St.

Rita’s College of Balingasag

Balingasag, Misamis Oriental
HIGHER EDUCATION DEPARTMENT
MODULE 4

Subject Code: LING 1

Course Title: Introduction to Linguistics
Credit Units: 3 units
Course Description: This course is an introduction with the nature of language and
communication. It deals both with the study of particular languages, and the search for general
properties common to all languages or large group of languages. It involves subareas like: phonetics,
phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics. This also includes explorations into the
nature of language variation (i.e., dialects ), language change over time , how language is processed
and stored in the brain and how it is acquired by young children.

Course Outcomes:
CO 1 – Examine the nature of language and its components
CO 2 – Manifest positive attitude towards the study of language.
CO 3 – Distuinguish the evolving language as it embraces world englishes.
CO 4 – Create a educational video about linguistics

Course Outline:
Week 1: Introduction to Linguistics and Descriptive Linguistics
Week 2: Phonetics and Phonology
Week 3: Morphology
Week 4: Syntax
Week 5: Semantics
Week 6: World Englishes
Week 7: Sociolinguistics
Week 8: Educational Video

Grading System:

See Revised Handbook

Topic
SYNTAX
Learning Objectives
At the end of this module, the students are expected to;
(i) define linguistics;
(ii) describe the descriptive Lingustics;
(iii) discuss at least four major concepts of linguistics; and
(iv) discuss the relevance linguistics in becoming a language teacher.

Introduction

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 SYNTAX

Syntax is the branch of linguistics that studies sentence structure. In his theory of generative grammar,
Noam Chomsky has pointed out to the astonishing fact that a speaker of any language can produce and
understand an infinite number of sentences. The inventory of phonemes of a language is finite, the number
of words may reach hundreds of thousands, and it would very difficult to try to count all the existing words
of a language. However, to say how many sentences there are in a language is really an impossible task. A
speaker can create new sentences by adding prepositional phrases, adjectives, clauses, etc..

Time Allotment: 15 hours (1 week)

Core/Related Values and Biblical Passage
Core/Related Values: Service – Courage

Biblical Passage: “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends”
John 15:13

Learning Content

The traditional grammar, which has its roots in the description of the classical languages – Greek
and Latin – provided the distinction and description of the parts of speech: nouns (window, idea,
Mary, milk), verbs (give, play, believe, have, be), adjectives (nice, new, open), adverbs (very,
quickly, really), prepositions (on, of, without, despite) pronouns (she, you, somebody), articles (a,
the) conjunctions (and, when, though), and interjections (oh, phew). Modern linguists, though
accepting this distinction, point out to some incompleteness of the definitions of parts of speech.
Thus, for example, nouns may be defined as words referring to people, entities, qualities or abstract
notions; adjectives are words that modify nouns, expressing quality, property or attribute of a
person or entity, etc. In these definitions parts of speech are presented including their essential
meaning properties but not all their functional properties are revealed. Yet the distinction of parts
of speech (or lexical categories) is of crucial importance because it helps to classify the words of a
language. Using the rules of syntax, we combine words into phrases and phrases into sentences.
English has fixed Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) word order. Therefore, the sentence The children took
all the apples. is correct (grammatical) but the sentence *Took all the apples the children. is
ungrammatical. Sentences are not just lineal strings of words – they may be analyzed
hierarchically into phrases. For example, the following sentence contains three phrases, indicated
by bracketing.

[The diligent students] [have completed] [the last task]. A phrase may consist of one word or a
group of words. The substitution test may be used to show the identity of a phrase, i.e. a single
word can often replace it. For example, the phrase the diligent students can be replaced by the
pronoun they. Another way to test the reality of phrases is the movement test – a whole phrase can
be moved as a unit. Compare the two sentences: a) He put the cake on the kitchen table. b) On the
kitchen table, he put the cake. The main types of phrases are: the noun phrase, the verb phrase, the
adjective phrase, the adverb phrase, and the prepositional phrase. Each type of phrase has the head
– the lexical category around which the phrase is built. A phrase can contain only the head. Some
examples of noun phrases: a book, the book, people, these people, the red carpet. Prepositional
phrases consist of a preposition and a noun phrase: on the table, with a spoon, in the crowded
street, etc. According to Noam Chomsky’s generative grammar, a finite set of formal rules project a

