The Rules of English Definitions and Examples

In linguistics, the rules of English are the principles that govern syntax, word formation, pronunciation, and other features of the English language.In prescriptive grammar, the rules of English are statements regarding correct or conventional forms of words and sentences in English. Examples and Observations The grammatical rules of English language are determined by the nature of the language itself but the rules of use and the appropriateness of the use are determined by the speech community.  (Joseph C. Mukalel, Approaches To English Language Teaching. Discovery Publishing House, 1998)A moments reflection will reveal that if languages were not highly systematic and ruled, we could never learn them and use them. Speakers learn the rules of their language(s) as children and then apply them automatically for the rest of their lives. No native speaker of English, for example, has to stop in the middle of a sentence and think about how to pronounce the plurals of rate, race, or raid. Even though the plurals of all three of these words are pronounced differently, we learned at a very young age that the different forms are predictable and how to predict them. Mistakes in usage occur in areas of language that lack systems or are exceptions to the rules. Children who say My foots are dirty a re demonstrating not that they do not know the rules of English, but rather that they know the rules well; they just have not mastered the exceptions.  (C. M. Millward and Mary Hayes, A Biography of the English Language, 3rd ed. Wadsworth, 2011) Constitutive Rules and Regulatory Rules The difference between descriptive grammar and prescriptive grammar is comparable to the difference between constitutive rules, which determine how something works (such as the rules for the game of chess), and regulatory rules, which control behavior (such as the rules of etiquette). If the former are violated, the thing cannot work, but if the latter are violated, the things work, but crudely, awkwardly, or rudely. . . .If you say, for example, Cat the dog chased you are not speaking English; the sentence violates the constitutive rules of the language and is thus considered ungrammatical. Hearers might well have trouble understanding you (Is the dog chasing the cat or the cat chasing the dog?). However, if you say He did good on the exam, your sentence is grammatical and would be understood by all, but many people would find your sentence unacceptable; they would consider it bad, nonstandard, or incorrect English. This sentence violates the regulatory rules of English but not its constitutive rules.  (Laurel J. Brinton and Donna M. Brinton, The Linguistic Structure of Modern English. John Benjamins, 2010) The Influence of Latin on the Rules of English Grammar [T]he endless versatility of English is what makes our rules of grammar so perplexing. Few English-speaking natives, however well educated, can confidently elucidate the difference between, say, a complement and a predicate or distinguish a full infinitive from a bare one. The reason for this is that the rules of English grammar were originally modeled on those of Latin, which in the seventeenth century was considered the purest and most admirable of tongues. That it may be. But it is also quite clearly another language altogether. Imposing Latin rules on English structure is a little like trying to play baseball on ice skates. The two simply dont match. In the sentence I am swimming, swimming is a present participle. But in the sentence Swimming is good for you, it is a gerund--even though it means exactly the same thing.  (Bill Bryson, The Mother Tongue. William Morrow, 1990) Syntactic Rules Syntax is the set of rules for combining words into sentences. For example, the rules of English syntax tell us that, because nouns generally precede verbs in basic English sentences, dogs and barked may be combined as Dogs barked but not *Barked dogs (the asterisk being used by linguists to mark constructions that violate the rules of the language). Similarly, Dogs bark is permissible, but Bark dogs is permissible only if the subject is understood--in which case the sentence would be punctuated Bark, dogs! to indicate the normal pronunciation. Still, other syntactic rules require the presence of an additional word if dog is singular: one can say A dog barks or The dog barks but not *Dog bark(s). Moreover, the rules of standard English syntax tell us that -ing must be attached to bark if some form of be precedes bark: Dogs are barking or The/A dog is barking, but not *Dogs barking.  (Ronald R. Butters, Grammatical Structures. The Cambridge History of the English Language, Volume 6, ed. by John Algeo. Cambridge University Press, 2001) The Lighter Side of the RulesHenry Spencer: You know, a club needs regulations, bylaws. You guys got any rules?Young Gus: Yes. No girls!Young Shawn: And everybody has to be under twelve. No old guys.Young Gus: And they have to have a love of correct grammar.Young Shawn: Thats not a rule!Young Gus: You said we could have one special rule. Thats mine.Young Shawn: And thats the best rule you could think of?Young Gus: I think you mean, thats the best rule of which you could think.Young Shawn: Im not being in a club with this!(Dis-Lodged. Psych, February 1, 2008)

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass Dialectical...

