Morphology

1.1 Morpheme, morph, allomorph

Conditioning of allomorphy

• Phonological: choice determined by the preceding sound — plural /ɪz/ after sibilants (horses), /s/ after other voiceless sounds (cats), /z/ elsewhere (dogs); the same rule holds for the genitive 's, 3rd person -s, and (mutatis mutandis) past -ed (/ɪd/ ~ /t/ ~ /d/).
• Lexical (morphological): choice determined by the individual lexeme — ox selects -en (oxen), foot selects mutation (feet), sheep selects a zero allomorph (sheep-Ø).
• Suppletion: the allomorph is a completely different form — go/went, good/better, be/am/was.

1.2 Free vs bound; lexical vs grammatical morphemes

• Free morphemes can stand alone as words: dog, run, happy.
• Bound morphemes must attach to another element: prefixes (un-), suffixes (-ness, -s), bound roots (-ceive in receive; the unique "cranberry" morph cran- — a periphery phenomenon).
• Lexical morphemes carry lexical content, especially roots. Derivational affixes create new lexemes (happy → unhappiness); classifications differ over whether to call them lexical or grammatical. State their unambiguous properties: bound, derivational, prefix/suffix, meaning and input/output class.
• Grammatical morphemes signal grammatical relations: inflectional affixes (create word-forms of one lexeme: walk, walks, walked, walking) and function words (the, of, will).
• Derivation changes lexical identity (often word class) and feeds the lexicon; inflection is required by grammar, is fully productive in the core, and closes the word (inflection comes after derivation: modern-iz-ation-s).

1.3 Parts of speech — classification criteria

Three classical criteria (they must be combined; no single one suffices):

Because of scanty inflection and widespread conversion, syntactic distribution is the primary criterion. Classic illustration — round: adjective (a round table), noun (a round of golf), verb (to round the corner), adverb (turn round), preposition (round the corner).

1.4 Open classes vs closed-system items

• Open classes (membership unlimited, new members freely added): nouns, full (lexical) verbs, adjectives, adverbs.
• Closed classes / closed-system items (Quirk's term; small, stable membership; items mutually define one another and cannot normally be added to): pronouns, determiners (incl. articles), prepositions, conjunctions, auxiliary verbs (primary and modal).
• Marginal/lesser categories: numerals, interjections.
• "Closed system" means the members are reciprocally exclusive and reciprocally defining: this means what that does not; the value of the exists only against a and zero.

1.5 Analytic and synthetic features of English

English is a predominantly analytic language with synthetic residues (Old English was richly inflected; the inflections decayed in ME).

What survives of inflection (synthetic features):

Analytic devices (do the work Czech does with endings):

• Fixed word order (SVO) signals syntactic function: The dog bit the man vs The man bit the dog.
• Function words: prepositions replace case endings (of = genitive-like, to = dative-like), articles express determination, auxiliaries build the verb phrase.
• Periphrasis: comparison (more/most interesting), futurity (will go), aspect (have gone, is going), voice (was seen), mood (should go).
• Weak morphology also enables massive conversion (to google, a must).

Czech contrast note: Czech is synthetic (7 cases, rich agreement); English often expresses comparable relations by order and prepositions, although the systems do not correspond one-to-one. An explicit contrast helps explain the analysis.

1.6 Centre and periphery (Prague School)

Concept developed in the Travaux linguistiques de Prague (Daneš, Vachek, 1966): grammatical categories are not homogeneous sets but have a centre (core) and a periphery, with gradual transitions.

• Centre: regular, productive, systematic, fully integrated members — e.g. regular -s plurals; regular -ed verbs; central modals; central adjectives (big, old).
• Periphery: irregular, less productive or transitional members (these properties need not coincide) — e.g. foreign plurals (stimuli, phenomena), mutation plurals (feet), invariable nouns (news, scissors), marginal modals (dare, need, ought to, used to), the fossilized subjunctive (God save the King), cranberry morphs.
• Transitional zones between categories: collective nouns between singular and plural (the committee have decided); the gerund between verb and noun; the participle between verb and adjective (an interesting book — very interesting); semi-auxiliaries (have to, be going to) between lexical and auxiliary verb; near between adjective and preposition. Membership is a matter of degree (gradience), not all-or-nothing.

