FM-AA-CIA-15 Rev.

0 10-July-2020

Study Guide in ELS 107 English Discourse Module No.2

STUDY GUIDE FOR MODULE NO. ___

Chapter 2: Discourse and Grammar

MODULE OVERVIEW

Grammar and discourse are interrelated. Grammar specifies a set of language –specific codes,
typically restricted to sentence –level units. It guides speakers on how to properly construct sentences, which
are then joined together by a completely different set of (discourse) principles into a coherent piece of
discourse. Discourse is the product of the use of grammar in particular context. It typically comprises a stretch
of utterances ( mostly sentences) which are organized in a non-random fashion. The foundation for
sophisticated discourse is grammar so when we speak or write, we must always consider the right choice of
words(diction). It is not only what to say but how to say it. The vocabulary and grammar that we used to
communicate are influenced by a number of factors, such as the purpose for communication, the setting, the
people we are addressing, and whether we are speaking or writing. Considering these, it give us awareness
on the systematic patterns of choice in the use of English grammar.
Most grammars have focused on structure, describing the form and ( sometimes) meaning of
grammatical constructions out of context. They have not described how forms and meanings are actually used
in spoken and written discourse. But for someone learning about the English language for the purposes of
communication, it is the real use of language that is important. It is not enough to study just the grammatical
forms, structures, and classes. These tell us what choices are available in the grammar, but we also need to
understand how these choices are used to create discourse in different situations.
This chapter focuses on grammar. Words and word classes, phrases and their characteristics and
clause elements and clause patterns are introduced.

MODULE LEARNING OBJECTIVES

At the end of this chapter, students should be able to :

 Give the meaning of words and able to identify its word classes;
 Define phrases and determine its characteristics;
 Recognize the clause elements and clause patterns;
 Answer the given exercises which focus on the different aspects of grammar.

LEARNING CONTENTS ( INTRODUCTION TO WORDS)

111

A. What are words?

Words are generally considered to be the basic elements of language. They clearly show up
in writing, and they are the items defined in dictionaries. Yet the definition of “word” is not simple.
Words are relatively fixed in their internal form, but they are independent in their role in larger
units. For example, insertions can usually be made between words but not within words:

There are two pedal-bins against the wall.

There were two ( large new) pedal-bins ( standing) against the ( side) wall.

In the example, it is possible to insert words between other words to form a longer sentence without
losing clarity of meaning. On the other hand, we could not easily interrupt a word, by inserting another
word or morpheme inside it, as in *pedal-(new)-bins.

B. Different senses of the word ‘word’

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Study Guide in ELS 107 English Discourse Module No.2

The notion of ‘word’ is complex, and so it is useful to identify a number of slightly different
senses of ‘word’.

 Orthographic words: These are the words that we are familiar with in written language, where they
are separated by spaces.
Example:
They wrote us a letter. This sentence contains five orthographic words.
 Grammatical words: A word fall into one grammatical word class ( or ‘part of speech) or another.
Thus the orthographic word leaves can be either of two grammatical words; a verb ( the present
tense –s form of leave) or a noun ( the plural form of leaf). This is the basic sense of ‘word’ for
grammatical purposes.
 Lexemes: This is a set of grammatical words which share the same basic meaning, similar forms,
and the same word class. For example, leave, leaves, left, and leaving are all members of the verb
lexeme leave. This is the meaning of ‘word’ that is employed in dictionaries.

Each occurrence of a word in a written or spoken text is a separate token. For example , in
the following line of conversation there are ten separate word tokens:
The birds and the deer and who knows what else.
In contrast to word tokens, word types are the different vocabulary items that occur in a text ( such as
you would look up in a wordlist). Thus, in the sentence above, there are only eight word types ( the,
birds, and, deer, who, knows, what and else), since and and the occur twice. Notice the token/type
distinction applies equally to orthographic words, grammatical words, and lexemes. However, our
main concern will be with grammatical words, whether as types or as tokens.

C. Three major families of words

Words can be grouped into three families, according to their function and their grammatical
behavior: lexical words, function words, and inserts.
1. LEXICAL WORDS
 Lexical words are the main carriers of information in a text or speech act.
 They can be subdivided into the following word classes ( parts of speech); nouns, lexical
verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.
 Of all the word families, lexical words are the most numerous , and their number is growing all
the time. In other words, they are members of open classes.
 They often have a complex internal structure and can be composed of several parts: e.g.
unfriendliness=un+friend+li+ness.
 Lexical words can be heads of phrases: e.g. the noun completion is the head ( or main
word)of the noun phrase [ the completion of the task].
 They are generally the words stressed most in speech.
 They are generally the words that remain if a sentence is compressed in newspaper
headline: e.g. Elderly care crisis warning.

2. FUNCTION WORDS
 Function words can be categorized in terms of word classes such as prepositions,
coordinators, auxiliary verbs, and pronouns.
 They usually indicate meaning relationships and help us interpret units containing lexical
words, by showing how the units are related to each other.
 Function words belong to closed classes, which have a very limited and fixed membership.
Example, English has only four coordinators: and, or, but, and ( rarely) nor.
 Individual function words tend to occur frequently, and in almost type of text.

3. INSERTS
 Inserts are found mainly in spoken language.
 Inserts do not form an integral part of syntactic structure, but tend to be inserted freely in a
text.
 They are often marked off by a break in intonation in speech, or by a punctuation mark in
writing: e.g. Well, we made it.