YOUR NAME HERE: Cristina Villegas PERIOD: 6 Dialectical Journal for Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass ATTENTION: you must complete 5 journal entries. MAKE SURE that you are ANALYZING, not summarizing!!! Your analysis MAY NOT have the word â€Å"quote† in it anywhere, nor should you start your analysis with â€Å"this shows,† or â€Å"here Douglass uses.† Instead, indentify the ACTION that is taking place in terms of language. If you see a biblical allusion, type â€Å"Douglass employs biblical allusion to emphasize†¦Ã¢â‚¬  or something similar. You may NOT use first (â€Å"I,† â€Å"me,† â€Å"we,† â€Å"us†) or second person (â€Å"you†). Also, you should not begin every sentence†¦show more content†¦Ã¢â‚¬Å"These words sank deep into my heart, stirred up sentiments within that lay slumbering, and called into existence an entirely new train of thought. It was a new and special revelation, explaining dark mysterious things, with which my youthful understanding had struggled, but struggled in vain. I now understood what had been to me a most perplexing difficulty – to wit, the white man’s power to enslave black men. It was a grand achievement, and I prized it highly. From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom† (20). The words he is told by Mr. Auld are the ultimate proof as to how slavery works, and once Douglass understands this, he realizes that the only hope of freedom is through education. The concept of slavery is made a â€Å"dark mysterious thing† to slaves, with no explanation as to why they are subordinate to white men, so they never understand the real workings of how it is perpetuated, and therefore never revolt. Douglass’s claim to have tried to understand it before in â€Å"vain†, and only now having an idea of how to achieve freedom proves the futility of escaping slavery when slaves are deprived of knowledge. This piece of information Hugh Auld unknowingly discloses to Douglass reveals that the only separation between a white man and a black man is the power of knowledge; the only reason white men are in control over black men is because white men deprive them of any form of education or knowledge from the moment they are born,Show MoreRelatedNarrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass An American Slave4034 Words   |  17 PagesTitle/ Author: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass an American Slave, By Frederick Douglass Date: July 31, 2015 Total Pages: 13 Dialectical Journal Quotes Chapter and Page # Analysis (Characters, Theme, Plot) â€Å"My mother was of a darker complexion than either my grandmother or grandfather. My father was a white man. He was admitted to be such by all I ever heard speak of my parentage.† Chapter 1 Page 2 Indirect Characterization: Speech This shows us that Frederick douglass was not a fullRead MoreEssay about Bless Me Ultima Dialectical Journal3577 Words   |  15 Pages Bless Me, Ultima Dialectical Journal Passages from the text and References: Commentary: 1. â€Å"The magical time of childhood stood still, and the pulse of the living earth pressed its mystery into my living blood† (1.1). (P) This thought that Antonio has builds up the possibility that he will later form a deep connection and bond with the earth and nature. 2. â€Å" The war sucks everything dry,† my father said solemnly, â€Å"it takes the young boys overseas, and their families move to California where

