Problems of English Grammar - hm

Problems of English Grammar

Version 6.0

Prof. Dr. Russell Block University of Applied Sciences - M?nchen Department 13 - General Studies Summer Semester 2018

? 2018 by Russell Block

Um eine gute Note in der Klausur zu erzielen, gen?gt es nicht, das Buch zu lesen.

Sie m?ssen auch die "Show" sehen!

The causes why our English tongue hath not yet been thoroughly perceived are the hope and despair of such as have either thought upon it, and not dealt in it, or that have dealt in it, but not rightly thought upon it.

Richard Mulcaster (1582)

Contents

Part I: Languages and Language Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

1 Language learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 1.1 First language ? child in appropriate situation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 1.2 What children learn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 1.2.1 Evidence from errors (9) 1.2.2 Impoverished corpus (9) 1.2.3 Different corpuses ? same grammar (10) 1.3 Critical age hypothesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 1.3.1 Brain damage (10) 1.3.2 Genie (10) 1.3.3 Experience (10) 1.4 Second language learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 1.4.1 Children ? classroom experience ineffective (11) 1.4.2 Adults ? No longer able to extract the rules from simple exposure. (11) 1.4.3 First and Second Language Learning - extracting the rules (11)

2 Contrastive Linguistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 2.1 Basic thesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 2.2 English as a Second Language (ESL) in the USA and in Germany . . . . . . . 15 2.3 The mapping problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

3

Difficulties of English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

3.1 Tense and aspect system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

3.2 Complementation system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Part II: The Theoretical Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

2 What can be a rule of English grammar? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 2.1 Syntactic rules: - ing-form after a preposition (20) 2.2 Semantically based rules (20) 2.3 Pragmatically based rules (21) 2.4 Conversational implicatures (21) 2.5 Perceptional rules (22) 2.6 Discourse rules (23) 2.7 Historical relicts (23)

3 Transformational rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 3.1 Phrase order rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 3.2 Function changing transformations - the cycle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 3.3 Verb Raising . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 3.4 The strange case of for . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

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3.5 Deletion transformations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 3.7 Extraction ? WH-Movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 3.8 Syntactic ambiguity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

3.8.1 The line between syntax and pragmatics (39) Close correspondencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

3.10 Articles (41) 3.11 Problems of determiners - set theory (41) 3.12 Negative polarity (43) 3.13 Negative attraction (45) 3.14 Surface case assignment (47) 3.15 Shadow pronouns (49) 3.16 Promotion and demotion (51) 3.17 Unaccusative and German sich (53)

Part III: Aspect and the English Verb System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

1 The English tense and aspect system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

1.1 English verb morphology (the forms of the English verb) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

1.2 Tenses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

1.3 Aspects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

1.3.1 (57)

1.3.2 Continuous form (Delimited) (58)

1.3.3 Perfect form (58)

1.3.3.1

Resultative (58)

1.3.3.2

Anterior (59)

1.3.4 Present perfect continuous (59)

1.4 Additional ways to express aspect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

2 Simple present vs. present continuous . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 2.1.1 Restrictions on the continuous (62) 2.1.2 Continuous form and inherent aspect (63) 2.1.3 Timelessness of the present (64) 2.1.4 Historical holdovers (66)

2.2 Simple past and past continuous . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 2.3 Simple past and present perfect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 2.4 Present perfect and present perfect continuous . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 2.5 Repeated action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

2.5.1 Past perfect (79) 2.5.2 Past perfect continuous (79) 2.5.3 Future perfect and future perfect continuous (79)

3 The future system - pragmatics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 3.1 The future indefinite - will vs. the future definite going to + inf. . . . . . . . . 80 3.2 Will and shall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 3.3 The decided future - be + Vb-ing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 3.4 The speculative future - will + be + -ing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 3.5 The definite scheduled future - simple present . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 3.6 The putative scheduled future - be + to + Vb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

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