FONETICA E FONOLOGIA: pag.

MORFOLOGIA: pag. 13

SINTASSI: pag. 21
 LINGUISTICS AND THE COMPONENTS OF LANGUAGE

LINGUISTICS is defined as the study of language systems. For the purposes of study, language is divided into levels or
components.

COMPONENTS

 PHONOLOGY
 MORPHOLOGY → SEMANTICS
 SYNTAX
 PRAGMATICS

INTRODUCTION

Although speech (sebbene la parola) is a continuum sound, it’s possible to break it into different types of sounds, known
as CONSONANTS, VOWELS and GLIDES (or semivowels).

The English Alphabet has 26 letters, but 44 sounds. While standard Italian has 30 sounds (7 vowels + 2 semiconsonants
+ 21 consonants), the English system has more vowel sounds (short and long).

In writing, words are made of LETTERS.

In speech, words are made of SOUNDS.
LETTERS are not always the same as SOUNDS.

Key Car  The sound is the same, but the letters are different

↕ phonemic symbols

/ki:/ /ka:/

TWO KINDS OF SOUNDS

- CONSONANT SOUNDS (C)

- VOWEL SOUNDS (V)

Usually, in a word the number of sounds is not the same as the number of letters.
EXAMPLE “duck” CVC /dʌk/

WORDS C and V SOUNDS PHONEMIC SYMBOLS

Night CVC /naɪt/
Dog CVC /dɒɡ/
Rabbit CVCVC /ˈræb·ɪt/
Frog CCVC /frɒɡ/
Gorilla CVCVCV /ɡəˈrɪl·ə/
Snake CCVC /sneɪk/
Bee CV /bi:/

PHONETICS
PHONETICS is the study of the way humans make, transmit and receive speech sounds. It’s divided into:

- ARTICULATORY PHONETICS: the study of the way the vocal organs are used to produce speech sounds
- ACOUSTIC PHONETICS: the study of the physical properties of speech sounds
- AUDITORY PHONETICS: the study of the way people perceives speech sounds

PHONOLOGY

PHONOLOGY is the study of the sound systems of languages, and of the general properties displayed by these
systems.

By contrast with phonetics, which studies ALL possible sounds that the human vocal apparatus can make, phonology
studies ONLY those contrasts in sound ( the PHONEMES) which make differences of meaning within language.

PHONEME

The minimal unit of phonology is the PHONEME.

Phonemes are abstract concepts, and every language has its own phoneme inventory.
An essential property of a phoneme is that it functions contrastively. We know there are two phonemes /f/ and /v/ in
English because they are the only basis of the contrast in meaning between the words fat and vat, or fine and vine.

This contrastive property is the basic operational test for determining the phonemes that exist in a language. If we
substitute one sound for another in a word and there is a change of meaning, then the two sounds represent different
phonemes.

With the exception of the indefinite article “a” [ǝ] and the present indicative plural of the verb “to be”  “are” [ɑːr], discrete
units of sounds, such as [b] or [u], do not have any intrinsic meaning.

PHONEMES VS GRAPHEMES

Phonemes in English DO NOT correspond to letters in the written language.

A letter of the alphabet corresponds to the GRAPHEMES.

A phoneme is a distinctive sound in a language capable of creating a distinction in meaning between two words.

In many cases, phonemes share the same mark or symbol (ex: <t> and /t/). In other cases, there is no correspondence
(ex: <c> represents the phoneme /k/ in cut  [kʌt] and the phonemes /s/ in nice  [naɪs];
<o> represents the phoneme /ʌ/ in come  [kʌm]).

MINIMAL PAIRS

A MINIMAL PAIR is a set of different words consisting of all the same sounds except for one.

If we replace the phoneme /d/ in “dog” [dɒɡ] with the phoneme /l/, we obtain the word “log” [lɒg].

We could set up a phonetic environment (or a sequence of sounds) such as an environment containing the sound
sequence /æt/. If we then establish a blank slot preceding this sequence, /_ æt/, and substitute different consonants in
this slot, we can see if we get different words. If we do, then each of these consonants is a phoneme.

/_æt/  pat, bat, sat, mat, gnat, fat, that, vat, cat

We can conclude that /p/, /b/, /s/, /m/, /n/, /f/, /ð/, /v/, and /k/ are all phonemes. Thus, “bat” and “cat”, for example, form a
minimal pair, as do “gnat” and “vat”.

This same concept of a minimal pair holds true for vowels as well.

Consider, for example, a phonetic environment such as /p_t/.

Substituting different vowels in the empty slot, we can generate numerous minimal pairs.

/p_t/  pit, peat, pate, pot, pout, put, putt, pat, pet

We can conclude that /ɪ/, /i/, /eɪ/, /ɒ/, /aʊ/, /ʊ/, /ʌ/, /æ/, and /ɛ/ are all distinct phonemes. Thus “pot” and “put” form a
minimal pair, as do “pat” and “pet”.

MINIMAL SET

When a group of words can be differentiated, each one from the others, by changing one phoneme (always in the same
position in the word), then we have a MINIMAL SET.

For example, one minimal set based on the vowel phonemes of English could include feat, fit, fat, fate, fought, foot, and
another minimal set based on consonant phonemes could have big, pig, rig, fig, dig, wig.

HOMOPHONES AND HOMOGRAPHS

HOMOPHONES  words which are pronounced the same but spelled differently, such as bear/bare [beǝ], meat/meet
[mit], or maid/made [meɪd].

HOMOGRAPHS  words that are spelled the same but pronounced differently, for example: lead [li:d] (condurre) e lead
[led] (piombo); tear [tɪǝ] (lacrima) and tear [teǝ] (strappare).

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION

Note that conventionally phoneme symbols (abstract segments) are enclosed within slashes  /…/

Whereas the phonetic transcription (physically produced segment) of words is enclosed within square brackets  […]
 BASIC TERMINOLOGY

GRAPHEMES  alphabetic signs which are independent from sound, enclosed within guillemets (or angle quotes): < >

PHONES  sounds that are independent from their role in the phonological system of a given language, enclosed within
square brackets: [ ]

PHONEMES  units capable of constituting meaningful oppositions in a given language system, enclosed within
slashes: / /

“SOUND AND LETTERS DISAGREE”

Since the writing system of English does not provide us with a one-to-one correspondence between oral sound and
written symbol, we need a tool for representing human sounds in a regular way when studying phonology.

The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) has been invented for this purpose. In it, each written symbol represents
one, and only one, speech sound, while each speech sound is represented by one, and only one, written symbol.

CONSONANTS

A CONSONANT is defined as a speech sound which is articulated with some kind of stricture, or closure, of the air
stream.

Consonants are classified according to four features.

1. The state or position of the glottis: in vibration (voiced) or open (voiceless);

2. The state of the velum: lowered (nasal) or raised (oral);
3. The place of articulation: the location where the stricture or place of maximum interference occurs, and what
articulators are involved;
4. The manner of articulation: the amount of stricture, whether it is complete, partial (called “close approximation”),
or relatively open (“open approximation”)

1. POSITION: VOICED AND VOICELESS CONSONANTS

As the air is pushed out by the lungs up through the trachea (or windpipe) to the larynx, it meets the vocal folds (or vocal
cords) which take two basic positions:

- When the vocal folds are spread apart, the air from the lungs passes between them unimpeded. Sounds
produced in this way are described as voiceless.
- When the vocal folds are drawn together, the air from the lungs repeatedly pushes them apart as it passes
through, creating a vibration effect. Sounds produced in this way are described as voiced.

VOICELESS CONSONANTS  no vibration of the vocal cords.

VOICED CONSONANTS  vibration of the vocal cords.

 VOICELESS CONSONANT PHONEMES are: /p/ as in pea; /t/ as in tea; /k/ as in coffee; /f/ as in fat; /θ/ as in
thin; /s/ as in see, /ʃ/ as in she; /h/ as in he.
 VOICED CONSONANT PHONEMES are: /b/ as in ball; /d/ as in dog, /dʒ/ as in joke; /g/ as in good; /v/ as in
van; /ð/ as in that; /z/ as in zoo; /m/ as in mouth; /ə/ as in no; /ŋ/ as in thing; /l/ as in love; /r/ as in right; /w/ as in
why; /j/ as in you.

2. ORAL OR NASAL CONSONANTS

 ORAL  the air escapes through the mouth

 NASAL  the air escapes through the nose
Almost all consonants are oral, only 3 are nasal: [m], [n], [ƞ]

3. PLACE OF ARTICULATION
It is important to know our speech apparatus in order to understand and recognise the individual speech sounds that we
produce.

The place of articulation indicates the location inside the mouth where the constriction of the air passing through the oral
cavity takes place.

The tongue, lips, teeth, and various regions of the mouth constitute places of articulation in the oral cavity.
BILABIAL, LABIODENTAL, DENTAL OR INTERDENTAL, ALVEOLAR, PALATO-ALVEOLAR, PALATAL, VELAR,
GLOTTAL.

4. MANNER OF ARTICULATION
It refers to the way the sounds are articulated or pronounced.

- STOP or PLOSIVE (occlusiva)

- FRICATIVE (fricative)
- AFFRICATE (affricate)
- GLIDE (senza frizione)
- NASAL (nasale)
- LATERAL (laterale)
- LIQUID (liquida)

APPROXIMANT (in English lateral, glide and liquid sounds are approximants, as they don’t involve friction in any part of
the vocal tract).

ALLOPHONES

In natural speech production sounds occur in groups in fast succession so individual sounds are influenced by the
sounds around them.

If /t/ occurs before a vowel it is aspirated more than if it occurs before a /r/. Ex: say: table and train.

In some varieties of English (American English, Cockney) [t] can have up to 6 different realisations, these are called
phonetic variants or allophones.

In transcription they are represented by diacritic symbols added to the phonemic ones.
They do not involve any change of meaning but differences in accents.

PRONUNCIATION OF -ED

/d/ After vowels and voiced consonants (except /d/):

/b/, /v/, /z/, /ʤ/, /ō/, /g/, /m/, /n/, /ƞ/, /l/
tried, lived, used, closed, enjoyed, listened
/t/ After unvoiced consonants (except /t/):
/Ɵ/, /p/, /f/, /s/, /ʃ/, /ʧ/, /k/
helped, laughed, missed, washed, watched, looked
/id/ After /d/ and /t/:
ended, started, added, depended, wanted

FORTIS VS LENIS

 Voiceless plosive consonants /p/ /t/ /k/ are also referred to as fortis (forti)
 Voiced plosive consonants /b/ /d/ /g/ are also referred to as lenis (deboli)

This distinction has a repercussion on the vowels, which are longer with lenis consonants

ARTICLE THE
The definite article is pronounced /ōǝ/ before consonants (the dog), but is pronounced /ōi/ before a vowel (the apple).

/Ɵ/ /ō/ - sounds of <thing> <this>  /Ɵɪƞ/ /ōɪs/

/ʃ/ /ʒ/ - sounds of <ship> <measure>  /ʃɪp/ /meʒǝ/ (the sound /ʒ/ is rarely at the beginning of a word)

/ʧ/ /ʤ/ - sounds of <choose> <judge>  /ʧu:z/ /ʤʌʤ/

 THE CONSONANT SOUND /h/

The sound /h/ only happens before a vowel sound. /h/ has always the quality of the vowel it precedes.

Phonetically /h/ is a voiceless vowel with the quality of the voiced vowel that follows

Phonologically /h/ is a consonant. It is usually found before vowels

Frequently Rarely Notes

/h/ H (hill) WH (who) H is often silent
  RULES FOR /ƞ/

/ƞ/ never occurs in initial position.

Medially /ƞ/ occurs quite frequently but there is in the BBC accent a rather complex rule. Some words with orthographic
<ng> in the middle will have a pronunciation containing /ƞg/ and others will have /ƞ/ without /g/

A B

Finger /fɪƞgǝ/ Singer /sɪƞǝ/

Anger /æƞgǝ/ Hanger /hæƞǝ/

*The words in column B can be divided into two morphemes /g/

Words ending orthographically in -ng always have an ending in /ƞ/ (ex: sing - /sɪƞ/)

Exception is the comparative and the superlative which have a /g/ (ex: longer - /lɒŋgǝ/)

It never occurs after a diphthong or long vowel.

Only five vowels ever found preceding this consonant: /ɪ/ /e/ /æ/ /ʌ/ /ɒ/

VOWELS

To adequately define a VOWEL, we need to look at it in articulatory, acoustic, and functional terms:

- In articulatory terms, vowels are sounds articulated with no obstruction of the air stream, that is, with open
articulation. There is no central closure of the air stream, though the tongue may come into contact with the teet
on the sides.
- In acoustic terms, vowels are sounds that vary in pitch, which is determined by the quality of the sound wave
and refers to the degree of highness or lowness of a tone. Pitch is modified by changing the shape of the
resonating chamber (the oral and, sometimes, the nasal tracts) by changing the position and shape of tongue
and lips and by lowering or raising the velum.
- In functional terms, vowels constitute the nucleus, or necessary, part of the syllable.

CLASSIFICATION OF ENGLISH VOWELS

If for consonants, we take into consideration four criteria: voicing, orality/nasality, place and manner of articulation, for
vowels, we need to consider only one criterion: the place of articulation.

All vowels are voiced and oral.

In terms of their manner of articulation, all vowels are produced with open approximation.

Instead of determining which articulators are used and where stricture occurs, we determine where the highest point of
the tongue is during the production of the vowel sound.

The position of the tongue alters the quality of the sound produced.

Another determining factor is the shape of the lips, which can be more or less spread (smiling) or more or less rounded
(kissing).

ENGLISH VOWEL SOUNDS

To describe vowel sounds, we consider the way in which the tongue influences the shape through which the airflow must
pass.

To talk about a place of articulation, we think of the space inside the mouth as having a front versus a back and a high
versus a low area.

Thus, in the pronunciation of heat and hit, we talk about “high, front” vowels because the sound is made with the front
part of the tongue in a raised position.

In contrast, the vowel sound in hat is produced with the tongue in a lower position and the sound in hot can be described
as a “low, back” vowel.
 FRONT VOWELS:

[i] bead, beef, key, me

[ɪ] bid, myth, women
[Ɛ] bed, dead, said
[æ] bad, laugh, wrap

CENTRAL VOWELS:

[ǝ] above, oven, support

[ʌ] butt, blood, dove, tough

BACK VOWELS:

[u] boo, move, two, you

[ʊ] book, could, put
[ɔ] born, caught, fall, raw
[ɑ] Bob, cot, swan

SEGMENTAL VS SUPRASEGMENTAL LEVEL

So far, we have mainly been looking at features concerning individual sounds or phonemes ( consonants, vowels and
diphthongs). These are part of the segmental level, since each phoneme is usually assumed to be one segment of
speech.

Once we move on to look at larger chunks of speech that span a number of segments, such as whole words or phrases,
etc., we are dealing with features on the suprasegmental level.

This deals with features of pronunciation beyond the phoneme level, which determine the prosody of spoken language
( stress, intonation, rhythm, pitch and connected speech).

PROSODY

Features of pronunciation beyond the phoneme level are called suprasegmental features or prosody.

Each language has phonotactic constraints. These are restrictions to which sounds can occur together (number of
consonant sounds in a cluster, number of vowels, etc.).

Phonotactic constraints – as permitted arrangements of sounds – vary from one language to another.

THE SYLLABLE

Phonological unit made up of one or more phonemes. A syllable must contain a vowel or vowel-like sound, including
diphthongs. The most common type of syllable in language also has a consonant (C) before the vowel (V) and is typically
represented as CV.

Technically, the basic elements of the syllable are the onset (one or more consonants) followed by the rhyme (or rime)
which consists of a vowel, which is treated as the nucleus, plus any following consonant(s), described as the coda.

 Minimum syllable is made up of one vowel (ex: the verb are [ɑ:] or the conjunction or [ɔ:]) V
 Open syllables: tea [ti:], zoo [zu:] (onset and nucleus, but no coda) CV
 Closed syllables: all [ɔ:l], arm [ɑ:m] (nucleus + coda or onset + nucleus + coda) VC or CVC. The most
common syllable in English is CVC (did, bag, look).

