You are on page 1of 27




Name: Shaukat Hussain Afridi

Registration No:
Roll No:
Programme: PGD TEFL
Assignment / Subject: Grammar (5657)
Submitted by: Shaukat Hussain Afridi
Submitted to:
Date: 16TH October………………..

Q.1 Define the term clause. Discuss with examples different types
of clauses that make up sentences.
Ans: Clause
A clause is a group of related words containing a subject and a predicate‖
For example, he laughed. A clause refers to a group of related words (within a
sentence or itself as an independent sentence) which has both subject and
I will meet him in office.
The part of above sentence ―I will meet him‖ is a clause because it has a subject
(I) and a predicate (will meet him). On the other hand, the rest part of above
sentence ―in office‖ lacks both subject and predicate (verb) such group of word
is called phrase.
A clause may stand as a simple sentence or may join another clause to make a
sentence. Therefore, a sentence consists of one, two or more clauses.
• He is sleeping. (one clause)
• The kids were laughing at the joker. (one clause)
• The teacher asked a question, but no one answered. (two clauses)
• I am happy, because I won a prize. (two clauses)
• I like Mathematics, but my brother likes Biology, because he wants to
become a doctor. (three clauses)

Clauses are divided into main clause (also called independent clause) and
subordinate clause (also called dependent clauses).

Types of Clauses
There are two major types of clauses main (or independent) clause and
subordinate (or dependant) clause.
Main Clause and Subordinate Clause – Comparison
He is buying a shirt which looks very nice.
The above sentence has two clauses ―He is buying a shirt‖ and ―which looks
very nice‖. The clause ―He is buying a shirt‖ expresses a complete thought and
can alone stand as a sentence. Such a clause is called main or independent

While the clause ―which looks very nice‖ does not express a complete thought
and can‘t stand as a sentence. It depends on another clause (main clause) to
express complete idea. Such a clause is called subordinate or dependent

Main or Independent Clause

Main (or independent) clause is a clause that expresses a complete thought and
can stand as a sentence.

I met the boy who had helped me.
She is wearing a shirt which looks nice.
The teacher asked a question but no one answered.
He takes medicine because he suffers from fever.
He became angry and smashed the vase into pieces.
In the above sentences each underlined part shows main clause. It expresses
complete though and can stand as a sentence that is why a main or an
independent clause is normally referred as a simple sentence.

Subordinate or dependent Clause

Subordinate (or independent) clause is a clause which does not express
complete thought and depends on another clause (main clause) to express
complete thought. Subordinate clause does not express complete idea and can‘t
stand as a sentence. A sentence having a subordinate clause must have a main
He likes Chinese rice which tastes good.
The clause ―which tastes good‖ in above sentence is a subordinate clause
because it does not express complete thought and can‘t stand as a sentence. It
depends on main clause (he likes Chinese rise) to express complete thought.
I met the boy who had helped me.
I bought a table that costs $ 100.
He takes medicine because he suffers from fever.
The teacher asked a question but no one answered.

Subordinate (or dependent) clauses are further divided into tree types,

Types of Subordinate Clause

1. Noun Phrase,
2. Adjective Phrase,
3. Adverb Phrase
Functions of Subordinate Clause.

A subordinate (dependent) clause may function as a noun, an adjective or an

adverb in sentence. On the basis of their function in a sentence, subordinate
clauses can be divided in to following types.

1. Noun Clause

2. Adjective Clause.

3. Adverb Clause

1. Noun Clause
A dependent clause that functions as a noun in a sentence is called noun
clause.‖ A noun clause performs same function like a noun in a sentence.
What he did made a problem for his family.
In above sentence the clause ―what he did‖ functions as a noun, hence it is a
noun clause. A noun clause works as a noun that acts as a subject, object, or
predicate in a sentence. A noun clause starts with words “that, what, whatever,
who, whom, whoever, whomever”.
Whatever you learn will help you in future. (noun clause as a subject)
What you said made me laugh. (noun clause as a subject)
He knows that he will pass the test. (noun clause as an object)
Now I realize what he would have thought. (noun clause as an object)

2. Adjective Clause
A dependent clause that functions as an adjective in a sentence is called
adjective clause.‖
An adjective clause works like adjective in a sentence. The function of an

adjective is to modify (describe) a noun or a pronoun. Similarly a noun clause

modifies a noun or a pronoun.
He wears a shirt which looks nice.
The clause ―which looks nice‖ in above sentence is an adjective clause because
it modifies noun ―shirt‖ in the sentence.
An adjective clause always precedes the noun it modifies.
I met the boy who had helped me.
An apple that smells bad is rotten.
The book which I like is helpful in preparation for test.
The house where I live consists of four rooms.
The person who was shouting needed help.
Adjective clause begins with relative pronoun (that, who, whom, whose,
which, or whose) and is also relative clause.
Adjective (relative) clauses can be restrictive clause or non-restrictive clause

Restrictive and Non-restrictive Clauses

Adjective (relative) clauses can be restrictive clause or non-restrictive clause.
A restrictive clause limits the meaning of preceding noun or pronoun. A non-
restrictive clause tells us something about preceding noun or pronoun but does
not limit the meaning of preceding noun or pronoun.


