Grammar

1. Grammar What is it? and what is it (good) for?

2. What grammar can mean… • Something that young people today are not taught properly at school, as a result of which the language is going to the dogs! • A collection of arcane terminology, such as auxiliary, past participle and relative clause

3. What grammar can mean… • A cluster of prohibitions that make people worry about whether they speak their own language properly • A galaxy of aparantly arbitrary rules which make foreign languages unnecessarily difficult and seem to get in the way of natural communication • A dusty book full of any of the above…

4. A simple definition… • The rules for combining words into sentences • However incomplete; there’s no indication of function…

5. A language without grammmar... Imagine you are an intelligent primate that would like to invent a rich communication system….

6. Possible ways to signal information • Cries and grunts • Facial expressions • Gestures - however, vocal signs work in the dark and round corners!

7. A new language • Bear : ros cold: brr • Axe: flin eat: nyam • Two: dines drink: veba • Baby: wawa red: kara • Chief: sunar big: ell • Sister: sib hat: dang • Cave: hollo apple: pom • Rain: flot die: kurt • Yesterday: dego fall: wong • Tomorrow: dekum kill: hek

8. First • A possible strategy would be to decide for a distinctive vocal sign for each of the things in your world • However, this wil not work because • There is a need for too many signs • You can only talk about things that you have already paid attention to

9. Then • Use words to designate classes of things in stead of individuals • You are thus now able not only to talk about a specific tree, but about any tree.

10. You now realize the need for words that • Signal shared characteristics (big, red, cold etc.) • Refer to events, situations and changes in your world (eat, run, die etc.)

11. Now – what can you do? • You can draw each other’s attention to the existence of something in your environment (ex. Tree! Bear! Axe!) • And you can combine words to pin individual members of classes and make it clear which one you are talking about (ex. Tree big, Axe nice)

12. You have now invented language! - Up to a point…

13. Problems • Word order has no significance • There’s only one kind of words

14. This results in some limitations • Difficulty in specifying exact meaning in situations involving more than one element ( Big, Bear, Cave) • Difficulty in clarifying the causal, spatial and other relationsships between elements. (who does what to whom? Why, when and where?) • You can’t get beyond requests and statements! (questions, negations, suggestions, modifications…)

15. As a consequence of that yoou need be able to express • What word goes with what? • Agency – patiency • Status of your utterance

16. You have discovered the need For grammar

17. Solving the problems • One approach is that you signal necessary extra meanings by the way you arrange words (word order significance – analytic languages do this) • ’Big bear’, ’small cave’, ’good axe’ • ’Brother kill bear’, ’bear kill brother’ • Kill brother big bear?’

18. Solving the problems • Another appraoch is to alter the word in a way to signal their function. (- inflection, synthetic languages do this) • ’Brotherus kill bearum’

19. Solving the problem • A third approach is to invent non-referential words that do not label anything in the world, but show the functin of the other words (auxiliries)

20. Thus, we now have a more precise definition of grammar: ’Grammar is essentially a limited set of of devices for expressing certain kinds of necessary meaning that cannot be conveyed by referential vocabulary alone!’

21. refernces • Michael Swan, 2005 • Scott Thornbury, 2005