STRESS

STRESS is the relative prominence given to a syllable. In phonetic transcription it is indicated by a vertical line (stress
mark) preceding the stressed syllable. Money  [‘mʌni]

WORD STRESS

Words with more than one syllable carry an accent or stress on one syllable.

Diacritic indicate suprasegmental features:

[‘] indicates main stress; protest (n)  /’prǝʊtest/ [,] secondary stress; to protest (v)  /prǝ’test/
 MAIN TYPE OF STRESS PATTERNS

2-syllable words with primary stress on the first syllable:

type strong + weak  money [‘mʌni], river [‘rɪvǝ]

2-syllable words with primary stress on the first syllable and a full vowel on the second:
type strong + strong  background [‘bækgraʊnd], pillow [‘pɪlǝʊ]

2-syllable words with primary stress on the second syllable:

type weak + strong  result [rɪ’zʌlt], connect [kǝ’nekt]

2-syllable words with a full vowel on the first syllable and primary stress on the second syllable:
type strong + strong  although [ɔ:l’ōǝʊ], myself [maɪ’self]

3-syllable words with primary stress on the first syllable:

type strong + weak + weak  family [‘fæmǝli], manager [‘mænɪdʒǝ]

3-syllable words with primary stress on the first syllable and a full vowel on the third syllable:
type strong + weak + strong  telephone [‘telɪfǝʊn], summertime [‘sʌmǝtǝɪm]

3-syllable words with primary stress on the first syllable, and a full vowel on the second:
type strong + strong + weak  newspaper [ˈnjuːzpeɪpə], grandmother [ˈɡrænmʌðə]

3-syllable words with primary stress on the second syllable:

type weak + strong + weak  remember [rɪˈmembə], agreement [əˈɡriːmənt]

3-syllable words with full vowel on the first syllable and primary stress on the second syllable:
type strong + strong + weak  sensation [senˈseɪʃn], transparent [trænsˈpærənt]

3-syllable words with a full vowel on the first syllable and primary stress on the third syllable:
type strong + weak + strong  afternoon [ˌɑːftəˈnuːn], understand [ˌʌndəˈstænd]

SOME TENDENCIES OF WORD STRESS

WORD TYPE OF WORD TENDENCY EXCEPTION

Apple Two-syllable nouns and Stress on the first syllable: Hotel
table adjectives lagoon
happy person minute apple
breakfast
Suspect Words which can be used The noun has stress on the Respect
import as both nouns and verbs first syllable: witness
insult “You are the suspect”

The verb has stress on the

second syllable:
“I suspect you”
Hairbrush Compound nouns Fairly equally balanced but
football with stronger stress on the
first part:
hairbrush

3-syllable words:
the stress is usually on 1st syllable
ex: int-eres-ting; beau-ti-ful; a-ny-one
but there are many words where the stress is not on the 1 st syllable

4-or more-syllable words:

the stress is usually in the middle (not on the first nor on the last)

VOCALIC LENGTH

Vowel length is a characteristic of stressed syllables

Unstressed syllables have shorter vowels (often reduced to /ə/)

In connected speech we focus on stressed syllables rushing the less important ones

In polysyllabic words with /r/ in unstressed the syllable preceding /r/ disappears /ˈdɪkʃənəri/  /ˈdɪkʃənri/
 STRESS-TIMED VS SYLLABLE-TIMED LANGUAGES

Different languages fit their syllables into the beat in different ways

In a syllable-timed language, every syllable is perceived as taking up roughly the same amount of time, though the
absolute length of time depends on the prosody. These languages tend to give syllables approximately equal
prominence and generally lack reduced vowels (e.g., Icelandic, Cantonese Chinese, Georgian, French, Welsh, Italian,
Turkish and Spanish)

In other languages, known as stress-timed languages, the length of the syllables varies, and so the time of an
utterance depends on the number of stressed syllables, rather than the total number

English is a stress-timed language. The interval between one strong beat and the next is said to be isochronous (that is,
each chunk is given, approximately equal amount of time)

- Rhythm has important consequences on the incidence of weak sounds, which typically occur in unstressed
syllables
- Tonicity is the assignment of rhythmic prominence
- Words stress versus sentence stress

STRONG AND WEAK FORMS

- Unstressed words tend to be function words

- Content words contain a stressed syllable

As weak syllables in words are reduced to the schwa, vowels in function words are reduced to a neutral sound (strong 
weak form)

SENTENCE STRESS

As in polysyllabic words we find primary and secondary stress, in sentences some words have stronger stress than
others (usually those providing new or important information)

Most sentences have two basic types of word:

- Content words: are the key words of a

sentence. They are the important words that
carry the meaning or sense – the real content
- Structure/function words: are not very
important. They are small, simple words that
make the sentence correct grammatically. They
give the sentence its correct form – its structure.

If you remove the structure words from

a sentence, you will probably still
understand the sentence. If you
remove the content words from a
sentence, you will not understand the
sentence. The sentence has no sense
or meaning.

“Will you sell my car because I’ve gone

to France?”
CONTENT WORDS: sell – car – gone
– France
STRUCTURE/FUNCTION WORDS:
will you – my – because I’ve – to

CONTRASTIVE STRESS

Sometimes we emphasise one word rather than another in order to make intended meaning clear.

a. Mary thinks that reading is difficult

b. Mary thinks THAT reading is difficult
In (a), that is a function word which introduces a noun clause (Mary thinks reading is difficult); that is not stressed and
actually the vowel is pronounced as a schwa (an unstressed vowel)

In (b), that is a determiner which refers to a particular reading (that reading, not this one), a specific text, and therefore is
stressed, and the vowel is pronounced fully (as in bat). Thus, the content which the word is intended to convey in the
utterance within a given context will determine whether or not it is stressed.

PITCH AND INTONATION

▪ Intonation is the variation of voice pitch in connected speech.

▪ Tonality refers to the segmentation of longer stretches of connected speech into shorter meaningful chunks

▪ An intonation phrase is an utterance with its intonation pattern (tone) and a nucleus (punctuation roughly reflects the
segmentation in chunks).

▪ The nucleus is the syllable receiving the greatest prominence and carrying intonation movement (usually the last
prominent lexical word in an intonation phrase)

Pitch and intonation may be difficult to acquire in a foreign language

RHYTHM AND INTONATION

 Rhythm is about how we use a combination of stressed and unstressed words in sentences
 Intonation is the way the pitch of a speaker’s voice goes up or down as they speak

RHYTHM
English tends to organise an utterance around stressed syllables according to a regular rhythm. One implication of this is
that the unstressed syllables between stressed syllables tend to contract or expand to fill the time available.

Here are some examples of phrases with zero, one, two, or three syllables between the stressed syllables (in bold)

1. A good boy (zero syllables)

2. As good as gold (one syllable)
3. As quick as a flash (two syllables)
4. As nutty as a fruit cake (three syllables)

INTONATION
Intonation refers to the way we use the pitch of our voice to express particular meanings and attitudes. It could be
described as “the music of speech”.

A change of variation in this music (or pitch) can affect the meaning of what we say. In fact, in English, intonation has two
main functions: grammatical and attitudinal.

In using intonation, we create contours or patterns that allow us to make clear what we want our listeners to focus on; we
also use intonation to convey our communicative function. Consider the difference between:

- You’re going. (statement) (there’s no two ways about it!)

- You’re going? (question) (what?? So soon??)

The rise and fall of pitch throughout is called its intonation contour. We can interpret meaning according to the final
intonation contour of the clause.

Intonation plays an important role in grammar and discourse, influencing the meaning of large stretches of speech.

A tone may be rising or falling, or a combination of these

 ↗ rising  questions and incomplete clauses (was she glad to see him?)
 ↘ falling  statements (I live in Moscow)
 ↘ ↗ fall - rise  uncertainty and doubt (you may be right)
 ↗ ↘ rise - fall  surprise and admiration, or strong emotions (it’s impossible!)

Main functions of intonation are:

 Attitudinal (feeling and attitudes; other prosodic and paralinguistic features)

 Grammatical (segmentation in meaningful units)
I ↘ ‘fed her / ↗ ‘dog ‘biscuits
I ‘fed her ↗ ‘dog / ↘ ‘biscuits
 Accentual (stress on nucleus indicating focus of information)
  Discourse (connected to accentual): end-focus for new information. Foregrounding can take place also trough
intonation

TONES
- He’s passed his exam – a (pure) statement  Falling
- He’s passed his exam? – a question  Rising
- He’s passed his exam? – a question as an expression of surprise / it is unbelievable that he has passed his
exam because he had not been studying a lot  Rise – Fall
- He’s passed his exam – a statement suggesting that he must know something, he may not be so lazy and now
he deserves to take a rest after all  Fall – Rise

ATTITUDINAL FUNCTION

- Expresses the speaker’s attitudes and emotions to the topic or as a response to the listener’s statement
(boredom, gratitude, scepticism, arrogance etc.)
- Adds additional meaning to the semantics of the statement
- We do this by tone. The choice of tone is context-dependent
- Voice quality, face and body expressions, loudness, speed contribute to this

GRAMMATICAL FUNCTION

It is related to the segmentation of speech into meaningful units:

- My daughter who lives in Oxford | is a doctor (defining relative clause)

- My daughter | who lives in Oxford | is a doctor (not defining relative clause)

- Those who sold quickly | made a profit

- Those who sold | quickly made a profit

- She dressed | and fed the baby

- She dressed and fed the baby

ACCENTUAL FUNCTION

It involves the placement of the stress on the nucleus, thus indicating where the focus of the information is centred.

Nuclear stress generally falls on the last lexical item of intonation

DISCOURSIVE FUNCTION

- It distinguishes between old and new information in an utterance

- It directs the listener’s attention to the salient points of the message, the focus of the information
- We do this by tonicity. The exact speaker’s meaning is achieved by appropriate nucleus placement and choice
of tone
- Intonation serves the purpose of foregrounding relevant information and guiding the listener to understand what
the speaker means

CONNECTED SPEECH

In spoken language, phonetic variability is caused by the influence of the phonetic environment, rhythm and the speed of
the utterance

Our talk is fast and spontaneous, and it requires our articulators to move from one sound to the next without stopping.
The process of making one sound almost at the same time as the next sound is called coarticulation

There are two well-known coarticulation effects, described as assimilation and elision

5 aspects of connected speech: similitude, linking (or catenation), assimilation, elision and vowel reduction and
weak forms

SIMILITUDE
Accommodation in the articulation of a sound segment to an adjacent segment, so that they become similar

- Eighth [eɪtƟ]
[t] is dental (not alveolar) because of its proximity to dental [Ɵ]
- Can’t (BrE) [kɑ:nt]; (AmE) [kænt]
the vowels are nasalized because of the presence of nasal [n]
LINKING
Linking (or catenation): ending consonant sound carried over to initial vowel sound.

- R-linking: BrE is a non-rhotic variety, the sound [r] is pronounced only when it appears between two vowel
sounds or before a vowel sound.
- Sometimes the [r] sound functions as a bridge between the two words (for example [fɔ:’ɪg’zɑ:mpl])
- How about [haʊ ǝ’baʊt]
- Friday evening [‘fraɪdeɪ ‘i:vnɪƞ]
- Other linking sounds:
/w/ : “have you ever” /juwevǝ/
/j/ : “yes I am” /aɪjæm/
/ƞ/ : “thinking of” /Ɵɪƞkɪƞgǝv/

ASSIMILATION
Assimilation (one sound similar to the following one). It may involve:

- Place of articulation
- Manner of articulation (progressive and only in casual speech)
- Energy of articulation (voicing)

The most common assimilation form involves the movement of place of articulation of the alveolar stops /t/, /d/ and /n/ to
a position closer to that of the following sound.

For instance, in the phrase ten cars, the /n/ will usually be articulated in a velar position, /’teƞ ‘kɑ:z/ so that the organs of
speech are ready to produce the following velar sound /k/.

Similarly, in ten boys the /n/ will be produced in a bilabial position, /’tem ‘bɔɪz/ to prepare for the articulation of the bilabial
/b/.

Assimilation can be regressive or progressive

- Progressive: the precedent sound modifies the successive.

ex: read these /rɪ:d’dɪ:z/ instead of /rɪ:d/ /ōɪ:z/
- Regressive: the opposite.
ex: move to /mu:ftǝ/ instead of /mu:vtǝ/, the consonant sound /v/ remains both fricative and labiodental; due to
assimilation with the voiceless alveolar plosive /t/ it goes from being voiced to being voiceless

Assimilation, which involves the replacement of a sound with another owing to the influence of an adjacent one, is of two
types:

- Historical: raspberry from [‘rɑsp,beri] to [‘rɑ:zbǝri]

sugar from [‘sjʊgǝ] to [‘ʃʊgǝ]
handkerchief from [‘hænd,kɜʧɪf] to [‘hæƞkǝʧɪf]

- Contextual: this shop from [ōɪs ʃɒp] to [ōɪʃ ʃɒp]

bad boys from [bæd bɔɪz] to [bæb bɔɪz]
shut your eyes from [ʃʌt jɔ:’ aɪz] to [ʃʌt ʃǝ’ aɪz]

EXAMPLE

/t/ > /p/ before /m/ /b/ or /p/

basket maker, mixed bag, cigarette paper

/d/ > /b/ before /m/ /b/ or /p/

bad pain, blood bank, good morning

/n/ > /m/ before /m/ /b/ or /p/

iron man, American plan, brown bear

/t/ > /k/ before /k/ /g/

short cut, credit card, that cake

/d/ > /g/ before /k/ /g/

bad girl, closed game, hard copy

/s/ > /ʃ/ before /ʃ/ /j/

bus shelter, nice shoes, nice yacht
COALESCENCE
Coalescence is a particular case of assimilation whereby to sounds are coalesce (i.e., merge)

It interests the sounds /t/ and /d/ followed by /j/. The results are /ʧ/ and /ʤ/ respectively

It is complete in words such as righteous /’raiʧǝs/ from /rait/ and is frequent in expressions containing you or your

/t+j/ = /ʧ/ what you will  /waʧu’wil/

/d+j/ = /ʤ/ would you mind  /wʊʤ u’maind/

The phenomenon is also called “yod coalescence”

ELISION
Elision: the dropping of a sound which once existed (historical elision) or which exists in slow speech (contextual elision)

Total elision of one or more sounds (in adjusting to the next sound) either within or between words
correct /krekt/ - just before /ʤʌsbɪfɔ:r/

In English the alveolar plosives /t/ and /d/ in final position are usually elided (in the first part of compounds or in some
expressions)
- didn’t /didn/ (followed by another word)
- postman /pǝʊsmǝn/
- next question /nekskwesʧǝn/

In Italian the elision is usually marked by the apostrophe

VOWEL REDUCTION AND WEAK FORMS

- Remarkable differences between the pronunciation of words in isolation and in connected speech
- The reduction of strong, longer vowels and diphthongs, when in a weak, unstressed position, to the neutral
schwa sound [ǝ] or to the short vowels [ɪ, i] and [ʊ, u]

EXAMPLES

Auxiliaries (are, have), modals (can, must), articles (a, the), conjunctions (and, but), personal pronouns (you, he) and
prepositions (to, from)

MORPHOLOGY
Morphology is the area of linguistics that deals with the structure or form of words

Morphology is a subdivision of grammar;

- deals with the internal structure of words: many words can be subdivided into smaller meaningful units called
morphemes
- has two main subdivisions: inflection and derivation

- Inflectional morphology deals with patterns of word structure that are determined by the role of words in
sentences (the identity of the word does not change)
- Derivational morphology deals with the creation of new words with different meaning, e.g. the adverb quickly
from the adjective quick (the identity of the word changes)

Morphology is the area of grammar concerned with the structure of words and with relationships between words,
involving the morphemes that compose them.

