THE ORGANIZATION OF GRAMMAR When we speak of

THE ORGANIZATION OF GRAMMAR When we speak of the organization of grammar we are going to consider two important concepts: RANK and CLASS

RANK It refers to different levels of organization within grammar Let’s consider the following example: People throw stones. This stretch of language consists of one sentence and three words. Sentence and Word are two ranks of grammatical organization

Let’s compare the following sentence with the previous one: People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. Like the previous sentence (People throw stones), this sentence can be analysed into three units. Two of these units are regarded as expansions of single words in the previous sentence.

(i) People who live in glass houses (expansion of “people”) (ii) shouldn’t throw (expansion of “throw”) (iii) stones These units are called GROUPS

SENTENCE Group (i) W W W People who live in glass houses Group (ii) Group (iii) W W should n’t throw stones

We also need to recognize an additional rank between group and sentence Let’s analyse the following sentence: She’s great fun but her husband is rather dull. The two underlined units are called CLAUSES

CLAUSE COMPLEX Clause 1 Clause 2 Group W W W She ‘s great fun Group W W W but her husband is rather dull

CLASS Terms like noun (N) and verb (V) are names of word classes, what we know as “parts of speech” The words in the sentence People throw stones. can be labeled according to their class N V N People throw stones

The same class labels are also used to name the groups. Thus, People who live in glass houses (NG) shouldn’t throw (VG)

Two other major word classes are: Adjective: Adverb: That’s good! Fortunately, the situation changed for the better The same class labels are used to name the groups: Adj. G: … a letter from a very angry parent Adv. G: It is very deeply rooted in the American psyche.

Some grammars use the term “phrase” instead of “group”, for instance: noun phrase and adverbial phrase but in this course the only kind of phrase which we are going to recognize is the “prepositional phrase”

What’s the difference between GROUP and PHRASE ?

A group can be thought of as an expanded word. A phrase, however, is like a mini clause in the sense that the words which follow the prepositions are not expansions of the prepositions but objects of prepositions

Examples of prepositional phrases: James is a software designer for a computer company. The students in her class are all from Germany. Here’s an e. mail in English. We often go to the mountains.

How many groups can we identify in SFG? FOUR Which are they? n Nominal Group n Verbal Group n Adjectival Group n Adverbial Group How many phrases can we recognize? ONLY ONE The Prepositional Phrase

In today’s class, we are going to focus on Nominal Group only. As we said before, groups are extended words. When analysing a Nominal Group, we may say that it consists of a main noun or “head word” (called the Thing) and has the potential to be expanded by adding information before the head-word and/or after it.

If the information is added before the head-word it’s called “pre-modification”. If the information is added after the head-word it’s called “post-modification”. For example, we could say: They said they could make him a suit. or extend the NG further by pre- and postmodification as in They said they could make him the most beautiful suit, with magic cloth that only clever people could see.

Now, Let’s do some recognition practice on the Nominal Group and the different functions each component or constituent performs. My brother is a History teacher. His daughter’s name is Lara. The student bars and cafés are cheap. That’s one of my sister’s son. There are too many cars on the streets. The center of the house is one very big bubble.

too many Numerative the Deictic streets Thing cars Thing

My Deictic A Deictic His Deictic Lara Thing brother Thing History Classifier daughter’s Deictic teacher Thing name Thing

The student bars and Deictic Classifier Thing That Deitic one of Deictic my sister’s son Deictic Thing cafés Thing

The Deictic center of Deictic one very Numerative Epithet the house Deictic Thing big Epithet bubble Thing