Fundamentals of English Grammar: An Eclectic Approach

PREFACE

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rammar is the bedrock of language studies. Any language student who has a good knowledge of grammar will, therefore, excel in his or her studies. Unfortunately, many students (including some teachers of language) dread courses that are related to grammar. This is especially true of students of English as a Second Language (ESL). One of the reasons that can be adduced for this fear is that grammar is deemed ‘dry’ or abstract by many. It has lots of rules and exceptions which change over time. The only solution, therefore, is to master both the rules and their exceptions and to keep abreast of latest developments in the field in order to do well as a student of English. I have written this book, a product of my several years of English teaching and research experience in both secondary and tertiary institutions of learning, to help douse the fear of such people by simplifying difficult concepts and by giving copious examples.

The book is intended as an introductory course text on English grammar for undergraduate and college of education students of English in Nigeria and in other countries where English is a second language. For undergraduate students, the book will be good for courses on basic English grammar offered at the lower levels and also provide the foundation needed to succeed in syntax courses offered at the higher levels. In addition, it will give students of English in Nigerian colleges of education, who offer various courses on English grammar, the needed solid foundation. Polytechnic students who take courses on the basic grammar of English and secondary school students who need early exposure to the rudiments of English grammar will equally find the book very useful. Finally, teachers of English at all the levels of education mentioned above will find the book an invaluable reference material.

Among the unique qualities of this book is the use of an eclectic approach. Thus, when necessary, insights are drawn from different theories of grammar to buttress our points. One of the reasons for doing this is to expose students of English to the basic tenets or principles of the various approaches to grammar. Another reason is to give them a holistic view of English grammar based on the different perspectives of the leading authorities on grammar.

The book is divided into three parts. Part One is concerned with that aspect of grammar commonly known as ‘morphology’. It starts with morphological description (the morpheme) and ends with lexical description (the word). Part Two, with theoretical explanations on phrases, clauses and sentences, deals with the structural part of grammar called ‘syntax’. Part Three, with the caption ‘English Grammar in Use’, discusses how grammatical structures are used and the problems that are associated with their usage.

I assure you of a worthwhile reading experience and welcome suggestions on how to improve future editions of the book.

Gideon Olushola Dada

January, 2021

Chapter One

INTRODUCTION

1.1 The Concept of Grammar

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rammar can be viewed from, at least, six different perspectives. Five of these perspectives have been cited from Tomori (1977) and explained below. The sixth definition, given by Osisanwo (2002), comes last. Meanwhile, note that most of these definitions represent different approaches to the study of grammar. We shall discuss them in turn.

First, grammar is ‘the body of prescriptive statements about usages that are considered acceptable and those that are considered unacceptable in a particular language’ (Tomori, 1977, p. 1). This is the view of grammar as ‘linguistic etiquette … since it has to do with people’s social attitudes and values’ (Yule, 1996, p. 87). It is also the view of Traditional Grammar about the concept of grammar.

Secondly, grammar is ‘the body of descriptive statements about the morphological and syntactic structures of a language’ (Tomori, 1977, p. 1). This is the opinion of Leonard Bloomfield about grammar because, according to him, the study of grammar involves both ‘morphology’ and ‘syntax’ (Tomori, 1977, p. 21). This definition can be associated with Structural Grammar.

In the third place, still according to Tomori (1977, p. 1) grammar is defined as ‘a book embodying the morphological and syntactic rules of a particular language’. This is an extension of Bloomfield’s definition above and, by implication, an extension of the view of Structural Grammar as well. By inference, therefore, this book you are reading is a grammar of English.

Furthermore, grammar refers to ‘the quality of the knowledge of a language possessed by a speaker, as inferred from the nature of his utterances’ (Tomori, 1977, p. 1). This, according to Yule (1996, p. 87), is ‘mental grammar’ because the knowledge of a language possessed by a speaker is resident in his or her brain. This same view of grammar refers to ‘linguistic competence’ (Olujide, 1999, p. 49) because it is the ability that an individual has for language use. This is the view of Transformational Generative Grammar about grammar.

Moreover, grammar can be defined as ‘a body of descriptive statements about the systemic interrelationships of structures within [a] language’ (Tomori, 1977, p. 1). This view of grammar can be attributed to Systemic Functional Grammar.

Finally, according to Osisanwo (2002, p. 1), grammar also means ‘the totality of language description’. This is the sixth definition of grammar. It is also the broadest of the definitions because it encompasses not only the theoretical levels of language description such as phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics but also the applied levels of language analysis such as pragmatics, stylistics, sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics. It is in this sense that ‘grammar’ is synonymous with ‘linguistics’.

