentence
‘adverbs’ into five of his fifteen groups.
 Though, Fries's classification was not valid, yet he showed that the eight traditional parts of speech are not
satisfactory.
 Need of more than 8-part of speech – functions of words are different
 The grammar - largely stated in terms of their functions.
Noun: What is a noun in English?
 It depend on the functions of that class of word in the grammar BUT the functions may be many and varied.
The noun boy, for instance, has a different function in each of the following sentences.
Use in sentence Word Functions
The boy has come. (Nominative Case)
I've seen the boy. Boy (Accusative Case)
I gave it to the boy. (Dative Case)
This is the boy's mother. (Genitive Case)
 Kinds of Noun: Common, Proper, Abstract, Concrete, Countable, Uncountable, Compound, Collective,
Singular, Plural, Possessive, Pair Nouns, Gerund (verbal Noun), etc.

Verbs: belong to the class of words (Part of Speech) that are used to show:
 An action (do, throw, run), existence (be), possession (have), state (know, love, sleep) of a subject.
 To put it simply a verb shows what something or someone does.
Types of Verbs: verbs can be divided into two categorize on the basis of role in a sentence.
1) Full Verbs: sometime called ‘Main Verbs’ or ‘Principal Verbs’ or ‘Non-auxiliary verbs’.
 Main verbs have meaning of their own.
 The main verb expresses ‘the main action’ or ‘state of being’ of the subject in the sentence

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 It changes form according to the subject (singular, plural, 1st person, 2nd person, 3rd person).
 The main verb changes its form according to the tense (perfect tense, past tense, simple tense etc).
E.g.: He is writing a letter.
2) Auxiliary Verbs or Helping Verbs: Auxiliary means functioning in a supporting capacity.
Types of Auxiliary verbs:
a. Primary Auxiliaries: To be, to do and to have
b. Modal Auxiliaries: All the auxiliary verbs except be, do and have are called modals. i.e: can,
could, may, might, must, shall, should, will, would, etc.
Forms/ States of Verbs in English:
Base Form Infinitive Present Form Past Form Past Participle Present Participle
(bare infinitive) (To infinitive) (1st Form) (2nd Form) (3rd Form) (-ing Form)
take to take take, takes took taken taking
play to play play, plays played played playing
eat to eat eat, eats ate eaten eating
do to do do/ does Did done doing
be to be is/ are /am was/ were been being
have to have have/ has had had having

Pronouns:
 Pronouns have different forms relating to person and sex.
 The third person pronouns often refer, or co-refer to noun phrases, their antecedents, e.g.:
I saw the old woman and spoke to her. [The old woman = her]
Types of Pronouns: There are two main types of pronoun,
a. The Personal Pronouns: I/me, you, he/him, she/her, it, we/us, they/them
b. The reflexives Pronouns: myself, yourself, himself, herself, itself, yourselves and themselves.
The reflexives are generally used for co-reference within the same clause, the others for co-reference
elsewhere. Thus we may distinguish:
He hurt himself/He hurt him.
Flaws in traditional definition of a pronoun
 Traditional definition of a pronoun: ‘a word used instead of a noun' is misleading.
* I saw the old woman and spoke to the silly her.
 It is used 'instead of' a noun phrase as the example above shows.
 If ‘pronoun’ is a word used in place of a noun, then we should also have another category for ‘Proverb’
[word that replaces a verb]
John hasn't been swimming, but I have.
He lives in London, but his mother has never been there.
(Adverb ‘there’ co-refers with prepositional phrase ‘in London’)
Adjective: perform two functions in a sentence
a. Attributive: the little boy
b. Predicative: The boy is little.
Categories of Adjectives:
1) Predicative as well as Attributive:
The little boy (Correct)

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Zahir Shah, Lecturer English UGS NUML Grammar – Frank Palmer

The boy is little (Correct)

2) Predicative but not Attributive:
The boy was well/glad/abroad/afraid, etc. (Correct)
* The well/glad/abroad/afraid, etc. boy ….. (Incorrect)
3) Non-Predicative but Attributive:
*The decision was main. (Incorrect)
The main decision (Correct)
4) Predicative as well as Attributive but with changed Meanings:
The heavy smoker – The smoker is heavy
The right girl – The girl is right
My old friend - My friend was old.
5) Some Succeed Nouns than Preceding them:
People abroad, Children asleep.
But what about this ones
The inside wall/the wall inside

