Introducing english grammar utdrag

Introducing English Grammar describes and explains English grammar in light of current an introductory course in English grammar at college/university level in Norway.

The third edition of Introducing English Grammar has been revised and updated, but retains the key points of the previous edition: •

alerting learners to the close ties between grammatical form, meaning and communicative function

•

providing learners with good tools for improving their English

•

giving practical advice through “Notes for learners”

•

introducing learners to grammatical terminology so that they can make use of

•

comparing English with Norwegian in order to address specific learner problems and increase the students’ language awareness

•

presenting ways of creating coherent texts that are adapted to context and purpose

•

providing exercises focusing on practical as well as analytical skills, including the use of English-language corpora

The book has an accompanying website with a key to the exercises at https://intengram.portfolio.no/

Magne Dypedahl is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Southeast Norway.

Hilde Hasselgård is Professor of English Language at the University of Oslo.

INTRODUCING ENGLISH GRAMMAR

making learners familiar with the basic clause structure of English

THIRD EDITION

grammar notes from dictionaries and other sources •

Magne Dypedahl and Hilde Hasselgård

usage. It is aimed at students of English in teacher education and students who take

INTRODUCING ENGLISH GRAMMAR THIRD EDITION Magne Dypedahl and Hilde Hasselgård

ISBN 978-82-450-2368-8

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INTRODUCING ENGLISH GRAMMAR THIRD EDITION

INTRODUCING ENGLISH GRAMMAR THIRD EDITION Magne Dypedahl and Hilde Hasselgård

Copyright © 2018 by Vigmostad & Bjørke AS All Rights Reserved ISBN: 978-82-450-2368-8 Graphic production: John Grieg, Bergen Cover design by publisher Cover photo © shutterstock / J. Helgason Typeset by publisher Enquiries about this text can be directed to: Fagbokforlaget Kanalveien 51 5068 Bergen Tel.: 55 38 88 00 Fax: 55 38 88 01 email: fagbokforlaget@fagbokforlaget.no www.fagbokforlaget.no All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photo-copying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 INTRODUCING GRAMMAR ..................................................................................... 11 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4

Studying language .......................................................................................................................11 Grammatical units .......................................................................................................................12 Putting the pieces together ......................................................................................................15 Using authentic texts ..................................................................................................................15

2 WORDS AND PHRASES ............................................................................................ 19 2.1 2.2 2.3

Lexical words and function words .......................................................................................... 19 What is a phrase? .......................................................................................................................22 Phrase types ................................................................................................................................23

3 NOUNS ......................................................................................................................... 29 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8

Types of nouns........................................................................................................................... 29 Common and proper nouns ................................................................................................... 29 Countable and uncountable nouns....................................................................................... 30 Singular and plural nouns .........................................................................................................33 Collective nouns.........................................................................................................................35 Concrete and abstract nouns ..................................................................................................35 Compound nouns ......................................................................................................................36 Noun phrases..............................................................................................................................37

4 DETERMINERS AND PRONOUNS ........................................................................ 41 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8 4.9 4.10 4.11

Characteristics of determiners and pronouns...................................................................... 41 Classes of determiner .............................................................................................................. 42 Types of pronoun ...................................................................................................................... 42 The articles ..................................................................................................................................43 Possessive determiners ............................................................................................................ 49 The genitive ................................................................................................................................ 50 Some and any..............................................................................................................................52 Demonstrative determiners and pronouns ...........................................................................53 Relative pronouns ......................................................................................................................54 Reflexive pronouns ....................................................................................................................54 Pronoun-headed noun phrases ..............................................................................................55

5

5 ADJECTIVES AND ADVERBS ................................................................................... 59 5.1 5.2 5.3

Adjectives ....................................................................................................................................59 Adverbs ....................................................................................................................................... 64 Adjective or adverb? .................................................................................................................67

6 CLAUSES AND SENTENCES ................................................................................... 71 6.1 6.2

What is a clause? .........................................................................................................................71 The sentence...............................................................................................................................73

