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Basic English Grammar A web linked course Basic English Grammar is not a grammar book per se, with para graphs and rules, but a course designed specifically for speakers of Swedish who wish to improve their proficiency and confidence in English. Since most Swedish speakers have a great deal of intuitive knowledge about the structure of the English language, the authors have integrated exercises into the informative text in order to create a course based on ‘learning by doing’. An interactive version of the book is available on the course website. Here, not only a vast number of exercises is provided but also feedback to help the reader to understand why the given answers are appropriate choices, giving them an excellent opportunity to enhance their grammar skills. The exercises and quizzes, with keys and comments together with many links to relevant language pages, online dictionaries and grammars as well as electronic corpora, are carefully composed and designed to promote inductive learning. The code to access the website is provided inside the book cover.

Hudson Paradis Warren | Basic English Grammar

Jean Hudson, Carita Paradis, and Beatrice Warren are professors of English at the universities of Malmö and Lund. They bring a range of skills to the development of this course: long experience in the teaching of English grammar at all levels, materials design in English language teaching, and the use of computers and the internet in language learning and teaching.

Basic English Grammar A web linked course

The target audience ranges from first-year students in English Studies programs to professionals in all walks of life who are working in international contexts. It is equally appropriate for classroom use and for self-study. www.studentlitteratur.se Third edition

Art.nr 7362

3rd ed.

Jean Hudson Carita Paradis Beatrice Warren

www.studentlitteratur.se

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COPYING PROHIBITED

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The papers and inks used in this product are eco-friendly.

Art. No 7362 ISBN 978-91-44-07607-2 Third edition 3:1 ÂŠâ&#x20AC;&#x2030;The authors and Studentlitteratur 2001, 2014 www.studentlitteratur.se Studentlitteratur AB, Lund Cover design: Jens Martin/Signalera Co-author: Olof Ekedahl Printed by Eurographic Danmark A/S, Denmark 2014

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgements 7 Abbreviations 9 About the course 11 Learning resources 13 Chapter 1

Nouns and noun phrases 17

The word class system 17 The inflection of nouns 19 Classification of nouns 19 The five grammatical phrases 21 The structure of the noun phrase 22 Chapter 2

Nouns and determiners 29

Problematic nouns 29 The articles and common nouns 32 The definite article and proper nouns 36 The genitive 37

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Contents Chapter 3

Verbs and verb phrases I 41

Auxiliaries 44 Grammatical auxiliaries 45 Tense 46 Finiteness 49 Modal auxiliaries 49 Mood 55 Chapter 4

Verbs and verb phrases II 59

Tense and time in English 59 Aspect 64 Voice 66 Verb complementation 67 Verb types 69 Prepositional verbs and prepositional phrase adverbials 71 Phrasal verbs 72 Chapter 5

Pronouns I 77

General introduction to pronouns 77 Quantifiers 79 Some, any and no 82 The Swedish pronoun man in English 85 What in exclamations 86 Interrogative pronouns 87 Chapter 6

Pronouns II 93

Demonstrative pronouns 93 Determinative pronouns 94 Possessive pronouns 95 Reflexive pronouns 97 Relative pronouns and relative clauses 98 Swedish det in English 103

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Contents Chapter 7

Adjectives and adverbs 111

Adjectives and adjective phrases 111 Nominalized adjectives 113 Adverbs and adverb phrases 114 Chapter 8

Word order 119

Two aspects of word order 119 Syntax based rules 120 Discourse based options 123 Adverbial position 126 Multi-word verbs: the position of prepositions and adverbs 128 Chapter 9

Phrases and clauses 133

Identifying phrases 133 The function of phrases 135 The internal structure of phrases 137 Identifying clauses 138 Classification of sentences 144 Chapter 10 Revision exercises