•The student in the class who studied a lot passed the test. (restrictive clause)

•The student in the class, who had attended all the lectures, passed
the test. (non-restrictive clause)

In the first sentence the clause ―who studied a lot‖ restrict information to
preceding noun (student), it means that there is only one student in the class
who studied a lot, hence it is a restrictive clause.

In the second sentence the clause ―who had attended all the lectures‖ gives us
information about preceding noun but does not limit this information to the
preceding noun. It means there can be several other students in the class who
had attended all the lectures.

A comma is always used before a restrictive clause in a sentence and also after
non-restrictive clause if it is within a main clause. ―That‖ is usually used to

introduce a restrictive clause while ―which‖ is used to introduce a non-

restrictive clause.

The table that costs $ 100 is made of steel. (Restrictive clause)

The table, which costs $ 100, is made of steel. (Non-restrictive clause)

3. Adverb Clause

 A dependent clause that functions as an adverb in a sentence is called

adverb clause‖
An adverb clause like an adverb modifies a verb, adjective clause or other
adverb clause in a sentence. It modifies (describes) the situation in
main clause in terms of “time, frequency (how often), cause and
effect, contrast, condition, intensity (to what extent).‖

The subordinating conjunctions used for adverb clauses are as follows.
Time: when, whenever, since, until, before, after, while, as, by the time,
as soon as
 Cause and effect: because, since, now that, as long as, so, so that,
 Contrast: although, even, whereas, while, though
Condition: if, unless, only if, whether or not, even if, providing or
provided that, in case
 Examples.
He takes medicine because he is ill.
 Although he tried a lot, he couldn‘t climb up the tree.
 Unless you study for the test, you can‘t pass it.
 I will go to the school unless it rains.
 You are safe as long as you drive carefully.
 You can achieve anything provided that you struggle for it.
 Don‘t go before he comes.

Q.2: How would you differentiate between descriptive and traditional

grammar? List the major differences with examples.

Ans: Understanding Prescriptive vs. Descriptive Grammar


When people hear about linguistics, they often believe that linguists are very
much like the character Henry Higgins in the play My Fair Lady, who expresses
sentiments like in the following song, where he bemoans the state of English
and the lack of proper pronunciation:

However, as you will learn in this first week of class, there are two different
ways that language has been talked about in disciplines that focus on the use of
language. We can talk about these different approaches to language as
descriptive grammar vs. prescriptive grammar.

Prescriptive grammar describes when people focus on talking about how a

language should or ought to be used. One way to remember this association is to
think of going to a doctor‘s office. When a doctor gives you a prescription for
medication, it often includes directions about how you should take your
medication as well as what you should not do when taking your medication. In a
similar way, a prescriptive grammar tells you how you should speak, and what
type of language to avoid. This is commonly found in English classes as well as
other language classes, where the aim is to teach people how to use language in
a very particular (typically described as ‗proper‘ or ‗correct‘) way.

Descriptive grammar, on the other hand, focuses on describing the language as

it is used, not saying how it should be used. For example, think about a
prescriptive rule like Don’t split infinitives. A descriptive grammarian would
see a sentence like ―To boldly go where no man has gone before‖ and would try
to describe how the mental grammar can cause that ordering of words, rather
than saying that the surface form is faulty due to prescriptive rules (which
would require the sentence ―To go boldly where no man has gone before‖).
Linguistics takes this approach to language.

A key contrast is to be found between these two approaches. A descriptive

grammarian would say that a sentence is ―grammatical‖ if a native speaker of
the language would produce that sentence in speaking. The descriptive
grammarian would then try to describe how that sentence is produced through
theorizing about the mental processes that lead up to the surface form. A
prescriptive grammarian, on the other hand, would say that something is
grammatical only if the surface form conforms to a set of rules that the
grammarian believes should be followed in order for a certain grammar style is
achieved. (Note that I have tried to emphasize that the descriptive grammarian
hears a form and tries to describe the mental processes underneath the produced
(spoken) form, while a prescriptive grammarian does not hypothesize about the
mental grammar at all, but is merely concerned with ‗editing‘ the surface form.)

Again, Linguistics aims to provide a descriptive grammar of language. In

this course, we will use data based on surface forms (i.e. ‗spoken‘ or ‗produced‘
data) and will try to describe how these surface forms occur through processes
in the mental grammar.

Q.3: Design a detailed lesson plan for teaching past perfect tense
through communicative technique.

Ans: Past Perfect Tense Lesson Plan

Name of Shaukat Class: 10TH Date: 02-10-2016
Teacher: Hussain
Subject: English Topic: Past Time: 45 Minutes

 Description

In this lesson, students will learn about Past Perfect Tense and the difference
between Simple Past Tense and Past Perfect Tense through a warm-up, a main
and a follow-up activity.

 Materials

Marker, white board, text book, Charts, AV Aids etc

 Main Aims

The students will learn about Past Perfect Tense and they will be able to
differentiate Past Perfect Tense from Simple Past Tense in terms of both
meaning and structure.

 Subsidiary Aims

The students will be able to create the story by given sentences understanding
the context. The students will be able to match the sentence halves and find the
first and second events. The students will be able to analyse the pictures given
and create sentences in Past Simple and Past Perfect Tense accordingly.

Procedure (29-40 minutes)


 Warmer/Lead-in (8-10 minutes)

 To set lesson context and engage students

The teacher will divide students into pairs and distribute them mixed sentences
taken from a short story and ask them to put the sentences into the correct order.
The teacher will hang a cartoon about the topic on the wall and student will
stick the sentences in the correct order below the cartoon.

