INTRODUCTION

What is grammar?
We use the term “grammar’ with a systematic ambiguity. On the one hand, the term
refers to the explicit theory constructed by the linguist and proposed as a description of the
speaker’s competence. On the other hand, [it refers] to this competence itself.
N. Chomsky and M. Halle. The sound pattern of English.
Teaching grammars
The grammar of language is different from a teaching grammar, which is used to
learn another language dialect. In countries where it is advantageous to speak a ‘prestige’
dialect, people do not speak it natively may wish to learn it. Teaching grammars states
explicitly the rules of the language, lists the words and their pronunciation, and aid in
leaning a new language or dialect. As an adult, it is difficult to learn a second language
without being instructed. Teaching grammars assume that the student already knows one
language and compares the grammar of the target language with the grammar of the native
language. The meaning of a word is given by providing a gloss. – the parallel word in the
student’s native language, such as maison ‘house’. It is assumed that the student knows the
meaning of the gloss ‘house’ and so the meaning of the French word maison.
We are all intimately familiar with at least one language, our own; yet few of us ever
stop to consider what we know about it. There is no book that contains the English or
Russian or Zulu language. The words of a language can be listed in a dictionary, but not all
the sentences and a language consist of these sentences as well as words. Speakers use a
finite set of rules to produce and understand an infinite set of possible sentences.
These rules comprise the grammar of a language, which is learned when you acquire
the language and includes the sound system (the Phonology), how words may be combined
into phrases and sentences (the syntax), ways in which sounds and meanings are related (the
semantics), and the words or lexicon. The sounds and meanings of these words are related
in an arbitrary fashion. If you had ever heard the word syntax you would not, by its sounds,
know what it meant. Language, then, is a system that relates sounds with meanings, and
when you know a language you know this system.
This knowledge (linguistic competence) is different from behaviour (linguistic
performance). If you woke up one morning and decided to stop talking (as the Trappist
monks do after they take a ‘vow of silence’), you would still have knowledge of your
language. This ability or competence underlies linguistic behaviour. If you do not know the
language, you cannot speak it; but if you know the language, you may choose not to speak.

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 Grammars are the three kinds. The descriptive grammar of a language represents the
unconscious linguistic knowledge or capacity of its speakers. Such a grammar is a model of
the ‘mental grammar’ every speaker of the language knows. It does not teach the rules of
the language; it describes the rules that are already known. A grammar that attempt to
legislate what your grammar should be is called a prescriptive grammar. It prescribes; it
does not describe, except incidentally. Teaching grammars are written to help people learn
a foreign language or a dialect of their own language.
Knowing a language means knowing what sounds are in that language and what
sounds are not. This unconscious knowledge is revealed by the way speakers of one
language pronounce words from another language. However, knowing the sounds and
patterns in our language constitutes only one part of our linguistic knowledge. In addition,
knowing a language is knowing that certain sound sequences signify certain concepts or
meanings. Speakers of English know what boy means something different from toy or girl
or pterodactyl. Knowing a language is therefore knowing how to relate sounds and
meanings.
The range of constructions that is studied by grammar is very large, and grammarians
have often divided it into sub-fields. The oldest and most widely -used division is that
between morphology and syntax.

Diagram 1 The division of subfields of linguistics

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 UNIT 1: MORPHOLOGY
As the diagram shows, morphology is the branch of grammar that studies the
structure of words and word formation. The word morphology itself comes from the Greek
word morpheme, which means “form’. Morphology is to words what syntax is to sentences.
That is, morphology is concerned with the structure of words just as syntax is concerned
with the structure of sentences. In the following list, all the words except the last can be
divided into parts, each of which has some kind of independent meaning.
unhappiness un - happi - ness
horses horse - s
talking talk-ing
yes yes
Yes has no internal grammatical structure. We could analyse its constituent sounds, /
j /, / e /, / s /, but none of these has a meaning in isolation. By contrast, horse, talk, and
happy, plainly have a meaning, as do the elements attached to them (the ‘affixes’): un-
carries a negative meaning; -ness expresses a state to convey a sense of duration. The
smallest meaningful elements into which words can be analysed are known as morphemes;
and the way morphemes operate in language provides the subject matter of morphology.

Further reading
Morphology is the field within linguistics that studies the internal structure of words.
(Words as units in the lexicon are the subject matter of lexicology.) While words are
generally accepted as being the smallest units of syntax, it is clear that in most (if not all)
languages, words can be related to other words by rules. For example, English speakers
recognize that the words dog, dogs, and dog-catcher are closely related. English speakers
recognize these relations from their tacit knowledge of the rules of word-formation in
English. They intuit that dog is to dogs as cat is to cats; similarly, dog is to dog-catcher as
dish is to dishwasher. The rules understood by the speaker reflect specific patterns (or
regularities) in the way words are formed from smaller units and how those smaller units
interact in speech. In this way, morphology is the branch of linguistics that studies patterns
of word-formation within and across languages, and attempts to formulate rules that model
the knowledge of the speakers of those languages.
Models of morphology
There are three principal approaches to morphology, which each try to capture the
distinctions above in different ways. These are:
- Morpheme-based morphology, which makes use of an Item-and-Arrangement approach

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- Lexeme-based morphology, which normally makes use of an Item-and-Process approach.
Word-based morphology, which normally makes use of a Word-and-Paradigm approach.
Note that while the associations indicated between the concepts in each item in that list is
very strong, it is not absolute.
Morpheme-based morphology
In morpheme-based morphology, word-forms are analyzed as arrangements of morphemes.
A morpheme is defined as the minimal meaningful unit of a language. In a word like
independently, we say that the morphemes are in-, depend, -ent, and ly; depend is the root
and the other morphemes are, in this case, derivational affixes. In a word like dogs, we say
that dog is the root, and that -s is an inflectional morpheme. This way of analyzing word-
forms as if they were made of morphemes put after each other like beads on a string, is
called Item-and-Arrangement.
The morpheme-based approach is the first one that beginners to morphology usually think
of, and which laymen tend to find the most obvious. This is so to such an extent that very
often beginners think that morphemes are an inevitable, fundamental notion of morphology,
and many five-minute explanations of morphology are, in fact, five-minute explanations of
morpheme-based morphology. This is, however, not so. The fundamental idea of
morphology is that the words of a language are related to each other by different kinds of
rules. Analyzing words as sequences of morphemes is a way of describing these relations,
but is not the only way. In actual academic linguistics, morpheme-based morphology
certainly has many adherents, but is by no means the dominant approach.
Lexeme-based morphology
Lexeme-based morphology is (usually) an Item-and-Process approach. Instead of analyzing
a word-form as a set of morphemes arranged in sequence, a word-form is said to be the
result of applying rules that alter a word-form or stem in order to produce a new one. An
inflectional rule takes a stem, changes it as is required by the rule, and outputs a word-form;
a derivational rule takes a stem, changes it as per its own requirements, and outputs a derived
stem; a compounding rule takes word-forms, and similarly outputs a compound stem.
Word-based morphology
Word-based morphology is a (usually) Word-and-paradigm approach. This theory takes
paradigms as a central notion. Instead of stating rules to combine morphemes into word-
forms, or to generate word-forms from stems, word-based morphology states
generalizations that hold between the forms of inflectional paradigms. The major point
behind this approach is that many such generalizations are hard to state with either of the
other approaches. The examples are usually drawn from fusional languages, where a given

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"piece" of a word, which a morpheme-based theory would call an inflectional morpheme,
corresponds to a combination of grammatical categories, for example, "third person plural."
Morpheme-based theories usually have no problems with this situation, since one just says
that a given morpheme has two categories. Item-and-Process theories, on the other hand,
often break down in cases like these, because they all too often assume that there will be
two separate rules here, one for third person, and the other for plural, but the distinction
between them turns out to be artificial. Word-and-Paradigm approaches treat these as whole
words that are related to each other by analogical rules. Words can be categorized based on
the pattern they fit into. This applies both to existing words and to new ones. Application of
a pattern different from the one that has been used historically can give rise to a new word,
such as older replacing elder (where older follows the normal pattern of adjectival
superlatives) and cows replacing kine (where cows fits the regular pattern of plural
formation). While a Word-and-Paradigm approach can explain this easily, other approaches
have difficulty with phenomena such as this.

1. The word as the minimal free form of language

Most linguists believe that the word is best defined in terms of the way in which it
patterns syntactically. One widely accepted definition of this type is as follows:
A word is a minimal free form because it is an element that can occur in isolation
and/or whose position with respect to neighboring elements is not entirely fixed. For
example, the sound sequence /h˄ntәz / hunters is a word and can occur in different positions
within the sentence, as shown below:
The hunters pursued the bear.
The bear was pursued by the hunters.
In contrast, the units -er and - s do not count as words here since they cannot occur
in isolation and their positioning with respect to adjacent elements is completely fixed.
Thus, we cannot say * erhunt or “serhunt, but only hunters. Hunters is a minimal free form
because a larger unit such as the hunters cannot be identified as a single word but as a phrase
or group of words. Although this unit can function independently and can occur in different
positions in a sentence, it is not a minimal free form since it consists of two smaller free
forms - the and hunter.
So, while such units as hunters can be treated as a minimal free from we should seek
the answers for treating the meaningful units such as -er and -s in the sound sequence
hunters in terms of their distinctive features and their roles in the word. These linguistic
units are called morphemes which will be defined in the sections below.

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 Further reading
A word is a unit which is a constituent at the phrase level and above. It is sometimes
identifiable according to such criteria as:
- being the minimal possible unit in a reply
- having features such as:
+ a regular stress pattern
+ phonological changes conditioned by or blocked at word boundaries
+ being the largest unit resistant to insertion of new constituents within its
boundaries, or
+ being the smallest constituent that can be moved within a sentence without making
the sentence ungrammatical.
A word is sometimes placed, in a hierarchy of grammatical constituents, above the
morpheme level and below the phrase level.
Words sit uneasily at the boundary between morphology and syntax. In some
languages – ‘isolating’ languages, such as Vietnamese – they are plainly low-level units,
with little or no internal structure. In others – ‘polysynthetic’ languages, such as Eskimo –
words-like units are highly complex forms, equivalent to whole sentences. The concept of
‘word’ thus ranges from such single sounds as English a topalyamunurringkujamunurtu
(‘He/she definitely did not become bad’) in the Western Desert language of Australia.
Words are usually the easiest units to identify, in the written language. In most
languages, they are the entities that have spaces on either side. (A few languages use word
dividers (e.g. Sanskrit). Because a literate society exposes its members to these units from
early childhood, we all know where to put the spaces – apart from a small number of
problems, mainly to do with hyphenation. Should we write washing machine or should it
be washing-machine? well informed or well-informed? no one or no-one?
It is more difficult to decide what words are in the stream of speech, especially in a
language that has never been written down. But there are problems, even in languages like
English or French. Certainly, it is possible to read a sentence aloud slowly, so that we can
‘hear’ the spaces between the words; pauses do not occur between each word, as can be
seen from any acoustic record of the way people talk. Even in very hesitant speech, pauses
come at intervals, such as phrases or clauses (p.95). So if there are no audible ‘spaces’, how
do we know what the words are? Linguists have spent a great deal of time trying to devise
satisfactory criteria – none of which is entirely successful.
Five tests of word identification:

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Potential pause
Say a sentence out loud, and ask someone to ‘repeat it very slowly, with pauses’. The
pauses will tend rod all between words, and not within words. For example,
the/three/little/pigs/went/to/market. But the criterion is not foolproof, for some people will
break up on syllable, e.g. mar/ket.
Indivisibility
Say a sentence out loud, and ask someone to ‘add extra words’ to it. The extra items
will be added between the words and not within them. For example, the pig went to market
might become the big pig once went straight to the market, but we would not have such
forms as pi-big-g or mar-the-ket. However, this criterion is not perfect either, in the light of
such forms as absoblooming-lutely.
Minimal free form
The American linguist Leonard Bloomfield (1887-1949) thought of words as
‘minimal free forms’ – that is, the smallest units of speech that can meaningfully stand on
their town. This definition does handle the majority of words, but it cannot cope with several
items which are treated as words in writing, but which never stand on their own in natural
speech, such as English the and of, or French je (‘I’) and de (‘of’).
Phonetic boundaries
It is sometimes possible to tell from the sound of a word where it begins or ends. In
Welsh, for example, long words generally have their stress on the penultimate syllable, e.g
‘cartref ‘home’, car’trefi ‘homes’. In Turkish, the vowels within a word harmonize in
quality (p.161), so that if there is a marked change in vowel quality in the stream of speech,
a new word must have begun. But there are many exceptions to such rules.
Semantic units
In the sentence Dog bites vicar, there are plainly three units of meaning, and each
unit corresponds to a word. But language is often not as neat as this. In “I switched on the
light”, the has little clear ‘meaning’, and the single action of ‘switching on’ involves two
words.
We know nothing — or almost nothing — about the mechanism by which a speaker's
mental process is converted into sound groups called "words", nor about the reverse process
whereby a listener's brain converts the acoustic phenomena into concepts and ideas, thus
establishing a two-way process of communication.
We know very little about the nature of relations between the word and the referent
(i. e., object, phenomenon, quality, action, etc. denoted by the word). If we assume that there

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is a direct relation between the word and the referent — which seems logical — it gives rise
to another question: how should we explain the fact that the same referent is designated by
quite different sound groups in different languages.
We do know by now — though with vague uncertainty — that there is nothing
accidental about the vocabulary of the language;1 that each word is a small unit within a
vast, efficient and perfectly balanced system. But we do not know why it possesses these
qualities, nor do we know much about the processes by which it has acquired them.
The list of unknowns could be extended, but it is probably high time to look at the
brighter side and register some of the things we do know about the nature of the word.
First, we do know that the word is a unit of speech which, as such, serves the
purposes of human communication. Thus, the word can be defined as a unit of
communication.
Secondly, the word can be perceived as the total of the sounds which comprise it.
Third, the word, viewed structurally, possesses several characteristics.
The modern approach to word studies is based on distinguishing between the
external and the internal structures of the word.
By the vocabulary of a language is understood the total sum of its words. Another
term for the same is the stock of words.
By external structure of the word we mean its morphological structure. For example,
in the word post-impressionists the following morphemes can be distinguished: the prefixes
post-, im-, the root press, the noun-forming suffixes -ion, -ist, and the grammatical suffix of
plurality -s. All these morphemes constitute the external structure of the word post-
impressionists.
The external structure of words and also typical word-formation patterns are studied
in the section on word-building.
The internal structure of the word, or its meaning, is nowadays commonly referred
to as the word's semantic structure. This is certainly the word’s main aspect. Words can
serve the purposes of human communication solely due to their meanings, and it is most
unfortunate when this fact is ignored by some contemporary scholars who, in their obsession
with the fetish of structure tend to condemn as irrelevant anything that eludes mathematical
analysis. And this is exactly what meaning, with its subtle variations and shifts, is apt to do.
Another structural aspect of the word is its unity. The word possesses both external
(or formal) unity and semantic unity. Formal unity of the word is sometimes inaccurately
interpreted as indivisibility. The example of post-impressionists has already shown that the

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word is not, strictly speaking, indivisible. Yet, its component morphemes are permanently
linked together in opposition to word-groups, both free and with fixed contexts, whose
components possess a certain structural freedom, e. g. bright light, to take for granted.
The formal unity of the word can best be illustrated by comparing a word and a word-
group comprising identical constituents. The difference between a blackbird and a black
bird is best explained by their relationship with the grammatical system of the language.
The word blackbird, which is characterised by unity, possesses a single grammatical
framing: blackbird/s. The first constituent black is not subject to any grammatical changes.
In the word-group a black bird, each constituent can acquire grammatical forms of its own:
the blackest birds I've ever seen. Other words can be inserted between the components
which is impossible so far as the word is concerned as it would violate its unity: a black
night bird.
The same example may be used to illustrate what we mean by semantic unity. In the
word-group a black bird each of the meaningful words conveys a separate concept: bird - a
kind of living creature; black - a colour.
The word blackbird conveys only one concept: the type of bird. This is one of the
main features of any word: it always conveys one concept, no matter how many component
morphemes it may have in its external structure.
A further structural feature of the word is its susceptibility to grammatical
employment. In speech, most words can be used in different grammatical forms in which
their interrelations are realised.
So far we have only underlined the word's major peculiarities, but this suffices to
convey the general idea of the difficulties and questions faced by the scholar attempting to
give a detailed definition of the word. The difficulty does not merely consist in the
considerable number of aspects that are to be taken into account, but, also, in the essential
unanswered questions of word theory which concern the nature of its meaning.
All that we have said about the word can be summed up as follows.
The word is a speech unit used for the purposes of human communication, materially
representing a group of sounds, possessing a meaning, susceptible to grammatical
employment and characterised by formal and semantic unity.

