Category: Life

Grammar deals with the rules for combining words into larger units. The largest unit that is described in grammar is normally the sentence. However, defining a ‘sentence’ is notoriously difficult, for the reasons we’ll now discuss.

It is sometimes said that a sentence expresses a complete thought. This is a notional definition: it defines a term by the notion or idea it conveys. The diffi­culty with this definition lies in fixing what is meant by a ‘complete thought’. There are notices, for example, that seem to be complete in themselves but are not generally regarded as sentences: Exit, Danger, 50 mph speed limit.

On the other hand, there are sentences that clearly consist of more than one thought. Here is one relatively simple example:

This week marks the 300th anniversary of the publication of Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, a fundamental work for the whole of modern science and a key influence on the philosophy of the European Enlightenment.

How many ‘complete thoughts’ are there in this sentence? We should at least recognize that the part after the comma introduces two additional points about Newton’s book: (1) that it is a fundamental work for the whole of modern science, and (2) that it was a key influence on the philosophy of the European Enlighten­ment. Yet this example would be acknowledged by all as a single sentence, and it is written as a single sentence.

We can try another approach by defining a sentence as a string of words begin­ning with a capital (upper case) letter and ending with a full stop (period). This is a formal definition: it defines a term by the form or shape of what the term refers to. We can at once see that as it stands this definition is inadequate, since (1) many sentences end with a question mark or an exclamation mark, and (2) capital letters are used for names, and full stops are often used in abbreviations. Even if we amend the definition to take account of these objections, we still find strings of words in newspaper headlines, titles, and notices that everyone would recognize as sentences even though they do not end with a full stop, a question mark, or an exclamation mark:

Trees May Be a Source of Pollution

An Irish Airman Foresees his Death (title of poem)

Do not enter

But the most serious objection is that the definition is directed only towards orthographic sentences; that is, sentences that appear in the written language. Spoken sentences, of course, do not have capital letters and full stops.

It is in fact far more difficult to determine the limits of sentences in natural con­versation, to say where sentences begin and end. That is so partly because people may change direction as they speak and partly because they tend to make heavy use of connectors such as and, but, so, and then. Here is a typical example of a speaker who strings sentences together with and. The symbol <,> denotes a pause.

I’d been working away this week trying to clear up <,> the backlog of mail caused by me being three weeks away <,> and I thought I was doing marvellously <,> and at about <,> six o’clock last night <,> I was sorting through <,> stuff on the desk and I discovered a fat pile of stuff <,> all carefully opened and documented by Sally that I hadn’t even seen

How many orthographic sentences correspond to the speaker’s story? There is no one correct answer. In writing it we have a choice: we could punctuate it as one sentence or we could split it into two or more sentences, each of the later sentences beginning with and.

Grammarians are not unduly worried about the difficulties in defining the sen­tence. Their approach to the question is formal because they are interested in grammatical form. Like many people who are not grammarians, they are generally confident of recognizing sentences, and they specify the possible patterns for the sentences. Combinations of words that conform to those patterns are then gram­matical sentences.

 

Irregular sentences and non-sentences

Sentences that conform to the major patterns (cf. 3.13) are regular sentences, and they are the type that will generally concern us in this book. Sentences that do not conform to the major patterns are irregular sentences.

If I ask you to write down the first sentences that come into your mind, you are likely to produce regular sentences. Here are some regular sentences in various major patterns:

David and Helen have three children.

The liquid smelled spicy to Justin.

Some people give their children a daily dose of vitamins.

About a million visitors come to our city every summer.

Most irregular sentences are fragmentary sentences. These leave out words that we can easily supply, usually from the preceding verbal context. Here is a typical example in an exchange between two speakers:

A: Where did you put the letter? B: In he top drawer.

We interpret B’s reply as I put the letter in the top drawer, and that reconstructed sentence would be regular. Similarly, the newspaper headline Washington abuzz over missing intern corresponds to the regular Washington is abuzz over a missing intern. Fragmentary sentences can therefore be viewed as directly derivable in their interpretation from regular sentences.

Finally, we often say or write things that are not grammatical sentences. These non-sentences may simply be mistakes. But they may also be perfectly normal, although they cannot be analyzed grammatically as sentences. Normal non-sentences include such common expression as Hello!; Yes; No; So long!; Thanks!; Cheers!; and they include many headlines, headings, titles, labels and notices:

Traffic Chaos (newspaper headline) On the Nature of the Model (section heading in book) The Captain and the Kings (title of book) Naming of Parts (title of poem) Pure Lemon Juice No Smoking

In the next chapter we will be looking at the patterns of regular sentences, but first I have a few more general things to say about sentences.

 

Simple and multiple sentences

Here are two sentences placed next to each other:

[1] The inquiry left in its wake a number of casualties. I was one of them. I can combine the two sentences in [1] merely by putting and between them: [2] The inquiry left in its wake a number of casualties, and I was one of them. I can also combine them by putting a connecting word in front of the first sentence: [3] When the inquiry left in its wake a number of casualties, I was one of them. I can make a small change in the second sentence:

[4] The inquiry left in its wake a number of casualties, I being one of them.

A sentence or a sentence-like construction contained within a sentence is called a clause. Constructions like I being one of them in [4] resemble sentences in that they can be analyzed to a large extent in similar ways (cf. 6.8). The sentences in [2], [3], and [4] therefore all consist of two clauses. (Strictly speaking, the separate sentences in [1] are also clauses, but since they have only one clause each, it is convenient to refer to them just as sentences.)

A sentence that does not contain another clause within it is a simple sentence. If it contains one or more clauses, it is a multiple sentence.

Here are some more examples of multiple sentences with connecting words:

You can’t insist that your children love each other. The building was emptied before the bomb-disposal squad was called. When we returned three hours later, no wolves were in sight. My father always hoped that I would become a doctor and that must have been why he took me along when he visited his patients.

We will be looking more closely at multiple sentences in Chapter 6. Meanwhile, I will be using simple sentences to illustrate general matters about sentences.

 

Sentence types

There are four major types of sentences:

1. Declaratives (or declarative sentences)

She was attracted to an open-air job.

The new proposals have galvanized the normally disparate community into a potent fighting force.

2. Interrogatives (or interrogative sentences)

Do you have internet access at home? Where will you be going for your holiday?

3. Imperatives (or imperative sentences)

Open the door for me. Take a seat.

4. Exclamatives (or exclamative sentences)

How well you look!

What a good friend you are!

These four sentence types differ in their form (cf. 6.2- 4). They correspond in general to four major uses:

Statements are used chiefly to convey information.

Questions are used chiefly to request information.

Directives are used chiefly to request action.

Exclamations are used chiefly to express strong feeling.

It is usual to refer to interrogatives more simply as questions.

We will be discussing these sentence types and their uses in a later chapter (cf. 6.1-5). Declaratives are the basic type and I will therefore generally be using them for illustrative purposes.

 

Positive and negative sentences

Sentences are either positive or negative. If an auxiliary (‘helping’) verb is present, we can usually change a positive sentence into a negative sentence by inserting not or n’t after the auxiliary. In the following examples, the auxiliaries are

has, is, and can:

Positive: Nancy has been working here for over a year. Negative: Nancy has not been working here for over a year.

Positive: Dan is paying for the meal. Negative: Dan isn’t paying for the meal.

Positive: I can tell the difference. Negative: I can’t tell the difference.

The rules for inserting not and n’t are somewhat complicated. I will return to them

later (cf. 3.3f).

A sentence may be negative because of some other negative word:

She never had a secretary.

Nobody talked to us.

This is no ordinary painting.

Most sentences are positive, and I will therefore generally be using positive sentences for my examples.

 

Active and passive sentences

Sentences are either active or passive. We can often choose whether to make a sentence active or passive (cf. 4.15). The choice involves differences in position and differences in the form of the verb:

Active: Passive: Charles Dickens wrote many novels.

Many novels were written by Charles Dickens.

Charles Dickens and many novels are at opposite ends of the two sentences. In the passive sentence by comes before Charles Dickens, and the active wrote corresponds to the longer were written. Here are two further examples of pairs of active and passive sentences:

Active: Manchester United beat Liverpool at Old Trafford. Passive: Liverpool were beaten by Manchester United at Old Trafford.

Active: The Rambert Dance Company won the country’s largest arts prize, the Prudential Award. Passive: The country’s largest arts prize, the Prudential Award, was won by the Rambert Dance Company.

Actives are far more numerous than passives. Their relative frequency varies with register. For example, passives tend to be heavily used in formal scientific writing. The nature of grammar as a constituent part of language is better understood in the light of explicitly discriminating the two planes of language, namely, the plane of content and the plane of expression.

Units of language are divided into segmental and suprasegmental. Segmental units consist of phonemes, they form phonemic strings of various status (syllables, morphemes, words, etc.). Supra-segmental units do not exist by themselves, but are realized together with segmental units and express different modificational meanings (functions) which are reflected on the strings of segmental units. To the supra-segmental units belong intonations (intonation contours), accents, pauses, patterns of word-order.