Traditional definition of 'adjective' is Faulty:

 It includes words that are best regarded as members of different classes.
 The articles (the, a), possessive pronouns (his, her, my, their, etc.), demonstratives (this, that, these,
those), plus words such as all, some, neither.
Test for Adjectives: In order to classify if a word is an adjective or a verb, the following techniques
can be applied.
i. It can be preceded by words like ‘very’. e.g.: ‘very interesting’ but not *‘very singing’.
ii. ‘Adjectives’ - ‘no object’ but ‘verbs’ – ‘objects’
This book is interesting me. (Verb)
The book is interesting. (Adjective)
iii. Adjectives have degrees – but what about??? Slowly, more slowly and most slowly (Aren’t they adverbs).
What about – Applying ‘Very Test’ to other Adjectives?
The boy is very glad/well/afraid but not ... very abroad, very asleep or very awake.
 Some words seem to belong to more than one class.
Steel: (1). Steel is strong (2). a steel bridge
Cotton: (1) Cotton comes from Egypt, (2). cotton shirt.
 Hockett recognized seven major classes to classify words that belong to more than one class. They
include: N, A, V, NA, NV, AV and NAV - plus an eighth, particles.
 Another solution to this problem is to treat these words in terms of derivation.

 Same Form Different Categories  Different Form Different Categories

 Sheep is both singular and plural Wood - Wooden
 Hit is both present and past, Wool - Woollen
 Steel the adjective is a derived form of steel the noun Class - Classic

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Adverb: qualify a verb, an adjective and another adverb.

Categories of Adverbs Functions Examples

Adverbs of manner How the action occurs She speaks loudly.
He runs fast.
Adverb of place Where the action occurs He will come here.
The children are playing outside.
Adverb of time At which time the action occurs The guest came yesterday.
Do it now.
Adverb of frequency How many times action occur He goes to school daily.
She never smokes.

Further Divisions / Categorization:

Fries Other Scholars Category Examples
Parts of Speech Full Words/ lexical Open Category Boy, Nice, Play, Slowly, etc.
Form Words Empty Words/ Grammatical Words Closed Category A, On, At, The, etc.

Expressions Containing More Than One Nouns:

 English allows constructions that consist of two nouns: bus stop, shoe polish, bread shop.
 The list of nouns can be extended: bus stop girl, bus stop girl inquiry, bus stop girl inquiry row, etc., (such
expressions are typical of newspaper headlines than of ordinary English.)
 The functions of silver in silver box to mean either 'box made of silver' or 'box for silver'.

Inflection and Derivation:

 In morphology, derivation is the process of creating a new word out of an old word, usually by adding
a prefix or a suffix i.e.: fame and famous, man and manhood, serene and serenity, black and blacken.
 Inflection is a process of word formation in which items are added to the base form of a word to
express grammatical meanings.
 Inflectional features involve only one word class (the number/person forms of the verb are all verbs/
degrees of adjectives), whereas derivation often (but not always) changes the word class, from noun to
verb, from verb to noun, from noun to adjective, etc.
 What about the use of ‘more and most (more beautiful, most beautiful).’- Is it inflection or derivation?
 Similarly, what about 'Present Participles', 'Participles' and 'Gerund-verbal nouns', for instance, such as
swimming, singing, playing in English. Are they inflected forms or derived forms?

2.4 Sentence, Clause and Phrase

What a sentence is?
The general understanding about a sentence is:
 It is 'composed of words'.
 It ended with a full stop (Period).
 It starts with a capital letter.

Traditional grammars’ Definition of a Sentence:

A sentence is the 'expression of a complete thought’.

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Flaws and Problems in Traditional Definition of a sentence:

1. How do we know what a complete thought is? Is 'cabbage' or 'man' a complete thought? If not, why not
2. If it rains, I shan't come. [Is it one thought, or two joined together?]
3. It contains a subject and predicate - that on the one hand it indicates something that we are talking about,
and on the other it says something about it. For instance:
John is coming
(John – ‘Subject’ because we are talking about John, ‘is coming’ is a ‘predicate’ as it talks about John.)