7 CLAUSE ELEMENTS .................................................................................................. 79 7.1 7.2 7.3

Finding the clause elements ....................................................................................................79 Types of clause elements ........................................................................................................ 80 More on adverbials....................................................................................................................85

8 SYNTACTIC ANALYSIS ............................................................................................. 93 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6 8.7 8.8 8.9 8.10

Analysing clauses .......................................................................................................................93 Obligatory and optional clause elements ............................................................................93 Transitive and intransitive verbs .............................................................................................. 94 Combinations of clause elements ......................................................................................... 94 Grammatical properties of verbs ............................................................................................95 The syntactic functions of adjective phrases....................................................................... 96 The positions of adjectives.......................................................................................................97 The syntactic functions of adverb phrases .......................................................................... 98 Anticipatory subject ................................................................................................................. 98 Summary of grammatical units ............................................................................................... 99

9 IT AND THERE ............................................................................................................103 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4

The need for studying it and there .......................................................................................103 Uses of it ....................................................................................................................................103 Uses of there ............................................................................................................................. 107 Contrastive points ....................................................................................................................108

10 CONCORD BETWEEN SUBJECT AND VERBAL ..............................................113 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5 10.6 10.7 10.8 10.9 10.10 10.11 10.12

6

Using the s-form of the verb ................................................................................................... 113 Co-ordinated noun phrase as subject ..................................................................................114 Verb form in sentences with existential there ......................................................................114 Indefinite pronouns and determiners ................................................................................... 115 Uncountable nouns .................................................................................................................. 115 Collective nouns: unit and distributive meaning/use ........................................................ 116 Plural form, singular meaning and grammar ....................................................................... 116 Singular form, plural meaning ................................................................................................ 117 Nominalized adjectives ........................................................................................................... 117 Sentences with subject predicative ....................................................................................... 117 Dependent clause as subject.................................................................................................. 118 Quantifying expressions with of ............................................................................................ 118

INTRODUCING ENGLISH GRAMMAR, THIRD EDITION

10.13 Notional concord...................................................................................................................... 119 10.14 Concord in relative clauses ....................................................................................................120

11 VERBS, TENSE AND ASPECT ................................................................................ 125 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 11.5 11.6 11.7 11.8

Verbs and verb phrases ........................................................................................................... 125 Tense ........................................................................................................................................... 129 Finite and non-finite verbs......................................................................................................130 Aspect ........................................................................................................................................130 The perfect progressive .......................................................................................................... 134 Stative and dynamic verbs...................................................................................................... 134 Elements of the verb phrase .................................................................................................. 136 Contrastive points .................................................................................................................... 137

12 MODALITY AND FUTURE TIME REFERENCE .................................................143 12.1 12.2 12.3 12.4 12.5 12.6 12.7 12.8 12.9

Referring to something that has not happened ................................................................. 143 What is modality?..................................................................................................................... 143 Root and epistemic modality .................................................................................................144 Modal auxiliaries ...................................................................................................................... 145 Other modal expressions .......................................................................................................149 Contrastive points ....................................................................................................................150 Future-referring expressions .................................................................................................. 152 Future in the past ...................................................................................................................... 156 Contrastive points .................................................................................................................... 156

13 THE PASSIVE ..............................................................................................................161 13.1 13.2 13.3 13.4 13.5

Active and passive clauses ...................................................................................................... 161 The form of the passive .......................................................................................................... 162 Long and short passives.......................................................................................................... 163 Reasons for using the passive ................................................................................................ 163 Contrastive points .................................................................................................................... 165

14 WORD ORDER .........................................................................................................169 14.1 14.2 14.3 14.4 14.5 14.6 14.7 14.8

English word order ................................................................................................................... 169 Comparison between English and Norwegian................................................................... 171 The placement of adverbials .................................................................................................. 171 Fronting ...................................................................................................................................... 174 Inversion in English declarative sentences...........................................................................175 The information principle ....................................................................................................... 178 The principle of end weight ...................................................................................................180 Summary of word order principles .......................................................................................182

