The origins of grammar

Grammar rules began because people speaking the same language needed a universal way to communicate what they meant in sounds to someone only looking at words or symbols (rather than hearing the words spoken). Originally, people used individual symbols to stand for different words or ideas. Eventually, people began using symbols to represent specific sounds. At first, the only symbols used were for the letters of the alphabet. In fact, oftentimes words were not even separated by any spacing (c.f., original handwritten copies of the New Testament were written in all capital letters with no spacing between words). Then as writing developed (especially after printing made books more available), symbols were created to indicate inflection (tone of voice--period for a statement, question mark for a question), pauses (commas, dashes), and other characteristics of spoken language. As time passed, people began to try to standardize the rules governing spelling, grammar, and punctuation so that everyone would be able to agree to the meaning of what was meant in a piece of writing. Since most of these rules developed out of everyday speech (the sounds of words), they don't always appear to follow any logic.

Oftentimes when students have problems with grammar, it is because they are putting into print what they are hearing when talking rather than using the standard rules that were developed for writing. For instance, a student might write, "I'm gonna go to the store," using gonna for going to. Once I had a Latin-American student who thought shoulda was a word because he heard people say it. The students in my class quickly explained that the correct spelling was should of. I had to tell them that this wasn't correct either. What is actually meant is should have, but it is easy to see how someone could mistake the sound of should've (contraction of should have) for should of since they sound the same. Writers have to work hard to break any bad habits they may have developed in recording sounds when writing.

How English is put together

There are two basic rules that English follows: meaning centers on the subject and verbs, and changing the placement of words or punctuation changes the meaning (or can even destroy the meaning).

Placement of words or punctuation

For instance:

The sentence "My brother, who lives in Texas, is crazy" suggests by the commas that the writer has one brother (the words i"who lives in Texas" are not necessary to explain the meaning of "My brother is crazy"). Since the sentence "My brother who lives in Texas is crazy" does not have commas, the sentence indicates that the writer has more than one brother (the words "who lives in Texas" are necessary to distinguish which brother is crazy--the one who lives in Texas is crazy while the one who lives in Ohio is not).

Moving the word however in the following sentence, changes the emphasis placed on the other words, and so changes the meaning.

However, he loves her.

However at the beginning of the sentence suggests a contrast to the preceeding sentence. Placing however after he suggests that he loves her in contrast to some other person previously mentioned.

Subjects and verbs as the center of meaning

We begin with a noun and verb

man walks.

To make a sentence we can add the definite article the

The man walks.

Although this is a complete sentence, it doesn't say much. We may continue to add words and groups of words until we have a sentence like

The old, ugly man who lives next door walks slowly down the street swinging his cane while his wife screams at him.

 

Adjectives

The words old and ugly tell us more about the man (a noun). Words which change the meaning of (modify) nouns are adjectives. In English, adjectives come immediately before nouns.

 

Adverbs

The word slowly changes the meaning of the verb walks. Words which change the meaning of verbs (modify verbs) are called adverbs.

 

Phrases

Some of the words in this sentence change the meaning of the subject man or verb walks by acting as a group. A group of related words is called a phrase. The words down the street are a common type of phrase, a prepositional phrase. Prepositional phrases always have the following pattern

preposition (modifiers) noun [where the modifiers are optional]

The phrase swinging his cane is another common type of phrase called a participial phrase. Notice: swinging is not a verb. Words ending in ing are only verbs when they are used with other verbs. Otherwise, they act as other parts of speech. For example,

He is walking in the rain. [is walking is a verb. It is the action taking place.]

Walking in the rain is fun. [The subject of this sentence (the thing that is fun) is Walking in the rain. The phrase Walking in the rain is acting like a noun, in this case the subject of the sentence (Participial phrases which act as nouns are called gerunds)].

 

Clauses

A group of related words which also have their own subject and verb are called clauses. The group of words who lives next door and the group while his wife screams at him are both clauses.

Like old and ugly, the group of words who lives next door also changes the meaning of man. Since words which modify nouns are called adjectives, clauses which modify nouns are called adjective clauses. Adjectives always come before the noun they modify. Adjective clauses always come immediately after the noun they modify, and since the pronoun which begins the clause and is the subject of the clause (in this example, who) relates to the noun right before it, adjective clauses are also called relative clauses. Moving the clause around in the sentence (for instance, after the word cane) would either cause the sentence to not make sense or change the meaning entirely. An adjective clause must come immediately after the noun it modifies.

Like the word slowly, the group of words while his wife screams at him modify the verb walks. The wife's action (screams) takes place at the same time as (while) the man's action (walks). Since words which modify verbs are called adverbs, clauses which modify verbs are called adverb clauses. Adverb clauses can be moved from the end of a sentence to the beginning of a sentence, but something happens.

We can divide our original sentence in half

The old, ugly man who lives next door / walks slowly down the street swinging his cane while his wife screams at him.

Everything on the left side modifies the subject, and everything on the right modifies the verb. If we move the clause while his wife screams at him to the beginning of the sentence, it will be in the wrong half (modifies the verb but is in the noun half of the sentence). When a phrase or clause from the verb side of a sentence is moved to the beginning of the sentence, it is set off by a comma to indicate it has been moved (usually the phrase or clause is moved to the beginning to give it emphasis).

While his wife screams at him, the old, ugly man who lives next door / walks slowly down the street swinging his cane.

A third type of clause, noun clause, acts like nouns. In the following sentence, the clause What William said is the subject of the sentence:

What William said is correct.

Noun clauses can only be moved the same way a noun can be moved in a sentence (for instance, subjects usually come after verbs in questions, for example, Is what William said correct?).

 

Independent and Dependent Clauses

Since a sentence is also a group of related words with its own subject and verb, sentences are also clauses, but because sentences are complete in themselves and do not need anything else to complete their meaning (a sentence is a complete thought), sentences are independent clauses. Since adjective, adverb, and noun clauses cannot stand alone but depend on the rest of a sentence to complete their meaning, they are called dependent clauses.

 

Fragments

A fragment is a piece of a sentence punctuated as if it were a complete sentence. Because phrases and clauses are groups of related words, students often confuse them for complete sentences and punctuate them as if they were sentences. When a phrase or clause is punctuated as if it were a sentence, it is a sentence fragment.