 Subject and Predicate Identification – Difficult: For instance

 John gave the book to Mary.
In the sentence, John, the book and Mary are talked about. All three seem to be the 'subject' in this sense but
they are subjects.
 The birds have eaten all the fruit.
What is the centre of focus? The missing fruit or the unidentified birds?
 It's raining.
What is the subject? It? But what is 'It'? - The weather, the universe, or what?
Subject and Object:
a. Subject - as the 'actor': refers to a person who performs the action.
b. Object – as the' goal' or 'recipient': the person or thing that is affected by it.
He is playing cricket.
She writes a letter.
Problems: The above definitions would not allow us to identify the subject as ‘John’ in any of the following
sentences, for in none of them is John 'acting' in any intelligible sense:
John suffered terribly.
John looked sad.
John saw his brother.
John sank under the waves.
Similarly, it would be equally impossible to determine the subject in
John lent a book to Bill.
Bill borrowed a book from John.
Who is the actor, who the recipient? If John is the subject in the first sentence, Bill cannot be the subject in the
second as long as we rely on purely notional definitions.
But there is no real doubt in linguistic terms - in terms of position in the sentence.

Different Rules in different languages:

 In Latin for the identification of whether a word is used as a subject or object, case-marking is the
defining characteristic. Unlike English order is not a defining characteristic in Latin language.
 In Swahili, the main criterion is agreement of both subject and object with the verb.
 In Burmic languages such as Lisu & Lolo, there is no distinction between ‘subject’ and ‘object’ in any
regular formal way. Thus, in this language, a single sentence may mean either:
 'People bite dogs' or 'Dogs bite people'.
 This seldom creates ambiguity, however, since either the context or common sense will usually point
to the correct meaning.

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What about Sentences in Spoken Language?

 In spoken, we cannot identify sentence with the help of the above definitions.
 Moreover a great deal of spoken language does not consist of sentences in the sense in which the term is
understood for writing at all.
 Much of it is made up of incomplete, interrupted, unfinished, or even quite chaotic sentences. Speech may
be made up of utterances, but utterances seldom correspond to sentences. We could not, for instance,
identify all the sentences in a conversation that went:
MARY: John! Coming?
JOHN: Yes dear, I was only-
MARY: Oh do hurry up and - we ought to catch the bus - only they don't always run on time -
wretched people - as long as you're quick. I’ve been ready for some - since half past seven.
Such a conversation is not abnormal; much of our everyday speech is like this.

A Linguistic Definition of the Sentence: in terms of its internal structure.

 A sentence will be composed of certain specified elements in a certain order, ultimately, of course, of
words or parts of words.
 For instance, it might be argued that the basic sentence structures of English are of the type:

English Sentence Structure Examples

Subject Verb (SV - NV) The bird flies.
Subject Verb Object (SVO - NVN) He writes a letter.
Subject Verb Complement (SVC) This pen is beautiful.
(C= complement = Adjective or Noun Phrase) It was a big match
Subject Verb Adv (SVAdv, Adverbial = PP) It is nearby.
Subject Verb Object Object (SVOO - NVNN) He is giving me pain.
He has given me a pen.

Bloomfield’s Definition of Sentence:

 A sentence is 'an independent linguistic form.’ For example, He considered the example:
How are you?
It's a fine day.
Are you going to play tennis this afternoon?

What is an Independent linguistic Form?

 Transition Words: Words such as however, therefore, later, other serve very often to refer from one
sentence to another.
 Pronouns: He, she and it may 'stand for' the man, the woman, the table, etc. We find in one sentence:
The man . .. but in the next, He ....
 Substitution: It makes use of a word instead of another in a discourse which performs the function of
similar meaning. Substitution is some kind of counter used instead of repeating a particular word again
and again. Example: You believe he has committed this crime. But I don’t think so.

 Types of Substitution: a. Nominal Substitution (One/ones, same)

b. Verbal Substitution (Do) e.g.: John came and so did Mary

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Zahir Shah, Lecturer English UGS NUML Grammar – Frank Palmer

c. Causal Substitution (So, Not)

 The use of auxiliary verbs in English can act as pro-verbs in the sense that they alone stand for the whole
of the verbal element of which they are or were only the first word:
John is coming. Is he?
I haven't seen him. But I have.
Must you come? I really must.
He'll have been there. No he won't.
Incomplete Sentences: A problem is raised by the incomplete, interrupted 'sentences'. There are, however,
three kinds of' incomplete sentence’.
1.Incomplete Sentences - caused by interruptions or changes of mind on the part of the speaker. For
example, I was only – and I've been ready for some - .
2. Incomplete sentences – Context dependent: that are dependent on what has gone before.
John, for instance, might be a reply to Who did it? or Who did you see?
Thus, ‘John’ is the incomplete form of ‘John did it’ or ‘I saw John.’
3. Incomplete sentences – Short Forms: For example,

Short Form Full Form

Coming? Are you coming?
Coming! I'm coming!
Found them? Have you found them?
Got you! I've got you!

