Grammar 5657
Grammar 5657
Q.1 Define the term clause. Discuss with examples different types
of clauses that make up sentences.
Ans: Clause
A clause is a group of related words containing a subject and a predicate‖
For example, he laughed. A clause refers to a group of related words (within a
sentence or itself as an independent sentence) which has both subject and
predicate.
Example
I will meet him in office.
The part of above sentence ―I will meet him‖ is a clause because it has a subject
(I) and a predicate (will meet him). On the other hand, the rest part of above
sentence ―in office‖ lacks both subject and predicate (verb) such group of word
is called phrase.
A clause may stand as a simple sentence or may join another clause to make a
sentence. Therefore, a sentence consists of one, two or more clauses.
Examples.
• He is sleeping. (one clause)
• The kids were laughing at the joker. (one clause)
• The teacher asked a question, but no one answered. (two clauses)
• I am happy, because I won a prize. (two clauses)
• I like Mathematics, but my brother likes Biology, because he wants to
become a doctor. (three clauses)
Clauses are divided into main clause (also called independent clause) and
subordinate clause (also called dependent clauses).
Types of Clauses
There are two major types of clauses main (or independent) clause and
subordinate (or dependant) clause.
Main Clause and Subordinate Clause – Comparison
He is buying a shirt which looks very nice.
The above sentence has two clauses ―He is buying a shirt‖ and ―which looks
very nice‖. The clause ―He is buying a shirt‖ expresses a complete thought and
can alone stand as a sentence. Such a clause is called main or independent
clause.
3|Page
While the clause ―which looks very nice‖ does not express a complete thought
and can‘t stand as a sentence. It depends on another clause (main clause) to
express complete idea. Such a clause is called subordinate or dependent
clause.
Examples
I met the boy who had helped me.
She is wearing a shirt which looks nice.
The teacher asked a question but no one answered.
He takes medicine because he suffers from fever.
He became angry and smashed the vase into pieces.
In the above sentences each underlined part shows main clause. It expresses
complete though and can stand as a sentence that is why a main or an
independent clause is normally referred as a simple sentence.
Subordinate (or dependent) clauses are further divided into tree types,
4|Page
1. Noun Clause
2. Adjective Clause.
3. Adverb Clause
1. Noun Clause
A dependent clause that functions as a noun in a sentence is called noun
clause.‖ A noun clause performs same function like a noun in a sentence.
Example
What he did made a problem for his family.
In above sentence the clause ―what he did‖ functions as a noun, hence it is a
noun clause. A noun clause works as a noun that acts as a subject, object, or
predicate in a sentence. A noun clause starts with words “that, what, whatever,
who, whom, whoever, whomever”.
Examples
Whatever you learn will help you in future. (noun clause as a subject)
What you said made me laugh. (noun clause as a subject)
He knows that he will pass the test. (noun clause as an object)
Now I realize what he would have thought. (noun clause as an object)
2. Adjective Clause
A dependent clause that functions as an adjective in a sentence is called
adjective clause.‖
An adjective clause works like adjective in a sentence. The function of an
5|Page
Example
•The student in the class who studied a lot passed the test. (restrictive clause)
•The student in the class, who had attended all the lectures, passed
the test. (non-restrictive clause)
In the first sentence the clause ―who studied a lot‖ restrict information to
preceding noun (student), it means that there is only one student in the class
who studied a lot, hence it is a restrictive clause.
In the second sentence the clause ―who had attended all the lectures‖ gives us
information about preceding noun but does not limit this information to the
preceding noun. It means there can be several other students in the class who
had attended all the lectures.
A comma is always used before a restrictive clause in a sentence and also after
non-restrictive clause if it is within a main clause. ―That‖ is usually used to
6|Page
Example
The table that costs $ 100 is made of steel. (Restrictive clause)
3. Adverb Clause
When people hear about linguistics, they often believe that linguists are very
much like the character Henry Higgins in the play My Fair Lady, who expresses
sentiments like in the following song, where he bemoans the state of English
and the lack of proper pronunciation:
However, as you will learn in this first week of class, there are two different
ways that language has been talked about in disciplines that focus on the use of
language. We can talk about these different approaches to language as
descriptive grammar vs. prescriptive grammar.
