Grammar refers to the structure and science of language. It explains how we combine morphemes into words, words in phrases, phrases into clauses and clauses into larger sentences and texts in order to convey a message. This ability to string elements together in a meaningful way involves:
Many people missed out on explicit grammar teaching in primary school, but it doesn't mean they don't understand any grammar at all.
Everybody subconsciously knows some grammar rules; it's how we instinctively know whether or not
a sentence makes sense!
For many beginning teachers, it
is simply a matter of awareness building up this metalanguage in order to discuss and analyse grammar with students.
"But I was never taught grammar in school..."
What is Grammar?
Syntax
Syntax relates to the structure of the English language. It explains the rules we follow in combining words to make meaningful phrases, clauses and sentences. The structure of English can be represented by the following flow diagram:
Morphology relates to the way in which small units of meaning are combined to create words. All words are built up from these small segments called morphemes. For example, words like "the" and "plant" are each made up of one morpheme, or unit of meaning, however other words like "unhappy", "jumped" or "unconstitutional" can be made up of many morphemes, for example:
Morphology
Semantics deals with the meaning of language and the relationship between linguistic elements and the real-world concepts that they describe. The meaning of individual words is usually taught in Primary Schools under the banner of 'vocabulary' and in conjunction with spelling. Meaning in English, however, is more than just understanding individual words; the relationship between words and the collective meaning of whole clauses, sentences or texts is also important.
Semantics
The functional grammar approach still considers the structure and word choices of English, but adds another level of complexity by considering the context in which the language is used and how this affects grammatical choices.
Most functional grammar theory is based on the work of Michael Halliday, who proposed the model shown to the right. It simple terms, the language choices made in creating any given text will be influenced by:
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The language system - in our case, 'traditional' rules of English syntax, morphology and semantics explained above.
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The situation within which the text is being created - this includes the subject (field), audience (tenor) and method of communication (mode) and is also called the register.
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The culture within which the text is created, considered here as culturally accepted systems of genre.
Functional grammar is a mixture of descriptive and prescriptive grammar; rather than viewing non-standard grammatical forms as 'wrong', it considers whether the language is appropriate or in appropriate for the context.
Functional Grammar
Upon entering school, students often struggle to translate their everyday oral language knowledge into the expected written structures of Standard English, requiring explicit instruction to help them learn this new skill (Burridge, 2014).
The explicit teaching of grammar requires students and teachers to be able to talk about language, using a metalanguage (language about language) to identify, label and describe the patterns and structures we see (Herbert, 2012; Horton & Bingle, 2014).
In addition to these elements of traditional grammar, current pedagogy and the Australian Curriculum also propose a functional grammar approach, which attends to the social purpose of language and the ability of speakers or writers to vary their language use appropriately, according to context (Horton & Bingle, 2014; Winch et al., 2010).
Below you will find an overview of these four elements of grammar, including the concepts and terminology relevant to grammar expectations in the current Australian Curriculum.
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morphology - the combining of units of meaning to build or change words
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semantics - the meaning of words
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syntax - the arrangement of and relationship between words in a phrase or
sentence, including punctuation
Not all words are equal. In English, they are divided up into different classes. The most important for Primary teaching are nouns, verbs, adjective, adverbs, prepositions and articles. Each play a different role in speech and therefore take different positions within a phrase, clause or sentence.
Phrases, clauses and sentence can express meaning greater than their individual words. It is important to also consider linguistics elements such as:
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Similies - comparison using "like" or "as", e.g. as stong as an ox
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Metaphors - comparison using direct language, e.g. the whole world's a stage
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Personification - the description of a non-human entity using human characteristics, e.g. the cold wind gnawed at her bones
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Idioms - phrases which carry extra or figurative meaning, e.g. put a cork in it (figurative meaning = 'shut up')
cats = cat + s
jumped = jump + ed
unhappily = un + happy + ly
independent = in + depend + ent
Morphological changes can be inflectional (creating different forms of the same word) or derivational (creating new words).
Inflections can indicate tense, such as the -ed ending on verbs, or number, as seen in the plural -s morpheme. These morphemes show the relationship with other words in the phrase.
Derivations change the meaning of words (e.g. "important" to "unimportant") and these morphemes may even change the word class (e.g. "sparkle" verb to "sparkly" adjective).
Morphemes can be:
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Bound - only occur as part of a bigger word, e.g. -ment
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Free - can stand alone, e.g. -man (as in fireman)
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Prefixes - occuring before the root word, e.g. un- (as in unimportant)
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Suffixes - occuring after the root word, e.g. -ment (as in government)
New words can also be formed by combining two free morphemes, such as blue + bird = bluebird. This is called compounding as it forms compound words.
Morphology can also be an efficient method for identifying the meaning of new unknown words. For example, some morphemes indicate the syntactic class of words; adverbs often have the suffix -ly, only nouns can end in -tion, adjectives often end in -ious, etc.
Words
Words can be combined into groups, or phrases, which perform the same function in a sentence as a single word (e.g. the subject, object, verb or description). Phrases are usually named after the class of word which they can substitute. For example, noun phrases can include determiners, nouns, adjectives, and other phrases. They can be substituted for nouns or pronouns; for example the sentence below can also be written as "He lives on it".
Phrases
Clauses can be thought of as simple sentences, usually containing a verb and a subject noun phrase, which have all the required information to make syntactic sense. For example, "James runs", "James likes sandwiches", and "James put the sandwiches on the table" are clauses because each phrase is necessary and cannot be removed or stand alone. They represent one complete thought (Terry, 2014).
Clauses
Compound sentences
Compound sentences are created when two or more clauses are joined together using co-ordinating conjuctions. These conjunctions can be remembers using the FANBOYS acronym: for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so.
For example, "James eats sandwiches and he likes to run."
