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Casey Thomas
ENGL332
Professor Melanie Rechkemmer
February 19, 2015
Essay Assignment
The study of grammar is rich and vast. It can refer to “the linguistic system that
presumably exists in the mind of a speaker of a language” (Klammer, Schulz, Della Volpe 3). It
can also be a description of the language system, an ideal set of rules, or a handbook containing
established rules. There are also different kinds of grammatical descriptions such as descriptive
rules of grammar and prescriptive rules of grammar and different versions of English such as
Standard American English. The field of grammar has consistently adapted as our speech
changes. One thing is for certain, though, and that is the different aspects of grammar
interconnect with each other. Morphology, form-class words, structure-class words, phrases, and
the five basic sentence types connect to each other in some way or form as will be shown below.
Morphemes
Morphemes are “the smallest units of meaning in a language” (Klammer, Schulz, Della
Volpe 61) and they consist of bases and affixes which can be free or bound. The affixes are
bound and they may be the prefix or the suffix of the word. To analyze morphemes, words would
need to be broken down into its meaningful parts (morphemes), the meaning and functions of
each are stated, then each are shown how they occur with a same meaning or function “as part of
other words in the language” (Klammer, Schulz, Della Volpe 61). English has eight inflectional
morphemes which show grammatical relationships: plural and possessive nouns, present tense,
past tense, present participle, and past participle verbs, and comparative and superlative
adjectives and adverbs. The other morphemes are derivational and are used to create words in
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that language. “A knowledge of morphemes is useful in identifying parts of speech, and
recognizing these, in turn, will help you identify larger units in the syntax of the sentence”
(Klammer, Schulz, Della Volpe 61).
Form-Class Words
Now that there is a basic understanding of morphemes, form-class words will be easy to
find and differentiate between each other. Most of the words in the English language belong to
one of the four form classes: nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.
“By examining prototypical and peripheral members of each group, linguists have
identified specific features of form (derivational and inflectional morphemes) and
function (typical positions and frequently co-occurring words) that marks nouns, verbs,
adjectives, and adverbs and enable us to recognize them” (Klammer, Schulz, Della Volpe
94).
To identify nouns, knowing that some nouns were created from other words by adding an affix
noun-making derivational morpheme. Most nouns also inflect and become either plural or
possessive. The ability to inflect differentiates nouns and adjectives that have the same base
forms. Nouns can also be identified by what words precede them or where they are at in a
sentence. Many nouns are found after articles, possessives, numbers, or demonstratives. Verbs
are traditionally words that “express action(s)” and it is true of most verbs. To classify words as
verbs there also has to be an agent performing an action and it can name states and conditions.
Verbs are also recognized by their form since some have been created from other parts of speech
with derivational verb-making morphemes. They can change form through inflection, taking on
endings that indicate third-person singular, past tense, past participle, and present participle.
Verbs can also be negated, made into commands, and can follow a modal auxiliary. Adjectives
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are words that modify or describe nouns and stand for a quality. “Some adjectives are derived
morphologically from other parts of speech” (Klammer, Schulz, Della Volpe 80). They can also
be made superlative or comparative by using more and most and can be modified by degree.
Lastly adverbs modify verbs, adjectives, other adverbs, and whole sentences. They can be
transformed by inflectional morphemes or by using more and most, just like adjectives. “Being
able to reliably identify nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs will enable you to identify larger
units of syntax: noun phrases, verb phrases, adjective phrases, and adverb phrases” (Klammer,
Schulz, Della Volpe 94).
Structure-Class Words
Structure classes, for structure-class words, are small, closed sets that have little lexical
meaning and their members occur in a single form. “One of their primary functions is to modify
or replace form-class words” (Klammer, Schulz, Della Volpe 129). Determiners supply aspects
of meaning for a following noun and articles are prototypical for the entire determiner group.
