CHAPTER 2 Basic English Concepts This chapter discusses some of the basics of English language, which are relevant for the understanding of language analysis. Every language defines certain basic alphabets, words, word categories and language formation rules called grammar rules. These categories are made according to their role in parts of speech. From the language analysis point of view, the style of a language must be concretely defined to design a working parser for that language. Though there is no hard and fast rule to name the formal categories, but it is customary to give various parts of speech their traditional names. The set of grammatical categories (like noun, verb, etc.) which are taught in English literature are very informal and are not precisely defined as formal grammar. In addition to this, there are many more distinctions that have to be made in a real parser. Hence, it is evident that for language processing using computer, the grammar writer should very clearly understand the basic word categories of any language, types of words and other constituents of the language and the process in which they interact with each other. In linguistic analysis, Chomsky has done pioneer work in 1960s. He has formally defined various grammars, types of grammars, features and characteristics of grammars. These are described in detail later in this chapter. As a result of Chomsky’s work on transformational generative grammar, a vast amount of fairly descriptive linguistic analysis is carried out, and as a result of it, a large repository of terminology has grown up, which augments informal set of old fashioned terms. Now let us describe elementary terminology of English grammar. 2.1 FUNDAMENTAL TERMINOLOGY OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR The well-accepted English grammar terminology defines the following word categories: (i) Noun: Traditionally, noun is considered a naming word. Formally, it is defined as “the name of a person place or thing”. However, noun can also be Chapter-2.p65 23 10/11/2010, 10:15 AM Basic English Concepts 25 Sometimes, an adverb modifies the quality of even the complete sentence or phrase. For example, consider the following sentences: 4. Probably you are wrong. (modifies one complete sentence) 5. I will not read all through this book. (modifies a phrase) (ix) Adjective: It is a word, which specifies quality of noun. It is a describing word. It can be attached to a noun to modify its meaning or it can be used to assert some attribute of the subject of sentence, e.g., blue, large, fake, main, etc. (x) Verb phrase: A verb along with its object constitutes a verb phrase, e.g., she gave flower to the teacher. 2.2 SENTENCE A group of words which make a complete sense, is called a sentence. A sentence is created by joining the words according to grammar rules, for example, Adwet is a good boy. The sentences are of four types. (i) Assertive : Those which make statements or assertion; as Humpty dumpty sat on a wall (ii) Interrogative: Those which ask questions; as Where do you live? (iii) Imperative: A sentence that expresses a command or an entreaty e.g., Be quiet. (iv) Exclamatory sentence: A sentence that expresses a strong feeling is called exclamatory sentence. e.g., How cold the night is! What a shame! 2.2.1 Parts of the Sentence A sentence is divided into two parts, subject and predicate. Subject is the part which names the person or thing we are speaking about. The part which tells something about the subject is called predicate. Normally in a sentence the subject comes before the predicate. A sentence is made up of various constituents, these are known as parts of speech. These constituents are made according to their work in sentence. These parts of speech are: (i) Noun (ii) Adjective (iii) Pronoun (iv) Verb (v) Adverb (vi) Preposition Chapter-2.p65 25 10/11/2010, 10:15 AM 26 Natural Language Processing (vii) Conjunction (viii) Interjection Basic terminology of English grammar is described as above. Now we discuss some other details of these constituents. Noun: The noun is of the following types: (i) Common noun: It is a name given in common to every person or thing of the same class or kind. (ii) Proper noun: Is the name of a particular person, place or thing. (iii) Collective noun: Is the name of a number (or collection) of persons or things taken together and spoken of as one whole, e.g., crowd, mob, team, flock, herd, army, etc. (iv) Abstract noun: Is usually the name of a quality action or state considered apart from the object to which it belongs as quality: goodness, kindness, whiteness, etc. (v) Countable nouns: Are the names of objects, that we can count, e.g., book, pen. (vi) Uncountable nouns: Are the names of things which we cannot count, e.g., milk, oil, sugar etc. Adjective: A word used with a noun to describe or point out the person, animal, place, thing with the noun names or to tell the number of quantity is called adjective. The adjective can be of following types: 1. Adjectives of quality or descriptive adjective: It shows the kind or a quality of a person or thing. For example, he is an honest man. 2. Adjective of quantity: It shows how much of a thing is meant. I ate some rice. 3. Numeral adjective: Shows how many persons or things are meant, e.g., The hand has five fingers. Few cats like cold water. 