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of each other
our knowledge of the grammatical function of each
Clause
Phrase/Group
Word
Morpheme
structures
Sentences in any language are constructed from a rather
small set of basic structural patterns and through certain
processes involving the expansion or transformation of
these basic patterns.
When we consider sentence types from another
perspective, it can be shown that each of the longer
sentences of a language (and these are in the majority
usually) is structured in the same way as one of a
relatively small number of short sentences which are
impossible to reduce to a short form.
These short sentences have the basic sentence types. There
are different ways of dealing with sentence types.
“ The structure of every sentence is a lesson
in logic”.
John Stuart
Mill
Simple Sentence
Coordinate Sentence
Complex Sentence
A simple sentence contains only one clause
with a single verb group.
• Dora yelled.
• Christ resembled his father.
• Jack and Jill love each other.
• A runner from Ethiopia won the New York
marathon this year.
• The students should have been working on
the term paper.
A coordinate sentence has two clauses
conjoined into one by a coordinating
conjunction. (and, but, or). They hold
equal status.
• Christ resembled his father, but his
brother resembled his mother.
• Mark loves Dora, and she feels it.
A complex sentence is composed of two
clauses with one holding main status
(matrix clause) and the other incorporated
or embedded into it (embedded clause),
which is often introduced by a
subordinator (who, that, though, when,
because, as, since, although)
Mark denied that Dora yelled.
The murderer escaped when the police arrived
at the scene.
The traditional approach to syntactic function
identifies constituents of the sentence, states the
part of speech each word belongs to, describes the
inflexion involved, and explains the relationship
each word related to the others.
Dominance
1. VP node dominates all the other nodes.
2. VP node immediately dominates the nodes
labeled V and PP.
Precedence
1. V node precedes the nodes labeled PP, P, NP,
det, and N as well as in, the and house.
2. V node immediately precedes the PP, P
and in.
Number is a grammatical category for the analysis of
such contrasts as singular and plural of certain word
classes. In English, number is a feature of nouns and
verbs.
Gender demonstrates such contrasts as "masculine,
feminine, and neuter", and "animate: inanimate",
etc. for the analysis of certain word classes. In most
languages, grammatical gender has little to do with
the biological sex. For instance, in French, the moon,
which has nothing to do with the biological sex, is
grammatically feminine.
Inflectional category, basically of nouns, which
typically marks their role in relation to other parts
of the sentence.
The case category is often used in the analysis of