SWSPiZ,
Descriptive Grammar
30 November 2008
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
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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
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