Phrases
 Words are grouped into elements that are smaller than the sentence.
 The most important phrases of the sentences are the verb phrases and the noun phrases (symbolized as VP
and NP respectively), e.g.
John likes Mary.
(NP VP NP).
The little boy has been reading a fairy story
(NP VP NP).
Noun Phrase: It consists either of:
Pronoun alone ’his’
Adjective + Pronoun: ‘Poor you!’
Adjective + Noun: ‘Nice man’
Determiners + Noun: ‘The Boy’
Noun + Adjective: ‘people abroad’, ‘children asleep’

Verb Phrases: Maximum words should be of 5-word.

He may have been being beaten.
Adverbial Phrases: They are elements within the sentence such as this morning or in the garden which are
sometimes called 'adjuncts.'

Transitive and Intransitive Sentences: One further traditional distinction is between

i. Transitive Sentences - which need an object to give complete meaning e.g.: John likes Mary.

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Zahir Shah, Lecturer English UGS NUML Grammar – Frank Palmer

ii. Intransitive Sentences – do not need an object to give its complete sense. E.g.: John sings.
Palmer: We may also, perhaps, talk of di-transitive verbs, those that have two objects.
John gave Mary a present. (‘Mary’ - Indirect object & ‘present’ - Direct object)

Clauses
Traditional grammars defines 'clauses' as 'sentences that are part of larger sentences'. For instance,
John stood still and Mary ran away.
While John was standing there Mary ran away.
Types of Clauses:
a. Coordinate Clause: Principal/ Main/ Independent Clause
I like ice-cream but I hate chocolate.
Coordinate clauses are added by coordinate conjunctions (FANBOYS: for, and, nor, but, or, yet and so)
b. Subordinate Clause: Dependent Clause - One of the sentences (clauses) functions as part of the other.
For instance, If you work hard, you will pass.

Classification of Subordinate Clause: These subordinate clauses were further classified into three categories
according to whether they had the function of nouns, adjectives or adverbs within the sentence.
1. Noun-Clauses: He said that he was coming.
In the above example we have just mentioned that he was coming has the function of a noun, for it is nouns
and noun phrases that act as objects.
2. Adjective-Clauses: For instance, an example of an adjective clause would be who was standing there in
The boy who was standing there ran away.
The adjective clause comes after the noun that it modifies.
3. Adverb-Clauses: An adverb clause would be ‘while I was standing there’, which has the same kind of
function as ‘yesterday’ in I saw John while I was standing there.

Terms in traditional grammars:

 'Maximal' sentence – sentences whereas 'Minimal' sentences - clauses.
 Reflexive pronouns: for instance, will normally refer to a noun within the same clause (but not to one in
another clause in the same sentence), as shown by
The boy said that John had hurt himself. (Here ‘himself’ can refer only to ‘John, not to the boy.)

 Finite Verb: A 'finite verb' is a verb form that can stand alone in an independent sentence. For instance,
He comes, every day. (‘comes’ is a finite verb as it stands alone in the sentence)

 Infinite Verb: An 'infinite verb' is a verb form that cannot stand alone in an independent sentence. E.g.:
* He coming every day. (‘Coming’ is an infinite verb as it does not stand alone in the sentence – it
needs a helping verb to give its complete sense)

 Copular Verb (Also known as Linking Verb): it is a special kind of verb used to join an adjective or
noun complement to a subject. Common examples are: be (is, am, are, was, and were), appear, seem, look,
sound, smell, taste, feel, become and get. E.g.: He became angry.
[The verb ‘became’ acts as a copular verb as it joins the adjective ‘angry’ with the subject ‘He’.]

 Transitive Verbs: such verbs require an object. E.g.:

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Zahir Shah, Lecturer English UGS NUML Grammar – Frank Palmer

She filled the cup.