2. Morpheme and allomorph

Words, though they may be definable as minimal free forms, are not the minimal
meaningful units of language we are looking for, since they can often be broken down
further. As we can see, the word hunters consists of three meaningful parts: hunt, -er and -

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s. The traditional term for these minimal meaningful units is sign. A more common term in
linguistics is morpheme.
Morpheme can be defined as the smallest meaningful unit of language (any part of
a word that cannot be broken down further into smaller meaningful parts, including the
whole word itself). The word 'hunters' can be broken down into three meaningful parts:
'hunt'; ‘-er’ and the plural suffix '-s'; neither of these can be broken down into smaller parts
that have a meaning. Therefore 'hunt'; -‘er’ and '-s' are all morphemes.
In morpheme-based morphology, a morpheme is the smallest linguistic unit that has
a semantic meaning. In spoken language, morphemes are composed of phonemes (the
smallest linguistically distinctive units of sound), and in written language morphemes are
composed of graphemes (the smallest units of written language).
E.g., the word ‘hunters’ is composed of 5 phonemes / h /; /˄/; /n/; /t/; /ә/ and /z/; but this
word is composed of 6 graphemes ‘h’, ‘u’, ‘n’, ‘t, ‘e’, ‘r’ and ‘s’.
The concept morpheme differs from the concept word, as many morphemes cannot
stand as words on their own. A morpheme is free if it can stand alone, or bound if it is used
exclusively alongside a free morpheme. Its actual phonetic representation is the morph,
with the morphs representing the same morpheme being grouped as its allomorphs.
English example:
The word "unbreakable" has three morphemes: "un-" (meaning not x), a bound
morpheme; "-break-", a free morpheme; and "-able", a bound morpheme. "un-" is also a
prefix, "-able" is a suffix. Both are affixes.
The morpheme plural-s has the morph "-s", IPA: [s], in cats ([kæts]), but "-es", [-әz / iz], in
dishes ([disiz]), and even the voiced "-s", [z], in dogs ([dɒgz]). These are the allomorphs of
"-s". It might even change entirely into -ren in children.
Thus, allomorphs are phonetic variants of a morpheme in a particular context, e.g., the
plural marker in English is sometimes realized as [-z], [-s ] or [-әz/iz].
3. Types of morphemes
Morphemes can be classified according to a variety of ways.
3.1. Lexical and Grammatical morphemes
The distinction between lexical and grammatical morphemes is not well defined
although many linguists seem to agree that it is a useful division to make. Lexical
morphemes (also content morpheme) have a sense (i.e., meaning) in and of themselves. A
lexical morpheme has a relatively more specific meaning than a grammatical or function
morpheme. A lexical morpheme names a concept/idea in our record of experience of the

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world (e.g., boy and big are typical of lexical morphemes. Content morphemes fall into the
classes of noun, verb, adjective, adverb. Grammatical morphemes (function morphemes),
on the other hand, don’t really have a sense in and of themselves; instead, they express some
sort of relationship between lexical morphemes. Function morphemes generally fall into
classes such as articles ('a', 'the'), prepositions ('of', 'at'), auxiliary verbs ('was eating', 'have
slept'), etc. Prepositions, articles and conjunctions (e.g., of, the, and but…) are typical of
grammatical morphemes.
3.2. Free and Bound morphemes
In contrast to the division between lexical and grammatical morphemes, the
distinction between free and bound morphemes is straightforward. Free morphemes are
morphemes that can stand alone as an independent word. They may be lexical (e.g., 'item').
Free morphemes like town, dog can appear with other lexical items (as in town hall or dog
house).
Bound morphemes (or affixes), on the other hand, are morphemes that cannot stand
alone as an independent word, but must be attached to another morpheme/word (affixes,
such as plural '-s', are always bound). Roots are sometimes bound, e.g., the 'kep-' of 'kept'
or the '-ceive' of 'receive'. Bound morphemes like "un-" appear only together with other
morphemes to form a lexeme. Bound morphemes in general tend to be prefixes and suffixes.
Unproductive, non-affix morphemes that exist only in bound form are known as "cranberry"
morphemes, from the "cran" in that very word.
3.3. Root and Affixes
Affixes are bound morphemes which attach to a base (root or stem). Prefixes attach
to the front of a base; suffixes to the end of a base; infixes are inserted inside of a root. An
example of a prefix is 're-' of 'rewrite'; of a suffix, '-al' of 'critical'.
3.4. Base, Stem and Root morphemes
Another distinction between base, stem and root morphemes can be said to be still
controversial among linguists. Root morphemes are (usually free) morphemes around
which words can be built up through the addition of affixes. The root usually has a more
specific meaning than the affixes that attach to it. For example, the root 'kind' can have
affixes added to it to form 'kindly', 'kindness', 'kinder', 'kindest'. The root is the item you
have left when you strip all other morphemes off a complex word. In the word
dehumanizing, for example, if you strip off all the affixes -ing, -ize, and de-, human is what
you have left. It cannot be divided further into meaningful parts. It is the root of the word.
Base can be defined as an element (free or bound, root morpheme or complex word)
to which additional morphemes are added. It is also called a stem. A base can consist of a

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single root morpheme, as with 'kind' of 'kindness'. But a base can also be a word that itself
contains more than one morpheme. For example, we can use the word 'kindness' as a base
to form the word 'kindnesses'; to make 'kindnesses', we add the plural morpheme, spelled '-
es' in this case, to the base 'kindness'.
3.5. Inflectional and Derivational morphemes
This distinction applies only to the class of bound, grammatical morphemes. The
more familiar term for the class of bound grammatical morphemes is affix consisting of
prefix and suffix as mentioned above.
Derivational morphemes are those that can be added to a word to create (derive)
another word with new meaning and/or new syntactic category. For example, the addition
of "-ness" to "happy," for example, to give "happiness."
Inflectional morphemes do not change the meaning or syntactic category of a word.
They just modify a word’s form to mark the sub-grammatical classes to which this word
belongs. An inflectional morpheme can mark a word's grammar category such as tense,
number, aspect, and so on (e.g., plural marker -s as in the word dogs or possessive marker
‘s as in Tom’s car).
Besides these distinctions, morphemes can be defined in terms of their position
within the word as prefix (the ones that occur in front of a base form); suffix (the one that
is added to the end of the base form). The main classes of bound morphemes are the prefixes
and suffixes; but infixes are also possible - an infix which is inserted within a stem. The
nearest we get to this in English is emphatic forms such as abso-blooming-lutely awful.
Other instances of this kind of affixes can be found with expletives, providing a kind of
extra emphasis, as in the following examples:
guaran-damn-tee
abso-bloody-lutely
3.6. The difference between Lexical and Grammatical Morphemes
Lexical morphemes can be distinguished from grammatical morphemes according
to the following criteria:
1) Morphemic status:
Lexical morphemes tend to come as free, independent words. Grammatical
morphemes tend to appear as bound morphemes or affixes (prefixes or suffixes).
2) Word size:
Lexical morphemes tend to be large (long).
Grammatical morphemes tend to be small (short).
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3) Stress:
A lexical morpheme in English carries one primary word-stress. Grammatical
morphemes tend to be unstressed.
4) Meaning:
Lexical morphemes tend to be semantically complex with a cluster of highly specific
semantic features. Grammatical morphemes tend to be semantically simple to code a single
general feature.
5) Class size:
Lexical morphemes come in a few large classes. Grammatical morphemes come in
many small classes.
6) Membership:
The membership of a lexical class is relatively open; new members join regularly
and old members drop out. The membership of a grammatical morpheme is relatively
closed and
grammatical change is usually involved when members are added or subtracted.
7) Function:
Grammatical morphemes partake in making structure of clause. The function of
lexical morphemes is to create new words from existing ones.
Criterion morphemic word stress meaning class membership function
status size size
Lexical free large stressed complex large open knowledge
morpheme

Gram. bound small un- simple small closed grammar

morpheme

3.7. Morpheme problems

Not all words can be analysed into morphemes so easily. In English, for example, it
is difficult to know how to analyse irregular nouns, and verbs: feet is the plural of foot, but
it is not obvious how to identify a plural morpheme in the word, analogous to the -s ending
of horses. Another example is that the extra - r turns up in the plural of child in English -
child-r-en. This extra -r in English word form children does not seem belong to anywhere.
Its use is automatic in this word. Effects of this kind complicate morphological analysis -
and add to its fascination.

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E.g. compress E.g. subvert E.g. at E.g. girls E.g. teacher
depress invert the works unhappy
repress convert and worked happiness
suppress pervert but taller happily
Figure 1. Division of morphemes into various types

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UNIT 2: WORD STRUCTURE
1. TYPES OF WORDS: SIMPLE VS COMPLEX WORDS
There are two basic types of words in human language - simple and complex. Simple
words are those that cannot be broken down into smaller meaningful units while complex
words can be analyzed into constituent parts. The word houses, for example, is made up of
the form house and the plural marker –s, neither of which can be divided into smaller
morphemes. While many English words consist of only one morpheme, others can contain
two, three, or more (see Table 1).
Table 1. Words consisting of one or more morphemes

One morpheme Two Three More than three

And
Boy boy-s

Hunt hunt-er hunt-er-s

Hospital hospital-ize hospital-ize-ation hospital-ize-ation-s

Gentle gentle-man gentle-man-ly gentle-man-li-ness

Morphology deals with the internal structure of complex worlds. The word of any
language can be divided into two broad types of categories, closed and open, of which the
latter are most relevant to morphology. The closed categories are the function words:
pronouns like you and she; conjunctions like and, if, and because; determiners like a and
the; and a few others. Newly coined or borrowed words cannot be added to these categories,
which is why we say that they are closed. The categories of words that open are the major
lexical categories: noun (N), verb (V), adjective (A), and adverb (Adv). It is to the categories
that new words may be added. Because the major problem of morphology is now people
make up and understand words that they have never encountered before, morphology is
concerned largely with major lexical categories.
Each word that is a member of a major lexical category is called a lexical item. A
lexical item can best be thought of as an entry in a dictionary: A lexicon. The entry for each
lexical item will include, in addition to the pronunciation (phonology), information about
its meaning (semantics), what lexical category it belongs, and in what syntactic
environments it may occur (subcategorization).
Thus, a simple word is a word consisting of a single morpheme; a word that cannot
be analyzed into smaller meaningful parts, e.g., 'item', 'five', 'chunk', 'the'. A complex word
is a word consisting of a root plus one or more affixes (e.g., 'items', 'walked', 'dirty'). Besides
15
these two types of words, we can also have compound words which can be defined as words
that are formed from two or more simple or complex words (e.g. landlord, red-hot, window
cleaner).
The analysis of morphological structure is based on a number of fundamental
contrasts. The first involves the distinction between a free morpheme, which can constitute
a word by itself, and a bound morpheme, which must be attached to another element. The
morpheme house, for example, is free since it can be used as a word on its own; plural – s,
on the other hand, is bound.
2. WORD STRUCTURE
Like sentences, complex words such as builder and gentlemanly have an internal
structure. At least, we can readily see that the word builder is composed of two morphemes:
build and –er, and the word gentlemanly is composed of 3 morphemes: gentle, -man and -
ly. In this section, we will consider the categories and representation that are relevant to the
analysis of words structure.
What sort of structure do complex words have? The word denationalization contains
five morphemes: de, nation, al, ize, ation. It is an essential point that these five parts have
to come together in a particular way, with a particular arrangement and order. For example,
none of these possible orders of the same five morphemes constitute an English word:
* ationizalnationde
* alizdeationnation
* nationdeizational
In fact, of the 120 possible arrangements of these five morphemes, only one
denationalization, could be an English word. The order is so strict because each of the bound
morphemes is an affix, a morpheme which not only must be bound, but must be bound in a
particular position. Furthermore, each affix attaches only to a particular lexis; category
(either N or V or A), called its base, and results in a word of another particular lexical
category. The negative affix de-, for example, attaches to verbs and forms other verbs:
ionize deionize
segregate desegregate
Similarly, the affix –al forms adjectives from nouns, -ize forms verbs from adjectives
or nouns, and –ation forms nouns from verbs.
Given these restrictions, the structure of the word denationalization can best be seen
as the result of beginning with the simple form nation, which we may call the roof of the
word, and adding affixes successively, one at a time, as follows:

16
 nation
national
nationalize
denationalize
denationalization
The structure of an entire word may be represented by means of either a set of labeled
brackets or a tree diagram. The two types of notation are for the most part interchangeable.
Both are shown in the figure. The diagram reveals how the word begins at its root.
2.1. The tree diagram and bracket diagram of the words with suffixes
Let’s consider the word ‘nationalization’ below:
N
V Af

A Af

N Af

nation al ize ation

[[[[nation]Nal]Aize]Vation]N

Figure 2: The representation of the internal structure of ‘nationalization’

Figure 2 shows the building up levels of the word nationalization is developed to the
right side of the word where the affix -ation is located at the farthest end of the word.
To count the number of the morphemes that a word in question may consist we can
use a simpler system of representation that indicates the location of the morphemes
boundaries:
il-legal; hospital-ize; nation-al-ize-ation.
2.2. The tree diagram and bracket diagram of the words with both prefixes and
suffixes
In some cases, the internal structure of a complex word is not obvious. The word
unhappiness, for instances, could apparently be analyzed in either of the ways indicated in
Figure 3a-b. By considering the properties of the affixes un- and –ness, however, it is

17
possible to find an argument that favors Figure 3a over Figure 3b. The key observation here
is that the prefix un- combines quite freely with adjectives, but not with nouns as shown in
Table on page (The advertiser’s uncola is an exception to this rule and therefore attracts the
attention of the reader or listener). This suggests that un-must combine with the adjective.

Figure 3. The representation of the internal structure of ‘unhappiness’

With the argument mentioned above, the internal structure of the word
denationalization can be represented as in Figure 4 below.

Figure 4: The representation of the internal structure of ‘decentralization’

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UNIT 3: WORD FORMATION
A characteristic of all human being languages is the potential to create new words.
The categories of noun, verb, adjective, and adverb are open in the sense that new members
are constantly being added. The two most common types of word formation are derivation
and compounding, both of which create new words from already existing morphemes.
Derivation is the morphological process by which a new word is built from a base, usually
through the addition of an affix. Compounding, on the other hand, is a process involving
the combination of two words (with or without accompanying affixes) to yield a new word.
The noun helper, for example, is related to the verb help via derivation; the compound word
mailbox, in contrast, is created from the words mail and box.
1. INFLECTIONAL AND DERIVATIONAL
Two main fields are traditionally recognized within morphology. Inflectional
morphology studies the way in which words vary (or ‘inflect’) in order to express
grammatical contrasts in sentences, such as singular/plural or past/present tense. In older
grammar books, this branch of the subject was referred to as ‘accidence’. Boy and boys, for
example, are two forms of the ‘same’ word; the choice between them, singular vs plural, is
a matter of grammar, and thus the business of inflectional morphology. Derivational
morphology, however, studies the principles governing the construction of new words,
without references to the specific grammatical role of a word might play in a sentence. In
the formation of drinkable from drink, or disinfect from infect, for example, we see the
formation of different words, with their own grammatical properties.
1.1. English inflectional morphology
A. Definition:
Inflection is a process by which affixes combine with roots to indicate basic
grammatical categories such as tense or plurality (e.g., in 'cat-s', 'talk-ed', '-s' and '-ed' are
inflectional suffixes). Inflection is viewed as the process of adding very general meanings
to existing words, not as the creation of new words.
English has only three categories of meaning which are expressed inflectionally,
known as inflectional categories. They are number in nouns, tense/aspect in verbs, and
comparison in adjectives. Within these categories, English has a remarkably small
inventory of affixes, by comparison with languages such as Spanish or Russian. English
does not always use affixes to express these categories (see the discussion of irregular
morphology).
B. Inflectional categories and affixes of English
Regular and irregular inflectional morphology
19
 Word class to
Regular affix used to express
which inflection Inflectional category
category
applies

Nouns Number -s, -es: book/books, bush/bushes

Possessive -'s, -': the cat's tail, Charles' toe

Verbs 3rd person singular -s, -es: it rains, Karen writes, the
present water sloshes

past tense -ed: paint/painted

perfect aspect ed: paint/painted ('has painted) (past

participle)

progressive or -ing: fall/falling, write/writing

continuous aspect (present participle)
Adjectives comparative (comparing -er: tall/taller
two items)
superlative (comparing -est: tall/tallest
+2 items)

Here are some ways English inflectional morphology is irregular:

Type of Verbs: past
Noun plurals Verbs: past tense
irregularity participle
Unusual suffix oxen, syllabi, taken, seen, fallen,
antennae eaten

Change of stem foot/feet, run/ran, swim/swum,

vowel mouse/mice come/came, sing/sung
flee/fled, meet/met,
fly/flew,
stick/stuck, get/got,
break/broke
Change of stem brother/brethren/ feel/felt, write/written,
vowel with kneel/knelt do/done,
unusual suffix

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 break/broken,
fly/flown

send/sent, send/sent,
Change in bend/bent, bend/bent,
base/stem form think/thought, think/thought,
(sometimes with teach/taught, teach/taught,
unusual suffix) buy/bought buy/bought

Zero-marking (no deer, sheep, moose, hit, beat hit, beat, come
suffix, no stem fish
change)

More ways inflection can be irregular:

Suppletion (instead of a suffix, the whole word changes):
be - am - are - is - was - were - been
go - went - gone
good - better - best
bad - worse - worst
some - more - most
Syntactic marking (added meanings are indicated by a separate word rather than marking
with a suffix or change to the base):
Future of verbs: will go, will eat, will fight, etc.
Comparative/superlative of adjectives: more intelligent, more expensive, etc.;
most intelligent, most expensive, etc.
1.2. English derivational morphology
A. Definition:
Derivation is the process by which affixes combine with roots to create new words
(e.g., in 'modern-ize', 'read-er', '-ize' and '-er' are derivational suffixes). Derivation is viewed
as using existing words to make new words. The inflection/derivation difference is
increasingly viewed as shades of gray rather than an absolute boundary. Derivation is much
less regular, and therefore much less predictable, than inflectional morphology. For
example, we can predict that most English words will form their plural by adding the affix
<-s> or <-es>. But how we derive nouns from verbs, for example, is less predictable. Why
do we add <-al> to 'refuse', making 'refusal', but '-ment' to 'pay' to make 'payment'? 'Payal'

21
and 'refusement' are not possible English words. We have to do more memorizing in
learning derivational morphology than in learning inflectional morphology.
B. Characteristics:
1) Category Change:
Derivation often changes the category (the part of speech) of the word or base
morpheme
e.g., sing (V) + er singer (N), especially when the affix is added to the end of the base.
Derivation creates a new word by changing the category and/or the meaning of the
base which it applied
e.g., the derivational affix - er combines with a verb to create a noun with the meaning “one
who does X”
E.g., work V + er workerN
N

V Af
Work er

2) Derivational Rules:
Derivational rules can help predict how words may be formed in English,
E.g., From the rule: un + Adjective X unX meaning not X
we can predict un + harmonious (A) means “not harmonious”
Derivational rules can also help analyse words, e.g., those who may not know the
word trainer before can consider the use of –er in the sense of “one who does X” with bases
whose category can be determined as a verb. Thus, trainee may mean an object of the act
of training
3) Multiple derivations:
Derivation can create multiple levels of word structure consistent with the word
formation rules and in terms the feeding rule or bleeding rule, e.g. for the structure of
organizational, the outmost affix -al forms adjectives from nouns, - ation forms nouns from
verbs, and –ize forms verbs from nouns.

