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Study questions
1. Identify all the parts of speech used in thissentence (e.g. woman= noun): The woman kept a large snake in a cage, but itescaped recently.
Key: The (= article), woman (=noun), kept (= verb), a (= article), large (= adjective), snake (= noun), in (=preposition), a (= article), cage (= noun), but (= conjunction), it (=pronoun), escaped (= verb), recently (= adverb)
2. What is thedifference between grammatical gender and natural gender?
Key: Grammatical gender is based onthe type of noun, such as masculine or feminine or neuter, and is not tied tosex. Natural gender is based on sex as a biological distinction between male,female or neither male nor female.
3. What prescriptive rules for the “proper” useof English are not obeyed in the following sentences and how would they be“corrected”?
(i) The oldtheory consistently failed to fully explain all the data.
(ii) I can’tremember the name of the person I gave the book to.
Key: (a) “You must not split aninfinitive.” (to fully explain → to explain fully)
(b) “You must not end a sentence with a preposition” (the person Igave the book to →the person to whom I gave the book)
4. What was wrong withthe older Latin-influenced definition of English pronouns?
Key: In the older definition,pronouns were described as ‘words used in place of nouns’. If this was correct,we could use he instead of man and it instead of sandwich, and rewrite The manate the sandwich as ∗The he ate the it. Because we usually say He (= The man) ate it (=the sandwich), it would be better to define pronouns as ‘words used in place ofnoun phrases’.
5. Given these otherGaelic words, translate the following sentences into English.
mor (“big”) beag (“small”) bhuail (“hit”) duine (“man”)
(i) Bhuail angille beag an cu dubh.
(ii) Chunnaican cu an duine mor.
Key: (a) The small boy hit the blackdog.
(b) The dog saw the big man.
6. Create a labeled andbracketed analysis of this sentence: The thief stole a wallet.
Key: S
Tasks
A. Another term used in the description of theparts of speech is “determiner.”
What are determiners? How many examples were included inthis chapter?
Key: Determiners are used in frontof nouns to indicate whether you are referring to something specific orsomething of a particular type.
You use a specific determiner when people know exactly whichthing(s) or person/people you are talking about.
The specific determiners are:
the definite article :the
demonstratives : this,that, these, those
possessives : my, your,his, her, its, our, their
You use general determiners to talk about people or things withoutsaying exactly who or what they are.
The general determiners are:
the indefinite articles :a, an
B. In this chapter, wediscussed “correction” in grammar. What is hypercorrection?
Key: Hypercorrection is a term usedin linguistics that refers to some sort of error or mispronunciation in thelanguage that usually stems from a desire to be too formal or overly correct.Usually, those who make the mistake of hypercorrection take a linguistic ruleand apply it where it should not be applied. Hypercompensation andhyperforeignism are among the more common types of errors. In English, theseerrors are often grammatical, and some forms of hypercorrection in thislanguage involve personal pronouns and using prepositions at the end of asentence. Hypercorrection can also occur in pronounciation, usually in cases ofindividuals who are studying a new language.
Grammatical hypercompensation is probably among the most common kindof hypercorrection and refers to a situation where an exception to a rule isincorrectly believed to be the rule itself. An example is the verb"dig"; originally, the past tense of the word was the regular"digged," but this form has since become archaic. Overtime, theirregular form, "dug," became more widely used and is now thestandard where it was before the exception.
Hyperforeignism occurs when grammatical rules from one language areapplied to another. For example, the English term habanero peppers is sometimespronounced "habañero," even though this is not correct according tothe original Spanish word. This may have been influenced by English speakerswho discovered the original Spanish pronunciation of "jalapeño" andmistakenly applied it to "habanero."