About grammar: basic concepts

Question 1

What is the definition of syntax?

Answer 1

the study of sentence structure

Question 2

what is morphology?

Answer 2

the analysis of sentence structure

Question 3

What is derivational morphology?

Answer 3

study of word formation

e.g. photo - photography - photographic, they create new words by adding prefixes (un- or re-) or suffixes (-ly, -ness, -ation)

Question 4

what is inflectional morphology?

Answer 4

the study of the variation in form of single lexical items for grammatical purposes

e.g. photo - photos, they basically don’t create new words, they modify them to express a grammatical feature (plural s, past tense -ed, possessives, comparative -er, superlative -est)

Question 5

What is grammar?

Answer 5

The system by which the words and morphemes of a language are organised into large units, particularly into sentences.

Question 6

What are Collocations?

Answer 6

statistical tendency of certain lexical items to co-occur

focus on lexical combinations

e.g. strong tea, pay attention

Question 7

What are Colligations?

Answer 7

co-occurrence of a lexical item with a grammatical pattern

focus on syntactic combinations

e.g. afraid of, interest in ..-ing

Question 8

What are the three branches of a language?

Answer 8

• Phonology
• Grammar
• Lexicon

Question 9

What is prescriptive grammar?

Answer 9

set of rules according to established standards

Question 10

What is descriptive grammar?

Answer 10

how language is used by speakers and writers, they don’t care about rules

e.g. Nobody said nothing. - right in a descriptive perspective but not in a prescriptive perspective, they would use “anything”.

Question 11

How do grammarians discover the regularities of a language?

Answer 11

• Introspection (sitting somewhere and thinking about it)
• Elicitation (asking a small group)
• Corpora

Question 12

What is reference grammar?

Answer 12

comprehensive and systematic description of the grammatical rules and structures of a particular language

descriptive, tense, aspect, mood, parts of speech e.g. nouns

Question 13

What is pedagogical grammar?

Answer 13

tailored to the needs of learners, emphasizing clarity, simplicity, and practical usage

Question 14

What is theoretical grammar?

Answer 14

principles that seeks to explain the underlying structure of language

Question 15

What is traditional grammar?

Answer 15

how language should be used, rather than describing how it is actually used in practice, lowkey another word for prescriptive grammar