22
4) Phonological constraint:
Sometimes, a particular derivational affix is added to attach only to stems with
particular phonological properties.
E.g., the English suffix –en + adjectives verbs with a causative meaning are restricted
to only monosyllabic stems that end in an obstruent.
E.g., white + en whiten but *abstracten (-) or *greenen (-)
Below is a sample of some English derivational affixes. This is only a sample; there
are far more affixes than presented here.
Some derivational affixes of English

AFFI
No CHANGE SEMANTIC EFFECTS EXAMPLES
X

1 -able V→ A able to be X’ed/ can undergo X Understandable

2 -ation V→N the result of X’ing translation

process or state of X starvation,
exploration

3 -er V→N one who X’s Worker

4 -ing V→N + activity connected with X cricketing, farming

N→N + with reference to material of which matting, carpeting

X is made building, opening
+ result from action of X
V→N the shooting
+ the act of X’ing the sleeping man
V→N
+ in the process of X’ing
V→A

5 -ful N→A full of/providing X delightful, pitiful

N→A amount contained in X spoonful, glassful

6 -ion V→N the result of act of X’ing Protection

7 -ive V→A having the property of doing X Predictive

8 -ment V→N the act or result of X’ing Achievement

9 -al N→A pertaining to X National

2 -ial N→A pertaining to X Managerial

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10 -ian N→A pertaining to X Canadian

11 -ic N→A having the property of X Organic

12 -ize N→V put in X Materialize

13 -less N→A without X Penniless

14 -ous N→A the property of having or being X Advantageous

15 -ate A→V make X Activate

16 -ity A→N the result of being X stupidity, priority

17 -ize A→V make X Modernize

18 -ly A →Adv in an X manner Quietly

19 -ness A→N the state of being X happiness, sadness

20 -age N →N measure of X/collection of X baggage, frontage

21 -ery N →N condition/behavior associated with X slavery,

A→ N bravery

22 -wise N →Adv in relation to dimension of X clockwise

so far as X is concerned education-wise,
money-wise

23 -ism A→N doctrine of X/practice of X idealism,

impressionism
N →N

24 - N →N government by X democracy,
ocracy meritocracy

25 -eer N →N skilled/engaged in X auctioneer,

profiteer

26 -let N →N small, unimportant booklet, piglet,

starlet

27 -ster N →N involved in X Gangster

28 -ant V→ N agential/ one who X informant

29 -ee V→N object of X payee, trainee

24
30 -ment V→N result of X arrangement,
amazement

31 -ed N →A having X simple-minded,

wooded

32 -ish N→A somewhat like X childish, snobbish

N →N name of races/peoples/language of X Swedish, Turkish

33 -ly N→A having qualities of X womanly,

cowardly

34 -y N→A characterized by/somewhat like X sandy, creamy,

hairy

35 re- V →V X again Rethink

36 a- N→N lacking/lack of X amoral, anarchy,

atheist

37 dis- V →V converse of X disobey, disloyal

reversing the action of X disconnect,
dispossess

38 in- A→A not/converse of X incompetent

39 non- N→N not X non-smoker

A→ A non-perishable

40 un- A→A not/converse of X unwise,

unforgettable
untie, unfasten
V→V reverse X

41 de- N→V reversing the action of X defrost

V→V denationalize

42 mal- V →V bad manner of X maltreat

N→N malnutrition

43 mis- V →V wrong manner of X miscalculate

misconduct

44 ex- N→N former X ex-president

25
 45 sur- A→A over and above X surcharge, surtax

46 under- V→V too little of X Underestimate

47 pro- N→N for/on the side of X pro-communist

1.3. Inflection vs Derivation

Inflection can be distinguished from derivation according to the following
criteria:
1) Category Change:
Inflectional affixes never change either the category (the part of speech) or the type
of meaning of the base morpheme, e.g., both eat and eats are verbs with the same content or
meaning. On the other hand, derivational affixes characteristically change the category
and/or the type of meaning of the form to which they applied,
E.g. modern (A) + ize modernize (V)
(property X) + ize (action/ process of X)
2) Positioning within the word:
Inflectional affixes are the last member to be added to the base morpheme, following
derivational affixes, e.g., in modernize – modernizes, the inflectional –s follows the
derivational affix –ize. If an inflectional suffix is added to a verb, as with modernizes, then
no further derivational suffixes can be added, e.g., [ [disDER [appear]V]V sINF]V
3) Productivity:
Inflectional affixes typically have very few exceptions, e.g., the suffix –s can
combine with any noun that allows a plural form. In contrast, derivational affixes
characteristically apply to restricted classes of stems,
e.g., terror (N) + ize terrorize (V)
but horror (N) + ize horrorize (V) (-)
Besides the principles mentioned above, it can be seen that inflection makes use of
only suffixes whereas derivation utilizes either prefixes or suffixes.
E.g., Inflectional affixes: suffix Derivational affixes: both prefixes and suffixes
worked co-worker
inflectional derivational derivational

26
Further reading From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Derivation (linguistics)
In linguistics, derivation is a morphological process to create new words by changing the
category and/or the meaning of the base to which it applies. The derivational affixes –er, for
instances, combines with a verb to create a noun with the meaning “one who does X or
simply ‘one who Xs’ with X stands for an action denoted by a verb. By another definition,
derivation is "used to form new words, as with happi-ness and un-happy from happy, or
determination from determine. A contrast is intended with the process of inflection, which
uses another kind of affix in order to form variants of the same word, as with
determine/determine-s/determin-ing/determin-ed." (Crystal, David (1999): The Penguin
Dictionary of Language. - Penguin Books - England.)
A derivational suffix usually applies to words of one syntactic category and changes them
into words of another syntactic category. For example, the English derivational suffix -ly
changes adjectives into adverbs (slow → slowly).
Some examples of English derivational suffixes:
adjective-to-noun: -ness (slow → slowness)
adjective-to-verb: -ise (modern → modernise)
noun-to-adjective: -al (recreation → recreational)
noun-to-verb: -fy (glory → glorify)
verb-to-adjective: -able (drink → drinkable)
verb-to-noun: -ance (deliver → deliverance)
Although derivational affixes do not necessarily modify the syntactic category, they modify
the meaning of the base. In many cases, derivational affixes change both the syntactic
category and the meaning: modern → modernize ("to make modern"). The modification of
meaning is sometimes predictable: Adjective + ness → the state of being (Adjective);
(stupid→ stupidness).
A prefix (write → re-write; lord → over-lord) will rarely change syntactic category in
English. The derivational prefix un- applies to adjectives (healthy → unhealthy), some verbs
(do → undo), but rarely nouns. A few exceptions are the prefixes en- and be-. En- (em-
before labials) is usually used as a transitive marker on verbs, but can also be applied to
adjectives and nouns to form transitive verb: circle (verb) → encircle (verb); but rich (adj)
→ enrich (verb), large (adj) → enlarge (verb), rapture (noun) → enrapture (verb), slave
(noun) → enslave(verb). The prefix be-, though not as productive as it once was in English,
can function in a similar way to en- to mark transitivity, but can also be attached to nouns,

27
often in a causative or privative sense: siege (noun) → besiege (verb), jewel (noun) →
bejewel (verb), head (noun) → behead (verb).
Note that derivational affixes are bound morphemes. In that, derivation differs from
compounding, by which free morphemes are combined (lawsuit, Latin professor). It also
differs from inflection in that inflection does not change a word's syntactic category and
creates not new lexemes but new word forms (table → tables; open → opened).
Another type of derivation may occur without any change of form, for example telephone
(noun) and to telephone. This is known as conversion. Some linguists consider that when a
word's syntactic category is changed without any change of form, a null morpheme is being
affixed.

2. Compounding
A. Definition:
Compounding is a morphological process to create new words by joining 2 or more words
(simple or complex).
Examples: skateboard, whitewash, cat lover, self-help, red-hot, etc.
B. Characteristics:
1) Productivity: Compounding is highly productive in English. Compounds may be found
in all lexical categories, e.g., compound noun: boyfriend; compound verb: team-teach;
compound adjective: easy-going
2) Structural status of constituent members:
Constituent members of a compound are not equal: the lexical category of the last
member of the compound is the same as that of the entire compound; the first member (the
dependent) is often a modifier of the second (the head) of the compound, e.g., bookstore is
a store that sells books.
V
hand-wash

N V
hand wash
Dependent Head
3) Grammatical status:
The Head undergoes inflection, e.g., hand-wash → hand-washed

28
4) Number of structural members: the basic compounding operation is always binary, i.e.,
a compound never has more than two constituents though it may contain more than 2 words.
A N

A V N N

N Af V Af V Af

ease y go ing lady kill er

5) Inter-relationships between compounding and derivation:

Compounding and derivation may feed each other, i.e. the members of a compound
are often themselves derivationally complex, and sometimes a compound may serve as a
base of a derivational affix, e.g.
Derivation feeds Compounding Compounding feeds Derivation
A N

A V N N

N Af V Af V Af

ease y go ing brain washing ing

6) Stress Distribution:
The first component of a compound is pronounced more prominently than the second
whereas in non-compounds, the second element is stressed, e.g.
‘GREENhouse (compound)
green ‘HOUSE (non-compound)
C. Types:
Compounds can be classified according to a variety of ways:
1) According to meaning:

29
 a. Non-idiomatic compounds: e.g., salesgirl, goalkeeper
b. Idiomatic compounds: e.g., lip-service, blackleg
2) According to componential relationship:
a. Coordinative compounds: e.g., actor-manager; Anglo-Saxon
b. Subordinative compounds: e.g., book-keeper; boyfriend
3) According to part of speech:
a. Compound Nouns: e.g., girlfriend
b. Compound Verbs: e.g., team-teach
c. Compound Adjectives: e.g., easy-going
d. Compound Adverbs: e.g., whole-heartedly
e. Compound Prepositions: e.g., into
4) According to Compositional types:
a. Compound formed by juxtaposition: e.g., backache, heart-broken
b. Compound formed by morphological means: e.g., handicraft
c. Compound formed by syntactical means: e.g., cash-and-carry
d. Compound formed by both morphological and syntactical means: e.g., long-legged

Further reading From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Compound (linguistics)
In linguistics, a compound is a lexeme (a word) that consists of more than one other lexeme.
An endocentric compound consists of a head, i.e. the categorical part that contains the basic
meaning of the whole compound, and modifiers, which restrict this meaning. For example,
the English compound doghouse, where house is the head and dog is the modifier, is
understood as a house intended for a dog. Endocentric compounds tend to be of the same
part of speech (word class) as their head, as in the case of doghouse. (Such compounds were
called karmadharaya in the Sanskrit tradition.)
Exocentric compounds do not have a head, and their meaning often cannot be transparently
guessed from its constituent parts. For example, the English compound white-collar is
neither a kind of collar nor a white thing. In an exocentric compound, the word class is
determined lexically, disregarding the class of the constituents. For example, a must-have
is not a verb but a noun.

30
In the Sanskrit tradition, the type of exocentric compound exemplified by white-collar is
called a bahuvrihi compound. The meaning of this type of compound can be glossed as
"(one) whose B is A", where B is the second element of the compound and A the first. A
bahuvrihi compound is one whose nature is expressed by neither of the words: thus, a white-
collar person is neither white nor a collar (the collar's colour is a metaphor for
socioeconomic status). Other English examples include barefoot and Blackbeard.
Composition should not be confused with derivation, where bound morphemes are added
to free ones.
A special kind of composition is incorporation, of which noun incorporation into a verbal
root (as in English backstabbing, breastfeed, etc.) is most prevalent (see below).
While the notion of compound has been very important, clear definitions that work even
within one language (much less across languages) have not been articulated. The study of
compounds in English, for example, often includes expressions that are written as two
words. This lack of precision and agreement has hampered the cross-linguistic study of
compounds and even a good study within English.
Formation of compounds
Compound formation rules vary widely across language types.
In a perfectly analytic language, compounds are simply elements strung together without
any markers. In English, for example, science fiction is a compound noun that consists of
two nouns and no markers.
Compounds can be rather long when translating technical documents from English to, for
example, Swedish. "Motion estimation search range settings" can be directly translated to
rörelseuppskattningssökningsintervallsinställning; the length of the word is theoretically
unlimited.
Compound types
Compound nouns
Most natural languages have compound nouns and sometimes compound adjectives. The
positioning of the language, i.e., the most common order of constituents in phrases where
nouns are modified by adjectives, by possessors, by other nouns, etc. While Germanic
languages, for example, are left-branching when it comes to noun phrases (the modifiers
come before the head), the Romance languages are usually right-branching.
Verb-noun compounds
A type of compound that is fairly common in the Indo-European languages is formed of a
verb and its object, and in effect transforms a simple verbal clause into a noun.

31
This construction exists in English, generally with the verb and noun both in uninflected
form: examples are spoilsport, killjoy, breakfast, cutthroat, pickpocket, dreadnought, and
know-nothing.
Also common in English is another type of verb-noun (or noun-verb) compound, in which
an argument of the verb is incorporated into the verb, which is then usually turned into a
gerund, such as breastfeeding, finger-pointing, etc. The noun is often an instrumental
complement. From these gerunds, new verbs can be made: (a mother) breastfeeds (a child)
and from them new compounds mother-child breastfeeding, etc.
Verb-verb compounds
Verb-verb compounds are sequences of more than one verb acting together to determine
clause structure. They are of two types:
Serial verb expressions in English may include What did you go and do that for? or He just
upped and left; this is however not quite a true compound since they are connected by a
conjunction and the second missing arguments may be taken as a case of ellipsis.
In a compound verb (or complex predicate), one of the verbs is the primary, and determines
the primary semantics and also the argument structure. The secondary verb, often called a
vector verb or explicator, provides fine distinctions, usually in temporality or aspect, and
also carries the inflection (tense and/or agreement markers). The main verb usually appears
in conjunctive participial (sometimes zero) form.
Compound verb equivalents in English (examples from the internet):
What did you go and do that for?
If you are not giving away free information on your web site then a huge proportion of your
business is just upping and leaving.
Big Pig, she took and built herself a house out of brush.
Compound prepositions
Compound prepositions formed by prepositions and nouns are common in English and the
Romance languages (consider English on top of, Spanish encima de, etc.). Japanese shows
the same pattern, except the word order is the opposite (with postpositions): no naka (lit.
"of inside on", i.e., "on the inside of").
Bahuvrihi
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A bahuvrīhí (बहुव्रीहि), or bahuvrihi compound, is a type of nominal compound

32
that refers to something that is not specified by any of its parts by themselves (i.e., it is
headless or exocentric, its core semantic value being subsumed by an elliptical or 'external'
semantic value so that the compound is not a hyponym of the head), especially a compound
that refers to a possessor of an object specified: a bahuvrihi compound XY tends to mean
someone or something which has a Y, and that Y has the characteristic X. For instance, a
sabertooth (smil-odon) is neither a saber nor a tooth: it is an extinct feline with saber-like
fangs. English bahuvrihis often describe people by referring to specific properties: flatfoot,
half-wit, highbrow, lowlife, redhead, tenderfoot, longlegs, and white-collar. Many of these
are colloquial, pejorative, or both.
The term bahuvrihi was first used by Sanskrit grammarians, and is a specific Sanskrit
example: a compound consisting of bahu (much) and vrihi (rice).
The last constituent in a Sanskrit bahuvrihi is a noun, more strictly: a nominal stem. The
whole compound is an adjective and agrees in gender and number with the head. The accent
is regularly on the first member (tatpurusharāja-pútra "a king's son", but bahuvrihirājá-
putra "having kings as sons" (vizrājá-putra- (m.) "father of kings", rājá-putrā- (f.) "mother
of kings"), with the exception of a number of non-nominal prefixes such as the privative a;
the word "bahuvrīhí" is itself likewise an exception to this rule.
Recent trends
Although there is no universally agreed-upon guideline regarding the use of compound
words in the English language, in recent decades written English has displayed a noticeable
trend towards increased use of compounds. Moreover, although English does not form
compound nouns to the extent of Dutch or German, such constructions as "Girl Scout troop",
"city council member", and "cellar door" are arguably compound nouns and used as such in
speech. Writing them as separate words is merely an orthographic convention.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compound_%28linguistics%29"

3. Other Ways of creating new words in English

Along with derivation and compounding, English makes use of some other morphological
processes to create new words.
3.1. Zero derivation: (also called conversion or functional shift):
In this process, there is no adding of affixes but it is simply using a word of one category as
a word of another category. It is a process by which a new word is created without any affix
but just by assigning a new syntactic category to the already existing word.
Examples: Noun verb: comb, sand, knife, butter, referee, proposition.

33
3.2. Stress shift:
In this morphological process, no affix is added to the base, but the stress is shifted
from one syllable to the other. With the stress shift comes a change in category.
Noun Verb
cómbine combíne
ímplant implánt
réwrite rewríte
tránsport transpórt
Noun Adjective
cóncrete concréte
ábstract abstráct

3.3. Clipping: A new word is created by shortening of a polysyllabic word.

Examples: bro (< brother)
pro (< professional)
prof (< professor)
math (< mathematics)
veg (< 'vegetate', as in veg out in front of the TV)
sub (< substitute or submarine).
3.4. Acronym formation:
New words are formed from the initials of a group of words that designate one
concept. Usually, but not always, capitalized. An acronym is pronounced as a word if the
consonants and vowels line up in such a way as to make this possible, otherwise it is
pronounced as a string of letter names.
Examples: NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration)
NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization)
AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome)
scuba (self-contained underwater breathing apparatus)
radar (radio detecting and ranging), NFL (National Football League)
AFL-CIO (American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial
Organizations)

34
3.5. Blending: Parts (which are not morphemes) of two already-existing words are put
together to form a new word.
Examples: motel (motor hotel)
brunch (breakfast & lunch)
smog (smoke & fog)
telethon (television & marathon)
modem (modulator & demodulator)
Spanglish (Spanish & English).
3.6. Back formation:
A suffix identifiable from other words is cut off from a base which has previously
not been a word; that base then is used as a root, and becomes a word through widespread
use.
Examples: pronunciate (< pronunciation < pronounce)
resurrect (< resurrection)
enthuse (< enthusiasm)
self-destruct (< self-destruction < destroy)
burgle (< burglar)
attrit (< attrition)
This differs from clipping in that, in clipping, some phonological part of the word
which is not interpretable as an affix or word is cut off (e.g., the '-essor' of 'professor' is not
a suffix or word; nor is the '-ther' of 'brother'. In backformation, the bit chopped off is a
recognizable affix or word ('ham ' in 'hamburger'), '-ion' in 'self-destruction'. Backformation
is the result of a false but plausible morphological analysis of the word; clipping is a strictly
phonological process that is used to make the word shorter. Clipping is based on syllable
structure, not morphological analysis. It is impossible for you to recognize backformed
words or come up with examples from your own knowledge of English, unless you already
know the history of the word. Most people do not know the history of the words they know;
this is normal.
3.7. Adoption of brand names as common words:
By this process, a brand name becomes the name for the item or process associated
with the brand name. The word ceases to be capitalized and acts as a normal verb/noun (i.e.,
takes inflections such as plural or past tense). The companies using the names usually have

35
copyrighted them and object to their use in public documents, so they should be avoided in
formal writing (or a lawsuit could follow!)
Examples: xerox, kleenex, band-aid, kitty litter.
3.8. Onomatopoeia/sound imitation (pronounced: 'onno-motto-pay-uh'):
This is a process based on the phonetic motivation by which new words are invented
which (to native speakers at least) sound like the sound they name or the entity which
produces the sound.
Examples: hiss, sizzle, cuckoo, cock-a-doodle-doo, buzz, beep, ding-dong.
3.9. Borrowing:
A word is taken from another language. It may be adapted to the borrowing
language's phonological system to varying degrees.
Examples: skunk, tomato (from indigenous languages of the Americas)
sushi, taboo, wok (from Pacific Rim languages)
chic, shmuck, macho, spaghetti, dirndl, psychology, telephone,
physician, education (from European languages)
hummus, chutzpah, cipher, artichoke (from Semitic languages)
yam, tote, banana (from African languages).