The segmental units of language form a hierarchy of levels. This hierarchy is of a kind that units of any higher level are analysable into (i.e. are formed of) units of the immediately lower level. Thus, morphemes are decomposed into phonemes, words are decomposed into morphemes, phrases are decomposed into words, etc.

But this hierarchical relation is by no means reduced to the mechanical composition of larger units from smaller ones; units of each level are characterised by their own, specific functional features which provide for the very recognition of the corresponding levels of language.

The lowest level of lingual segments is phonemic: it is formed by phonemes as the material elements of the higher -level segments. The phoneme has no meaning, its function is purely differential: it differentiates morphemes and words as material bodies. Since the phoneme has no meaning, it is not a sign.

Phonemes are combined into syllables. The syllable, a rhythmic segmental group of phonemes, is not a sign, either; it has a purely formal significance. Due to this fact, it could hardly stand to reason to recognise in language a separate syllabic level; rather, the syllables should be considered in the light of the intra-level combinability properties of phonemes.

Phonemes are represented by letters in writing. Since the letter has a representative status, it is a sign, though different in principle from the level-forming signs of language.

Units of all the higher levels of language are meaningful; they may be called “signemes” as opposed to phonemes (and letters as phoneme-representatives).

The level located above the phonemic one is the morphemic level. The morpheme is the elementary meaningful part of the word. It is built up by phonemes, so that the shortest morphemes include only one phoneme. E.g.: ros-y [-1]; a-fire [э-]; come-s [-z].

The morpheme expresses abstract, “significative” meanings which are used as constituents for the formation of more concrete, “nominative” meanings of words.

The third level in the segmental lingual hierarchy is the level of words, or lexemic level.

The word, as different from the morpheme, is a directly naming (nominative) unit of language: it names things and their relations. Since words are built up by morphemes, the shortest words consist of one explicit morpheme only. Cf.: man; will; but; I; etc.

The next higher level is the level of phrases (word-groups), or phrasemic level.

To level-forming phrase types belong combinations of two or more notional words. These combinations, like separate words, have a nominative function, but they represent the referent of nomination as a complicated phenomenon, be it a concrete thing, an action, a quality, or a whole situation. Cf., respectively: a picturesque village; to start with a jerk; extremely difficult; the unexpected arrival of the chief.

This kind of nomination can be called “polynomination”, as different from “mononomination” effected by separate words.

Notional phrases may be of a stable type and of a free type. The stable phrases (phraseological units) form the phraseological part of the lexicon, and are studied by the phraseological division of lexicology. Free phrases are built up in the process of speech on the existing productive models, and are studied in the lower division of syntax. The grammatical description of phrases is sometimes called “smaller syntax”, in distinction to “larger syntax” studying the sentence and its textual connections.

Above the phrasemic level lies the level of sentences, or “proposemic” level.

The peculiar character of the sentence (“proposeme”) as a signemic unit of language consists in the fact that, naming a certain situation, or situational event, it expresses predication, i.e. shows the relation of the denoted event to reality. Namely. it shows whether this event is real or unreal, desirable or obligatory, stated as a truth or asked about, etc. In this sense, as different from the word and the phrase, the sentence is a predicative unit. Cf.: to receive — to receive a letter — Early in June I received a letter from Peter Mel« rose.

The sentence is produced by the speaker in the process of speech as a concrete, situationally bound utterance. At the same time it enters the system of language by its syntactic pattern which, as all the other lingual unit-types, has both syntagmatic and paradigmatic characteristics.

But the sentence is not the highest unit of language in the hierarchy of levels. Above the proposemic level there is still another one, namely, the level of sentence-groups, “supra-sentential constructions”. For the sake of unified terminology, this level can be called “supra-proposemic”.

The supra-sentential construction is a combination of separate sentences forming a textual unity. Such combinations are subject to regular lingual patterning making them into syntactic elements. The syntactic process by which sentences are connected into textual unities is analyzed under the heading of “cumulation”. Cumulation, the same as formation of composite sentences, can be both syndetic and asyndetic. Cf.:

He went on with his interrupted breakfast. Lisette did not speak and there was silence between them. But his appetite satisfied, his mood changed; he began to feel sorry for himself rather than angry with her, and with a strange ignorance of woman’s heart he thought to arouse Lisette’s remorse by exhibiting himself as an object of pity (S. Maugham).

In the typed text, the supra-sentential construction commonly coincides with the paragraph (as in the example above). However, unlike the paragraph, this type of lingual signeme is realized not only in a written text, but also in all the varieties of oral speech, since separate sentences, as a rule, are included in a discourse not singly, but in combinations, revealing the corresponding connections of thoughts in communicative progress.

We have surveyed six levels of language, each identified by its own functional type of segmental units. If now we carefully observe the functional status of the level-forming segments, we can distinguish between them more self-sufficient and less self-sufficient types, the latter being defined only in relation to the functions of other level units. Indeed, the phonemic, lexemic and proposemic levels are most strictly and exhaustively identified from the functional point of view: the function of the phoneme is differential, the function of the word is nominative, the function of the sentence is predicative. As different from these, morphemes are identified only as significative components of words, phrases present polynominative combinations of words, and supra-sentential constructions mark the transition from the sentence to the text.

Furthermore, bearing in mind that the phonemic level forms the subfoundation of language, i.e. the non-meaningful matter of meaningful expressive means, the two notions of grammatical description shall be pointed out as central even within the framework of the structural hierarchy of language: these are, first, the notion of the word and, second, the notion of the sentence. The first is analyzed by morphology, which is the grammatical teaching of the word; the second is analyzed by syntax, which is the grammatical teaching of the sentence.

Systematic nature of grammar

Modern linguistics lays a special stress on the systemic character of language and all its constituent parts. It accentuates the idea that language is a system of signs (meaningful units) which are closely interconnected and interdependent. Units of immediate interdependencies (such as classes and subclasses of words, various subtypes of syntactic constructions, etc.) form different microsystems (subsystems) within the framework of the global macrosystem (supersystem) of the whole of language.

Each system is a structured set of elements related to one another by a common function. The common function of all the lingual signs is to give expression to human thoughts.

The systemic nature of grammar is probably more evident than that of any other sphere of language, since grammar is responsible for the very organization of the informative content of utterances. Due to this fact, even the earliest grammatical treatises, within the cognitive limits of their times, disclosed some systemic features of the described material. But the scientifically sustained and consistent principles of systemic approach to language and its grammar were essentially developed in the linguistics of the twentieth century, namely, after the publication of the works by the Russian scholar Beaudoin de Courtenay and the Swiss scholar Ferdinand de Saussure. These two great men demonstrated the difference between lingual synchrony (coexistence of lingual elements) and diachrony (different time-periods in the development of lingual elements, as well as language as a whole) and defined language as a synchronic system of meaningful elements at any stage of its historical evolution.

On the basis of discriminating synchrony and diachrony, the difference between language proper and speech proper can be strictly defined, which is of crucial importance for the identification of the object of linguistic science.

Language in the narrow sense of the word is a system of means of expression, while speech in the same narrow sense should be understood as the manifestation of the system of language in the process of intercourse.

The system of language includes, on the one hand, the body of material units — sounds, morphemes, words, word-groups; on the other hand, the regularities or “rules” of the use of these units. Speech comprises both the act of producing utterances, and the utterances themselves, i.e. the text. Language and speech are inseparable, they form together an organic unity. As for grammar (the grammatical system), being an integral part of the lingual macrosystem it dynamically connects language with speech, because it categorially determines the lingual process of utterance production.

Thus, we have the broad philosophical concept of language which is analyzed by linguistics into two different aspects — the system of signs (language proper) and the use of signs (speech proper). The generalizing term “language” is also preserved in linguistics, showing the unity of these two aspects.

The sign (meaningful unit) in the system of language has only a potential meaning. In speech, the potential meaning of the lingual sign is “actualized”, i.e. made situationally significant as part of the grammatically organized text.

Lingual units stand to one another in two fundamental types of relations: syntagmatic and paradigmatic.

Syntagmatic relations are immediate linear relations between units in a segmental sequence (string). E.g.: The spaceship was launched without the help of a booster rocket.

In this sentence syntagmatically connected are the words and word-groups “the spaceship”, “was launched”, “the spaceship was launched”, “was launched without the help”, “the help of a rocket”, “a booster rocket”.

Morphemes within the words are also connected syntagmatically. E.g.: space/ship; launch/ed; with/out; boost/er.

Phonemes are connected syntagmatically within morphemes and words, as well as at various juncture points (cf. the processes of assimilation and dissimilation).

The combination of two words or word-groups one of which is modified by the other forms a unit which is referred to as a syntactic “syntagma”. There are four main types of notional syntagmas: predicative (the combination of a subject and a predicate), objective (the combination of a verb and its object), attributive (the combination of a noun and its attribute), adverbial (the combination of a modified notional word, such as a verb, adjective, or adverb, with its adverbial modifier).