Q.3: Design a detailed lesson plan for teaching past perfect tense
through communicative technique.
Description
In this lesson, students will learn about Past Perfect Tense and the difference
between Simple Past Tense and Past Perfect Tense through a warm-up, a main
and a follow-up activity.
Materials
Main Aims
The students will learn about Past Perfect Tense and they will be able to
differentiate Past Perfect Tense from Simple Past Tense in terms of both
meaning and structure.
Subsidiary Aims
The students will be able to create the story by given sentences understanding
the context. The students will be able to match the sentence halves and find the
first and second events. The students will be able to analyse the pictures given
and create sentences in Past Simple and Past Perfect Tense accordingly.
The teacher will divide students into pairs and distribute them mixed sentences
taken from a short story and ask them to put the sentences into the correct order.
The teacher will hang a cartoon about the topic on the wall and student will
stick the sentences in the correct order below the cartoon.
The teacher will ask some questions about the story which will lead the students
to use the new structure and the teacher will write one of the sentences which
include both Simple Past and Past Perfect Tense on the board.
The teacher will draw a timeline on the board just below the sentence already
written. The teacher will explain the students that both actions happened in the
past but one of them happened earlier, and the students will find the 1st and 2nd
actions.
The teacher will divide the class into groups and distribute the students sentence
halves to be matched in an envelope and ask them match all 10 halves to each
other. Then, the teacher will read a part of a sentence and a student will
complete the rest of the sentence, come to the stage and place sentence halves
under '1st&2nd actions' titles on the board.
The teacher will divide the class into groups and give each group 4 pictures of
different people. First, the teacher will explain the activity with an example,
then each student will take a picture and write a sentence in Simple Past Tense
below the picture about what happens in the picture. Later, s/he will pass the
picture to another student in the group and s/he write a new sentence below with
Pas Perfect Tense making up a reason for his/her peer's comment. Finally, all
the class will share some ideas about each picture.
10 | P a g e
While words, along with clitics, are generally accepted as being the smallest
units of syntax, in most languages, if not all, many words can be related to other
words by rules that collectively describe the grammar for that language. For
example, English speakers recognize that the words dog and dogs are closely
related, differentiated only by the plurality morpheme "-s", only found bound to
nouns. Speakers of English, a fusional language, recognize these relations from
their tacit knowledge of English's rules of word formation. They infer intuitively
that dog is to dogs as cat is to cats; and, in similar fashion, dog is to dog catcher
as dish is to dishwasher. By contrast, Classical Chinese has very little
morphology, using almost exclusively unbound morphemes ("free" morphemes)
and depending on word order to convey meaning. (Most words in modern
Standard Chinese ("Mandarin"), however, are compounds and most roots are
bound.) These are understood as grammars that represent the morphology of the
language. The rules understood by a speaker reflect specific patterns or
regularities in the way words are formed from smaller units in the language they
are using and how those smaller units interact in speech. In this way,
morphology is the branch of linguistics that studies patterns of word formation
within and across languages and attempts to formulate rules that model the
knowledge of the speakers of those languages.
The discipline that deals specifically with the sound changes occurring within
morphemes is morphophonology.
History
The history of morphological analysis dates back to the ancient Indian linguist
Pāṇini, who formulated the 3,959 rules of Sanskrit morphology in the text
Aṣṭādhyāyī by using a constituency grammar. The Greco-Roman grammatical
tradition also engaged in morphological analysis. Studies in Arabic
morphology, conducted by Marāḥ al-arwāḥ and Aḥmad b. ‗alī Mas‗ūd, date
back to at least 1200 CE.[6]
Fundamental concepts
Lexemes and word forms
The distinction between these two senses of "word" is arguably the most
important one in morphology. The first sense of "word", the one in which dog
and dogs are "the same word", is called a lexeme. The second sense is called
"word form". Dog and dogs are thus considered different forms of the same
lexeme. Dog and dog catcher, on the other hand, are different lexemes, as they
refer to two different kinds of entities. The form of a word that is chosen
conventionally to represent the canonical form of a word is called a lemma, or
citation form.
