LING1004 notes

The work that language does

- Form
o Imperative (express a command or make a request)
o Interrogative (a question sentence)
o Declarative (statement)
- Content (express the relationships between the people and things)
- Function (e.g. make a request, object to something, ask a question)
- Force (the meaning that the speaker intends the hearer to understand)

Noun
- Definiteness (the determiner or the article)
- Categories (can be replaced with another from the same category)
- Basic types of nouns
o Proper
o Common
 Countable/uncountable
 Abstract / concrete
- Determiner (express distinctions of quality, uniqueness and definiteness)
- Singular/plural
- Agreement
- Gender

Adjectives
- Refer a property of nouns (physical/abstract/real/imaginary)
o Size, shape, qualities perceived by senses, social/personal qualities

Verbs
- Signal events and actions
- Constitute, singly or in a phrase, a minimal predicate in a clause
- Govern number and types of other constituents
o Inflected for tense, aspect, voice or modality OR agreement with other
constituents in person, number of grammatical gender
- Types of verbs
o Main verbs – describing the state of affairs
o Auxiliary verbs – express “possibility” (can), “necessity” (must) and obligation”
(should)
- Roles
o Agent – person or thing doing the event
o Theme – entity that undergoes a change in state or is acted upon by the agent
o Goal – the direction toward which a change in position, possession or state is
moving
o Experiencer – the individual who has a perception, thought or feeling
o Instrument – a role where sth did not actually consciously do sth but is the
causer of the event (e.g. the ball broke the window/the key opened the door)
- Case
 o Nominative – marks subject
o Accusative – marks object
o Dative – indicates the goal of giving
o Instrumental – how some action is being accomplished
o Genitive – expresses possession
o Prepositional – used after certain prepositions
- Tense and Aspect
o Time: meaning of the components
o Tense: form change of the verb and other components
- Aspect (refers to the time and the relationship with the action)
o Perfect aspect – completed but without referencing to when
o Progressive aspect – ongoing and continuing
o Habitual – regularly occurring event
o Prospective – just about to occur
o Stative – a state that is ongoing but not evolving