Since syntagmatic relations are actually observed in utterances, they are described by the Latin formula as relations “in praesentia” (“in the presence”).

The other type of relations, opposed to syntagmatic and called “paradigmatic”, are such as exist between elements of the system outside the strings where they co-occur. These intra-systemic relations and dependencies find their expression in the fact that each lingual unit is included in a set or series of connections based on different formal and functional properties.”

In the sphere of phonology such series are built up by the correlations of phonemes on the basis of vocality or consonantism, voicedness or devoicedness, the factor of nasalization, the factor of length, etc. In the sphere of the vocabulary these series are founded on the correlations of synonymy and antonymy, on various topical connections, on different word-building dependencies. In the domain of grammar series of related forms realize grammatical numbers and cases, persons and tenses, gradations of modalities, sets of sentence-patterns of various functional destination, etc.

Unlike syntagmatic relations, paradigmatic relations cannot be directly observed in utterances, that is why they are referred to as relations “in absentia”” (“in the absence”).

Paradigmatic relations coexist with syntagmatic relations in such a way that some sort of syntagmatic connection is necessary for the realization of any paradigmatic series. This is especially evident -in a classical grammatical paradigm which presents a productive series of forms each consisting of a syntagmatic connection of two elements: one common for the whole of the series (stem), the other specific for every individual form in the series (grammatical feature — inflexion, suffix, auxiliary word). Grammatical paradigms express various grammatical categories.

The minimal paradigm consists of two form-stages. This kind of paradigm we see, for instance, in the expression of the category of number: boy — boys. A more complex paradigm can be divided into component paradigmatic series, i.e. into the corresponding sub-paradigms (cf. numerous paradigmatic series constituting the system of the finite verb). In other words, with paradigms, the same as with any other systemically organized material, macro- and micro-series are to be discriminated.

Introduction

Language incorporates the three constituent parts (“sides”), each being inherent in it by virtue of its social nature. These parts are the phonological system, the lexical system, the grammatical system. Only the unity of these three elements forms a language; without any one of them there is no human language in the above sense.

The phonological system is the subfoundation of language; it determines the material (phonetical) appearance of its significate units. The lexical system is the whole set of naming means of language, that is, words and stable word-groups. The grammatical system is the whole set of regularities determining the combination of naming means in the formation of utterances as the embodiment of thinking process.

Analyzing the language from the viewpoint of the information it carries we cannot restrict the notion of information to the cognitive aspect of language. Connotative aspects and emotional overtones are also important semantic components of linguistic units.

The components of grammatical meaning that do not belong to the denotation of the grammatical form are covered by the general term of connotation most obviously relevant to grammatical aspects of style.

Grammatical forms play a vital role in our ability to lend variety to speech, to give “color” to the subject or evaluate it and to convey the information more emotionally.

 

Text grammar as a part of text linguistics

I will be using the word grammar in this work to refer to the set of rules that allow us to combine words in our language into larger units. Another term for grammar in this sense is syntax.

Some combinations of words are possible in English and others are not. As a speaker of English, you can judge that Home computers are now much cheaper is a possible English sentence whereas Home computers now much are cheaper is not, because you know that much is wrongly positioned in the second example. Your ability to recognize such distinctions is evidence that in some sense you know the rules of grammar even if you have never studied any grammar. Similarly, you operate the rules whenever you speak or write (you can put words in the right order) and whenever you interpret what others say (you know that Susan likes Tom means something quite different from Tom likes Susan). But knowing the rules in evaluative and operational senses does not mean that you can say what the rules are.

You acquire a working knowledge of your native language simply through being exposed to it from early childhood: nobody taught you, for example, where to posi­tion much. You study grammar, however, if you want to be able to analyze your language. The analytic grammar makes explicit the knowledge of the rules with which you operate when you use the language. There is a clear difference between the operational grammar and the analytic grammar. After all, many languages have never been analyzed and some have been analyzed only relatively recently. People were speaking and writing English long before the first English grammars appeared at the end of the sixteenth century.

Grammar deals with the structure of languages, English grammar with the structure of English, French grammar with the structure of French, etc. Language consists of words, but the way in which these words are modified and joined together to express thoughts and feelings differs from one language to another.

In a language description we generally deal with three essential parts known as phonology, vocabulary, and grammar. These various ranges, or levels, are the subject matter of the various branches of linguistics. We may think of vocabulary as the word-stock, and grammar as the set of devices for handling this word-stock. It is due precisely to these devices that language is able to give material linguistic form to human thought.

Practically speaking, the facts of any language are too complex to be handled without arranging them into such divisions. We do not mean to say, however, that these three levels of study should be thought of as isolated from each other. The affinities between all levels of linguistic organization make themselves quite evident. Conceived in isolation, each of them will always become artificial and will hardly justify itself in practice. It is not always easy to draw precise boundaries between grammar and vocabulary. Sometimes the subject matter becomes ambiguous just at the borderline. The study of this organic relationship in language reality seems to be primary in importance.

For a complete description of language we have to account for the form, the substance and the relationship between the form and the situation. The study of this relationship may be referred to as contextual level of analysis.

Grammar, whose subject matter is the observable organization of words into various combinations, takes that which is common and basic in linguistic forms and gives in an orderly way accurate descriptions of the practice to which users of the language conform. And with this comes the realization that this underlying structure of the language (as system) is highly organized. Whatever are the other interests of modern linguistic science, its center is surely an interest in the grammatical system of language.

Grammar and other aspects of language

Linguistic communications are channeled mainly through our senses of sound and sight. Grammar is the central component of language. It mediates between the system of sounds or of written symbols, on the one hand, and the system of meaning, on the other. Phonology is the usual term for the sound system in the language: the distinctive sound units and the ways which they may be combined. Orthography parallels phonology in that it deals with the writing system in the language: the distinctive written symbols and their possible combinations. Semantics is concerned with the system of meanings in the language: the mean­ings of words and the combinatory meanings of larger units:

• Phonology
• Grammar Semantics
• Orthography

Three other aspects of language description are often distinguished: phonetics, morphology, and pragmatics. Phonetics deals with the physical characteristics of the sounds in the language and how the sounds are produced. Sounds and letters combine to form words or parts of words. Morphology refers to the set of rules that describe the structure of words. The word computer, for example, consists of two parts: the base compute (used separately as a verb) and the suffix -er (found in other nouns derived from verbs, e.g. blender). Pragmatics is concerned with the use of particular utterances within particular situations. For example, Will you join our group? is a question that, depending on the speaker’s intention, is either a request for information or a request for action.

For descriptive purposes, it is convenient to deal with the components of language separately, but because of the central place of grammar in the language system, it is sometimes necessary to refer to the other components when we discuss the grammar.

The grammar of each language constitutes a system of its own, each element of which stands in a certain relation to, and is more or less dependent on, all the others. No linguistic system, however, is either completely rigid or perfectly harmonious, and we shall see in some of the subsequent chapters that there are loopholes and deficiencies in the English grammatical system.

Language is nothing but a set of human habits, the purpose of which is to give expression to thoughts and feelings, and especially to impart them to others. As with other habits it is not to be expected that they should be perfectly consistent. No one can speak exactly as everybody else or speak exactly in the same way under all circumstances and at all moments, hence a good deal of vacillation here and there. The divergences would certainly be greater if it were not for the fact that the chief purpose of language is to make oneself understood by other members of the same community; this presupposes and brings about a more or less complete agreement on all essential points. The closer and more intimate the social life of a community is, the greater will be the concordance in speech between its members. In old times, when communication between various parts of the country was not easy and when the population was, on the whole, very stationary, a great many local dialects arose which differed very considerably from one another; the divergences naturally became greater among the uneducated than among the educated and richer classes, as the latter moved more about and had more intercourse with people from other parts of the country. In recent times the enormously increased facilities of communication have to a great extent counteracted the tendency towards the splitting up of the language into dialects—class dialects and local dialects. In this grammar we must in many places call attention to various types of divergences: geographical (English in the strictest sense with various sub-divisions, Scottish, Irish, American), and social (educated, colloquial, literary, poetical, on the one hand, and vulgar on the other). But it should be remembered that these strata cannot be strictly separated from, but are constantly influencing one another. Our chief concern will be with the normal speech of the educated class, what may be called Standard English, but we must remember that the speech even of “standard speakers” varies a good deal according to circumstances and surroundings as well as to the mood of the moment. Nor must we imagine that people in their everyday speech arrange their thoughts in the same orderly way as when they write, let alone when they are engaged on literary work. Grammatical expressions have been formed in the course of centuries by innumerable generations of illiterate speakers, and even in the most elevated literary style we are obliged to conform to what has become, in this way, the general practice. Hence many established idioms which on closer inspection may appear to the trained thinker illogical or irrational. The influence of emotions, as distinct from orderly rational thinking, is conspicuous in many parts of grammar—see, for instance, the chapters on gender, on expanded tenses, and on will and shall.