A key concept in morphology is that of the morpheme

Morphemes have two main characteristics:

- must be identifiable from one word to another in a consistent fashion (i.e., in similar positions);
- must also contribute in some way to the meaning of the whole word

These two conditions are both necessary because elements may be recognisable from one word to another, but not
contribute to the meaning in any way

For example, -ish /ɪʃ/ is present in all the following words, but it does not contribute to the meaning, and therefore cannot
be considered a morpheme
- wish /wɪʃ/ - fish /fɪʃ/

Human beings are able to produce an infinite number of words, ranging from super-mega to podcast, from re-icing to
recessionwear, from reupload to Anglocentris…
 MORPHOLOGY – BASIC TERMINOLOGY

Morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of language (any part of a word that cannot be broken down further into
smaller meaningful parts)
Free morpheme is a morpheme which can stand alone or act as a base. They can be functional or lexical
Bound morpheme is a morpheme that cannot stand alone as an independent word, bust must be attached to another
morpheme/word
Base is an element (free or bound, root morpheme or complex word) to which additional morphemes are added. Also
called a stem. A base can consist of a single root morpheme or can also contain more than one morpheme
Root is a (usually free) morpheme around which words can be built up through the addition of affixes. The root is what
you find when you strip all other morphemes off of a complex word
Affix is a bound morpheme which attaches to a base (root or stem)
Prefixes attach to the front of a base
Suffixes attach to the end of a bae
Infixes are inserted inside a root

MORPHEME

A morpheme has the following characteristics:

- it is internally indivisible: it cannot be further subdivided or analysed into smaller meaningful units;
- it has internal stability since nothing can be interposed in a morpheme;
- it is externally transportable;
- it has positional mobility or free distribution, occurring in various contexts

Morphemes are represented within curly braces { }

For example, the word headphones consists of the three morphemes head, phone, and -s;
the word ringleader consists of three morphemes, ring, lead, and -er

Some of these morphemes may stand alone as independent words (head, phone, ring, lead), other must always be
attached to some other morpheme (-er, -s)

A word may consist of one or more morphemes, which shall, not be confused with its prosodic elements, i.e. its syllables
ex: the noun moralize contains the three syllables mo-, ra-, lize, but only two morphemes – namely moral and -ize

Compare the syllables and the morphemes: contrary to the syllables, each morpheme in moralize has a stable
“meaning”, which remains the same even if the respective morphemes appear in a different context (e.g., in im-moral,
moral-ity, or in to moral-ize

AFFIXATION

Affixes are bound morphemes. Two types of affix: inflectional and derivational

INFLECTION

The process by which affixes combine with roots to indicate basic grammatical categories such as tense or plurality
e.g.: in “cat-s”, “talk-ed”  “-s” and “-ed” are inflectional suffixes

Inflection is the process of adding very general meanings to existing words, not the creation of new words

Words do not change class

In English there are only inflectional suffixes (only 8) which are added to nouns, verbs and adjectives.

nouns Verbs Adjectives

-s plural -s third person singular -er comparative
-‘s possessive -ed past definite -est superlative
-ing present participle/gerund
-en perfect participle

LEXICAL WORDS – INFLECTION

Inflection – when they take inflectional suffixes to signal meanings and roles (e.g. to mark the plural, past tenses, etc.);
the identity of the word does not change

- Noun: boy – boy+s (plural)

 - Verb: write – write+s (present tense, third person sing.)
live – live+d (past tense)
speak – speak+ing (present participle/gerund)
- Adjective: nice – nic+er (comparative)
nice – nic+est (superlative)
- Adverb: soon – soon+er (comparative)
soon – soon+est (superlative)

DERIVATION

Derivation is the process by which affixes

PREFIXES combine with roots to create new words. In
English, derivational affixes are either
TIME prefixes or suffixes
e.g.: in “modern-ize”, “read-er”  “-ize” and
Pre- Prearrange, presuppose, preheat “-er” are derivational suffixes
after- aftershock, afterthought, afterglow
Derivation is the process through which
NUMBER existing words become new words. Words
change class
Tri- Tricycle, triannual, triconsonantal Derivation is much less regular, and
multi- Multinational, multilingual, multimillionaire therefore much less predictable, than
PLACE inflectional morphology

For example, we can predict that most

In- Infield, in-patient, ingrown
inter- Interconnect, interbreed, interlace English words will form their plural by adding
the affix <-s> or <-es>. But how we derive
DEGREE nouns from verbs, for example, is less
predictable. Why do we add <-al> to “refuse”,
Super- Supersensitive, supersaturated, superheat making “refusal”, but “-ment” to “pay” to
over- Overanxious, overconfident, overdue make “payment?”
PRIVATION DER. = PHONOLOGY + MORPHOLOGY
a- Amoral, apolitical, asymmetric LEXICAL WORDS – DERIVATION
un- Unlock, untie, unfold
Derivation, like inflection, usually involves
NEGATION adding an affix (i.e., a morpheme added at
the beginning of a word (prefix) or at the end
Un- Unafraid, unsafe, unwise
of a word (suffix)).
anti- Antisocial, antitrust, anti-war
Derivation, unlike inflection, changes the
SIZE identity of a word, since it creates new
nouns, adjectives, adverbs, etc.
Micro- Microcosm, microchip, microfilm
mini- Miniskirt, minivan, minimall - Prefix: un-kind, re-read, dis-honest, a-
broad
- Suffix: child-hood, exact-ly, gray-ish,
support-ive

SUFFIXES
Normalizer V>N -ment Arrangement, judgement, advancement
-er worker, helper, leader
-(e)ation legalization, simplification, taxation
-al disposal, refusal, arrival, trial
-ance/-ence ignorance, performance, reference

A>N -dom Freedom, officialdom, Christendom

-ness happiness, cleverness, bitterness
-ity legality, purity, equality

Verbalizer A/N > V -ify Pacify, simplify, purify

-ize prioritize, publicize, centralize
-ate hyphenate, orchestrate, chlorinate
-en lighten, soften, tighten
 Adjectivalizer N>A -y Flowery, thirsty, bloody
-ous poisonous, glamorous
-ful delightful, sinful

V>A -ive Supportive, generative, assertive

-able acceptable, liveable, changeable
-ful hopeful, thankful, useful
-ent/-ant flippant, repellent

Adverbalizer A/N > Adv -want Homeward, eastward, downward

-ly quickly, terribly, gradually
-way(s) sideway(s), anyway(s), someway

REDUPLICATION

Reduplication is a process similar to derivation, in which the initial syllable or the entire word is doubled, exactly or with a
slight phonological change. Reduplication is not a common or regular process of word formation in English, though it may
be in other languages

In English it is often used in children’s language (e.g. boo-boo, putt-putt, choo-choo) or for humorous or ironic effect (e.g.
goody-goody, rah-rah, pooh-pooh)

Three different kinds of reduplication can be identified:

1. Exact reduplication: papa, mama, goody-goody, so-so, hush-hush, never-never, tutu, fifty-fifty
2. Ablaut reduplication in which the vowel alternates while the consonants are identical: crisscross, zig-zag, flip-
flop, mish-mash, wishy-washy, clip-clop, riff-raff, achy-breaky
3. Rhyme reduplication in which the consonants change while the vowel remains the same: hodge-podge, fuddy-
duddy, razzle-dazzle, boogie-woogie, nitty-gritty, roly-poly, hob-nob, hocus-pocus

Reduplications can be formed with two meaningful parts, for example, flower-power, brain drain, culture vulture, boy toy,
or heart smart

Reduplication has many different functions: it can express disparagement (namby-pamby), intensification (super-duper),
diminution (teeny-weeny), onomatopoeia (tick-tock), or alternation (ping-pong), among other uses

CONVERSION OR FUNCTIONAL SHIFT

Conversion is also common. A word may change its class with no accompanying change in form if it is used in a
particular syntactic context.

A Functional shift involves the conversion of one part of speech to another without the addition of a suffix, as in a phone
(N) > to phone (V)

The following kinds of functional shifts are most common in English:

- V > N (a) run, drive, walk, bruise, cut, look, call, dump, spy, bite, sneeze
- N > V (to) man, head, shoulder, telephone, lust, contact, ship, sign, skin, mail
- A > V (to) weary, better, empty, idle, dirty, bare, quiet, tame, lower
- A > N (a) daily, double, private, commercial, formal, red, elder, roast
- Prt > V (to) down, up, off, thwart, out

Phrasal verbs (to print out, to take over) also become nouns (a printout, a takeover). One complex verb combination
(want to be) has become a new noun, as in “He isn’t in the group, he’s just a wannabe”.

Verbs (see through, stand up) also become adjectives, as in see-through material or a stand-up comedian. Or adjectives,
as in a dirty floor, an empty room, some crazy ideas and those nasty people, can become the verbs to dirty and to empty,
or the nouns a crazy and the nasty.

BLENDS

A blend involves two processes of word formation, compounding and “clipping”. Two free words are combined and
blended, usually by clipping off the end of the first word and the beginning of the second word, although sometimes one
or the other morpheme is left intact. Blends are sometimes called “portmanteau” words

Sm(oke) + (f)og  smog

mo(tor) + (ho)tel  motel
info(rmation) + (com)mercial  infomercial
simul(taneous) + (broad)cast  simulcast
trans(fer) + (re)sistor  transistor
sky + (hi)jacker  hijacker
motor + (caval)cade  motorcade
perma(nent) + frost  permafrost
docu(mentary) + drama  docudrama
film + (bi)ography  filmography

COMPOUNDING

Compounding is the combination of nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs or prepositions to form complex words is also
widely used. A compound is the combination of two or more free roots (plus associated affixes)

Both the semantics and the syntax of compound are complex

Often the semantics of compounds are not simply a sum of the meaning of the parts; that is, if we know the meaning of
the two roots, we cannot necessarily predict the meaning of the compound, as in firearm, highball, makeup, or handout

- Homeland  land which is one’s home

- Homemade  something which is made at home
- Homebody  someone who stays at home
- Homestead  a place which is a home
- Homework  work which is done at home
- Homerun  a run to home
- Homemaker  a person who makes (cares for) the home

Common English compounds are bookcase, doorknob, fingerprint, sunburn, textbook, wallpaper, wastebasket and
waterbed.

All these examples are nouns, but we can also create compound adjectives (good-looking, low-paid) and compounds of
adjective (fast) plus noun (food) as in a fast-food restaurant or a full-time job

LEXICAL WORDS – COMPOUNDING

 Form of derivation
 More than one root/stem

 Noun+Noun (Chair+man, Boy+friend)

 Verb+Noun (Cook+book, Guess+book)
 Adjective+Noun (Blue+bird, Flat+fish)
 Noun+Adjective (head+long, water+tight)

BACK FORMATION

In back formation, speakers derive a morphologically simple word from a form which they analize, on the basis of
derivational and inflectional patterns existing in English, as a morphologically complex word

For example, by analogy with the very common derivational pattern in English in which the agentive suffix -er is added to
a verb to produce a noun (sing + er  singer; work + -er  worker), verbs have been formed from the following nouns by
the removal of an agentive suffix, as in sightseer  -er > sightsee; babysitter  -er > baby-sit.

Since the nouns predate the verbs in these cases, we say that the verbs are “back-formed”.

Other examples of words created by this process are: donate (from “donation”), emote (from “emotion”), enthuse (from
“enthusiasm”), liaise (from “liaison”) and babysit (from “babysitter”).

SHORTENING

The three types of shortening – acronyms, initialisms, and clipped forms – have in common the deletion of sound
segments without respect to morphological boundaries. That is, parts of words, but not usually entire morphemes, are
deleted.

A CLIPPING is the result of deliberately dropping part of a word, usually either the end or the beginning, or less often
both, while retaining the same meaning and same word class.

End
mic < microphone; porn < pornography
rehab < rehabilitation; fax < facsimile
fan < fanatic; mitt < mitten

Beginning
burger < hamburger; venture < adventure
spite < despite; gin (cotton gin) < engine
cello < violoncello; phone < telephone

beginning and end

fridge < refrigerator
flu < influenza
shrink < head-shrinker

English speakers also like to clip each other’s names, as in Al, Ed, Liz, Mike, Ron, Sam, Sue and Tom.

A particular type of reduction, favoured in Australian and British English, produces forms technically known as
hypocorisms. In this process, a longer word is reduced to a single syllable, then -y or -ie is added to the end. This is the
process that results in movie (moving pictures) and telly (television). It has also produced Aussie (Australian), barbie
(barbecue), bookie (bookmaker), brekky (breakfast) and hankie (handkerchief)

MORPHOLOGICAL PROCESSES (PRACTICE)

- Use google to look for it  Google it! (CONVERSION)

- The outcome was not predictable  the outcome was unpredictable (AFFIXATION)
- You’ll catch a fast train  things went down fast (CONVERSION)
- I got my right foot caught in the door  I got my *rightfuckingfoot caught in the door (AFFIXATION/Infix)
- His story is unbelievable  his story is un-fuckin’-believable (AFFIXATION/Infix expletive)

SAXON GENITIVE

Saxon Genitive is a term for the forms of the possessive associated with the apostrophe (boy’s, boys’), so called
because, along with the plural ending, they are the only noun inflections surviving from Old English or Anglo-Saxon.

The Saxon Genitive can be used alone with a place reference: See you at Tom’s; I got it at the grocer’s this morning.

Other usages include the subjective genitive (the man’s statement, to say that the man made the statement);
the objective genitive (the group’s leader, meaning that someone leads the group);
and the descriptive genitive (a moment’s thought, a ladies’ hairdresser, ship’s biscuits)

The possessive form is used with nouns referring to people, groups of people, countries and animals

“Belonging to” or “ownership” is one of the relationships it expresses:

- John owns a car (“John” is the possessor or owner)  it is John’s car

- America has some gold reserves (“America” is the owner)  they are America’s gold reserves

It can also express other relationships, for example:

- Where someone works or studies or spends time:

John goes to this school  this is John’s school
John sleeps in this room  this is John’s room
- A family relationship:
John’s mother
The Queen’s daughter
- Qualities:
John’s patience
The politician’s hypocrisy

There are also some fixed expressions:

 A day’s work
 For God’s sake!
 A fortnight’s holiday
 A month’s pay
 The water’s edge
 Today’s newspaper
 A stone’s throw away
 In a year’s time
  At death’s door
 In my mind’s eye

The possessive is also used to refer to shops, restaurants, churches and colleges, using the name or job title of the
owner. Examples: the doctor’s; Saint Mary’s; the grocer’s; the vet’s; Smith’s
Shall we go to Luigi’s for lunch?
I’ve got an appointment at the dentist’s at eleven o’clock.

It is often omitted. Mistakes can be found, for example, in shop signs or due to hypercorrection (i.e., people put it where it
is not needed for fear of making a mistake)

A DISCOURSE PERSPECTIVE ON GRAMMAR

Every time we write or speak, we are faced not only with choices of what to say, but also of how to say it.

Our choice of vocabulary and grammar is influenced by:

- The reason for the communication

- The setting (i.e. the physical situation or the typical place where speech interactions occur, e.g. home, church,
mosque, school, office, etc)
- The people we are addressing
- The mode of communication (i.e. speaking or writing)

PRESCRIPTIVE VS DESCRIPTIVE GRAMMARS

- Prescriptive grammars dictate how people “should” use the language. For example, a prescriptive grammarian
would insist that only “whom” should be used when the pronoun refers to a human and functions as an object or
prepositional complement. In contrast, speakers in conversation regularly prefer “who” in actual usage:
“There’s a girl who I work with who’s pregnant” (CONV)
- Descriptive grammars focus on describing the actual patterns of use and the possible reasons for those
patterns.