Complex sentences
Complex sentences contain more than one clause, with at least one clause which is subordinate to (depends on) another. That is, it represents one complete thought connected to an incomplete thought (Terry, 2014).
Subordinating conjunctions introduce a subordinate clause which is 'less important' than the main clause. These include:
after, although, as, because, before, even if, even though, every time, if, since, so that, than, though, unless, until, when, whenever, where, whereas, wherever, and while
An example of a sentence including a subordinate clause is: "James ate the sandwiches because he was hungry"
Relative pronouns introduce a kind of subordinate clause called a relative clause. These act as the subject of the relative clause, which gives extra information about a noun phrase in the main clause. Relative pronouns include:
that, which, what, whatever, who/whose/whom, and whoever/whomever
An example of a sentence including a relative clause is: "James the sandwich which had fallen on the floor."
Other common phrase types are:
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Verb phrases - containing main and auxiliary verbs, plus optional adverbs and other connected phrases such as direct object noun phrases and prepositional phrases
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Adjective phrases - containing adjectives, plus optional adverbs, prepositional phrases or whole clauses
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Prepositonal phrases - containing a preposition and usually a following noun phrase
In the above example sentence, lives on the old abandoned farm is a verb phrase and on the old abandoned farm is also a prepositional phrase. The verb phrases could be substituted with an intransitive verb (This piglet eats) and the prepositional phrase could be substituted by here/there (This piglet lives there).
While not included in every guide to syntax, punctation and sentence structure are often taught concurrently in writing (Horton & Bingle, 2014; Terry, 2014). The most important elements of punctuation relating to sentence structure for Primary teaching are the following:
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Capital letters and full stops signify the beginning and end of a sentence, respectively. They can also be used to abbreviate words.
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Commas show the break between multiple clauses within a sentence, as well as between (but not before or after) items in a list. They also occur in dialogue, before quotation marks.
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Quotation marks indicate speech and dialogue.
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Apostrophes can be possessive (e.g. the cat's pajamas; my cats' favourite food) or indicate missing letters, such as in contractions (e.g. don't = do not; would've = would have).
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Colons are used in time (e.g. 10:45), in titles, to introduce lists, and after the words "as follows" or "the following".
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Semicolons join two complete sentences, showing the same or continuing thought. They usually come before words such as however, therefore, moreover, futhermore and thus.
Exclamation marks and question marks are also important in syntax, as they play a role in different types of sentence construction:
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Exclamatory sentence ("Oh no!") express strong feelings, is often short and ends in an exclamation mark.
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Interrogative sentence ("Do you understand?") express a question - usually by inverting the subject and verb - and ends in a question mark.
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Declarative sentences ("I like eggs.") make statement and end with a full stop.
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Imperative sentences ("Give me the keys!") request or make a command, using the base form of the verb - often with the subject ommitted - and ending in either a full stop or an exclamation mark.
Sentence demarcation (punctuation)
Verbs are particularly important in grammar. Not only do they come in different categories, but they also change their form to indicate tense (locating the action in time), aspect (once off vs. ongoing) and mood (modality/modal verbs).
In English, verbs can be in the past, present or future tense. While the simple past tense is indicated through morphological changes, some tenses and aspects are shown through syntax and combinations of verbs.
Past
Simple: I was
Continuous: I was being
Perfect (continued up to a point): I had been
Present
Simple: I am
Continuous (ongoing): I am being
Perfect (started in the past): I have been
Future
"will" + verb: I will be
"be" + "going to" + verb: I am going to be
Modal + verb: I might be
Verbs and sentence structure also change according to voice. Sentences can either be:
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In the active voice (following the normal subject - verb - object pattern with the first noun phrase performing the action)
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In the passive voice (the first noun phrase receives the action).
To write or speak in the passive voice, the verb form changes to auxiliary verb "to be" + part participle of the orginal verb. The auxiliary verb takes the same tense as the original verb. For example:
The passive can only be created using transitive verbs (verbs which can take a direct object), but can in any tense. For example:
Past continuous: "I was hammering the nail" / "The nail was being hammered (by me)"
Future: "He will capture the flag" / "The flag will be captured (by him)"
Even within Standard English (the 'accepted correct' form used commonly by news broadcaster and ESL teachers), there are many different stylist levels of vocabulary and structure. The choices we make depend on the register we are using, for example:
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Field - "hypothesis" when discussing science experiments vs. "prediction" when discussing next week's weather.
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Tenor - "Would you like some tea?" to the Governor General vs. "Cuppa?" to your good friend.
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Mode - "Thank you" in speech vs. "THX" in a text message.
In considering mode, it is also important to remember that grammar is not only restricted to print text. The concept of 'texts' also encompasses oral, visual and multimodal modes of communication, with elements of grammar being important in each. While it is impossible to list all the appropriate and inappropriate forms of language for each individual mode, primary teachers need to discuss alternative modes with their students, especially spoken text forms.
Within the context of genre there are also established systems concerning appropriate forms of grammar. For example, students need to learn that the passive voice ("The beaker was heated") is preferable to the active voice ("I heated the beaker") when writing up science reports. Similarly, the language used in information texts is very different to that used in poetry, and the two styles cannot be substituted for each other without adversely affecting the function of the texts; readers would be neither entertained by the poetry nor informed by the information text.
When considering the language system through a functional lense, sentence structure can be boiled down to three main segments:
Participants refers to the noun phrase or subject of the clause, process refers to the verb or verb phrase and circumstance refers to the possible adjectival, adverbial or prepositional phrases within the clause. The different labelling, however, reflects the consideration and emphasis on the function or role that these phrases play in the text and the meaning which they express.
Through a combination of traditional grammar and functional grammar, it is possible to teach students to see both the form and function of their linguistic choices.