The nature of grammar as a constituent part of language is better understood in the light of explicitly discriminating the two planes of language, namely, the plane of content and the plane of expression.

The plane of content comprises the purely semantic elements contained in language, while the plane of expression comprises the material (formal) units of language taken by themselves, apart from the meanings rendered by them. The two planes are inseparably connected, so that no meaning can be realized without some material means of expression. Grammatical elements of language present a unity of content and expression (or, in somewhat more familiar terms, a unity of form and meaning). In this the grammatical elements are similar to the lingual lexical elements, though the quality of grammatical meanings, as we have stated above, is different in principle from the quality of lexical meanings.

On the other hand, the correspondence between the planes of content and expression is very complex, and it is peculiar to each language. This complexity is clearly illustrated by the phenomena of polysemy, homonymy, and synonymy.

In cases of polysemy and homonymy, two or more units of the plane of content correspond to one unit of the plane of expression. For instance, the verbal form of the present indefinite (one unit in the plane of expression) polysemantically renders the grammatical meanings of habitual action, action at the present moment, action taken as a general truth (several units in the plane of content). The morphemic material element -s/-es (in pronunciation [-s, -z, -iz]), i.e. one unit in the plane of expression (in so far as the functional semantics of the elements is common to all of them indiscriminately), homonymically renders the grammatical meanings of the third person singular of the verbal present tense, the plural of the noun, the possessive form of the noun, i.e. several units of the plane of content.

In cases of synonymy, conversely, two or more units of the plane of expression correspond to one unit of the plane of content. For instance, the forms of the verbal future indefinite, future continuous, and present continuous (several units in the plane of expression) can in certain contexts synonymically render the meaning of a future action (one unit in the plane of content).

Taking into consideration the discrimination between the two planes, we may say that the purpose of grammar as a linguistic discipline is, in the long run, to disclose and formulate the regularities of the correspondence between the plane of content and the plane of expression in the formation of utterances out of the stocks of words as part of the process of speech production.

The formation of a one-direction sequence is based on syntactic cumulation of sentences, as different from syntactic composition of sentences making them into one composite sentence. Hence, the supra-sentential construction of one-direction communicative type can be called a cumulative sequence, or a “cumuleme”. The formation of a two-direction sequence is based on its sentences being positioned to meet one another. Hence, I propose to call this type of sentence-connection by the term “occursive”, and the supra-sentential construction based on occursive connection, by the term “occurseme”.

Furthermore, it is not difficult to see that from the hierarchical point of view the occurseme as an element of the system occupies a place above the cumuleme. Indeed, if the cumuleme is constructed by two or more sentences joined by cumulation, the occurseme can be constructed by two or more cumulemes, since the utterances of the interlocutors can be formed not only by separate sentences, but by cumulative sequences as well. E.g.:

“Damn you, stop talking about my wife. If you mention her name again I swear I’ll knock you down.” — “Oh no, you won’t. You’re too great a gentleman to hit a feller smaller than yourself” (S. Maugham).

As we see, in formal terms of the segmental lingual hierarchy, the supra-proposemic level (identified in the first chapter of the book) can be divided into two sublevels: the lower one — “cumulemic”, and the higher one — “occursemic”. On the other hand, a fundamental difference between the two units in question should be carefully noted lying beyond the hierarchy relation, since the occurseme, as different from the cumuleme, forms part of a conversation, i.e. is essentially produced not by one, but by two or several speakers, or, linguistically, not by one, but by two or several individual sub-lingual systems working in an intercourse contact.

As for the functional characteristic of the two higher segmental units of language, it is representative of the function of the text as a whole. The signemic essence of the text is exposed in its topic. The monologue text, or “discourse”, is then a topical entity; the dialogue text, or “conversation”, is an exchange-topical entity. The cumuleme and occurseme are component units of these two types of texts, which means that they form, respectively, subtopical and exchange-sub-topical units as regards the embedding text as a whole. Within the framework of the system of language, however, since the text as such does not form any “unit” of it, the cumuleme and occurseme can simply be referred to as topical elements (correspondingly, topical and exchange-topical), without the “sub “-specification.

Sentences in a cumulative sequence can be connected either “prospectively” or “retrospectively”.

Prospective (“epiphoric”, “cataphoric”) cumulation is effected by connective elements that relate a given sentence to one that is to follow it. In other words, a prospective connector signals a continuation of speech: the sentence containing it is semantically incomplete. Very often prospective connectors are notional words that perform the cumulative function for the nonce. E.g.:

I tell you, one of two things must happen. Either out of that darkness some new creation will come to supplant us as we have supplanted the animals, or the heavens will fall in thunder and destroy us (B. Shaw).

The prospective connection is especially characteristic of the texts of scientific and technical works. E.g.:

Let me add a word of caution here. The solvent vapour drain enclosure must be correctly engineered and constructed to avoid the possibility of a serious explosion (From a technical journal).

As different from prospective cumulation, retrospective (or “anaphoric”) cumulation is effected by connective elements that relate a given sentence to the one that precedes it and is semantically complete by itself. Retrospective cumulation is the more important type of sentence connection of the two; it is the basic type of cumulation in ordinary speech. E.g.:

What curious “class” sensation was this? Or was it merely fellow-feeling with the hunted, a tremor at the way things found one out? (J. Galsworthy).

On the basis of the functional nature of connectors, cumulation is divided into two fundamental types: conjunctive cumulation and correlative cumulation.

Conjunctive cumulation is effected by conjunction-like connectors. To these belong, first, regular conjunctions, both coordinative and subordinative; second, adverbial and parenthetical sentence-connectors (then, yet, however, consequently, hence, besides, moreover, nevertheless, etc.). Adverbial and parenthetical sentence-connectors may be both specialised, i.e. functional and semi-functional words, and non-specialised units performing the connective functions for the nonce. E.g.:

There was an indescribable agony in his voice. And as if his own words of pain overcame the last barrier of his self-control, he broke down (S. Maugham). There was no train till nearly eleven, and she had to bear her impatience as best she could. At last it was time to start, and she put on her gloves (S. Maugham).

Correlative cumulation is effected by a pair of elements one of which, the “succeedent”, refers to the other, the “antecedent”, used in the foregoing sentence; by means of this reference the succeeding sentence is related to the preceding one, or else the preceding sentence is related to the succeeding one. As we see, by its direction correlative cumulation may be either retrospective or prospective, as different from conjunctive cumulation which is only retrospective.

Correlative cumulation, in its turn, is divided into substitutional connection and representative connection. Substitutional cumulation is based on the use of substitutes. E.g.:

Spolding woke me with the apparently noiseless efficiency of the trained housemaid. She drew the curtains, placed a can of hot water in my basin, covered it with the towel, and retired (E. J. Howard).

A substitute may have as its antecedent the whole of the preceding sentence or a clausal part of it. Furthermore, substitutes often go together with conjunctions, effecting cumulation of mixed type. E.g.:

And as I leaned over the rail methought that all the little stars in the water were shaking with austere merriment. But it may have been only the ripple of the steamer, after all (R. Kipling).

Representative correlation is based on representative elements which refer to one another without the factor of replacement. E.g.:

She should be here soon. I must tell Phipps, I am not in to any one else (O. Wilde). I went home. Maria accepted my departure indifferently (E. J. Howard).

Representative correlation is achieved also by repetition, which may be complicated by different variations. E.g.:

Well, the night was beautiful, and the great thing not to be a pig. Beauty and not being a pig\ Nothing much else to it (J. Galsworthy).

A cumuleme (cumulative supra-sentential construction) is formed by two or more independent sentences making up a topical syntactic unity. The first of the sentences in a cumuleme is its “leading” sentence, the succeeding sentences are “sequential”.

The cumuleme is delimited in the text by a finalising intonation contour (cumuleme-contour) with a prolonged pause (cumuleme-pause); the relative duration of this pause equals two and a half moras (“mora” — the conventional duration of a short syllable), as different from the sentence-pause equalling only two moras.

The cumuleme, like a sentence, is a universal unit of language in so far as it is used in all the functional varieties of speech. For instance, the following cumuleme is part of the author’s speech of a work of fiction:

The boy winced at this. It made him feel hot and uncomfortable all over. He knew well how careful he ought to be, and yet, do what he could, from time to time his forgetfulness of the part betrayed him into unreserve (S. Butler).

Compare a cumuleme in a typical newspaper article:

We have come a long way since then, of course. Unemployment insurance is an accepted fact. Only the most die-hard reactionaries, of the Goldwater type, dare to come out against it (from Canadian Press).

Here is a sample cumuleme of scientific-technical report prose:

To some engineers who apply to themselves the word “practical” as denoting the possession of a major virtue, applied research is classed with pure research as something highbrow they can do without. To some business men, applied research is something to have somewhere in the organisation to demonstrate modernity and enlightenment. And people engaged in applied research are usually so satisfied in the belief that what they are doing is of interest and value that they are not particularly concerned about the niceties of definition (from a technical journal).

