iain salatiga
DESCRIPTION
The 18 th century which had a high regard for order and regularity and grammarians felt the need to codify English as that its rules would be fixed for all time in keeping with the “universal truth” of language. In this they failed to recognize that language is a constant state of change and cannot be defined even within the static rules of any stage of its development.TRANSCRIPT
The 18th century which had a high regard for order and regularity and grammarians felt the need to codify English as that its rules would be fixed for all time in keeping with the “universal truth” of language. In this they failed to recognize that language is a constant state of change and cannot be defined even within the static rules of any stage of its development.
The grammarians at this time may have been trying to provide logical statements about “correct” usage but their assumptions were mostly intuitive and very often inconsistent. Some of the rules formulated at that time have left their mark on Modern English. One such example is the rules that the word “than” should be followed by a pronoun in the nominative case and it can be considered as an abbreviation of a whole sentence of which it would be a subject. “He is taller than I”, for instance, is considered correct, as opposed to “He is taller than me”. Everyday usage, of course, still favors the latter.
Traditional grammar held away right through the 19th century into the 20th century, particularly in language teaching. The study of languages in 19th century, however, had some positive result. There was an awakening of interest of modern language in general and the prestige of the classical languages (LATIN) was forgotten. Latin was no longer used as prestigious means of communication between educated people. The remarkably perceptive work of Ancient Indian grammarians on Sanskrit, notably of Panini, was discovered and as a result there was a new breakthrough in comparative philology and the classification of language.
Structural grammar is a means of analyzing written and spoken language. It is concerned with how elements of a sentence such as morphemes, phonemes, phrases, clauses and parts of speech are put together. Under this form of linguistic analysis, it is how these elements work together that is most important, as the relationships between the elements typically have a greater meaning than any of the single elements. The study of this method therefore is an important tool for improving clarity in communication.
THE RISE OF STRUCTURAL GRAMMAR
Structure,stucture and structure!
An instance from Chomsky
Simple sentence
Complex sentence
1. Some students like to study in the morning.
2. The smart teacher returned the homework after she noticed the error.
3. Fay Ahmed goes to the library. 4.The boys are studying because they have
a test. 5. The man who is standing there is my
father.
Is this a phrases or a clause?
6. My grandfather died when I was five years old.
7. There is a dead black cat under the red chair.
8. She was crying, for her mother was seriously ill.
9. The lost expensive heavy black leather bag is here.
10. I like this park since it is close to my house.
Is this a phrase or a clause?
A good way of comparing traditional and structural grammar is to examine their approach to the questions of word categories or parts of speech. Traditional grammar often defines parts of speech by their meanings: e.g., ‘a noun is the name of a person, place or thing’ (some grammarians added “quality” or “abstract entity” to complete this definition). At best a definition of this kind is not entirely helpful, and serious difficulties arise because traditional grammar is not consistent.
TRADITIONAL Vs. STRUCTURAL GRAMMAR
Alongside such semantic definitions occur definitions based on functions, so that an adverb, for example, we defined as ‘a word which modifies as verb or another adverb’. Confusion arises when these two criteria overlap.
In the sentence “A house is not a home”, no one would be in any doubt in justification that the word “home” belongs to the category of “noun”. After all, it is the name of a place. What happens in a sentence such as “He runs home”? Surely ‘home’ is still the name of a place, but, as we can see, it also modifies the verb ‘runs’. Here the two categories of noun and adverb as defined in traditional grammar overlap thus invalidating the criteria on which the distinction was made in the first place.
ADJECTIVE, faster, fastest.1.moving or able to move, operate, function, or take effect quickly; quick; swift; rapid:a fast horse; a fast pain reliever; a fast thinker.
2.done in comparatively little time; taking a comparatively short time:a fast race; fast work.
On which category the word “fast”?
1. She hold me fast. 2. Yesterday I started my fast. 3. He is a fast runner. 4. Hundreds of prisoners began a fast in
protest about prison conditions. 5. One day a week he fasts for health
reasons.
What about this?
Dealing with the above problem, it is important to consider that the structural linguist classify parts of speech in an entirely different way. They took account of the important supra-segmental phonemes of stress, pitch and included a transcription of these intonational features in their analysis.
By making use of what inflexions remain in the modern English and the typical ordering of words in a sentence, they were able to classify parts of speech purely by form and the linear sequence indicating their function. For instance, read this table below and study how different intonation on each utterance will be understood differently and they indicate different function on each utterance. Let’s check it out!
NO
MOVIE QUOTES CHARACTER/ACTOR-ACTRESS+ MOVIE TITTLE/YEAR
1 "Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary."
John Keating/Robin Williams+ Dead Poets Society/1989
2 "There's no place like home."
Dorothy Gale/Judy Garland+ The Wizard of Oz/1939
3 "I'm the king of the world!" Jack Dawson/Leonardo DiCaprio+ Titanic/1997
4 "Elementary, my dear Watson." Sherlock Holmes/ Basil Rathbone+ The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes/1939
5 "Get your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape."
George Taylor/Charlton Heston+ Planet of the Apes/1968
6 "As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again." Scarlett O'Hara/Vivien Leigh+ Gone with the Wind/1939
7 "A boy's best friend is his mother." Norman Bates, Anthony Perkins+ Psycho/1960
8 "Mama always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get."
Forrest Gump/Tom Hanks+ Forrest Gump/1994
9 "I'll be back." The Terminator/Arnold Schwarzenegger+ The Terminator/1984
10 "Bond. James Bond." James Bond/Sean Connery+ James Bond/1962
Find The Kind Of Sentence (Declarative, Imperative, Interrogative) And The Function Of Each Movie Quotes By Analyzing Their Structure !