 Highlighting (2-5 minutes)

 To draw students' attention to the target language

The teacher will ask some questions about the story which will lead the students
to use the new structure and the teacher will write one of the sentences which
include both Simple Past and Past Perfect Tense on the board.

 Clarification (3-5 minutes)

 To clarify the form the target language

The teacher will draw a timeline on the board just below the sentence already
written. The teacher will explain the students that both actions happened in the
past but one of them happened earlier, and the students will find the 1st and 2nd

 Controlled Practice (8-10 minutes)

 To concept check and prepare students for more meaningful practice

The teacher will divide the class into groups and distribute the students sentence
halves to be matched in an envelope and ask them match all 10 halves to each
other. Then, the teacher will read a part of a sentence and a student will
complete the rest of the sentence, come to the stage and place sentence halves
under '1st&2nd actions' titles on the board.

 Semi-Controlled Practice (8-10 minutes)

 To make students practice the new structure

The teacher will divide the class into groups and give each group 4 pictures of
different people. First, the teacher will explain the activity with an example,
then each student will take a picture and write a sentence in Simple Past Tense
below the picture about what happens in the picture. Later, s/he will pass the
picture to another student in the group and s/he write a new sentence below with
Pas Perfect Tense making up a reason for his/her peer's comment. Finally, all
the class will share some ideas about each picture.
10 | P a g e

Q.4: Briefly discuss the nature of Morphology in English. Also

comment, with suitable examples, on the problem of ‘hidden
morphemes’ as noticed in irregular nouns and verbs.

Ans: Morphology (linguistics)

In linguistics, morphology (/mɔːˈfɒlədʒi/[1]) is the study of words, how they are
formed, and their relationship to other words in the same language.[2][3] It
analyzes the structure of words and parts of words, such as stems, root words,
prefixes, and suffixes. Morphology also looks at parts of speech, intonation and
stress, and the ways context can change a word's pronunciation and meaning.
Morphology differs from morphological typology, which is the classification of
languages based on their use of words[4] and lexicology, which is the study of
words and how they make up a language's vocabulary.[5]

While words, along with clitics, are generally accepted as being the smallest
units of syntax, in most languages, if not all, many words can be related to other
words by rules that collectively describe the grammar for that language. For
example, English speakers recognize that the words dog and dogs are closely
related, differentiated only by the plurality morpheme "-s", only found bound to
nouns. Speakers of English, a fusional language, recognize these relations from
their tacit knowledge of English's rules of word formation. They infer intuitively
that dog is to dogs as cat is to cats; and, in similar fashion, dog is to dog catcher
as dish is to dishwasher. By contrast, Classical Chinese has very little
morphology, using almost exclusively unbound morphemes ("free" morphemes)
and depending on word order to convey meaning. (Most words in modern
Standard Chinese ("Mandarin"), however, are compounds and most roots are
bound.) These are understood as grammars that represent the morphology of the
language. The rules understood by a speaker reflect specific patterns or
regularities in the way words are formed from smaller units in the language they
are using and how those smaller units interact in speech. In this way,
morphology is the branch of linguistics that studies patterns of word formation
within and across languages and attempts to formulate rules that model the
knowledge of the speakers of those languages.

Polysynthetic languages, such as Chukchi, have words composed of many

morphemes. The Chukchi word "təmeyŋəlevtpəγtərkən", for example, meaning
"I have a fierce headache", is composed of eight morphemes t-ə-meyŋ-ə-levt-
pəγt-ə-rkən that may be glossed. The morphology of such languages allows for
each consonant and vowel to be understood as morphemes, while the grammar
of the language indicates the usage and understanding of each morpheme.
11 | P a g e

The discipline that deals specifically with the sound changes occurring within
morphemes is morphophonology.

The history of morphological analysis dates back to the ancient Indian linguist
Pāṇini, who formulated the 3,959 rules of Sanskrit morphology in the text
Aṣṭādhyāyī by using a constituency grammar. The Greco-Roman grammatical
tradition also engaged in morphological analysis. Studies in Arabic
morphology, conducted by Marāḥ al-arwāḥ and Aḥmad b. ‗alī Mas‗ūd, date
back to at least 1200 CE.[6]

The term "morphology" was coined by August Schleicher in 1859.[7]

Fundamental concepts
Lexemes and word forms

The distinction between these two senses of "word" is arguably the most
important one in morphology. The first sense of "word", the one in which dog
and dogs are "the same word", is called a lexeme. The second sense is called
"word form". Dog and dogs are thus considered different forms of the same
lexeme. Dog and dog catcher, on the other hand, are different lexemes, as they
conventionally to represent the canonical form of a word is called a lemma, or
citation form.