Here are examples from other languages of the failure of a single phonological
word to coincide with a single morphological word form. In Latin, one way to
express the concept of 'NOUN-PHRASE1 and NOUN-PHRASE2' (as in "apples
and oranges") is to suffix '-que' to the second noun phrase: "apples oranges-
and", as it were. An extreme level of this theoretical quandary posed by some
phonological words is provided by the Kwak'wala language.[8] In Kwak'wala, as
in a great many other languages, meaning relations between nouns, including
possession and "semantic case", are formulated by affixes instead of by
independent "words". The three-word English phrase, "with his club", where
'with' identifies its dependent noun phrase as an instrument and 'his' denotes a
possession relation, would consist of two words or even just one word in many
languages. Unlike most languages, Kwak'wala semantic affixes phonologically
attach not to the lexeme they pertain to semantically, but to the preceding
12 | P a g e
lexeme. Consider the following example (in Kwak'wala, sentences begin with
what corresponds to an English verb):[9]
kwixʔid-i-da = clubbed-PIVOT-DETERMINER
bəgwanəma-χ-a = man-ACCUSATIVE-DETERMINER
q'asa-s-is = otter-INSTRUMENTAL-3SG-POSSESSIVE
t'alwagwayu = club.
"the man clubbed the otter with his club."
(Notation notes:
That is, to the speaker of Kwak'wala, the sentence does not contain the "words"
'him-the-otter' or 'with-his-club' Instead, the markers -i-da (PIVOT-'the'),
referring to "man", attaches not to the noun bəgwanəma ("man") but to the verb;
the markers -χ-a (ACCUSATIVE-'the'), referring to otter, attach to bəgwanəma
instead of to q'asa ('otter'), etc. In other words, a speaker of Kwak'wala does not
perceive the sentence to consist of these phonological words:
A central publication on this topic is the recent volume edited by Dixon and
Aikhenvald (2007), examining the mismatch between prosodic-phonological
and grammatical definitions of "word" in various Amazonian, Australian
Aboriginal, Caucasian, Eskimo, Indo-European, Native North American, West
African, and sign languages. Apparently, a wide variety of languages make use
of the hybrid linguistic unit clitic, possessing the grammatical features of
independent words but the prosodic-phonological lack of freedom of bound
morphemes. The intermediate status of clitics poses a considerable challenge to
linguistic theory.[citation needed]
same lexeme; while other rules relate to different lexemes. Rules of the first
kind are inflectional rules, while those of the second kind are rules of word
formation. The generation of the English plural dogs from dog is an inflectional
rule, while compound phrases and words like dog catcher or dishwasher are
examples of word formation. Informally, word formation rules form "new"
words (more accurately, new lexemes), while inflection rules yield variant
forms of the "same" word (lexeme).
The distinction between inflection and word formation is not at all clear cut.
There are many examples where linguists fail to agree whether a given rule is
inflection or word formation. The next section will attempt to clarify this
distinction.
A linguistic paradigm is the complete set of related word forms associated with
a given lexeme. The familiar examples of paradigms are the conjugations of
verbs, and the declensions of nouns. Accordingly, the word forms of a lexeme
14 | P a g e
The inflectional categories used to group word forms into paradigms cannot be
chosen arbitrarily; they must be categories that are relevant to stating the
syntactic rules of the language. For example, person and number are categories
that can be used to define paradigms in English, because English has
grammatical agreement rules that require the verb in a sentence to appear in an
inflectional form that matches the person and number of the subject. In other
words, the syntactic rules of English care about the difference between dog and
dogs, because the choice between these two forms determines which form of the
verb is to be used. In contrast, however, no syntactic rule of English cares about
the difference between dog and dog catcher, or dependent and independent. The
first two are nouns and the second two are adjectives – and they generally
behave like any other noun or adjective behaves.
Allomorphy
Even cases regarded as regular, such as -s, are not so simple; the -s in dogs is
not pronounced the same way as the -s in cats; and, in plurals such as dishes, a
vowel is added before the -s. These cases, where the same distinction is effected
by alternative forms of a "word", constitute allomorphy.