Further reading From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Suppletion
In linguistics and etymology, suppletion is the use of one word as the inflected form of
another word when the two words are not cognate. Suppletion in a particular language, as
demonstrated below, occurs overwhelmingly in lexical items which arise particularly often.
Many suppletive forms are known to learners of languages simply as /irregular/.
Here are some examples: In English, the past tense of the verb /go/ is /went/, which comes
from the past tense of the verb /wend/, archaic in this sense. (The modern past tense of
/wend/ is /wended/.) There is also a suppletive use of the perfect tense of /be/ to distinguish
an experiential sense ("He has been to France") from a resultative sense ("He has gone to
France").
The English adverb form of "good" is the unrelated word "well," from Old English /wel/,
cognate to /wyllan/ "to wish." In English, the complicated irregular verb /be / is / were/ has
forms from several different roots: /be/ originally comes from the Proto-Indo-European
language /bhu-/; /am/, /is/ and /are/ from / es-/, and /was/ and /were/ from / wes-/. Click here
to find out more! This verb is suppletive in most IE languages. See Indo-European copula.
36
An incomplete suppletion in English exists with the plural of /person/ (from the Latin
/persona/). The regular plural /persons/ occurs mainly in legalistic use. The singular of the
unrelated noun /people/ (from Latin /populus/) is more commonly used in place of the
plural, e.g., "two people were living on a one-person salary" (note the plural verb). In its
original sense of "ethnic group", /people/ is itself a singular noun with regular plural
/peoples/
Conversion
Conversion, also called zero (linguistics) derivation, is a kind of word formation;
specifically, it is the creation of a word from an existing word without any change in form.
Conversion is more productive in some languages than in others; in English it is a fairly
productive process. Often a word of one lexical category (part of speech) is converted from
a word of another lexical category; for example, the noun /green/ in golf <#> (referring to a
putting-green) is derived ultimately from the adjective /green/. Conversions from adjectives
to nouns and vice versa are both very common and unnotable in English; much more
remarked upon is /verbing /, the creation of a verb by a converting a noun or other word.
The boundary between conversion and /functional shift / (the extension of an existing word
to take on a new syntactic function) is not well-defined.
Back-formation
In etymology, back-formation refers to the process of creating a new lexeme (less
precisely, a new "word") by removing actual or supposed affixes. The resulting neologism
is called a back-formation. Back-formations are shortened words created from longer words,
thus back-formations may be viewed as a sub-type of clipping.
For example, the noun resurrection was borrowed from Latin, and the verb resurrect was
then backformed hundreds of years later from it by removing the -ion suffix. This
segmentation of resurrection into resurrect + ion was possible because English had many
examples of Latinate words that had verb and verb+-ion pairs — in these pairs the -ion
suffix is added to verb forms in order to create nouns (such as, insert/insertion,
project/projection, etc.).
Back formation may be similar to the reanalyses of folk etymologies when it rests on an
erroneous understanding of the morphology of the longer word. For example, the singular
noun asset is a back-formation from the plural assets. However, assets is originally not a
plural; it is a loan-word from Anglo-Normanasetz (modern Frenchassez). The -s was
reanalyzed as a plural suffix.

37
Back-formation in the English language
Many words came into English by this route: Pease was once a mass noun but was
reinterpreted as a plural, leading to the back-formation pea. The noun statistic was likewise
a back-formation from the field of study statistics. In Britain the verb burgle came into use
in the 19th century as a back-formation from burglar (which can be compared to the North
America verb burglarize formed by suffixation).
Even though many English words are formed this way, new coinages may sound strange,
and are often used for humorous effect. For example, gruntled or pervious (from disgruntled
and impervious) would be considered mistakes today, and used only in humorous contexts.
The comedian George Gobel regularly used original back-formations in his humorous
monologues. Bill Bryson mused that the English language would be richer if we could call
a tidy-haired person shevelled - as an opposite to dishevelled.
Frequently back-formations begin in colloquial use and only gradually become accepted.
For example, enthuse (from enthusiasm) is gaining popularity, though it is still considered
substandard by some today.
The immense celebrations in Britain at the news of the relief of the Siege of Mafeking
briefly created the verb to maffick, meaning to celebrate both extravagantly and publicly.
"Maffick" was a back-formation from Mafeking, a place-name that was treated humorously
as a gerund or participle.
The mechanics of back-formation
Back-formations of borrowed terms generally do not follow the rules of the original
language. For example, Homo sapiensis Latin for thinking man. As with all Linnaean
species names, this is singular in Latin (plural would be hominessapientes) but it is
sometimes mistakenly treated as plural in English, with the corresponding singular back-
formation Homo sapien. Similarly, antipodes, borrowed from Greek via Latin, has the
apparent form of a plural noun, and is sometimes treated as such, with antipode taken to
mean "an antipodal point". The final podes is indeed plural, meaning feet, and the
corresponding singular would be transliterated as pous (foot). However, antipodes itself is
a compound of anti (opposite) and podes (feet). As such, it is not a plural noun at all, and
the singular *antipous, if it existed at all, would mean "a substitute foot." ("Opposite a foot"
would be anti poda.)
Some regard such divergence as incorrect, or as a mark of ignorance. Others assert that a
language is determined by its usage and that strictly applying such a principle of correctness
would render English a highly irregular blend of Anglo-Saxon, Latin, French and every
other language from which it had ever borrowed.

38
UNIT 4: MORPHOLOGY AND PHONOLOGY
Allomorphy or morphophonemic variation in English
1. Definition of allomorphy:
Allomorphy, or morphophonemic is the study of the processes by which morphemes
change their pronunciation in certain situations. This study accounts for the alternation of
the allomorphs of a morpheme in a particular context of pronunciation.
The pronunciation variants of a morpheme are called allomorphs. The phenomenon
of variation in the pronunciation of a morpheme is called allomorphic variation or
morphophonemic variation (since it is the phonemic makeup of a morpheme that is
varying). The variations themselves are sometimes called morphonological processes.
Allomorphs are the different forms (pronunciations) of a single morpheme. E.g., the
plural morpheme in English is {-z}. Its allomorphs are / s /, / z /, /әz/. Also, the morpheme
'leaf' has two allomorphs: 'leaf' in words built from it (e.g., 'leafy') and 'leav-', found only in
the plural: 'leaves'.
Many morphemes of English have more than one way of being pronounced; this is
often not reflected in the spelling of the morpheme. Such variations affect both affixes and
roots. Sometimes the pronunciation varies because of nearby sounds; sometimes there is no
logic to it - its motivation lies in forgotten history.
2. The distribution of the allomorphs of the past tense form of the English verb

The English plural Past tense '-d' / '-ed'

morpheme has three
allomorphs: /әd /, / t
/, and / d /.
(Remember, /ә/ is
being used to stand
for schwa.)
Morpheme
Allomorphs /әd / /t/ /d/
Distribution after / t / and / d / after other voiceless after other voiced
consonants Cs and vowels
faded, stated, kissed, leaped, buzzed, played,
petted, sounded fluffed, stocked mooned, sued

39
2.1. Motivation:
Phonological / d / occurs after vowels and voiced consonants other than / d /; / t/ occurs
after voiceless consonants other than / t /; and /әd / occurs after the alveolar stops / t / and /
d /.
2.2. Unmotivated allomorphy:
A change in the pronunciation of a morpheme that is not based on the phonological
surroundings. Most of these simply must be memorized.
Examples:
• 'Electric' usually has final /k/; but has final /s/ in 'electricity'. The morpheme 'electric'
has two allomorphs: 'electri/k/' and 'electri/s/-'; the second occurs only when the
suffix -ity' is attached to the word.
• Words such as 'life', 'shelf', 'leaf' have a final /f/ in most forms, but when they are
pluralized, the base has a final /v/: 'lives', 'shelves', 'leaves'. Thus, these words have
two allomorphs: one final in /f/ in the singular ('life', 'shelf', 'leaf') and one final in
/v/, which occurs only when the plural suffix is added: 'live-', 'shelv-', 'leav-'. Notice
that not all words that end in /f/ undergo this change: the plural of the noun 'proof' is
not 'prooves'. Dialects differ in how they pluralize words such as 'roof', 'hoof'; some
people say 'roofs' while others say 'rooves'; some say 'hoofs' and others 'hooves'. The
plural of 'loaf' is 'loaves', but the plural of 'oaf' is not 'oaves' but 'oafs'. A learner of
English has to memorize which words change from /f/ to /v/ and which don't.

PRACTICE EXERCISES
Ex.1. Consider the following words and answer the questions below.
a) loneliness b) White House c) unreliable d) anti-aging pills
e) immobility f) sweeteners g) easiest h) hunger strikers
i) unhappiness j) lovelier k) optionality l) independently
Group the morphemes of these words into free morphemes and bound morphemes
and state whether the bound morphemes are derivational or inflectional affixes.
The first two words (loneliness and White House) have been done for you

Bound morpheme
Word Free morpheme
Derivational affix Inflectional affix

lone ly, ness Ø

40
 Loneliness

White House White, house Ø Ø

Ex.2.
Consider the following words and answer the questions below
a. honeymoon e. naked i. barriers m. optionality
b. impossibility f. unbearable j. fastest n. prettier
c. comfortable g. justice k. publicity o. communicate
d. examinees h. unexceptionally l. disobeys p. nationwide
1) For each word, determine whether it is simple or complex.
2) Circle all the bound morphemes. Underline all of the roots.
3) Cross out all inflectional morphemes.
Ex.3.
Consider the following words
a. postmodifiers d. identifiable g. malnutrition
b. delightful e. mistreated h. illogically
c. disobeys f. spiteful i. derivational
1) Draw a tree structure to each word.
2) Establish the base and the root for each word.
Ex.4.
Fill in the blanks with suitable words or phrases suggested below in order to make the
passages meaningful (some words can be used twice) (3ms)

affixes, bases, bound, bound, derivational, free, independent, infixes, inflectional,

meaningful, morphemes, prefixes, single, suffixes, syllables, verb, morphology

41
-----0 ------ is the arrangement and relationships of the smallest ------1------ units in a
language. These minimum units of meaning are called -----2-------. Note that morphemes are
not identical to ----3------: the form don't has one syllable but two -----4--------, do and not.
Conversely, the word Wisconsin has three syllables but is a ------5-------- morpheme.
It is often useful to distinguish between -----6-----and ------7-------morphemes. ---------8-----
--- morphemes can be used alone as ------9------- words - for example, take, for, each, the,
panda. ----10------- morphemes form words only when attached to at least one other
morpheme; re-, dis-, un-, -ing, -ful, and –tion are all bound morphemes. The most familiar
bound morphemes are -----11-------(that is, prefixes and suffixes), but even -----12--------
(forms to which affixes are attached) can be bound. An example of a bound base is the –
cept of such words as except, accept, deceptive, and reception.
Some languages also have ------13---------, which appear inside a word, but these are not
important for English. Another classification of affixes distinguishes -------14-----and -----
15------affixes. For instance, the -s used to form plurals and the –ed used to indicate past
tense are -------16-------- affixes.
--------17--------- affixes may be either prefixes or suffixes. Most derivational ------18-------
-- simply change the meaning of the word to which they are attached (uniform, transplant,
microwave, unbelievable, desensitize). Derivational ------19------ normally change the part-
of-speech category and may also change the meaning of the word to which they are attached.
For example, -ify in codify changes the noun code to a -----20-------.
Ex.5.
Represent the internal structure of the following words using tree structure and bracket
diagram
1. undifferentiated (Adj)
2. underdeveloped (Adj)
Ex.6.
Create a word for each of these definitions using the word formation process suggested.
Fill in the blanks with your new words.
1. Use derivation …. to mean having this property
Martin was very _________ of what he had done. SHAME
2. Use derivation …to mean the result or an act of X’ing
The museum does not charge for__________on Sundays. ADMIT

42
3. Use derivation …to mean the result or an act of X’ing
The secretary was very busy all day dealing with______________. ENQUIRE
4. Use derivation …to mean the result or an act of X’ing
The teacher stressed the need for regular_______________ . ATTEND
5. Use derivation …to mean member of an occupation
There were over fifty_____________in the orchestra. MUSIC
6. Use derivation … to mean able to be X’ed
Jim always does what he says; he’s very______________ . RELY
7. Use derivation … to mean make sth become X
They have agreed to __________ the road because of the heavy traffic WIDE
8. Use derivation …to mean one who X
We have decided to interview only the best six _________for the job. APPLY
9. Use derivation …to mean not having this property
That large dog is perfectly ___________and has never been known to attack anyone.
HARM
10.Use derivation …to mean make sth become X
They are going on to _______________ the bridge. STRONG
11. Use derivation …to mean give this property
My teacher_______________ me to take this examination. COURAGE
12. Use derivation …to mean the result or an act of X’ing
The crowd showed its ____________ by shouting insults. APPROVE
13. Use derivation ….to mean one who receive this action
The company will not take any new ____________ this year. EMPLOY
14. Use derivation …to mean one practises X
Carl is studying to become a ___________. LAW
15. Use derivation …. to mean one who X
Dozens of________ are injured on the city’s roads each year. CYCLE

43
Ex.7.
Use Inflection for marking the category of each of the following words:
1. lovely + [comp]
2. teach + [present]
3. cry + [past]
4. go + [past part]
5. write + [pres part]
6. happy + [sup]
7. boss + [poss]
8. watch + [plu]
Ex.8.
Consider the following words in column 1 and column 2
Column 1 Column 2 Morphological process
State the morphological process that is responsible for the creation of the new words in
column 2
Back derivation
E.g., air-conditioner air-condition
1) cook cooker ....................................
2) breakfast and lunch brunch ....................................
3) house-keeping house-keep ....................................
4) water (N) water (V) ....................................
5) memorandum memo ....................................
6) 'subject sub’ject ....................................
7) scape, land landscape ....................................
8) Palestine Liberation Organization PLO ....................................
9) advertisement ad ....................................
10) lose loser ....................................

Ex.9. Consider the following words in column 1

From each of the words in column 1, create new words and write them in column 2 as
suggested in the morphological process.
44
Column 1 Column 2 Morphological process
re’cord
E.g. ‘record stress shift
1) refrigerator ......................... initial-medial clipping
2) editor ......................... back-formation
3) calm ......................... conversion
4) day, dream ......................... compounding
5) useful ......................... derivation
6) human immunodeficiency virus ......................... acronymy
7) binary, digit ......................... blending
8) intercommunication system ......................... clipping
9) compact disk, read-only-memory ......................... acronymy
10) courage ......................... derivation

45
 PHRASES – CLAUSES - SENTENCES
INTRODUCTION
Word and sentence are two basic units to grammar, though they are by no mean the
only units of grammatical structure, and there is no direct relation between words and
sentences. Neither are they the smallest and largest units of grammar respectively: there are
recognizable units smaller than words, and units larger than sentences. However, sentences
do exhibit a structure that a larger unit, i.e. paragraph or discourse, does.
Words do not pattern directly into sentences. This implies that there are some
intervening levels of organization between word and sentence.
Consider the following sentence:
The grand old man of letters stumbled along the dimly- lit road, but the pen which he had
lost had been picked up by a small boy.
This sentence cannot be viewed simply as a concatenation of words: the + grand + old +
man+ etc. Some groups of words belong more closely together than any of them do with
any others, and these longer stretches of group words in turn form larger units. In this
sentence, we can recognize the following word groupings: the grand old man of letters/
stumbled/ along the dimly-lit road/ the pen which he had lost/ had been picked up/by a small
boy/. These are called phrases. They combine in turn into larger units: the grand old man
of letters stumbled along the dimly lit road/ the pen which he had lost had been picked up
by a small boy. These are called clauses. And then they are linked together by BUT to form
a complete sentence.
Thus, words pattern into phrases, phrases into clauses and clauses into sentences. Or
from the alternative perspective, a sentence is composed of one or more clauses, a clause is
composed of one or more phrases and a phrase is composed of one or more words. Our
investigation of grammar will, then, be concerned with the kinds of words, phrases, clauses
and sentences that occur in contemporary English, and with the rules for their structure and
combination.
(Jackson, pp3-4)

46
 PHRASES

Classes of phrase:
We shall recognize five classes of phrase: NOUN PHRASE (NP), ADJECTIVE
PHRASE (ADJ.P), ADVERB PHRASE (ADV.P), PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE (P.P) and
VERB PHRASE (VP). Of these, noun phrase (NP), adjective phrase (adj.p), adverb phrase
(adv.p) all have the same basic structure:
[Premodifier(s)] + HEAD + [Postmodifier(s)]

I. NOUN PHRASE (NP)

A. Structure: The structure of the NP is as follow:
Determiners + Adj Phrase + Noun modifier + HEAD + post modifiers
1 2 3 4 5

1. DETERMINERS may be:

• All, both, half, twice, such (a), etc.