Prosodic word vs. morphological word

Here are examples from other languages of the failure of a single phonological
word to coincide with a single morphological word form. In Latin, one way to
express the concept of 'NOUN-PHRASE1 and NOUN-PHRASE2' (as in "apples
and oranges") is to suffix '-que' to the second noun phrase: "apples oranges-
and", as it were. An extreme level of this theoretical quandary posed by some
phonological words is provided by the Kwak'wala language.[8] In Kwak'wala, as
in a great many other languages, meaning relations between nouns, including
possession and "semantic case", are formulated by affixes instead of by
independent "words". The three-word English phrase, "with his club", where
'with' identifies its dependent noun phrase as an instrument and 'his' denotes a
possession relation, would consist of two words or even just one word in many
languages. Unlike most languages, Kwak'wala semantic affixes phonologically
attach not to the lexeme they pertain to semantically, but to the preceding
12 | P a g e

lexeme. Consider the following example (in Kwak'wala, sentences begin with
what corresponds to an English verb):[9]

kwixʔid-i-da bəgwanəmai-χ-a q'asa-s-isi t'alwagwayu

Morpheme by morpheme translation:

kwixʔid-i-da = clubbed-PIVOT-DETERMINER
bəgwanəma-χ-a = man-ACCUSATIVE-DETERMINER
t'alwagwayu = club.
"the man clubbed the otter with his club."

(Notation notes:

1. accusative case marks an entity that something is done to.

2. determiners are words such as "the", "this", "that".
3. the concept of "pivot" is a theoretical construct that is not relevant to this

That is, to the speaker of Kwak'wala, the sentence does not contain the "words"
'him-the-otter' or 'with-his-club' Instead, the markers -i-da (PIVOT-'the'),
referring to "man", attaches not to the noun bəgwanəma ("man") but to the verb;
the markers -χ-a (ACCUSATIVE-'the'), referring to otter, attach to bəgwanəma
instead of to q'asa ('otter'), etc. In other words, a speaker of Kwak'wala does not
perceive the sentence to consist of these phonological words:

kwixʔid i-da-bəgwanəma χ-a-q'asa s-isi-t'alwagwayu

clubbed PIVOT-the-mani hit-the-otter with-hisi-club

A central publication on this topic is the recent volume edited by Dixon and
Aikhenvald (2007), examining the mismatch between prosodic-phonological
and grammatical definitions of "word" in various Amazonian, Australian
Aboriginal, Caucasian, Eskimo, Indo-European, Native North American, West
African, and sign languages. Apparently, a wide variety of languages make use
of the hybrid linguistic unit clitic, possessing the grammatical features of
independent words but the prosodic-phonological lack of freedom of bound
morphemes. The intermediate status of clitics poses a considerable challenge to
linguistic theory.[citation needed]

Inflection vs. word formation


morphological rules. Some morphological rules relate to different forms of the
13 | P a g e

same lexeme; while other rules relate to different lexemes. Rules of the first
kind are inflectional rules, while those of the second kind are rules of word
formation. The generation of the English plural dogs from dog is an inflectional
rule, while compound phrases and words like dog catcher or dishwasher are
examples of word formation. Informally, word formation rules form "new"
words (more accurately, new lexemes), while inflection rules yield variant
forms of the "same" word (lexeme).

The distinction between inflection and word formation is not at all clear cut.
inflection or word formation. The next section will attempt to clarify this

Word formation is a process, as we have said, where one combines two

complete words, whereas with inflection you can combine a suffix with some
verb to change its form to subject of the sentence. For example: in the present
indefinite, we use ‗go‘ with subject I/we/you/they and plural nouns, whereas for
third person singular pronouns (he/she/it) and singular nouns we use ‗goes‘. So
this ‗-es‘ is an inflectional marker and is used to match with its subject. A
further difference is that in word formation, the resultant word may differ from
its source word‘s grammatical category whereas in the process of inflection the
word never changes its grammatical category.

Types of word formation

Main article: Word formation

There is a further distinction between two kinds of morphological word

formation: derivation and compounding. Compounding is a process of word
formation that involves combining complete word forms into a single
compound form. Dog catcher, therefore, is a compound, as both dog and
catcher are complete word forms in their own right but are subsequently treated
as parts of one form. Derivation involves affixing bound (i.e. non-independent)
forms to existing lexemes, whereby the addition of the affix derives a new
lexeme. The word independent, for example, is derived from the word
dependent by using the prefix in-, while dependent itself is derived from the
verb depend.

Paradigms and morphosyntax

A linguistic paradigm is the complete set of related word forms associated with
a given lexeme. The familiar examples of paradigms are the conjugations of
verbs, and the declensions of nouns. Accordingly, the word forms of a lexeme
14 | P a g e

may be arranged conveniently into tables, by classifying them according to

shared inflectional categories such as tense, aspect, mood, number, gender or
tables, using the categories of person (first, second, third); number (singular vs.
plural); gender (masculine, feminine, neuter); and case (nominative, oblique,

The inflectional categories used to group word forms into paradigms cannot be
dogs, because the choice between these two forms determines which form of the
verb is to be used. In contrast, however, no syntactic rule of English cares about
the difference between dog and dog catcher, or dependent and independent. The
first two are nouns and the second two are adjectives – and they generally
behave like any other noun or adjective behaves.

An important difference between inflection and word formation is that inflected

word forms of lexemes are organized into paradigms, which are defined by the
requirements of syntactic rules, whereas the rules of word formation are not
restricted by any corresponding requirements of syntax. Inflection is therefore
said to be relevant to syntax, and word formation is not. The part of morphology
that covers the relationship between syntax and morphology is called
"morphosyntax" and concerns itself with inflection and paradigms but not with
word formation or compounding.


Above, morphological rules are described as analogies between word forms:

dog is to dogs as cat is to cats and as dish is to dishes. In this case, the analogy
applies both to the form of the words and to their meaning: in each pair, the first
word means "one of X", while the second "two or more of X", and the
difference is always the plural form -s (or -es) affixed to the second word,
signaling the key distinction between singular and plural entities.