15 DEPENDENT CLAUSES .......................................................................................... 187 15.1 15.2 15.3

Main clauses and dependent clauses .................................................................................. 187 Syntactic functions of dependent clauses ..........................................................................188 Finite dependent clauses ........................................................................................................189

Table of contents

7

15.4 15.5 15.6

Non-finite dependent clauses ..............................................................................................198 The placement of dependent clauses ................................................................................202 Reported speech .....................................................................................................................203

16 TEXT GRAMMAR ....................................................................................................209 16.1 16.2 16.3 16.4 16.5

From sentences to text ...........................................................................................................209 Coherence in text ...................................................................................................................209 The information in the text .....................................................................................................210 Cohesive ties .............................................................................................................................. 211 Structuring content ..................................................................................................................214

17 GENRE AND STYLE .................................................................................................221 17.1 17.2

Genres ........................................................................................................................................ 221 Formal and informal English..................................................................................................224

APPENDIX 1: PUNCTUATION ................................................................................... 231 Capitals .................................................................................................................................................... 231 Commas ................................................................................................................................................. 232 Full stops................................................................................................................................................. 233 Semi-colons and colons ..................................................................................................................... 233 Exclamation marks ............................................................................................................................... 233

APPENDIX 2: PREPOSITIONS ................................................................................... 235 1 2 3 4

Prepositions in fixed expressions................................................................................................. 235 Nouns with fixed prepositions ....................................................................................................242 Adjectives with fixed prepositions..............................................................................................244 Verbs with fixed prepositions ......................................................................................................248

INDEX ............................................................................................................................... 253

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INTRODUCING ENGLISH GRAMMAR, THIRD EDITION

PREFACE The third edition of Introducing English Grammar has undergone some structural changes, but maintains the formula that made the previous editions so popular.

That means clear explanations of central topics in English grammar, plenty of practical notes for learners and exercises at the end of each chapter. Each set of exercises contains one or two tasks focusing on language skills, a set of sentence pairs, a text with questions related to the topic of the chapter and a corpus task.

The corpus tasks rely on corpora that are freely available on the Internet. Besides being an important resource in English language research and the development of dictionaries, grammars and teaching aids, corpora provide a useful digital tool for English language teaching and learning.

Introducing English Grammar can be used for all types of introductory courses in higher education, including teacher education. The general focus on functional grammar and the inclusion of topics such as text structure, style and genre are all in accordance with the overall aim of developing a comprehensive communicative language competence in language education.

Magne Dypedahl and Hilde HasselgĂĽrd

9

1 INTRODUCING GRAMMAR

1.1

STUDYING LANGUAGE

“Grammar is the business of taking a language to pieces, to see how it works,� according to the grammarian David Crystal. The problem of taking something to pieces, however, is that it will probably stop working. Thus, it is just as important to put the pieces of language together again in order to understand the meaning of language. Such a focus on the relationship between form and meaning is characteristic of functional grammar, which is also the backdrop for the approach to grammar in this book.

In language pedagogy, the functional approach to grammar is closely related to the aim of communicative language competence. Communicative language competence can be divided into three components: linguistic competences (such as grammar and phonetics), sociolinguistic competences (the social dimension of language use, such as politeness conventions) and pragmatic competences (for example, structuring texts appropriately according to their function). It should be noted that grammatical form is very much an integral part of the concept of communicative language competence because knowledge of language structures is necessary to communicate appropriately in different situations. The same relationship between form and meaning is also evident in the concept of language awareness, which involves both knowledge and analysis of the form of language and sensitivity to how language is used in different contexts.

11

In sum, there is every good reason for advanced learners of a foreign language to study both the forms of the language and the meanings they express, whether the overall aim is called communicative language competence or language awareness. Moreover, grammatical form is not only about morphology (the form of words) and syntax (the structure of phrases, clauses and sentences). It is also about linking sentences into meaningful paragraphs and texts. For that reason, text grammar is also included in this book (see chapters 16 and 17). This aspect of grammar is very useful for understanding how texts are adapted to different situations and purposes, for example, why (and how) conversational English is different from academic writing.