• Articles: a, an, the.
• Demonstratives: this, that, these, those.
• Possessives: my, your, our, John’s, etc.
• Indefinite: some, any, another, each, every, no, enough, etc.
• Cardinal number: one, two, three, etc.
• Ordinal numbers: first, second, third, etc.
• General ordinals: other, next, last,
2. ADJECTIVE PHRASE:
When there are more than one adjective in front of the head noun, they must be
aranged in the order OSASCO
O-S-A-S-C-O: opinion, size, age, shape, colour, origin
E.g. a handsome(O) tall(S) young(A) American(O) man
Big(S) blue(C) eyes
a new(A) black(C) shirt

47
3. NOUN PREMODIFIER:
E.g. evening class; gold rings; a nylon shirt
4. The HEAD of an NP may be:

• a noun: the beauty, Linda, these cats, etc.

• a pronoun: them, itself, everyone in the street, etc.
• an adjective: the rich, the young, etc.
• a genitive phrase: the teacher’s, Lan’s, etc.
• an enumerator: all fifteen, her twenties, etc.
Two of the less usual possibilities (iii) & (v) are illustrated in:
E.g. The greedy will take all three.
In such cases, there is usually a noun which semantically is understood to be the
head: the greedy = the greedy people, all three = all three loaves.
5. The POSTMODIFIERS of an NP may be:
◆ Prepositional phrases:
E.g. the best day of my life, his desire for fame, etc.
The occurrence of subordinate PPs as postmodifiers is very common, and it is
important to distinguish cases like:
E.g. (1) the girl by the table with the carved legs
(2) the girl by the table with the sunburnt legs
In (1) one PP postmodifies “girl”, and the other PP is subordinate to it, postmodifying
“table”. In (2), however, both PPs postmodify “girl”.
◆ Adjective phrases:
E.g. something strange, people alive, etc.
◆ Adverb phrases:
E.g. the room upstairs, the house opposite, etc.
◆ Noun phrase as apposition:
E.g. the bandicoot, a tiny marsupial
◆ Relative clauses:
E.g. a quality that I admire, the book which I bought at a book festival, the man who leads
the collection campaign, etc.

48
 ◆ Non-finite clauses:
3 types of non-finite clause can occur as postmodifiers:

• To infinitive:
E.g. the man to see; the energy to run away

• Ing participle:
E.g. the man carrying the shotgun; three men digging for gold

• Ed participle:
E.g. the techniques used; the film directed by Mel Gibson
B. Function:
In the clause, NPs act as subject (S), as object (O), or as complement (C) and as
adverbial (A).
E.g. The house was empty. NP = S
The cost of living in London is high NP = S
We have bought a new house. NP = Od
They gave him some money. NP = Oi
This must be their house. NP = Cs
Her youngest daughter has become a very famous violist. NP = Cs
They elected him the monitor NP = Co
We called him a fool NP = Co
We moved to Ho Chi Minh City last year. NP = A
The couple is going to Dalat for their honeymoon next week. NP = A
II. THE PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE (PP)
A. Structure:

PP = Preposition + NP/-V-ing/finite clause

B. Function:
◆ In the clause, PPs act as adverbials (A):
E.g. We have been living here for 10 years.
The children go to school every day.

49
 The adverbial PPs have various meanings. In the following sentence, the three PPs
are adverbials of time-when, means, and place, answering the questions When? How?
and Where?
E.g. By Monday we had arrived by train in New York.
◆ In NPs, Adj.Ps, Adv.Ps and PPs, subordinate PPs act as postmodifiers.
E.g. the girl in the room
afraid of spiders
too quickly for comfort
on the top of the bookshelf
III. THE ADJECTIVE PHRASE AND THE ADVERB PHRASE
The adjective phrase (Adj.P)
A. Structure:

[Premodifier(s)] + HEAD + [Postmodifier(s)]

a) The head of an Adj.P must be an Adjective which may be simple, comparative

or superlative.
E.g. quite cheap, her elder brother, the most intelligent boy, etc.
b) Premodifiers are always adverbs: typically, adverbs of degree (extremely,
rather, too, very) or other adverbs (surprisingly, convincingly). Some, especially very and
too, can be reduplicated (very very very tall).
c) Postmodifiers can be:
◆ Adverbs (indeed, enough)
E.g. very tall indeed, nice enough
◆ PPs:
E.g. too hot for comfort
◆ Non-finite clauses:
E.g. too difficult for me to understand
◆ Finite clauses:
E.g. more interesting than I thought
B. Function:
◆ In the clause, Adj.Ps function as complement (C):

50
E.g. This coffee is hot.
Adolphus drinks his coffee hot.
◆In the phrase, Adj.Ps can function as premodifiers in NPs:
E.g. a very large slice of bread
the most boring book
The adverb phrase (Adv.P)
A. Structure:

[Premodifier(s)] + HEAD + [Postmodifier(s)]

a) The head of an Adv.P must be an adverb

E.g. very successfully, quite quickly, etc.
b) Otherwise, the structure of Adv.Ps is the same as that of Adj.Ps:
E.g. too quickly for comfort
more slowly than we expected
clearly enough for me to understand
B. Function:
Adv.Ps function in the clause as adverbials (A).
E.g. She sang very well.
The passengers are talking extremely noisily in the outside the station.
IV. THE VERB PHRASE (VP)
The VP always acts as predicator (P) in the clause. We need to distinguish between
finite and non-finite verb phrases.
1. Finite and non-finite verb phrases:
The verb forms operate in finite and non-finite verb phrase, which are distinguished
as follows:
Finite verb phrase:
(i) Finite verb phrases have tense distinction:
E.g. He works as a builder.
He worked as a builder.

51
 (ii) Finite verb phrase occurs as the verb element of a clause. There is person and
number concord between the subject and the finite-verb. Concord is particularly overt with
BE.
E.g. I am/ she is/ we are...
With most lexical verbs, concord is restricted to a contrast between 3rd and non-3rd
person singular present:
E.g. He reads the paper every morning.
They read the paper every morning.
With modal auxiliaries there is, no concord:
E.g. I/ you / he / they/ we {could come.
{can play the guitar.
(iii) Finite-verb phrases have mood. In contrast to the “unmarked” indicative mood,
we distinguish the “marked” moods and imperative and subjunctive.
E.g. He spoke to me as if I were deaf.
It is necessary that every member inform himself of these rules.
Be reasonable!
Non-finite verb phrase:
The non-finite forms of the verb are the infinitive (with or without TO), the -ing
participle, and the -ed participle. Non-finite verb phrases consist of one or more such items.
Compare:
E.g. Finite verb phrases Non-finite verb phrases
He smokes heavily To smoke like that must be dangerous
He is working I found him working.
B. The structure of finite verb phrases:
The structure of the VP is mentioned in two kinds of elements: The main verb (Mv)
and auxiliaries (Aux). The auxiliaries are optional, and precede the main verb.
At the most general level the structure of VP is:

{ Aux } {Aux } {Aux }Mv

In practice we can distinguish sixteen different kinds of VP, and moreover, four
different functions performed by the auxiliaries (see the table below - Table 1). In this table,

52
 the general label Aux can be replaced by some more specific function labels: Modality,
perfect aspect, progressive and passive.
Table 1:
MODALITY PERFECT PROGRESSIVE PASSIVE MAIN
ASPECT ASPECT VOICE VERB

(Mod.) (Perf.) (Prog.) (Pass.) (Mv.)

modal have be be V

shook 1

might shake 2
had shaken 3

was shaking 4
was shaken 5

might have shaken 6

might be shaking 7

The might be shaken 8

branch
had been shaking 9

had been shaken 10

was being shaken 11

might have been shaking 12
might have been shaken 13

might be being shaken 14

had been being shaken 15

might have been being shaken 16

V. SUMMARY
The following, then are the formal structures of the five types of phrase.
A. Noun phrases (NP): {Mn} H {Mn}.

53
Where H (head) may be: N, pronoun, Adj., etc.; M before H (premodifiers) may be: det.,
Adj., N, etc.; M after H (postmodifiers) may be: PP, NP, Adv.P, Adj.P, relative clause, etc.
B. Prepositional phrases (PP): p{Mn } H {Mn }/V-ing/ finite clause
Where P is a preposition, and M, H, and M are exactly as in noun phrases.
C. Adjective phrases (Adj.P): {Mn } H {Mn }
Where H (head) is an Adjective; M before H (premodifiers) are normally Adv.;
M after H (postmodifiers) are PP, Adv, and some clauses.
D. Adverb phrases (Adv.P): {Mn } H {Mn }
Where H (head) is an Adv, and M are Adv.Ps.
E. Verb phrases (VP):{Aux} {Aux} {Aux} {Aux} Mv
Where all Aux are v (operator - verbs), and Mv is either v (operator - verb) or V (full - verb).
The functions of these phrase classes in the clause can be summarized as shown in
the following figure. The arrow X ----- Y is to be interpreted: X may be a Y.

PRACTICE EXERCISES: 
1. Make an analysis of the following noun phrases in items of the word classes that they
comprise.
e.g.: those delicious ice-creams

det. adj. head

1. that attractive young woman in the blue dress
2. Jim's fatal mistakes
54
3. all our many grievous sins
4. an ugly large yellow submarine
5. an eight-year-old boy who attempted to rob a sweet shop
6. her blue silk umbrella
7. our relations' dirty screaming offspring
2. The following are NPs in which the order of premodifiers is scrambled:
1. some, fresh, bread, brown, nice
2. green, a, small, leather, handbag
3. designs, Chinese, old, those, all
4. old, a few, friends, of mine
5. brilliant, that, first-year, student
6. Morgan’s, steam, revolution
7. a/an, tower, grey, ancient
8. first, tourists, the, foreign, all, almost
9. responsibilities, new, his, heavy
10. people, these, young, highly, educated
3. Find out noun phrases in the following sentences, analyze their constituents and
functions:
1. The woman wearing a plastic nose is our history professor.
2. Opinions expressed here are not those of the editors.
3. This is an experience you'll always remember.
4. She loves any dish involving cheese.
5. Any article left by students in the office will be taken to the lost property office.
6. The bad weather compelled us to stay indoors.
7. The man behind the door is my old teacher.
8. The man to feed the kangaroo is my uncle.
9. His decision to use all female cast surprised all of us.
10. The next plane to arrive is from Bangkok.
11. The poor little boy who seems to be lost is my friend's daughter

55
12. The clearest instructions that anybody could have been given were already made.
13. The fourth place behind Jim was reserved for Peter.
14. Several irate gentleman farmers waiting for the prime minister came from the south.
15. This sudden disaster approaching us made us very worried.
4. What part of speech (noun, verb, adjective, adverb….) might be put in the blanks?
1. ……….. intelligent boy is from class 10B2.
2. That ……….. apple pie smells delicious.
3. My ………. food is fried chicken.
4. The ..…….. to feed the kangaroo is ………. uncle.
5. ………… made no move to greet me.
6. His ………… to use an all-female cast surprised all of us.
7. The next ………. to arrive is from Bangkok.
8. The ……….. girl who seems to be lost is my friend's daughter.
5. State whether the bold prepositional phrase(s) in each sentence is/are used as an
adverbial or a postmodifier to nouns.
1. The people in the gallery could not hear.
2. We are going to meet the new comers in the gallery.
3. He punched the man in the face.
4. He punched the man in the black.
5. The men fled from the police.
6. Everybody stared at the man from the police station.
7. The ripe apples from the biggest tree might hit the people on the head.
8. The spectators were sitting in the grandstand.
9. The spectators in the grandstand were singing.
10. I take my car to the garage in the village.
11. In the village, there are several old cottages.
12. A house was destroyed near us.
13. The house next to ours was damaged.
14. Oranges in Spain are huge.

56
6. Find out adjective phrases and adverb phrases in the following sentences and analyse
their constituents:
1. That is a bit premature, isn't it?
2. I found it rather tight.
3. I'd be quite keen to try anything like that really.
4. What you have been doing then has been so wild.
5. I expect you are glad you're not a vegetarian.
6. I am sure it isn't much difficult than you say.
7. She was uncertain what to do.
8. He gave me a very earnest look.
9. He sounds very interested in our proposal.
10. Unfortunately, he is very busy now.
11. It was a quite ridiculously- worded statement.
12. Is he certain of our support?
13. I am quite sure that he is certain to win.
14. He was rather concerned that no-one should know immediately.
15. He runs very fast.
16. It is a surprisingly high price.
17. He intentionally took the calculator.
18. They excitedly welcomed the music band.
7. Underline verb phrases in the following sentences and decide whether they are finite
or non finite:
1. At the station, we were met by a man carrying a copy of the Times.
2. He was accompanied by a porter weighing at least 150 kilos.
3. A car, coming unexpectedly out of a side street, crashed into us.
4. We collided with a car driven by a young man without a license.
5. Any diver not having a license ought to be sent to jail right away.
6. The train standing at platform six is for Brussels and Ostend.
7. Any articles left in this bus were taken at once to the Lost property Office.
8. Any dutiable articles not declared to the custom will be liable to confiscation.
57
9. Presents costing less than ten pounds in all may be imported duty free.
10. Anyone not hearing that noise must have been stone deaf.
8. Find out verb phrases in the following sentences and analyse them;
1. We were waiting for hours.
2. Yee Ling has never been to Scotland.
3. Those people are really lucky.
4. We will not give you that information.
5. They appointed him the chairman of the committee.
6. Ali must have spent a fortune last week.
7. They could help you.
8. They will arrive tomorrow morning.
9. The thieves may have left by now.
10. When did you see Mr. Lim?
9. A part of each of the sentences below is marked. Indicate by which of the following
linguistic structures the bold part is being realized:
a. finite verb phrase
b. non - finite verb phrase
c. prepositional phrase
d. noun phrase
e. adjective phrase
f. adverb phrase
g. non-finite clause
h. finite clause
1. Fire can cause great damage to any city.
2. The Great Fire of London started in a bakery.
3. It burnt furiously for four days.
4. Pepys has given us a vivid account of it.
5. Who has given a vivid account of it?
6. The man who has just spoken is Benjamin Hall.

58
7.They suddenly decided to christen the bell Big Ben.
8.The man who won the contract was Dent
9. The next day we were sitting in the car
10. Leaving us at the gate, they disappeared.
11. Leaving us at the gate like that was very thoughtless.
12. Hand the man at the gate your ticket.
13. I thoroughly enjoyed meeting June again.
14. Meeting her again has left me very happy.
15. We doubts whether peace will last.

59
 CLAUSES & SENTENCES

SENTENCE ELEMENTS
Most sentences of more than one word consist of two nuclei: the subject and the
predicate.
As you can see, every statement (leaving aside the other sentence forms for the
moment) can be divided into two parts: the person or thing that is being spoken about – the
topic of the sentence – and the things that are said about him/her/them/it, etc. In traditional
terms, these are called subject and predicate. These labels are useful, since they reflect the
fact that one of the two defining characteristics of the sentence is the message or information
content. The subject is the topic, or what is being spoken about; the predicate is what is
‘predicated’ (or said to be true) about the subject. Usually the subject and predicate occur
in that order in a statement.
SUBJECT PREDICATE
John loves Mary.
The cat chased a mouse.
James Smith plays the piano beautifully.
Captain Cook discovered Australia in 1776.
The people I like the best never forget my birthday.
I met her down the street yesterday.
I. The subject:
The subject can be expressed by a noun phrase, a non-finite clause or a finite clause.
E.g.: Men do not know how to suffer; women do
The young girl with long hair walked confidently across the room.
English enables many people to make some social advancement
Learning English enables many people to make some social advancement.
What to do with the money drove him mad
That coffee grows in Brazil is famous to all.
Whether or not he gets the money doesn’t matter to me.
What we are learning seems to be difficult.
60
 The subject of a sentence maybe ‘It’ as empty or preparatory subject, or ‘There’ as
introductory or anticipatory subject.
(a) Empty subject
We often use it in sentences referring to time, the weather, temperature or distance.
When used in this way, it is sometimes called an empty subject because it carries no real
information. It is present because every English sentence has to contain a subject (and a
verb):
Time: It’s 3 o’clock. It’s Thursday. It’s November 23rd.
It’s time for us to leave.
Weather: It’s hot. It’s raining.
Temperature: It’s 37oC.
Distance: It’s 5 km from here to the university.
The tides: It’s high tide at 11.44.
Environment: It’s noisy in here.
Present situation: Isn’t it awful!
With since: It’s three years since we last met.
With say: It says here there was a big fire in Dong Xuan.
With take: It takes 20 minutes to get to work.
(b) Preparatory subject: Sometimes sentences beginning with IT continue with an
infinitive, a gerund or a noun clause. It is possible to begin such sentences with an infinitive
or gerund, but we generally prefer IT. The true subject is the infinitive, gerund or noun
clause, and it is preparatory to the subject.
E.g. It’s pleasant to lie in the sun.
It’s pleasant lying in the sun.
It’s a shame that Tom isn’t here.
It doesn’t matter when we arrive.
(c) Introductory ‘There’
Sentences with ‘There’ may serve to assert or deny the existence of something or
someone. In these sentences, the predicate verb is usually the verb ‘to be’ or other verbs
such as to live, to occur, to appear, to come etc. which indicate existence.
E.g. There was a violent storm last night.

61
 There came a loud knock at the front door.
There lived an old woman in that humble cottage.
There have occurred many great changes since we last met.
II. The object:
The object is very closely tied to the predicator in terms of meaning, and typically
denotes the person or thing most intimately affected by the action or state denoted by the
predicate. An object is normally a noun phrase; it usually goes after the verb in the active.
It can become the subject of the verb in the passive. An object can be a clause: finite or
non-finite.
E.g. Mary bought some ice cream.
He loves girls with long hair and brown eyes.
Mary likes to eat ice cream.
We always enjoy listening to classical music.
Mary bought whatever we wanted.
Nobody understands why the minister committed suicide.
They didn’t know whether the crowd had been dismissed.
He suggested that we should dissolve the business.
Objects can be divided into two types: direct objects and indirect objects:
* A direct object refers to the person or thing affected by the action of the verb. It
comes immediately after a transitive verb:
E.g. He kicked the dog.
The dog bit him.
* An indirect object usually refers to the person who ‘benefits’ from the action
expressed in the verb.
E.g. Mary threw me the ball.
The man bought his wife some flowers.
Indirect object can stand either after the verb or after the direct object with a
preposition in between. In the latter case, another term which can be used for the indirect
object is prepositional object.
E.g. I brought him a cup of tea.
I brought a cup of tea to him.

