Search results for 'tag:Modals tag:Noun phrases' matching tags 'Modals' and 'Noun phrases'

Re: Lack of emphasis on NPs in ESL

Kooyeen — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 20:38:55 GMT

I obviously agree with Forbes: it depends on your first language. I have never had any problems with passive sentences, subjects and objects, the difference between countable and uncountable, etc. because those are all features I have in Italian too. It is not difficult at all for me to use conditional structures (= modal verbs) in polite requests, like in "Could you lend me 1,000 dollars?", because very similar structures are used the same way in Italian too. On the other hand, I know some Asian languages don't even have past or future tenses, so it's easy to imagine how much more difficult it must be for them to learn English.

So instead of focusing on noun phrases, shouldn't we rather focus on the real difficulties, which happen to vary from learner to learner according to their native language and past experience with languages in general?

Anonymous

How about this student?

<<I assume many of you have watched the cartoon "Totally spies", right?
I just wonder why it is "Totally" here. "totally" is always an adverb, so what do they imply when using "totally" here? How can it go with the noun "spies"?>>>

Heh, good question! I don't know! Could somebody tell me more about that, as a side note here without going completely off topic? Otherwise I will open another thread. I would say "Total spies", but if I suspect that "totally" in "Totally spies" is used informally in some dialects to mean "definitely", like in, like " Are you, like, coming to my awesome party tonight? - Oh, yeah, totally!"
If that is the case, then I don't think that "totally" has anything to do with proving learners have trouble with noun phrases. It would suggest learners have trouble with informal English, and if you ask me, that's true.

Re: Modal Substitutes

Inchoateknowledge — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 10:12:59 GMT

CalifJim wrote:
I - pronoun subject
am - linking verb
allowed - predicate adjective
to ride - infinitive complement of allowed
the roller coaster - noun phrase object of ride

Alternately, depending on the analytical technique you are using, the sentence is derived by transformations of the underlying structure:

someone allow [ I ride the roller coaster ]

CJ

It is another interpretation of grammarians.

I like mine more

Re: Modal Substitutes

CalifJim — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 01:01:26 GMT

I - pronoun subject
am - linking verb
allowed - predicate adjective
to ride - infinitive complement of allowed
the roller coaster - noun phrase object of ride

Alternately, depending on the analytical technique you are using, the sentence is derived by transformations of the underlying structure:

someone allow [ I ride the roller coaster ]

CJ

Modal Substitutes

Anonymous — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 20:31:47 GMT

I have a sentence that I am trying to label parts of speech, but having some difficulty.The sentence is:

I am allowed to ride the roller coaster

I know that 'am allowed to' is a substitute for the modal verb 'may' as in:

I may ride the roller coaster

In the second example, I have 'I' as the subject, 'may' as a modal connected to the verb 'ride', and 'the roller coaster' as a noun phrase serving as a direct object of the verb.

My question is this: How do I label the parts of the substitute 'am allowed to' to make up a modal.

I have look through phrase structure rules and cannot find a rule that says modals may be phrases made up of other parts of speech.

Any Ideas?

Calcio

Re: tense?

rishonly — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 21:20:10 GMT

Goodman wrote:

In this passage,".....that I am the only one who still have a little stubbornness .....", it takes the 1st and 2nd person rule and thus "have " is the correct modal to use. Unless I have wrong all along

Hi,

In my opinion, the complete subject of "have" is the noun phrase " the only one". Hence, it should be "still has". Please jump in to correct me if I am off the track.

Re: How to use i.e. /e.g./ for example /and so on

Jussive — Sat, 19 Nov 2005 17:47:52 GMT

CalifJim wrote:
If a student points to some construction and asks me if it's the subjunctive or not, I can't reply, 'No, it's a monkey!'

Now there you are wrong! You are the teacher and can say any dang thing you want!
In fact a smart retort like that might go a long way toward making your students realize that knowing the correct terminology for this or that word or phrase is not at all the same as gaining competence in the use of English.