This book synthesizes basic insights from different theories of grammar and it is, therefore, related to all these definitions in varying degrees. Our next focus is on the different theories of grammar, which most of the definitions above are based on.

1.2 Theories of Grammar

The four main theories of or approaches to grammar, which are also relevant to this book, are summarized below.

1.2.1 Traditional Grammar (TG), also known as Classical Grammar (CG), was the approach to grammar inherited from Greek and Latin by early English grammarians such as Charles Butler, Roger Brawn, John Priestley, Lindley Murray, Robert Lowth, etc. (Osisanwo, 2002 & Egbe, 2005). Then, Greek and Latin were regarded as the most prestigious languages in the world and English grammar was only written to teach Latin to foreigners (Lamidi, 2016). Although Traditional Grammar has been criticized for certain weaknesses, its heritage to modern grammar, such as technical linguistic terminology, has been indispensable. Hence, terms such as sentence, clause, phrase, noun, verb, adjective, tense, concord, subject, predicate, etc which came from TG are still being used today. Such technical terms are also used in this book.

1.2.2 Structural Grammar emerged as a reaction to the inadequacies of Traditional Grammar, the foremost of which is ‘prescriptivism’ (Lamidi, 2016, p. 8). The thrust of Structural Grammar is to study the structural peculiarities or idiosyncrasies of each language. The major contributions to this school of thought in Europe came from Ferdinand de Saussure, a Swiss linguist and the generally acclaimed father of modern linguistics (Osisanwo, 2002, p. 5). The American linguist, Leonard Bloomfield, who viewed language from the perspective of psychological behaviourism, also made significant contributions to structuralism. Among other things, the structuralists replaced the traditional term ‘parts of speech’ with ‘word classes’ and used Subject Verb Complement Object Adjunct (SVCOA), instead of the traditional Subject Predicate (SP), to describe the structure of sentences. These structuralist terms are also used in this book, where necessary.

1.2.3 Transformational Generative Grammar (TGG) is also called Transformational Grammar (TG) or Generative Grammar (GG). It is one of the two modern approaches to grammar and a reaction to the weaknesses of Structural Grammar. The proponent of TGG is Avram Noam Chomsky, an American linguist. Chomsky has proved that man possesses a unique creative productive linguistic capacity which is resident in his brain (Lyons, 1981, pp. 230-231). He, therefore, believes that language is a mental phenomenon and the job of a linguist is to study the intuition of an ideal native speaker of a language in order to know and explain his innate ability (competence) for language use (performance). To do this, Chomsky came up with various grammatical rules such as phrase structure rules, transformational rules, government and binding rules, etc. Where necessary, references are made to this grammatical model in this book.

1.2.4 Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG), also known as Systemic Grammar (SG), or Functional Grammar (FG) is the second modern approach to the study of grammar and a reaction to TGG. Its exponent is Michael Alexander Kirkwood Halliday, a British linguist, who is of the opinion that grammatical interpretations are subject to the social context of language use. Hence, language is more about acceptability than grammaticality (Lamidi, 2016, p.17). Among other things, Halliday identified four grammatical categories for describing any human language. They are: unit, class, structure and system. Halliday views grammar as a network of systems of interrelated contrasts, which is why Osisanwo (2002, p. 10) described Systemic Grammar as a ‘generative non-transformational grammar’. Aspects of this grammatical model are also used in this book.

1.3 Grammatical Continuum

Systemic Grammar, in presenting ‘unit’ as a grammatical category, has described five grammatical units with a diagram popularly known as ‘grammatical rankscale’. This can be illustrated as follows.

Figure 1: Grammatical Rankscale

The diagram above shows the units or components of grammatical description, in descending order, from ‘sentence’ and in ascending order, from ‘morpheme’. According to the rankscale, the largest unit is ‘sentence’ while the smallest unit is ‘morpheme’. A sentence is a combination of one or more clauses; a clause consists of one or more phrases; a phrase is made up of one or more words, and a word comprises one or more morphemes. However, Dada (2016, p. 1) has proposed a more realistic view of the grammatical rankscale with his ‘sentence continuum’, which we have re-named ‘grammatical continuum’, thus:

Figure 2: Grammatical Continuum

The diagram above presents the grammatical units in a cline. As in the rankscale, the morpheme is the smallest grammatical unit while the sentence is the largest unit. In addition, the spiral circle shows that each unit is capable of expanding or reducing. For example, the morpheme can expand into a word, the word can widen into a phrase, the phrase can spiral into a clause and the clause can grow into a sentence. Similarly, the sentence can reduce to a clause, the clause can reduce to a phrase, the phrase can decrease to a word and the word to a morpheme, all in a labyrinthine continuum and without any hindrance.