One of the largest sources of complexity in morphology is that this one-to-one

correspondence between meaning and form scarcely applies to every case in the
language. In English, there are word form pairs like ox/oxen, goose/geese, and
signaled in a way that departs from the regular pattern, or is not signaled at all.
15 | P a g e

Even cases regarded as regular, such as -s, are not so simple; the -s in dogs is
not pronounced the same way as the -s in cats; and, in plurals such as dishes, a
vowel is added before the -s. These cases, where the same distinction is effected
by alternative forms of a "word", constitute allomorphy.

phonological rules, by resulting in sound sequences that are prohibited in the
language in question. For example, to form the plural of dish by simply
appending an -s to the end of the word would result in the form *[dɪʃs], which is
not permitted by the phonotactics of English. In order to "rescue" the word, a
vowel sound is inserted between the root and the plural marker, and [dɪʃɪz]
depends on the quality (voiced vs. unvoiced) of the final preceding phoneme.

Lexical morphology

As such, it concerns itself primarily with word formation: derivation and

There are three principal approaches to morphology and each tries to capture the
distinctions above in different ways:

 Morpheme-based morphology, which makes use of an item-and-

arrangement approach.
 Lexeme-based morphology, which normally makes use of an item-and-
process approach.
 Word-based morphology, which normally makes use of a word-and-
paradigm approach.

While the associations indicated between the concepts in each item in that list
are very strong, they are not absolute.

Morpheme-based morphology

In morpheme-based morphology, word forms are analyzed as arrangements of

language. In a word such as independently, the morphemes are said to be in-,
16 | P a g e

case, derivational affixes.[10] In words such as dogs, dog is the root and the -s is
an inflectional morpheme. In its simplest and most naïve form, this way of
analyzing word forms, called "item-and-arrangement", treats words as if they
were made of morphemes put after each other ("concatenated") like beads on a
string. More recent and sophisticated approaches, such as distributed
morphology, seek to maintain the idea of the morpheme while accommodating
non-concatenative, analogical, and other processes that have proven problematic
for item-and-arrangement theories and similar approaches.

Morpheme-based morphology presumes three basic axioms:[11]

 Baudoin‘s "single morpheme" hypothesis: Roots and affixes have the

same status as morphemes.
 Bloomfield‘s "sign base" morpheme hypothesis: As morphemes, they are
 Bloomfield‘s "lexical morpheme" hypothesis: morphemes, affixes and
roots alike are stored in the lexicon.

Morpheme-based morphology comes in two flavours, one Bloomfieldian and

one Hockettian.[12] For Bloomfield, the morpheme was the minimal form with
meaning, but did not have meaning itself.[clarification needed] For Hockett,
morphemes are "meaning elements", not "form elements". For him, there is a
morpheme plural using allomorphs such as -s, -en and -ren. Within much
morpheme-based morphological theory, the two views are mixed in
unsystematic ways so a writer may refer to "the morpheme plural" and "the
morpheme -s" in the same sentence.

Lexeme-based morphology

Lexeme-based morphology usually takes what is called an item-and-process

sequence, a word form is said to be the result of applying rules that alter a word-
form or stem in order to produce a new one. An inflectional rule takes a stem,
changes it as is required by the rule, and outputs a word form; a derivational
rule takes a stem, changes it as per its own requirements, and outputs a derived
stem; a compounding rule takes word forms, and similarly outputs a compound

Word-based morphology

Word-based morphology is (usually) a word-and-paradigm approach. The

morphemes into word forms or to generate word forms from stems, word-based
17 | P a g e

morphology states generalizations that hold between the forms of inflectional

paradigms. The major point behind this approach is that many such
person plural". Morpheme-based theories usually have no problems with this
situation since one says that a given morpheme has two categories. Item-and-
out to be artificial. The approaches treat these as whole words that are related to
a pattern different from the one that has been used historically can give rise to a
regular pattern of plural formation).

Q.5: Read Unit 5 carefully. What do you mean by the term ‘word family’?
Write down a few words included in the families of the following
Meet, Stand, Get, Hike, Inspire

Ans: Word family:


A group of words that share a common base to which different prefixes and
suffixes are added. For example, members of the word family based on the
headword work include rework, worker, working, workshop, and workmanship,
among others.

According to Birgit Umbreit, "[L]language users are able to analyse complex

words and to establish synchronic relations between words both formally and
semantically because they have an implicit or even explicit knowledge of word-
family organization."

Examples and Observations:

18 | P a g e

a playground." (Gilbert K. Chesterton)
 You can be childlike without being childish.
 "Correction does much, but encouragement does more. . . . A correct
answer is like an affectionate kiss." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
 "I write and rewrite and rewrite and write and like to turn in what I think
is finished work." (Gay Talese)

 "Normal social behavior requires that we be able to recognize identities in

spite of change. Unless we can do so, there can be no human society as
we know it." (Kenneth L. Pike)
to be out of danger? (Thomas Huxley)
 Teaching Word Families
 "Gouden, Nation and Read (1990) counted the number of word families
in Webster's Third New International Dictionary (1963) . . . [and] found
that the dictionary contained about 54,000 word families. This is a huge
number of items (remember that each word family contains several
words), and so we as teachers must give up on the idea of ever teaching
all of them to our students in a classroom situation. . . .

