Step 3 – The nature of grammar

Student
Leidy Tatiana Lineros

Group No.
518017_4

Tutor
Viviana Andrea Ospina Giraldo

UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL ABIERTA Y A DISTANCIA – UNAD

Licenciatura en lenguas extranjeras con énfasis en ingles
Introduction To Linguistics
Suesca – C/marca
April 2020
Study questions

2.1. Identify all the parts of speech used in the following sentence (e.g. woman = noun):

“The woman kept a large snake in a cage, but it escaped recently”.

The woman kept a large snake in a cage, but it escaped recently

article noun verb article adjective noun prepositio article noun conjunctio pronoun verb adverb

n n

and respond to following analysis:

According to the author, what is an important wrong linguistic view at establishing a

proper English grammar model in eighteenth-century (this conceptual error is even today

present when considering “a good English use”).

In the prescriptive approach the author shows how it is a mistake to enter an oration with a

preposition and that teachers today very much correct this error.

Another rule of the prescriptive approach is not to divide an infinitive, but in the English where

the infinitive is to and go, it is obviously a rule that does not will be fulfilled, because from the

beginning the infinitive is handled divided.

2.2. What prescriptive rules for the “proper” use of English are not obeyed in the following

sentences and how would they be “corrected”?

(i) The old theory consistently failed to fully explain all the data.

In the this sentence the rule was used: You should not divide an infinitive.

Sentence The old theory consistently failed to fully explain all the data.
incorrect
Correction The old theory could not fully explain all the data.

(ii) I can’t remember the name of the person I gave the book to

In the second sentence the rule was used: you must not finish a sentence with a preposition.

Sentence I can’t remember the name of the person I gave the book to
incorrect
Correction I don't remember the name of the person to whom I gave the book

2.3. Tasks

2.3.1. Another term used in the description of the parts of speech is “determiner.”

What are determiners? How many examples were included in this chapter?

Determinants are a set of words that are used before nouns in English.

There are several types of determinants.

the demonstratives: the, this, these, that, these, those.

the possessives: my, his, her, your, its, our, their, whose.

the articles: the, an, a.

EXAMPLES INCLUDED:

 You can have a banana or an apple.

 we say that the verb loves.

 We have to describe this relationship in terms of natural gender.

 This view of grammar as a set of rules for the “proper”.

  If it is a social expectation that someone who writes well should obey these prescriptive

rules, then social judgments such as “poorly educated” may be made about someone who

does not follow these rules.

2.3.2 In this chapter, we discussed “correction” in grammar. What is hypercorrection?

Hypercorrection is a system application of the second language, this occurs when trying to

remove an original rule from the mother tongue. These are elements shared by the mother tongue

and the second language in search of a phonological control.

2.3.3. The structural analysis of a basic English sentence (NP + V + NP) is often described
as “Subject Verb Object” or SVO. The basic sentence order in a Gaelic sentence (V + NP +
NP) is described as “Verb Subject Object” or VSO.

After looking at the examples below (based on Inoue, 1979), would you describe the basic
sentence order in these Japanese sentences as SVO or VSO or something else?
2.3.3.1 Jakku-ga gakkoo-e ikimasu
Jack school to go
(“Jack goes to school”)
2.3.3.2 Kazuko-ga gakkoo-de eigo-o naratte imasu
Kazuko school at English learn be
(“Kazuko is learning English at school”)
The 2 sentences in their basic order correspond to SOV, since first we find the subject (noun),
followed by the complement of the prayer and finished by the verb that defines the action that is
performing the noun.
S O V
Subject (Noun) Object (Complement) Verb
1 Jack School to Go
2 Kazuko School at english Learn be
2.3.3.3 Divergence in the syntactic patterns of languages is responsible for the patterns of
errors made by English-language learners. Given that English-language learners from
Korea produce sentences such as *I ice-cream like and *I book read, what can you say
about word order in Korean? (Taken from Gordon T. 2012)

we can say that the normal order of Korean words is subject - object - verb, this is used to
facilitate coherence and communication, everything is taught from childhood, by cultural
custom.

4. Based on the second text please answer: In the text we can see that in the history of
linguistics we have two forms to understand grammar: a Prescriptive form and a
Descriptive one; why the second comprehension it is considered a breakthrough in
Linguistics?

Descriptive grammar studies a specific grammatical model, a theoric structure of a given

language. This style of grammar seeks to produce and understand sentences that have never been
heard, and thus become the study of the complexity of human language.
 REFERENCES

 Yule, G. (2010). The Study of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Retrieved from
https://fac.ksu.edu.sa/sites/default/files/cambridge.the_.study_.of_.language.4th.edition.a
pr_.2010.ebook-elohim.pdf
 Bauer, L. (2007). The Linguistic Student’s Handbook. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press. Retrieved from http://bibliotecavirtual.unad.edu.co/login?
url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?
direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=194155&lang=es&site=eds-live&scope=site