149

Wordlist 153 English—Swedish 153 Swedish—English 159

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This course was originally used by distance learners at the English Department of Lund University, within a project financed by Lund University. Its popularity, together with developments in web-based learning opportunities, has prompted us to create this third edition, which is independent of any particular authority in English grammar. The emphasis is on interactive learning through a well developed website which promotes learning beyond the confines of the book. We reiterate our thanks to Olof Ekedahl, who was responsible for the technical solutions within the framework of the original course, to Ami Kullander for meticulous proofreading of the original manuscripts, and to our students and colleagues who continue to provide us with inspiration and new ideas. Last, but not least, our thanks to the editors who have supervised and encouraged us over the years: Gunilla Klose, Karin Palmkvist, Maria Mörnsjö, and Tommy Lundahl. Jean Hudson

Carita Paradis

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Beatrice Warren

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ABBREVIATIONS

We have used very few abbreviations in the book. However, there are certain conventions used in grammatical analysis, and these you should be familiar with. They are listed below. * An asterisk marks incorrect forms ? A question mark is used for less acceptable but not entirely incorrect forms A Adverbial AdjP Adjective phrase Adv Adverb AdvP Adverb phrase C Complement C noun Countable noun NP Noun phrase O Object PP Prepositional phrase predV Predicate verb S Subject U noun Uncountable noun VP Verb phrase

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ABOUT THE COURSE

This book is unconventional in several ways. Firstly, it is not a grammar book per se, with paragraphs and rules. It is, as the title indicates, a course in English grammar, designed specifically for Swedish speakers wishing to improve their understanding of why things are the way they are in order to improve their proficiency and confidence in English. Apart from first-year students on English Studies programmes, this includes professionals from all walks of life who are working in international contexts as well as advanced students in other academic disciplines who want to branch out and publish their research results in English. Since most Swedish speakers have a great deal of intuitive knowledge about the structure of the English language, we have integrated exercises into the informative text in order to create a course based on a ‘learning by doing’ philosophy. This has been made possible through enormous developments in web-based learning technology over the past decade or so. The course, which is equally appropriate for the classroom and for selfstudy, can be compared to a lecture series. Each chapter, or ‘lecture’, highlights important aspects of English grammar, with a particular emphasis on areas that can be problematic for Swedish speakers. We describe and explain how English is used and we provide not only a vast number of exercises but also feedback to help you understand why the given answers are appropriate choices. The final chapter (10) gives you an opportunity to revise all that you have learned through the course. In addition to this, there are a number of quizzes on the course website. Before you start working on the course, we would like to ask you to read the next section carefully, especially if you are using the book for self-study. It provides important information on how to get the most out of the course. © T he au tho r s and S t u dentlitte r at u r

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LEARNING RESOURCES

The small book that you are holding in your hand (or reading on the screen) is only the tip of the iceberg of this course in basic English grammar. To begin with, you should log on to the course website, using the access code inside the front cover, and see how you can complete the exercises online. As you work through the exercises, you will get feedback not only in the form of ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, but very often with explanations as to why a particular form is preferred. This is especially useful if you are using the book for self-study. But we would like to take you further than the book itself, so this section is about how you can become ever more proficient in English without the help of books and teachers. Of course, dictionaries and grammar books are useful tools for the language learner, and today these are available at no cost, online. A simple Google search will take you there. But there are some things that neither dictionaries nor grammar books can help you with. One of these concerns the way in which meaning is at the heart of all grammatical elements: our use of grammar is governed by what we want to communicate and how we want to communicate it. For instance, we may make use of the modal verb should in This should be quite clear to express an assumption in a tentative and polite way. The way we use tense and aspect is based on our understanding of what they mean as in She has lived here for 10 years vs. She lived here for ten years, where has lived indicates that she still lives here, which is not the case when we use lived. Has lived relates to the present while lived is in the past. Grammatical choices are always choices that have to do with what we want to say (meaning), and how and why we want to say it (function). Another problematic issue is that of ‘sounding right’, of getting just the © T he au tho r s and S t u dentlitte r at u r