Poetical text is formed by cumulemes, too:

She is not fair to outward view, | As many maidens be; | Her loveliness I never knew | Until she smiled on me. |Oh, then I saw her eye was bright, | A well of love, a spring of light (H. Coleridge).

But the most important factor showing the inalienable and universal status of the cumuleme in language is the indispensable use of cumulemes in colloquial speech (which is reflected in plays, as well as in conversational passages in works of various types of fiction).

The basic semantic types of cumulemes are “factual” (narrative and descriptive), “modal” (reasoning, perceptive, etc.), and mixed. Here is an example of a narrative cumuleme:

Three years later, when Jane was an Army driver, she was sent one night to pick up a party of officers who had been testing defences on the cliff. She found the place where the road ran between a cleft almost to the beach, switched off her engine and waited, hunched in her great-coat, half asleep, in the cold black silence. She waited for an hour and woke in a fright to a furious voice coming out of the night (M. Dickens).

Compare this with modal cumulemes of various topical standings:

She has not gone? I thought she gave a second performance at two? (S. Maugham) (A reasoning cumuleme of perceptional variety)

Are you kidding? Don’t underrate your influence, Mr. O’Keefe. Dodo’s in. Besides, I’ve lined up Sandra Straughan to work with her (A. Hailey). (A remonstrative cumuleme)

Don’t worry. There will be a certain amount of unpleasantness but I will have some photographs taken that will be very useful at the inquest. There’s the testimony of the gunbearers and the driver too. You’re perfectly all right (E. Hemingway). (A reasoning cumuleme expressing reassurance) Etc.

Conclusions

Gerund is one of the most difficult grammar point in English and it must be studied perfectly by teacher before explaining students. It has a lot of positions in the sentence and students must learn these positions because the meaning of the sentences depends of the positions every word in English.

The derivation of gerund structures is various. Every structure has its own grammar meaning and position in the sentence. It was shown in this course paper how to build sentences with these structures and there are many examples which show the using of gerund.

Gerund is a specific structure because it can be used as Direct Objects. In this case it mixed with nouns. Gerund complements is differ from noun its grammar and semantic meanings. And it can be used as the Subject of sentences.

Gerund very often is used with prepositions. It is very important to know these structures because very often the preposition can change semantic meaning of the verb which is used as gerund. Most of that prepositions have their grammar meaning, too.

It is difficult to teach gerund because it often is mixed with infinitive. Gerund is used after particular verbs. There are not rules about these verbs and students must learn them by heart because infinitive has particular verbs, too. So, if students do not know them they can’t use gerund correctly. It is the main difficulty.

Sometimes using infinitive instead of gerund doesn’t make the sentence incorrect but it change the meaning of it.

It has an importance the frequency of using gerund in language. English is one of the European language where gerund is used the most frequently. And it makes a big difficulty for Ukrainian students because these grammar structures don’t exist in native language.

 

References

1. Cawley, F. The difficulty of English grammar for pupils of secondary school age. — MEd thesis, University of Manchester, 1957.
2. Conrad J. F. Gerund Clauses General Properties of Gerunds, Participles and Verbal Nouns. — at Britain: Prentice Hall, 1982.
3. Ellis J. Gerund and Infinitive. — London: Larson-Freeman, 2002
4. Freed M. Theory of English grammar. — Cambridge: Cambridge University press, 1979.
5. Murhy R. English grammar in Use. – Cambridge: Cambridge University press, 1988.
6. Swan M. Grammar. – London: Longman 1999.
7. Thomson A. J. & A. V. Martinet. A Practical English grammar. – Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1986.

In general to the V construction has future orientation. It speaks of potential events, while the gerund has present or past readings, it tends to ‘reify’ or actualize an event. This distinction is relevant for several categories of verbs that take both complements.

Also, in general, the infinitive complement carries with it a generic reading (cf. Freed (1979)) It suggests a series (= + countable, plural interpretation) of the event / action in question, occurring at different moments, throughout an unspecified stretch of time. The gerund on the other hand has a durative reading, which typically refers to the unspecified duration of a single event.

While these are very general properties of the two types of clauses, the specific meaning difference between a to-clause and an ing-clause depends on the semantics of particular main verbs as well. There is a first class of verbs showing little or no meaning difference between the infinitive and the gerund complement.

(17) afford, attempt, brook, decline, delay, disdain, dread, fear, forbear, neglect, omit, project, purpose, scorn, shun, plan, intend.

(18) a. It is needless to attempt describing the particular character of young people. I don’t attempt to strike out anything new.

1. Do you think I’ll brook to be / being worse treated than a cook?
2. He had declined attending the ceremony. He declined to take any part in the concern.

One should also include in this class the few, aspectual verbs that govern both infinitives and gerunds: begin, start, commence, continue, cease, go on, finish, stop (only gerund), because the two complements are interchangeable in almost all contexts. In spite of this, Freed (1979), Conrad (1982) have shown that each of the two complements may convey specific shades of meaning, emerging in appropriate contexts. When the gerund is used after aspectual verbs it makes reference to a specific event or a series of events locatable in space and time. Since the gerund refers to observed performances of an action, it is often qualified by manner adverbials or other adverbials describing various aspects of the event. This has to do with the more concrete range of denotations allowed by gerunds (events, facts, propositions), while the infinitives express propositions. (cf. Asher (1993) in the preceding chapter).

(19) a. He began abstractly brushing his hair.

He went across to the shelves and began removing books from them with admirable speed and dexterity.

The infinitive with aspectual verbs is best suited to refer to potential events, given its modal meaning. Thus the infinitive is appropriate to express dispositional properties of the subject, that is, what the subject can do, not what the subject is actually doing at some point in time. The infinitive is frequent with verbs of state, habitual predicates or psychological verbs, since they often express dispositional properties:

(20) a. She started to be interested in music late in life.

She began to read poetry when she was ten.

The infinitive is often chosen to express habitual events (the same event appearing at different points in time), sometimes with subjects designating a plurality; the event may be regularly or sporadically repeated:

(21) a. His intelligence never ceases to amaze me / (amazing me).

Two years later they began to write to one another regularly.

(22) a. While the man held a gun on her she continued counting / to count out hundred dollar bills.

While semantic factors of the type mentioned above may explain the preference for one form in a particular context, the two complements are, in principle interchangeable with aspectual verbs. Thus the infinitive may describe one single non-hypothetical occurrence, which is the realization of some dispositional property (23a,b). Similarly, the gerund can be quantified over, so that it may express generic activities, which represent, however, a generalization of observed specific events (23c):

(23) a. The train started to move.

To fill in some time, he found some College stationary and began to write

A difference of meaning has often been noticed between the gerund and the infinitive of verbs of affective stance (verbs of liking and disliking): like, love, adore, detest, hate, prefer (all with gerund and infinitive), adore, enjoy tolerate, resent, dislike (only with gerund complements). The difference between gerund and infinitive with verbs of emotional reaction is similar to the one described for aspectual verbs. The gerund after verbs of emotional reaction refers to a definite event; it expresses an emotional stance to real experienced occurrences. Also, it often functions like an anaphoric definite article, referring back to an already mentioned event.

(24). Bond liked fast cars, and he liked driving them.

The infinitive implies that there is a disposition for actions of a certain kind. What the subject likes, hates, etc. is a kind of activity, which will predictably appear under appropriate circumstances, though it need not have occurred. The infinitive is preferred to convey generic meanings: general rules, properties, etc. Thus in (25a) the subject has the property of liking to talk over dinner, etc.:

(25) a. Somas liked to talk during dinner.

1. A man likes to be waited on.
2. He loved above all to see the Guards drilling in the park.

The typically referential nature of the gerund, in contrast with the generic, dispositional nature of the infinitive is best brought out in sentences containing state verbs, where the infinitive may suggest several occurrences of a state, while the gerund refers to a continuous durative occurrence.

(26) a. We all love being in love. / We all love to be in love.

I adore being engaged. / I adore to be engaged.

However, since the gerund DP can be quantified over, the gerund too can express generic meaning, as in (27c-f), and, on the other hand, the infinitive may refer to a single event, possibly falling under some rule, or disposition (as in (27a, b)), so that again the two forms will often be interchangeable. (27 f, g)

(27) a. I hate to see you standing about by yourself in this stupid manner. b. I don’t like to be avoided.

We like having fun, and we like having it together. d. He likes going out with an attractive girl.

The choice of the gerund or the infinitive with these verbs may also largely depend on mood, tense factors of the main and the embedded clause. Thus the infinitive is chosen to convey futurity with respect to the main clause.

(28) a. I don’t like to refuse him, but I am afraid I shall have to.

He preferred to drive back through the night.

Given its modal meaning, the infinitive is strongly preferred when the main clause is in a subjunctive, hypothetical form. For example in the five-million word corpus investigated by the Longman grammar,” 75% of the occurrences of like + to-clause in fiction and news are preceded by would. (op. cit. 757).”

