THEME 2 LECTURES 3-4

GRAMMATICAL ANALYSIS: APPROACHES

AND METHODS

Part 1

1. The scope of grammar

2. Types of grammar

3. Grammatical analysis

   1. grammatical description

   2. agreement

   3. prescriptive and descriptive approaches

   4. structural approach

4. Methods of analysis

   1. oppositional

   2. distributional

   3. IC analysis

   4. Transformational

Part 2

Tasks

Part 3

Basics of Sentence Parsing

Recommended reading:

1. Donnelly, Colleen. Linguistics for Writers. – NY: State University of New York Press, 1994

2. Huddleston, R. English Grammar: An Outline. – Cambridge: CUP, 1988

3. Iofik L, Chakhoyan L. Readings in the Theory of English Grammar. – L.: Prosveshchenije, 1967.

4. Lehman, Winfred. Language: An Introduction. – NY: Random House, 1993

5. Todd, L. An Introduction to Linguistics. – Longman: York Press, 1987

6. Yule, G. The Study of Language. – CUP, 1996

Study questions

Projects / reports

1. Competence and performance

1. The scope of grammar

A grammatical model of a language is an attempt to represent systematically and overtly what the native speaker of that language intuitively knows. A model is thus a system of rules that relates patterned sounds to predictable meanings and which reflects a speaker's ability to 'make infinite use of finite means.

As yet, there is no model for English which totally satisfies all requirements for an adequate grammar of the language, although many models have been advanced and they all have their uses. We shall look briefly at the different models advanced in this century in Britain and in the United States and we shall indicate their respective strengths and weaknesses.

The great expansion of linguistics as a discipline in the 1960s and 1970s was associated with advances which were then being made in theories of grammar. The work of Noam Chomksy and others not only generated great excitement within linguistics, but also had a considerable impact in other fields as diverse as psychology and architecture. Today, there is a more even balance in the major areas of linguistic research, but theories of grammar are still considered a central part of language study.

The idea of 'grammar' and of doing grammatical analysis, seems to frighten many people. In part, this may have to do with the nature of lan­guage itself - a grammar attempts to make generalizations about language structure, but language has the habit of being more complex in its struc­ture than first appears and often evades simple analysis. However, the way grammar has traditionally been taught in schools in many parts of the world - almost as a matter of punishment than for any enjoyment of discovery and learning - has probably alienated generations of students. But it has to be admitted that linguists themselves have not been entirely helpful in this matter: a whole range of theories and terminologies have emerged in recent years and it is sometimes hard to keep up with changing and conflicting ideas about grammar issues, such for example as sentence structure.

In view of the revolutionary nature of some of the new theories of language, it may seem surprising that they still incorporate many tradi­tional and familiar concepts and categories. Nouns and verbs, and subjects and objects, to name just a few, still appear in modern accounts of sentence structure. At the level of rudimentary description, less has changed than might be supposed.

The word 'grammar' is used by linguists in a variety of ways, which can be confusing to a newcomer to the discipline. The first ambiguity has to do with the scope of grammar: what range of language phenomena does it include? In the days when the study of language meant mainly the study of Latin and Greek, grammar was concerned largely with morphology (the study of word structure). This narrow focus was appropriate for the study of in­flected languages, where the relations between words in a sentence is shown primarily by word endings. It was less suitable for the English language, but the focus of grammatical studies remained largely on morphology until well into the twentieth century. The American linguist, Zeilig Harris, was able to complain in 1946 that 'many grammars have carried little or no syntactic description.

As systematic techniques for analysing word order were developed in the second half of the century, so the term 'grammar' came to include both morphology and syntax (the study of how words are combined into longer stretches of language). Such a definition conforms to the traditional use of the word 'grammar' in lin­guistics, and it coincides, more or less, with popular everyday usage.

Some linguists, however, particularly those working in the tradition es­tablished by Chomsky, use 'grammar' to refer to the entire system of organization of language - including phonology and semantics, as well as morphology and syntax.

There is a further ambiguity attached to 'grammar'. Just as the word 'language' is used in two different ways - language and a language - so the word 'grammar' can be used to describe either the general structural properties of human language, or the characteristics of a specific language. The kind of grammar which Chomsky is associated with has become known as universal grammar, which reflects the first of these usages. On the other hand, we can use expressions such as a 'grammar of Sanskrit', to mean a description of the regular patterns of sentence and word structure in Sanskrit.

These different usages of 'grammar' may sound confusing, but in fact the meaning that different linguists intend is usually quite clear. A linguist who provides a general account of language tends to use the word 'gram­mar' in the wider sense - to include all the components of a linguistic theory. A linguist who provides an account of a particular language tends to use 'grammar' in the narrower sense - to include only morphology and syntax.