This two-part article introduces the study of linguistics and its connections to the teaching of English as a second language.

In the first part of this article, we looked at how the grammatical description of a language is conveniently divided into two complementary sections: morphology and syntax. Here we will look at some of the systems English uses for communication and analyze the structure of English sentences. This information is designed to aid ESL teachers.

Preview questions

  • What do the terms "deep structure" and "surface structure" mean?
  • How can the same sentence mean two different things to two different people?
  • Why might an L2 learner say, "I saw the rose red," rather than "I saw the red rose"?

Define syntax

Syntax is the study of the structure of sentences. Syntacticians describe how words combine into phrases and clauses, and how these combine to form sentences.

For example, "I found a coin yesterday" is embedded as a relative clause in the sentence, "The coin that I found yesterday is quite valuable." Syntacticians describe the rules for converting the first sentence into the second.

The sentence

A sentence is a sequence of selected syntactic items combined into a unit in accordance with certain patters of arrangement, modification and intonation.

Phrase: "In the house"

Sentence: "He is coming."

Clause: "If he comes,"

These can be analyzed into progressively smaller units. The kernel is the smallest basic sentence of a language.

Syntactic devices

1. Coordination or conjoining

Use "and" to connect parallel entities. Examples:

  • He takes cream and sugar.
  • Fred and William came.
  • He came and sat down.

2. Embedding or subordination (who, that, which, when, where and why clauses)

When we say, "He is the man who came," the clause "who came" is called an embedded statement by linguists. The embedded element may be indicated by a special word as in English who, that or which as in "John, who drinks coffee ..."

The main clause is called the matrix clause. In Japanese, the embedded clause is placed before the entity it modifies, koohi o namu taro is "Taro who drinks coffee." Turkish uses a similar construction: Ankaraya giden tren is "The train that goes to Ankara."

Arabic uses a connecting word, alladhi. (Called ism mawsul-linking noun). If the modified word is definite: Al-wald alladhi ja'a "The boy who came." (al-walad = the boy; alladhi = who; ja'a = came.) If the modified noun is indefinite, no connecting word is used: walad ja’a "A boy came" or "a boy who came."

Differences in this process can cause errors in ESOL students' speaking and writing. Arabic speakers may say or write "The book that I bought it," for example.

3. Content words

These are the nouns and verbs.

4. Function words

These convey the relationships among the content words and include auxiliaries (must, might will), conjunctions, determiners (a, an, the, that), interjections, postpositions (Evda in Turkish where ev = house and de = at). This category also includes prepositions and relatives (who, whom).

Syntactic rules

The words of a language cannot occur randomly; they must conform to the rules of the language. Contrast the following:

  • The dentist hurt my teeth.
  • My teeth hurt the dentist

The next item is meaningless even though it is made up of meaningful morphemes:

  • My the hurt dentist teeth.

Concord or congruence is the agreement among morphemes. This changes to these before plurals. In Arabic walad misryy (Egyptian boy) 'awlaad misriyuun (Egyptian boys, where the adjective misry (Egyptian) changes to agree with the noun, walad (boy). In English, the verb agrees with its subject: The boy is here/The boys are here.

Government is the determination of one form by the action of another. Case is an example. Who changes to the object form whom when affected by a verb. An example from German: Es ist mir leib It is dear to me. leib (love) requires the dative case mir (me).

Contrastive sentence types

In English the favorite types of sentences are the following:

N1+V: They came.

N1+V+N2(Obj): They saw her.

N+be+Comp, where Comp is the complement (The word after be or other linking verb is an adjective, noun or adverb.)

  • It is hot.
  • It is a boy
  • It is here.

In contrast: The word order in Arabic is verb, subject object (VSO).

  • kataba ahmad risllah Ahmad wrote a letter (Literally "wrote Ahmad letter").

A nominal (noun) sentence in Arabic has no verb:

  • huwa taalib He is a student (literally: "He student")
  • al-kitaab tawiil The book is long. al = the; kitaab = book; tawiil = long.

These differences would surely be soon noticed by anyone involved to any depth with the languages in question. But there are other differences in grammar between languages that are much subtler.

Let us take the English sentence, I saw you and came here. The first part of the sentence (before the and) is a complete sentence in its own right — the subject of the verb saw is overt, appearing as the word I. But the second part of the sentence is not complete in itself; its subject is missing.

However, as speakers of English, we have no hesitation in interpreting the second part to mean I came here, and not to mean You came here, although there is no logical reason, other than the requirements of English grammar, that this second interpretation should be excluded.

Word order

Word order in English is subject verb object (SVO) or complement. Adverbs are added according to a small number of possible orders.

  • Kernel sentence: It is cold.
  • With additions: It is very cold here today.
  • Or Today it is very cold here.

But not:

  • Very it is cold here today.

Other languages

It is helpful to know how the L1 rules differ from those of English to predict common errors. For example, Russian does not use determiners:

In Russian, there are no words equivalent to a and the in English. As a result, native speakers of Russian tend to omit determiners in English. For example, a native speaker of Russian uses the following sentence in our data: I was champion of swimming competition in Russia, instead of, I was the champion of a swimming competition in Russia.

French and other Romance languages use the adjective after the noun, which can result in errors: lessons very important instead of very important lessons; afternoon free instead of free afternoon.

Another area of interference is the N+N construction:

Another pattern that is common with French natives is preference for the construction "noun preposition noun" over "noun noun" compounds, which are less frequent in French. Hence, French natives may prefer licence for sailing over sailing licence, and manager of Bruce Springsteen instead of Bruce Springsteen's manager.

Count and noncount nouns differ, so when students translate from L1, errors result.

Different languages have different count/mass noun distinctions. For example information, furniture and homework are count nouns in French, and so natives of French may say informations, furnitures and homeworks in English.

By being aware of the contrasts between L1 and English, instructors can anticipate the errors and provide positive feedback to students, particularly in writing where the errors are more noticeable.