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Descriptive Grammar

Lecture 3

Pronouns

I. Classification

specific

indefinite

central relative interrogative demonstrative universal partitive quantifying
personal assertive general
reflexive

non-asserive enumerative

reciprocal

negative

possessive


II. Case

Common

Genitive

Objective: me, us, him, her, them, who(m)

III. Person

Personal, possessive and reflexive pronouns have distinction of person: 1 person (I/we,

me/us

, my/our, myself/ourselves), 2 person (you, your, yourself), 3 person (he/she/it/ they,

him/her/it/them, his/her/its/their, himself/herself/itself/themselves

).

IV. Gender

Personal, reflexive, and possessive pronouns distinguish between masuline, feminine, and

non-personal gender.

V. Number

SWSPiZ,

30 November 2008

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Adjectives

I. Syntactic functions of adjectives

a. Attributive, e.g. the beautiful painting

- attributive only: intensifying, limiter, related to adverbials, denominal

b. Predicative, e.g. Your daughter is pretty.

He made his wife happy

.

- predicative only: afraid, conscious, fond

c. Postpositive, e.g. I want to try on something larger.

the president elect

d. Head of a noun phrase, e.g. The wise look the wiser for a advice.

The very best is yet to come.

e. Verbless adjective clause, e.g. Nervous, the man opened the letter.

Long and untidy, his hair played in the breeze.
Enthusiastic, they make good students.

II. Semantic sub-classification of adjectives

a. stative / dynamic, e.g. tall / foolish
b. gradable / non-gradable, e.g. tall / dead
c. inherent / non-inherent

Adverbs

I. Syntactic functions of adverbs

a. adverbial: adjuncts (I can now understand it), disjuncts (Frankly, I’m tired), conjuncts (We
have complained about the noise, and yet he does nothing about it

)

b. modifier of adjective, e.g. That was a very funny film.

c. modifier of adverb, e.g. They’re smoking very heavily.

d. modifier of prepositional phrase, e.g. The nail went right through the wall.

e. modifier of indefinite pronoun, e.g. Nearly everybody came to our party.

f. modifier of a noun phrase, e.g. It was rather a mess.

g. adverb as complement of preposition, e.g. from here, since recently

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Prepositions and prepositonal phrases

a. postposed prepositions
b. simple prepositions, e.g. at, in, for
c. complex prepositions, e.g. away from, up tp, due to, owing to, by means of, in front of

I. Syntactic functions of prepositional phrases

a. adjunct, e.g. The people were singing on the bus.
b. disjunct, e.g. To my surprise, the doctor phoned.
c. conjunct, e.g. On the other hand, he…
d. postmodifier in a noun phrase, e.g. The people on the bus were singing.
e. complementation of a verb, e.g. We depend on you.
f. complementation of an adjective, e.g. I’m sorry for his parents.

II. Prepositional meaning

1. Place

a. dimension
b. positive position and direction
c. negative position and direction
d. relative position
e. relative destination
f. passage
g. direction
h. orientation
i. resultative
j. pervasive

2. Time

3. Cause, reason, motive

4. Purpose, intended destination

5. Receipient, goal, target

6. Source, origin

7. Manner

8. Means, instrument

9. Stimulus

10. Accompaniment

11. Support, opposition

12. Concession

13. Reference

14. Exception