4. Demonstrative adjective: It points out which person or thing is meant. As this boy is stronger than Harry and those mangoes are sweet. 5. Interrogative adjective: As, what manner of man is he? Which way shall we go? 6. Emphasizing adjective: The adjective used to emphasize some concept, e.g., I saw it with my own eyes. 7. Exclamatory adjective: The words used to show exclamation, e.g., what a genius! What folly! What an idea! Adjectives can have degrees. The degrees mentioned quantity of the concept indicated by adjective. There can be three degrees. Positive degree, comparative degree, superlative degree. The positive degree is simple form of adjective. The comparative degree is used to indicate comparison between the concepts. And the superlative degree is highest degree of quality, e.g., strong, stronger, strongest. Chapter-2.p65 26 10/11/2010, 10:15 AM Basic English Concepts 27 Article: The words a, an and the are called articles. They come before a noun. A and an are indefinite articles because these usually leave indefinite the persons or thing spoken of, as a doctor, an orange: “The” is called definite article because it normally points to some particular person or thing. Pronoun: A word that is used instead of noun is called pronoun. The pronouns can be of various types. Personal pronoun like, I, we, he, she, it, they, you. They indicate the personal category. The persons can be of three types. 1st person, 2nd person and 3rd person. Verb: A word that tells or asserts something about a person or thing. For example, Harry laughs, the clock strikes. The verbs can be of two types. Types of verbs: Transitive and intransitive verbs. Transitive verb is a verb which denotes an action which passes over from the subject to an object. The intransitive verb is a verb which denotes an action which does not pass over to an object or which expresses a state or being. For example, he ran a long distance. Most transitive verbs take a single object. But such transitive verbs as give, ask, offer, promise, tell, etc. take two objects after them, an indirect object which denoted the person to whom something is given or for whom something is done, and a direct object which is usually the name of something, for example, His father gave him (indirect) a watch (direct). He told me (indirect) a secret (direct). Most verbs can be used both as transitive and intransitive verbs. It is therefore, better to say that a verb is used transitively or intransitively rather than that is transitive or intransitive. Some verbs, e.g., come, go, fall, die, sleep, lie, denote actions which cannot be done to anything, they can therefore never be used transitively. 2.3 ACTIVE AND PASSIVE VOICE Voice is the form of verb which shows whether whatever is denoted by the subject does something or has something done on it. Active and passive are two methods of framing an English sentence. They uses different types of verbs. In active voice the verb form shows that the person or thing denoted by the subject does something or we can say is doer of the action. e.g., Ram helps Hari. The active voice is so called because the person denoted by the subject acts. A verb is in passive voice when its form shows that something is denoted to the person or thing denoted by the subject, e.g., Hari is helped by Ram. The passive voice is so called because the person or thing denoted by the subject is not active but is passive, that is, suffers or receives some action. Chapter-2.p65 27 10/11/2010, 10:15 AM 28 Natural Language Processing Some sentences in active and passive form are given below: (i) (a) Sita loves Savitri. (b) Savitri is loved by Sita. (ii) The mason is building a wall. A wall is being built by the mason. (iii) The peon opened the gate. The gate was opened by the peon. The sentences represented by active and passive voice convey the same semantic meaning, hence, in the context of natural language processing there are grammars (namely transformational grammars) which convert a sentence represented in active voice to passive voice.