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 They generally carry emotional and discoursal meanings , such as oh,ah, wow, used to
express speaker’s emotional response to a situation, or yeah, no, okay used to signal a
response to what has just been said.
 Inserts are generally simple in form, though they often have an atypical pronunciation ( e.g.
hm, uh-huh, ugh, yeah). Examples are : Hm hm, very good, Yeah, I will. Bye, Cheers man.

D. Closed classes and open classes

 A closed class contains a limited number of members, and new members cannot be easily
added. For example, it is not easy to create a new coordinator or a new pronoun. Those
word classes have a fairly fixed set of members.
 Open classes is definitely large, and can be readily extended by users of the language.
Lexical classes such as nouns and adjectives are open classes. For example, we can easily
form new nouns with the suffix –ee, adjectives with –ish, verbs with –ize, and adverbs with
–wise:
gossipee, franchisee, internee, retiree
birdish, broadish, coquettish, heathenish
bureaucratize, mythologize, periodize, solubilize
crabwise, fanwise, frogwise, starwise

THE STRUCTURE OF WORDS: MORPHOLOGY

Lexical words can consist of a single morpheme ( a stem, such as go, book, cat ), or
they can have a more complex structure created by a process of inflection , derivation, or
compounding.

1. INFLECTION
Lexical words can take inflectional suffixes to signal meanings and roles which are
important to their word class, such as ‘ plural’ in the case of nouns, and ‘past tense’ in the
case of verbs. The following are marked by inflection:

Word class base form example forms with inflectional suffixes

Nouns boy plural ( boys), genitive ( boy’s, boy’s)
Verbs live, write singular present tense ( lives, writes),
past tense( lived, wrote) past participle
(lived, written),ing-participle ( living,
writing)
Adjectives dark comparative ( darker), superlative (
darkest)
Adverbs soon comparative ( sooner), superlative (
soonest)

Other classes of words are generally invariable. For example, prepositions ( e.g. of,
in, with), conjunctions ( e.g. if, while, unless) and determiners ( e.g. the, each, several) have
only one form.

2. DERIVATION

Derivation, like inflection, usually involves adding an affix, i.e. a morpheme attached
to the beginning of a word ( a prefix) or to the end of a word (a suffix). However, this
process is different from inflection because inflection does not change the identity of a
word ( I.e. it remains the same lexeme), while derivation creates new nouns, adjectives,
verbs, and adverbs. Derivation changes the meaning or word class of a word, and often
both, and in effect creates a new base form for the word:

Prefixes: ex+president, un+kind, re+read, a+broad

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Suffixes: boy+hood, central+ize, green+ish, exact+ly

Words can be build up using a number of different prefixes and suffixes, and can thus
contain several morphemes:
industry+al, industry+al+ize, industry+al+iz+ation
post+industry+al
Notice that inflections, such as –ed, and –s, follow derivational suffixes, such as –
iz(e):central+iz+ed, build+er+s.

3. COMPOUNDING

Inflection and derivation result in complex words, with a stem plus one or more
affixes. Another form of derivation is compounding, which also leads to more complex
words. Words that are compounds contain more than one stem.
Examples are:
Noun+noun : chair+man, girl+ friend
Verb+noun: cook +book, guess+work
Adjective +noun: blue+bird, flat+fish
Noun+adjective: head+long, water+tight

Multi-word units, collocations, and lexical bundles

Apart from compounds, there are sequences of words that behave as a combination:
 A multi-word unit is a sequence of orthographic words which functions like a
single grammatical unit: e.g the preposition on top of or the adverb of course.
 An Idiom, like many compound words, is a multi-word unit with a meaning that
cannot be predicted from the meanings of its constituent words. A typical
example is a verb expression like fall in love or make up (one’s) mind. However,
the boundary between idioms and freely chosen combinations is not always
clear.
 A collocation is the relationship between two or more independent words which
commonly appear together ( or-co-occur). The adjectives broad and wide, for
example , are similar in meaning ,but occur in very different collocations: e.g
broad accent, broad agreement, broad daylight, broad grin, broad shoulders, etc.
wide appeal, wide area, wide experience, wide interests, wide margin.

LEARNING ACTIVITY 1

A. Choose the right option and write the word on the lines. There are more words than you need. In the parenthesis
you write the word class used.
Suspect-suspected-suspectible-suspecting-suspectingly-suspicious-suspicion-suspecting

1. I think she _________________________the surprise. ( _______________________)

2. They _______________________him of committing the murder. ( _____________________)
3. A suspect is a person under _____________________. ( _________________)
4. My mother has always been very _______________________. ( __________________)

Love-loving-lovely-loved-loves-lovable-lovably

5. She was the ____________________of my life. (__________________)

6. He sent her ___________________glances all the time. ( __________________)
7. Everybody ____________________Saturday night. ( ______________)
8. What a _____________smile. ( ________________)
9. My niece is so _____________to everyone. ( _______________)

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Study Guide in ELS 107 English Discourse Module No.2

10. Kyla ________to watch Cartoons. ( ______________)

B. Copy an example of any advertisement from the magazine or newspaper. Then identify the content
words and function words being used.

SUMMARY

 There are three major families of words: lexical words, function words, and inserts
 These families are broken down into word classes, such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs and
prepositions.
 Words belong to closed classes or open classes.
 The different word classes have different morphology-that is different rules for how to form them.
 Different registers use the various classes of words to different extents.
Newspaper writing has the highest density of lexical words, while conversation has the lowest.
Conversation has more use of inserts than the other register.

REFERENCES

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