1 / 22

THE ORGANIZATION OF GRAMMAR

THE ORGANIZATION OF GRAMMAR. When we speak of the organization of grammar we are going to consider two important concepts: RANK and CLASS. RANK. It refers to different levels of organization within grammar Let’s consider the following example: People throw stones.

rmcroberts
Download Presentation

THE ORGANIZATION OF GRAMMAR

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. THE ORGANIZATION OF GRAMMAR When we speak of the organizationof grammar we are going to consider two important concepts: RANK and CLASS

  2. RANK It refers to different levels of organization within grammar Let’s consider the following example: People throw stones. This stretch of language consists of one sentence and threewords. Sentence and Word are two ranks of grammatical organization

  3. Let’s compare the following sentence with the previous one: People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. Like the previous sentence (People throw stones), this sentence can be analysed into three units. Two of these units are regarded as expansions of single words in the previous sentence.

  4. (i) People who live in glass houses (expansion of “people”) (ii) shouldn’tthrow (expansion of “throw”) (iii) stones These units are called GROUPS

  5. SENTENCE Group(i)Group(ii)Group(iii) W W W W W W W W W W People who live in glass houses should n’t throw stones

  6. We also need to recognize an additionalrank between group and sentence Let’s analyse the following sentence: She’s great funbuther husband is rather dull. The two underlined units are called CLAUSES

  7. CLAUSE COMPLEX Clause 1 Clause 2 Group Group Group Group Group Group Group W W W W W W W W W W She ‘s great fun but her husband is rather dull

  8. CLASS Terms like noun (N) and verb (V) are names of word classes, what we know as “parts of speech” The words in the sentence People throw stones. can be labeled according to their class N V N People throw stones

  9. The same class labels are also used to name the groups. Thus, People who live in glass houses(NG) shouldn’t throw(VG)

  10. Two other major word classes are: Adjective:That’s good! Adverb:Fortunately, the situation changed for the better The same class labels are used to name the groups: AdjG:… a letter from a very angry parent AdvG:It is very deeply rooted in the American psyche.

  11. Some grammars use the term “phrase” instead of “group”, for instance: noun phrase and adverbial phrase but in this course the only kind of phrase which we are going to recognize is the “prepositional phrase”

  12. What’s the difference between GROUP and PHRASE?

  13. A group can be thought of as an expanded word. A phrase, however, is like a miniclause in the sense that the words which follow the prepositions are not expansions of the prepositions but objects of prepositions

  14. Examples of prepositional phrases: James is a software designer for a computercompany. The students in her class are all from Germany. Here’s an e.mail in English. We often go to the mountains.

  15. How many groups can we identify in SFG? FOUR Which are they? • Nominal Group • Verbal Group • Adjectival Group • Adverbial Group How many phrases can we recognize? ONLY ONE The Prepositional Phrase

  16. In today’s class, we are going to focus on Nominal Group only. As we said before, groups are extended words. When analysing a Nominal Group, we may say that it consists of a main noun or “head word”(called the Thing) and has the potential to be expanded by adding information before the head-word and/or after it.

  17. If the information is added before the head-word it’s called “pre-modification”. If the information is added afterthe head-word it’s called “post-modification”. For example, we could say: They said they could make hima suit. or extend the NG further by pre- and post-modification as in They said they could make him the most beautifulsuit, with magic cloth that only clever people could see.

  18. Now, Let’s do some recognition practice on the Nominal Group and the different functions each component or constituent performs. My brother is a History teacher. His daughter’s name is Lara. The student bars and cafés are cheap. That’s one of my sister’s son. There are too many cars on the streets. The center of the house is one very big bubble.

  19. too many cars Numerative Numerative Thing the streets Deictic Thing

  20. Mybrother Deictic Thing A History teacher Deictic Classifier Thing His daughter’s name Deictic Deictic Thing Lara Thing

  21. The student bars and cafés Deictic Classifier Thing Thing That Deitic one of my sister’s son Deictic Deictic Thing

  22. The center of the house Deictic Deictic Deictic Thing one very big bubble Numerative Epithet Epithet Thing

More Related