English Grammar: An Introduction

The concept of a SYSTEM is important in the study of language generally, not just in grammar. A system occurs where there is a choice of forms, ie. where we have to choose one possibility from amongst a range of possibilities. An example of a system is the PARADIGM (= table of examples) for the present tense verb given below. In using this paradigm, we have to make a choice from the pronouns and also of the run/run-s forms of the verb.

I run	We run
You run	You run
He, she, it runs	They run

Compare the above paradigm with the equivalent paradigm from a little known language called /jukki/:

wot	yuks
rispot	stor
astly	joke

It should be obvious that the English paradigm contains a lot more information. The root of the verb is the same in all cases, and one form is marked by the inflexional suffix -S. There is no such relationship apparent among the Yukki forms. In addition, the English verbs are associated with pronouns, which themselves contain a lot of grammatical information. Pronouns in English are marked for the systems of

Some pronouns are also marked for CASE:

he (NOMINATIVE), him (ACCUSATIVE), his (GENITIVE).

Using these four systems, we can write a description of each pronoun, eg. "He" is the third person singular masculine nominative form. If we use this pronoun, or the third person singular feminine or neuter pronouns, we must choose the verb form run-s. The systems of the verb and pronoun are thus interrelated. Another way of putting this is that there must be CONCORD between the verb as predicator and its subject, in this case the pronoun, as example (1) shows:

The word order in sentence (1c) is unusual, because of the fronting of the object, but the sentence is unambiguous because the predicator requires a singular subject. There is therefore no doubt about which NP is the subject and which the object. Additionally, he is in the nominative case, and them in the accusative case, which are the cases associated with subject and object respectively. In OE, all nouns were marked for case, which allowed word order to be more flexible than it is in NE.