She loves animals.
[The sentence is incomplete without the object ‘cup’.]

 Intransitive Verbs: such verbs don't take an object. E.g.:

He ran.
The dog barked.
 Verbs That Can Be Transitive and Intransitive: Some verbs can be transitive or intransitive, depending
on how they are used in a sentence. For example:
Intransitive Transitive
They cheered. They cheered the band.
She sang. She sang a song.
We visited. We visited Aunt Ruth

Ergative – Absolutive languages: In the grammatical system of some languages the ‘subject’ of an
‘intransitive verb’ behaves like the ‘object’ of a ‘transitive verb’, and differently from the agent ‘subject’ of
a ‘transitive verb’. They include Basque, Eskimo, Caucasian languages such as Georgian, North Indian
languages such as Hindi and Bengali, and many languages in Australia.

Type of Dyirbal English Subjects Objects

Sentence (Australia)
Intransitive 1.ŋuma banaganyu. Father returned. ŋuma (Father) ---
Verb
2.yabu banaganyu. Mother returned. yabu (Mother) ---
Transitive Verb 3.ŋuma yabuŋgu buran.Mother saw yabuŋgu ŋuma
father. (Mother) (Father)
4.yabu ŋumaŋgu buran.Father saw ŋumaŋgu Yabu
mother. (Father) (Mother)

Nominative - Accusative Languages: These languages treat the agent (subject-the doer) of transitive verbs
(verbs that take objects) and the doer of intransitive verbs the same, but they treat the object of a transitive
verb differently. For example, in English the pronouns used in the following sentences:
He fell. (Intransitive)
He hit him. (Transitive)
(The subjects in both sentences have the same case in the above examples whereas the object gets a different
case (in English, a different pronoun)

2.5 Grammatical Categories

Criticism on Traditional Grammar: two respects in which the traditional grammars can be criticized.
 First, grammatical 'notional' terms.
 Secondly, imposition of Latin categories upon English.
Some of the traditional categories with an indication of the term used, the class of word with which it is
generally found and the kind of meaning with which it is (sometimes misleadingly) associated.

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Zahir Shah, Lecturer English UGS NUML Grammar – Frank Palmer

GENDER: a feature of nouns, associated with male (masculine), female (feminine) and (for neuter)
sexless creatures - but often misleadingly so (confused with sex).

PROBLEMS WITH GENDER:

1. Gender systems vary from language to language. The table shows gender system in various languages.
Language Masculine Feminine Neutral
French Ie livre 'the book' la porte 'the door’
Ie solei 'sun' la lune 'moon' N/A
Italian Illibro 'the book' la porta 'the door’
it sole 'sun' la luna 'moon'
Spanish el libro 'the book' la puerta 'the door’
el sol 'sun' la luna 'moon'
English N/A N/A 'the book' & 'the door’
'Sun' & ‘Moon’
Urdu Darwaza ‘The door’ Kitab ‘Book’ N/A
‘Sun’ and ‘Moon’
Pashto Kitab ‘Book’ Darwaza ‘The door’ N/A
'Sun' ‘Moon’
German der Mond 'moon' die Sonne 'sun'
2. In some languages - gender is defined in terms of the form of the article and adjectives that may accompany
the noun. In Spanish, Articles and adjectives are said to 'agree' with nouns.
ellibro rojo (masculine) 'the red book'
la puerta roja (feminine) 'the red door'
(Here we have the contrast of el and la and of the endings -0 and -a and these are determined by the noun,
libro requiring one of each pair, puerta the other.)

3. Urdu and Russian have no articles, but the adjectives agree with the noun.
Russian English Urdu
novyj stul (masculine) 'new chair' Naye Kursi (new chair)
novaja kniga (feminine) 'new book' Naya darwaza (new door)
novoe okno (neuter) 'new window' Naye kharki (new window)

4. In some languages it is possible to recognize the gender of a word by the shape of the word itself.
Languages Identification Spanish Italian English
Spanish words ending in -0 are usually masculine el poema il poema 'the poem'
& words ending in -a are feminine la mano la mana 'the hand'
Italian

In Urdu "‫ "ت" & "ی‬at the end of a word – Feminine; "|" at the end of a word - Masculine
Problem: But there are many exceptions cases.
5. Another issue is that there are plenty of nouns which, though feminine, normally refer to men, e.g.
French la sentinelle 'the sentinel',
la vigie 'the night watchman',
la recru 'the recruit'
 In German there is an even more striking situation. It has three genders - masculine, feminine and neuter