Common traps (Ch. 1)

• Morpheme ≠ syllable: walked has one syllable but two morphemes; water has two syllables but one morpheme.
• Inflectional -ing/-ed vs derivational look-alikes: interesting/interested used as adjectives (gradable: very interesting) have crossed into adjective territory — a gradience/periphery point.
• "Analytic language" does not mean "no inflection at all" — always name the surviving inflections.
• Allomorph vs allophone: allomorphs realize a morpheme (meaningful unit); allophones realize a phoneme.

Exam-style questions (Ch. 1)

1.7 Apply the criteria to an unfamiliar form

Use distribution as evidence rather than treating a familiar meaning or suffix as a verdict. In They bottled the juice, past -ed and the object the juice identify a verb; in the empty bottles, determiner, plural and adjective modification identify a noun. Frequency does not equal centrality: highly frequent be is morphologically irregular.

English nouns have the categories number, (count/non-count) countability, case, definiteness (expressed by determiners) and covert gender.

2.1 Number

Regular plural: -s/-es; three phonologically conditioned allomorphs:

Spelling: -es after sibilant letters (boxes); -y → -ies after consonant (ladies but days); -o varies (potatoes, tomatoes, heroes vs photos, pianos).

Irregular plurals:

Plural of compounds: inflect the head — passers-by, runners-up, mothers-in-law, courts martial, attorneys general (informal mother-in-laws exists but avoid in the exam); spoonfuls.

Invariable nouns:

• Singular invariable (singularia tantum): non-count nouns (information, advice, furniture, luggage, news); proper nouns; -s singulars: news, sciences in -ics (physics, linguistics, mathematics), diseases (measles, mumps), games (billiards, darts, dominoes, draughts) — these senses take a singular verb: This news is good. A different sense can change agreement: The acoustics of this room are excellent.

• Plural invariable (pluralia tantum):

  • Summation plurals (two-part objects, counted with a pair of): trousers, jeans, scissors, glasses, binoculars, pliers, scales, pyjamas, tights.
  • Other pluralia tantum in -s: outskirts, premises, surroundings, belongings, earnings, savings, thanks, remains, contents, customs (duty), goods, arms (weapons), minutes (of a meeting), manners, looks.
  • Unmarked plural invariables (no -s, plural concord): people, police, cattle — The police are investigating. (But peoples = nations.) Do not extend this rule to every collective noun: livestock and vermin are non-count nouns, and usage/concord must be checked for the particular noun and sense.

• Collective nouns (family, team, committee, government, staff, crew, jury, audience): in BrE singular verb = the body as a unit, plural verb = its members as individuals (The committee has decided / The committee have been arguing); AmE strongly prefers the singular. A centre–periphery/notional-concord phenomenon.

Czech contrast note: watch interference — *informations, *advices, *furnitures are impossible; conversely money is (Czech peníze jsou), hair is singular (vlasy), scissors are (nůžky).

2.2 Countability

• Count nouns: individuated entities; take a/an, numerals, plural (a book, three books).
• Non-count (mass) nouns: substances, abstractions; no plural, no a/an; quantified by much/little and partitives: a piece of advice, an item of news, a loaf of bread, a slice of bread, a lump of sugar, a bar of chocolate, a blade of grass, a flash of lightning, a fit of anger.
• Countability is a property of uses, not permanently of nouns — systematic shifts:

2.3 Case

English nouns distinguish only two cases: common case (unmarked) and genitive ('s). Czech's remaining case functions are carried by prepositions and word order.

Genitive form: 's after singular and irregular plural (the boy's, the children's); apostrophe alone after regular plural -s (the girls' books) and often after classical names in /z/ (Socrates' teaching). Pronunciation follows the plural allomorph rule, so boys, boy's, boys' are all /bɔɪz/ — syncretism resolved only in spelling. The genitive 's is best analysed as a phrase-final clitic, not an ordinary case ending — proof: the group genitive: the King of Spain's daughter, someone else's problem, my brother-in-law's car, an hour and a half's walk (the 's attaches to the whole NP, not the head noun).

Genitive meanings (Quirkian labels, with paraphrase):

(The appositive relation is expressed only by the of-construction: the city of Prague.)

s-genitive vs of-construction — choice factors:

• Gender/animacy scale (the higher, the likelier 's): person's name > personal noun > higher animal > collective noun > inanimate. My brother's car but the roof of the house.
• Inanimates of "human relevance" still take 's: geographical/institutional names (London's population, the government's decision), temporal nouns (today's paper, a week's holiday), fixed phrases (at arm's length, for heaven's sake, out of harm's way, a stone's throw).
• Weight and structure: heavy, postmodified possessors go into the of-construction (the daughter of the man who lives next door); FSP/end-focus also plays a role (put the informationally prominent element last).
• Many NPs allow both: the ship's name / the name of the ship.

