WHAT IS GRAMMAR?

It is a description of the structure of a language and the way in which linguistic

units such as words and phrases are combined to produce sentences in the
language.
Richards, Platt and Platt (1992:161)
Grammatical form and grammatical
function
Grammatical form refers to how a word or phrase is made in
English. For example:The base form of the verb is smoke but,
when the subject is he, she or it, the form of the verb changes
to smokes.
The noun is child but when we make it plural, we change
the form to children.
With an adjective in English such as happy we can change the
form and make it a noun: happiness. There is more on how we
do that in the guide to lexis.
When we change the form of a word in English, the change is
called an inflexion. For example:
smoke → smokes: this is the third-person, -s inflexion.
printed → printed: the verb is inflected to show the past tense
with -ed.
print → printable: the verb is made into an adjective by the
addition of the suffix able.
Inflexion is sometimes spelled inflection, by the way. Both are
correct.
Define inflection: the definition of inflection is the way in which words alter their
endings to show case, number, gender, etc.
In summary, an inflection:
is a change in the base form of a word
affects nouns, adjectives, and verbs
shows different grammatical meaning of words
Grammatical functionrefers to what a word is doing in the
language. For example : In I cut my finger yesterday, the
word cut has the grammatical function of a verb describing an
action.
In I have a bad cut on my finger, the word cut has
the grammatical function of a noun for a thing.
In The English are strange people, the word English is a noun for
the people who live in England.
In She is English, the word English is an adjective describing her
nationality. It is modifying the noun.
It is easy to see that you do not know what a word is doing when you look at it. You
must see or hear it in a context to know what it means and what sort of word it
is. Where, socially, or in a text the word is used is referred to as context. The words
around the word in a text, written or spoken, is referred to as co-text.
What is co-text?

The words surrounding a particular word or passage within

a text that provide context and help to determine meaning. ...
For Example If I were teaching the word goal in context I could
use images (e.g. Nelson Mandela) to evoke the life of a man
who overcame difficulties in order to achieve his goals. .
the term co-text when reading Michael Lewis's The Lexical Approach but later found
out that it was probably first used by Michael Halliday, a systemic functional linguist,
who distinguished between:
co-text – the linguistic environment of a word
context – the non-verbal environment in which a word is used
Put another way, the surrounding situation in which a word is used is
its context whereas the surrounding words is its co-text, the most obvious manifestation
of which is collocations.
Two different sorts of words
There are two kinds of words in English.

Content words
When they are alone, these words still have a meaning. For example:
house, school, beauty, dislike, begin, jump, happy, sad, important, quickly, now,
fortunately
When you see or hear these words you can provide a definition and, often, a
translation into another language.
Grammar or function words
These words mean nothing when they are alone but they make the grammar of the
language work. For example:
in, out, up, the, a, an, this, that, he, she, them, and, when, but
When you see or hear these words you cannot define them or provide a translation
until you know what they are doing in the sentence by looking at the co-text.
 Content words
There are 5 types of content words in English.
 Grammar or Function words
These words mean nothing when they are alone. They must
be part of a sentence for you to understand them. There are
4 different kinds of function words.
Tense and aspect
There are two concepts to be clear about here.

Tense
Tense in languages refers to the time something happens. For example:
I came with him (past time)
I will finish before 6 (future time)
I am smoking too much (present time)
Aspect
Aspect refers to how we see an event in relation to other events. For example:
I have been waiting since 6 o'clock (the perfect aspect: I am talking about
something which started in the past and is still happening now)
She was cycling when the accident happened (the progressive aspect followed
by the simple aspect: I want to be clear that the cycling was a long event but the
accident was short and quick)
Phrases
PhrasesWe have seen that, for example, a noun or a verb can be a single word
with a single grammatical function as in, for example:
He (pronoun) went (verb) home (noun)
Mrs.Smith (noun) cooked (verb) that (determiner) wonderful (adjective) dinner (
noun).
 ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS

1.-The two main types of words in English are:

a.-grammar and structure words
b.-content and lexical words
c.-function and content words
2.-In "He seems very unhappy today", the word 'seem' is
a.-a modal auxiliary verb
b.- a lexical verb
c.-a copular verb
3.-In "Please don't smoke inside" the word 'inside' is
a.- a determiner
b.- an adverb of place
c.-a preposition of place
4.-In "I looked but couldn't find it" the word 'but' is
a.-a coordinating conjunction
b.-a subordinating conjunction
c.-a correlating conjunction

5.-In "Don't open that!", the word 'do' is

a.- a lexical verb
b.-a primary auxiliary verb
c.-a modal auxiliary verb of prohibition
6.-In "Nobody came to the party", the word 'Nobody' is
a.- a pronoun
b.-a demonstrative
c.-a determiner

7.-In "She became angry" we have

a.- a main verb and a predicative adjective
b.- a copular verb and a predicative adjective
c.- a copular verb and an attributive adjective
8.-In "That is a small house", the adjective is
a.- predicative
b.- attributive
c.- dynamic

9.-The head of the prepositional phrase "opposite the car park" is

a.- opposite
b.- car
c.- park
10.-In "I enjoyed the play enormously", the word 'enormously' is
a.- a predicative adjective
b.- an adverb of manner
c.- an adverb of degree

11.-In "He has reluctantly joined the army", the verb phrase is
a.- has reluctantly joined
b.- reluctantly joined
c.- joined
12.-In "That house is too small", the word 'that' is
a.- a quantitative determiner
b.- a demonstrative pronoun
c.- a demonstrative determiner

13.-In "She came home late as she'd missed the bus" the word 'as' is
a.- a subordinating conjunction
b.- a coordinating conjunction
c.- a correlating conjunction
14.-In the expression "Two sugars, please", the noun 'sugar' is
a.- a proper noun
b.- a mass noun
c.- a count noun

15.-The -ed ending to show the past tense in English is a verbal

a.- inflexion
b.- derivation
c.-addition
ANSWER KEY
1.- C 6.- A 11.-A
2.- C 7.- B 12.- C
3.- B 8.- B 13.- A
4.- A 9.- A 14.- C
5.- B 10.- C 15.-A