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The Labyrinth of Grammar, a Course for English, EFL/ESOL and MFL The Labyrinth of Grammar A Course for English, EFL/ESOL, MFL Teachers and Students With activities and excercises for learning and classroom practice Adriano Bulla Contents Introduction Who this book is for The concept How to use this book Chapter I – Phonetics Vowels Consonants Stress, intonation and accent Further study, the IPA for MFL and EAL teachers Chapter II – word classes Nouns Declensions and grammatical cases Pronouns Pronouns and cohesion Verbs Adjectives Adverbs Morphology Connectives Prepositions Interjections Chapter III - Phrases Chapter IV, clauses and sentences Categorisation of clauses Endnotes Introduction Who this book is for This text is for everybody with an interest in grammar, anyone who wishes to learn grammar in a comparatively short time, for English teachers and students, EFL teachers who wish to have a reference for or refresh their knowledge of grammar rules and functions, EFL students at a high level, people who wish to start a TEFL course but need to consolidate their metalinguistic competence, MFL teachers and students at a hih level. This text is designed for both thenovice who wants to start learning grammar from its foundations and build up to a quite advanced level and for those who already have a general knowledge of it but wish to have a more in-depth competence. The concept This is a text which specifically looks at key elements of grammar; it is mainly focussed on English, though many languages and comparisons amongst them are featured as well. The language used in the exposition is sometimes technical, and based on the style one would find in a reference grammar text; this is to accustom the reader to more complex linguistics books. It is organised in a canonical way, looking at phonetics and word classes first, then moving into phrases, clauses and sentences, thus it builds from the ‘building blocks’ of the language system and gives a perspective of its more complex architecture. Although it is based on traditional descriptive (sometimes prescriptive) grammars, it does consider in detail more recent developments, such as Functional- Systemic Grammar. It also offers exercises for the consolidation and self-assessment of the reader’s competence, suggestions for classroom practice, as those who teach a language will want to link their knowledge to their ability to engage students and pupils with key concepts, and reflection tasks, to relate the scope of one’s learning to that of one’s professional activity. How to use this book There is, as in any form of learning, a level of self-assessment the reader will need to carry out when using this text. This needs to start from an analysis of one’s needs, whether one is about to embark on a TEFL course and knows that s/he will primarily teach classes up to intermediate level, or whether the reader is an experienced practitioner who wishes to have a comprehensive understanding of grammar will affect the choice of how in depth certain items should be studied. It is highly advisable to focus on the definitions given at the beginning of each chapter/ section, and make sure that they are clear in the reader’s mind, before progressing deeper into the exposition and carrying out the exercises suggested. As just stated, the exercises are, in fact, suggestions, and the readers are warmly invited to modify them to suit their needs. The reader may find that progress through this text is slower than through, for example, a fiction novel, and should not expect to read through it in a few hours. An estimate would be to dedicate about 120-180 hours to the methodical study of this text to move from being a ‘grammar novice’ to rather extensively knowledgeable. Although this book is meant to be a self-study course, asking friends, colleagues and teachers for help or opportunities for discussion is of course, always a good idea. A final mention to the footnotes, in this edition rendered as endnotes: they need to be seen a points to satisfy one’s curiosity, or to suggest further areas of investigation; they are, in fact, just notes. Adriano Bulla, 2013 Chapter I – Phonetics Phonetics[1] is the branch of linguistics that studies the production of sounds in language, it is concerned with how sounds are physically produced. It is not to be confused with phonology, which studies how sounds encode meaning in any given human language. The International Phonetic Association devised a phonetic alphabet, the International Phonetic Alphabet (or IPA), which is fully phonetic, therefore each sign corresponds to a particular sound. It is especially useful to students of foreign and additional languages and their teachers. In English, in particular, the IPA is a useful tool as this language, due to its long history of change, is far from phonetic. Other languages, for example Italian and Spanish, are more phonetic, meaning that letters tend rto correspond more closely to sounds, yet no language is fully phonetic. IPA