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English Structures
Several captious viragos susurrated noisily in the antechoir
prior to the nuptials.
Morphology
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Syntactic Categories
Do you remember the eight parts of speech from your earlier English classes? If not, click here.
You'll get to sound smarter now that you're in college, though, because the linguistic term for all the parts is Syntactic Categories.
In short, syntactic categories simply means the different kinds of words that exist. When you learned that there were eight parts of speech, it meant that there were eight kinds of words in English. There are eight syntactic categories.
See how many you can recognize in a sentence by doing the activity below. Go ahead and use the traditional labels you learned in elementary or middle school classes. The check your answers against the sample answer.
Activity: Identifying Parts of Speech
Identify the categories of the words in this sentence by writing the part of speech below each word:
Here is one possible labeling of the sentence.
Activity: Syntactic Categories
Now that you've reminded yourself of the different kinds of words, see how much more you know about words by doing the next activity without looking up anything.
Exchange each of the following words for ONE word in the sentence by typing the new word in the space below the old word you want to substitute for.
- Susurrate
- Captious
- Viragos
Did you try to substitute captious for my?
Or for the?
Or for after?
Why Not?
Is this what you did?
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If you're like most native speakers of English, you used:
Susurrate in place of argue,
Captious in place of angry,
Viragos in place of neighbors (or perhaps in place of outcome or election)
How is it that you made these decisions, and why do so many native speakers of English make the same decisions?
Continue with the next activity to see if you can figure it out.
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Activity: Syntactic Categories 2 |
Now identify the categories of words in this sentence by typing in the name of the syntactic category in the box below each word.
DO NOT look up the words in a dictionary. Just look at them in the sentence here and label them.
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Even without the definitions, you should have known the categories by:
- The syntactic context (position in sentence
and relationship to other words)
- The morphological context (by the formation of the word, such as the use of suffixes
and prefixes)
- Your own intuitive knowledge of English (you already know all the prepositions and articles and pronouns)
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| Click here for an appropriate labeling of the sentence. |
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Subdivisions of Syntactic Categories |
Until now, the categories have been named according to the traditional labels from elementary school, but linguists actually use slightly different categories. Linguists do not consider interjections to be a syntactic category, but they do include a category called determiners, which includes possessives, articles, and demonstratives. Linguists do not consider these last words to be adjectives. Only true adjectives are part of the category called adjectives. (The explanations of why possessives, articles and demonstratives aren't adjectives will be presented in later grammar classes. The discussion requires greater depth of study than is possible in this overview of all the subdivisions of linguistics.) There are
two main divisions of the syntactic categories:
- Lexical categories
- Functional Categories
Lexical Categories
Four of the eight syntactic categories make up the lexical categories: Noun, Verb,
Adjective, Adverb. The lexical categories are categories that are high in meaning. The words can be grouped together into one of the four groups according to shared similarities in semantic content (meaning),
inflectional affixation (grammatical prefixes and/or suffixes), and distribution (placement in a sentence). Words with these shared characteristics belong to the same syntactic category.
Lexical categories are Wernicke words; the kinds of words people with
Wernicke’s aphasia have trouble with. Lexical categories are also open categories:
They easily allow for the addition of new words.
That’s why when you see a new word you've never seen before, you guess it is one of these kinds of words. This is one of the reasons you substituted susurrate for argue. Argue is a verb, and verbs are an open category. It is very likely that an unfamiliar word might be a verb. You also likely noted (either consciously or subconsiously) that -ate is a suffix that is often part of verbs, and that became part of your decision to place susurrate as a substitute for argue. Similar explanations can be given for how you made decisions for substituting captious and viragos for certain words. You chose other open categories and you matched word forms.
Functional Categories
The remaining four of the eight syntactic categories comprise the functional categories. Functional category words are grouped together according to their grammatical function more than their meaning. That is, the functional categories are the categories that are low in meaning (hard to define) but high in grammar: determiners, conjunctions, prepositions, and pronouns.
Functional Categories are Broca words: they are the words that people with Broca’s Aphasia have trouble with. Functional Categories are closed categories: they don’t admit new words easily. That’s why you don’t guess that new words are one of these kinds of words. Almost no native speakers try to substitute captious, viragos, or susurrate for any of the functional words in the sentence. |
| Go to Part 3 |
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American Sign Language The sign language used by the deaf community in the United States.
Test of English for International Communication. A standardized exam for Educational Testing Services that is intended to determine the general capability of an NNSE to use English to conduct business. It is used by some businesses, predominantly in Asia, in hiring.
Test of English as a Foreign Language. A standardized exam from Educational Testing Services that is intended to determine the general capability of an NNSE to use English as the language of insruction .It is used as an admissions requirement by most US universities and colleges for international students.
Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. A term that encompasses both TEFL and TESL. It is the name of the professional organization to which many teachers belong. TESOL the organization has many regional affiliates both in the US and abroad.
Teaching English as Second Language. Refers to the activity of teaching the English language as a tool necessary for some daily task like instruction, shopping, or interpersonal interactions.
Teaching English as a Foreign Language. Refers to the activity of teaching the English language as an intellectual, academic pursuit to non-native speakers of English.
Native Speaker of English. Refers to a person who acquired English in infancy and young childhood as a first language.
Native Speaker. Refers to a person whose relationship to a language is that it was encountered in infancy and young childhood as the dominant language of the environment.
Non-Native Speaker of English. Refers to a person who didn't acquire English as a first language, but came to it after another language was established.
Non-Native Speaker. Refers to a person whose relationship to a particular language is that he/she didn't encounter it while initially acquiring language, but came to it after another language was established.
Limited English Proficient. An adjectival phrase used to refer to the same students as ELL refers to. LEP is falling into disuse as it focuses attention on student deficiency rather than on the positive attribute of learning. Is being replaced by ELL.
Second Language. Refers to any language gained subsequent to the first or native language. It is acquired or learned secondarily to the native language. Doesn't refer to the ordinal numbering of languages, only to the relationship of a particular language to a persons native language.
First Language. Refers to the language that an individual encounters as an infant and young child; a persons native language.
English for Specific Purposes. Refers to the goal of learning English to use it for highly focused activity, such as for business or for aviation communication.
English as a Second Language Program. refers to a school program that is purposefully structured to provide instruction on the English language to NNSEs. An ESL program does not typically include instruction in any other subjects than English. An ESL program may be a component of a larger ELL program at a school.
English as a Second Language. Refers to the subject matter of the English language and the methodology for teaching the English language to non-native speakers. ESL makes no reference to the subjects other than English, but it is not methodology alone either, it refers to teaching the English language as content area. Typically, ESL refers to the study of English in a country where it is used for at least one daily task, such as instruction, interpersonal relations, or shopping.
English Langauge Learner Program. Refers to a school program that is purposly structured to provide instruction on the English language and instruction in other content areas to English Language Learners.
English Language Learner. Refers to students who are in the process of learning English, whether they are in ESL classes exclusively or a combination of ESL classes and other subject area classes.
English as a Foreign Langauge. Refers to the study of English as an intellectual, academic pursuit, not a a language whose use is necessary or desirable for daily life, although it may be used as a research tool. Typically, EFL is the study of English in a country where English is not a language of instruction or daily interactions, such as in Italy or in Saudi Arabia.
English for Academic Purposes. Refers to the goal of learning English to use it as the language of instruction for other subject areas.
Refers to a school program that is purposely structured so that students will use two languages on a daily basis.
Refers to the use of two languages in any capacity on a daily basis. A bilingual person uses two languages on a daily basis--for work and at home, perhaps, or for different subjects at school. Can also refer to the ability to use two languages, even if not used daily.