62
 She gave John some pocket money.
She gave some pocket money to John.
III. The complement:
The complement can be defined as a sentence element that gives further information
about the subject or the object; in other words, the complement completes the meaning of
subject or the object, and therefore, there are two types of complement: subject complement
(Cs) and object complement (Co).
◆ The subject complement can be expressed by a noun phrase, an adjective phrase,
a prepositional phrase, a non-finite clause or finite clause.
E.g. He is the chairman.
A pig is not a flying animal.
She seems an honest person.
The students always act dumb.
His brother grew happier gradually.
The machine is still in good condition.
The student is in a hurry.
His hobby is collecting stamps.
Your problem now is how to win your boss’s feeling.
Our duty is that we must finish the problem.
Their concern is whether they can help their students to pronounce correctly.
◆ The object complement can be expressed by a noun phrase, an adjective phrase,
a prepositional phrase, a non-finite clause or a finite clause.
E.g. They made Sam the chairman.
We found him a good friend.
They have proved me wrong.
He likes his coffee strong.
We found her in tears.
The burglar left the house in a mess
She wants all of us to go.
I found what he said to mean nothing.

63
 I saw her running down the hill.
They made him feed the kangaroo
I will get my nose pierced one day
I named my son what my father named me.
Our supporter’ enthusiasm has made the club what it is today.
Notes: Another term for the subject complement (Cs) that follows a link-verb such as “to
be” is predicative.
E.g. He is a doctor.
She got tired.
IV. The adverbial:
The adverb suggests the idea of adding to the meaning of a verb. They tell us
something about the action in a sentence by modifying a verb, i.e., by telling how, when,
where, etc. something happens or is done:
E.g.: Paganini must have played the violin beautifully.
The adverbial can be expressed by an adverb, a noun phrase, a prepositional phrase,
a non-finite clause or a finite clause.
E.g. She sang softly.
They badly need a more effective banking system.
She sang in a soft voice.
The cat ran under the bed.
They will not come here next month.
We handed in our assignments last week.
The students met to prepare for the Students’ Day ceremony.
Having finished the work, they went out for a drink.
Whenever she has a cold, she eats only fruit.
We didn’t come home until the rain started.
I couldn’t feel anger against her because I liked her too much.
Adverbials are generally much more mobile in the sentence than the other elements.
So mobile are certain adverbials that they can be placed in the middle of the predicate.
E.g. Crabs are now being served.

64
 Crabs are being served now.
Adverbials are also optional in most sentence types.
E.g. (Sometimes) she (kindly) sends us some photographs.
The girls are singing (loud) (in the room).
V. The verb:
There are 3 main types of verbs: transitive, intransitive, and linking.
Transitive:
- A transitive verb is a verb that must be followed by a direct object to complete the
meaning of the verb. Such a verb is called a mono-transitive verb.
- She’s bought a camera.
D.O
Some transitive verbs have 2 objects: a direct and or indirect object. They are called
di-transitive verbs.
- She has sent her son some money.
I.O D.O
-He bought the flowers for his girlfriend.
D.O I.O
Some transitive verbs require, beside the object, a complement or an adverbial. They
are complex-transitive verbs.
We elected him the monitor.
D.O CO
We put George in the first class.
D.O A
Intransitive:
Intransitive verbs do not transmit action and do not require objects. An intransitive
verb usually expresses a motion and is often followed by an adverbial.
He arrived here yesterday (int V).
The boys are playing noisily in the garden (int V).

65
Linking verb (BE-like verb): is a verb that must be followed by a complement or an
adverbial to complete its meaning. Typical linking verbs are: be, become, seem, look, smell,
feel, sound, taste, remain, prove, get, etc.
She has become a good teacher.
The house is in good condition.
* Some verbs can be used as more than one kind of verb depending or the sentences in
which they are used.
He opened the door quickly. (tran V)
The door opened. (int V)
She is tasting the soup. (tran V)
The soup tastes salty. (linking V)

PRACTICE EXERCISES: 
1. Identify the constituent which realises Subject function in each of the following
sentences.
1. The use of caves for smuggling is as old as the hills.
2. The light of a torch flickered.
3. What the critics failed to understand is that his art was not sacrificed to popularity.
4. The list of people who she says helped her is long.
5. The wind coming down form the snowfields above woke us every night as we lay in our
tent.
6. There’s no way of knowing what goes on in their minds.
7. It’s 5 km away from here.
2. Write sentences as guided
1. S [V-ing P] makes us relaxed after a hard-working day.
2. S [ preparatory] seems to be a great challenge [real S].
3. S [finite clause] disappointed his parents.
4. S [non-finite clause] is my hobby.
5. S [complex noun phrase] surprised all of us.

66
3. Identify the constituent which functions as Direct Object in each of the following
sentences, and the class of unit which realises this function.
1. Shoppers are flouting the no-sales-on-Sunday trading laws.
2. He banged the door as he went out.
3. He pointed out that foreign doctors were not permitted to practise in that country.
4. The negotiations have achieved very little.
5. A team of divers have discovered what they believe to be sunken treasure.
6. One doubts that many will survive the long trek over the mountains.
7. You might ask what is the use of all this.
8. He shoveled a ton of gravel into the back garden.
9. Do you mind waiting a few minutes?
4. Identify subject complements, object complements in the following sentences
1. Spying on firms has become a multimillion - pound industry.
2. What will they call the baby?
3. Archie’s bar is where it’s at.
4. Life is a series of accidents. That’s what he thinks.
5. He makes his films accessible to a wide public.
6. He kept us laughing all evening with his jokes.
7. The weather has turned unexpectedly cold lately.
8. Make the coffee a bit stronger, would you?
9. I am an animal lover working in a department dedicated to cancer research.
10. I think you have mistaken the gentlemen’s lavatory for the stage door.
11. They found Winston’s sense of humour rather disconcerting.
12. What colour is she going to dye her hair?
13. Any attempt to re-establish control over the liberated areas would prove self-defeating.
14. They must prove themselves fit for the task.
5. Indicate, by Od, Oi, Cs or Co whether the parts underlined in the sentences below are
the direct object (Od), the indirect object (Oi), the subject complement (Cs) or the object
complement (Co).
1. Will someone get a doctor, quickly!
67
2. George and Paul both became famous doctors.
3. Do you call yourself a doctor?
4. May I call you Jenny?
5. May I call you a taxi or something?
6. It is so cold. I can’t get warm.
7. I can’t get my hands warm.
8. Keep quiet! Keep those children quiet.
9. The young man was slowly going mad.
10. His mother-in-law was driving him mad.
11. The driver turned the corner too quickly.
12. The weather is turning warmer.
13. The hot weather turned all the milk sour.
14. The young man grew very depressed.
15. He grew his hair long.
16. He had made a great mistake.
17. His in-laws had simply made him their servant.
18. His wife sometimes made him curry.
6. Divide each of the sentences below into its constituent parts and then label each part
S, O, C, or A
1. Full scale computers have a large number of programs.
2. We must change all the programs tomorrow.
3. Tomorrow will be a holiday here.
4. These bookshelves are becoming very popular in Sweden.
5. We recently added an extra unit to them.
6. Will you give it a try?
7. On July, DDT was sprayed on the marsh from a helicopter.
8. We all read too many books too quickly.
9. The young man grew restless in his mother-in-law’s house.
10. They had made him their son-in-law despite his objection.

68
11. He found his mother-in-law greedy.
12. They had found him a very young wife.
13. Thinking about this led us to an interesting conclusion.
14. Then the sleeper sees dreams as a jumbled sequence of important detail.
15. The speaker is seriously comparing dreams with what happens in a computer.

69
 CLAUSE TYPES
(SENTENCE STRUCTURES/ SENTENCE PATTERNS)
The various units that make up the structure of a clause or a simple sentence are
usually given functional labels, such as Subject (S), Verb (V), Complement (C), Object (O),
and Adverbial (A). A number of clause types can be identified in this way, such as:
S+V The girl + is dancing.
S+V+O The girl + kissed + her dog.
S+V+C The girl + is + sick.
S+V+A The girl + lay + on the ground.
S+V+O+O The girl + gave + her dog + a bone.
S+V+O+C The girl + called + her dog + Honey.
S+V+O+A The girl + put + her dog + on the sofa.
Beside these seven basic sentence patterns for active sentences, there are four
patterns for passive sentences which in fact come from the patterns for active sentences with
O.
S + V pass The boy was hit by a car running at a very high speed.
S + V pass +O The girl was given a nice doll on her last birthday.
S + V pass +C His father has just been appointed Director.
S + V pass +A The wallet was laid under the blanket.
Notes: * Many verbs can be restricted to one clause type.
E.g. seem (type SVC), elect (type SVOC), sit (type SVA)
* Many other verbs may enter more than one clause type
E.g. find (types SVOC, SVO), put (types SVOA, SVOC), open (types SV, SVO)
* The verb get can belong to all types except SV
E.g. The manager is getting furious. (SVC)
The boy got through the window. (SVA)
He has just got a $1.000 reward. (SVO)
She got her shoes and socks wet. (SVOC)
The man got himself into trouble. (SVOA)
She got her mother a nice present. (SVOO)

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* Some clause types can be transformed into some other types.
E.g. She sent him a card. (SVOO) She sent a card to him. (SVOA)
He is jobless. (SVC) He is without a job. (SVA)
The baby is sleeping. (SV) The baby is asleep. (AVC)
He hurried. (SV) He ran fast. (SVA)

PRACTICE EXERCISES: 
1. Identify each clause type (sentence structure) in the following sentences:
Example: He/ seems/ nice. (Answer = SVCs)
1. They arrived at the hotel and sat on the terrace.
2. What an extraordinary dancer she is!
3. I warn you that a villa in that area is not cheap.
4. Passing through the sound barrier doesn’t affect the passengers.
5. The precise number of heart attacks from using cocaine is not known.
6. The authorities claim that everything possible has been done.
7. The doctor gave the injured man treatment for shock.
8. The party will have to draw on whatever resources it can.
9. The government’s import policy has made the farmers furious.
10. Can you imagine yourself the owner of a luxury yacht?
11. Somebody snatched her bag in the park.
12. Sierra Leone is one of the world’s biggest producers of diamonds.
13. Save your brother a piece of your birthday cake.
14. She felt her face turn red.
15. He has become what he always wanted to be.
2. Identify each clause type (sentence structure) in the following sentences:
1. George’s father greeted the headmaster.
2. The headmaster put George into the second class.
3. That made Stanley angry.
4. His annoyance did not last.

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 5. He was really a lawyer.
6. He grew himself a great soldier.
7. The manager is not in.
8. May I offer you a cup of coffee?
9. After the war, M. gave him back his saddle-bag.
10. He threw himself from his horse.
11. I remember the reasonableness of my father’s argument.
12. The parson’s cat is an abominable animal.
13. We are in a bit of a mess.
14. I have always lived in the country.
15. Could you call me a porter, please!
3. Identify types of phrases in the following sentences and indicate their
functions.
1. They found her presentation on global warming quite persuasive.
2. What colour is she going to dye her hair?
3. Young people are now surprised at the belief that people should give the company
their unconditional loyalty.
4. The data used by the “green” groups were collected decades earlier.
5. Stocks of fish are declining at a much faster rate.
6. I considered him the best art critic to have emerged in London.
7. He is in a good mood.
8. They are painted in a variety of methods.
9. She has written me a very nice letter.
10. I shall never forget the immense sensation of space the first moment we entered
that room.
11. A full moon was rising over Godrevy.
12. The surprisingly increasing price of petrol is one of the reasons for the city’s
economic crisis.
4. Indicate the clause types of the following passive sentences:
1. People are killed on the roads every day.
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2. We were each handed a leaflet.
3. The walls were painted bright pink.
4. He has often been looked upon as slightly mad.
5. All my cards have been laid on the table.
6. Has all this food been paid for?
7. The prisoner was found guilty.
8. His children were found a suitable school.
9. This house has been lived in for two hundred years.
10. Surely, I cannot be refused a proper hearing?

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 SENTENCES AND CLAUSES
I. Sentences
Traditional grammar defines a sentence in one of two ways:
By meaning, a sentence is a complete thought.
By function, a sentence consists of a subject and a predicate.
In this course, we follow a definition which includes both functional and formal
characteristics of a sentence: ‘a sentence is a full predication containing a subject plus a
predicate with a finite verb.’
Its arrangement may be symbolized by such formulas as S V O (subject + verb +
object) …
A sentence that cannot be subdivided into constituent sentences is known as simple
sentence. And a complicated sentence contains in it combined simple sentences. A sentence
within a sentence is sometime called in modern term an embedded sentence. The traditional
term is clause.
II. Clauses
Analyzing by structural type, we arrive at the three main clauses:
1. Finite clause: a clause whose verb element is a finite verb phrase.
E.g. John has visited New York. (1sentence = 1 finite clause)
Because John is working, he may not hear what you say. (1sentence = 2 finite
clauses)
The finite clause always contains a subject and a predicate, except in the case of
commands and ellipsis. The finite clause can be used independently or dependently.
2. Non-finite clause: a clause whose verb element is a non-finite verb phrase.
A. Structure of non-finite clause:
Non-finite clauses can be constructed without a subject and usually are. The four
classes of non-finite verb phrase serve to distinguish four classes of non-finite clause:
+ Infinitive without To
E.g. Without subject: The best thing would be tell everybody.
With subject: The best thing would be for you tell everybody.
+ Infinitive with To
E.g. Without subject: The best thing would be to tell everybody.

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 With subject: The best thing would be for you to tell everybody.
+ ING participle
E.g. Without subject: Leaving the room, he tripped over the mat.
With subject: Her aunt having left the room, I declared my passionate
love for Celia.
+ ED Participle
E.g. Without subject: Covered with confusion, I left the room.
With subject: We left the room and went home, the job finished.
B. Functions of non-finite clauses
a. Non-finite clauses functioning as Subject:
E.g. To go out late at night is very dangerous.
Sitting in front of the computer for 4 hours tires her eyes.
It is a very educational experience to travel alone in a foreign country. (extraposed
S/real S)
b. Non-finite clauses functioning as Object:
E.g. She refused to show me where she lived.
We are considering organizing a barbecue.
Non-finite clauses as O can be infinite clauses (after verbs like want, expect, hope, refuse,
decide, attempt, intend, manage, fail, …) or ING clauses (after verbs like admit, avoid,
consider, deny, finish, imagine, mind, practice, risk, can’t stand, …)
c. Non-finite clauses functioning as subject complement:
E.g. His only good point is helping other people sincerely.
The aim of this course is to improve the students’ pronunciation.
d. Non-finite clauses functioning as object complement:
E.g. They would not allow us to interview the Vice-chancellor.
The headmaster asked that naughty boy to leave school immediately.
Non-finite clauses used with this structure are infinitive clauses after O and verbs like
advise, command, enable, encourage, order, tell, permit, persuade, allow, urge, ….
E.g. Don’t make him work too hard.
They never let their daughter go out alone at night.

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Non-finite clauses used with this structure are bare infinitive clauses after O and verbs like
help, let, make, have, ….
E.g. Did you see anyone crawl under the bed?
I overheard them gossiping about the Ambassador’s illness.
Non-finite clauses used with this structure are bare infinitive clauses or –ING clauses after
O and verbs like see, hear, watch, feel, notice,,….
E.g. The young woman had her hair cut once a month.
We had the whole building repainted in pink.
Non-finite clauses used with this structure are –ED clauses after O and verbs like have, get,
like, get, ….
e. Non-finite clauses functioning as adverbial:
* To infinitive clauses as Adverbial of purpose
E.g. The little girl got up early to catch the first train to Tokyo.
He did it to relieve his anger.
* -ING clauses as Adverbial of attendant circumstance
E.g. The young couple strolled along the river bank, holding each other’s
hands.
Helped by favourable weather, the country produced a record harvest.
f. Non-finite clauses functioning as Post modifier in a Noun phrase
E.g. He is always the first person to come to work and the last one to leave the
office.
The new system suggested by the Prime Minister proves to be very successful.
Any driver not having a license should be arrested right away.
g. Non-finite clauses functioning as Adjectival and Prepositional complement
* Adjectival complement:
E.g. They are quite ready to take part in the election campaign.
The manager is eventually hesitant to agree on the staff training scheme.
* Prepositional complement:
E.g. Children are interested in throwing snow at each other.

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 They are talking about raising money to help people in the natural disaster-struck
areas.
3. Verbless clause: a clause containing no verb element.
E.g. Although always helpful, he can't help you now.
Too nervous to reply, he stared at the floor.
John, then in New York, was quite an ordinary man.

PRACTICE EXERCISES: 
1. Underline all nonfinite subordinate clauses. Identify their functions.
1. He's interested in learning Maths.
2. Flattering your boss doesn't ensure career advancement.
3. This is something for you to eat after your ballet lesson.
4. The old man stood silently, sipping his cappuccino.
5. She loves any dish involving cheese.
6. He wore a suit to please his parents.
7. She had no desire to flatter his parents.
8. Ms. Jacobs will be the best person to oversee the project.
9. She uses her computer to do all her banking.
10. His decision to use an all-female cast surprised all of us.
11. Any article left by students in this office will be taken to the Lost Property Office.
12. She stood in the middle of the shop, looking around with interest.
13. We didn't receive any instruction to open the gate.
14. He has been dieting these days to lose weight.
15. For a bridge to collapse like that is unbelievable.
16. She's very glad to help us with the housework.
17. His ambition, to become a famous writer, was never fulfilled.
18. The children were on the beach, busy building sand castles.
19. Discouraged by the failure, he became an alcoholic.
20. She opened the door for Gypsy to go out.

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21. This will involve moving all the furniture.
22. He wrote Ms. Chew a friendly letter, thanking her for her help.
23. It won’t hurt you to eat more fruit.
24. I caught him reading your diary.
25. A test doesn’t always give you an opportunity to demonstrate your ability.
26. Older adults who are healthier and living longer than previous generations are powerful
societal forces shaping future employment practices.
27. We need the air-conditioner repaired in three hours.
28. She hopes to get a job within the next three weeks.
29. His advice has always been to consult an astrologer.
30. To put things off until the last minute is a mistake.

