英语语言学Chapter 4 Syntax.pptVIP

Chapter 4 Syntax Syntax Syntax: The study of the rules governing the ways words and phrases are combined to form sentences. 1. The traditional approach 2. The structural approach 3. The generative approach 4. The functional approach 1. The traditional approach The classification of words in terms of parts of speech, the identification of functions of words in terms of subject, predicate, etc. 1) Number, gender and case 2) Tense and aspect 3) Concord and government Number: Number is inflectional category basically distinguishing reference to one individual from reference to more than one. It is mostly a category of the noun and pronoun. In English there are two terms of number: singular and plural. But languages like classical Greek and Arabic have a third number: dual, something like the English “both”. And Fijian has a fourth: trial. Gender: Gender is grammatical category dividing nouns into classes basically characterizable by reference to sex. It is also mostly a category of the noun and pronoun. Case: Case is inflectional category, which typically marks the role in relation to other parts of the sentence. In English, pronouns have three cases of nominative(主格), accusative(宾格) and genitive(属格), nouns have only two cases: general(普通格) and genitive (属格). Tense: Tense is an inflectional category whose basic role is to indicate the time of an event, etc. in relation to the moment of speaking. Aspect: Aspect is a general term for verbal category that distinguishes the status of events, etc. in relation to specific periods of time, as opposed to their simple location in the present, past, or future. (Tense and aspect are two important categories of the verb, and they were not separated in traditional grammar.) Concord: also known as agreement, may be defined as the requirement that the forms of two or more words in a syntactic relationship should agree with each other in terms of some categories.