The Grammatical Strtuctures of English and Spanish: An Analysis of Structural Diferences Between the two Languages

Description

In this book, we have tried to speak of the grammatical structures of two lan­guages in a way that could reasonably be expected to be understood by non-linguists who bring motivation, intelligence, and time—but no considerable amount of training in linguis­tics as such—to the task. The enormous complexity of linguistic behavior is surprising in view of the fact that so high a percentage of it is readily mastered by young children. Yet only a small fraction of the complexity has been adequately described by generations of scholars. Most persons, including many language specialists, take the structure of lan­ guage for granted, like the air we breathe. How anyone learns his native language is still largely mysterious. Why almost no one learns a second language with native-like control after maturity is hardly less mysterious. With so little known about the process of learn­ing, beyond the simplest sort of conditioned responses, how anyone can go on advocating the advantages of this method of learning or that one is in itself no small mystery. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION TO GRAMMATICAL ANALYSIS......................................... 1 BASIC SENTENCE PATTERNS......................................................................... 18 WORD CLASSES AND MORPHOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS................ 41 THE NOUN PHRASE AND ITS CONSTITUENTS............................................ 64 VERB FORMS.............................................................................. 105 THE AUXILIARY CONSTITUENTS OF THE VERB PHRASE................... 132 OTHER CONSTITUENTS OF THE VERB PHRASE...................................... 166 SIMPLE SENTENCE TRANSFORMATIONS.................................................... 218 COMPLEX AND COMPOUND SENTENCE TRANSFORMATIONS.............. 243 LEXICAL DIFFERENCES.................................................................................... 265 HIERARCHY OF DIFFICULTY......................................................................... 282 APPENDIX: PEDAGOGY .............................................................................. 292 REFERENCES............................................................................................ 310 ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS.................................................................... 313 INDEX............................................................................................ 317