transcripts are usually given within strokes. The following table gives the IPA signs used to represent English sounds. This table does not include all the sounds, in fact, for example, it does not distinguish between light l (in ‘low’[2]) and dark l (in ‘call’, represented as /ɫ/) as these occur regularly in the language (/ɫ/ always appears at the end of an utterance). Also note that the dyphtong here represented as /αƱ/ is in many dictionaries, for example in the Oxford English Dictionary, represented as /ʌƱ/, as the recent trend in the English language has been towards this sound. Modern dictionaries, including the Oxford English Dictionary, prefer to use /ʌI/ instead of /ɑI/. Vowels Vowels are always voiced (the vocal cords vibrate) and their articulation is unobstructed by the mouth and given by the place in the mouth where they are produced and on whether the lips are rounded or flat, and they are called round or flat accordingly. /α:/,/u:/, /Ʊ/, /ↄ:/ and /ɒ/ are round, the others are flat. Vowels can also be long and short, a colon after the vowel symbol indicates that the vowel is long. This is not always a precise representationh of the sound, for example /ɒ:/ is long in words like ‘door’ and ‘more’, yet it is slightly shorter in ‘caught’ and ‘fought’. Two vowels sharing the same syllable and stress value (see stress) are called a diphthong. In English, the stress always falls on the first vowel in diphthongs, in other languages it may fall on the second. The vowel sounds /ə/ and /ɜ:/ are called short and long schwa respectively, and they are the most common vowel sunds in English. Following is a table of English vowels: Consonants Consonants are categorised according to whether they are voiced (there is a vibration of the vocal cords) or voiceless (there is no such vibration) as well as according to the manner and place of articulation. It is easy to identify if a consonant is voiced or voiceless: put your hand on your throat and say /v/ or /f/ for example; you will notice a vibration when uttering the former and not the latter. In fact, the two consonants are identical in the place and manner of articulation, the only difference is the use of vocal cords to produce a sound. The place of articulation, i.e. where the air is projected within the mouth/nose, can be labial if lips are used, nasal, if the air is projected towards the nose, dental, if the tongue touches the teeth, labio-dental if the teeth touch the lips, palatal if the air is projected towards the palate, etc.. It is not necessary for this certificate to know the categorisation of consonants. The two main ways in which consonants are produced gives us fricatives, where air is pressed through the mouth in a continuous flow and plosive (or stop) where the air is stopped to create a little ‘explosion’. For example, /b/ is a plosive (one stops the air altogether) while to produce the sound /v/ the air is allowed to flow from the lungs through the lips with no interruption. Plosives are, therefore, necessarily short, while fricatives can go on for as long as the speaker has breath. Beneath is a table of all English consonants: Exercises 1- Transcribe the following into Non IPA English words a- /pətIkjələ/ ………………………………………….. b- /eksəsʌIs/ ………………………………………….. c- /retəsənt/ ……………………………… (italicised schwa means that it can be pronounced or omitted) d- /ængləfəƱn/ …………………………………….. e- /sƱpəstIʃəs/ ……………………………………….. f- /kIŋʃIp/ …………………………………………… g- /æstrənↄ:t/ ……………………………………. h- /ədʒʌst/ ……………………………………….. i-/ θʌndə/ …………………………………………. j- /sƱpəkælIfrædʒəlIstəkespIælədəʃəs/ ……………………………………………………………… 2- Now try to transcribe these words into IPA: a- London …………………………………………………. b- Correct ………………………………………………… c- Stardom ………………………………………………. d- Sufficient …………………………………………….. e- Thorny ………………………………………………… Stress, intonation and accent Words have a stress, which falls on vowels and diphthongs: if one pronounces the word ‘courage’, for example, it is clear that the first syllable has a stronger stress than the second. However, longer words may have a primary (stronger) and secondary stress (weaker). Dictionaries mark the primary stress with a low accent (͵) and the secondary one with a high accent (ʹ) before the stressed syllable. So, ‘courage’ is transcribed as /͵kʌrədʒ/. A word like ‘conflagration’ would have two accents: /ʹkɒnflə͵greIʃən/. Very often, in English, unstressed vowels are pronounced as schwas, while stressed vowels retain a sound which is more similar to their spelling. Exercises Put primary and secondary stresses where necessary in the following words: Stirling, systematic, accreditation, revolution, mesmerise, politeness, reconstruction, obliterate. Exercise: Can you think of any ways in which stresses can be used in your practice as a teacher? Make a few bullet points: ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… Intonation is related to the pitch of the voice in sentences. It is used to convey emphasis and sometimes the function of an utterance/sentence.
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