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finite set of sentences upon the potentially infinite number of sentences of a language. To put it
more simply, there are a certain number of formal rules which explain the structure of the
sentences in a language. One of the main rules states that a sentence consists of a noun phrase and a
verb phrase. The hierarchical structure of a sentence can be represented by tree structures, i.e.
diagrams showing the hierarchical organization of phrases. On the whole, the analysis of sentence
structure proceeds along a number of different lines, depending on the linguistic school and model
of analysis. Sentences are classified into different types. The majority of linguists make a distinction
between functional and formal classifications. From the point of view of their function, sentences
are divided into statements (She closed the window.), questions (Did she close the window?),
commands (Close the window!), and exclamations (What a big window!). The formal classification
makes a distinction between declarative, interrogative, imperative, and exclamative sentences. One
more categorization of sentences is into simple, complex and compound. Simple sentences have
one Subject – Verb unit, e.g. The cat jumped on the couch. A compound sentence consists of two or
more main clauses, e.g. He is a busy man, but he promised to help me with this problem. We have
a complex sentence when one clause is used as a main clause and another is added to express
subordinate meaning, developing some aspect of the main clause, e.g. When I first saw the
building, I was amazed by its size.

Learning Evaluation
Teaching – Learning Activities
TLA1-Mark the grammatical sentences in each set. Determine why the other sentences are not
grammatical.

1) The girl put. The girl put on the table. The girl put carefully. The girl put the apples on the table.
2) John slept the bed. John slept. John slept on the bed.
3) The children took. The children took three. The children took three books. Three books took the
children.
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TLA 2: Determine what part of speech each word in the given sentences represents.

1) A woman was injured in the accident and was taken to hospital.

2) If you commit a serious crime, you could be sent to prison.
3) A couple were drinking tea at a table by the window.
4) Susan gave an amused laugh.
5) We got there at about five o’clock.
6) He got into the car quickly and drove off.
7) The tourists left the lake and climbed higher.
8) The girl who came into the room was small and slender.
9) The older men couldn’t find a job if they left the village.
10) Stay with me until I go.

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TLA 3: Draw a tree structure for each phrase and determine the type of phrase.

1) the book
2) a new book
3) very intelligent
4) on the shelf
5) with the new binoculars
6) so stupid
7) ideas
8) the brilliant ideas

TLA 3: Draw tree structures for the following sentences.

1) A man entered the room. 2) Students must study. 3) The new students can bring their
reports on Friday. 4) The players left the field without protest. 5) The clever dog found the
meat in the kitchen. 6) The latest news was about politics. 7) Sharks may appear in this
lagoon. 8) The girl took a bottle of milk from the fridge

TLA 4: Indicate cases of coordination and subordination of clauses.

1) The girl who was injured in the accident is now in hospital. 2) She said you took her notes. 3)
More and more money is being given to social projects, and it is reasonable to expect that this will
become a common practice. 4) I asked if I could borrow his car but he refused. 5) The medicine,
which is being tried at several medical institutions, has already helped a number of patients who
have failed to respond to other remedies. 6) He was waiting for the girl, who was buying ice cream.
7) The woman who was driving the car was all dressed in black. 8) I try to ignore the noise they
make in the kitchen but I simply can’t. 9) One passenger was killed and another seriously
wounded.
10) When I finish this project, I will go on a week holiday in Bahamas. 11) When his assignment
was finished, he returned home and spent the evening watching TV. 12) Sarah got her BA diploma
in English philology and now plans to study management.

Assessment

Study and Response about the Article

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References
Becker, H.J., Ravitz, J.L. & Wong, Y.T. (2015). Teacher and teacher-directed student use of
computers and software. [PDF document]. Center for Research on Information Technology
& Organizations, University of California, Irvine and University of Minnesota. Retrieved
from http://www.crito.uci.edu/

Corpuz, B.B., Lucido, P.I. (2015). Educational technology. Lorimar Publishing, Inc. Quezon City,
Metro Manila,

http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/lesson_images/lesson963/Rubric.pdf
https://www.cwu.edu/teaching-learning/sites/cts.cwu.edu.teaching-learning/files/documents/BSED316.pdf

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