(29) a. I would like to have your little rowing boat tomorrow, and go out to the wreck and take some photos of that.

She would however have liked to have had a child.

All the examples so far have involved explicit control of the complement subject. This is the only possibility for infinitives. The gerund may also have a non- controlled interpretation, where the embedded subject is understood as impersonal, unspecified, as in (30b, c). Hence the gerund may be more ‘impersonal’ than the infinitive. Thus example (30b) does not imply that the main clause subject kills dogs or tortures animals, in contrast with (30a).

(30) a. I hate to have to kill my dog / dogs.

I hate killing dogs / torturing animals.

Consider the following verbs: need, require, want (= need), deserve, bear. These verbs are freely followed by gerund or infinitive complements. What is of interest with these verbs is the alternation between a passive controlled infinitive (the matrix and complement have identical subjects) and an active non-controlled gerund complement, semantically equivalent to the passive infinitive. A passive gerund is likewise allowed. Examples are given in (31) and (32):

(31) He deserves to be hanged for this.

He deserves hanging for this.

(32) a. Charles Beresford will require looking after one of these days.

1. The house wants painting and papering shamefully.
2. Only two small incidents need mentioning.

There is a larger class of exercitive verbs of communication which select an infinitive of control when in the main clause there is an indirect object, serving as controller. If there is no personal indirect object in the sentence, then these verbs select ing complements, or, if possible, they take an Accusative + Infinitive complement. These possibilities are illustrated in (33). Some of the relevant verbs are the following: allow, permit, advise, suggest, propose, recommend, prescribe, suffer, forbid, telephone, urge, etc.

(33) a. He allowed Tom [PRO to smoke].

He didn’t allow [there to be any dancing in the room]. (Acc+Inf)

The infinitive of control in (33a) is appropriate when there is interaction between the referents of the Subject and Indirect Object. The Indirect Object is the permitee in the permission granting act. In examples (33 b-d), no permitee is actually expressed. It is suggested that the matrix Su has enough authority to make a more formal pronouncement. Notice in (33), (34) that the gerund’s subject is often unspecified, rather than arbitrary generic.

(34) a. I advised her to wait until the proper time. / I advised waiting till the proper time.

1. I forbid you to smoke here. / Smoking cigars in the child’s room is strictly forbidden.
2. I recommend you to buy this dictionary. / I recommend buying this dictionary.

Other differences between V ing and to V complements of the same verb characterize very small groups of verbs, but they are not unpredictable in the light of our discussion so far. The verbs remember, recollect, recall, report, observe, perceive, notice are non-active in the Accusative + Infinitive construction (35a), but have a active interpretation when used with the gerund complements (35b).

(35) a. They reported the enemy to have suffered a decisive defeat.

They reported the enemy’s having suffered a decisive defeat.

The second example implies that the report was true in the speaker’s opinion, while the first leaves open the possibility that the report was false. Consider more examples, which bring out the same contrast:

(36) a. I remembered him to be bald so I was surprised to see him with long hair.

I remembered his being bald so I brought a wig and disguised him.

The gerund reifies the event, (to use the expression of Bolinger (1977)), which may be understood as past, even when it is not marked so. Thus, they resented his being away is ambiguous as to the time reference of the gerund, and on one prong of the ambiguity, is synonymous with They resented his having been away. In contrast, the infinitive is understood as simultaneous or future with respect to the main clause. If a past reading is intended, it has to be marked on the complement verb. Thus, They suppose him to be away cannot mean They supposed him to have been away.

(37) a. He could not remember coming from the bar to the chapel.

1. I didn’t remember to post the letter, so I still have it with me.
2. I shall never forget seeing her. (= ‘having seen her’, active reading) d. I forgot to tell my sister about the party. (… so I was surprised when she came.)

And there is contrast:

(38) I regret to say that you are a fool.

I regret saying that you are a fool.

The verb try + ing is implicative, indicating that the complement clause action did take place. In contrast, the construction try to V suggests a difficult or unsuccessful attempt.

It can be compared:

(39) a. He tried speaking French, but wasn’t understood.

He tried to speak French, but couldn’t.

Finally notice that, for some verbs, different meanings correspond to different choices of complement constructions.

The verb mean + inf has the same sense of ‘intend’ or ‘signify’, while mean + ing is used only in the sense of ‘signify’.

(40) a. He means to run over France. / *running over France.

To serve such a man would mean doing / to do something worth doing.

The verb want expressing volition takes an infinitive complement; want meaning ‘be in need of’ takes both kinds of complement.

(41) a. I don’t want to tell you.

The door needs to be painted / painting.

The verb stop allows the ing as a DO, but takes an infinitive only as adverbial of purpose. There is clear syntactic and semantic difference between (36a.) and (36b).

(42) a. When he has working, he would stop to take a few pipes of his pipe.

He stopped smoking cigars at table.

Gerunds can occur in three different constructions in English: (a) as the subject of a sentence, (b) as verb complements (V + G) and (c) as objects of a preposition (Prep + O). Likewise, infinitives can occur in three different constructions: (a) as the subject of a sentence, (b) as a verb complement (V + I), and (c) as complement of an object (V + O + I). Gerunds and infinitives occur in several different constructions in English. The analysis is limited to the verb + complement (V + G and V+ I/V + O + I) constructions because it is these constructions that cause the most confusion for students. The generation of the gerund or the infinitive in these latter three constructions depends on the head verb choice. For example,

1. I want to go to the movies.
2. I want going to the movies.
3. She enjoys working in the library.
4. She enjoys to work in the library.

It is readily recognized sentences (1) and (3) as being grammatically correct sentences in English; likewise, items (2) and (4) are ungrammatical in English. However, there are some verbs that can trigger either gerund or infinitive constructions with relatively little difference in meaning.

5. He loves to walk in the rain.
6. He loves walking in the rain.

Both sentences (5) and (6) are grammatically correct sentences in English. A native speaker of English may recognize a subtle semantic difference between sentences (5) and (6). This intuitive difference is not part of our study. Finally, there are some verbs which take both the infinitive and gerund constructions but there is a significant difference. There is observed the semantic difference between items (7) and (8).

7. He stopped smoking.
8. He stopped to smoke.

Sentence (7) indicates that the man has kicked the habit of smoking; whereas, sentence (8) conveys the message that the man stopped what he was doing in order to have a cigarette. English second language grammar textbooks frequently provide extensive, but by no means exhaustive, lists of verbs that generate the various constructions. The students must learn to manage these lists, much as they must learn to manage the seemingly endless lists of irregular verbs. Because of the overlap in these verb + complement structures, it is not uncommon for students to produce frequent errors

The distribution of gerund complements

The aim of this part is to review the distribution of gerund complements, with examples and comments on usage.

1. Gerund complements as Direct Objects

There is a considerable number of verbs which take ing complements as Direct Objects.

Many of them also accept infinitival Direct Objects. Here is a list of verbs which accept gerund Direct Objects, but with which an infinitive complement is infrequent or not available.

(1) A. a. avoid, adore, bear, chance (= risk), contemplate, dread, dislike, detest, drop, end

up, enjoy, escape, evade, feign, finish, give up, keep, leave off, miss, postpone, put off, play, practice, risk, resume, renounce, shirk, can’t resist, help, stand, grudge;

1. condemn, consider(= think over), justify, ensure, include, entail, necessitate, encourage, defer, delay, excuse, pardon, defend, detest, support, sanction, oppose, criticize, favour.
2. a. resent, regret (also + inf) grasp, perceive, repent, deplore, ignore, care (about), bear in mind, mind, reveal, discover, disclose ;
3. admit, emphasize, explain, mention, announce, point out, verify, mean, acknowledge, certify, testify, doubt, deny, imagine, imply, etc.

Class A contains verbs that are typically followed by the gerund, verbs in class B have an alternative that complement construction.

(2) a. They certified his being insane.

1. They certified that he was insane.
2. I imagined John eating the apple quickly.

The fact that the gerund may alternate with that complement means that the gerund may have a propositional interpretation with these verbs. Following Portner (1994), we assumed that gerunds basically denote propositions, understood as sets of situations, rather than sets of possible words. Object gerunds may also denote facts (when the main clause predicate is active) or events, facts and events having in common the fact that they are more concrete occurrences.

(3) a. He regrets/ deplores accidentally killing his dog.

1. Mary always enjoyed going to the Opera.

Few of the verbs in (1) are verbs of obligatory subject control, which word always take a PRO-ing complement; examples are resist, finish, leave off, resume, keep on, as well as aspectual.

(4) a. *I left off his writing the essay.

1. *I resumed his writing the essay.

Most verbs in (1) accept different subjects in the matrix and complement clause, and then the subject assumes Possessive or Accusative form:

(5) Poss-ing

1. Nothing in the accident justified their grounding the aircraft.
2. And maybe you won’t mind my saying that you’re getting a little old for studying.
3. I don’t mind his coming whenever he likes.

Accusative. (6) a. I cannot help the dreams coming.