It rather depends on whether you want your students to be able to express themselves naturally in the real world, or whether the important thing is for them to pass tests in which they correctly identify word groupings as "noun phrase", "progressive tense", "gerund", "possessive adjective", "pronoun in the nominative case", and other such lingo of no use to them once they walk out the classroom door. It's quite amazing the number of students who know the word "nominative" but draw a blank on "lease a car" or "repair the light fixture". It is as if we were preparing them to live their entire lives in the English classroom.

Of course, if you are making your living in an academic institution where all those things are regarded as marks of competence in English, then you really have to concentrate on the lingo, like it or not, I suppose. If so, my condolences!

CJ

I completely agree with you bar a couple of things, CJ:

These technicalities are good for diagnostic reasons. It doesn't help anyone in the fluid process of speaking English, but if there is something wrong then it's easier if there's a technical understanding of grammar and the termonolgy involved so that the teacher can pinpoint the problem quickly. Also, I think, some particular and detailed aspect of any subject may be unnecessary and seem obsessive to some, however, to others it may play an important role to their overall understanding of that subject. It really does depend on how you've put the pieces together in your own mind as to whether one particular piece holds more or less value for you in your understanding of the subject.

As you indicated, though, the students have to pass exams, and I have been taught and am supposed to teach the language in this way, whether I like it or not. Personally, I'd rather just give the grammar where and when I think it's needed and not base their whole learning experience on it.

One last thing, I appreciate that sometimes and in some sense, termonology is just that, and you may as well call some things 'monkey', however, termonology also categorises important functions, elements and differences. For example, I get the sense that there IS a good reason why grammar books tend not to categorise the non-past and modals used hypothetically as 'the subjunctive'.

...but anyway, that's for:

http://www.englishforums.com/English/CoupleQuestionsAboutSubjunctive-Hypotheticals/bpkbn/Post.htm

Jussive

Re: Is anything wrong with this sentence?

CalifJim — Tue, 18 Oct 2005 16:36:28 GMT

deleted by an obligatory deletion transform.
Will this work on the clutter in my living room?

Don't we all wish!!! LOL

Part of the problem, as Paco has aptly observed, is the problem of finding the missing (deleted) subject of a dependent clause, the infinitive clause "to be ... cleverer ..." in this case.

In less complex situations, finding such a subject is child's play:

"Harry wants to marry Louise."
comes from
"*Harry wants Harry to marry Louise."
The subject of the infinitive in the deep structure is coreferential with the subject of the main clause. Therefore it is obligatory to delete it in the surface structure.

But the 'computer's-capacity' sentence is a "doozie" because a couple of other factors compound the problem.

If we express the whole sentence as a noun phrase: "Harry's desire to marry Louise"
the subject of the infinitive becomes a bit more elusive. Now the verb "want" is expressed as the noun "desire", and everything else has to shift accordingly: The subject noun "Harry" now becomes a possessive "Harry's", and the result is a possible misinterpretation that the desire may end up marrying Louise, not Harry! By "demoting" a verb "want"="desire" to a noun "desire", we have to "demote" the noun "Harry" to an 'adjective' "Harry's". To recover the real subject of "to marry Louise", we have to reverse the process, and then we see that "Harry" is the subject of that infinitive.

To compound the difficulty further, there are only a limited number of abstract nouns that can occur in the appositive structures I discussed in a previous post. A concrete noun simply won't do: "*Harry's kitchen to marry Louise" (on the relevant reading). The noun in question, whether "capacity", "desire", or whatever, must be deverbal in some way. ("capacity" is the deverbal form of the modal "can" -- obliquely, not directly, of course.)

So, all in all, there are several different grammatical phenomena working together here to undermine our ability to remain sane! (Whoops! There's another! 'our ability to remain sane': What is the subject of "to remain sane"??? Deleted "we"! -- And again the deverbal is modal in nature!)

Have a nice day, everyone. Hope this helped.

CJ

Is there a grammar of spoken English?

Anonymous — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 05:56:42 GMT

Summarising: Three ways of looking at it. Extracts from the Geoffrey Leech article, " />English Grammar in Conversation.

View 1: Spoken English has no grammar at all: it is grammatically inchoate.