Phonological rules constrain which sounds can appear next to each other in a
language, and morphological rules, when applied blindly, would often violate
phonological rules, by resulting in sound sequences that are prohibited in the
language in question. For example, to form the plural of dish by simply
appending an -s to the end of the word would result in the form *[dɪʃs], which is
not permitted by the phonotactics of English. In order to "rescue" the word, a
vowel sound is inserted between the root and the plural marker, and [dɪʃɪz]
results. Similar rules apply to the pronunciation of the -s in dogs and cats: it
depends on the quality (voiced vs. unvoiced) of the final preceding phoneme.
Lexical morphology
Lexical morphology is the branch of morphology that deals with the lexicon,
which, morphologically conceived, is the collection of lexemes in a language.
As such, it concerns itself primarily with word formation: derivation and
compounding.
Models
There are three principal approaches to morphology and each tries to capture the
distinctions above in different ways:
While the associations indicated between the concepts in each item in that list
are very strong, they are not absolute.
Morpheme-based morphology
case, derivational affixes.[10] In words such as dogs, dog is the root and the -s is
an inflectional morpheme. In its simplest and most naïve form, this way of
analyzing word forms, called "item-and-arrangement", treats words as if they
were made of morphemes put after each other ("concatenated") like beads on a
string. More recent and sophisticated approaches, such as distributed
morphology, seek to maintain the idea of the morpheme while accommodating
non-concatenative, analogical, and other processes that have proven problematic
for item-and-arrangement theories and similar approaches.
Lexeme-based morphology
Word-based morphology
Q.5: Read Unit 5 carefully. What do you mean by the term ‘word family’?
Write down a few words included in the families of the following
Words:
Meet, Stand, Get, Hike, Inspire
A group of words that share a common base to which different prefixes and
suffixes are added. For example, members of the word family based on the
headword work include rework, worker, working, workshop, and workmanship,
among others.
"The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is
a playground." (Gilbert K. Chesterton)
You can be childlike without being childish.
"Correction does much, but encouragement does more. . . . A correct
answer is like an affectionate kiss." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
"I write and rewrite and rewrite and write and like to turn in what I think
is finished work." (Gay Talese)
what happened, so phrases that include auxiliary verbs are used instead.
These can be made up of anywhere from two to four words.
A main verb, also known as a base verb, indicates the kind of action or
condition taking place. An auxiliary or helping verb accompanies the
main verb and conveys other nuances that help the reader gain specific
insight into the event that is taking place.
Read the following sentences and explanations to gain greater insight into
how auxiliary verbs work.
1. Jerry caught his thumb in the car door as coffee spilled from his cup onto
his favourite shirt.
2. Jerry is always spilling things.
3. Since Jerry is also accident prone, he should have been drinking coffee
from a mug with a lid, which would not have spilled on his favorite shirt.
Have
Do
Be
In this section, we‘ll take a closer look at how these common verbs work,
plus you‘ll see some examples.
Have
―Have‖ is a very important verb that can stand alone in all its tenses,
including has, have, having, had, and hadn’t or had not. It is usually
used to denote ownership, and it can also be used to discuss ability or
describe appearance. ―Have‖ is also a very popular substitute for the
verbs ―eat‖ and ―drink.‖ For example: ―Let‘s have dinner.‖
When used as an auxiliary verb, have is always teamed up with another
verb to create a complete verb phrase, making it easy to differentiate
between uses. You can see the difference in the sentences below:
Jerry has a large coffee stain on his shirt. → Has = action verb
22 | P a g e
Jerry has bought a new shirt to replace the one that was ruined earlier. →
Has = auxiliary verb; bought is a past participle that competes the verb
phrase.
Jerry should have been more careful! → Have = auxiliary verb; phrase
―should have been‖ expresses time and evaluates Jerry‘s actions.
Do
―Do‖ can be used as an action verb that stands alone in all its tenses,
including to do, do, does, done, did and didn’t, doesn’t or did not .