1. He replied that he should certainly support every nation being allowed to govern itself.
2. The parents did not mind the news becoming public.
3. Do you mind me saying it?

Allen (1959) mentions that deny, postpone, risk allow only a possessive complement, rejecting the Accusative structure:

(7) I couldn’t deny his / *him having made a reasonable excuse.

As to the preference for the Possessive or the Accusative. in object position, the Longman Grammar (1999: 750) has got the following to say: “In spite of a prescriptive tradition favouring the possessive form, the objective case must be considered the unmarked choice for the post-verbal noun-phrase in the pattern verb + NP + ing-clause. […] When both the objective and the possessive forms are permitted, the possessive option focuses attention on the action described in the in clause. In contrast, use of the objective form emphasizes the person doing the action.”

Another difference between the Accusative. and the Accussative complement, already discussed above is that the Poss-ing is understood as a definite nominal, referring to a definite (presupposed) event, while the Acc-ing may also refer to an indefinite event, when it is embedded under a non-active-predicate, as in (8d). A definite interpretation of the Acc-ing complement is also available, under active predicates, as in (8b).

(8) a. Mary didn’t enjoy John’s coming to visit her.

1. Mary didn’t enjoy John coming to visit her.

This interpretative contrast, suggests that Poss-ing gerunds are interpreted as DPs headed by a silent definite article, which secures reference to a known event, therefore, a presuppositional interpretation. The silent D of the Acc-ing complement may be indefinite, allowing a definite reading as a result of the factive context.

Where the Su of the complement is the same as that of the main clause, a PRO-ing complement is used, as in the following examples.

(9) a. I could hardly avoid (*my) running into him.

1. I gave up (*my) smoking.
2. I couldn’t resist (*my) buying such lovely apples.
3. He could not help looking youthful and calm and debonair.
4. He had sometimes envisaged telling her everything and making her his confessor and his judge.
5. He narrowly missed being seriously hurt, if not killed.
6. Andrew had by now almost finished dealing with the swing.

Kiparsky (1970) mentioned that the verbs listed under (1) Ba. above, which are active verbs, optionally allow a possessive of the same person as the subject to be inserted between the main verb and the ing complement, resulting in the alternation between the Poss-ing and PRO-ing complement.

(10) a. They resented (their) having a young family to support.

1. He deplored (his) going blind.
2. I recall (my) having seen her.

An arbitrary generic interpretation of the subject, roughly understood as the pronoun ‘one’ is also possible:

(11) a. The law doesn’t even mention killing oneself.

1. They abhor abusing oneself in public.

As already discussed in the previous chapter, ‘public verbs’ dispose of a second type of uncontrolled Su selection in the complement clause, the unspecified subject’, a featureless DP, whose content is retrievable in a given context. Examples of ‘Public verbs’ have tentatively been listed in (1) Ab and Bb, following the suggestions of Thompson (1973); verbs in Aa and Ba are ‘private verbs’ accepting only controlled readings.

(12) a. The report advocated setting up day-training-college.

1. The experiment justified changing the normal method of attack.
2. He advocated making war upon the brewers.

The gerund construction brings out several characteristics of true. [+ Active] verbs. We have already mentioned the alternation between a lexical and a null subject with active verbs, even when the embedded subject is the same as a main clause argument, so a PRO subject could have been used. An example appears in (13a, b) below. Since, with these verbs a lexical subject may potentially intervene between the main verb and the ing-predicate of the subordinate clause, these verbs tolerate apparent ‘doubling violations, as in (13c):

(13) a. Ed resented his getting photographed drunk.

1. Ed resented getting photographed drunk.
2. Ed’s resenting getting photographed drunk is just too funny.

Moreover active verbs have the property of freely combining with perfect gerunds; not all of the other verbs listed in (1) have this possibility, as apparent in the contrasts below:

(14) a. I deplored/resented having been given this commission.

1. I *avoided / *evaded having been given this commission.

Kiparsky (1970: 361) notices the existence of verbs which allow for a active, as well as a non active interpretation of their complement clause (e.g. announce, anticipate, admit, emphasize, mention, deduce, a.o.). It is interesting that, with this verb sub-class, the gerund complement is normally interpreted as active, while the clause is indifferent to activity.

(15) a. He will mention his having read it in the paper.

1. He won’t mention that he had read it in the paper.

With the verb explain the gerund complement and that complement differs in meaning, again along the lines of a active / non – active interpretation. Compare:

(16) a. I explained Adam’s refusing to come to the phone.

1. I explained that he was watching his favourite TV show.

In (16a) the subordinate clause refers to a proposition regarded as a fact. Explain, in this case means ‘give reasons for’. When the object is a that clause, as in (16b), it can be read as non-active with explain that S meaning ‘say that S to explain X’.

Verbs followed either by ing or by infinitive complements constitute an interesting class, as this syntactic difference sometimes correlates with a difference in the meaning of the two constructions.

As remarked in Longman grammar (1999: 757) “in general a to-clause has a meaning that is more hypothetical or potential than the meaning of the corresponding ing-clause (with the same verb)…” This general difference naturally follows from the properties of Inflection in infinitive and gerund clauses. With some exceptions, control infinitive have irrealis, future Tense, while gerunds have realis tense. No wonder then that the infinitive is associated with hypothetical or potential events.

Problem Definition

Fostering and gaining the great understanding of being able to assist students to think critically is very significant to their academic success. Students have been increasingly found to lack the motivation of employing their contemporary set of critical thinking skills, they, in turn, mess up in the development of those skills which befits their level of intellect or grade levels. The problem at hand deals with students at their ninth-grade level of education who lack motivation or have challenges in developing and utilizing critical thinking skills in the classroom throughout the school year.

The ability to facilitate the development of critical thinking skills is very significant to be addressed. This is possible through some individual assignments, group problems, projects, and lessons. Through emphasizing continuously on the nurturing and development of critical thinking skills, students enjoy the opportunity to experience to learn how to come up with effective solutions to problems and also to add up their level of knowledge. As critical thinking expansion continues students in possession of developed skills tend to concentrate on strategy more than the issue at hand (Mezirow, 1990). On the other hand, less developed students tend to focus on the problem rather than focusing on the strategy.

Methodology

Each of the students received a notebook with a research number of each student on the front. The students used their chosen word to complete the code which gave room for easy identification at the same time keeping their identity undisclosed. The students were required to hand in the notebooks at the end of the session, but this was done after filling in the minute papers. The notebooks were supposed to have each date stated at the top of a new page and submitted to the teacher before the students departed from the class. In case of absence of one or more students, they were given a zero, and this score did not necessarily reflect on their abilities; it indicated that the students were absent in class that day. Also, their weekly average did not include the zero score; otherwise, it would have led to misconstruction of the results.

The notebooks that were employed in the research were only allowed to leave the school grounds under the researcher’s control and were kept in a contained room all the other times. The area was locked and confidential for effective control to avoid losing them. As the end of each week approached, the minute papers of each student were read and given scores per rubric (Appendix C) and a survey carried out on a weekly basis to help in the documentation of their progress (Appendix D) was completed by the person carrying out the research. Two ratings and two ratings made up the weekly survey and these ratings were based on the minute papers for a school week.

The results of each of each week were graphed, and they provided a growing picture to commence with result analysis. Records of gender separation results were also made available which gave room for a different information layer. By carrying out gender separation, the emphasis focused on whether there would be better performance from one gender. The teacher’s weekly survey was collected on a weekly basis and consisted of two agree/disagree questions. At this point, the teacher was given a chance of providing comments and recommendations as well. Analysis of the all the captured information was carried out separately or as a whole, for example. Gender, weekly, daily, for deeper comprehension levels.

The notebooks provided a substantial amount of information that helps in understanding the backward slides, stagnation or progress made by each student through the questions they posed as well as their minute papers. Furthermore, the students were instrumental in the provision of a firsthand look at the material comprehension, employment of critical skills in action, and thought process of each student.

Timeline

There were three phases in the study timeline, and the whole process took at least seven calendar weeks (Jeong, 2007). The first phase included the teacher and the school administration being conducted two weeks before the commencing of the research to seek deeper research understanding, background, permission, full understanding of study cooperation and partial creation of the number of participants. The teacher sent an email to all the parents involved to notify them about the study. The first and the second weeks consisted of four class days each and the third week was three class days.

The second phase included the actual timeline of the research (Appendix A) which summed up to three weeks of research that was equal to four calendar weeks. The teacher submitted the students’ weekly question surveys on a weekly basis. The minute papers were also collected on a weekly basis to award scores and also to record the results from the weekly and rubric survey. The third phase was the data collection conclusion and commenced data analysis. The third phase consumed at least three weeks, which provided the necessary information that would assist in answering the research the questions.