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right nuances of expression that are appropriate to the situation, be it a formal presentation in a professional context or an informal chat with friends. To illustrate what we mean here, let us take the sentence They were happy about moving to Canada. This seems like a perfectly normal sentence in English – the grammar is correct and the words make sense. But our research has shown that the phrase happy about is, in fact, predominantly used in a negative context by native speakers of English, as in the following sentences: • the right-wing types were probably not so not so very happy about

the situation • the GP’s are not going to feel very happy about their patients getting a lesser service • it answers my question not in the way I was particularly happy about I have to say, but I mean it did answer my question • I was seeing her, because I wasn’t happy about the publicity, the way it had described audio description • I wasn’t too happy about that but never mind So the seemingly ‘correct’ sentence They were happy about moving to Canada is not altogether idiomatic. We know this because we have investigated how the preposition about is used in a large corpus of naturally occurring English, that is, everyday English as it is spoken and written by native speakers around the world.1 (A corpus is a large collection of naturally occurring text and speech, organized according to genre, for example: academic texts, news reporting, fiction, spoken conversation.) The corpus that we used is available online and without cost at http:// corpus.byu.edu/. The collections are housed at Brigham Young University in the US and are being updated daily. We would like to encourage you to visit this site and to check out, for example, how prepositions are used, whether a certain adjective+noun combination is natural and meaningful, whether

1 Hudson, Jean and Maria Wiktorsson. 2009. Formulaic language and the relater category: The case of ‘about’. In Corrigan, Roberta, Edith A Moravcsik, Hamid Ouali and Kathleen M Wheatley (eds). Formulaic Language, Volume 1: Distribution and historical change. John Benjamins, Amsterdam. pp 77–95.

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impossible really does mean not possible (it doesn’t!), or any other question that you might have about the English language. There are many online resources that are freely available. If you would like to delve further into this way of improving your English, you can find links to these resources on the course website.

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3 Verbs and verb phrases I

Finiteness A finite verb is always tensed. The finite verb in English is always the first verb in the clause and it is always in the present or in the past. Finite means complete. That is, they occur in clauses that can be complete sentences, e.g. I wrote the letter (where there is at least a subject and a verb). Having seen the tower is a clause. It is not a finite clause though, since it is not complete. There is no tensed verb and no subject. A finite verb in English: • is tensed

• agrees with the subject

• occurs only in clauses that are complete (i.e. have a subject and a

predicate verb and in that sense are complete).

The finite and the non-finite verb forms of be in English are: FINITE

NON-FINITE

Present is / are Past was / were

Infinitive (to) be Present participle being Past participle been

Choosing a tense form is not only a matter of locating an event in the present or the past, but it is also a matter of how we view or present an event. For instance, various degrees of aspects of ‘intention’, or ‘certainty’ can be attached to expressions of future time. This is known as modality.

Modal auxiliaries Unlike the grammatical auxiliaries, the modals carry some lexical meaning. The modals are can, could, may, might, must, ought to, shall, should, will and would. Modal auxiliaries occur only in these forms. They are all defective in that there are no non-finite forms, such as *(has) could, and they are not marked with the third person -s. The apparent pairs can / could, may / might, shall / should and will / would look like the present and the past of one lexical item. This is sometimes the case, but most of the time these pairs have totally © T he au tho r s and S t u dentlitte r at u r

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3 Verbs and verb phrases I

different roles as we will see soon. Modal auxiliaries convey notions such as certainty, obligation, ability, possibility, permission, willingness, etc: It must be true.

‘It must be the case that this is true.’

CERTAINTY / PROBABILITY

They must do their homework.

‘They are obliged to do their homework.’

OBLIGATION

She can play the violin quite well.

‘She is able to play the violin quite well.’

ABILITY

We may be at home tonight.

‘It is possible that we will be at home tonight.’

POSSIBILITY

You may stay out till 10 p.m.

‘You are allowed to be out till 10 p.m.’

PERMISSION

He won’t do it.

‘He is not willing to do it.’ ‘He is not going to do it.’

WILLINGNESS

Modals are tensed (finite) in that the forms are in the present or in the past. But the function of indicating time is in the background and the modal function is dominant. For instance, the difference between Can I use your phone? and Could I use your phone? is not a matter of time, but a matter of politeness on the part of the speaker. Could is more polite than can. CAN / COULD

• Ability

‘be able to’ My mother can play the piano very well. My grandmother could also play the piano.

