English Grammar: The Basics

Michael McCarthy

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000392159
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

English Grammar: The Basics offers a clear, non-jargonistic introduction to English grammar and its place in society. Rather than taking a prescriptive approach, this book helps the reader become aware of the social implications of choices they make to use standard or non-standard (regional/dialect) forms.

Readers will consider:

• what grammar is and how it fits into the structure of language;

• how grammar functions in the school curriculum, the press, broadcasting and social media, as well as how these outlets reflect and reinforce our attitudes towards grammar;

• differences between speech and writing, as well as between formality and informality;

• major different approaches to theorising and describing grammar from important grammarians, including Noam Chomsky and Michael Halliday.

Featuring a glossary of key terms and practical tips and insights from the author's 50+ years of language teaching experience around the world, this book is for anyone who has ever found themselves questioning the 'rules' of the English language.

Everyone knows what grammar is … don’t they?

A word for all seasons

If you never studied linguistics, you might be baffled if you saw the word morphosyntax, a technical term known to linguists which refers to rules that explain how items are related to one another in language. But you would probably feel reasonably familiar with the word grammar if it cropped up in conversation. Grammar is also a technical term in the study of language but at the same time it is a word people use in their everyday ‘language about language’, as familiar as spelling or punctuation.

Most non-specialists consider grammar to be the correct application of a set of rules that are written down somewhere, passed down through the generations and taught in schools. These rules are usually thought of as logical and abstract.

However, people often confess that their own grammar is not what it should be, or that they were never taught grammar at school, or that they can’t be bothered with it anyway. Often, if you pursue the question, they include their inability to spell tricky words, or not knowing when to use a comma (is it Jim, George and Jo or Jim, George, and Jo?) or an apostrophe (is it it’s or its?).

People also know what upsets and irritates them about other people’s grammar. The younger generation have let standards slip, grammar has been destroyed by texting and social media, interviewees on TV and radio start every answer to a question with ‘So, …’, young people say like all the time, greengrocers write banana’s instead of bananas, footballers say we was robbed instead of we were robbed. They may also claim that grammar is not taught properly in schools or is not taught at all. I haven’t invented these grumbles – when I give talks on language to local societies, people have said them to me. People get agitated about grammar in a way that they don’t get upset about physics or geography.

The word grammar covers different things for different people, but what they usually have in common is a belief that you can measure how well people use language against a set of rules or standards, and that going against those rules or standards is bad or wrong, or socially undesirable.

What grammar is (and what it isn’t)

A rough definition

Here is a rough definition: English grammar is the set of items and conventions for creating acceptable English sentences. I say rough because we will see that there are all sorts of problems with definitions that try to be airtight. Let’s unpack this one.

Items in grammar are the words and parts of words that express grammatical meanings. In English, we have items that show that something happened in the past (e.g. was, did or the -ed in arrived). We can indicate that something happens if certain conditions are met using words like if and unless, where something is in time or place (e.g. at, during, in, under, here, those), whether something is more or less possible (e.g. may, should, must, will), that something is specific or general (e.g. the cat, cats), that something is singular or plural, male or female (e.g. the -s in cats, we, she), and so on. These are all grammatical meanings carried by grammar items. Words like chuckle, giraffe and silly express a different sort of meaning; they are part of the vocabulary or lexis of English with which we label people, things and events in the world.

Our definition refers to the items as a set since they form a limited, finite group. At any point in the history of English, we can list the grammatical items that are in use and be confident that we have a complete list, a set.

Conventions are the socially agreed ways of using the items: which ones refer to who or what, how we agree to spell them and pronounce them, how we arrange them in speaking and writing (e.g. how words are put together to make phrases; the word order that makes something a question), what changes we make when we put words together (e.g. using these not this with a plural noun: these boxes), how we show who is doing what (Charlie phoned Mary is different from Mary phoned Charlie), whether we consider something suitable or not for the situation (is it too formal or too informal?). To qualify as conventions, the great majority of users of a language must agree that they are normal and appropriate.

Two technical terms associated with items and conventions are morphology (the items and what they are composed of) and syntax (how the items are arranged in meaningful ways).