It should be noted, as the continuum implies, that the morpheme can further reduce to a smaller entity called ‘phoneme’ while the sentence can further expand to a larger unit called ‘paragraph’ (although, these two other units are not our focus in this book). This possibility of reduction or expansion explains why the spiral is not close-ended at both extremes. Also, we consider the use of a spiral circle (continuum) for the grammatical description here as better than the use of a rankscale or concentric circles (as used by some other grammarians) because each unit of a rankscale or each ring of concentric circles is compartmentalized, without the possibility of further growth or reduction.

1.4 Grammar and Syntax

Many students wrongly use the terms ‘grammar’ and ‘syntax’ interchangeably. However, from our second and third definitions of ‘grammar’ above, it should be clear that syntax is only an aspect of grammar, the other aspect being ‘morphology’. While grammar has been defined above, morphology is dealt with in Chapter Two and we will, therefore, not repeat these definitions here. Rather, we will describe ‘syntax’ so as to distinguish it from ‘grammar’. According to Tomori (1977, p. 21), ‘syntax is the study of the rules governing the formation of linguistic units larger than the word.’ The linguistic or grammatical units that are larger than the word are: the phrase, the clause and the sentence. Therefore, syntax is the study of phrases, clauses and sentences. In studying these units, we are interested in their elements, components or structure. Consequently, syntax is the study of the structure of phrases, clauses and sentences. This is the concern of Part Two of this book.

1.5 Eclecticism as Applicable to this Book

The notion of ‘eclectic approach’ (as we have in the title) adopted in this book refers to the use of principles from the four theories of grammar briefly described above. Therefore, this book does not exclusively use ideas from a single theory of grammar but rather, ideas which we consider best to explain our position on any given topic or concept are used, either from one or from a combination of the grammatical theories, when necessary. However, more emphasis is placed on Transformational Generative Grammar and Systemic Functional Grammar – the two internationally renowned modern approaches to grammatical analysis. For the sake of clarity, when a principle from a particular theory of grammar is used, the theory concerned is mentioned.

Revision Exercise 1

Define the term ‘grammar’ in any six ways that you have learnt about in this book. Which of the definitions do you consider as the widest in scope and why?

Illustrate the grammatical rankscale with any diagram of your choice and discuss the relationship among its units.

Briefly write on any three of these schools of grammar:

Traditional Grammar

Structural Grammar

Transformational Generative Grammar

Systemic Functional Grammar

PART ONE: MORPHOLOGY

Chapter Two

THE MORPHEME

2.1 The Morpheme and Morphology

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ach of the items in (a) and (b) above is a morpheme. Fromkin, Rodman, Collins and Blair (1990), cited in Butt, Fahey, Spinks and Yallop (1995, p. 33), defined a morpheme as ‘the minimal linguistic sign, a grammatical unit that is an arbitrary union of a sound and a meaning and that cannot be further analysed’. A morpheme may, therefore, be defined as the minimal meaningful grammatical unit of a language. It should be noted, according to the definition, that each of the morphemes listed in (a) and (b) above is not further divisible. We cannot, for instance, break the entity ‘book’ into *bo + ok or ‘happy’ into *ha + ppy or ‘ing’ into *i + ng because the divisions will not make any sense. (Note, henceforth, that an asterisk (*) is placed above an ungrammatical expression.) Also, the morphemes are meaningful e.g. ‘ing’ means or shows the progressive form of a verb (as in ‘going’), ‘s’ shows the plural form of a noun (as in ‘apples’) or the singular form of a verb (as in ‘reads’), ‘un’ means ‘not’ in the word ‘unhappy’, ‘ly’ in ‘badly’ changes the adjective ‘bad’ to an adverb, ‘dis’ means ‘not’ in ‘disallow’, etc.

Morphology, on the other hand, ‘is the subfield of linguistics that studies the internal structures of words and the relationships among words’ (Akmajian, Demers, Farmer & Harnish, 2010, p.12). ‘The internal structures of words’, in the definition, implies ‘morphemes’. Hence, morphology may also be defined as the study of morphemes. There is no clear distinction between a morpheme and a word but, for now, it will be helpful to know that morphemes are not words but some words are morphemes. This statement will be clearer as we progress in this chapter and