"We can . . . maximize vocabulary learning by teaching word families

instead of individual word forms. Teachers can make it a habit when
introducing a new word to mention the other members of its word family.
In this way, learners form the habit of considering a word's derivations as
a matter of course." (Norbert Schmitt, Vocabulary in Language Teaching.
Cambridge University Press, 2000)
 The Concept of Transparency
 [M]ost linguists agree that word families should be transparent, in that
learning a new item related to one already known should involve a
minimum of learning burden. For instance, if a learner knows govern and
is familiar with the prefix mis-, then misgovern requires little if any
additional learning (Goulden et al., 1990). Derivations that do not meet
the transparency criteria are not included in a word family but given
separate listings; for instance business (busy). . . .
 Although the concept of transparency is relatively straightforward,
individuals' ability to process related word family members varies, in
particular with stages of learning."
(Frank E Daulton, Japan's Built-in Lexicon of English-based Loanwords.
Multilingual Matters, 2008.
 Birgit Umbreit, "Does love come from to love or to love from love? Why
lexical motivation has to be regarded as bidirectional." Cognitive
19 | P a g e

Perspectives on Word Formation, ed. by Alexander Onysko and Sascha

Michel (Walter de Gruyter, 2010)
 Words and their families
Meet Stand Get Hike Inspire
Greet Grand Bet Bike Ceasefire
Sheet Brand Jet Nike Transpire
Street Wonderland Wet Alike Admire
Sweet Expand Net Dike Satire
Tweet Island Set Kike Respire

Q.6: Sentences can be constructed without involving structural words.

For example: Zaib Loves Cricket
Even then the use of auxiliaries and structural words is emphasized.
Why? Discuss in detail.

Ans: Structural words:

 Unlike content words, structural words belong to a closed class of words.

In a sense, this class is easy to describe since it has the opposite
characteristics to the class of content words. They are
 very limited in number
 they are difficult to define
 they are fixed in number
1. They are fixed in number:
Although the determiner category of structural words is quite large, the
individual members can still be listed and counted. Determiners are those
words that come in front of adjectives and nouns. Words like, the, a, this,
that, some and phrases like a few of.
2. They are not borrowed:
We shall now go back to Urdu/English sentence taken from a cricket
context. E.g.
Usne beautiful shot miss kiya.
We have already observed that all the content words are English.
(Beautiful/ adjective) shot/noun, miss/verb). It is equally obvious all the
remaining forms are Urdu.
Usne: pronoun
Ek: determiner
Kya: auxiliary verb
If kiya had not been used the past tense morpheme (ed) would have been
retained, but this would have been contrary to normal practice.
20 | P a g e

One language rarely borrows grammar from another language- structural

words stay where they are. A main verb may well be taken from English,
but it will have to leave behind any grammatical endings it may have.
3. They are difficult to define:
Because of their grammatical function it is not easy to give dictionary
definitions to structural words. Contents words represent reality in some
way while structural words- represent relationships. If content words are
the bricks of language, structural words are its cement.
Auxiliary Verbs:
 Auxiliary verbs, also known as helping verbs, add functional or
grammatical meaning to the clauses in which they appear. They perform
their functions in several different ways:

 By expressing tense ( providing a time reference, i.e. past, present, or

 Grammatical aspect (expresses how verb relates to the flow of time)
 Modality (quantifies verbs)
 Voice (describes the relationship between the action expressed by the
verb and the participants identified by the verb‘s subject, object, etc.)
 Adds emphasis to a sentence
 Auxiliary verbs almost always appear together with a main verb, and
though there are only a few of them, they are among the most frequently
occurring verbs in the English language.
 How to Identify an Auxiliary Verb
 You probably know that every sentence has at least one verb in it. There
are two main types of verbs. Action verbs are used to depict activities that
are doable, and linking verbs are used to describe conditions. Both action
verbs and linking verbs can accompany auxiliary verbs including the
three main ones: do, be, and have.
 Sometimes actions or conditions occur only one time and then they‘re
over. It‘s at times like these that some of the same verbs that are used as
auxiliary verbs are instead used as action or linking verbs. In this
example, we see the word ―is‖. This is one of the most common auxiliary
verbs, but because it stands alone here, it is not functioning as an
auxiliary verb.
 Jerry slammed the car door on his thumb. He is in horrible pain.
―Is‖ is a linking verb in this sentence. Because it stands alone, it is not an
auxiliary verb.
 At other times, an action or condition is on going, happening predictably,
or occurring in relationship to another event or set of events. In these
cases, single-word verbs like is are not accurately capable of describing
21 | P a g e

what happened, so phrases that include auxiliary verbs are used instead.
These can be made up of anywhere from two to four words.
 A main verb, also known as a base verb, indicates the kind of action or
condition taking place. An auxiliary or helping verb accompanies the
main verb and conveys other nuances that help the reader gain specific
insight into the event that is taking place.
 Read the following sentences and explanations to gain greater insight into
how auxiliary verbs work.

1. Jerry caught his thumb in the car door as coffee spilled from his cup onto
his favourite shirt.
2. Jerry is always spilling things.
3. Since Jerry is also accident prone, he should have been drinking coffee
from a mug with a lid, which would not have spilled on his favorite shirt.