Acceptable means something that is accepted by speakers of a language as meaningful and as the normal way of expressing something. Most of the time we don’t consciously listen to one another’s grammar, but we may notice when something doesn’t sound or look right or seems incoherent. Perhaps it is something you can’t make sense of. So, if someone writes would a acceptable is means by accepted something that language a speakers of, it is difficult to make any sense of it. The word order violates so many conventions English speakers have been brought up to understand and use. Rearrange the words into the order of the opening words of this paragraph and they make sense (I hope).

Sometimes, what someone says or writes contradicts what we were taught in school. This is a different sort of judgement from saying that something doesn’t make sense. Someone says Me and my sister are going to Washington, and you remember that you were taught in school to say My sister and I are going to Washington. Or someone who comes from the part of Wales where I come from says I likes pizza and we judge them as sounding quaint or different from what we would say (e.g. I like pizza), or, worst of all, as less intelligent than us. Our judgements of what is acceptable might spring from a variety of different reasons or prejudices.

You may think that English is the least contentious word in our definition. Surely, English is the language that is not French, Japanese, Russian, Icelandic, etc.? However, English is a convenient, cover-all label for a wide range of varieties. There are the ‘old’ Englishes of Britain, Ireland, North America, Australia, New Zealand and so on which are different from one another, there are newer varieties of English in Asia and Africa that have developed their own vocabulary and grammar, and there are numerous ways of using English among people who just use it as a tool for professional reasons or for travel, with others who use it in that way when none of those involved would say it was their first language. And even within the English of the small island of Britain we will find a lot of variation in how people use grammar.

This book is mostly about British English because I’m British, but I will refer to the grammars of other varieties occasionally so that you don’t think British grammar is special in some way.

Sentence is another slippery word. The easiest definition of a sentence is a string of words that make sense and represent a meaningful, complete idea, separated by capital letters and full stops (periods). But all sorts of combinations of words may be meaningful and represent complete ideas, and we do not use capital letters or full stops when we speak. So, we need a definition of a sentence that has internal consistency, that is systematic. We’ll explore this in Chapter 2.

Lastly, the word grammar itself hides further complications. Grammar is something we use every day and something we study. But a grammar can also be a kind of book; just as we go to a dictionary to find out what words mean, we can consult a grammar (of English, Japanese, Welsh) to find out how the grammar of a language works. I have several grammars on my bookshelves. Then there is the question of what is included in a grammar, a school textbook or a reference book.

Over the centuries, grammar has included studying the origins of words, punctuation, poetic style, literary composition, as well as the conventions of how to construct sentences. Nowadays, interest has narrowed down so that we no longer consider it essential to include the origins of words or advice on literary style and composition in a grammar, but we are still interested in how grammar helps us put together meaningful texts and how the sentences in a text relate to one another.

Traffic lights and sunrises

The rules of the road

What about rules? A rule is something that tells you what you are allowed to do and not allowed to do. For example, the ‘rules of the road’ in the UK mean you must not do certain things when driving. If you do what you are not allowed to do, you may be punished. A red light means STOP in the UK. In some countries it means ‘stop unless you want to turn right and only if it is safe to do so’.

Figure 1.1 Rules of the road.

Grammar has some things in common with traffic lights. Just as the colours of the lights and the order in which they go on and off have meanings, the items and conventions of grammar have meanings. But the differences are important. You won’t be fined or sent to prison if you disobey the grammatical conventions. People may disapprove of your grammar, form a negative impression of you or laugh at you, you may fail an examination, but only the harshest of teachers would punish you for using the wrong ending on a word. You’re not likely to injure anyone by not following the conventions (unlike driving recklessly through a red traffic light), and English has no official body whose job it is to make sure we all behave grammatically.

The rules of the road can only be changed by official bodies that have the power to change them. The conventions of grammar change naturally and organically over time, and nobody can force them to change or stop them from changing. They change because societies and cultures change and because people start to use language in new ways and stop using older ways. Britain, for example, has seen successive waves of invaders and immigrants over many centuries who have left their mark on the English language, constantly renewing and enriching its grammar. The grammar we consider ‘correct’ today is not the same as the grammar of 600 years ago.

In this book, I try to avoid referring to rules and things that are correct or incorrect, and instead focus on what is meaningful, acceptable, normal and appropriate. This doesn’t mean that my motto is ‘anything...