Whatever the grammatical topic might be, there will always be grammatical terminology involved in the description. Unfamiliar terms seem to scare some students, but they should be less of a problem than many people think. For example, nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are names for types of words or word classes in the same manner as cats, dogs, cows and horses are names for different animals. They can be recognized by the way they look and how they behave. In the same way as it is difficult to say anything meaningful about animals without naming different kinds of them, it is difficult to describe how language is built up without knowing the names of word classes and other grammatical components.

1.2

GRAMMATICAL UNITS

In this book, we start at the word level and end up at the text level. In between there are other layers of language description, namely the phrase level, the clause level and the sentence level. Although language structures are more complex than they appear here, the various layers of language can be viewed as a hierarchy of larger and smaller units (as in Figure 1.1). This means that a text can be divided into sentences. A sentence may contain clauses. A clause can in turn be divided into phrases, which consist of one or more words.

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INTRODUCING ENGLISH GRAMMAR, THIRD EDITION

Higher

Text

Sentence Clause Phrase Word

Lower

Figure 1.1: A hierarchy of language units

Texts, sentences, clauses, phrases and words will be dealt with in more detail in the following chapters, but the following paragraph can serve as a first illustration of language units: 1

Tony Cox was a happy man. He played the radio as he drove slowly home through the streets of East London in the Rolls. He was thinking how well everything had gone.

He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel in time to a pop song with a bouncy beat. It was cooler now. The sun was low, and there were streamers of high white cloud in the blue sky. The traffic was getting heavier as the rush hour approached, but Tony had all the patience in the world this evening.

Based on the use of capital letters and punctuation, we can quickly conclude that this paragraph consists of seven sentences. Some of these sentences are longer and more complex than others.

1.2.1

Sentences

A sentence (helsetning/periode) starts with a capital letter and ends with a final punctuation mark. A sentence can be short or long. It can consist of one clause (setning) only or a combination of clauses.

1

Introducing Grammar

13

2 3 4

Tony Cox was a happy man. (sentence with one clause) He played the radio as he drove slowly home through the streets of East London in the Rolls. (sentence with two clauses, the second starting with as) The traffic was getting heavier as the rush hour approached, but Tony had all the patience in the world this evening. (sentence with three clauses, the second starting with as and the third with but)

1.2.2 Clauses Sentences are made up of one or more clauses. A clause that can function alone as a complete sentence is called a main clause. A clause that cannot be a sentence on its own is called a dependent clause (also referred to as a subordinate clause).

A clause consists of one or more phrases and always contains a verb. It can also contain dependent clauses. (See further chapter 6.)

5 6 7

1.2.3

It was cooler now. (a main clause, which is also a sentence) as the rush hour approached (a dependent clause, which is not a sentence) He was thinking how well everything had gone. (a main clause containing a dependent clause (underlined))

Phrases

Clauses are made up of phrases. A phrase consists of one or more words that form a unit. Note that a phrase may contain other phrases and/or clauses.

8 the traffic (phrase) 9 all the patience in the world (phrase that contains another phrase (underlined)) 10 the rush hour, which was about to start (phrase that contains a clause (underlined))

1.2.4 Words A word is the smallest unit of language that can be used independently in writing and speech.

11 Tony 12 radio 13 drove

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INTRODUCING ENGLISH GRAMMAR, THIRD EDITION

1.3

PUTTING THE PIECES TOGETHER

As mentioned above, the bits and pieces of language can be thought of as a kind of hierarchy with texts at the top and words at the bottom. However, this is a simplified picture. Some texts do not consist of sentences. A sign saying “No smoking” may be said to constitute a text, but not a sentence. Sentences need not contain more than one clause, and phrases need not contain more than one word. To complicate things further, clauses may contain other clauses, and phrases may contain clauses as well as other phrases, as shown in examples 9 and 10. With these reservations in mind, it is still useful to think of words, phrases, clauses and sentences as different levels of language. If we think of words as the basic building blocks of language, the grammar of a language can be seen as a set of instructions on how to assemble words to build phrases, how to assemble phrases to build clauses, and finally how clauses may be combined in sentences and texts that function the way they are intended.