LANGUAGE VARIATION

Two major types of language varieties: registers and dialects

- Registers (e.g., conversation, fiction, newspapers and academic prose) are varieties of language that are
associated with different circumstances and purposes
- Dialects are varieties according to the identity of speaker(s) or writer(s) – their geographic area, gender, socio-
economic class, and so on

REGISTER
Register is a conventional way of using language that is appropriate in a specific context, which may be identified as
situational (e.g. in church), occupational (e.g. among lawyers) or topical (e.g. talking about language)

Examples: we can recognize specific features that occur in the religious register (Ye shall be blessed by Him in times of
tribulation), the legal register (The plaintiff is ready to take the witness stand) and even the linguistics register (In the
morphology of this dialect there are fewer inflectional suffixes)

One of the defining features of a register is the use of jargon, which is special technical vocabulary (e.g. plaintiff, suffix)
associated with a specific area of work or interest (e.g. law, linguistics, business, tourism, etc)

Other examples of registers: Journalese, baby-talk, legalese, sports commentators, language of airline pilots, criminals,
doctors, engineers, politicians, students…etc

Register can differ according to:

- The mode: written/spoken

- The communicative purpose:
- personal communication (conversation)
- pleasure reading (fiction)
- information/evaluation (news discourse)
- argumentation/explanation (academic prose)

CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE FOUR MAIN REGISTERS

CONVERSATION FICTION NEWS ACADEMIC

MODE Spoken Written Written Written
 INTERACTIVENESS Yes Restricted to No No
AND REAL-TIME fictional dialog
PRODUCTION

SHARED SITUATION Yes No No No

MAIN Personal Pleasure Information/evaluation Argumentation/explanation

COMMUNICATIVE communication reading
PURPOSE/CONTENT

AUDIENCE individual Wide-public Wide-public specialist

Different registers vary greatly in their grammar usage. Example: use of pronouns and nouns in:

CONVERSATION NEWS
 Interactive, addressed to a specific  Non-interactive, not addressed to a specific
interlocutor; reader, author not stated, conveys general
 Frequent use of first-person pronoun I/we information;
and of second-person pronoun you  Rare use of personal pronouns;
 Common use of proper nouns to refer to people,
places and institutions
SUB-REGISTERS
Within each register there are also some sub-categories known as sub-registers:

- Fiction: detective fiction, fantasy fiction, romance fiction…

- Newspapers: broadsheet, tabloid, sport…
- Academic prose: science, medicine, linguistics…
- Conversation: chat with friends, job interview…

DIALECT
Dialects are varieties according to the identity of speaker(s) or writer(s) – their geographic area, gender, socio-economic
class, and so on, and vary in vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation.

Dialect variation interacts with register variation

From the grammatical point of view, dialect differences are arbitrary, while register differences are functional, as they
vary according to the communicative purpose

Examples – Regional dialects:

- British English (BrE): pavement, chemist, flat, petrol, baggage, lift

- American English (AmE): sidewalk, drugstore/pharmacy, apartment, gas, luggage, elevator

Examples – Social dialects: (influenced by education, occupation, income level of speaker)

- Standard English: spoken by the well-educated English speakers throughout the world;
- Received Pronunciation (the Queen English) or BBC English: the accent of the best educated and most
prestigious members of English society;
- Cockney: the accent of working-class Londoners, specifically of the East-End area of London

STANDARD VS NON-STANDARD ENGLISH

- Standard English: no official academy regulates usage for the English Language, but it is the language variety
that has been codified in dictionaries, grammars and usage handbooks
- Non-standard (or vernacular) English: especially in conversation or in fiction, where it represents the speech
of fictional characters, but generally rare in the written corpus
Ex: I ain’t done nothing (conv.)
 SYNTAX
Syntax is the way in which words combine to form larger units of meaning, e.g. phrases, clauses, sentences

Example: word order in a noun phrase or in statements and questions, e.g. She is a beautiful girl NOT She is a girl
beautiful

GRAMMATICAL UNIT

Grammatical units are meaningful elements which combine with each other in a structural pattern → grammar is the
system which organizes and controls these form-meaning relationships.

Graded according to size of unit: Sentence Clause Phrase Word Morpheme

Sentence: consists of one or more clauses “If I wash up all this stuff somebody else can dry it”
Clause: consists of one or more phrases “Somebody else can dry it”
Phrase: consists of one or more words “somebody else”, “can dry”, “it”
Word: consists of one or more morphemes “somebody”
Morphemes: parts of words, i.e. stems, prefixes and suffixes Some-body

Grammatical units are described in terms of four factors:

- Structure: in terms of their internal structure (words in terms of bases and affixes, phrases in terms of heads
and modifiers, clauses in terms of clause elements);
- Syntactic role: subject, object, etc.;
- Meaning: expression of information (place, time, manner, etc.);
- Use or discourse function: the way they are used in discourse. How they behave in discourse (their use in
different registers, their frequency, factors which influence their use in speech or in written texts: ex. pronouns).

WORDS

Words are the basic elements of language; the items defined in dictionaries. Relatively fixed in their internal form – you
cannot interrupt them by inserting another word or morphemes inside them

Token: each occurrence of a word in a written or spoken text

Word types: the different vocabulary items that occur in a text
Ex. The birds and the deer and who knows what else. (ten tokens and 8 word types)

FAMILIES OF WORDS

1. Lexical words
2. Function words
3. Inserts

Newspaper writing has the highest density of lexical words, while conversation has the lowest
Conversation has more use of inserts than the other registers

LEXICAL WORDS The main carriers of information in a text or speech act. They can be subdivided into the following
word classes (or parts of speech):

- Nouns
- Lexical verbs
- Adjectives
- Adverbs

 The most numerous word family, growing in time: they are an open class
 They often have a complex internal structure and can be composed of several parts (un + friend + li + ness)
 They can be heads (main words) of phrases
 They are generally the words stressed most in speech
 They are generally the words that remain if a sentence is compressed in a newspaper headline

INSERTS Inserts  found mainly in spoken language. Do not form an integral part of a syntactic structure, but tend to be
inserted freely in a text

 Often marked off by a break in intonation in speech, or by a punctuation mark in writing (‘Well, ...”)
 Generally, carry emotional and discoursal meanings (oh, ah, wow; yeah, no, okay)
 Generally simple in form, but with an atypical pronunciation (hm, uh-huh, ugh, etc.)
Peripheral to grammar

- Hello, is that Cindy Jones?

- You know who Margaret is, right?

CLOSED CLASSES AND OPEN CLASSES

Closed class: contains a limited number of members, and new members cannot easily have added (coordinators,
pronouns, etc.)
Open class: indefinitely large, and can be readily extended by users of the language (nouns, adjectives thanks to
prefixes, suffixes, etc.)
Not always clear-cut difference

MULTI-WORD UNITS, COLLOCATIONS, LEXICAL BUNDLES

Sequences of words that behave as combination:

 Multi-word unit: a sequence of orthographic words which functions like a single grammatical unit (on top of)
 Idiom: a multi-word unit with a meaning that cannot be predicted from the meanings of its constituent words (fall
in love)
 Collocation: the relationship between two or more independent words which commonly co-occur (broad and
wide + nouns)
 Lexical bundles: a sequence of words which co-occur very frequently (I don’t think... Would you mind...)

SURVEY OF LEXICAL WORDS

Four main classes of lexical words: nouns, lexical verbs, adjectives, and adverbs

 Nouns and verbs are the most common types of words

 Nouns and adjectives are more frequent in the expository or ‘information-giving’ registers: news and academic
writing
 Verbs and adverbs are more frequent in the other registers: conversation and fiction writing

The classification of lexical words is not always clear-cut, and some words have borderline status between the two
classes (ex. words ending in -ing can be nouns, verbs, and adjectives)

NOUNS

Morphological characteristics: (what forms does a word have (e.g in terms of stems and affixes)?

 Nouns have inflectional suffixes for plural number and for genitive case (Many nouns are uncountable and
cannot have a plural form: gold, information, etc.)
 Nouns quite often contain more than one morpheme (compound nouns, nouns with derivational suffixes)

Syntactic characteristics (what syntactic roles does a word play in phrases or other higher units?):

 Nouns can occur as the head of a noun phrase: A new book about the cold war
 Common nouns can be modified by many kinds of words before and after them, while proper nouns rarely have
any modifiers

Semantic characteristics (what type(s) of meaning does a word convey?):

 Nouns commonly refer to concrete entities e.g. book, friend, iron or denote abstract entities e.g. freedom, wish,
friendship.

LEXICAL VERBS Distinct from auxiliary verbs and modals like can and will (function words); primary verbs: be, have,
do are both lexical verbs and auxiliaries

Morphological characteristics:

 Different forms signalling tense (present and past), aspect (perfect, progressive), and voice (active and passive)
 Often have more than one morpheme (multi-word verbs and derived verbs)
Ex. bring up, rely on, look forward to, hyphenate, itemize, soften.

Syntactic characteristics:

 Lexical verbs most frequently occur on their own, as the central part of the clause
 He [writes] page after page about tiny details
 They also occur in the final or main verb position of verb phrases
Semantic characteristics:

 Lexical verbs denote actions, processes, and states of affairs that happen or exist in time
 They also define the role of human and non-human participants in such actions, processes, or states
Ex. [You] [ate] [Chinese food].

ADJECTIVES

Morphological characteristics:

 Many adjectives can take the inflectional suffixes -er (comparative) and -est (superlative) dark - darker - darkest
 They can be complex in morphology (compound adjectives; derived adjectives: -able, -ful, -ial)

derived adjectives: acceptable, forgetful, influential

compound adjectives: color-blind, home-made, ice-cold.

Syntactic characteristics:

 Adjectives can occur as the head of an adjective phrase (eager to help, very dark, guilty of a crime)
 Adjective and adjective phrases are most commonly used as modifiers preceding the head of a noun phrase, or
as predicatives following the verb in clauses

modifier: Tomorrow could be [a sunny day].

predicative: It's nice and warm in here. It's sunny.

Semantic characteristics:

 They describe the qualities of people, things, and abstractions

 Many adjectives are gradable: they can be compared and modified for a degree or level of the quality

ADVERBS: A varied word class

Morphological characteristics:

 Many adverbs are formed from adjectives by adding the suffix -ly, but others not
 A few adverbs allow comparative and superlative forms: sooner/soonest; faster/fastest

Syntactic characteristics:

 Adverbs can occur as head of adverb phrases (very noisily, more slowly than I had expected)
 They are often used as modifiers of an adjective or another adverb (really old, very soon)
 Otherwise, they can act as adverbials in the clause (again soon)

Semantic characteristics:

 They most often express the degree of a following adjective or adverb (totally wrong, right now)
 As elements of clauses, adverbs and adverb phrases have a wide range of meanings:
- They can modify an action, process, or state, by expressing such notions as time, place, and manner (I
learned German quite quickly);
- They can convey the speaker’s or writer’s attitude towards the information in the rest of the clause (Surely that
child’s not mine);
- They can express a connection with what was said earlier (It must be beautiful, though)

FUNCTION WORDS

Different classes:

- Determiners
- Pronouns
- Auxiliary verbs
- Prepositions
- Adverbial particles
- Coordinators
- Subordinators

o They usually indicate meaning relationships and show how the units are related to each other
o They belong to closed classes
o They tend to occur frequently
DETERMINERS
They normally precede nouns, and are used to help clarify the meaning of the noun

 The definite article the indicates that the referent (i.e. whatever is referred to) is assumed to be known by the
speaker and the person being spoken to (or addressee)
 The indefinite article a or an makes it clear that the referent is one member of a class
 Demonstrative determiners indicate that the referents are ‘near to’ o ‘away from’ the speaker’s immediate
context (this, that, etc.)
 Possessive determiners tell us who or what the noun belongs to (my, your, her, etc.)
 Quantifiers specify how many or how much of the noun there is (every, some, etc.)
 Determiner-like uses of wh-words and numerals

PRONOUNS
Pronouns fill the position of a noun or a whole noun phrase

 Personal pronouns: refer to the speaker, the addressee(s), and other entities (more frequent than the other
classes of pronouns) (I, you, etc.)
 Demonstrative pronouns: refer to entities which are ‘near to’ or ‘away from’ the speaker’s context (this, that,
etc.)
 Reflexive pronouns: refer back to a previous noun phrase, usually the subject of the clause (myself, herself,
etc.)
 Reciprocal pronouns: like reflexive pronouns, refer to a previous noun phrase, but indicate that there is a
mutual relationship (each other)
 Possessive pronouns: closely related to possessive determiners, usually imply a missing noun head (yours,
mine, etc.)
 Indefinite pronouns: broad, indefinite meaning
 Quantifier + general noun (everything, someone, nobody, etc.)
 A quantifier alone (all, some, many, etc.)
 Relative pronouns: introduce a relative clause (who, whom, which, that)
 Interrogative pronouns: ask questions about unknown entities (what, who, which)

Most relative and interrogative pronouns belong to the class of wh-words

AUXILIARY VERBS
They are added to a main verb to help build verb phrases. They precede the main or lexical verb in a verb phrase

Contracted forms (-’s, ’re, ’ve, ’d, ’ll)

 Primary auxiliaries (be, have, do)

- Have inflections
- Normally unstressed
- Can also act as main verbs
- Show how the main verb is to be understood:
- have for the perfect aspect
- be for the progressive aspect and for the passive voice
- do for negative statements and in questions (do insertion)
 Modal auxiliaries (9: will, can, shall, may, must, would, could, should, might)
- Express modality, such as possibility, necessity, prediction, and volition
- Each modal is historically the past tense of the modal directly above it (will-would, etc., except must)
- Invariable function words, with no inflections
- Contracted forms (’ll, ’d, n’t)
- Occur as the first verb in a clause and are followed by the base form of another verb, usually the main verb
- Marginal modal form: be going to

PREPOSITIONS
Linking words that introduce prepositional phrases

The prepositional complement following a preposition is generally a noun phrase

Short, invariable forms: about, after, around, as, at, by, down, for, from, into, like, of, off, on, round, since, than, to,
towards, with, without
Ex. He'll go [with one of the kids].

Prepositions can be linked to a preceding verb: prepositional verbs

Ex. You can't, you can't rely on any of that information.
Complex prepositions

 Multi-word units that have a meaning that cannot be derived from the meaning of the parts
- Such as, as for, except for, apart from, because of, according to, due to, regardless of, instead of, out of, owing
to
- By means of, in spite of, on account of, on top of, in addition to, with regard to, as far as, as well as

ADVERBIAL PARTICLES
A small group of words with a core meaning of motion: about, across, along, around, aside, away, back, by, down, forth,
home, in, off, on, out, over, past, round, though, under, up

 Closely linked to verbs

 They generally follow verbs, and are closely bound to them in meaning
 Used to build phrasal verbs (come on, break down, turn on) and extended prepositional phrases (back to the
hotel)

COORDINATORS
Two types of conjunctions: coordinators (coordinating conjunctions) and subordinators (subordinating conjunctions)

Coordinators: used to indicate a relationship between two units such as phrases or clauses

 They link elements which have the same syntactic role, and are at the same level of the syntactic hierarchy
And; But; Or; Nor (used after negative clauses)
 Correlative coordinators: Both ... And...; Not (only)... but (also...); Either... or...; Neither... nor...

Ex. [Mother] and [I] saw it. (CONV)

Ex. [I don't want to speak too soon], but [I think I have been fairly consistent this season]. (NEWS)

SUBORDINATORS
Linking words that introduce clauses known as dependent clauses – clauses which cannot stand alone without another
clause, called the main clause

They show the connection of meaning between the main clause and the subordinate clause
If (condition)
Ex. You can hold her [if you want].

The dependent clause starting with the subordinator appears at the front or at the end of the main clause
Ex. [A flash of fire appeared [as they watched.]]

They fall into 3 major subclasses:

1. The great majority of subordinators introduce adverbial clauses, adding details of time, place, reason, etc. to the
main clause: after, as, because, if, since, although, while, etc.
2. 3 subordinators introduce degree clauses: as, than, that
3. 3 subordinators introduce complement clauses (or nominal clauses): if, that, whether (also called
complementizers: they introduce clauses following verbs, adjectives or nouns, complementing or completing the
meaning of these key words in the main clause.
For ex: I'm glad [that I've found you again])

COMPLEX SUBORDINATORS

- As long as, as soon as

- Given (that), on condition (that), provided (that), except (that), in that, in order that, so (that), such (that)
- As if, as though, even if, even though

SPECIAL CLASSES OF WORDS  They have special qualities

WH-WORDS

Like subordinators, they introduce clauses, but they don’t form an independent word class (they are determiners,
pronouns, and adverbs). They begin with wh-, except for how

Usage:
- At the beginning of interrogative clauses or relative clauses (main usage)
- At the beginning of complement clauses of adverbial clauses)

INTRODUCING AN INTERROGATIVE CLAUSE:

 What do they want?

