Phrases and sentences: grammar

The Study of Language by George Yule (2006)

New words
Agreement: the grammatical connection between two parts of a sentence, as in the connection between subject (Cathy) and the form of a verb (loves chocolate)
Natural gender: a distinction based on the biological categories of male, female or neither.
Grammatical gender: a grammatical category designating the class of a noun as masculine or feminine (or neuter)
Prescriptive approach: an approach to grammar that has rules for the proper use of the language, traditionally based on Latin grammar
Descriptive approach: an approach to grammar that is based on description of the structures actually used in a language, not what should be used
Structural analysis: the investigation of the distribution of grammatical forms in a language
Immediate constituent analysis: a grammatical analysis of how small constituents go together to form larger constituents in sentences
Hierarchical organization: the analysis of constituents in a sentence showing which constituents are higher than and contain other constituents

Study questions
1 The (article) woman (noun) kept (verb) a (article) large (adjective) snake (noun) in (preposition) a (article) cage (noun), but (conjunction) it (pronoun) escaped (verb) recently (adverb).
2 Natural gender is based on sex as a biological distinction (male and female). Grammatical gender is based on the type of noun (masculine or feminine or neuter) and is not tied to sex.
3 a) The old theory consistently failed to fully explain all the data. → The old theory consistently failed to explain fully all the data. b) I can’t remember the name of the person I gave the book to. → I can’t remember the name of the person to whom I gave the book.
4 In the older definition, pronouns were described as ‘words used in place of nouns’. But it is more accurate to avoid ‘The it makes a lot of noise’.
5 a) The small boy hit the black dog. b) The dog saw the big man.