1.4

USING AUTHENTIC TEXTS

As learners of English, we want to study and analyse authentic language use.

This can mean to go online to read newspapers from English-speaking countries, read literature written by native speakers, or listen to English as it is used in films and TV shows. However, this may not be sufficient to find out more about language use in general. For a more systematic approach we can use corpora. A corpus is a large database of texts that have been prepared for such linguistic investigations. The texts in a corpus may include both writing and transcriptions of recorded speech. We can use corpora to find out about language usage; for instance, whether a word combination is possible in English, or whether a word or phrase is more common in writing than in speech. We get information not only about what it is possible to say in English, but also about typical language behaviour. Corpora are widely used in linguistic research. They are also an invaluable resource for learners as well as language teachers who want to explore language.

The corpus-related tasks in this book rely on two large corpora found at http:// corpus.byu.edu/, namely the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and the British National Corpus (BNC). These corpora can be used free of charge and without registering, but registered users will get access to more queries per day (still free of charge). Note that the same website also gives access to other corpora of English as well as some other languages. All have the same conditions

1

Introducing Grammar

15

of use and the same search interface. For people who are fascinated with language use, it will therefore be possible to continue explorations of the English language far beyond the scope of this book.

IMPORTANT TERMS IN THIS CHAPTER unit

main clause

word

dependent clause

phrase

sentence

clause

text

corpus

EXERCISES

1

Test yourself by choosing the correct alternative in the following sentences. a b c d e f g h

It/There is a lot of work left to do.

They were travelling by/with train.

Harry goes / is going to Spain every winter.

She hanged/hung her new dress in her wardrobe.

I haven’t got any/no/some new ideas.

Go to bed at once, do/will you!

Money are/is the root of all evil.

The dog had lost its/it’s collar.

2 Corpus exercise.

Use the British National Corpus to find answers to the following questions. (These exercises are meant as warm-up exercises for more serious grammar work with the corpora. See below for instructions on how to use the corpus.) a b

c

16

Which animal is mentioned most frequently: cats or dogs?

What is the most common phrase: bacon and eggs, egg and bacon or eggs and bacon?

Which animal is typically stupid in English? Find out by searching for stupid sheep, stupid pig and stupid cow.

INTRODUCING ENGLISH GRAMMAR, THIRD EDITION

d e f g

Search for an arm and a leg. Which words tend to occur just in front of this phrase? Do you understand the meaning of the expression from the context?

Which of the following words is most common in front of girl: pretty, beautiful, cute or handsome?

Which of the following words is most common in front of boy: pretty, beautiful, cute or handsome?

Which word tends to occur before your blessings?

How to use the corpus: ■ Go to http://corpus.byu.edu/. You should register an account under the tab labelled “My account”. Use your email address as your username and choose a password.

These will be your login details next time you log into this website. Tick the button for “undergraduate student” below the login details – this is simply because the corpus owners want to know what kind of people use the corpus. Note that creating a corpus account will not generate any spam. Using the corpora is free of charge, although you may see requests for a donation or a voluntary subscription.

■ Choose the relevant corpus (for example, the British National Corpus) by clicking on the corpus name. Search for a word or phrase simply by entering it in the empty box and click on “Find matching strings”. The next window will show the output of the search as a word or a list of words. The number under “Freq” says how many times a word/phrase occurs in the corpus. You can see the sentences containing your search word by clicking on the word/phrase in this window. For example, if you search for cats (question 2a), you will see CATS plus a number on the right.

When you click on CATS you get a list of sentences in which this word is used.