Results

The girls displayed a constant improvement in their weekly scores and about 62% of the daily average time, yet they were less than boys. Therefore, without the comparison of an equal amount of students, this can result in a curve in the analysis which might favor the girls. However, with a 17%, or 4 students, difference it is quite a small variation to provide an insight into how the performance of the students would be had there been exact boys to girls’ ratio. It shows that the students accepted the task regardless of the gender parity, i.e.., composing of minute papers, and were successful in building their critical thinking skills each time they wrote with the final week with veritably focusing on the skills they had gained that would improve their levels of critical thinking.

The teacher mentioned the scoring breakdown of each week throughout the weekly results sections. These results show that there was a steady increase in critical thinking skills throughout the whole study process. The second week presented issues that made the students appear to lose vigor and enthusiasm of the daily task which represents the overall scores of all the students (LoBiondo-Wood, 2017). Although, by the study’s last week the students had recorded a significant improvement of their skills in comparison to the previous scores of two weeks while the depth of their minute papers a displayed a substantial level of critical thinking. The students also posed questions that showed that they had taken new understanding levels.

Introduction

Teaching English is a hard work. When we speak about teaching English grammar it is more difficult work for the teacher and the students. Interest in learning of English to students has been steadily growing in recent years. For correct presenting grammar teachers need special skills. Helping the children to learn and develop grammar skills becomes more important than simply teaching language.

Grammar study is important for developing reading, writing, and speaking skills, but many teachers are unsure how best to include it in their curriculum. Providing grammar instruction through engaging literacy activities teaches basic concepts while developing students’ vocabularies and spelling proficiency. In this lesson, students review nouns, adjectives, and verbs and learn about gerunds. They then practice using them as new vocabulary words by composing structured diamante poems as a class and independently using an online interactive tool. The poems can be printed off and displayed or published as a class book or magazine.

However, teaching grammar isn’t difficult or painful if the teacher has appropriate knowledge and skills. It is impossible to speak about gerund and not to remain infinitive because they are structures which are connected very much. Gerunds and infinitives are among the most difficult topics to teach, and a continuing source of errors even among advanced learners. Treated as merely structural variants, these forms are usually grouped into a single grammar unit filled with differing syntactic specifications and long lists of verbs grouped according to their complement type. Significant grammatical distinctions between gerunds and infinitives, as well as pedagogical considerations, suggest that they should be separated and taught at different points in a grammar syllabus. The aim of this work are:

• to make grammar description of gerund;
• to show the difficulties in teaching gerund;
• to express the difference between gerund and infinitive;
• to presents a concise review of the linguistic evidence concerning important differences between gerunds and infinitives;
• to make recommendations on the sequencing of these topics within a course of instruction;
• to demonstrate frequency as a significant factor in second language acquisition;
• to show the derivations of gerund;

This course paper is devoted to show the role of grammar in the language, and the role of gerund especially.

Most theorists trace the history of grammar to the ancient Greeks who made grammar part of a tritium of rhetoric, logic, and grammar because without grammar the sentence doesn’t have any meening. The Greeks, however, viewed grammar as more than a set of prescriptive rules. Cheryl Glen (1995) interprets the role of grammar in the Greek tritium as one of style more than rules of correctness. Kolln also places grammar teaching in this position. Glenn views this role of grammar, what she calls “fluid, flexible, lively, ever-changing, emotional, beautiful, stylish, graceful language performance” (10) as the goal of grammar instruction.

1. The role of Frequency in teaching gerund

The development of constructional schemas is based on frequency of input and output. Research demonstrating frequency as a significant factor in second language acquisition, however, has been limited. Infinitive and gerund are analysed as constructions in English by native speakers because studies of gerunds and infinitives in second language acquisition are relatively rare. Furthermore, the students who are speakers of English often confuse these two constructions. Infinitives are high-frequency constructions in English. Conversely, gerund constructions are of low-frequency in English; do not generally exist in some European languages. This seemed a promising place, therefore, to test the relationship of frequency and error production in English second language students.

The theory that frequency plays a significant role in the production of language has been researched for nearly 50 years.

From these findings, it has been proposed that grammars are not a result of some sort of innate, preprogrammed set of universal rules that each human being is born with as proposed by Chomsky. Rather, functionalists claim that grammars emerge from thousands of different constructions, and these constructions are internalized and mapped onto our cognitive capacities through the frequency of input and output (Wray, 2002; Tomasello, 1998). Thus, the fundamental difference between the generativists and the functionalists is that of the source of grammatical knowledge in first language acquisition. Generativists believe that grammar is innate and that the lexicon and environment enter into cognition at a different, unrelated time. This fundamental difference continues to be hotly debated. Until very recently, though, the field of second language acquisition has not seriously considered frequency as a significant factor in learning a second language. Second language acquisition research has often avoided asking questions about language interference, variation, and pedagogy through the lens of the functionalist paradigm.

One of the primary reasons frequency effects has not received a great deal of attention in second language acquisition literature is that there is a genuine fear that evidence supporting a pedagogy based on frequency of input may lead the profession back to stimulus-response sorts of pedagogy like Lado and the audio lingual method which promotes rote memorization and practice of frequently occurring structures, divorcing structure from context (Ellis, 2002a). This is a very real concern and applied linguists, psycholinguists, and TESL practitioners have been justified in their reservations, not wanting to decontextualize language learning.

Language interference is a process in which internalized structures, or lack thereof, in the native language interfere with the learning and acquisition of structures in the target language (Ellis, R. 1994; Gass & Selinker, 2001). Language interference may result from differences between the native language and target language, or it can result from similarities between the two languages. For a discussion and a brief history of error analysis the language interference results from differences between the native language and the target language. For example, if the native language has an infinitive structure for verbs, then it can be predicted that this structure will transfer relatively easily to the target language. However, if the native language does not have the infinitive structure, this will be more difficult to learn and internalize in the target language. Language interference does not have to be restricted to grammatical structures. Learning lexical, semantic, phonological, and morphological items may also be affected by language interference. For example, Spanish makes use of two lexical items to represent the copula BE: ser and ir, whereas English only has one. Learning the contexts in which ser and ir are used is difficult for native speakers of English causing confusion and resulting in frequent errors in the early stages of learning Spanish as a second or foreign language.

It is clear that the frequency of input is not the only factor involved in learning a second language; however, we believe it plays a significant role.

2. General properties of gerunds

Here is a large variety of ing forms. Traditional grammars of English acknowledge the existence of two homonymous ING forms: the gerund and the participle. Gerunds, in (1a), were defined as “forms that have both nominal and verbal features, both aspects of the content being (often) apparent in the same context”. (Ellis, 2002a, p 347). “Participles differ from gerunds in that they don’t have any nominal features, but verbal features exclusively” (Ellis, 2002a p 365). The picture is more complex than that for several reasons. First, participles have a verbal use, as in (1b), but also an adjectival use, illustrated in (1c) below:

(1) a. I remember Mary’s performing the concert.

1. God willing, we shall succeed.
2. Never flog a willing horse.

Secondly, gerunds exhibit two forms, the traditionally called full gerund, whose subject is in the Gen (active) or Possessive case, and a second form, whose subject is in the Accusative case, known as the half gerund. We shall refer to the former as the Possessive construction, and to the latter as the Accusative construction.

(2) It all depends on their helping us. (Possessive)

It all depends on them helping us. (Accusative)

Additionally, the gerund may be subjectless. The subjectless gerund is, roughly,

interpretable like the subjectless infinitive in terms of Control Theory. It is reasonable to assume that an empty pronominal then represents the gerund’s subject, namely the empty pronominal. It will refer to this construction as pronominal gerund..

(3) I avoided of meeting him.

Thirdly, there is an ing deverbal noun, a form that has only nominal properties, illustrated in (4) below. This form is traditionally known as the verbal noun or the ing-of construction.

(4) Their cruel shooting of the prisoners

Theoretically, the more interesting ones appear to be the two gerund constructions, which exhibit mixed properties, being thus different both from IPs/CPs and from DPs.

More on the properties of the -ing suffix. Among the more obvious lexical peculiarities of English is the presence of a number of apparently distinct morphemes that share the phonological shape -ing. In addition to the gerund-forming affix under discussion here, we have noted the existence of the quite productive nominalizing affix exemplified in (4) above. There is also the adjective-forming suffix found in examples like unprepossessing individual. Then, there is the verbal participial affix found in the progressive, as well as in small clauses and adjuncts (e.g., John being away, I was sad; I found her laughing). Finally there is the semiproductive mass noun forming affix, seen in the “object” or “material” senses of words like clothing, fencing, and writings. It is difficult, if not impossible, to isolate a common meaning for all the types of -ing isolated above.

Several attempts have, however, been made to give a unitary description to the -ing suffix (cf. Milsark (1988), Harley and Noyer (1998)), in morpho-syntactic terms.

If there were in fact but one -ing in English, it would appear to have the following morphological properties: it suffixes to verbs, and the resulting complex lexical item may be of any category, a rather unusual property. The lack of category specification exhibited by -ing is unique among derivational affixes, at least in English. -ing is a category-neutral affix. If one takes the major lexical categories, N, V, A, P one notices the existence of Ns, Vs, A and Ps derived from verbs using -ing: