Attendance sheet: Tick next to your name!
- Use morphological and syntactic features to identify the word classes of verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.
- Distinguish between auxiliaries and main verbs.
- Semantic definition
👆 Click me
Defined by meaning as a word that expresses an action, being, or state of being- Morphological definition
👆 Click me
Defined by the morphological changes applicable to verbs: can be used in both present and past tenses; has both an –s and –ing form- Example:
--- Base form: talk
--- Present tense (third person singular): talks
--- Past tense: talked
--- Past participle: talked
--- -ing form: talking
- Many of our most common verbs are irregular!
- Minor (or “function”) class of words
- Signalers of verbs (“helping verbs”)
- Determining tense, aspect, and voice
- Adding information about likelihood, ability, obligation, etc.
- Structuring questions and negatives
- Mary had been having so much fun.
- She should have called her mom.
- She will be grounded.
- Now, she has to stay home all weekend.
- Mary is frustrating her parents.
- Curfews can be frustrating.
- Semantic definition: “Describing words”
- Morphological definition:
👆 Click me
Defined by the morphological features applicable to adjectives: have an adjective-making morpheme; takes comparative and superlative morphemes- What are some adjective derivational suffixes?
- What are some adjective inflectional suffixes?
- Semantic definition:
👆 Click me
words that usually modify (limit or restrict the meaning of) verbs- Morphological definition:
👆 Click me
Defined by the morphological features applicable to adverbs: have an adverb-making morpheme; takes comparative and superlative morphemesThey are almost the same as adjectives morphologically. How do we further tell them apart?
- Syntactic feature:
👆 Click me
Adjectives proceed or follow nouns; adverbs can be (almost) anywhere in the sentence.
- Adverbs are usually grouped according to the extra information they add to verbs:
- Time: now, today, nowadays, yesterday
- Duration: already, always, still, yet
- Frequency: often, seldom, never, sometimes, always
- Location: there, here, everywhere, somewhere, elsewhere, upstairs, abroad, outside, nearby
- Direction: away, thence
- Concession: still, yet
- Sequence: afterward, next, then
Note: Some words look like adverbs but are not:
- He ran towards us.
Quiz: Identifying verbs
Quiz: Auxiliary and main verbs
Quiz: Identifying adjectives
Quiz: Identifying adverbs
Quiz: Review of the major word classes
Any questions about the homework quizzes?
- Quiz: Syntax or Morphology?
- Quiz: Identifying Roots
- Quiz: Labeling Morphemes (Part 1)
- Quiz: Labeling Morphemes (Part 2)
This game is based on the GUM Corpus (Georgetown University Multilayer Corpus).
Question: What are the top 10 most commonly used words in English?
Answer:
Rank Word Percentage 1 the 5.24% 2 BE (of any form) 2.90% 3 of 2.53% 4 and 2.50% 5 a 1.86% 6 in 1.75% 7 to 1.27% 8 for 0.73% 9 you 0.72% 10 it 0.65%
What word class is each of these top 10 words?
What do you think is the most frequently used word class in English?
- Understand what word class is
- Use morphological and syntactic features to identify the word classes of nouns and pronouns
- Understand the distinction between common and proper nouns, count and non-count nouns, abstract and concrete nouns
- Distinguish sub-classes of pronouns
Word class = Part of Speech (POS)
- Traditional means of teaching word class: using semantic features
- Noun = person, place, or thing
- Verb = action word
- We will use morphological and syntactic features to identify word classes
- The builder’s plan was to lay the foundations in a fortnight.
- They plan to visit Paris next spring.
-
Major class words: Content words
- Noun (castle)
- Verb (decide)
- Adjective (happy)
- Adverb (beautifully)
-
Minor class words: Function words
- Pronoun (their)
- Determiner (the)
- Auxiliary (will)
- Preposition (across)
- Conjunction (and)
- Particle (break up)
- A person, place, thing, idea, event, etc.
But we can also identify content words by their forms (morphology) and where they are in the phrase or sentence structure (syntax).
Basically...
- A noun is a word that can be made plural and/or possessive; it is signaled by determiners
- Common nouns are general names.
- Proper nouns are specific people, places, or things.
- Proper nouns are capitalized.
- The singer was excited to take the stage.
- Taylor Swift released her new album today.
- Concrete: tangible (people, objects, events)
- Abstract: intangible (ideas, values, emotions)
- Collective nouns
- Can be followed by singular or plural verb form depending on meaning
- The team is here on vacation.
- The team have chosen different restaurants.
- Can be followed by singular or plural verb form depending on meaning
- Non-count nouns
- Do not take a/an
- The car needed oil.
- Some can be both
- Example: water, experience
- Do not take a/an
Pronouns help us avoid repetition!
- Michael bought the cheesecake for Michael, and Michael ate it all.
- Michael bought the cheesecake for himself, and he ate it all.
- They stand in for
- Nouns
- Noun phrases
- Nominals
- A pronoun’s antecedent is the name for what the pronoun stands in for.
- Subject and Object forms
- Take the place of a noun and show possession.
- I want yours.
- They left theirs at home.
"My car is expensive." Is "my" a possessive pronoun?
- Convey information about the position of something.
- this/that/these/those
- The girl wants this.
- That is unbelievable.
- this/that/these/those
"That car is expensive." Is "that" a demonstrative pronoun?
Formed by added –self or –selves to the personal pronouns
- Must have their antecedent in the same clause.
- Also known as intensive pronoun.
- Serve as appositive to emphasize a noun, but movable
- I myself checked the locks before leaving the house.
- The oncologist himself confirmed the patient’s diagnosis.
Each other and one another
- Used as objects to refer to previously named nouns
- The children borrow from each other.
- Juan and Claudia help each other.
- The sisters never wrote to one another.
There are a lot of them!
- Express quantities, definiteness
- Often unidentifiable antecedent
- Used to ask questions Includes some Wh- words (who/whose/whom/which)
who, whom, whose, which, that
- Occur in relative clauses (clauses that modify their antecedents)
- Do these quizzes to check your knowledge and bring your questions to class:
- Understand that words have an internal structure (studied in the branch of linguistics known as morphology)
- Apply morphological concepts like root and affix in analysis of word structure
- Understand the difference between derivational and inflectional word formation
- word
- morpheme
- syllable
👆 Click me for answer
word: the smallest unit of language that can stand on its ownmorpheme: the smallest meaningful unit in a word
syllable: a word or part of a word that contains a single vowel sound
What makes this poem English sounding?
We call word parts morphemes. Morphemes are the smallest meaningful part of language, but unlike words, they don’t have to be able to stand on their own.
- Many morphemes cannot stand alone as words; they are bound to other morphemes.
- Free morphemes are able to stand on their own as words.
- A free morpheme is a word; a bound morpheme is not.
A free morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit in language that can stand alone.
health giraffe week side boomerang sun up
In English we can combine two free morphemes to create compounds that have a new meaning together.
weekend week + end sunlight sun + light playground play + ground upend up + end downside down + side moonlight moon + light
A compound must have two free morphemes. The following are not compounds because the morphemes are not all free:
nonsense unkind kindness removes
Think of words with morphemes that fit the following formula: (e.g. free + bound = birds; bound + free = rerun)
- free + bound
- bound + free
- free + bound + bound
- bound + free + bound
- free + free
- bound + free + bound + bound
- bound + bound
- bound + bound + bound
- root: the base of a word, the morpheme that gives the word its primary lexical meaning
- affix: a morpheme which can come before (prefix) or after (suffix) a root
Example: unhelpful
- un: affix (prefix)
- help: root
- ful: affix (suffix)
- What are the roots of the following words?
a) domestication
b) mistrustful
c) joyfulness
👆 Click me for answer
a) domesticb) trust
c) joy
Find the common root for the following sets of words. What does the root mean?
nova auditor endure conceive renovation audience duration capable innovate inaudible durable susceptible novice auditorium during capture novelist audio endurance intercept
👆 Click me for answer
nova: classical Latin nova, feminine singular of novus, meaning new.audi: classical Latin audīre, meaning to hear.
dure: Latin dūrus, meaning hard.
capt: classical Latin capere, meaning to take.
Tip: We as ISU students have access to Oxford English Dictionary, where you can find detailed etymology for words.
What’s the difference?
- Derivational morphemes form new words.
- Inflectional morphemes do not create new words.
Derivational morphemes form new words. They do this by altering either the lexical meaning of a root (e.g., nonsense) or by changing the grammatical category of the word (e.g., kindness).
- -able
- -age
- -ese
- -ward(s)
- -esque
- -ify
- -less
- -ness
- -wise
Derivational morphemes are not systematic; they are arbitrary and there are no rules:
sweet: sweetness
happy: happiness
kind: kindness
but not
sunny: sunniness
difficult: difficultness
warm: warmness
- Inflectional suffixes change words but do not make new words.
- All inflectional morphemes are suffixes.
- There are now only eight inflectional morphemes.
Identify the inflections in the bolded words.
- Example: He wishes he could come.
- -es is the 3rd person singular s
The August 2020 derecho windstorm was bigger than most people remember. The straight-line wind gusts measured up to 110 mph in Iowa. Trees were broken off by the wind. Nevertheless, ISU's campus remains the prettiest campus in the world.
Here are some quizzes to help you test your learning. If you find it difficult to answer them, go back to our reading to review the concepts: Morphology Overview.
- Quiz: Syntax or Morphology?
- Quiz: Identifying Roots
- Quiz: Labeling Morphemes (Part 1)
- Quiz: Labeling Morphemes (Part 2)
- Identify how grammar is defined
- Learn key influences on English usage (e.g., prescriptive vs. descriptive grammar, regional and social dialects, language standards)
- Read this article and discuss with your peers what you think.
- Read "What is grammar and how is grammar used?" (5 min)
- Read "Varieties of English" (5 min)
- Klammer et al. (2010):
- “the linguistic system that presumably exists in the mind of a speaker of a language”
- Syntax + morphology
- “the knowledge to which we refer when we say that someone "knows" a language.”
- “a description of the language system”
- “an ideal set of rules”
- He always uses good grammar.
- a handbook containing the prescriptive rules
- Look it up in your grammar.
- “the linguistic system that presumably exists in the mind of a speaker of a language”
- Descriptive rules: “how our grammatical system operates, rules that are the same for all speakers of English (e.g., subjects precede verbs in most sentences).”
- Prescriptive rules “govern the version of English considered appropriate (e.g., Standard American English)”
- The reason why grammar gets a bad rap
- Two hallmarks:
- Insisted only certain “high” forms of English were worth studying
- Studied it in an complicated, obscure way, using a system borrowed from Latin
- The view that one variety (or use) of a language has an inherently higher value than others and ought to be the norm for the whole of the speech community (Crystal, 1995)
- An approach to the study of grammar that stipulates the grammatical forms that speakers should use or ought to use. (Cummings, 2018)
- Objective
- More data-driven
- Studying language as it's actually used by members of a speech community in real world contexts
What camp do you consider yourself to be in at this point? Why?
How should language teachers handle dialect differences in the classroom?
- Language change
- Dialects
- Language development
- Key definitions in the study of grammar, such as prescriptive/descriptive approaches, dialects, standard and nonstandard language
- Reasons for variations in grammar
Study of Grammar Quiz (3 min)
Any question?
In the next part we take a look at morphology — the structure of words.
Give the Morphology Overview a read. You can skip the Knowledge Check questions for now.
"How Y’all, Youse and You Guys Talk" (An NYT Dialect Survey)
What is English 2200?
Why English 2200?
How do we form questions in English?
How would you make the following statements into questions using tags?
- Joe ate the pizza, didn't he?
- He didn't have any food, _____?
- Mel and Jerry never study, _____?
- The students have worked hard, _____?
- Mr. Jones won't give us a raise, _____?
What are the steps we did automatically?
- Recognize what is grammatical (spot the rules)
- Write grammatically
- Help others to express themselves in the best way possible
- Understand and be able to accurately use terms and concepts related to morphology and syntax
- Be able to analyze the major grammatical structures of English
- Be able to explain grammar influences and uses
By the end of the course, you can do this:
- Your name
- Your major
- Any fun fact about you?
- What do you think of this course so far?
- Prerequisite: English 2500
- Access to Canvas
- Textbook: Altenberg, E. P., & Vago, R. M. (2010). English grammar: Understanding the basics. Cambridge University Press.
If you have to miss class, you must inform your instrcutor. Missing class without notice will take points away.
- Make note of assessment dates
- Check your emails
- Use this Github page as recaps
- Don't wait until the last minute
- Review diagrams and take quizzes
- Ask questions
Do the diagnostic quiz on Canvas.
- Before this course, how would you define what "grammar" is?
- Do you know someone who is a strict "grammar police"? Do you agree with them? Why?
- Can you think of any expressions you use now that a different generation might not understand?
- Can you think of any expressions that someone from a different geographic area uses but you find awkward?
- Share a time when you criticized or were criticized because of your language use. What was it that made the language nonstandard — was it an error or a dialect difference? Do you feel the correction was appropriate?
- How should language teachers handle dialect differences in the classroom?
Pick a few questions to discussion with people around you!
- Read the syllabus
- Read "What is grammar and how is grammar used?"
- Read "Varieties of English"