 In sentence one, caught and spilled, single-word verbs, describe quick,

one-time actions of both Jerry and his messy coffee. This sentence does
not contain an auxiliary verb.
 Since Jerry often has unfortunate accidents, is spilling communicates the
frequency of his clumsy actions in sentence two. In sentence three, the
auxiliary verbs that make up should have been drinking and would
have stained express time relationships as well as an evaluation of
Jerry‘s actions.
 Three Common Auxiliary Verbs
 There are just three common auxiliary verbs:

 Have
 Do
 Be
 In this section, we‘ll take a closer look at how these common verbs work,
plus you‘ll see some examples.
 Have
 ―Have‖ is a very important verb that can stand alone in all its tenses,
including has, have, having, had, and hadn’t or had not. It is usually
used to denote ownership, and it can also be used to discuss ability or
describe appearance. ―Have‖ is also a very popular substitute for the
verbs ―eat‖ and ―drink.‖ For example: ―Let‘s have dinner.‖
 When used as an auxiliary verb, have is always teamed up with another
verb to create a complete verb phrase, making it easy to differentiate
between uses. You can see the difference in the sentences below:

 Jerry has a large coffee stain on his shirt. → Has = action verb
22 | P a g e

 Jerry has bought a new shirt to replace the one that was ruined earlier. →
Has = auxiliary verb; bought is a past participle that competes the verb
 Jerry should have been more careful! → Have = auxiliary verb; phrase
―should have been‖ expresses time and evaluates Jerry‘s actions.
 Do
 ―Do‖ can be used as an action verb that stands alone in all its tenses,
including to do, do, does, done, did and didn’t, doesn’t or did not .
 When used as an auxiliary verb, do is always paired up with another verb
to create a complete verb phrase. In some cases, it is used to add
emphasis: “I did put the garbage out!” Do is often used to form
questions and negated clauses. It is also used in elliptical sentences,
where the main verb is understood and is omitted as a result. For
example: “He plays piano well, doesn’t he?” or ―They all had dinner, but
I didn‘t.‖

 Because he spills things so often, Jerry does more laundry than most
people.  Does = action verb
 Jerry didn‘t put his coffee in a cup with a lid.  Didn‘t = auxiliary verb
 Jerry doesn‘t always spill things, but it happens a lot.  Doesn‘t =
auxiliary verb
 Be
 ―Be‖ or ―to be‖ is an important verb that has a multitude of uses in
English. It can be used as an action verb that stands alone in all its tenses
including be, to be, been, am, are, is, was, were, wasn’t, was not
aren’t, are not, weren’t and were not.
 When used as an auxiliary verb, be is always paired with another verb to
create a complete verb phrase. It can be singular or plural, present or past.
Negative sentences are formed by adding the word ―not‖.

 Jerry is messy.  Is = action verb

 Although he is always complaining about his accidents, Jerry fails to pay
attention.  is = auxiliary verb
 Jerry is going to be doing extra laundry for the rest of his life.  to be =
auxiliary verb
 Modal Auxiliary Verbs
 In addition to the three main auxiliary verbs, have, do, and be, there are
additional auxiliary verbs. These are called modal auxiliary verbs, and
they never change form. A complete list of modal auxiliary verbs follows:

 Can
23 | P a g e

 Could
 May
 Might
 Must
 Ought to
 Shall
 Should
 Will
 Would
 Auxiliary Verb Examples
 Here are some examples of auxiliary verbs and verb phrases. In the
examples below, the verb phrase is italicized and the auxiliary verb is in

1. Jessica is taking John to the airport.

2. If he doesn’t arrive on time, he‘ll have to take a later flight.
3. Unfortunately, our dinner has been eaten by the dog.
4. I have purchased a new pair of shoes to replace the ones that were lost in
my luggage.
5. We hope you don’t have an accident on your way to school.
6. She was baking a pie for dessert.
7. Dad has been working hard all day.
8. The bed was made as soon as I got up.
9. Sarah doesn’t ski or roller skate.
10.Did Matthew bring coffee?

Q.7: Explain the difference between transitive, intransitive and linking

verbs. Give five examples of each.

Ans: Verb
A verb is a word that expresses an action or a state of being. As you can see
from that definition, there are two main categories of verbs: action verbs and
state of being verbs (also known as linking verbs). Because action verbs and
linking verbs are strong enough to be used in sentences all by themselves, they
are called main verbs.

I love cheese. I turned the page. (action verbs)

I am a teacher. I turned green. (linking verbs)

24 | P a g e

But wait! There is also a third category of verbs which doesn't get any glory.
They are the helping verbs. The reason that these guys don't get any of the fame
that action and linking verbs get is because they don't stand alone as main verbs .

 Helping verbs always help either an action verb or a linking verb.

 I will play the piano. (will = helping verb, play = action verb)
 I will be a teacher. (will = helping verb, be = linking verb)
 Some verbs can function as main verbs or helping verbs, but they will
only do one job at a time in a sentence.
 I have a cat. (have = main verb, action verb)
 I have been reading a great book. (have = helping verb)
 I am a teacher. (am = main verb, linking verb)
 I am cooking dinner for my family. (am = helping verb)

1. Transitive Verbs
Transitive Verbs are verbs that have to do something to something. That have to
is important because, technically, all verbs do something to something.
Transitive verbs, however, need to have that something mentioned to be
complete. For example: ―The shelf holds.‖ Well, what does it hold? For that
verb to be complete, it needs to hold something. Here‘s a few more examples:

 The committee named.