Special genitive constructions:

• Group genitive — see above.
• Independent (elliptic) genitive: My car is faster than John's.
• Local genitive: at the butcher's, at Tim's, to St Paul's (head noun understood).
• Double genitive (post-genitive) — of + 's combined: a friend of my father's, some friends of mine, that temper of hers; the first noun is indefinite/quantified or accompanied by a demonstrative, and a partitive reading ("one of several") is common, but is not necessary: that temper of hers does not imply several tempers.

2.4 Definiteness — the article system

Articles (central determiners) express determination/reference; Czech has no articles, so this is prime interference territory.

Definite article THE — main uses:

Indefinite article A/AN: specific but not identifiable to hearer (A man called for you); classificatory in predication (He is a teacher); numerical (a hundred; wait a minute); distributive (twice a day, 60 km an hour); generic (A tiger is a dangerous animal).

Zero article: non-count and plural count nouns with generic or indefinite reference (Water is essential; Tigers are dangerous; I bought flowers); most proper nouns; institutions in "activity" readings (go to school/church/bed/prison, be in hospital (BrE), at work, at home, at sea) vs the concrete building (walk to the school); means of transport (by bus/car/train); meals (have breakfast — but a late breakfast when modified); times/seasons (at night, at dawn, in winter); parallel structures (arm in arm, day by day, from father to son).

Specific vs generic reference — the four generic patterns:

1. The tiger is threatened with extinction. (the + singular count — the species as a class; formal/scientific)
2. A tiger is a dangerous animal. (any representative of the class — cannot be used with predicates that hold only of the whole species: *A tiger is dying out)
3. Tigers are dangerous. (zero + plural — the most neutral generic)
4. Water boils at 100 °C. (zero + non-count)

Bare plurals are the neutral form for generalizing over a class (Tigers are dangerous). Definite plurals usually identify a contextually restricted group (the tigers in this reserve), but can also denote a kind or an entire class in suitable contexts (the dinosaurs, the Romans). Do not mark a definite plural ungrammatical merely because it has a general reading.

2.5 Gender

English nouns lack the pervasive grammatical gender agreement found in Czech; gender distinctions are chiefly notional and pronominal, revealed mainly by pronoun co-reference (he/she/it), plus a few derivational markers (-ess: hostess; -ine: heroine; widow–widower) and gender-marking compounds (boyfriend, she-goat).

• Affective/personifying she for ships, cars, countries (England and her allies) — traditional, now often avoided.
• Gender-neutral strategies: he or she, singular they (Everybody thinks they are right), neutral nouns (chairperson, flight attendant).
• Czech contrast note: Czech assigns grammatical gender to every noun and marks it by agreement; English gender surfaces only in pronoun choice and is semantically driven.

Common traps (Ch. 2)

• *this criteria, *a phenomena — criteria/phenomena are plural; singular criterion/phenomenon. Data/media are increasingly treated as non-count singulars, but in academic writing the data are remains the safe form.
• news looks plural, takes singular verb; police looks singular, takes plural verb.
• Genitive apostrophe placement: the girls' books (plural) vs the girl's books (singular).
• The tigers are endangered is grammatical for an identified population. Generic A tiger is dying out fails on the intended species-level reading; use The tiger is dying out or Tigers are dying out.
• go to school (as pupil, zero) vs go to the school (the building).

Exam-style questions (Ch. 2)

2.6 A complete noun analysis

Those children's books are expensive: children is plural (irregular), countable, genitive and personal/common-gender in the traditional classification; the whole NP is definite because of those. Books is the plural count head in common case. Distinguish the noun's morphology from reference expressed by the whole NP. The research is useful contains a singular-agreement non-count use; two research projects counts projects, not an invented plural researches in that sense.

Finite verbs express person, number, tense, aspect, mood, voice; the VP is built analytically: (Modal) + (HAVE + -ed) + (BE + -ing) + (BE + -ed) + lexical verb — e.g. must have been being followed (all slots, rare).

3.1 Classes of verbs

Lexical (full) verbs (open class) vs auxiliaries (closed): primary be, have, do (also usable as lexical verbs; they inflect for person/number) and modal can, could, may, might, shall, should, will, would, must.