  When are you leaving?
 Which one do you want?
 Why should I care? (interrogative pronouns, determiners, adverbs)

INTRODUCING A RELATIVE CLAUSE (RELATIVIZERS):

 The kind of person who needs emotional space

 Graham Poole, whose grandfather started the place in 1895
 A small place where everyone knows everyone else (relative pronouns, determiners, adverbs)

INTRODUCING A COMPLEMENT CLAUSE (COMPLEMENTIZERS)

 I don’t know what I would have done without her

 I give them whatever I have in my pocket
 Anna wonders where she stands in her father’s affections

ADVERBIAL CLAUSE LINKS

- They could not improve upon that, whatever they might say
- However, they vary, each information comprises a distinctive set of rock layers

SINGLE-WORD CLASSES

Unique grammatically

Existential there

 Often called anticipatory subject: heading a clause expressing existence

 Not to be confused with the place adverb there
Ex. There's a mark on this chair.

The negator not

 To make a clause negative

 Other negative uses (not all, not many, not very, etc.)
Ex. You can do this but [you can't do that].

The infinitive maker to

 Not to be confused with the common preposition to

 Complementizer preceding the infinitive form of verbs
 Also expressing purpose in complex subordinators (in order to, so as to)
Ex. What do you want to drink?

NUMERALS

A small set of simple forms (one, two, three...) and a large set of more complex forms (three million eight hundred and
fifty-five thousand...)

Most commonly used in the role of determiners or heads in noun phrases

Cardinals

 How many? – determiners with a following noun

 Heads of noun phrases
 Noun-like use (hundreds, etc.)

Ordinals

 Which? – to place entities in order or in a series

 Determiners or head of noun phrases
 Also used to form fractions

INTRODUCTION TO PHRASES AND CLAUSES

SYNTAX is the way in which words combine to form larger units of meaning, e.g. phrases, clauses, sentences

 Sentence: consists of one or more clauses

“If I wash up all this stuff somebody else can dry it”
  Clause: consists of one or more phrases
“Somebody else can dry it”
 Phrase: consists of one or more words
“Somebody else”, “can dry”, “it”
 Word: consists of one or more morphemes
“Somebody”
 Morphemes: parts of words, i.e. stems, prefixes and suffixes
“Some-body”

PHRASE – OVERVIEW

One or more words. Phrases can be identified by substitution and movement tests:

- [The opposition] [demands] [a more representative government]

- [It] [demands] [something]
- [The opposition] [demands] [a more representative government]
- [A more representative government] [is demanded] [by [the opposition]]

Differences in phrase structure show up in differences of meaning

Phrases can be embedded (i.e. one phrase can be part of the structure of another phrase)

TYPE OF PHRASES

According to the head (i.e. the principal, obligatory word) of a phrase:

- Noun phrase
- Verb phrase
- Adjective phrase
- Adverb phrase
- Prepositional phrase

PHRASE – SYNTACTIC ROLES

Different syntactic roles (subject/verb/object)  [Mommy] [loves] [the kitty]

Recognizing syntactic roles can be crucial for the interpretation of phrases

By interchanging the position of “Mommy” and “the kitty”, we have also changed their syntactic roles, resulting in a
phrase with a clearly different meaning

NOUN PHRASES
Head of a noun phrase:

- Proper nouns
- Pronouns
- Adjectives (occasionally)

- Cindy lives in London

- They passed the table
- Show me how [the impossible] can be possible

These are noun phrases because their structure is typical of noun phrases and serve the same syntactic roles (e.g.
acting as subject or object of a clause)

A noun is the head of the phrase. It is preceded by a determined (the, a, her…)

Can be accompanied by a modified (i.e. elements that describe or classify whatever the head refers to: e.g. “good”,
“beautiful”)

- A house
- Their house
- The little girl next door

An abstract head noun can also be followed by complements, which complete the meaning of the noun, especially that-
clause or infinitive to-clause

CLAUSE ELEMENTS – OBJECT

The object is a noun phrase; it follows the verb (only transitive verbs)
It is in the accusative case (for pronouns)  he likes him

The object noun phrase of a transitive verb can be moved to become subject of the corresponding passive clause 
everyone deserted me / I was deserted (by everyone)

- Direct objects
- Indirect objects

CLAUSE ELEMENTS – SUBJECT

The subject is a noun phrase. It occurs with all types of verbs. Subject pronouns are in the nominative case when they
function as subjects (e.g., he, she...) while accusative forms (e.g., him, her...) are used as object.

It precedes the verb phrase (except in clauses with inversion, such as questions, where the subject follows the operator)

The subject determines the number of the verb phrase (singular or plural: she works vs they work)

The subject noun phrase of a transitive verb can be moved after the verb, and preceded by by to make a clause with a
passive verb (e.g. Kate saw; it was seen by Kate)

From the meaning point of view:

- It denotes the most important participant in the action or state denoted by the verb. With transitive verbs, this is
generally the “doer” or agent of the action

- It generally represents the topic, i.e. the entity that the clause is about. Sometimes English requires a subject,
even if the subject has no actual meaning (it is warm here / it’s very cold today)  it = dummy pronoun (u.e. a
pronoun that fills the place of the subject but has no content)

CLAUSE ELEMENTS – VERB

VERB PHRASE

- The central element of the clause

- It expresses the action or state to which other elements relate
- It controls the other kinds of elements and meanings that can be in the clause

PERIPHERAL ELEMENTS

- Conjunctions
- Parentheticals
- Prefaces
- Tags
- Inserts (vedi sopra)
- Vocatives

TRULY PERIPHERAL ELEMENTS

More peripheral than adverbials; they are attached to the clause, but do not form part of the main message of the clause

They are often set off from the rest of the clause by punctuation (writing) or intonation (speech) or position (placed
immediately before or after the clause)

VOCATIVES
Nouns or noun phrases which generally refer to people, and serve to identify the person(s) being addressed

- Hurry up, boys!

- Mum, I am making such a big sandwich

TAGS
Normally added at the end of a clause. Can be either noun phrase tags, question tags or declarative tags:

- It’s nice that table anyway (NP tag)

- She’s so generous, isn’t she? (question tag)
- Yeah I thoroughly enjoyed it, I did (declarative tag)

They are comparable to prefaces, except that they follow the main part of the clause

PREFACES
Prefaces are noun phrases placed before the subject, which typically have the same reference as a personal pronoun in
the clause:
 - This woman, she’s ninety years-old
- But Anna-Luise what could have attracted her to a man in his fifties?

CONJUNCTIONS
Coordinating and subordinating conjunctions in initial position in the clause, even abed of other peripheral adverbials:

- And, of course, now Peter doesn’t have any teeth (conv)

- Because he and Jane aren’t married (conv)

PARENTHETICALS
Set off from the surrounding clause by parenthesis (in writing) or dashes:

- At precisely 11:07 (Earth time) a message flashed up on the ITN screen

- One of the first to make it in modern times (some Greeks had known it long before) was Leonardo da Vinci

LONG VERB PHRASE (“umbrella constituent”)

Verb phrases + any other clause elements which follow the main verb (object, predicative, adverbial)

It corresponds to the traditional grammatical notion of predicate

Some clauses consist only of a long verb phrase, as with imperative constructions

MAIN CLASSES OF ADVERBIALS

1. Linking: they serve a connecting function, rather than adding information to the clause

They show the relationship between two units of discourse

2. Stance: add speakers’ comments on what they are saying or how they are saying it

They can be:

- Epistemic – (how true is the information in the clause?) comment on certainty, viewpoint, limitation of truth
value  “From my perspective, it was a clear case of abuse”
- Attitude – (speaker’s evaluation or attitude)  “Fortunately, this is far from the truth”
- Style – (speaker’s comment on the style or form of communication)  “Quite frankly we are having a bad year”

3. Circumstance: most common type. They add something about the action or state described in the clause

They answer questions such as: how? When? Where? How much? How long? And why?

OPTIONAL ADVERBIALS
They can be added to the clause with any type of verb.

They are usually adverb phrases, prepositional phrases or noun phrases. They may occur in different positions (initial,
final or medial). More than one of them can occur in a single clause.

They are rather loosely attached to the rest of the clause (whereas the verb phrase is central, the adverbial is relatively
peripheral). They express place, time, manner, extent and attitude.

PREDICATIVES

A predicative follows the verb phrase and (if one is present) the direct object: VP + DO + P

Semantic role: it defines the preceding noun phrase

There are two main types:

- Subject predicative – also called subject complement

- Object predicative – also called object complement

INDIRECT OBJECTS
After ditransitive verbs such as give and tell, and comes before the direct object

Semantic role: it denotes people receiving something or benefiting from the action of the verb
He brought us the big menu first

It conforms to the other criteria of objects, included the formation of passives

In contrast, the direct object cannot easily become the subject of a corresponding passive without the insertion of a
preposition (to)  the big menu was brought to us first.

DIRECT OBJECTS
However, a wide range of transitive verbs where the meaning of direct objects is less typical. The direct objects express
abstractions which are not affected by the action of the verb, yet grammatically they are direct objects.

Dummy pronouns can also be direct objects of some verbs (take)  take it easy!

Three valency patterns contain direct objects: the monotransitive, ditransitive, and complex transitive patterns

Immediately after the verb unless an indirect object intervenes

Semantically, it denotes the entity affected by the action of the verb

OBJECT PREDICATIVES – OBJECT COMPLEMENTS

It characterises or specifies the direct object noun phrase. It generally immediately follows the direct object. The main
verb has to be a complex transitive verb (make, find, consider, and name)

I can’t get this milk open.

He was surprised to find himself out of breath

SUBJECT PREDICATIVES – SUBJECT COMPLEMENTS

It characterises or specifies the subject noun phrase. It immediately follows the verb phrase. The main verb has to be a
copular verb (be, seem, become)  His skin was very pink

CLAUSE PATTERNS

- Intransitive pattern (S+V)

They disappeared at the party
- Copular pattern (S+V+SP and S+V+A)
His skin was very pink / Marc was in the bathroom
- Monotransitive pattern (S+V+DO)
He parked his car in the garden behind the house
- Ditransitive pattern (S+V+IO+DO)
You gave her the wrong kind of egg
- Complex transitive pattern (S+V+DO+OP and S+V+DO+A)
That makes me crazy / I bought a new dress today

TYPES OF NOUNS

COUNTABLE AND UNCOUNTABLE NOUNS

There is a distinction between common and proper nouns. Common nouns can also be countable and uncountable.

- Countable common nouns refer to entities which can be counted. They have both a singular and a plural form
(a cow, two cows). Both in the singular and in the plural form, there is a contrast between indefinite and definite,
showed through the articles: a cow – the cow / cows – the cows.
- Uncountable common nouns refer to something which cannot be counted. They cannot occur with the
indefinite article a (or an), but they allow a contrast between definite and indefinite: the milk – milk.
- Proper nouns are singular and definite. They only name an individual, while common nouns denote a class.
Sometimes, proper nouns have a possessive determiner: I’m gonna have to phone our Sue.

Concrete nouns refer to physical entities or substances; abstract nouns refer to abstractions (events, states, times)

- Countable concrete nouns refer to persons, objects and places

- Uncountable concrete nouns refer to substances, materials, liquids and gases

Some nouns can be countable and uncountable, with a difference in meaning. For example:
- I think these are eggs from our new chickens (countable);
- Would you like some chicken for dinner? (uncountable)

Also, uncountable nouns can have countable uses:

- Six teas please (countable);
- Plant beverages include tea and wine (uncountable)

Plural uncountable nouns: there are a few plural uncountable nouns, for example:
- Letters of thanks have been flooding into our office (news).
Though they end with an -s, they don’t have a singular form. But they are uncountable because there is no singular form:
*a cloth, a thank.

PROPER NOUN VS COMMON NOUNS Important types of proper nouns are:

- personal names (Anna)
- place names (Australia)
- organization names (Congress)
- time names (Saturday)

These nouns have no determiner and don’t have a contrast of number between singular and plural. They are
characterized by initial capitals, although not all words spelt with initial capitals are proper nouns.

Many names are actually multi-word expressions and contain ordinary lexical words: e.g. the Horn of Africa, the White
House. As these examples show, a name may also be preceded by the-something which can also occur with a single
proper name as in the Sahara (Desert), the Pacific (Ocean), the Vatican, the Kremlin. Some proper name with the are
plural (e.g. the Himalayas).

INITIAL CAPITALS: the use of initial capitals in spelling extends beyond proper names. Uses for which the capital letter
is conventional are:

- Personal names (Sam, Jones)

- Geographical names (Canada, Tokyo)
- Objects, especially commercial products (Voyager, Chevrolet)
- Religious periods, months, and days of the week (Ramadan, August)
- Religions and some religious concepts (Buddhism, Heaven)
- Address terms for family members (Mother, Uncle)
- People or bodies with a unique public function (the Pope, the Commonwealth)
- Public buildings, institutions, laws (the Library of Congress, Yale University)
- Political parties and their members (the Democrats, the Labour Party)
- Languages, nationalities, and ethnic groups (Arabic, Sioux)
- Adjectives and common nouns derived from proper nouns (Marxist, Greeks)

Proper nouns regularly occur with:

- Geographical names: rivers, seas and canals (the Nile, the Indian Ocean)
- Plural geographical names (the United States)
- Buildings with public functions: hotels, restaurants, theatres, museums and libraries (the Ritz)
- Names of ships (the Titanic)
- Many newspapers and some periodicals (the New York Times)

Sometimes proper nouns can function like common nouns:

- A family: The Addams

- A product of X: two Cadillacs

PACKAGE NOUNS
Four special classes of countable common nouns are:
1- Collective nouns
2- Unit nouns
3- Quantifying nouns
4- Species nouns
They package together a series of entities. They are often followed by “of- phrases”, for example: a load of books.

1- Collective nouns. They refer to groups of people, animals, things (audience, committee, family, staff).
A subgroup, formed by nouns like group, crowd and flock are called of-collectives because they generally
precede of + plural noun (bunch of roses).
Some of-collectives, such as group, are quite general in meaning, whereas others have a more specific
application. Some typical collocations are:
- bunch of idiots / thieves / roses / grapes
- crowd of demonstrators / fans / spectators / shoppers
- flock of birds / doves / geese / sheep / children
- gang of bandits / hecklers / thugs
- group of adults / girls / animals / buildings / diseases / things
- set of assumptions / characteristics / conditions
Other examples are: herd of cows, host of stars, pack of lies, series of accidents, shoal of fish, swarm of bees,
troop of inspectors.
 2- Unit nouns: they allow us to cut up a generalised mass into individual units. They are countable nouns followed
by an of-phrase including an uncountable noun. Each unit noun has a specific meaning, which shows up in the
different collocations it favors:
- a bit of cake / wood / fun / luck
- a chunk of chocolate / concrete / gold
- a grain of corn / dust / salt / sand
- an item of clothing / equipment / news
- a lump of clay / coal / soil / butter / fat
- a piece of cake / toast / chalk / land / wood / advice / evidence
- a sheet of cardboard / iron / paper
Other unit nouns are illustrated by: scrap of paper, slice of bread, speck of dirt, strip of cloth
3- Quantifying nouns: they are used to refer to quantities specified in a following of-phrase.
o NOUNS FOR A TYPE OF CONTAINER
- basket of eggs / flowers / bread / fruit
- box of books / candy / matches / soap
- cup of coffee / soup / tea
o NOUNS FOR SHAPE
- heap of ashes / blankets / bones / leaves / rubble
- pile of bills / bodies / bricks / rocks / rubbish / wood
o MEASURE NOUNS
- pint, gallon, quart, liter/litre of beer / blood / gas / milk / oil / wine
- foot, inch, yard, meter/metre of cloth / concrete / material / wire
- ounce, pound, gram, kilo(gram) of butter / cheese / flour / gold
- ton, tonne of aluminium / bricks / ore / sewage
o PLURAL NUMERAL NOUNS
- hundred, thousand, million, dozen and score of times
o NOUNS FOR LARGE QUANTITIES
- a load of fuel / garbage / junk / money / stuff
- loads of friends / money / things / work
- a mass of blood / detail / material / stuff
- masses of homework / money / people
o NOUNS ENDING IN -FUL
the noun suffix -ful can be added to almost any noun that can denote some kind of container, for
example: bowlful, earful, fistful, handful, mouthful, pocketful, spoonful, teaspoonful
o PAIR AND COUPLE
- pair of arms / eyes / glasses / gloves / hands / pants / pliers / scissors / shoes / socks
- couple of days / babies / balloons / boys / examples / hours / kids
o SPECIES NOUNS
they refer to a type rather than to the quantity of something, and they are often followed by an of-
phrase
- sort of: is used more in conversation
- kind of: is more for fiction

TYPES OF DETERMINERS

They are function words used to specify the kind of reference a noun has. In some cases, there is more than one
determiner: there are central determiners (these, those, a, the), predeterminers (last two, other, four) and
postdeterminers (all, both, half).

