The English Language english language

3 A Skeletal Introduction to English Grammar

key concepts

Clauses

Sentences

Phrases

Complementation and modification

Words

Morphemes

Parts of speech

Regular and irregular forms

Grammatical categories

Sounds and spelling

Form, function, meaning

introduction

This chapter has a number of purposes. First, it aims to place the study
of grammar within the larger study of discourse and text. Second, it aims
to provide a review of traditional grammatical concepts and terminol-
ogy for those who have studied grammar before. If you have not studied
grammar before, it will give a very simple introduction to grammatical
ideas and plenty of practice in using those ideas in straightforward exer-
cises. Third, it provides a basis for the deeper and more critical study of
language that we present in the remainder of this book and in Book II.
In this chapter we only provide examples of concepts; we do not justify
those concepts or their application (though we will sketch how to justify
analyses in our section on Form, Function, and Meaning). Our goal is
to help you get up to speed in recognizing basic grammatical elements.
Because the presentation in the following chapters progresses from the
smallest units (sounds), and works upward to the largest (sentences), we
begin this chapter with the largest units, clauses and sentences, and work
downward to the smallest.
We use language to communicate with each other. This communica-
tion may occur in conversation, which can be either directly face-to-face
or mediated by some technology such as the telephone. We may also com-
municate by writing to each other. Communication in which language
is used is called discourse and the products of discourse are called texts,
which can be recordings of spoken communication or the writings that
constitute a written discourse. Discourse is coherent, cohesive, contex-
tualized, and purposeful communicative activity. We will have more to