Common Themes In Short Stories Essay Example For Students

Common Themes In Short Stories Essay James Joyce, a most prestigious author of many titles, has incorporated into his works many different thoughts, life experiences, as well as themes. Those three things that he used in his works I believe are what made him the awesome author he is today. The main focus of this paper is to inform you of the themes that reoccur in many of his short stories. Some themes that I noticed were: family, frustration, dreams of escape, love infatuations, and finally, sin. Family is a strong theme in Joyces writings for in Araby, the young teen finds himself obeying his uncle and asking his permission to go to the festival showing his sense of respect and need for family. In Eveline the family theme can be seen when Eveline stays and takes over the role of head of the household as a teen when her mother dies, because she feels it is her duty and she owed it to her mother. The family theme that I identified can be interpreted many different ways from the context that it was written, but these two short stories were appropriate for this theme. Frustration another prevailing theme in some of Joyces work has also been outlined in Araby. Everyday the boy would suffer with an infatuation with a girl he could never have. He even had to deal with his frustration of his self-serving uncle, which he and his aunt were afraid of. The absolute epitome of frustration comes from his uncle when he arrived late at home delaying the one chance of going to Araby. When the boy arrives at Araby to find out that all of the shops are closed his true frustration was reveled on the inside. James Joyce, the man who implied all of his themes was a master of disguise because this theme was an extreme accomplishment to find. The dream of escape comes into play in his stories also. In Araby the boy after arriving at Araby he discovered that everything had already closed. That was his one and only implied chance of escape from his Uncle that was so cruel and uncaring, even unflinching towards what he wanted to do with his life. Joyce uses all of the p revious frustration endured by the boy as a springboard for the epiphany he realized in the end. Before the boy had accepted all of the frustration that had come with his life and after the destruction of what was supposed to be his magical escape at the Araby all of the frustration turns into anger and darkness. This theme not only appears in his short stories but in his major works as well. In Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man;, the leading characters name is a suggestion of escape with Dedalus of course referring to the ancient Greek inventor who fashioned wings from wax and flew away. By examining two of author James Joyces works Eveline and Araby, we can draw that both of these stories incorporate love tales. The first case is in Eveline involves a woman named Eveline who struggles to separate herself her family in order to follow her love into the arms of her young beau named Frank. The latter work Araby tells the story of a young teen who finds himself falling in love a beautiful woman who lives in his neighborhood, and tries to impress her by getting her something from the festival bearing the name of the storys title. Each work has elements such as setting, symbols, and themes, which are repeated in his writing that provides Joyce with a writing style that is his. The series of short stories included in Dubliners depict a broken morale in and around the city of Dublin. The early 1900s marked a time of disheartened spirits not only in Dublin but all of Ireland. England still clutched Ireland under its own control. The citizens were bitter and dismayed. In sayi ng this it brings me to my next subject. In James Joyces Dubliners, the seven deadly sins are apparent in a number of cases, and often times contribute to the downfall of the character. There are also a number of cases of a mention of hats. The hats reoccur often enough to give them an impact on the theme of the book as a motif. Joyce uses hats to contribute to the theme that sin is a way of life by acting as a symbol of the sin whenever they appear. Just as people wear hats everyday, the Dubliners are portrayed as people who sin everyday. Sin is a regular thing to them, and is as common as a hat. In fact, the hat in James Joyces Dubliners is symbolic of sin, since every time a person is mentioned to be wearing a hat, they are also committing a sin, and even when that hat is not being worn, as long as it is present, some form of that sin is present. From Two Gallants;, to Grace;, to Counterparts;, the motif of hats is always pared with sin as an everyday occurrence and way of life. .u0f9f4345271e8c3cfcf5ac307a6b60c2 , .u0f9f4345271e8c3cfcf5ac307a6b60c2 .postImageUrl , .u0f9f4345271e8c3cfcf5ac307a6b60c2 .centered-text-area { min-height: 80px; position: relative; } .u0f9f4345271e8c3cfcf5ac307a6b60c2 , .u0f9f4345271e8c3cfcf5ac307a6b60c2:hover , .u0f9f4345271e8c3cfcf5ac307a6b60c2:visited , .u0f9f4345271e8c3cfcf5ac307a6b60c2:active { border:0!important; } .u0f9f4345271e8c3cfcf5ac307a6b60c2 .clearfix:after { content: ""; display: table; clear: both; } .u0f9f4345271e8c3cfcf5ac307a6b60c2 { display: block; transition: background-color 250ms; webkit-transition: background-color 250ms; width: 100%; opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #95A5A6; } .u0f9f4345271e8c3cfcf5ac307a6b60c2:active , .u0f9f4345271e8c3cfcf5ac307a6b60c2:hover { opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #2C3E50; } .u0f9f4345271e8c3cfcf5ac307a6b60c2 .centered-text-area { width: 100%; position: relative ; } .u0f9f4345271e8c3cfcf5ac307a6b60c2 .ctaText { border-bottom: 0 solid #fff; color: #2980B9; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0; padding: 0; text-decoration: underline; } .u0f9f4345271e8c3cfcf5ac307a6b60c2 .postTitle { color: #FFFFFF; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 600; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 100%; } .u0f9f4345271e8c3cfcf5ac307a6b60c2 .ctaButton { background-color: #7F8C8D!important; color: #2980B9; border: none; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: none; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 26px; moz-border-radius: 3px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: none; width: 80px; min-height: 80px; background: url(https://artscolumbia.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts/assets/images/simple-arrow.png)no-repeat; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; } .u0f9f4345271e8c3cfcf5ac307a6b60c2:hover .ctaButton { background-color: #34495E!important; } .u0f9f4345271e8c3cfcf5ac307a6b60c2 .centered-text { display: table; height: 80px; padding-left : 18px; top: 0; } .u0f9f4345271e8c3cfcf5ac307a6b60c2 .u0f9f4345271e8c3cfcf5ac307a6b60c2-content { display: table-cell; margin: 0; padding: 0; padding-right: 108px; position: relative; vertical-align: middle; width: 100%; } .u0f9f4345271e8c3cfcf5ac307a6b60c2:after { content: ""; display: block; clear: both; } READ: Dear Charles Darwin, EssayThese are just some parallels, which one could draw between the many stories that James Joyce has written. One thing that always bothered readers of Joyces works is that he relied so heavily on using his own experiences as foundations for his stories. Joyce was notorious for using common themes in his stories and leaving them for the reader to find and interpret, sometimes slipping them in when the reader doesnt even notice till later. This repetition allows one to relate to Joyce as a writer and a person for much of what this famous author writes is a direct reflection of the man known as James Joyce.