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Introducing Grammar

17

2 WORDS AND PHRASES

2.1

LEXICAL WORDS AND FUNCTION WORDS

At the word level, we distinguish between lexical words and function words. Lexical words are also called content words, which indicates that such words are the most central words for the meaning of sentences. Function words, on the other hand, have more of a supporting role. Take a look at the two examples below: 1 2

but they have an in already bought old house York

Obviously, neither of these examples is a grammatically correct sentence. In the first case, all the words are function words, with little content. In the second case, however, all the words are lexical words which have independent meanings. If somebody said the words in example 2, we would be able to guess the meaning, but it is hardly a nuanced and elegant way to express this meaning. Then, by combining the function words and the lexical words, we can get a sentence like the following: 3

But they have already bought an old house in York.

Note that lexical words are open class, which means that new words are coined all the time. Words that become commonly used are also added to dictionaries. A relatively recent verb in some dictionaries, for example, is to photobomb someone

19

(sneak into the background when other people are taking photographs). A fairly new noun is funboard, which is a type of surfboard. Likewise, the adjective exploitational and the adverb exploitatively are new words. In this regard, function words are more funless – which is also a new adjective – because they are closed class. This means that new function words very seldom enter the language.

2.1.1

Lexical words

There are four word classes that are classified as lexical: verbs, adjectives and adverbs. These word classes will be described in further detail in chapters 3, 5 and 11, but here is a brief introduction: Nouns

Nouns are “naming words” for things, people, ideas, institutions and places. There are two major types of nouns: common nouns (things, ideas, etc.) and proper nouns (names of people, places, institutions, etc.). Most common nouns can occur with a or the in front of them. A singular noun has no particular ending, but most plural nouns end in -(e)s (car – cars). The first letter in proper nouns is capitalized (Tim, London).

Verbs

Verbs are typically “doing words” that describe actions or activities (to work). But verbs can also describe, for example, relations (to own), states (to be) and feelings (to love). The class of lexical verbs does not include auxiliaries (see below). The base form (infinitive form) of the verb can have the infinitive marker to in front of it (to sing).

Adjectives

Adjectives are “descriptive words” that refer to qualities and characteristics of people or things (a blue house). Adjectives can be compared (gradbøyd) with -er and -est (bright – brighter – brightest) or more and most (beautiful – more beautiful – most beautiful). Typical endings are: -y, -ic, -ish and -ous.

Adverbs

Adverbs can (a) occur with and describe verbs (sing beautifully), modify adjectives (extremely expensive) or modify other adverbs (very elegantly). They are

20

INTRODUCING ENGLISH GRAMMAR, THIRD EDITION

also used (b) to refer to, for example, time (early) and place (here), (c) as “linking words” (however), or (d) to indicate the speaker’s viewpoint or evaluation of a situation (fortunately). Some adverbs can be compared with -er and -est (early – earlier – earliest) or more and most (angrily – more angrily – most angrily). Many adverbs are formed by adding the ending -ly to adjectives.

Table 2.1: Lexical words Word class

Examples

noun

grandmother, house, iron, happiness, grammar, Tim, York, …

verb (lexical)

be, have, go, walk, laugh, resemble, …

adjective

old, happy, interesting, wonderful, industrious, sheepish, psychic, …

adverb

(a) (b) (c) (d)

2.1.2

happily, nicely, well, very, … already, yesterday, here, … nevertheless, moreover, accordingly, … fortunately, surely, maybe, …

Function words

The word classes that are called function words include the following categories: pronouns, determiners, prepositions, conjunctions (co-ordinating and subordinating), auxiliaries (also referred to as auxiliary verbs), the infinitive marker to and the existential there. Unlike the lexical word classes, the classes of function words contain a limited number of items. The extreme cases are the infinitive marker and the existential there, which form classes of their own.

