English Grammar

A University Course

Angela Downing

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780415732673
• eBook ISBN: 9781317610960
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Grammar & Punctuation
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This best-selling comprehensive descriptive grammar forms a complete course, ideal for all students studying English Language, whether on a course or for self-study. Broadly based on Hallidayan systemic-functional grammar but also drawing on cognitive linguistics and discourse analysis, English Grammar is accessible, avoiding overly theoretical or technical explanations.

Divided into 12 self-contained chapters based around language functions, each chapter is divided into units of class-length material. Key features include:

Numerous authentic texts from a wide range of sources, both spoken and written, which exemplify the grammatical description.

Clear chapter and module summaries enable efficient class preparation and student revision.

Extensive exercises with a comprehensive answer key.

This new edition has been thoroughly updated with new texts, a more user-friendly layout, more American English examples and a companion website, providing extra tasks, a glossary and a teachers' guide.

This is the essential coursebook and reference work for all native and non-native students of English grammar on English language and linguistics courses.

Chapter 1
Basic Concepts

Unit 1: Language and meaning

1.1 Communicative acts

1.2 The content of communication

1.3 Three ways of interpreting clause structure

1.3.1 The clause as representing situations: transitivity structures

1.3.2 The clause as interaction: mood structures

1.3.3 The clause as message: thematic structures

1.3.4 Combining the three types of structure

1.3.5 Active vs passive voice

Unit 2: Linguistic forms and syntactic functions

2.1 Syntactic categories and relationships

2.2 Testing for constituents

2.3 Grammatical units and rank of units

2.4 Classes of units

2.4.1 Classes of clauses

2.4.2 Classes of groups

2.4.3 Classes of words

2.4.4 Classes of morphemes

2.5 The concept of unit structure

2.5.1 Syntactic elements of clauses

2.5.2 Syntactic elements of groups

2.5.3 Componence, realisation and function

Unit 3: Negation and expansion

3.1 Negative and interrogative clause structures

3.1.1 The finite operator

3.2 Clausal negation

3.2.1 Interrogative clauses

3.3 No-negation vs not-negation + any

3.4 Any and other non-assertive words

3.5 The scope of negation

3.6 Local negation

3.7 Expanding linguistic units

3.7.1 Coordination

3.7.2 Subordination

3.7.3 Embedding

Exercises

Unit 1
Language and Meaning

A functional grammar aims to match forms to function and meaning in context. This Unit introduces three strands of meaning that form the basis of a functional interpretation of grammar: the representational, the interpersonal and the textual.

Each of these strands is encoded in the clause (or simple sentence) as a type of structure. The three structures are mapped onto one another, illustrating how the three types of meaning combine in one linguistic expression.

1.1 Communicative Acts

Let us start from the basic concept that language is for communication. Here is part of a recorded conversation taken from a sociological project of the University of Bristol. The speakers are Janice, a girl who runs a youth club and disco in an English town, and Chris, one of the boys in the club, who is 19 and works in a shop. In the dialogue, we can distinguish various types of communicative act, or speech act, by which people communicate with each other: making statements, asking questions, giving directives with the aim of getting the hearer to carry out some action, making an offer or promise, thanking or expressing an exclamation.

Offer	J:	If you like, I’ll come into your shop tomorrow and get some more model aeroplane kits.
Reminder	C:	O.K. Don’t forget to bring the bill with you this time.
Promise	J:	I won’t.
Question		Do you enjoy working there?
Statements	C:	It’s all right, I suppose. Gets a bit boring. It’ll do for a while.
Statement	J:	I would have thought you were good at selling things.
Statement	C:	I don’t know what to do really. I’ve had other jobs. My Dad keeps on at me to go into his business. He keeps offering me better wages,
Exclamation		but the last thing to do is to work for him!
Question	J:	Why?
Echo question	C:	Why? You don’t know my old man! I
Exclamations		wouldn’t work for him! He always
Statement		wanted me to, but we don’t get on. . . .
Question		D’you think it’s possible to get me on a part-time Youth Leadership Course?
Offer/Promise	J:	I’ll ring up tomorrow, Chris, and find out for you.
Thanking	C:	Thanks a lot.

In a communicative exchange such as this, between two speakers, the kind of meaning encoded as questions, statements, offers, reminders and thanks is interpersonal meaning. Asking and stating are basic communicative acts. The thing asked for or stated may be something linguistic – such as information or an opinion (Do you enjoy working there? It’s all right, I suppose) – or it may be something non-linguistic, some type of goods and services, such as handing over the aeroplane kits.

This non-linguistic exchange may be verbalised – by, for instance, Here you are – but it need not be. Typically, however, when goods and services are exchanged, verbal interaction takes place too; for instance, asking a favour (Do you think it’s possible to get me on a part-time Youth Leadership Course?) or giving a promise (I’ll ring up tomorrow, Chris, and find out for you) are carried out verbally.

The grammatical forms that encode two basic types of interpersonal communication – stating and questioning – are illustrated in section 1.3.2. The whole area is dealt with more fully in Chapter 4.

1.2 The Content of Communication

Every speech act, whether spoken or written, takes place in a social context. A telephone conversation, writing a letter, buying a newspaper, giving or attending a lecture, are all contexts within which the different speech acts are carried out. Such contexts have to do with our own or someone else’s experience of life and the world at large, that is, the doings and happenings in which we are involved or which affect us.

Any happening or state in real life, or in an imaginary world of the mind, can be expressed through language as a situation or state of affairs. Used in this way, the terms ‘situation’ or ‘state of affairs ‘ do not refer directly to an extra-linguistic reality that exists in the real world, but rather to the speaker’s conceptualisation of it. The components of this conceptualisation of reality are semantic roles or functions and may be described in very general terms as follows:

1. processes: that is, actions, events, states, types of behaviour;
2. participants: that is, entities of all kinds, not only human, but inanimate, concrete and abstract, that are involved in the processes;
3. attributes: that is, qualities and characteristics of the participants;
4. circumstances: that is, any kind of contingent fact or subsidiary situation which is associated with the process or the main situati...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• List of figures
• Preface to the third edition
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction to the third edition
• Table of notational symbols
• 1 Basic concepts
• 2 The skeleton of the message: introduction to clause structure
• 3 The development of the message: complementation of the verb
• 4 Interaction between speaker and hearer: linking speech acts and grammar
• 5 Conceptualising patterns of experience: processes, participants, circumstances
• 6 Organising the message: thematic and information structures of the clause
• 7 Combining clauses into sentences
• 8 Talking about events: the Verbal Group
• 9 Viewpoints on events: tense, aspect and modality
• 10 Talking about people and things: the Nominal Group
• 11 Describing persons, things and circumstances: adjectival and adverbial groups
• 12 Spatial, temporal and other relationships: the Prepositional Phrase
• Answer Key
• Select Bibliography
• Index