 The child broke.
 He cut.

To make this more complex, there are many verbs that can be both transitive
and intransitive. An example is the verb to hang. You could use it transitively
25 | P a g e

(Hang him!) or intransitively (The picture was hung.). Also note that misused
transitive verbs create odd sentences such as example 2 above.

2. Intransitive Verbs
Intransitive Verbs are verbs that don‘t need to do something to something to
make sense. For example: I arrived at work early. Here‘s a few more examples:

 The sound carried across the room.

 My cat often lies on the porch.
 We must leave.

3. Linking Verbs
Linking Verbs connect the subject to a noun or adjective. These are easy.
Linking Verbs are your standard to be verbs: am, is, are, was, were, became,
become, appears, seems, and so on. There are a few tricky ones, but the key is
to remember that linking verbs are verbs of sensation (feel, look, smell, sound,
taste, and so on) or existence (act, appear, be, become, continue, grow,
prove, remain, seem, sit, turn, and so on). Of course, you have to be careful
because many linking verbs can be used as intransitive and transitive verbs. For
example, let‘s use the verb taste in multiple situations.

 Linking—the water in Kansas tastes terrible.

 Transitive—He tastes the soup.

The only real way to know the difference between the verbs is to identify what
is happening. If the verb is telling you the state of sensation or existence of a
thing, it is a linking verb. The nice thing with linking verbs is that you can
check them by replacing the verb with a to be verb. If you can replace it, you
are looking at a linking verb (The water in Kansas is terrible.).

If the verb has to tell you what the action is done to, it is transitive. If it doesn‘t,
it is intransitive.

Q.8: What is the importance of using verbal groups for teaching tenses in
English language?

Ans: Importance of verbal groups for teaching tenses in English:

Verbal groups in tenses

 Introduction
26 | P a g e

 If you are not using tense accurately and appropriately in your writing,
there are three possible sources of your problem:
1. The forms of the verbs
2. The structure of the verbal group
3. The context in which the verbal group occurs.
The Forms of the Verbs
 One of the problems you may be having is that you are not familiar
enough with the forms of the verbs you are using as you may have seen in
Unit 2A; verbs have several forms which can be used on their own or
combined with other verb forms called Auxiliaries. When you combine a
verb with an auxiliary it is called a verbal group. These verbal groups can
be finite or non‐finite. If a verbal group is finite, it shows tense or
judgement /modality.

 Regular/ irregular verbs have the following forms

Base form ‗s‘ form Present participle First form(s)
State States Stating Stated
Say Says Saying Said
Writes Writes Writing Wrote

 The Structure of the Verbal Group

 A second problem you may be having with verbs is that you are not
familiar enough with the elements that make up the structure of the verbal
group. For example you may want to use a particular tense but you don't
know which elements of the structure to use.
Main Verb Contains the content information i.e it tells us what
type of activity is occurring.
Finite verb gives us information about the verb with respect to
time (tense) or judgement (modality).

Auxiliary verb give further information about tense

 So when a verbal group is broken down into these parts it looks like this:
Will Have Finish ed
Finite Auxiliary Main verb Verb ending
 You will also remember that the finite part of the verb can be expressed
in two ways -‐using time operators (e.g. did, was, is etc. or modal
operators (may, should, might etc.).
 If we put these different parts together we get a finite verbal group
structure that looks like the following:
 (finite operator), (auxiliaries), (main verb)
 time or modal have/ be/.
27 | P a g e

 You choose elements from the brackets according to factors relating to

the message you are trying to give your reader:
 If you are concerned about time you choose a time operator to show past,
present or future.
e.g. he went he is going, he didn't go.
 If you are concerned about indicating possibility or your attitude on what
is being said you choose a modal operator. e.g. he might go, he Should
 If you want to indicate secondary tense you choose an auxiliary
e.g. he might have gone, she is not being paid, it will be being
 If you want to concentrate on the thing affected by an action rather than
the doer of the action you choose passive rather than active.
e.g. he completed the experiment; the experiment was completed.
We have already discussed time operators, modal operators and
auxiliaries but we haven't looked yet at the difference between active and
passive voice.
Active and Passive Voice
 A statement of just one clause may have the following elements:
 Subject ^ Verbal group ^ Object ^ Complement ^ Adjunct
 We want to look at a statement with just four of these elements:
 He will finish the experiment in two days.
 Subject Verbal Group (Active) Object Adjunct
 We say that this statement is active because the ‗doer‘of the action, he, is
in first position as Subject and the ‗receiver‘of the action,the experiment,
is the object.
 Sometimes, however, we want to focus on the person or thing affected by
the action, not the person or thing that does it and so we could re-‐write
the above sentence in the following way:
 The experiment will be finished in two days.
 Subject Verbal group (Passive) Adjunct
 We put the object in subject position and change the verbal group to a
passive form. In this example we have left out the person who did the
action but we could have left him in:
 The experiment will be finished by him in two days.
 The choice of a passive form of the verb is very common in academic
writing and particularly in scientific writing.
 Now let's go back to look at the structure of the verbal group in relation to
tense. Here is our general model again.
 (finite operator) ^(auxiliaries)^ (main verb) time or modal have/be.