When used as an auxiliary verb, do is always paired up with another verb
to create a complete verb phrase. In some cases, it is used to add
emphasis: “I did put the garbage out!” Do is often used to form
questions and negated clauses. It is also used in elliptical sentences,
where the main verb is understood and is omitted as a result. For
example: “He plays piano well, doesn’t he?” or ―They all had dinner, but
I didn‘t.‖
Because he spills things so often, Jerry does more laundry than most
people. Does = action verb
Jerry didn‘t put his coffee in a cup with a lid. Didn‘t = auxiliary verb
Jerry doesn‘t always spill things, but it happens a lot. Doesn‘t =
auxiliary verb
Be
―Be‖ or ―to be‖ is an important verb that has a multitude of uses in
English. It can be used as an action verb that stands alone in all its tenses
including be, to be, been, am, are, is, was, were, wasn’t, was not
aren’t, are not, weren’t and were not.
When used as an auxiliary verb, be is always paired with another verb to
create a complete verb phrase. It can be singular or plural, present or past.
Negative sentences are formed by adding the word ―not‖.
Can
23 | P a g e
Could
May
Might
Must
Ought to
Shall
Should
Will
Would
Auxiliary Verb Examples
Here are some examples of auxiliary verbs and verb phrases. In the
examples below, the verb phrase is italicized and the auxiliary verb is in
bold.
Ans: Verb
A verb is a word that expresses an action or a state of being. As you can see
from that definition, there are two main categories of verbs: action verbs and
state of being verbs (also known as linking verbs). Because action verbs and
linking verbs are strong enough to be used in sentences all by themselves, they
are called main verbs.
But wait! There is also a third category of verbs which doesn't get any glory.
They are the helping verbs. The reason that these guys don't get any of the fame
that action and linking verbs get is because they don't stand alone as main verbs .
TYPES OF VERB:
1. Transitive Verbs
Transitive Verbs are verbs that have to do something to something. That have to
is important because, technically, all verbs do something to something.
Transitive verbs, however, need to have that something mentioned to be
complete. For example: ―The shelf holds.‖ Well, what does it hold? For that
verb to be complete, it needs to hold something. Here‘s a few more examples:
To make this more complex, there are many verbs that can be both transitive
and intransitive. An example is the verb to hang. You could use it transitively
25 | P a g e
(Hang him!) or intransitively (The picture was hung.). Also note that misused
transitive verbs create odd sentences such as example 2 above.
2. Intransitive Verbs
Intransitive Verbs are verbs that don‘t need to do something to something to
make sense. For example: I arrived at work early. Here‘s a few more examples:
3. Linking Verbs
Linking Verbs connect the subject to a noun or adjective. These are easy.
Linking Verbs are your standard to be verbs: am, is, are, was, were, became,
become, appears, seems, and so on. There are a few tricky ones, but the key is
to remember that linking verbs are verbs of sensation (feel, look, smell, sound,
taste, and so on) or existence (act, appear, be, become, continue, grow,
prove, remain, seem, sit, turn, and so on). Of course, you have to be careful
because many linking verbs can be used as intransitive and transitive verbs. For
example, let‘s use the verb taste in multiple situations.
The only real way to know the difference between the verbs is to identify what
is happening. If the verb is telling you the state of sensation or existence of a
thing, it is a linking verb. The nice thing with linking verbs is that you can
check them by replacing the verb with a to be verb. If you can replace it, you
are looking at a linking verb (The water in Kansas is terrible.).
If the verb has to tell you what the action is done to, it is transitive. If it doesn‘t,
it is intransitive.
Q.8: What is the importance of using verbal groups for teaching tenses in
English language?
If you are not using tense accurately and appropriately in your writing,
there are three possible sources of your problem:
1. The forms of the verbs
2. The structure of the verbal group
3. The context in which the verbal group occurs.
The Forms of the Verbs
One of the problems you may be having is that you are not familiar
enough with the forms of the verbs you are using as you may have seen in
Unit 2A; verbs have several forms which can be used on their own or
combined with other verb forms called Auxiliaries. When you combine a
verb with an auxiliary it is called a verbal group. These verbal groups can
be finite or non‐finite. If a verbal group is finite, it shows tense or
judgement /modality.