What is Grammar? Sytax and PART OF SPEECH/Word Class

What is Grammar, Sytax and PART OF SPEECH/Word Class

Grammar refers to all organizational facts or rules about language. It is made up of morphology, phonology, syntax and semantics. A high degree of grammatical experience is an aspect of linguistic communicative competence. Grammatical structure is the core of language usage and it features both in speech and in writing. It is the core of human speech or written texts, its absence may make or mar a speech (either written or spoken), and make it looks inferior. A spontaneous speech or talk, often breaks the rules of grammatical structures by lack of agreement, absence of link filled with pauses, silence fillers or gambits.

WHAT IS SYNTAX?

Syntax is that branch of grammar which deals with the relationship of words used in sentences. It is a sequence of forms and it comprises words chronicled into a chain and having structural relationships. A change in any of the members in the chain changes the meaning. For examples:

i The boy is good.
ii The boy is stupid.

iii) The students are coming.

iv) The student is coming.
v) Ajagbe sat on the mat with the cat beside him.

vi) The cat sat on the mat with Ajagbe beside it.

Each of the sentences above shows a basic chain, an affinity of possible choices which may be either pragmatic or syntagmatic in nature.

WHAT ARE PARTS OF SPEECH/WORD CLASS

Parts of speech are the grammatical elements (items) that must be appropriately structured in such a way that error free sentences are made or written. These grammatical elements called ‘Parts of Speech’ must be syntactically ordered. For instance it would be wrong to put a noun in a position of verb or vice-versa. For examples:

Spoke Tolu to me

Tolu spoke to me

In the sentences given above we can see that the two are not the same. The first sentence is wrong because it violates the rule of syntax. It is ungrammatical and therefore incorrect. However, the second sentence obeys the rule of syntax thus it is correct and grammatical.

Every word of English language thus belongs to a particular group. There are seven groups to which words can belong. A word can thus be said to belong to a group if it functions as such in any given sentence.

In fact, speaking and writing correct English demand basic knowledge of understanding why certain things are right and other things are wrong. The need to combine certain words together to give us error-free sentence becomes imperative and it would be helpful to study parts of speech to give us clear picture on how certain words can be structured.

Apparently, you may be surprised to find how much more there is about parts of speech than you realized in your secondary school days and get fascinated at something that is usually taken for granted. Nearly every word in English langauge can be classified into its kind, the different kinds of words being known as “Parts of speech”. The following are the Part of Speech: Nouns, Verbs, Adjective, Adverbs, Pronounce, Conjunction, Preposition and Interjection.

Keep tab has we write on in next class