Grammar I (Prof.

Martín Califa)
Intro to the Subject
Lesson Handout

The lowdown

● Year-round course
● Wednesdays 9-12 am
● First subject of the linguistics track (Grammar II, Linguistics, Language
acquisition…)
● Language & phonology (highly recommended)
● Non-final-exam course
● You need to have passed all CPI courses to do this subject!

“Promoción” Final exam Failed (need to

retake subject)
General average: 7 Yes

- At least 6 in each
exam (not 5 + 8)
- NO rounding up with
6 + 7)

Fulfill 75% of
requirements (quizzes,
hand-in tasks, etc.)

Attendance 75%
General average: 4 – - Yes
6.99

-At least 4 in each exam

(no 2 + 6)
-NO rounding up (not 3
+ 4)

Fulfill 65% of
requirements

Attendance 75%
General average: less Yes
than 3.99

Some important issues to keep in mind

● Assessment

✔ Two major exams (mid-year and end-of-year)

✔ Make-ups for each
✔ “Integradora” period (Nov-Dec)
✔ Throughout the year, online quizzes

● Virtual classroom (hopefully, as from next week)

✔ Repository for study materials

✔ Forums, tasks, and other activities
✔ Messaging service for important news

● How to reach me

✔ martin.califa@unahur.edu.ar
✔ Moodle messaging service
✔ No Whatsapp group (you’re free to create one for you)

Our core textbook (in case you want to buy it or get it some other way):
Huddleston, R., G. Pullum & B. Reynolds. 2022. A Student’s Introduction to English
Grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

The English language

English spoken around the world and as a lingua franca.
Some basic facts:
● 400m native speakers
● 750m non-native speakers
● Official language in 67 countries
● Used in a wide variety of environments: academia, diplomacy, trade, travelling, etc.

Language varies across different dimensions

● geography
● social class
● situation

Dialects: variation across pronunciation (phonetics and phonology), vocabulary (the lexicon),
and grammar (words, phrases, sentences).

British English American English

Pronunciation car /ˈkɑ:/ /ˈkɑ:r/
Vocabulary sitting room living room
Grammar The team is/are here The team is here
Standard English vs. non-standard English (or Englishes!)

Standard Non-standard
It doesn’t matter It don’t matter
I haven’t told anybody anything I ain’t told nobody nothing.
ain’t haven’t, hasn’t, don’t, doesn’t…
No sé nada. → Standard Spanish

Formal vs. informal style (or register).

Formal Informal
I do not like it I don’t like it
He was the one with whom she worked. He was the one she worked with.
She must be taller than I. She must be taller than me.

Spoken vs. Written language

Written language follows spelling rules. Spelling rules are an explicit convention.
Bernard Shaw (British playwright): why can’t fish be spelled ghoti?

gh as in enough
o as in women
ti as in nation
As such, spelling rules can be changed at will. We could, for example, decide to do away with
silent letters.
Heir eir air
Psychology sychology
Thumb thum
In contrast, it’s very difficult to change pronunciation at will. We cannot decide, for example,
to drop the distinction between buzz and bus. In the same way, we cannot decide to change a
fact of grammar. For instance, we cannot simply say that want is the past form of the verb and
that wanted is the present form.
Practice
(exercises taken from Huddleston & Pullum 2005: 9)
1. Consider features of the following sentences that mark them as belonging to non-standard
dialects of English. Rewrite them in Standard English, keeping the meaning as close as
possible to the original.
a. It ain’t what you do, it’s the way how you do it.
b. She don’t pay the rent regular.
c. Anyone wants this stuff can have it.
d. Me and her brother were late.

2. Consider what features of the following sentences mark them as belonging to formal style
in Standard English. Rewrite them in informal or neutral style, keeping the meaning as close
as possible to the original.
a. To whom am I speaking?
b. It would be a pity if he were to give up now.
c. We hid the documents, lest they be confiscated.
d. One should always try to do one’s best.

What is grammar?

Grammar refers to several things:

● the rules a language;
● a speaker’s knowledge of the rules of a language;
● the description of the rules of a language; or
● the elaboration of theories about the rules of a language.

Descriptive vs. prescriptive grammars.

Typical prescriptive rule: it’s wrong to say It’s me; the correct way is It’s I.
We’re mainly interested in the ways people actually speak and write.
A rule does not mean there’s only ONE way of saying things. Rules can describe some of the
variation.
i. I learned a lot.
ii. I learnt a lot.
iii. ‘The’ is the commonest word in English.
iv. ‘The’ is the most common word in English.

One of our main concerns will be what’s possible and what’s not possible according to the
rules of English. The technical term for this is grammatical and ungrammatical (signalled
by “*”).
i. Jack hit Mark.
ii. *Jack hitted Mark.
iii. I love country music.
iv. *I loves country music.

i. Juan le pegó su hermano.

ii. Juan le pegamos a su hermano.
iii. Me puse una camisa negra.
iv. Me puse una camisa negro.

It’s important to note that grammatical description is (or should be) an evidence-based
practice. That is, our analyses shouldn’t be arbitrary (e.g., ‘this is the subject of the sentence
because the book or the teacher says so’), but because there’s evidence for it (eg, ‘this is the
subject of the sentence because it shows agreement in the verb’).
He loves country music.
She don’t it.
*She it broke.
*Está rompido.
Different levels of grammatical description
● Phonology: the sounds of language
● Morphology: the internal structure of words
● Syntax: the principles governing how words can be assembled into phrases and
sentences
● Semantics: the principles by which sentences are associated with their literal
meanings

Practice
(adapted from Huddleston & Pullum 2005: 9)
3. For each of the following statements, say whether it is a morphological, syntactic, or
semantic fact about English.
a. If the sentence I saw a bunch of roses is true, then the sentence I saw some roses is also
true.
b. The string of words *He it saw can be made grammatical by placing the word it after the
word saw: He saw it.
c. The verb hospitalise is formed from hospital by adding -ise.
d. A person who truthfully says I saw a bunch of red roses would have to answer no if asked
Was everything yellow?
e. The verb fall doesn’t take the -ed suffix: fell occurs, not *falled.
f. You can’t insert the word every in the sentence All students love this course and get a
grammatical result. *Every students love this course
g. When someone says i) the sense is the same as if they had said ii).
i. I was going to walk but I decided not to.
ii. I was going to walk but I decided not to walk.
h. Of can be the last word of a Standard English sentence. E.g.:
She was the one I was dreaming of.
i. In English it is possible to use a whole phrase as a word to modify another word, as in He’s
a get-up-and-go person.

In a nutshell, grammar:
a) describes the form of words, phrases, and sentences;
b) describes the meaning of words, phrases, and sentences, and how this relates to their
form; and
c) builds theories about a) and b).
The main focus of our course will be on a). We will also devote significant attention to b).
We might occasionally say a few things about c), but this will clearly fall outside the scope of
our course.

Reading assignment
Huddleston & Pullum. 2005. Chapter 1 AND Chapter 16: sections 1-2.