COMMONLY ASKED QUESTIONS – SYNTAX 1

1. What is grammar? – Grammar is the systematic study of syntax and morphology.

It is a set of rules regarding those disciplines and a book containing those rules
(pedagogical and reference). It is the system in the mind – we can construct
structures acceptable to others and distinguish between acceptable and
unacceptable patterns; it is also implicit, meaning that it's hard to analyse and
describe the rules, but linguistics tries to make it explicit (to describe it using
labels and terms).

2. Prescriptivist rules:
1. „I“ should not be used in „between you and I“ --> between you and me
2. split infinitives should not be used
3. „only“ should be next to the word which it relates: I only saw Jane. 
incorrect; I saw only Jane.  correct
4. „None“ should never be followed by a plural verb: None was left.  correct
5. Different(ly) should be followed by „from“ and not by „to“ or „than“
6. a sentence should never end with a preposition
7. People should say I shall / You will / He will when they're referring to the
future time, not I will / You shall / He shall
8. „hopefully“ is regarded as wrong when used as a sentence adverbial; He is
coming hopefully. (in a hopeful manner) vs. He is coming, hopefully.
(hopefulness of the speaker; refers to the whole sentence, therefore wrong)
9. Whom should be used in sentences as „That is the man whom you saw.“
10. less-
11. like- it's not supposed to be used as a conjunction (No one reads poetry like
she does.)

3. Grammaticality is a linguistic string that follows grammatical rules, not

necessarily acceptable and understandable. (Colourless green ideas sleep
furiously.) Acceptability is natural, appropriate and meaningful sentence within a
context.

4. „Lexical“ refers to words or dictionaries. A lexeme is a group of words that have

the same basic meaning, belong to the same word class and have similar forms.
5. CALQUE – a word or a phrase borrowed from another language by literal, word-
for-word translation. As a verb „to calque“ means to borrow a word or a phrase
from another language while translating its components so as to create a new
lexeme in the target language. E.g. skyscraper – neboder – небоскрёб

6. A bias toward an abstracted, idealized, non-varying spoken language that is

imposed and maintained by dominant institutions. It has no scientific basis.

7. English does not have little grammar, it just has less morphological cases than, for
example, Latin.

8. Arbitrariness means that the content has no connection with the form of the
word. There's no one-to-one relation between sound and meaning. E.g. knjiga –
book – libri. We know what knjiga means, but we have to google for book and
libri.

9. Zero genitive? It indicates the absence of the „-s“ morpheme (suffix). Examples:
1) plural nouns ending in „-s“: my friends' house

2) classical Greek names ending in „-s“: Achilles' heel

3) English surnames ending in „-s“: Dickens' (s) novel

10. be passive vs. get passive

He was killed.  formal, static, agent included, no involvment of the S
He got killed.  dynamic, informal, agent rarely included, the S is involved in the
result of the action

11. skripta 1. page no 7

12. Valency – the number of grammatical elements with which a particular word
esp. a verb combines in a sentence.

Allomorph – different realization of the same morpheme

Discontinuous VP – split into 2 parts (by the S in Q or adjuncts)
Restrictive apposition – provides information essential to identifying the phrase
in apposition
He was examined by James Kelly the doctor.
13. Specifying vs. classifying genitive.
Specifying functions as a determiner; the determiner in front of the G refers to
the G. With specifying G all the modifiers and determiners before it refer to the
genitive.
Classifying – functions as a modifier, the determiner in front of the G refers to the
head noun; all the modifiers usually refer to the HN.

14. A non-restrictive clause which has as its antecedent not a NP but a whole
clause / sentence; the relativizer is always which. E.g. They flew from Zagreb to
Samobor, which is ridiculous.

15. „I read Warren Pierce this morning.“  it is aspectually complete due to the
usage of the simple aspect; but it's not actually completed bc we don't know if he
read the whole thing or if he just read a little this morning

16. the Irishmen vs. the Americans  both generic and specific reference is possible
with the definite article, BUT: the Americans – the whole nation or a specific
group of people; the Irishmen – nationality nouns ending in „-man“ cannot be
used for generic reference with the def. article; a specific group of ppl

17. Conjunction links 2 clauses and introduces a subordinate clause.

18. John has gone to Italy. – current relevance, unfinished past state; he's still there

John has been to Italy. – experience, past; he was there but isn't anymore,
there's a possibility that he might return
John has been in Italy. – unfinished past state
John has lived in Italy. – past experience

19. What will you be ordering? is more polite than What will you order?  future
progressive is used to avoid unwanted intepretations of Future Simple (instant
decision and volition)