Toni Morrison Biography Essay Example For Students

Toni Morrison Biography Essay Toni Morrison was born named Chloe Anthony Wofford, on February 18, 1931 in Lorain, Ohio. She was the daughter of Ramah and George Wofford. When Morrison entered the first grade, she was the only black student in her class and also the only child who had already learned to read. She eventually graduated from Howard University in 1953 with a degree in English, and later earned a masters degree from Cornell. Friends at college started calling her Toni because of her middle name. Morrison returned to Howard University to teach English in 1957, after two years of teaching at (TSU) Texas Southern University. While teaching at Howard she met and married a Jamaican architect, Harold Morrison. Together they had two sons, Harold Ford and Slade Kevin. In the following years she joined a writers group in which she wrote a short story about a little black girl who wanted blue eyes. She eventually developed that story into her first novel, The Bluest Eye. We will write a custom essay on Toni Morrison Biography specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now In 1964, Toni and Harold Morrison divorced, and Toni moved to New York with her two young sons. She began working as a book editor at Random House in 1965. Over the next 20 years, Morrison moved into a senior editorial position with the company and shepherded the literary efforts of a number of prominent African-Americans, including Muhammad Ali, Angela Davis, Andrew Young, and Toni Cade Bambara (Morrison). Morrisons novel The Bluest Eye was published in 1970 but did not seem to sell well. She had more marketable success with her second novel, Sula in 1973, the story of a close friendship between two women in a Midwestern black community called The Bottom. With her next novel, Song of Solomon in 1977, Morrison switched her viewpoint towards the African-American man, named Milkman Dead, who takes a journey south from his hometown in Ohio to learn more about his family history. It became a paperback bestseller and won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. Tar Baby published in 1981, is a passionate tale of class, racial, and sexual conflict set on a Caribbean island, and which it stayed on bestseller lists for four consecutive months. Morrison left Random House in 1983 to concentrate on her writing and teaching careers. In 1987, she published Beloved, the story of a former slave, Sethe, who is haunted by the ghost of her murdered daughter and is visited by a strange, beautiful young woman calling herself Beloved. The novel won international acclaim, including the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and it permanently established Morrison in the upper echelon of twentieth-century authors (Morrison). Morrison often compares writing in this era to writing while a war is taking place. Her refusal and fearlessness to sugarcoat the truth on the page is what I think makes her prose some of the best around. On writing she has said â€Å"I’m sometimes frightened of what I write, but I can’t look away. I will not look away. That’s the one place where I’m going to, you know, make eye contact. It’s a free place for me. It’s not always safe, but that’s the one place where all my little vulnerabilities, and cowardice, cannot come to the surface† (Hedge). In 1987, Morrison became the first black woman ever to hold a chair at an Ivy League school like Princeton University. She published Jazz, a novel about the stunning 1920s Harlem world. A sequence of personal tragediesincluding the death of her mother and the destruction by fire of her home in Grand View-on-Hudson, New Yorkwas lightened by professional success in 1993 when Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. She was the first African-American, and only the eighth woman ever to be named a Nobel laureate, which is the highest honor in the field. Morrisons continuing popularity became evident in 1996, when Song of Solomon resurfaced on bestseller lists after a little help from one of her more powerful fans, Oprah Winfrey, who also starred in the 1998 film version of Beloved. In 1998, Morrison published her seventh novel, Paradise, which is set in a black utopian community in Oklahoma. Toni Morrison now lives in Princeton, New Jersey.