Table 2.2: Function words Word class

Examples

Characteristics

pronoun

he, she, yourself, they, anybody, that and who

used instead of nouns

determiner

a, the, my, our, all, some, one, two and this

typically identifies the noun with respect to definiteness, number, ownership and distance

preposition

at, in, of, on, outside and with

expresses relationships in time or space as well as some more abstract relationships

2

Words and Phrases

21

Word class

Examples

Characteristics

co-ordinating conjunction

and, but, or and nor

links together words, phrases or clauses

subordinating conjunction

when, because, since and that

used to link a dependent clause to another clause

auxiliary

have, be, may, can and would

occurs in front of lexical verbs and expresses tense, aspect, voice or modality (see chapters 11–14)

infinitive marker

It may be a bad idea to stay up late to study the night before a test.

occurs with the base form (infinitive form) of a verb (to read, to sleep, …)

existential there

There are crocodiles in the river.

signals that something exists and is typically used to introduce new information

Although the tables of lexical and function words look nice and tidy, it is important to be aware – and remember – that many words can belong to more than one word class. Examples of this are guess and house (noun or verb), pretty (adjective or adverb), that (pronoun or conjunction) and to (infinitive marker or preposition).

The context will usually make it clear how the word is used. Besides, dictionaries give information about which word classes a word can belong to.

2.2

WHAT IS A PHRASE?

A phrase is often described as words that belong together and form a syntactic unit. If a phrase is a syntactic unit, it has a syntactic function in a clause (or in another phrase). For example, in sentence 4 the phrase The little girl functions as subject, or the “doer” of the action. However, when we analyse clauses, we also see that single words can have a syntactic function (see further chapters 7 and 8). In this context we therefore define “phrase” as one word or a group of words that functions as a syntactic unit at the clause level. In sentence 5, for example, each of the words functions as one syntactic unit or phrase.

4 5

The little girl was kissing the poor boy living next door.

She kissed him.

When we want to find out how many phrases there are in the sentence, and what words to include in each phrase, sentence 4 is more of a challenge than sentence 5.

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INTRODUCING ENGLISH GRAMMAR, THIRD EDITION

The clue is to find out which words belong together in a meaningful unit. One method is substitution, which means that we try to replace a string of words with one single word: Table 2.3: Phrases Unit 1

Unit 2

Unit 3

The little girl

was kissing

the poor boy living next door.

She

kissed

him.

The fact that it is possible to find one word to replace The little girl suggests that these words belong together. Note that it is not possible to find one word to replace The little, girl was or kissing the poor. These strings of words do not belong naturally together, and they are not phrases. Based on substitution, and also based on which words seem to belong naturally together, we find that sentence 4 consists of three phrases. Each of these phrases functions as a syntactic unit as well as a unit of meaning.

2.3

PHRASE TYPES

All the lexical word classes can form phrases on their own or in combination with other words. There are thus noun phrases, verb phrases, adjective phrases and adverb phrases. Within these phrases, the noun (or pronoun), lexical verb, adjective or adverb functions as head, which is the most important word in the phrase. The other words in a phrase typically specify, modify or describe the head by expanding and elaborating its meaning. In addition to the four phrase types mentioned above, there are prepositional phrases, which consist of a preposition plus a following element that is called a complement (typically a noun phrase).

2.3.1

Noun phrase

In a noun phrase, a noun or a pronoun functions as the head of the phrase. In addition, noun phrases may contain determiners and modifiers that give further information about the noun (see chapter 3).

2

Words and Phrases

23

6 7 8 9

book an interesting book a book by J.K. Rowling you

2.3.2 Verb phrase A verb phrase contains a (lexical) verb which functions as the head of the phrase.

The lexical verb may be preceded by one or more auxiliaries. The lexical verb can also be referred to as the main verb because it carries the main meaning of the verb phrase (see chapter 11).

10 11 12 13 14

eat has eaten will have eaten has been eating must have been eaten

2.3.3 Adjective phrase In an adjective phrase an adjective functions as the head. It may be accompanied by one or more modifiers (see chapter 5).

15 16 17 18 19 20

happy extremely happy happy about her latest novel more interesting than anyone else so interesting that I couldn’t put it down as interesting as possible

2.3.4 Adverb phrase In an adverb phrase an adverb functions as the head. Like adjective phrases, an adverb phrase can contain modifiers (see chapter 5).

