HEK 215

INTRODUCTION TO
ENGLISH GRAMMAR
INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH GRAMMAR

• Though there is an underlying system of grammar, users of English employ the system in
highly different ways to meet their communication needs in different situations.
• Language has many varieties:
• Registers: varieties of language associated with certain characteristics of a communicative
setting.
• Dialects: varieties in accordance with the identity of a speaker or a writer- their, gender,
socioeconomic class, geographic area, etc.
• Variance in dialects is arbitrary while variance in registers is functional, i.e., grammar variance
according to communicative purpose).
• Standard English (codified in dictionaries)
• Non-standard or Vernacular (usually used in conversation)
STANDARD ENGLISH

• Standard English has the greatest social prestige in a speech

community.
• Using standard English involves making choices of grammar,
vocabulary and spelling.
• No variety of English, including standard English, is inherently
better or worse than another.
TYPES OF GRAMMAR

❑ Prescriptive grammar: a grammar that presents rules about correct and

incorrect stylistic choices.
➢ How language ‘should’ be used.
➢ E.g., *Me and John are going to the store or *John and me are going to the store
John and I are going to the store.

❑ Descriptive grammar: a grammar which describes the grammatical

patterns that speakers and writers follow.
➢ How language is used in real life, not stating the right or wrong forms.
➢ E.g., Corpus Linguistics looks at language, using a descriptive approach.
TYPES OF GRAMMAR (CONT.)

❑ Corpus linguistics
➢ the study of authentic language stored in electronic form,
accessed using corpus software.
✓E.g., BNC
https://www.english-corpora.org/bnc/
WORDS

• Generally speaking, a word is the basic element of language, a

meaningful unit of writing or speech defined in dictionaries.
• There are three kinds of words:
❑ Lexical words:
➢ Nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.
➢ They carry information in a text or speech act.
➢ Sometimes called the open class words as new words can be added to
this class, e.g., blog.
WORDS (CONT.)

❑ Function words:
➢ Prepositions, coordinators, auxiliary verbs, and pronouns.
➢ They do not have clear lexical meanings; they indicate meaning
relationships and grammatical relations.
➢ Sometimes called closed class words whose membership is highly
limited and fixed, i.e., no conjunctions or pronouns have recently been
added to the language.
E.g. only four coordinators in English: and, or, but, and (rarely)
nor.
WORDS (CONT.)

❑ Inserts
➢ Generally used in spoken language.
➢ Inserted freely in a sentence or text.
➢ Often characterized by a break in intonation in speech, or separated by a
punctuation mark in writing.
E.g., Well, thank goodness that’s over!
➢ Mainly simple in form and carry emotional and discoursal senses like
wow and Okay.