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 CLASSIFICATION OF SENTENCES

SIMPLE SENTENCES -COMPOUND SENTENCES -COMPLEX

SENTENCES – COMPOUND COMPLEX SENTENCES
The traditional definition of a simple sentence is: “A group of words that contains a
finite verb and makes a complete sense."
Sentences may be simple, compound, complex and compound complex.
A. Simple Sentences
A simple sentence is the one that contains a finite verb (and only one finite verb).
A simple sentence is composed, usually, of two parts, the subject and the predicate.
The basic sentence patterns of simple sentences:
1. S + V
2. S + V + C
3. S + V + A
4. S + V + O
5. S + V + O + O
6. S + V + O + C
7. S + V + O + A
B. Compound sentences
A compound sentence consists of two or more independent clauses usually
connected by coordinating conjunctions (coordinators). In a compound sentence, all the
independent clauses are of equal rank.
E.g. John bought the tickets and Mary parked the car.
There was no moon that night and, as a result, they took the wrong turning.
The picture is not an original: in other words, it’s a forgery.
Two simple sentences may be combined into one compound sentence without any
conjunction to link them together. In this case, they must be separated by a colon, a comma
or a semi-colon.
E.g. He is rich but he’s unhappy.
He is rich; he’s unhappy.
He is rich: he’s unhappy.

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 Sometimes, in order to avoid repetition, some parts of the compound sentence may
be omitted.
E.g. Man is guided by reason, beast (are guided) by instinct.
My father wanted me to be a doctor and my mother (wanted me to be) a teacher.
In a compound sentence, all the clauses are of equal importance and can stand on
their own.

• The following coordinative conjunctions (and adverbs) connect the clauses of a

compound sentence.
a) Copulative: and, not only... but also..., neither... nor..., now, then and others.
Copulative conjunctions express that two ideas are connected.
E.g. She drew up the curtain and the room was flooded with bright golden light.
Not only was he dissatisfied but also he was extremely indignant.
Neither the moon was visible in this dark night nor were the stars.
b) Disjunctive: or, otherwise, else, either... or, etc. Disjunctive conjunctions indicate
choices:
E.g. We must hurry or we will miss the train.
You must carry your raincoat along, otherwise you will get wet in the rain.
Either you speak clearly or I do not understand what you say.
c) Adversative: but, yet, still, nevertheless, however, etc. Adversative conjunctions
denote that two ideas contradict each other.
E.g. You can cross the river here, but be careful of the swift flow.
I tried to persuade her to stay, still she would insist on leaving at such a late hour.
She repeated it three times, yet I could not understand what it meant.
d) Causal: for
E.g. I could not buy it, for it is impossible for me to afford it.
We cannot see the moon, for dark clouds cover the sky.
e) Resultative: so, therefore, accordingly, then...
E.g. It is getting late, then we had better go home.
She did not feel well for some days, so she decided to go and see her doctor.

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C. Complex sentences
In traditional grammar, a complex sentence contains a main clause and one or more
subordinate clauses. The subordinate clause must be a finite clause and can be the Noun
clause, the Adjective clause or the Adverb clause.
E.g. He realises that he hasn't understood his father.
The man who knows no foreign language knows nothing about his mother
tongue. (Geothe)
When I was answering the telephone, he came back because he had forgotten his hat.
D. Compound complex sentences:
A compound complex sentence consists of two or more independent clauses and at
least one dependent clause
E.g. You should leave early or you have to stay overnight because the gate will be locked
in ten minutes.

PRACTICE EXERCISES: 
Classify the following sentences according to structure. If the sentence is a complex or
a compound complex, pick out the finite subordinate clause(s).
1. I'm glad that my mother made me take piano lessons when I was a child.
2. Joe jumped into the river to rescue the little girl who was drowning even though he wasn't
a good swimmer.
3. I knew that I should get some sleep, but I just couldn't put my book down because I was
really enjoying it.
4. Thomas was thirsty yet he refused to drink the water that I offered him.
5. The Comedian made people laugh by telling jokes and making funny faces.
6. Most 15th century Europeans believed that the world was flat and that a ship could
conceivably sail off the end of the earth.
7. Please tell me soon whether you will go or not so that I can decide what I'm going to do.
8. My sister can fall asleep under any conditions, but I can't get to sleep unless the light is
off and the room is perfectly quiet.
9. The cheapest way to get from an airport to a hotel is to take an airport bus, but I'm not
sure if River City has one.
10. I asked Angela to run the office while I 'm gone since I know I can depend on her.
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11. You'd better give me your answer quickly, or else I 'll withdraw the invitation.
12. As long as you 're going to the fruit market, would you please pick up a few apples for
me?
13. Even though Jack hates going to the dentist, he should see his dentist soon because he
has a very bad toothache.
14. Robert is totally exhausted after playing tennis whereas Marge isn't even tired despite
the fact that she ran around a lot more during the game.
15. I'm sorry you 've decided not to go with us on the river trip, but if you change your mind
there will still be enough room on the boat for you.

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 NOUN CLAUSES
I. Noun clause markers:
Noun clause markers
“That" indicates a fact.
“What " focuses on a fact?
“When “indicates a time.
"Where" indicates a place.
“Why" indicates a reason
"How many" indicates a quantity?
"How much" indicates an amount
“How" indicates a manner.
"Which” indicates a choice?
"Whether" indicates two or more
alternatives.
“Whose" indicates possession.
"Whom" indicates a person.
engaged.
"If" indicates alternatives.
II. Functions:
1. Subject:
E.g. That his people believe that after last night is doubtful.
2. Object
E.g. I don't know what I have to do.
3. Complement
- of a Subject
Example:
I knew that he had to go
Everyone was surprised at what he brought for
the picnic.
He told us when the plane would arrive.
Where they are going on their honeymoon is a
secret.
She shouldn't say why he left so early.
I've lost count of how many times I've
broken my glasses.
He wasn't paying attention to how much
he ate.
He showed us how he was going to win the race.
I didn't know which book I was supposed to read.
I didn't know whether I should bring
my bike or leave it at home.
I never found whose car was parked outside our
house.
Sue didn't know to whom he was
I didn't know if I should bring my bike.
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E.g. Her proposal is what we have expected
- of an object
E.g. We call him what he’d like to.
-of an adjective
E.g. I’m not quite sure if that’s right actually.
- of a preposition:
E.g. At the time of the original meeting, nobody had any idea of what would happen.
4. In apposition to a noun phrase:
E.g. The news that the price of petrol is going up makes a headline on the front page of
this morning’s newspaper.

PRACTICE EXERCISES: 
1. Identify whether each of the following is (a) noun clause or (b) independent clause or
(c) both.
1. that book was very interesting
2. that he is a good actor
3. whichever program you prefer
4. who he is
5. whose house is cross the street
6. where she lives
7. when are you going
8. that picture was in the library
2. Underline the noun clause. Write S in the space if the noun clause is the subject, O
if the clause is an object & C if the clause is a complement.
1.______ How the buildings are constructed to keep their inhabitants cool is one of the most
striking aspects of the Bahraini architecture.
2.______ What the doctor advised was a vacation away from the hustle and bustle of the
city.
3.______ When the city of Rome was founded is a matter of dispute among historians.
4.______ Marie Curie showed that a woman can be as good a scientist as a man can be.

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5.______ The general decided which troop was to be moved.
6.______ It is easy to understand why fast food restaurants are so popular.
7.______ The president told the youths that their journey was a noteworthy achievement
8.______ That the city has lost its charm in its zeal to modernize is a common perception
9.______ One of the characteristics of leather is that it has a fibrous structure
10._____ I’m not sure whether he will come.
3. Identify the noun clauses in the following sentences and describe the function of each.
1. That it was done deliberately is quite clear.
2. We greatly regret that we were obliged to refuse your invitation.
3. Many people are wondering when inter-planetary travel will become possible.
4. Can you explain to me where he lives?
5. Who will lead the collection campaign is what we have to decide this morning.
6. What you are attempting is really too difficult for you.
7. We were greatly amused by what you tell us.
8. I am delighted that you have succeeded in getting the job.

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 ADVERBIAL CLAUSES
A subordinate clause that functions as an adverbial in the sentence/higher clause is
an adverbial clause.
According to their meaning, adverbial clauses are divided into the following types:
1. Adverbial clause of time: before, after, just as, as soon as, as, when, whenever, since,
until, once...
E.g. Before you can bring the rib to your mouth, the meat will fall off the bone.
One must go along with the final decision once it has been made.
2. Adverbial clause of place: where, wherever
E.g. Where he worked, everybody wore a bullet-proof garment.
You can sit wherever you like.
3. Adverbial clause of manner: As, as if, as though, like. . ..
E.g. Mr. Dong treats me as if I were his hamster.
He was staring at her like he had never seen a woman before.
4. Adverbial clause of reason: because, since, as…
E.g. He got the job because he can type with all his fingers.
Some people avoid love as they fear its treachery.
5. Adverbial clause of purpose: so that, in order that, so as that . . .
E.g. The park closes on Mondays so that the monkeys can rest.
They advertised the book fair on TV in order that more people should know about
it.
6. Adverbial clause of result: so that, (so…) that. . .
E.g. I was so shocked that I dropped the rifle.
7. Adverbial clause of condition: if, unless, on condition that, provided (that), as long as,
supposing. . .
E.g. I will go if I get invited.
8. Adverbial clause of concession: though, although, even though, even if, whatever, no
matter how
E.g. Though we could see nothing, we distinctively heard the sound in the
distance.

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 Whatever you say, I would never change my mind.
While she loves her children, she is very strict with them.

PRACTICE EXERCISES: 
Underline the adverbial clauses. Identify their functions in the higher clauses:
1. Since you love seafood, you should go to Pummeling.
1. Before the Pan Island Expressway was constructed, we swam in the pond here
whenever it rained.
2. They will invite us when they are ready.
3. Provided no one objects, the library will be moved to Foot Street.
4. When we arrived at the football field, the game had started.
5. Richard left dirty footmarks whenever he went.
6. Kick the ball as Richard did.
7. Don't handle those cups as if they were made of iron.
8. I need a hammer and nails, because I am going to repair the shed.
9. We shall come and see you if we have a holiday.
10. Although it was rather foggy, we played the match.
11. They went swimming although the sea was very rough.
12. He told the secret so that I should help him.
13. He was so stupid that he couldn't pass the exam.
14. Providing you don’t have enough money, you can ask him for help.

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 ADJECTIVE CLAUSES
An adjective clause has a subject and a verb. It is used like an adjective to describe,
identify, or give more information about nouns and indefinite pronouns such as “someone",
"anyone", and “everything"
- The horse which I recently bought is an Arab.
- We saw some people whose car had broken down.
- Sam's uncle, who is very rich, came for a visit.
An adjective clause may begin with:
A. RELATIVE PRONOUNS
I. Who, which, that
* Who is used when the antecedent is a person
E.g. An architect is someone who designs buildings
Anyone who wants to do the exam must enter before next Friday
* Which is used when the antecedent is not a person
E.g. Barbara works for a company which makes washing machines
The machine which broke down has now been repaired
* That is a relative pronoun can replace either who or which, and it is preferred especially
after all, everything, nothing, the only, ... and superlatives.
E.g. Everything that happened was my fault
She is the only person that has succeeded in the interview
II. Notice that which can refer to the entire preceding clause
E.g. John didn’t pass the test, which disappointed his father
Liz often goes to work late, which annoys everyone.
III. Possessive of the relative pronouns
Possession can be expressed by whose, whether or not the antecedent is a person.
When the antecedent is not a person, of which may be also used.
E.g. The man whose car broke down is my uncle.
The car whose tyre is being repaired is my uncle’s.
B. RELATIVE ADVERBS
* When: used after the day, the month, the time, the moment, etc.

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E.g. I remember the day (when /that) we met
I haven’t seen them since the year (when /that) they got married
* Where (in which): used after the hotel, the park, the place, etc.
E.g. Is this the park (where /that) you two met?
I would like to live in a country (where /that) there is plenty of sunshine
* How: used after the way:
E.g. This is the way (how/that) he did it
* Why: used after the reason:
E.g. The reason (why/ that) I’m phoning you is to invite you to a party
REDUCED ADJECTIVE CLAUSES
Adjective clauses can be reduced to phrases when the relative pronoun of the
adjective clause is the subject of the clause. Note that the clause marker and the auxiliary
words and/or “be” verbs are omitted. The main verb change depends on the voice.
(A) Active voice
The man (who is) driving has a new car. The man driving has a new car
Christopher de Hamel has published a book (which) contains description of illuminated
manuscripts.
Christopher de Hamel has published a book containing description of illuminated
manuscripts.
(B) Passive voice
The magazine ad (which was) printed in Shopper’s Weekly showed the city skyline.
The magazine ad printed in Shopper’s Weekly showed the city skyline.
The ideas (which had been) presented in the previous meeting were discussed.
The ideas presented in the previous meeting were discussed.
(C) Subject + to be + adjective
The man who is responsible said the underground water had a high salt content
The man responsible said the underground water had a high salt content
(D) Subject + to be + noun
Her name, (which is) Lou Ann, contains easy sounds for the deaf to pronounce.
Her name, Lou Ann, contains easy sounds for the deaf to pronounce.

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PRACTICE EXERCISES: 
1. All the following sentences contain errors in adjective clause structures. Correct the
errors.
1. In our village, there were many people didn't have much money.
2. I enjoyed the book that you told me to read it.
3. Almost all the people appear on television wear make-up.
4. I showed my father a picture of the car I am going to buy it as soon as I save enough
money.
5. I sit next to a person who his name is Ahmed.
6. Last Saturday, I attended a party was given by one of my friends.
7. People can speak English can be understood in many countries.
8. Patrick who is my oldest brother. He married and has one child.
9. The road that we took it through the forest it was narrow and steep.
10. At the national park, there is a path leads to a beautiful waterfall.
11. If you need any information, see the librarian sits at the central desk on the second
floor.
12. I've met many people since I came here who some of them are from my country.
2. Read all the passages and identify all reduced relative clauses
A. It is generally true that, as long as the top management maintains the confidence of the
board of directors, the directors will not actively intervene dictate specific policies. This is
the first administrative procedure usually followed by the board of trustees of a college or
university, and is similar in many respects to the parliamentary system of ministerial
responsibility practiced in Great Britain.
B. Traditionally, mental tests have been divided into two types. Achievement tests are
designed to measure acquired skills and knowledge, particular those that have been
explicitly taught. The proficiency exams required by some states for high school graduation
are achievement tests. Aptitude tests are designed to measure a person’s ability to acquire
new skills or knowledge. For example, vocational aptitude tests can help you decide whether
you would do better as a mechanic or musician.
C. Today the population is more than five billion. Estimates based on research by the United
Nations indicate that it will double in the twenty-five years between 1975 and the year 2000,
reaching seven billion by the turn of the century.

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D. Alcohol is a major cause of traffic accidents. One in three of the drivers killed in road
accidents have levels of alcohol which are over the legal limit, and the road accidents after
drinking are the biggest cause of death among young men. More than half of the people
stopped by the police to take a breathalyzer test have a blood alcohol concentration of more
than twice the legal limit. It is important to remember that driving after you’ve been drinking
doesn’t just affect you. If you’re involved in an accident it affects a lot of other people as
well, not least the person you might kill or injure.

EXERCISES ON SUBORDINATE CLAUSES

1. Isolate the subordinate clause in each of the sentences below and state their functions
1. That you could do it, I always knew.
2. That you can do it is still uncertain.
3. You can do it if you try.
4. If you can do it, I'll give you ten dollars.
5. Glancing up at my tired face, she asked, in a rather grating voice, how I was
feeling.
6. Steinweg had a large room where we always breakfasted together.
7. He was a delightful companion who is always cheerful and considerate.
8. She sang completely out of tune so that permission was seldom granted.
9. What he saw both surprised and frightened him.
10. Since I have been especially invited to speak, for you now to tell me I cannot do so is
quite unpardonable.
2. Underline the subordinate clauses. Identify their functions in the higher clauses:
1. The president did not explain why he had ousted Benazir.
2. My feeling is that someone has been masterminding the anti-Bhutto protests.
3. As Clinton gained experience, he modified some of his earlier ideals.
4. How they reply will indicate whether they trust us.
5. Poor implementation of an idea does not necessarily mean it is a bad one.
6. One reassuring sign is more Australians speak an Asian language these days.
7. It is obvious that Clinton has elevated trade relations above security concerns.
8. I have not seen Martha since I came back.
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9. I will support the policy, if I believe it is right.
10. If I think I should challenge anybody, I will do it.
11. What he saw frightened him.
12. Whenever I visit my in-laws, I feel an outsider.
13. Why she suddenly disappeared is a complete mystery.
14. I noticed that she had spilled a little tea.
15. I doubt if he is telling the truth.
16. Who knows what he is thinking?
17. Who you are is not my concern.
18. My concern is why you drink.
19. The question remains how these children became computer addicts.
20. I told him that I would telephone him the next day.
21. That he didn't use real name showed that she was afraid.
3. Underline the subordinate clauses. Identify their functions in the higher clauses:
1. Buying clothes is a very time-consuming practice because those clothes that a person
likes are rarely the ones that fit him or her.
2. At the moment husbands in all industrialized countries contribute very little to domestic
work and recent research shows that this contribution doesn’t increase when the wife
goes out to work.
3. When mother works economic advantages accrue, but children lose something of great
value if mother’s employment prevents her from being home to greet them when they
return from school.
4. In recent years, it has been observed that in those societies where women work outside
their home in the company of men, there exist many serious social problems.
5. The man who does not see that the good of every living creature is his good is a fool.
6. Nothing can describe the confusion of thought which I felt when I sank into the water.
7. We who are fortune enough to live in this enlightened century hardly realize how our
ancestors suffered from their belief in the existence of mysterious and malevolent
beings.
8. I have no sympathy with a poor man I knew, who, when suicides abounded, told me he
dared not look at his razor.

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9. As my eldest son was bred a scholar, I determined to send him to town, where his
abilities might contribute to our support and his own.
4. Here are two texts. For each of them, do the following: underline all the finite
subordinate clause; identify their functions
Text one:
When President Marcos declared Martial Law in September 1972, our fragile institutions
of freedom collapsed. The writers who had been the most fervent champions of freedom
were quickly silenced. Literature, which is the noblest of the arts, became the pauper of the
arts in the President's scheme of priorities. He claimed that literature was elitist. I think that
he was simply suspicious of writers. The first instrument of censorship in 1972 was the
army Office of Civil Relations which issued newspaper and magazine licenses. It also
imposed guidelines which were often arbitrary. Under these guidelines, the President, his
family and the Armed Forces could not be criticized. Before any manuscript was published,
it was examined by the Army censors. Works that critiqued the authorities were the main
victims of the censorship.
Text two:
It's hard to be a smoker in Singapore. Smoking all forms of tobaccos is banned in public
places and in most enclosed places except pubs and nightclubs. That is why British-
American Tobacco constantly seeks fresh ways to sell its product. A recent innovation is
brand of cigarette mild and slightly sweet. It is, supposedly, less offensive to those non-
smokers who consider the regular smell unpleasant.