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Zahir Shah, Lecturer English UGS NUML Grammar – Frank Palmer

Masculine Feminine Neuter

der Tisch die Tar das Feuer 'the fire',
'the table' 'the door', das Madchen and das Fraulein (neuter)‘girls’ and ‘young ladies’

6.Yet another problem is that adjectives indicating sex often occur with nouns of the 'opposite' gender.
In Latin, lupus (masculine) - ‘a wolf',
lupus femina - ('She-wolf')

7. Gender in English: No grammatical gender – We have sex reference only

 English has words that refer to adult male and female creatures - bull/cow, ram/ewe, boar/sow etc.
 Why don’t we have distinctive names for baby animals - calf, lamb, and piglet?

8. In Urdu and Russian, however, there are distinct forms of the verb for masculine and feminine.

English Russian Urdu

'he wrote' on pisal ‘Wo Likhta tha’
'she wrote' ona pisala ‘Wo Likhti thi’

9. In Geez, a classical Ethopic language,

Geez (Masculine) English Geez (Feminine) English
nagara 'he spoke' nagarat 'she spoke'
nagarka 'you (a man) spoke' nagarki 'you (a woman) spoke’
nagarku 'I spoke’ nagarku 'I spoke’
nagaru 'they (men) spoke' nagara 'they (women) spoke'
nagarkem 'you (men) spoke' nagarken 'you (women) spoke'
nagarna 'we spoke' nagarna 'we spoke'

10. In Swahili, there are word classes which differ in not only having different prefixes but also in requiring
similar differences in the adjectives and the verbs. Thus we find:

Swahili ‘zuri’ mtu mzuri nyumba nzuri kitu kizuri kasha zuri mahali paz uri kula kuzuri
English ‘fine’ a fine man a fine house a fine thing a fine chest a fine place a fine death

In the above examples, the Sawahili word, ‘zuri’ which means 'fine' is preceded by m-, n-, ki-, nothing, pa-
and ku- according to the noun with which it agrees.

NUMBER: a feature of nouns and verbs, associated with 'one' and 'more than one' (dual with 'two').
 The European languages have the distinction of singular and plural, marked in both the noun and the verb,
the verb usually agreeing with the subject.
 In English this is almost extinct but still to be found in The boy comes, The boys come.
 In other European languages there is agreement with article and adjectives as well as the verb

French Italian English

Ie petit garcon il ragazzo piccolo the little boy
les petits garcons, i ragazzi piccoli the little boys

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 Some languages have singular, dual (two) and plural. Thus in Arabic we find
malikun 'a king', malikani 'two kings' , malikuna 'kings'
 If we look to the verb there are no less than thirteen forms in the paradigm:
Arabic English Person Gender Number
rd
Kataba 'he wrote' 3 masculine Singular
rd
katabat 'she wrote' 3 feminine Singular
nd
katabta 'you (a man) wrote' 2 masculine Singular
nd
katabti 'you (a woman) wrote' 2 feminine Singular
st
katabtu 'I wrote' 1 masculine / feminine Singular
rd
katabā 'they (two men) wrote' 3 masculine dual
rd
katabatā 'they (two women) wrote' 3 feminine Dual
nd
katabtumā 'you (two) wrote' 2 masculine / feminine Dual
rd
katabú 'they (men) wrote' 3 masculine Plural
rd
katizbna 'they (women) wrote' 3 feminine Plural
nd
katabtum 'you (men) wrote' 2 masculine Plural
nd
katabtunna 'you (women) wrote' 2 feminine Plural
st
katabnii 'we wrote' 1 masculine / feminine plural