• Permission

‘be allowed to’, ‘be permitted to’ Can I borrow your book? Could I borrow your book?

• Possibility

‘possible’ Can you direct me to the airport? Could you direct me to the airport?

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3 Verbs and verb phrases I

Can is common in all these three functions. Could is much more common in expressing possibility than ability and permission. Note that Swedish har kunnat + passive infinitive translates in the following way: Dödsorsaken har ännu inte kunnat fastställas. It has not yet been possible to establish the cause of death. MAY / MIGHT

• Permission

‘be allowed to’, ‘be permitted to’ You may leave now. In the past often other expressions: was / were allowed to, etc.

• Possibility

‘possible’ This may / might be true.

Both may and might expressing possibility refer to present or future time. The difference between the two is the degree of possibility. If speakers use might, they think that what they say is less possible than if they had used may. In other words, in this might be true the speaker is more uncertain than in this may be true. It is difficult to define modality precisely. It can be argued that will and would in neutral predictions about future events convey nothing but future time, i.e. they are grammatical rather than modal auxiliaries (see the previous chapter). But, it is natural that expressions of future time convey implications of purpose, determination, hope, promise, desire, willingness, certainty, etc. That is, they come with modal overtones. That is why we bring up will and would both here and as grammatical auxiliaries of time. WILL / WOULD • Future time (and purpose)

I will soon be back. She thought that the film would be very interesting. Will Jill be here tomorrow?

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3 Verbs and verb phrases I

• Volition

a) Questions: Will you help me? (‘Are you willing to help me?’)

b) Negative statements: I won’t / will not go to Austria. (‘I refuse to go.’)

c) Conditional subclauses: Shall I mail this letter for you? Oh, yes, if you will / would. I’d be grateful, if you would take a look at this.

Will does not mean ‘want to’ in assertive statements. The Swedish vill in assertive statements is expressed by want or be willing to. • Predicted likelihood (probability, certainty: ‘nog’, ‘säkert’,

‘säkerligen’)

You will feel better after this medicine. You would feel better after this medicine. • Predictable habit

He will talk for hours. Every morning he would walk the dog round the tip. • Conditional sequences

If I meet your brother in town,

I will tell him to phone you.

PR E S E N T F U T U R E

If I saw a polar bear in town,

I would probably faint.

If I had met Superman in town,

I would have asked him to help me.

PAST PAST MODAL

PAST PERFEC T PAST PERFEC T MODAL

It should be noted that the ‘past modal’ looks the same as the ‘future in the past’. However, the two forms have completely different functions. The ‘future in the past’ refers to events or states that will take place in the future from a point of view in the past. He knew that they would meet again. 52

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3 Verbs and verb phrases I

The ‘past modal’ and the ‘past perfect modal’ indicate that the proposition is hypothetical. If I saw a polar bear in town, I would probably faint. Shall and should are presented separately, since they have no functions in common. SHALL • Predicting future time

I shall be back soon. I shan’t give in. • Suggestion, offer

Shall we go now? SHOULD • Something recommended (obligation: ‘bör’, ‘borde’)

You should help your mother. • A likely assumption (probability, certainty: ‘bör’, ‘borde’)

When you have finished that book you should know a lot about China. • Only in subclauses

a) Future in the past (first person) She told them that I should be back soon. b) that-clauses after subjective and/or emotional expressions It’s annoying that we should be late again. c) that-clauses after expressions of volition He suggested / insisted that I should consult a doctor. d) Conditional subclauses (‘by chance’) If you should see her tomorrow, please give me a ring! Finally, we will present the subjunctive and the should-construction as two ways of expressing the same thing (see also below, under ‘Mood’). © T he au tho r s and S t u dentlitte r at u r

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Hudson Paradis Warren | Basic English Grammar

Basic English Grammar A web linked course

Art.nr 7362

3rd ed.

Jean Hudson Carita Paradis Beatrice Warren

www.studentlitteratur.se

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