现代英语语法串讲

现代英语语法串讲

Main points of Grammar

Chapter One - The Structure of the English Sentence

1. Present the grammatical units that form a hierarchical order:

A text consists of one or more sentences

A sentence consists of one or more clauses

A clause consists of one or more phrases

A phrase consists of one or more words

A word consists of one or more morphemes

2. Terms:

(1) Morpheme: Morphemes are the minimal meaningful elements.

(2) Free morpheme: A morpheme that can occur in isolation is termed a “free morpheme”.

(3) Bound morphemes: A morpheme that can only occur in conjunction with at least one other morpheme is termed a “bound morpheme”

(4) Root: A root is that part of a word that remains when all affixes have been removed.

(5) Stem: A stem has to do with inflectional features and is the part that remains when all inflectional affixes have been removed.

(6) Base: A base is any form to which affixes of any kind can be added.

3. Words are classified in terms of three factors：

the environment, the internal structure, the meaning

4. Words classes

Open classes: noun, adjective, adverb, verb

Closed classes: determiner, pronoun, preposition, conjunction, auxiliary

Marginal classes: numerals, interjections

5. Words in the open classes are determined on the basis of three criteria:

meaning (semantic or notional angle), form (morphology), function (syntactic)

6. the word-formations:

(1) Affixation: Affixation is a kind of word-formation approach that it attaches a lesser morpheme. The general term includes: prefixes, infixes and suffixes.

(2) Composition: A compound, the product of composition, is a lexical unit consisting of more than one base and functioning both grammatically and semantically as a single word.

(3) Conversion: Conversion is the derivational process whereby an item is adapted or converted to a new word class without the addition of an affix.

(4) Blending: Blending is a kind of word-formation that a new word is formed from parts of two other words.

(5) Back-formation: Back-formation refers to a similar process only reversed.

(6) Shortening: Shortening is a process whereby part of a word is clipped so that the original

word is shortened to a smaller word.

(7) Acronyms: An acronym is a word coined by putting together the initial letters of a group of words.

7. Phrases:

(1) Definition: A phrase consists of one or more than one word, always with a head word which determines the class and the structured way of the phrase. It can be classified into five classes: noun phrase, verb phrase, adjective phrase, adverb phrase, and preposition phrase.

(2) Five phrase classes:

Noun phrase: consists of a head word (a noun) and one or more optional modifiers. Adjective phrase: consists of an adj. as its head word and optional modifiers.

Adverb phrase: consists of an adverb as its head word that can take optional modifiers. Prepositional phrase: consists of a proposition as its head word and optional postmodifiers. Verb phrase: the head of a verb phrase is the head verb or lexical verb. Verb phrase is divided into two types based on the forms: the finite verb phrase and the non-finite verb phrase.

8. Clause:

Two categories: main clause and subordinate clause

9. Sentence:

(1) Classes: According to different functions, a sentence can be a statement, a question, a command or an exclamation.

(2) Seven basic clause patterns:

SV: subject + verb

e.g The solider has recovered.

SVC: subject + verb + complement

e.g I am happy.

SVO: subject + verb + objective

e.g She forgot the key.

SVOO: subject + verb + objective + objective

e.g He gave me a present.

SVOC: subject + verb + objective + complement

e.g He calls her little sister.

SVA: subject + verb + adverbial

e.g The sun rises each day.

SVOA: subject + verb + objective + adverbial

e.g China is a large country with a long history.

Chapter Two Sentence Types

1. Four major types of sentences and functions:

(1) Declaration: giving information;

(2) Interrogative: requiring information;

(3) Imperative: requiring actions;