ARTICLES The most common determiners are a/an and the, which signal definite and indefinite meaning. They are
pronounced differently depending on whether the name begins with a vowel or not. When there is no determiner, we say
that there is a zero article.

/a/ a house, a UFO

/an/ an apple, an hour, an MP6
/ðə/ the house, the union
/ði/ the apple, the hour, the other day

• a/an:
- specific use, to introduce a new specific entity (news): a 12 years old boy got mad at his parents Friday night
- unspecific use, when it does not refer to a specific individual: I’m looking for a millionaire but I don’t see any around
- it can be used to classify an entity: my husband is a doctor.
- to refer generically to what is typical of any member of a class: a doctor is not better than his patient

• Indefinite meaning with the zero article:

- it signals indefinitness
- zero articles are also involved in meals
- places as institutions

• Predicatives with unique reference:

- means of transport (by)
- times of the day, days, month, seasons (in)
- parallel structures (from, to)
- block language, abbreviated language used in newsaper headlines
- vocatives (no hard feelings, doctor)

• the:
- anaphoric reference, when the phrase “the” refers back to a previously mentioned item (when the earlier noun is not
repeated but an associated noun is used with the or with synonyms)
- cataphoric use of the, reference is established by something following later in the text

POSSESSIVE DETERMINERS They specify the noun phrase by connecting it to the speaker or writer. They correspond
to personal pronouns and make a noun phrase definite.

DEMONSTRATIVE DETERMINERS This/these and that/those are similar to the definite article the in conveying definite
meaning. However, they also specify whether the referent is singular or plural (this v. these) and whether the referent is
'near' or 'distant' in relation to the speaker.

- situational reference; very common in conversation, where the choice between this/these and that/those reflects the
speaker's perception of whether the referent is near or distant, the choice of determiner can also reflect emotional
distance: this/these can express greater sympathy than that/those.
- time reference, although the basic situational use of demonstratives is in reference to place (compare here/there),
another kind of situational use refers to time (compare now/then
- anaphoric reference, refer back to the preceding text
- cataphoric reference, that and those are used where a modifier following the head specifies the reference of the head
We apologise to those readers [who did not receive the Guardian on Saturday]

QUANTIFYING DETERMINERS (QUINTIFIERS) Specify nouns in terms of quantity or amount (all/much with the
uncountable, all/many with countable)

- inclusive are: all, both, each, every. All refers to the whole of a group or mass; both refers to two entities, and goes with
a plural noun. Each and every refer to all the individual members of a group but, in contrast to all, combine only with
singular countable nouns. Each stresses the separate individual, every stresses the individual as a member of the group.
Each can denote two or more, while every denotes three or more.
- large quantity: many and much, many with plural countable nouns, and much with uncountable nouns. They are used
especially with negatives, interrogatives, and some combinations such as very rnuch/many, so many/much, too
many/much, a great many, a good many. Other determiners signifying a large amount are multi-word units, like a lot of,
lots of, plenty of, a great/good deal of: A lot of and lots of often replace much and many in casual speech.
- moderate or small quantity; some usually denotes a moderate quantity and is used with countable and uncountable
nouns, a few and a little are used to indicate a small amount, few and little (without a) mean 'not many' and 'not much'
- an arbitrary or negative individual or amount; any denotes an arbitrary member of a group, or an arbitrary amount of a
mass. Either has a similar meaning, but it is used to denote a member of a group of two, and occurs only with singular
countable nouns. They occur with negative questions. No and neither have a purely negative meaning: no is used for
countables as well as uncountables, and neither is used for a choice of two.

NUMERALS AS DETERMINERS Cardinal numerals (like two) are similar to quantifiers, while ordinal numerals (like
second) are similar to the semi-determiners. Cardinal numerals (like two) are similar to quantifiers, while ordinal
numerals (like second) are similar to the semi-determiners. When the two types occur together in one noun phrase,
ordinal numerals normally precede cardinal numerals (the first three pages).

SEMIDETERMINERS Words like same, other, another, last, and such have some adjective characteristics and some
determiner characteristics. These forms lack the descriptive meaning that characterizes most adjectives, and like most
determiners, they can also double as pronouns.

WH-DETERMINERS Wh-determiners are used to introduce interrogative clauses (Which way are we going?) and
relative clauses (I had a girl whose dog was the bridesmaid)

NUMBER AND CASE IN NOUNS

- NUMBER: SINGULAR AND PLURAL

The singular form of nouns is the unmarked form of a noun. Plurals are formed from the singular by inflectional change,
usually the addition of a suffix

REGULAR PLURALS The majority of nouns form their plural by adding –(e)s
NATIVE IRREGULAR PLURALS Irregular plurals can be divided into native plurals and plurals borrowed from other
languages. The plural form of these words can be obtained by:
- changing the vowel: man-men / foot-feet / tooth-teeth
- adding -en: child-children / ox-oxen
- changing -f to -ves: shelf-shelves / knife-knifes / wife-wives

ZERO PLURALS Zero plurals are plural forms which don’t change from singular to plural, as some animal nouns: fish,
sheep, deer, salmon

PLURAL-ONLY NOUNS AND SINGULAR NOUNS IN -S Moreover, there are nouns that look singular but are actually
plural, like people, police, staff, cattle. And there are also nouns that look plural but actually singular, like news, measles,
mumps, checkers

- CASE: THE GENITIVE

GENITIVES OF TIME AND MEASURE The genitive is often used to specify time, duration, distance or value:
- duration: a month’s holiday
- distance: I held the telephone at arm’s length and stared at it
- monetary value: she had to buy fifty pounds’ worth

INDEPENDENT GENITIVES Independent genitives are genitive phrases standing alone as a noun phrase. Some are
elliptic genitives, which are genitive phrases whose main noun head can be recovered from the preceding text, for
example: this isn’t my bag. It’s Selina’s.
Other independent genitives refer to people’s homes, for example: she’s going to a friend’s.

DOUBLE GENITIVES In this construction, either the independent genitive or a possessive pronoun occurs in the phrase,
for example: this was a good idea of Johnny’s.

The choice between genitives and of phrases depends on:

- The semantic class of the noun. Personal nouns are more likely used with the genitive form than inanimate
nouns, which, on the other hand, are used with the of-construction, for example: the future of socialism / dad’s
car
- The meaning relation between the two nouns. Meaning relations favouring the genitive are:
- possessive genitive: the family’s car
- attributive genitive: Martha’s courage
- subjective genitive: Chiang’s recognition

GENDER AND NOUN FORMATION English doesn’t have masculine and feminine inflections for nouns or determiners
Four semantic gender classes can be distinguished: masculine, feminine, personal and neuter.
- Masculine nouns and pronouns refer primarily to male people
- Feminine nouns and pronouns refer primarily to female people
- Personal gender nouns and pronouns refer primarily to people, regardless of whether they are female or male
- Neuter gender nouns and pronouns refer primarily to inanimates

MASCULINE AND FEMININE NOUN REFERENCE There are four major ways of specifying masculine and feminine
contrast in nouns:
- Using totally different nouns: father-mother / son-daughter / uncle-aunt
- Using derived nouns with suffixes -er/or, -ess: actor-actress / master-mistress
- Using a modifier, such as male, female, man, woman, women: woman doctor / male dancer
- Using nouns in -man, -woman: Englishman / policeman

- THE FORMATION OF DERIVED NOUNS

Derived nouns are formed by:

- affixation, - conversion, - compounding

TYPES OF PRONOUNS

 PERSONAL PRONOUNS

They have different forms according to:

- Number: singular of plural (I, we)
- Person: first, second, third person
- Case: nominative, accusative, possessive (I, me, mine)
- Gender: masculine, feminine, neuter

PERSON AND PRONOUN USAGE

- First person: we We can be inclusive, including the addressee(s).
 Example: what game shall we play (I + you)?
It can also be exclusive, excluding the addressee(s), but including other people.
Example: Nancy, we love you (I + another person)
- Second person: you You can be either singular or plural
- Third person: it, he, she, they Third- person pronouns are important in making referential links in text or a
conversation. They are usually anaphoric; in this case, the antecedent precedes the pronoun.
Example: my cousin works at Jones, she’s a designer, she’s very famous.

It is also possible for a pronoun to go before its antecedent, for example: on his arrival in Hobart, Mr Bond told
journalists he was not finished yet

The pronoun “it” can also be a dummy pronoun, where it has no specific reference, for example: it’s cold

GENERIC USE OF PERSONAL PRONOUNS we, you and they can be used to refer to people in general

 POSSESSIVE PRONOUNS
Possessive pronouns are like possessive determiners, but they constitute a whole noun phrase, for example: the house
will be hers when they are properly divorced.

 REFLEXIVE PRONOUNS
Reflexive pronouns end with -self in the singular and -selves in the plural. The most common use of reflexive pronouns is
in their “reflexive” role. They refer back to the subject, for example: most consultants are just selling themselves.

EMPHATIC USE OF REFLEXIVE PRONOUNS A reflexive pronoun can be used for emphasis, put immediately after the
emphasised noun phrase, for example: unfortunately, I myself didn’t have this chance

 RECIPROCAL PRONOUNS
“each other, one another” indicate a mutual relationship between two or more parties, for example: we always speak
French to each other

 DEMONSTRATIVE PRONOUNS
“this, that, these, those”, for example: what are these, mom? Those are called hot plates

Demonstrative pronouns can be used as alternatives to the personal pronoun “it”, but they are usually pronounced with
stress, for example: what a neat picture! Yeah, I should put that in a frame or something

 INDEFINITE PRONOUNS
There are three major classes of indefinite pronouns: the compound pronouns, the quantifiers and the pronoun one

- COMPOUND PRONOUNS There are four groups of compound pronouns, beginning with every, some, any and
no
- QUANTIFYING PRONOUNS Quantifying pronouns are usually followed by of- and a noun phrase: “bring all of
your friend”
They can stand alone: “I just want to get my bonus, that’ all”
They can have an elliptic meaning: “I’ll eat some of the steak. I’ll have some (some of the steak)
- THE PRONOUN ONE It can replace a countable noun that has been mentioned before in a context. A singular
noun is replaced by “one”; a plural noun is replaced by “ones”. It also refers to people in general, for example:
one doesn’t raise taxes with enthusiasm
- OTHER PRONOUNS There are other important pronouns: others, another, the other, the last, the latter, such

VERB FUNCTION AND CLASSES

MAIN VERBS: they play a central role in clauses; the occur in the middle of the clause and they determine the other
clause elements. The pattern of this other clause elements is called valency pattern

AUXILIARY VERBS: they occur before a main verb and qualify its meaning, example: Jack could be staying there
(‘could’ and ‘be’ are the auxiliary verbs while ‘staying’ is the main verb)

Verbs can be divided into three main classes:

- Lexical verbs, also called full verbs: run, eat, think; function only as main verbs
- Primary verbs: be, have, do; can function as both auxiliary and main verbs
- Modal verbs: can, could, should, will, would, may, might, must; function only as auxiliary verbs

SINGLE-WORDS LEXICAL VERBS

SEMANTIC CATEGORIES OF LEXICAL VERBS We distinguish seven semantic categories of lexical verbs:
1. ACTIVITY VERBS (bring, get, buy, come, give, play, try, take, use, run, pay, show) They usually refer to a
volitional activity and so performed intentionally by an agent. They can be transitive, taking a direct object, or
 intransitive, occurring without any object, for example: well, give it to the dogs (trans) / go to the hospital! (intran)
2. COMMUNICATION VERBS (ask, offer, call, claim, say, speak, talk, tell, thank, suggest, write) They are a
special category of activity verbs, that involve communication activities, particularly verbs describing speech and
writing, for example: you said you didn’t have it!
3. MENTAL VERBS (believe, find, think, listen, hear, love, want, see, feel, like, know, suppose) They refer to
mental states and activities; emotions, desires, perceptions. Mental verbs don’t involve physical action; some of
them convey volition others don’t, for example: I think it was Frankie.
4. CAUSATIVE VERBS (allow, force, help, let, require) They indicate that some person or thin helps to bring about
a new state of affairs. These verbs often occur with a derived noun (in academic prose) and a complement
clause, for example: what caused you to be ill?
5. VERBS OF OCCURRENCE (become, grow, change, happen, occur, die, develop) They report events that
occur without an actor; often the subject of these verbs are affected by the event that is described by the verb,
as in this example: the lights changed.
6. VERBS OF EXISTENCE OR RELATIONSHIP (appear, indicate, represent, live, seem, involve, look, stay)
These verbs report a state of existence or a logical relationship that exist between entities. Some of existence
verbs are copular verbs, such as seem and appear, for example: Witnesses said he appeared happy and
relaxed. / I go and stay with them. / The exercise will include random stop checks by police.
7. VERBS OF ASPECT (being, continue, keep, start, stop) They characterize the stage of progress of an event or
activity. These verbs occur with a complement clause following the verb, for example: she kept running out of
the room. / He couldn’t stop talking about me

Many verbs have more than one meaning and so they can two or more semantic categories simultaneously (say/get/go)

LEXICAL VERBS: STRUCTURES AND PATTERNS

REGULAR AND IRREGULAR VERB ENDINGS

- REGULAR VERBS Inflection are morphemes that express grammatical meaning like person and number. Most
verbs are regular, meaning that they use the same inflections to mark person, tense, aspect and voice. For
example: all regular verbs mark the third person singular with an s- suffix and past tense with an -ed suffix.
Regular verbs have only four morphological forms, these forms involve three suffixes added to a base:
base  infinitive, present tense, except third singular person
base + -ing  -ing participles (as in progressive aspect)
base + -(e)s  third person singular present tense
base + -(e)d  simple past tense and -ed participles (as in perfect and passive constructions)
- IRREGULAR VERBS There is a much smaller set of irregular verbs (that have irregular past tense and -ed-
participle forms), but they are some of the most common verbs. There are seven main patterns used to mark
the past tense and ed-participles in irregular verbs

Also there are many irregular verbs that have regular alternatives (the verb “speed” can have the past tense as
“speeded” or “sped)

VERB FORMATION A prefix can be attached to the front base of a verb or a suffix can be attached to the end of the
base; verb prefixes do not change the word class, but the meaning of the verb, derivational suffixes change nouns and
adjectives into verbs: like  dislike; cook  overcook; active  activate; simple  simplify

There are many different derivational prefixes used to form new verbs in English. The most common are:
- Re: rebuild, redefine, reabsorb
- Dis: disallow, disarm, dislike
- Over: overbook, overcome, overreach
- Un: unlike, unbend, uncouple, unfold
- Mis: misbehave, mishandle, misinform
- Out: outbid, outdo, outgrow, outweigh
The prefixes -re- and -ize- are also frequently used to create new words

There are only few derivational suffixes used for verb formation, they are:
- Ize: computerize, energize, stabilize
- En: awaken, flatten, moisten
- Ate: activate, liquidate, regulate, pollinate
- (i)fy: beautify, codify, exemplify, notify

VALENCY PATTERNS The main verb in a clause determines the other elements that are required in that clause. The
pattern of these elements is called valency pattern for the verb. There are five major valency pattern:
- INTRANSITIVE: subject + verb (SV): more people came
- MONOTRANSITIVE: subject + verb + direct object (SVDO): She carried a long whippy willow twig
- DITRANSITIVE: subject + verb + indirect object (SVIODO): Fred gave her (id) a huge vote of confidence
- COMPLEX TRANSITIVE: subject + verb + direct object + object predicative (SVDOOP): People called him
Johnny (op)
- COPULAR: subject + copular verb + subject predicative (SVSP): Carrie felt a little less bold (sp)
The monotransitive, ditransitive and complex transitive patterns are the transitive patterns; they all require some type of
object. The common structure for the objects is a noun phrase. However, in some cases, other structure can function as
objects: complement clauses, prepositional clauses, adverbials

Most common verbs can allow more than one valency pattern, and some allow a wide range. For example, ‘speak’ and
‘help’ can occur with intransitive or monotransitive patterns:
- intransitive: Simon spoke first. Money helped, too
- monotransitive: The stewards all spoke French. Evans did a great job when he helped Alan Jones.

