Language Form and Functions Essay

ENGLISH STATEMENTS

-ADVERBIALS, AUXILIARIES VERBS, PASSIVE FORM, NEGATIVE SENTENCES, YES/NO QUESTIONS- 

By Angie Plata

INTRODUCTION

The English grammar is the set of rules that make up the structure of the language, and includes words, phrases, clauses and sentences, and is important to learn it in order to speaking proper English and be able to teach it well.

This essay is based on chapter 8 of unit 2 of language forms and functions course.

The chapter’s beginning it’s a continuation of the discussion about the syntax of simple sentences in English. It refers to the three types of adverbial modification, the form of the verb specifiers (auxiliary phrase, consisting of tense, mood, aspect and voice), the structure of the passive sentence and the interaction of passive with verb subcategories are then treated. Then it goes about the structure of yes/no questions and negatives in English, followed by a consideration of tag questions and imperative sentences, and at the end finish with a review of phrase structure rules, grammatical functions, and verb types.

ESSAY

Adverbials are optional modifiers at the level of the verb phrase and of the sentence level. The adverbials can be classified according to their function in adjunct, disjunct and conjunct.

Adjunct adverbials indicates manner, time, place, reason, frequency and duration. An example of each one will be: slowly, tomorrow, the living room, for the weather, weekly, for a month.

Disjunct adverbials also well known as sentence adverbials indicates the speaker’s attitude toward or judgment (seriously, honestly, happily). Unlike adjunct adverbials, the disjunct ones change the sentence.

Conjunct adverbials express textual relations serving to link clauses and they have no function in their own clause (however, therefore, in addition, on the other hand), and denote a logical connection between the clause that follows and the clause or clauses that precede.

On the other hand there are the auxiliary verbs, which are verbs that add functional or grammatical meaning to the clause to express tense, aspect, modality, voice, emphasis, between others. The auxiliary verbs usually accompany a main verb which provides the main semantic content of the clause, and can be classify as: primary auxiliaries (have, be), dummy auxiliary do, modal auxiliaries (will, can, shall, may and must) and borderline auxiliaries (dare, need).

Learning English we have to identify that sentences can be active or passive. In active sentences, the subject of the sentence who does the action and the object is the thing receiving the action.

In passive sentences, the subject of the sentence is the one receiving the action and the thing who does the action is optionally included near the end of the sentence.

In the passive form the thing receiving the action is more important or should be emphasized (The forgery could have been detected by the art expert – it could have been by Mike – The Mona Lisa was drawn by Leonardo DaVinci).

Besides to the above, it is worth noting that in English is not important just learn declarative and positive sentences, also, it’s important to know too about negative and interrogative sentences.

A big step moving toward that goal is learning how to make yes/no questions. Some people think that English gets complicated when we have to learn this, but if we start from the declarative sentences, I would be easier.

When the sentence is “Ricardo is leaving soon”, the YES or NOT question will be: “Is Richard leaving soon?”. So, if the declarative sentence is: “Hellen can buy a new house”, the question will be: “Can Hellen buy a new house?”.

In these questions an auxiliaries movement occurs, so the auxiliaries is, has, can and was move in front of the subject.

For making negative sentences and questions, the negative element (not) is placed after tense and the first auxiliary element. If the declarative statement is: “Richard is leaving soon” the negative form of that sentence would be: “Richard is not (isn’t) leaving soon”. For the negative question the structure would be: “Isn’t Richard leaving soon?”. For negative sentences contraction is optional, but for negative questions the contraction is obligatory.

When we need to build a negative or interrogative sentence from a sentence that doesn’t have auxiliary we have to use de auxiliary DO (does, didn’t). For example, is de declarative sentence is: “The children played football yesterday” the question would be: “Did the children play football yesterday?” and the negative form would be: “The children didn’t play football yesterday”.

At last, we find the tag questions, which is characterized by a “tag” follows the comma and consists of a tense and the first auxiliary of the main clause or do if there is not auxiliary, a pronoun identical in person, number and gender with the subject of the main clause and a marker of negative polarity. For example: “You used to be a lawyer, didn’t you?”, “He loves to drink water from the fridge, doesn`t he?”, “Allison will be leaving soon, won`t she?”.

CONCLUSION

Learning grammar is important for those who want to speak English, and also, for those who want to teach it.

We have to stop thinking in Spanish and start to do it in English in order to make it own.

Knowing about grammar gives to the student the opportunity to get into a different world, and get close to different cultures.

With this chapter students will be able to deepen their knowledge about English grammar, first, with adverbials and their classification (adjunct, disjunct and conjunct) and being able to identify everyone.

Also, students will be able to build properly passive sentences, yes or not and tag questions.