PERSON: first person, second person, third person

In traditional terms first person refers to the person speaking, second person to the person spoken to, and third
person to the person (or thing) spoken about.
Problems: The definitions work well enough in the singular - a speaker, someone spoken to, and someone
spoken of. But in the plural it is more complex.
First person plural (we) ought to refer to a plurality of speakers,
Second person plural (you) to a plurality of people addressed
Third person plural (they) to a plurality of people spoken of.
But this is not so as the use of we to refer to a number of joint speakers is rare. Similarly, ‘you’ does not refer
only to people spoken to; it often refers to the person or persons spoken to plus others. They alone is restricted
to our 'ideal' use; it refers solely to people spoken about.
Proposed Solution: ‘we’ means any group of people that includes the speaker, ‘you’ any group that includes
the person spoken to, ‘they’ refers to any group other than ‘we’ and ‘you’.
Problem with Urdu Pronouns - Plural forms for respect. But again the problem arises when calling a child.
For instance, ‘Bachey idhar aao’ not ‘Bacha Idhar aao’. Same for ‘Larkey’, ‘Larka’and ‘Choty’, ‘Chota’.
Similarly, in Urdu, ‘Unko’, ‘Usko’ and ‘Tu’, ‘Tum’, ‘Ap’.

TENSE: present, past, future - a feature of verbs, associated with time. But this is misleading.
a) Number of Tenses in English:
 Morphologically, English has only two tenses, past and present, as illustrated by take(s) and took or
love(s) and loved. The traditional 'future' tense is formed with the auxiliary verbs WILL and SHALL. But
English also has progressive (or 'continuous') forms expressed by the auxiliary verb BE followed by an -
ing form as in:
The boy is reading a book.

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It also has perfect forms which are expressed by the auxiliary HAVE and a following past participle:
The boy has read the book.
b) Lack of correlation between grammatical form and meaning:
You are going to meet Jane tonight. (Present continuous structure – future meaning)
If I were you, I would forgive him. (Past structure – Unreal or imaginative situation in the present)

MOOD: There are three major moods in English:

a) The Indicative Mood: is used to make factual statements or pose questions. When we make basic
statements or ask questions, we use the indicative mood. For example
I leave at five.
Are you taking the car?
b) The Imperative Mood: to express a request or command, and the (rarely used).
Go to your room. (An order), Let’s go for a walk. (A Suggestion), Please lend me your book. (A
request), Work hard. (An Advice)
Have a good time at the picnic. (A wish)
c) The Subjunctive Mood: to show a wish, doubt, or anything else contrary to fact.
"If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?" (Abraham Lincoln)
d) The Optative Mood: A category of grammatical mood that expresses a wish, pray, or curse.
Would that I were rich! (Wish)
May you live long! (Pray)
May he fail in the exam! (Curse)
VOICE: active and passive - again a feature of verbs.
 Many languages show a difference between active and passive with the object of the active being the
subject of the passive. i.e.: John saw Bill. (Active Voice)
Bill was seen by John. (Passive Voice)
 In Urdu, this is not the case.

CASE: Nominative Subjective Case

Vocative Direct Object (Addressing or calling)
Accusative Objective Case
Genitive Possessive Case
Dative Indirect Object
Ablative Special case used in Latin

Finnish is often quoted as the language with the most cases – nominative (subject), genitive ('of'), accusative
(object), inessive ('in'), elative ('out of'), illative ('into'), adessive (,on'), ablative ('from'), allative ('to'), essive
('as'), partitive ('involving part of'), translative ('involving change to'), abessive ('without'), instructive ('by')
and comitative ('with').

2.6 CONCORD AND GOVERNMENT

 Inflected and agglutinative languages - there are
different forms of the same word. Concord: Verb + Adj  agree with ‘Noun’
 Thus, in such languages there must often be choice Government: Verb + Preposition  govern ‘noun’
between the forms of a word.

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 For instance, Why do we have:

likes rather than like in English,
petite rather than petit in French,
amamus rather than amatis in Latin.
Free Choice: Sometimes the choice is free. For instance, we can choose between the present and the past
tense forms of the verbs in the sentences. They are different in meaning but the choice of ‘likes’ & ‘liked’ is
not determined by anything in the sentence but by ‘tense/ time’.
The boy likes ice-cream.
The boy liked ice-cream.
Bound/ Restricted Choice: There is no freedom of choice between the forms of the verb ‘likes’ and ‘like’.
The choice is determined by the occurrence of ‘boy’ and ‘boys’ in the following sentences.
The boy likes ice-cream.
The boys like ice-cream.
 What is important is that boy and likes occur together as do boys and like.
 If they are paired wrongly, it will be recognized as an ungrammatical sentence.
 There is clearly a grammatical restriction involving the morphosyntactic category of number.

