Some Grammar Helps!

By:

Mubarak Abdessalami

For new theorists in the field of English language teaching for non-native speakers,Grammar is not actually of great importance for they claim that communicating a message is based on language and meaning not on grammar. In other words, when two people understandeach other, it is thanks to the meaning conveyed in what they say, and that's the mostimportant objective of all. Grammatical mistakes are not spotted or commented while two people speak to each other. They only expect from each other to be readable enough and theynever correct each other. The likely made mistakes are always overlooked as far as themessage is transmitted and decoded easily.This is somehow tolerable but everybody knows that Grammar is the backbone of thelanguage and without it the language becomes distorted, meaningless and sometimes even barren. The extension of the language relies greatly on grammar so as the complexity of theexpanded statement won't be an encumbrance to decoding the message. Hence, Grammar must be respected while speaking or writing. So you make sure your audience or interlocutor will surely understand what you "mean". It is advisable, however, not to rely seriously on thegrammatical form on the expanse of meaning. This will lead to mere noise. What is importantin priority is to know the basics. And the more you are short and simple, the easier you'll beunderstood.The base form of the simple sentence is

ubject

+ V

erb

+ O

bject when it isaffirmative. Shifting to compound and complex statements however, requires a great care vis-à-vis the order of words and the parts of speech used as well as the placement of clauses, punctuation, tenses and so on within the text of your message. As you see, it is not enough toknow a language; it is rather the knowing of the accurate structure of your syntax whichcounts much. This is crucial to make yourself coherent, clear, and understood. The more asentence is grammatically approved, no matter how long and verbose it is, the more easilygraspable it gets. Despite all, Grammar remains an important factor in making sense of your sentences though grammar alone doesn't make sense; it only helps in the making of it. In Brief grammar and meaning are two sides of the same coin. They only complete each other butonce separated they are disabled. Let's try to imagine them "disabled"!

Case I

Imagine a person who learns a lot of vocabulary items and whose lexical repertoire isopulently loaded. This person is able to make as many fabricated sentences as he wishes, yetnobody could understand or even decipher what he says or writes unless the grammaticalform is respected. For example,1. "Under lays old the man that tree a philosopher who is ".This is what I could have imagined myself but the person's sentence may well beworse. Any other person who's got the right syntactic structure of accurate sentences in mindcould rather say,2. "The old man who lays under that tree is a philosopher".1

Therefore, not much cognitive effort is needed to decode the second sentence becausethe message it carries is crystal clear. A lot of words don't make meaning but with a little helpfrom grammar everything will be significant and legible again.

Case II

Now imagine another person who learns the grammatical rules so well that he cansmell the least grammatical mistake in an utterance or a script but whose lexis is very poor (which is logically unsustainable). What do you think his sentences would look like? Let'senvisage one of his:# "The table speaks water".This sentence is a hundred per cent grammatically correct. It respects the normal order of the English formal simple sentence [

subject

(The table) +

verb

(speaks) +

object

(water)] but it means nothing or at least it means something inconceivable to the human brain. Thiscase also is not usual at all; the sentence is almost a wizard incantation: The table cannotspeak except in fairy tales; and water is not to speak. Later on you'll see more examples of such extraordinary "meaningless correct sentences"Both cases above are worse than each other. Therefore normal speakers of anylanguage should be a mixture of the two persons above so as to reach an advanced level of eloquence like poets, writers or orators of high standard. My intent, however, is to try andinvestigate to what extent grammar could be helpful in making sentences extend to developinto texts of certain length without harming the meaning but on the contrary improving itconsiderably.

Step by step Progress

The simple affirmative declarative English sentence is made this way:- John plays tennisHowever the expansion of the sentence is always possible. The sentence goes fromSimpleto compound and then to complex...- John usually plays tennis in the morning .The sentence, any sentence, is endlessly flexible. It takes diverse shapes and meanings.You can generate as many utterances as you wish if you simply master the accurate syntax of the sentence. The intelligible sentence is not accepted as such unless it is grammatically andsemantically accurate. Additionally, the intonation and the tone play an enormous role indisplaying the genuine meaning of the sentence when it is spoken.*/

Look at these ones and see how they grow meaningfully

* Ali goes to school.* Alialwaysgoes to school.* Ali always goes to schoolon foot.2

* Ali always goes to school on footearly.*My neighbour Ali always goes to school on foot early.* etc.The sentence can go expanding like this until it becomes almost a paragraph or often ashort passage in a text. In order that the sentence expands correctly and naturally withoutharming the context and the meaning you should rely on clauses and punctuation to achievethe task properly.Example* Ali,who lives next to me, always goes to school on foot early.The phrase in blue is the clause which is used basically to identify who, among all thestudents named "Ali" you know, does what you said. This clause, in other words, specifies thestudent you are talking about. He is neither "Ali" who lives near the marketplace nor the onewho lives on the other side of the street. There's something here you can do to own morespace for your sentence. Because you are talking about Ali who lives next to you, thereforeyou are talking about Ali

your neighbour

. It is thus that you can change the clause into a phrase "My neighbour ", and gain more room for another clause. See what I mean?!*Ali who lives next to me = My neighbour Ali.* The clause (who lives next to me) could now be replaced by another clause whichmay add more information about "Ali" to make your statement clearer.* Ali's father sells second hand cars. (This piece of information can be used to fill inthe changed clause place).Things will go in this stream of generating more details without harming the meaningand the ultimate objective of the sentence use. But beware this expansion may lead toverbosity and eventually you may lose control of the meaning. Besides this, the listener maywonder if what you say is exactly what you mean and if what you mean is exactly what youwant him to understand. It is quite a complicated system. It is a little bit risky and it needs toomuch care and concentration. The further you go with the extension of your sentence, the leastsure you are that your addressee will get what you mean easily. Generally speaking, the longwinding sentence is not recommended at all. It is always better, as I constantly advise mystudents, to keep it short and simple. No matter what my advice is, the students usually like to be challenging with their long twisting sentences to tell everybody that they master the stuff quite well. No objection!But if things develop to go a bit further than the normal limits everything will collapse. Nowlet's go on with our chosen sentence to see what are the limits?* My neighbour Ali,whose father sells second hand cars, always goes to school onfoot early.* My neighbour Ali, whose father sells second hand cars, always goes to school onfoot earlyso as to arrive on time.* My neighbour Ali, whose father sells second hand cars, always goes to school onfoot early so as to arrive on time because he is a very hardworking student.3