(That view) ...does not need to be taken seriously, although it is surprisingly persistent in the mind of the folk grammarian. It is inherited from the age-old tradition associating grammar with the written language, and it is bolstered by examples such as the following, which, like others which follow, is from the Longman spoken corpus:

No. Do you know erm you know where the erm go over to er go over erm where the fire station is not the one that white white

View 2: Spoken English does not have a special grammar: its grammar is just the same as the grammar of written English

Conversation makes use of entities such as prepositions, modals, noun phrases and relative clauses, just as written language does. So - assuming, as many would, that differences of frequency belong to the use of the grammar, rather than to the grammatical system itself - it is quite natural to think in terms of one English grammar, whose use in conversational performance can be contrasted with its use in various kinds of writing. In other words, conversational grammar is seen to be just a rather special implementation of the common grammar of English: a discovery which does not necessarily in any way diminish the interest of studying the grammar (i.e. the grammatical use) of spoken language.

View 3: Spoken English does have a special grammar - it has its own principles, rules and categories, which are different from those of the written language.

In handling spoken language, (David) Brazil argues for a totally different approach to grammar from the approach which has become familiar through conventional focus on the written language. He argues for a linear model moving dynamically through time, and puts aside the more traditional architectural model in terms of hierarchies of units. Although Carter and McCarthy do not take this thorough-going approach, they do throw the spotlight on grammatical features of spoken language which they feel have been largely neglected by standard grammars entrenched in the 'written tradition'. They argue that structures which are inherent to speech have not been properly studied until the advent of the spoken computer corpus, and are consequently absent from canonised written grammar familiar to learners of English throughout the world: structures such as the 'dislocated topic' of This little shop ... it's lovely or the 'wagging tail' of Oh I reckon they're lovely. I really do whippets. These tend to find their raison d'Ãªtre in the fact that conversation constructs itself in a dynamic fashion, giving the speaker only a small look-ahead window for planning what to say, and often inducing retrospective add-ons. Carter and McCarthy (1995) put forward a structural model for the clause in conversation, containing in addition to the core clause itself a pre-clause topic and a post-clause tail. With their refreshing emphasis on the dynamic modelling of grammar in action, Carter and McCarthy seem to be taking a line similar to Brazil's advocacy of a new grammar of speech.

Re: to be parsed

MrPedantic — Sat, 03 Sep 2005 10:27:54 GMT

Hello K.O.

That looks good - here's a little more detail:

Clause 1

We - subject

were spared - passive voice, past tense

the storm's fury - noun phrase, object (the storm's - possessive; fury - direct object)

Clause 2

but - coordinating conjunction

now - adverb

are having - modal verb, present continuous

to deal with - phrasal verb (prepositional), to-infinitive

the refugees and the misery - two objects coordinated by 'and'

(I expect there are other ways of parsing it.)

The present continuous emphasises the fact that the action is taking place as the speaker utters the sentence.

MrP

Re: Sentence analysis

hela — Sun, 16 Jan 2005 13:19:46 GMT

Hello,

Nobody replied to my previous post, but I hope someone will for this one

1) The representative told the press a lie out of fear of retribution.

Parts of speech:

The = definite article
Representative = noun
Told = ditransitive verb
Press = noun
A = indefinite article
Lie = noun
Out of = complex preposition
Fear = noun
Of = preposition
Retribution = noun

Sentence elements:

The representative = subject
Told = verb
The press = indirect object
A lie = direct object
Out of fear of retribution = adverbial of reason

2) Children should watch less television.

Parts of speech:

Children = noun
Should = modal auxiliary
Watch = transitive verb
Less = comparative adjective (?)
Television = noun

Sentence elements:

Children = subject (noun phrase)
Should watch = verb (verb phrase)
Less television = direct object (?) (noun phrase)

3) We walked five miles to a garage.

Parts of speech:

We = subjective personal pronoun
Walked = intransitive verb (?)
Five = determinative adjective / cardinal numeral (?)
Miles = nouns
To = preposition
A = definite pronoun
Garage = noun

Sentence elements:

We = subject
Walked = verb
Five miles = adverbial (?)
To a garage = adverbial of place

See you for another post,
Hela