Статья "Background to language learning: grammar"

Background to language learning: grammar

The first question for the beginning is what grammar is.

A clear definition of grammar is here:

a description of the structure of a language and the way in which linguistic units such as words and phrases are combined to produce sentences in the language. Richards, Platt and Platt (1992:161)

Grammar  includes two main aspects: Grammatical form and grammatical function.

Grammatical form refers to how a word or phrase is made in English.

For example:

The base form of the regular verb is make but, when the subject is he, she or it in Present Simple, the form of the verb changes to makes. The noun is man but when we make it plural, we change the form to men. Also we can change the form of an adjective and make it a noun. When we change the form of a word in English, the change is called an inflexion (inflection).

We can identify grammatical forms in parts of speech, grammatical structures and words that contain prefixes and suffixes.

Grammatical function refers to what a word is doing in the language.

For example:

I met my friend yesterday, the word met has the grammatical function of a verb describing an action.

I have meetings with him every week, the word meeting has the grammatical function of a noun for a thing.

You must see or hear it in a context to know what it means and what sort of word it is.

There are two kinds of words in English: content words (have their own meaning and definition) and function words (These words mean nothing when they are alone but they make the grammar work).

Here is the picture where you can see the categorization of content words\.

 

It is very important to understand the difference between content words and grammar words.