21 carefully 22 very carefully

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INTRODUCING ENGLISH GRAMMAR, THIRD EDITION

23 carefully enough 24 as carefully as he could 25 so carefully that nobody noticed

2.3.5 Prepositional phrase A prepositional phrase consists of a preposition plus a complement. The complement is usually a noun phrase, but there are exceptions (see the last example in the table below). In the case of the phrase types mentioned above, we have seen that one element of the phrase is more important than the other elements, namely the head. In prepositional phrases, however, both elements are equally important, and both are obligatory. For more information on the use of prepositions, see appendix 2.

Table 2.4: The structure of prepositional phrases Preposition

Complement

in

the evening (noun phrase)

at

work (noun phrase)

for

yourself (noun phrase)

by

solving the problem (clause)

IMPORTANT TERMS IN THIS CHAPTER lexical word

subordinating

function word

auxiliary

noun

infinitive marker

verb (lexical)

existential there

adjective

phrase

adverb

noun phrase

pronoun

verb phrase

determiner

adjective phrase

preposition

adverb phrase

conjunction

prepositional phrase

co-ordinating

complement of preposition

2

Words and Phrases

25

EXERCISES

1

Which of the following words are function words, and which are lexical words? car, should, in, hoping, the, fun, show, maybe, her, through, office, sleep, weekend

2

The italicized words in each pair belong to different word classes. Identify the correct class and explain what clues you use to arrive at the right alternative. a1 We need to book our tickets. a2 I bought a book about butterflies. b1 They saluted the American flag. b2 They saluted the Americans. c1 She did not know the correct answer. c2 She had to correct her mistake. d1 I will always love you. d2 Were you there for the reading of his will? e1 It was getting dark. e2 He was afraid of the dark.

3

Read the following text and answer the questions below:

Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, ‘and what is the use of a book,’ thought Alice ‘without pictures or conversation?’ a b c

26

List all the lexical verbs in the text.

List all the nouns in the text.

List all the prepositional phrases in the text.

INTRODUCING ENGLISH GRAMMAR, THIRD EDITION

4

Use the Corpus of Contemporary American English at http://corpus.byu.edu/ to find answers to the following questions. (See instructions for how to use the corpus at the end of Chapter 1.) a

b c d e

Search for been. Judging from the first 20 hits, is been most often used as an auxiliary or a main verb? (Hint: it is an auxiliary if there is another verb right after it.)

What is the most common order: in and out or out and in?

Search for at the * of. Which are the top five words to occur between the and of? What is their word class?

Search for at the end of the *. What type of phrase is this? What word is the most common one after at the end of the?

Study some of the examples of at the end of the *. Does the expression always have a literal meaning?

2

Words and Phrases

27

Introducing English Grammar describes and explains English grammar in light of current an introductory course in English grammar at college/university level in Norway.

The third edition of Introducing English Grammar has been revised and updated, but retains the key points of the previous edition: •

alerting learners to the close ties between grammatical form, meaning and communicative function

•

providing learners with good tools for improving their English

•

giving practical advice through “Notes for learners”

•

introducing learners to grammatical terminology so that they can make use of

•

comparing English with Norwegian in order to address specific learner problems and increase the students’ language awareness

•

presenting ways of creating coherent texts that are adapted to context and purpose

•

providing exercises focusing on practical as well as analytical skills, including the use of English-language corpora

The book has an accompanying website with a key to the exercises at https://intengram.portfolio.no/

Magne Dypedahl is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Southeast Norway.

Hilde Hasselgård is Professor of English Language at the University of Oslo.

INTRODUCING ENGLISH GRAMMAR

making learners familiar with the basic clause structure of English

THIRD EDITION

grammar notes from dictionaries and other sources •

Magne Dypedahl and Hilde Hasselgård

usage. It is aimed at students of English in teacher education and students who take

INTRODUCING ENGLISH GRAMMAR THIRD EDITION Magne Dypedahl and Hilde Hasselgård

ISBN 978-82-450-2368-8

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