Auxiliaries will accompany or substitute main verbs and can signal important elements of
grammatical meaning in the verbal system. The modals and have, be, and do will constitute the
main English auxiliaries while qualifiers accompany adjectives and adverbs by increasing or
decreasing the intensity of the quality indicated by the form-class words. “Personal, reflexive,
reciprocal, and indefinite pronouns have a close grammatical relationship with nouns and noun
phrases” and they “undergo changes in form similar to those that characterize nouns” (Klammer,
Schulz, Della Volpe 129). Prepositions connect noun phrases to other parts of a sentence and a
preposition with its noun phrase object will become a prepositional phrase, which functions
either as an adjective or adverb modifier. Coordinating conjunctions join grammatically
equivalent units and conjunctive adverbs will connect complete sentences, showing the logical
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relationships between them. Subordinating conjunctions will link subordinating clauses as
adverbial modifiers; these are linked to verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and even whole sentences.
Relatives will link relative clauses to nouns or the noun phrases that they modify while
interrogatives are direct or indirect questions. “All of these structure classes, as well as other
function words and groups yet to be described, play significant roles in the grammatical
structures introduced in later chapters” (Klammer, Schulz, Della Volpe 155).
Phrases
In chapter seven of Analyzing English Grammar, the phrases that were discussed function
“as the most important constituents of a sentence: noun phrases, verb phrases, adjective phrases,
and adverb phrases” (Klammer, Schulz, Della Volpe 201). Knowledge of how the main verb
phrase functions can help to identify and classify main verbs in sentences and will help to
understand sentence structures that have passives, questions, commands, exclamations,
negatives, and other things like that in them. In English grammar, “the systematic patterning of
the main verb phrase auxiliary is unique” (Klammer, Schulz, Della Volpe 201). The main verb
phrase formula will represent the “regularity of its underlying structure” (Klammer, Schulz,
Della Volpe 201). The subject of the sentence is always a noun phrase and the predicate is
always a verb phrase. If the verb phrase is functioning as a predicate, then it must include at least
a main verb phrase, but it could also include a noun phrase, an adjective phrase, and/or an adverb
phrase that will function as complements of the verb. Next it will be shown “the complements
that can be important constituents of the verb phrase” (Klammer, Schulz, Della Volpe 203).
Five Basic Structure Types
“Simple English sentences have four basic positions that define their structure: the
subject position, the main verb position, the position filled by a required object or complement,
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and the position that can be filled by one or more adverbial modifiers” (Klammer, Schulz, Della
Volpe 243). There are five types of English sentences that have components that occupy each of
the four positions in those modeled sentences. The five basic sentence types are as follows:
1. Type 1 – Intransitive Verb – Structural formula: Noun phrase + Main verb (intransitive)
+ Optional adverb phrase(s)
2. Type 2 – Linking Verb Be with Adverbial of Time or Place – Structural formula: Noun
phrase + Main verb phrase (Be) + Adverb phrase (time/place) + Optional adverb
phrase(s)
3. Type 3 – Linking Verb with Adjectival Subject Complement – Structural formula:
Noun phrase + Main verb (linking) + Adjective phrase(s) + Optional adverb phrase(s)
4. Type 4 – Linking Verb with Nominal Subject Complement – Structural formula: Noun
phrase 1 + Main verb (linking) + Noun phrase 1 + Optional adverb phrase(s)
5. Type 5 – Transitive Verb – Structural formula: Noun phrase 1 + Main verb (transitive)
+ Noun phrase 2 + Optional adverb phrase(s)
In grammar, especially English grammar, each concept builds off of each other. Everything
within this subject can link to each other as is shown in morphology, form-class words, structureclass words, phrases, and the five basic sentence types. An understanding of the first concept of
grammar would be needed to understand the next concept and an understanding of that concept
would be needed to learn the next, and so on. Without learning and understanding the previous
concept, the next concept would be nearly unattainable and it would be futile to even try and
learn it.
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Work Cited
Klammer, Thomas P., Muriel R. Schulz, and Angela Della Volpe. Analyzing English Grammar.
7th ed. Boston: Pearson, 2013. Print.