Also, many verbs can take both intransitive and transitive patterns, but these verbs differ their preference for one pattern
over another. For example, the verbs stand, change and meet are possible with both valency patterns

MULTI-WORD LEXICAL VERBS: STRUCTURE AND MEANING

Many multi-word verbs function as a single verb; they usually have idiomatic meanings and so their meaning cannot be
predicted from the meaning of each individual word. The multi-word verbs fall into four classes:
1. Phrasal verbs: the verb is followed by an adverbial particle (ex. Carry on, find out, pick up)
2. Prepositional verbs: the verb is followed by a preposition (look out, talk about, listen to)
3. Phrasal-prepositional verbs: contain both an adverbial particle and a preposition (ex. Get away with).
Sometimes is possible to replace the multi-word verbs by single-words verbs with similar meaning (look at 
observe / talk about  discuss)
4. Other multi-word verb constructions can also be free combinations (come down, go back)

CHARACTERISTICS OF PHRASAL VERBS AND PREPOSITIONAL VERBS The meaning and the structure of phrasal
verbs, prepositional verbs, and free combinations differ in many ways. There are three criteria for distinguish among
multi-words combination:
- Whether or not there is an idiomatic meaning: intransitive phrasal verbs usually have an idiomatic meaning,
while the words in free combinations retain their own meanings. For example, the phrasal verbs come on, shut
up, get up, grow up, they all have their idiomatic meaning (ex. The verb ‘grow up’ meaning to act mature and
NOT literally to grow in an upward direction)
- Whether or not the particle movement is possible: if the adverbial particle can be placed both before or after the
object noun phrase. Transitive phrasal verb allows the movement (ex. I went back to Eddie’s to get back my
shirt -or ‘get my shirt back’). Particle movement is not possible with prepositional verbs; the particle always
come before the noun (waiting for, depend on, look at)
- How the wh-question is formed: in sentences with a prepositional verb, wh-questions are usually formed with
what or who; while for free combination verbs is used when and where. These questions indicate that the
prepositional phrase is an adverbial that follows the verb: where are you going? I’m walking to that place

PRIMARY VERBS: BE, HAVE, DO

MAIN VERB BE As a main verb -be- (the copula) is the most important copular verb in English. It links to the subject
noun phrase with a subject predicative or an obligatory adverbial, e.g.: Radio waves are useful
As an auxiliary verb, -be- has two main grammatical functions:
1. PROGRESSIVE ASPECT (be+ING+participle): the last night was fading by the time we entered the town
2. PASSIVE VOICE (be+ED+participle): this system is called fiscal federalism

MAIN VERB HAVE Have, as a transitive main verb, is the most common lexical verb in English. Similar to ‘get’, the main
verb ‘have’ can be used with many different meanings:
- For showing physical possession: they have two cars
- Telling family connections: she had a husband and child
- Describing eating or drinking: the kids had an ice cream
- Showing where something exists: it would be nice to have a young person in the house again
- Linking a person to an abstract quality: I hope she has fun
Also, the verb ‘have’ occurs as the semi-modal verb ‘have to’ and in idiomatic multi-word phrases, such as ‘have a look’

As an auxiliary verb, ‘have’ is the maker of the perfect aspect.

Past tense ‘had’ marks past perfect; present ‘has/have’ marks present perfect. Ex: 20 years before, Charlie had passed a
whole day without a drink. No one has ever seen anything like that before

MAIN VERB DO As a main verb, -do- has an activity meaning. It can take a direct object (she did a wonderful thing) or
an indirect object + direct object (would you do me a favour?)
‘Do’ commonly combines with a noun phrase to form idiomatic expressions such as ‘do the job, do the dishes, do some
work, do your hair, do the wash’

- DO AS A TRANSITIVE PRO-VERB: it usually functions as a pro-verb, substituting for a lexical verb (done this,
done so), e.g.: well, that’s why he did it
- DO AS AN INTRANSITIVE PRO-VERB it provides an alternative to ellipsis (the omission from speech or writing
of a word or words that are superfluous or able to be understood from contextual clues), e.g.: A: they kicked him
out. B: they should have done, but they won’t
Do works as an auxiliary verb when lexical main verbs are made negative or used in interrogative, e.g.: he doesn’t
smoke or drink. This use of ‘do’ is known as ‘do support’

Emphatic ‘do’ occurs as an auxiliary verb in a clause that is not negate and is not a question. It’s used to empathize that
the meaning of the main verb is positive, in contrast with what one might expect: I did have a protractor, but it broke. I
really did go to see him.
Emphatic ‘do’ is also used in commands that use the imperative form (oh, do shut up!)

COPULAR VERBS The copular verbs are used to associate an attribute with the subject of the clause. The attribute is
often expressed by the subjective predicative following the verb, e.g.: You are very stupid!
‘You’ is the subject, ‘very stupid’ is the subjective predicative

Many copular verbs are also used to locate the subject of a clause in time or space and so there is an adverbial of
position that occurs after the copula, e.g.: I was in the kitchen

Several verbs, such as -grow, go, come- are used either as a copular verb or a transitive/intransitive verb, depending on
the contest, e.g.: your bones grow strong and healthy (copular) / she stated to grow sesame herbs (transitive) / I went to
Mexico (intransitive)

Many verbs can function as copular verbs; there are two main categories:
1. Current copular verbs: also divided into:
- state of existence (be, seem, appear, stay, keep), e.g.: we are all human / David seemed quite satisfied
- sensory perception (look, found, smell, taste), e.g.: I really do look awful / Oh, that feels good
2. Result copular verbs: they identify an attribute that is the result of a process of change, e.g.: she’ll end up
pregnant / My heart grew sick and I couldn’t eat

There are highly systematic patterns of use associated with copular verbs + complements.

VERB PHRASE

TENSE (tempo) – PRESENT / PAST

a) SIMPLE PRESENT: refers to habitual action; describe a state that exists at the present time
b) SIMPLE PAST: is used to refer to past time but sometimes it is used at the present time to show that the
speaker is being polite: “did you want a cup of coffee?”
c) FUTURE TIME: is usually marked in the verb phrase with a modal (will, shall) or semi-modal (be going to)

ASPECT (aspetto) – PERFECT / PROGRESSIVE

Aspect answers the question “is the event/state described by the verb completed, or is it continuing?”

a) PERFECT ASPECT: describes an event or state taking place during a preceding period of time
b) PROGRESSIVE ASPECT: describes an event or state in progress or continuing

- PRESENT PERFECT
HAVE/HAS + PARTICIPIO PASSATO
“I have been”  si usa per parlare di un’azione verificatasi in un tempo indeterminato del passato e indica la
durata di un’azione non ancora conclusa

- PRESENT PERFECT CONTINOUS

HAVE/HAS + BEEN + -ING
“She has been studying”  si usa con I verbi di azione (work, study) per esprimere la continuità di un’azione
iniziata nel passato e che continua nel presente

- PAST PERFECT
HAD + PARTICIPIO PASSATO
“I had gone”  si usa per esprimere un’azione avvenuta prima di un’altra azione passata, infatti l’azione
successiva va espressa con il past simple. “The plane had taken off when I got to the airport”

- PAST PERFECT CONTINOUS

HAD + BEEN + -ING
“She had been working”  si utilizza quando si vuole evidenziare l’azione nel corso del suo svolgimento

VOICE (voce) – ACTIVE / PASSIVE

Most transitive verbs can occur in two voices: active voice and passive voice. Most passive constructions are formed with
the auxiliary verb “be” and “-ed participle”, but other phrases can also be formed with the auxiliary verb “get”
- SHORT PASSIVE: the agent is not specified  “it is known that he was in prison for five years”
- LONG PASSIVE: the agent of the action is specified  “he is known to have been in prison for five years”

Verbs frequently used in the get-passive form: get married; get hit; get involved
 MODALS

MODALS: can, could, may, might, must, should, will, would, shall
They act as an auxiliary verb in verb phrases and they don’t take inflections to show agreement or tense. Each modal
can have two different types of meaning: personal or logical (intrinsic, extrinsic)

- PERSONAL (intrinsic)
1) Permission  can, could, may, might
2) Obligation  must, should, have to, need to, ought to
3) Volition  will, would, shall, be going to

- LOGICAL (extrinsic)
Logical modal meaning refers to the logical status of states or events. It usually refers to levels of certainty or
logical necessity

BE GOING TO – USED TO
The semi-modals “be going to” and “used to” are mostly used to mark time distinctions

- Be going to  is a common way of marking future time in conversation: “I think I’m going to die”
- Used to  shows past habitual behaviour or a past state: “He used to go to the gym”

ADJECTIVES

- CENTRAL: can be inflected to show comparative and superlative degree: big, bigger, biggest
They serve both attributive and predicative syntactic roles.
In attribute position the adjective precedes and modifies the noun phrase: “full impact”
Predicative adjectives usually follow the copular verb and characterize the noun phrase: “even Oscar Wilde
called it charming”
Central adjectives are gradable, so they can take comparative and superlative forms and can be modified by an
adverb of degree, such as ‘very’: “the two couples were very close”
- PERIPHERAL: share some but not all the defining characteristics of adjectives. Such as ‘beautiful’ has all the
characteristics of central adjectives but can’t be inflected to show comparative or superlative degree. Many
peripheral adjectives occur in only attributive or predicative roles, but not both!

FORMATION OF ADJECTIVES
- Participial adjectives  most participial adjectives are derived from verbs with -ing or -ed participial forms:
surprised, promising
- Adjectives with derivational affixes  many adjectives are formed by adding an adjective suffix to a noun or a
verb:
noun/verb + adjective suffix
effect + ive
adjectives can also be formed from other adjectives, especially by using the negative prefixes un-, in-, non-
(unhappy, insensitive)
- Adjectival compounds  they are made from a combination of more than one word:
adjective + adjective: greyish – blue
adjective + noun: full – time
reduplication: goody – goody

SEMANTIC CATEGORIES OF ADJECTIVES

- Descriptors: are adjectives that describe:
- Colour  black, white
- Size/Quantity  big, deep
- Time chronology, age and frequency  late, now
- Emotive  bad, beautiful
- Classifier: restrict a noun’s referent, rather than describing characteristics like descriptors:
- Relational classifier  initial, public, single
- National classifier  American, Chinese
- Topical classifier  social, human

Adjectives can serve other roles, for example like a postposed modifier  is part of a noun phrase, but it follows the
head word; they are common with indefinite pronouns (somebody, anything): “you haven’t got anyone musical here”

ADJECTIVES AS EXCLAMATIONS: “Great! I’ll back now”

ADVERBS

Adverbs can function as modifier: this means that they can be integrated into an element of the clause, for example “I am
almost positive”, or as an adverbial, so they themselves can be an element of the clause: “I think she’ll be married
shortly”
The same adverbs can function as modifiers and adverbials

FORMATION OF ADVERBS
- Simple adverbs  they are not derived from another word; for example: well, too, rather, quite, soon, here
- Compound adverbs  they are formed by combining two or more elements into a single word: anyway,
nowhere, heretofore
- Adverbs derived by suffixation  many adverbs are formed by suffixing “-ly” to an adjective, such as ‘clearly’,
but not all the words ending in -ly are adverbs: weekly or fatherly.
Other suffixes used to form adverbs are: -wise, that can be added to nouns, and -ward(s), added to nouns and
prepositions (piecewise, onward)
- Fixed phrases  some fixed phrases are used as adverbs: of course, kind of, at last

ADVERBS:
1. MODIFIERS
- Adjectives  “this is quite good”
- Adverbs  “he runs really fast”
- Pronoun  “almost nobody”
2. ADVERBIALS
- Circumstance  add information about the action described in the clause
- Stance  express the speaker’s valuation of the preposition
- Linking  serve to connect stretches of texts

SEMANTIC CATEGORIES OF ADVERBS

1. PLACE ADVERBS  express distance, direction or position: “I want to be there”
2. TIME ADVERBS  express position in time, frequency, duration and relationship: “she always eats pizza”
3. MANNER ADVERBS  express information about how an action is performed, many of these adverbs have -ly
suffixes: “automatically, she backed away”
4. DEGREE ADVERBS  describe the extent of a characteristic: “it’s insulated slightly with polystyrene behind”
- amplifiers: increase intensity “more, very, so”
- diminishers: decrease the effect of the modified item “less, slightly, rather”
5. ADDITIVE/RESTRICTIVE ADVERBS  show that one item is being added to another: “my dad, was a great
boy, too”
6. STANCE ADVERBS
- Epistemic: probably, actually
- Attitude: emotional attitude: surprisingly, unfortunately
- Style: frankly, honestly, simply
7. LINKING ADVERBS  more connections between sections of discourse: thus/however

THE CLAUSES

The CLAUSE is the key unit of grammar/syntax and it is capable of occurring independently. The clause can be
considered a unit that can stand alone as an expression of a ‘complete thought’  a complete description of an event or
state of affairs
1. CONVERSATION VS. NEWSPAPER
conversation:
- non-clausal material (e.g. right, yeah)
- many single-clause units
- little clause embodying
newspaper:
- all words and phrases belong to clauses
- no single-clause units
- the clauses contain many words
2. DEVICES OF ELABORATION AND CONDENSATION enable us to elaborate, combine and reduce the
structure of clauses. There are three kinds:
- coordination  two clauses are connected, with each having equal status (e.g. It’s modern but it’s clean)
- subordination  one clause is embedded as a part of another clause (e.g. although it’s modern, it’s clean)
- ellipsis  is a device of simplification. It allows us to subtract words from the complete clause structure,
wherever their meaning can be “taken for granted”. This symbol ^ marks the ellipsis (e.g. it’s clean although ^
modern or it’s modern but ^ clean)
3. SUBORDINATION AND DEPENDENT CLAUSES In the case of subordination, one clause (a dependent
clause) is embedded as part of another clause (it’s main clause)
- independent clause can stand alone without being subordinate to another clause
- dependent clause have to be part of a larger clause
4. SUBORDINATORS AS CLAUSE LINKS Subordinators are like coordinators, but are different from linking
adverbials, because they are always in the same position at the front of the clause. But the clause introduced by
a subordinator is always a dependent clause, and it doesn’t necessarily follow the clause to which it’s linked.
5. SIGNAL OF SUBORDINATION Subordination can be signalled by:
1. An overt link, in the form of a subordinator or a wh-word
2. A non-finite verb phrase, that is, by a verb phrase introduced by an infinitive
 3. Ing-participle or ed-participle
- finite clauses are marked for tense or modality and usually have an overt link, starting with a subordinator or
wh-word
- non-finite clauses have no tense and cannot include a modal verb. Usually they have no overt link, but the
non-finite verb form signals that the clause is subordinate, and the mostly have no subject, so the verb phrase
begins the clause.
6. COORDINATION can link words, phrases or clauses. Three major coordinators in English are:
- and  is most common in fiction and academic writing (than in conversation and news). In conversation is
common as a clause-level link, while in academic writing is used mostly as a phrase-level link (coordinators in
conversation are primarily clause-level link)
- but  is most common in conversation (than in the written registers; n.b. a coordinator can link more than two
elements. Structures of coordination can be embedded, one within the other)
- or  is most common in academic writing

