Last round

Soooo, we're having our last two assistantships regarding Syntax. We have seen how sentences are organized with simple words and also the different types of phrases, can you recall them all? Now, the following assistantships will be focused on Clauses and the 3 different types of clauses we can find within a sentence.

So, What can you remember about all these contents? Do you think Syntax is important in our learning process? Why or why not? Why is Syntax important for our students? I will leave those questions here so you can answer in the comments box, remember that your comments here also count as participation :D. See you around!

Your questions and the answers

Ok, I remember the following questions from the last assistantship, so I asked Sabrina

1. "The car was hit unaware by the truck"

The car is a noun phrase as a subject while the truck is a noun phrase object of a preposition."

Somebody asked me about the objects in that sentence. Which would be the direct and the indirect object there?

2. "The cat killed many birds"

I understand "killed many birds" as a verb phrase, right? Also, what would be "many" in the sentence?

Here are the answers Sabrina gave:

Good questions.

1. The first is complicated because it’s passive voice so you’re actually starting with the object, most affected/relevant part. The truck is the agent (often introduced by “by” in this type of structure). There is no indirect object. What you’ve brought up here is surface and deep structure (which I’ve decided to not focus on this term). The sentence’s meaning is the same as saying “The truck hit the car unaware.”

2. Yep: killed is the verb phrase (The VP would start with the verb “killed” on the left branch and NP on the right branch; that NP would then divide into “many” (adjective sounds right—that’s what my colleagues and I just agreed. =) and “birds”(noun).

Good questions guys!

An ode to the English Plural

An Ode to the English Plural

We'll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes,
But the plural of ox becomes oxen, not oxes.
One fowl is a goose, but two are called geese,
Yet the plural of moose should never be meese.
You may find a lone mouse or a nest full of mice,
Yet the plural of house is houses, not hice.

If the plural of man is always called men,
Why shouldn't the plural of pan be called pen?
If I speak of my foot and show you my feet,
And I give you a boot, would a pair be called beet?
If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth,
Why shouldn't the plural of booth be called beeth?

Then one may be that, and there would be those,
Yet hat in the plural would never be hose,
And the plural of cat is cats, not cose.
We speak of a brother and also of brethren,
But though we say mother, we never say methren.
Then the masculine pronouns are he, his and him,
But imagine the feminine: she, shis and shim!

Let's face it - English is a crazy language.

There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England . We take English for granted, but if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square, and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

Why is it that writers write, but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham?

Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend?

If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?

If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught?

If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?

Sometimes I think all the folks who grew up speaking English

should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane.

In what other language do people recite at a play and play at a recital?

We ship by truck but send cargo by ship...

We have noses that run and feet that smell.

We park in a driveway and drive in a parkway.

And how can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same,

while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language

in which your house can burn up as it burns down,

in which you fill in a form by filling it out, and

in which an alarm goes off by going on.

And finally, if Father is Pop, how come Mother's not Mop ???