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 SYNTAX AND ITS ASPECTS

METHODS OF SENTENCE ANALYSIS

Analysis of sentences is the breaking up of a sentence into its parts, with a view to
show their mutual relations.
There are two conventional methods of sentence analysis:
1. Descriptive Linguistic Analysis: (Traditional Grammar)
I do not know whether the woman who was asking so many questions was really
interested in the subject, or whether she wanted to attract the attention of the speaker towards
herself, but whatever her motive was, she succeeded in making him feel so much confused
that he eventually sat down, blushed and remained silent.
M1: ‘I do not know'
S1: 'Whether the woman was really interested in the subject': Noun clause,
object of 'know'.
S1.1: 'Who was asking so many questions': Adjective clause,
postmodifying 'woman'.
S2: 'Or whether she wanted to attract the attention of the speaker
towards herself: Noun clause, object of 'know'.
M2: 'But she succeeded in making him feel so much confused'
S3: 'Whatever her motive was': Adverb clause of concession,
modifying 'succeeded'.
S4: 'That he eventually sat down, blushed and remained silent':
Adverb clause of result, modifying 'confused'.
(M: main clause; S: subordinating/dependent clause)
2. Tree diagram
To build a tree, it is easy to work form the bottom- up and from right to left. (A
Grammar of Contemporary English).
The words of each sentence can be divided into two or more groups and within each
group the words can be divided into sub-groups, and so one, until only simple words remain.
In tree-diagram method, the sentence is called a constituent structure. The 'tree' is
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upside down with the 'root' at the top and the 'leaves' at the bottom. At each point where the
tree ' branches', there is a group of words that form a part or structural constituent of the
sentence.
At the bottom of the tree are individual words or morphemes. In addition to revealing
linear order, a constituent structure tree has hierarchical structure.
Three aspects of the syntactic knowledge of sentence structure revealed in the
constituent structure tree are:
a. Linearity: the linear older of the word. E.g., the subject preceded the verb while
the object follows the verb.
b. Hierarchy: the grouping of the words into structure constituents. In sentences,
lesser elements are parts of larger whole, which are in turns parts of larger wholes
c. Categoriality: the syntactic category of each structural constituents. Words and the
larger constituents they make up belong to a set of distinct categories, each with its special
characteristics (E.g., Noun, Adjective, Verb phrase, etc.)
E.g.
S
The young boy has bought a new camera

NP VP

The young boy has bought a new camera

The young boy has bought a new camera

has bought a new camera

The tree diagram shows that sentence ‘the young boy has bought a camera’ consists
of two structural constituents: a noun phrase 'the young boy,’ and a verb phrase ‘has bought
a new camera.’ The verb phrase ‘has bought a new camera’ consists of two structural
constituents: the verb “has bought’ and the noun phrase ‘a new camera’ and so on. The
article ‘a’, the adjective “new’ and the noun ‘camera’ are constituents in a large constituent
noun phrase ‘a new camera’. A constituent includes all the smaller constituents beneath it
in the tree. Each branching point in the tree is called a ‘node’, and sometimes the syntactic
category associated will the node is called its ‘label’.
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 The constituent structure of sentence also reveals which constituents can be
substituted for other constituents without affecting the grammaticality of the sentence
(although the meaning may change).
Constituents that can be substituted for one another without loss of grammaticality
belong to the same syntactic category.
Below is another model example of tree diagram:
 Sentences

PRACTICE EXERCISES: 
I. Analyse the following sentences according to descriptive analysis:
1. Investigators at first suggested that the blight was caused by static energy, smoke from
railroad trains, or vapors from underground volcanoes; however, the root cause was later
discovered as an airborne fungus that traveled from Mexico.
2. Due to the apparent screaming that the plant made as it was pulled from the ground,
people in the Middle Ages believed that the person who removed the mandrake from the
earth would either die or go insane.
3. The tiger moth, in deed, is a clear example of a concept that many predators intuitively
understand that creatures with the brightest coloration are often the least suitable to eat.
4. Video-conferencing has been disparaged for the lack of eye-contact that can affect the
efficacy of the medium and for the fact that participants can be camera conscious.

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5. The public needs experts to offer them specialized advice, but because this advice is
specialized they are not in a position to know what advice they need so this has to be defined
in conversation with the professional.
6. This is tough on those diligent professionals who produce excellent work; but since –as
everyone agrees- awful programs far outnumber the good, it is a relief to know the former
cannot do much harm.
7. We who are fortune enough to live in this enlightened century hardly realize how our
ancestors suffered from their belief in the existence of mysterious and malevolent beings.
8. I have no sympathy with a poor man I knew, who, when suicides abounded, told me he
dared not look at his razor.
9. The expanding city enabled economic growth, which paid for the buildings, roads, and
other infrastructure that helped the city absorb more people.
10. The belief that merit is neglected forms the secret consolidation of almost every human
being from the mightiest to the meanest peasant.
11. Like individuals who give to charity, many countries feel it is their religious, social, or
moral duty to help people in other countries who are suffering from famine, drought, war,
or disease.
12. When the whale comes up to take a nice big breath of fresh air, it instead gets a nice big
breath of exhaust fume so it is hard to say how greatly it affects the animals, but think how
breathing polluted air affects us.
13. Those who are allergic to furry pets, pollen, and plants are prescribed mild medication
or taught how to control their reactions with simple lifestyle changes, while those with food
allergies learn to safely remove certain food from their diets.
14. It is not known exactly how or when the potatoes were first introduced to Europe,
however, the general assumption is that it arrived on a Spanish ship some time in the 1600s.
15. A few relief programs were eventually implemented, such as soup kitchens and
workhouses; however, these were poorly - run institutions that facilitated the spread of
disease and offered inadequate food supplies considering the extent of Ireland’s shortages.
16. Although the surviving stocks have probably been sufficient to sustain the resident pods,
many of the runs that have been lost were undoubtedly traditional resources favoured by the
resident orcas.
17. But because of the fact that orcas are so popular, they may be the best species to use as
a focal point in bringing about the many changes that need to be made in order to protect
the marine environment as a whole from further toxic poisoning.

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18. Marine animals, busy hunting and feeding under the surface of the water, may not be
aware that there is a kayak above them and actually hit the bottom of it as they surface to
breathe.
19. With novels, the reader attends mainly to the meaning of words rather than the way
they are printed on the page, whereas the ‘reader’ of a painting must attend just as closely
to the material form of marks and shapes in the picture as to any ideas they may signify.
20. Scientists are increasing to find out what’s going on because they consider the Artic the
‘canary in the mine’ for global warming- a warning of what’s in store for the rest of the
world.
21. Today, many planners bring people back to cities and make suburbs denser by creating
walkable town centers, high- rise apartment buildings, and more public transportation so
that people are less dependent on cars.
22. Her study reveals that members of the male group follow a strict social hierarchy in
which each member knows his rank or status, similar to the pecking order in female
extended families.
23. Even though these individual buildings might be wonderful, they are not necessarily
wonderful within the fabric of the city, however, sometimes you can excuse them because
they draw people from around the world to see them and, therefore it helps improve the
health of the city.
24. The distinction can be seen by the fact that humans have the unique facility to create
art, as no other creature can see a painting as anything other than a collection of shapes
and colours.
II. Draw tree diagram for the following noun phrases:
1. the girl with a smile
2. the pretty girl with a smile
3. a man like John
4. action in case of fire
5. the table which remained
6. the man who is walking in the garden
7. an experience you’ll always remember
8. that distinguished man in a black suit
III. Draw trees for the following VPs:
1. cancelled the project
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2. pointed out the man hidden in the crowd
3. banned the cat scratching furniture from the living room
4. put the car on the porch later
5. sent me a postcard on my birthday
6. give the first comer a gift
7. throw away money on gambling
8. will eat the rice in that saucepan
9. was quite sure about what his father had told him
10. will have the car serviced
IV. Draw tree diagrams for the following adjective phrases:
1. angry at Bill’s sister
2. proud of the invention
3. interested in what we have proposed
4. very anxious about Jim’s health
5. aware of what might happen as a result of too much air pollution
V. Analyse the following sentence by PSRs (Phrase structure Rules)
1. The farmer was eating his lunch in the cornfield.
2. A declining birthrate may cause a shortage of skilled and knowledgeable employees.
3. The police caught the thief red-handed.
4. He punched the man in the face.
5. He punched the man in the blue shirt.
6. He put the book on the table in the living room on the shelf.
7. He went to school in Walton Street in his city.
8. He went to school in Walton Street in the evening.
9. The police examined a photograph of the accident.
10. A wedding cake should be placed in front of them tomorrow morning.
11. He appeared in the car which had been bought by his mother.
12. She gave him a look which betokened trouble.
13. I have forgotten who gave us the gift.
14. The young girl was fond of what had been said by him.
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15. The ripe apples from the tree which is near the house might hit the people on the head.
16. Those people moved the desk into the hall because they needed more space.
17. The patient in bed was realizing with mild surprise that he was getting weaker.
18. He told the secret so that I should help him
19. He went by car because it was raining
20. You can tell me whether the train has left.
21. He drove carefully because the road was slippery.
22. That Sharon’s car had broken down astonished the mechanic.

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 STRUCTURAL AMBIGUITY
I. Structural ambiguity is the different underlying meanings or different implications of a
sentence due to the fact that the sentence components can be arranged into phrases in more
than one way. An ambiguous sentence is a sentence which may have two or more meanings
Some sentences are structurally ambiguous. They are surface. For example, the
sentence, “Annie whacked a man with an umbrella” is structurally ambiguous.
It has two distinct deep structures expressing, on the one hand, the fact that “Annie
had an umbrella and she whacked the man with it”; and on the other hand that “Annie
whacked a man and he happened to be carrying an umbrella”.
(Yule, G, 1985:82)
So this sentence has two different underlying interpretations which would be
represented differently in the deep structure.
Syntactic knowledge combined with semantic knowledge can help us see which
sentences are paraphrases of chosen original sentence and which are not.
When a string of words can be semantically associated with more than one tree
structures, it is said to be structurally ambiguous.

• The tree diagram:

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II. Some Other Examples of Ambiguity
2.l. “Fast cars and motorcycles are dangerous”
Two underlying interpretation of this sentence is as follows:
a. “Fast cars and fast motorcycles are dangerous”.

b. “Fast cars and any type of motorcycle are dangerous”.

The tree diagram:

2.2. “The policeman killed the woman with a gun.”

Two underlying interpretations of this sentence are as follows:
a) The policeman shot the woman.

b) The policeman killed the woman who held a gun in her hand.

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The tree diagram:

103
2.3. “You can call her Mary”
Two underlying interpretations of this sentence are as follows:
a) You can address her as Mary

b) You can ask Mary to come to help her.

The tree diagram:

a.

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2.4. “George likes amusing girls”
Two underlying interpretations of this sentence are as follows:
a) George likes enjoyable girls.

b) George likes making girls laugh or smile.

The tree diagram:

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2.5. “Smoking grass can be nauseating”
Two underlying interpretation of this sentence are as follows:
a) Putting grass in a pipe and smoking it can make you sick.

b) Fumes from smoldering.

• Grass can make you sick.

• Burning slowly without flame.
The tree diagram:

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PRACTICE EXERCISES:
1. The following sentence is structurally ambiguous, analyze the two different
sentence structures (SVOCA) to show both possible meanings.
1. The girl scratched the boy with the sharp fingernails.

2. We called him a porter.

3. They took her money.

4. He looked after dinner

5. We must ask the farmer who owns the fields where we can camp.

6. The police have trouble with the people who occupy these cottages all the time.

7. I looked at the letter Max was reading with unfeigned astonishment.

2. Draw tree diagrams to illustrate the different meanings of the following

ambiguous sentences:
1. He couldn’t find the key to the jewel case which he had left on the table.

2. The mother of the girl and the boy will arrive.

3. I am looking for someone to teach French.

4. Max was ogling a girl with brazen audacity.

5. The girl scratched the boy with the sharp fingernails.

6. They have wounded men there.

7. I bought an old French dictionary.

8. He buried the knife he found in the garden.

9. Children who stay out all night sometimes should be punished.

10. The students complained to everyone that they couldn't understand.

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 SYNTHESIS OF SENTENCES
Synthesis is the combination of a number of simple sentences into one new sentence
- simple, compound or complex.
A. Combination of two or more simple sentences into a single simple sentence.
Chief ways of combination:
1. By choosing a non - finite clause.
A crow stole a piece of cheese. She flew to her nest to enjoy the tasty ' meal.
 Having stolen a piece of cheese, a crow flew to her nest to enjoy the tasty meal.
2. By using a prepositional phrase.
He has failed many times. He still hopes to succeed.
 In spite of many failures, he hopes to succeed.
3. By using a noun phrase in apposition.
This town was once a prosperous sea – port. It is now a heap of ruins.
 This town, once prosperous sea - port, is now a heap of ruins.
4. By using an adverb phrase.
He deserved to success. He failed
 He failed undeservedly.
B. Combination of two or more simple sentences into a single compound sentence.
Simple sentences may be combined to form compound sentences by the use of coordinating
conjunctions.
1. I was annoyed, I kept quiet.
 I was annoyed, still I kept quiet or I was annoyed, but I kept quiet.
2. The wind blew. The rain fell. The lighting flashed.
 The wind blew, the rain fell, and the lighting flashed.
3. We can travel by land. We can travel by water.
 We can travel either by land or by water.
4. He was obstinate. He was punished.
 He was obstinate; therefore he was punished.

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C. Combination of two or more simple sentences into a single complex sentence.
1. Subordinate clause: a noun clause.
a. He may be innocent, I do not know
 I do not know whether he is innocent.
b. She said something I did not hear it
 I did not hear what he said.
2. Subordinate clause: an adjective clause.
a. A farmer had a hen. The hen laid an egg every day. The egg was golden
 A farmer had a hen which laid a golden egg every day.
b. That is a school. I was taught there.
 That is a school where I was taught.
3. Subordinate clause: an adverb clause.
a. It was very stuffy last night. I could not sleep
 I could not sleep last night because it was very stuffy
b. He is superstitious. He is equally wicked.
 He is as superstitious as he wicked.

PRACTICE EXERCISES: 
I. Combine each set of sentences into one simple sentence.
1. He devoted himself to public affairs, he never took a holiday. This continued for thirty
years.
2. The boy was drowning. He shouted for help. A workman heard the boy's shouts. He
plunged into the river, he risked his own life
3 The traveler was toiling slowly over the desert, he suddenly turned round. He heard his
companion's voice. His companion was crying for help.
4. He paid all of his father's debts. This was a very honest proceeding. It was very creditable
to him.
5. The thieves poisoned the dog. He had brought it from England. He had trained it carefully
to protect his property.

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II. Combine each set of simple sentences into one compound sentence.
1. He does well. He is nervous as the start.
2. Bruce was lying on his bed. He looked up to the roof. He saw the spider.
3. He was my school-fellow. He has become a great man. He has grown proud, he forgets
his old friends.
4. I did not see you. I should have spoken to you. I had important news. Delay was
dangerous.
5. I lost my way. I asked the policeman to direct me. He was new to his work. He could not
help me. He called the gentleman passing by to my assistance.
6. Generally your conduct is good. You have been guilty of an act of folly. You will not be
punished. I advise you to be more prudent in future.
III. Combine each set of simple sentences into one complex/compound complex
sentence.
1. The German army was no longer to be considered as invincible. This was apparent to the
entire world.
2. We wished to know. We were going somewhere.
3. Who wrote Shanuntala? Can you tell me that?
4. I am very sorry. I cannot adequately express my sorrow.
5. The theft was committed last night. The man has been caught.
6. The time was six o'clock. The accidents happened then.
7. He has many plans for earning money quickly. All of them have failed.
8. You put it somewhere. Show me the place.
9. I wound my watch this morning. It has stopped.
10. He spoke in a very low voice. Nobody could hear him.
11. He saw me coming. He immediately took his heels.
12. It is very simple. Even the child can understand it.
13. I may help you. I may not help you. You are sure to lose the game.
14. You must hurry. You will miss the train otherwise.
15. He finished the work. Just then the clock struck five.
16. He is a rich man. No other man in our community is equally rich.

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17. It doesn't matter what I say. He always does something different.
18. I will leave the message for you with my secretary. It is possible that I will be out when
you telephone.
19. In view of the drought, there is only enough water for two days. That is our conclusion.
20. You could have the best binoculars in the world. You still wouldn’t be able to see
anything.
21. He has very bad health. He lives very carefully. It is inexplicable to the doctor. The
doctor has attended him for years. He told me this.
22. He wrote a letter. He wrote it for a certain reason to his superior. He told me about this.
23. He played exceedingly well in the match. His team won in consequence. The match was
played yesterday.
24. He forsook his dishonest ways. No one would give him work. His dishonest ways had
brought him to the depths of poverty.

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Alexander, L. G. (1992). Longman English Grammar. England: Longman Group
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Alexander, L.G. (1992). Longman Advanced Grammar: Reference and practice.
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Azar & Schrampfer, B. (1989). Understanding and Using English Grammar (2nd
Edition). Newjersey: Prentice Hall Regents.
Collins Cobuild. (1994). Collins Cobuild English Grammar. London: William
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Fromkin, V., Rodman, R., Collins, P., & Blair, D. (1990). An Introduction to
Language. Holt, Rineart & Winston.
Howard, J. (1999). Analysing English. Pergamon Institute of English.
Huddleston, R. (1993). An introduction to the grammar. Oxford: Oxford University
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Leech, G., & Svartvik, J. (1975). A communicative grammar of English. England:
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O’Grady, W., & Dobrovolsky, M. (1993). Contemporary Linguistics - An
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Roberts, & Burton, N. (1997). Analysing sentences. Longman.
Schmidt, & Hoyt, H. (1995). Advance English Grammar. Newjersey: Prentice Hall
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Swan, M. (1994). Basic English Usage. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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