Concord and Government: In the T.G. - these restrictions are dealt with under two headings.
a) Concord - agreement between words
b) Government – choice between forms of words
Concord: In Latin, words have to agree with each other.
 A verb is supposed to agree with its subject - in person and number.
 An adjective is said to agree with the noun it modifies - in number, gender and case.

Latin puer venit pueri veniunt Puer (singular Noun) requires venit (a singular verb
English The boy comes. The boys come. form),
Urdu while pueri (plural Noun) requires veniunt (a plural verb
form)
Agreement in terms of person: Furthermore,
in Latin, the verb is said, then, to agree with the pronoun in person (as well as in number).
nos venimus 'we come'
vos venitis 'you (plural) come'
There are similar examples in French, German, Italian, Spanish and other languages. In French, for example,
we have: le garfon vient 'the boy comes'
les garfons viennent 'the boys come'
In English there are two forms only:
1. ‘Comes’ which occurs with he, she, it and all singular nouns,
2. ‘Come’ which occurs with all the other pronouns.

Adjective-Noun Agreement in Latin: There are thirty-six (2 x 3 x 6) forms of an adjective based on the
different types (number, gender and case) of noun that they qualify.
vir bonus 'the good man'
viri boni 'the good men' (number: plural)
mulier bona 'a good woman' (gender: feminine)
viro bono 'to a good man' (case: dative)

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The situation in German and Russian is similar to that in Latin, though there are fewer cases in German. In
the Romance languages there are no cases, but there is agreement in number and gender, as in Italian:
l'uomo buono 'the good man'
gli uomini buoni, 'the good men'
la donna buona 'the good lady'
le donne buone 'the good ladies'
In Italian examples the articles are also involved in the agreement. This is also true of French, Spanish and
German, and in German it is a matter of case as well as number and gender:
der gute Mann 'the good man'
des guten Mannes 'of the good man' (genitive)
Nothing similar exists in English. Adjectives need not to agree with the nouns they qualify. They remain the
same for all kinds of noun. For example,

English Urdu
I am good.
We are good.
You are good.
He is good.
She is good.
It is good.
They are good.
Government: In Latin, ‘Prepositions & verbs’ are said to govern nouns in a certain cases. Thus
a) Prepositions Governing Nouns:
‘a’ = English preposition 'from' governs nouns in the ablative while
‘ad’ = English preposition 'to' governs nouns in the accusative.
a monte 'from the mountain' (Ablative Case)
ad montem 'to the mountain' (Accusative Case)
b) Verbs Governing Nouns: Some verbs govern the objects in the accusative, others in the genitive, others
in the dative and still others in the ablative:
hominem videre 'to see a man' (accusative)
hominis meminisse 'to remember a man' (genitive)
homini parere 'to obey a man' (dative)
gladio uti 'to use a sword' (ablative)

 In English and French, it is doubtful whether this concept of government can be usefully applied.
 Case can be found only for the nominative and accusative in pronouns: I/me, he/him, we/us, je/me, il/le, etc.
 But the distinction does not depend on the verb, since there is no variation with different verbs, but only on
the grammatical function of subject and object.
 The point is quite simply that with pronouns there is one form for the subject and another for the object.
Government: Verb + Preposition  govern ‘noun’
In ‘government’, the form of a noun determined by a particular verb or class of verb (not a form of a
verb). Thus the verb PAREO 'obey' (in all its forms) takes the dative, i.e. requires a dative form of a noun.
Government refers to the kind of linkage in which a word or class of word requiring a particular form of
another word

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Concord: Verb + Adjective  agree with ‘Noun’

In ‘concord/ agreement’ in number and case between adjective and noun, one form of a noun
requires the corresponding form (i.e. with the same number and case) of an adjective. In concord/ agreement,
a form of one word requiring a corresponding form of another.
vir bonus 'a good man' (both nominative singular)
viros bonos 'good men' (both accusative plural)
In some languages, the verbs often have two kinds of endings, one relating to the subject, the other to the
object, so that they can be simultaneously governed by or agree with two different nouns, the subject and the
object.
Us ny match jeeta. Jeeta  match
Us ny match jeetwaya. Jeetwaya  Us
In some languages, the government is in the possessor/possessed (genitive) construction of the kind
exemplified by the boy's book.

In Latin, the order of the words is not fixed, therefore, concord and government, patterns are all important in
establishing grammatical structure.

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