Lesson 1

Introduction
Learning Objective
• Short history of the English language
• Aims of these course
• Terminologies 
 History
 Late Modern
English –
 Middle English Industrial
 Celtic –Roman – the Vikings and revolution &
influence (Pre 5th French (11th to Imperialism (18th
century) 15th century) to Present)

 Old English- Early Modern

Angles (5th to English –
11th century) Shakespeare
(15th to 18th)
 What is Grammar?
Grammar is the study of words and their function.

In its wider sense it may include:

• Phonology -- pronunciation
• Morphology -- inflectional forms
• Syntax -- the relation of words to other words in phrases, clauses, and
sentences
• Semantics -- meanings of words
 What is Syntax?

The arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed

sentences in a language. Simply, it is the grammatical structure of
sentences
Can you fix it?

House in ecstatically, girls the celebrated the.

• The girls in the house celebrated ecstatically.
• Ecstatically, the girls in the house celebrated.
• The girls in the house ecstatically celebrated.
• In the house, the girls celebrated ecstatically.
• Ecstatically, the girls celebrated in the house.
• In house the, the ecstatically girls celebrated.
• House in ecstatically, girls the celebrated the.
 Are Diction and Syntax the same thing?
• NOPE!
• Diction refers to the word choices you make while writing a sentence.
• Syntax refers to the grammatical structure you use while writing a
sentence. 

• Using variations in both syntax and diction is a fundamental tool we

should use to make our written and oral communications interesting.
 Aim of this course?

• The overall aim is to carry out syntactic analysis which is also known
as sentence analysis or structural analysis. 

• Syntactic Analysis involves:

1. Determining the relevant component parts of a sentence
2. Describing these parts grammatically
 Entire
Text/
Morpheme Phrase Sentence Essay

Word Clause Paragraphs

Exceptions?

Visitors must not enter this room

Shoplifters will be prosecuted.

Example

The cat killed the rat and swallowed it.

 The cat killed the rat and swallowed it.

• Two main clauses joined by coordinating conjunction​

• First clause has two phrases and the second has one (only VP)​
• Each phrase is made up of words​
• Each word consists of one or two morphemes. "Cat" is a "one-
morpheme" word, but "killed" has two morphemes: "kill" and
"ed".​
• Morphemes are the indivisible part of a sentence.
More examples

I Know that the snake killed the rat.

Another example

The snake that killed the rat belongs to our neighbours

Do complicated sentences imply better
writing?
• Not necessarily
• Sentences should not be complicated for the sake of being complicated.
• In addition, a lot of the times, beautiful individual sentences do
not translate into "good writing"
• Sentences do not occur in isolation.
• Sentences in a text/discourse/paragraph should follow each other in a
logical order. 
• In other words, sentences written should ideally be related to the
sentences to come. 
How will syntactic analysis help us?
• It will help us improve our writing. Ex: self-taught mechanics
• It will assist in developing our reading skills as it will improve
comprehension. 
• If we can read and write, with a bit of practice our listening will also
improve.
• When the above three skills are on point, speaking automatically
gets better considering we can curb our fear of public speaking.
Practice Time!