 SENTENCE-INITIAL AND TURN-INITIAL COORDINATORS

Even though there is a well-known rule that prohibits the use of coordinators at the beginning of a sentence,
coordination often occurs in this position, both in conversation and writing. “But” and “nor”, as stronger linkers,
are much more likely to take the initial position than “and” or “or”.
 COORDINATION TAGS
Coordination tags are more popular in conversation. The most common are the phrases “or something”, “and
everything”, “and things/stuff (like that)”. Coordination tags are a kind of vagueness marker or hedge, a way to
be “evasive”. The coordinator “and” or “or” is usually followed by a general noun or pronoun. The coordination
can be at the word of phrase level, but also at the clause-level. Instead the tags “or so”, “and so on”, and “etc”
are mostly used in expository writing
 CORRELATIVE COORDINATORS
Correlative coordinators are “both...and”, “either...or”, “neither...or”. they are most common in the written
registers, because they add greater clarity and precision

7. ELLIPSIS AND STRUCTURAL CONDENSATION Ellipsis is the omission of elements which are recoverable
from the linguistic context or the situation. The ellipsis condenses (or reduces) the same meaning into a small
number of words. Ellipsis can be:
- initial  when the subject of the second clause can be omitted
- medial
- final
- textual  the missing words can be found in the nearby text; it serves to avoid unnecessary repetition
- situational  the missing words are clear from the situation in which language is used

 ELLIPSIS IN COMPARATIVE CLAUSES

Repeated elements in the comparative clause are normally left out or replaced by a pro-form
 ELLIPSIS IN QUESTION-ANSWER SQUENCES
In quick conversation speakers leave out what is easily understandable from the context of the situation. This
happens mostly with answers to question.
 ELLIPSIS IN NOUN PHRASE
Ellipsis is common in noun phrase, like independent genitives, quantifiers and semi-determines

8. THE SUBJECT-VERB CONCORDANCE RULE This rule states that in finite clauses, the verb phrase in a
clause agrees with the subject in number (singular or plural) and person (1, 2 and 3)
- coordination by “and”  a subject that consists of noun phrases coordinated by “and” takes plural concord
(generally but not always)
- coordination by “or”  a subject that consists of noun phrases coordinated by “or” takes singular concord if
both noun phrases are singular (generally but not always)
- coordination by “neither...nor”  a subject that consists of noun phrases coordinated by “neither...nor” takes
singular concord when both noun phrases are singular, and plural concord when both are plural
- agreement of person  with “or” and “neither...nor” in coordination of different grammatical persons, the verb
tends to agree with the closest noun phrase

 CONCORD WITH QUANTIFYING EXPRESSIONS

- The indefinite pronouns “anybody/anyone, everybody/everyone, nobody/no one and somebody/someone”
agree with singular verb forms, even though co-referent pronouns and determiners may be plural
- Quantifying pronouns such as “all, any, none, a lot, most” can take either singular or plural concord in
according to their reference
 CONCORD WITH COLLECTIVE NOUNS
- Singular collective nouns (like team, government, committee) allow either singular or plural concord in British
English, but in American English the singular is the normal choice
- Nearly all human collective nouns occasionally occur with plural concord in British English
 NOTIONAL CONCORD
Notional concord is the tendency to let the notion of singular/plural in the subject determine the form of the verb,
rather than the grammatical form of the subject
 - Concord with names, titles, etc  plural names, titles, and quotations take singular concord if the reference is
to a single thing
- Concord with measure expressions  plural measure expressions take singular concord if the reference is to
a single measure
 CONCORD AND PROXIMITY
The principle of proximity is the tendency for the verb to agree with the closest (pro)noun, even when that
(pro)noun is not the head of the subject
 CONCORD WHERE THE SUBJECT IS A CLAUSE
When the subject is a finite or non-finite clause there is singular concord. But nominal relative clauses can have
both singular and plural concord
 CONCORD WITH SUBJECT-VERB INVERSION
This kind of concord shows up when the subject follows the verb phrase:
- Existential “there”  the noun phrase which follows the verb “be” is called ‘notional subject’. In written
registers, the notional subject generally determines concord with the verb. In conversation the verb is singular
even when the notional subject is plural

9. VERBS AS OPERATORS The operator is the verb used for clause negation or for forming questions. Operators
have also another function: they’re used when in a sentence it is needed to omit everything that would be
useless to repeat. It’s a type of final ellipsis

 NEGATION
- Clauses are either positive or negative
- Negative clauses are most commonly formed by using ‘not’ or its contraction ‘-n’t’
- The verb as operator is a key tool for forming negation with not/-n’t
- In clause negation, there is an important distinction between not-negation and no-negation

10. MAJOR TYPES OF INDEPENDENT CLAUSES An independent clause consists of a clause which is not part of
any larger clause structure. All independent clauses are finite, that’s to say, they contain a finite verb with the
specification of tense and modality. Independent clauses are used to perform speech-act functions. Four basic
speech-act functions correspond to four structural types of independent clauses:
1. STATEMENT  gives information and doesn’t expect a specific response from the addressee
(speech-act  informing)
2. QUESTION  asks for information and expects a linguistic response (speech-act  eliciting)
3. DIRECTIVE  is used to give orders or requests and expects some action from the addressee
4. EXCLAMATION  expresses the strong feelings of the speaker/writer, and expects no specific
response (speech-act  expressing)

 DECLARATVIVE CLAUSES
- SV (subject-verb) structure
- Express statements
- ‘Default’ type of independent clause-level occasionally used in asking a question
 INTERROGATIVE CLAUSES
- VS (verb-subject) structure or initial wh-word  grammatically
- Rising intonation (in speech) and question mark (in writing)  non grammatically
- Three types of independent interrogative clauses:

1. Wh-questions  used to elicit missing information, where the wh-word refers to the missing elements of the
clause
2. Yes/no questions  used to ask if a proposition is true or false. They have VS structure (operator followed by
subject). The answer has to be a truth value (either yes or no)
3. Alternative questions  used to ask which of two or more alternatives is the case. They open with operator +
subject structure, but the answer can be alternative. They are signalled by the word ‘or’ and by a falling
intonation at the end
4. Question tags  used to ask confirmation to the statement of the speaker. They have operator + subject
structure. The operator is the same of the one in the declarative clause. If there is no operator, dummy ‘do’ is
used. The subject is also the same of the preceding clause. A positive statement is followed by a negative tag,
viceversa, a negative statement is followed by a positive tag. But the positive-positive question tags are used
too, generally to seek confirmation of a previous statement

 EXCLAMATIVE CLAUSES
Can begin with a wh-word (what or how) followed by a SV pattern.
 IMPERATIVE CLAUSES
- Lack of the subject, use of the base form of the verb, and absence of modal, tense and aspect markers
- Special kind of imperative is with the verb ‘let’ followed by ‘us’ (contracted to ‘s’) to express a suggestion
- An imperative urges the addressee to do something (or not to do something); for this limited function, tense,
aspect and modality are unnecessary
- Imperative clauses can be elaborated by the addition of question tags, discourse markers like ‘please’, and
adverbs like ‘just’
 - Imperative can express a variety of directive speech acts (commands, offers, invitation)
 NON-CLAUSAL MATERIAL
- Non-clausal material is common, particularly in conversation
- It consists of headings, public notices, book titles and headlines and they’re made of a series of noun phrase-
level

11. FINITE DEPENDENT CLAUSES COMPLEMENT CLAUSES

- Controlled by a preceding verb, adjective, noun or preposition
- Also called ‘nominal clause’  because their syntactic roles are comparable to those of a noun phrase
- Used as subject, predicative or object
- Introduces by ‘that’ or by a ‘wh-word’

 ADVERBIAL CLAUSES
- Used as adverbials in the main clause
- Like adverbials they are optional, so they can be either at the beginning, middle or end of the main clause
- Generally introduced by a subordinator, such as ‘if, before, when and although’
- Expression of time, reason and condition. Sometimes they are just comment clauses
 RELATIVE CLAUSES
- Postmodifier in a noun phrase
- Expand the meaning and specify the reference of the head noun
- Introduces by a ‘relativizer’, which has a grammatical role (subject or direct object) in the relative clause
- The relativizer points back to its antecedent, the head of the noun phrase
 COMPARATIVE CLAUSES
- Complements in an adjectival phrase or an adverb phrase
- Spell out the basis of comparison and introduced by a conjunction (‘than’  unequal comparison / ‘as’  equal
comparison)
 PERIPHERAL CLAUSES
1) REPORTING CLAUSES
- Introduce somebody’s direct speech or thought
- Can report who is speaking, who the addressee is, the nature of the speech act, and the manner of speaking
- Generally one-word subject + one-word verb phrase, but the order of S and V can variate
2) THE CLAUSES
- Loosely attached to the end (or sometimes the middle) of another clause
- Include ‘question tags’ and ‘declarative tags’ (which reinforce the commitment of the speaker)

12. NON-FINITE DEPENDENT CLAUSES Non-finite clauses are regularly dependent on a main clause. They are
more compact and less explicit. They don’t have tense or modality. They usually lack an explicit subject and
subordinator. Four types:
- ing-infinitive clauses
- ed-participle clauses
- supplement clauses
- verbless clauses  special type of non-finite clause, they’re like as adverbial clauses with ellipsis of the verb
‘be’ and the subject
13. SUBJUNCTIVE VERBS IN DEPENDENT CLAUSES
- Rare in present day English
- Present subjunctive is the base form of the verb
- It occurs in special kinds of finite dependent clauses, particularly in some that-complement clauses and
occasionally in some adverbial clauses
- Past subjunctive is restricted to form ‘were’ used in the singular, especially to express unreal or hypothetical
meaning
14. DEPENDENT CLAUSES WITH NO MAIN CLAUSE In special circumstances, dependent clauses can be used
without being attached to a larger structure. Can occur in dialogs or in texts written in an informal style

COMPLEX NOUN PHRASE

Basic noun phrase can be expanded with modifiers.

Premodifiers (attributive adjectives) occur before the head noun.
Postmodifiers (relative clause) occur after the head noun. Summing it up, noun phrases can be composed of four major
components: determiner + premodifiers + head noun + postmodifiers. All noun phrases must include a head, while the
other three elements are optional. A noun or a complete noun phrase can be substituted by a pronoun, in this case there
are no determiner and premodifiers, but just postmodifiers. Noun phrases are complex form a structural point of view,
especially in written discourse.

1. SURVEY OF NOUN MODIFIER TYPES

There are several types of premodifiers: adjective, participial and noun. There are also several types of postmodifiers,
including both clauses and phrases.
CLAUSAL POSTMODIFIERS can be either finite or non-finite. When the clauses are finite, they are relative clauses.
When the clauses are non-finite, they can be to-clauses, ing-clauses and ed-clauses.
PHRASAL POSTMODIFIERS consist of two main types: prepositional phrases and appositive noun phrases. There’s
also a third type, adjective phrases, which is less common. Occasionally adverbs can also be premodifiers and
postmodifiers in noun phrases.
- Noun phrases are very common as premodifiers in the written registers
- Prepositional phrases are the most common postmodifiers

2. TYPES OF PREMODIFIERS
There are four types of premodification:
1. General adjective (most common form of noun premodifiers)
2. Ed-participial modifier
3. Ing-participial modifier
4. Noun (noun are also extremely common as premodifiers)

MEANING RELATIONSHIPS EXPRESSED BY NOUN+NOUN SEQUENCES

NOUN+NOUN SEQUENCES contain just ‘content words’, with no function word which shows the meaning relationship
between the two nouns. Those sequences are used to express an array of logical relations, like: composition, purpose,
identity, content, objective, subjective, time, location, institution, partitive, specialization
The forms of noun+noun sequences save spaces, because each sequence conveys a complex meaning in a condensed
form
NOUN PHRASES WITH MULTIPLE PREMODIFIERS
Noun phrases can occur with multiple premodifiers, in written registers. The order of multiple premodifiers:
a. adverb + adjective + head
b. adjective + noun + head
c. adjective + adjective + head

3. RESTRICTIVE VS. NON-RESTRICTIVE FUNCTION

Relative clauses can have two functions: restrictive and non-restrictive
- Restrictive  identify the intended reference of the head noun
- Non-restrictive  add descriptive information about the head noun.
With the first, generally, there is no punctuation; with the second there’s usually a comma (used to separate from the
head noun). Restrictive clauses are more common. Newspapers tend to use more non-restrictive.
Postmodifiers (other than relative clauses) can be classifies by restrictive and non-restrictive function. The majority of
postmodifiers are non-restrictive

POSTMODIFICATION BY RELATIVE CLAUSES

The components of relative clauses are:
- the head noun  the noun modified by the relative clause
- the relativizer  is the word (e.g. who or that) that introduces the relative clause. If refers to the head noun
- the gap  is the location of the missing component (part/constituent) in the relative clause

THE DISCOURSE CHOICE AMONG RELATIVIZERS

In English there are 8 relativizers:
- relative pronouns (5)  which, who, whom, whose, that
- relative adverbs (3)  where, when, why
In many cases the relativizers can be omitted, resulting in a zero relativizer. The choice of relative pronoun is made
according the position of the gap. THAT, WHICH and WHO are the most flexible from this point of view. They are used
generally with subject gaps, but also direct gaps and other types. Instead, the other relativizers are rare and used always
in a specific gap position:
1. Whom  non subject noun phrase gaps
2. Whose  possessive/genitive gaps
3. Where, when, why  adverbial gaps
4. Zero  non subject gaps in restrictive relative clauses

RELATIVE PRONOUN CHOICES

- THAT and ZERO are the preferred choice in conversation
- THAT is preferred in fiction too
- WHICH and WHO are preferred in news
- WHICH is preferred in academic prose

- WHO vs. WHICH with human and non-human head nouns:

- WHO occurs almost exclusively after human heads
- WHICH occurs most often after non-human heads
- THAT and ZERO with human and non-human head nouns:
- THAT and ZERO are flexible and can be used both inanimate and animate head nouns
- WHOM vs. WHO vs. THAT with human head nouns:
- WHO and WHOM are both used with animate head nouns. But WHO is usually used with subject gaps
positions, while WHOM is used with non-subject gaps. With non-restrictive relative clauses, there is a very
strong preference to use who/whom rather than that and zero
- WHOSE vs OF WHICH
 - WHOSE is used to mark a possessive relationship between a human head noun and some other noun phrase.
An alternative to WHOSE is inanimate heads in the phrase OF WHICH ( this alternative is largely restricted to
academic prose). Similar meanings can be expressed in two other ways:
1. Relative clause with which or that and the verb have;
2. Postmodifying prepositional phrase with the preposition with
- ZERO relativizer
- The relativizer can be omitted in restrictive relative clauses and whenever the gap is not in subject position.
The zero relativizer is most likely to be used when the subject of the relative clause is a personal pronoun

RELATIVE CLAUSES WITH ADVERBIAL GAPS

- Relative adverbs: where, when, why
- where  for place adverbials (location or direction)
- when  for time adverbials
- why  for reason adverbials
Occasionally where and when are used to mark an abstract location rather than physical locations or times
- Preposition + relative pronoun WHICH
Which preceded by a preposition that marks the adverbial element in the relative clause
- Stranded preposition
This option is to leave the preposition stranded in the relative clause, making the site of the gap
- Omitted preposition
This option is to omit the preposition, providing no surface marker of the adverbial gap. The preposition, in these
cases, has to be understand from the information provided by the head noun and the main verb of the relative
clause
- Manner adverbial gaps and way
In relative clauses with manner adverbial gaps there is no relative adverb available. In fact, we use almost
always the same head noun: WAY. These relative clauses usually occur with both relativizer and the preposition
omitted

4. POSTMODIFICATION BY NON-FINITE CLAUSES

Noun can also be modified by non-finite clauses. Three types of non-finite postmodifying clauses:
1. Ing-clauses 2. Ed- clauses 3. To-clauses
(1) and (2) have always subject gap positions. Instead (3) can have both subject or non-subject gaps.
N.B. (1) and (2) are also called participle clauses; (3) is also called an infinitive clauses or a to-infinitive clause.
Participle clauses are common in news and academic prose, but ed-clause are more common than ing-clauses

TO-CLAUSES AS POSTMODIFIERS
To-clauses are more flexible than participle clauses for two reasons:
1. They can occur with both subject and non-subject gaps and 2. They can occur with an overt subject noun phrase. The
to-clauses constructions in conversation usually have object or adverbial gap. The most common head nouns taking a to-
clauses have general meanings, they are nouns common in conversation (thing, time way). The head nouns associated
with adverbial gaps cover the three major domains of time, place, manner (way)