Regular vs irregular lexical verbs: regular verbs form past/-ed participle with -ed — allomorphs /ɪd/ after /t, d/ (wanted), /t/ after voiceless (walked), /d/ after voiced (played). Irregular verbs show suffix irregularities (keep–kept), ablaut (sing–sang–sung, write–wrote–written), invariable forms (put–put–put, cut), suppletion (go–went–gone).

Operator properties — the NICE tests (what auxiliaries can do and lexical verbs cannot; lexical verbs need do-support):

Additional modal criteria: bare infinitive complement (must go); no 3rd sg -s (*she cans); no non-finite forms (*to must, *musting) — hence periphrastic substitutes; no stacking of two modals in standard English; "past" forms with non-past, tentative meaning (Might I ask...).

The auxiliary–main verb scale (CGEL; a textbook centre–periphery gradient):

1. Central modals: can, could, may, might, shall, should, will, would, must
2. Marginal modals: dare, need, ought to, used to
3. Modal idioms: had better, would rather, have got to, be to
4. Semi-auxiliaries: have to, be able to, be about to, be going to, be bound to, be supposed to
5. Catenatives: appear to, happen to, seem to, get + -ed
6. Main verb + non-finite clause: hope to, want to

3.2 Person and number

Marked only in the present 3rd sg -s (she walks) — plus be (am/is/are; was/were) and have (has). Concord types: grammatical (The list of items is long), notional (The committee have decided — BrE), proximity/attraction (Either the students or the teacher is responsible — verb agrees with the nearer element).

3.3 Tense

Tense is the grammaticalized (morphological) expression of time reference; time is the extralinguistic concept — they must not be confused. Morphologically English has two tenses: present and past; the "future" is expressed analytically (chiefly by modal will/shall), so it is not an inflectional tense.

Uses of the simple present:

Uses of the simple past: basic use — event/state at a definite past time (with past-time adverbials: yesterday, in 1990, ago). Secondary (transferred) uses:

• Backshift in indirect speech: He said he was tired.
• Hypothetical (unreal) past: If I knew..., I wish I knew, it's time we left, I'd rather you came tomorrow — past form, present/future time.
• Attitudinal past (politeness/tentativeness): Did you want to see me? I wondered if you could help me.

Expressing future time: will/shall + inf (neutral prediction; shall formal BrE 1st person); be going to (present intention / imminent outcome of present cause: She's going to have a baby); present progressive (personal arrangement: We're leaving tomorrow); simple present (timetable); will be -ing (matter-of-course future: I'll be seeing him anyway); be to (official arrangement/command: The President is to visit Prague); be about to (imminence). Future-in-the-past: was going to, would (in narrative).

Czech contrast note: in temporal/conditional clauses Czech uses the future (až přijde), English the present (when he comes, not *when he will come); and English backshifts in reported speech where Czech keeps the original tense.

3.4 Aspect

Aspect expresses "the manner in which the verbal action is regarded or experienced" (Quirk): completed vs in progress. English has two aspects, freely combinable with both tenses (and with each other): perfect (called perfective in some older descriptions) and progressive. Do not equate them with Czech perfective/imperfective vid — the systems do not map onto each other.

Progressive (BE + -ing): action in progress, viewed as temporary, of limited duration, possibly incomplete.

• She's living with her parents (temporary) vs She lives in Prague (permanent).
• Punctual verbs → iteration or imminence: He was knocking at the door. The bus is stopping.
• Futurate: We're leaving tomorrow (arrangement).
• With always: emotive, "annoyingly often" — He's always losing his keys.
• Politeness/tentativeness: I was hoping you could help.

Stative (non-progressive) verbs — resist the progressive because they denote states, not actions: cognition (know, believe, understand, mean), emotion/attitude (love, hate, like, prefer, want), perception (see, hear — with can: I can hear music), possession/relation (have, own, belong, contain, consist, resemble, cost). When such a verb takes on a dynamic sense, the progressive returns: You're being silly (behaving), I'm seeing the doctor tomorrow (meeting), We're having dinner (eating), I'm thinking about it (pondering vs I think = opinion). Stance verbs (live, stand, sit, lie) take both, the progressive adding temporariness.

Perfect (HAVE + -ed participle): anterior event/state with current relevance at the reference point.

• Present perfect versus simple past: the present perfect often combines with since, for, just, already, yet, ever, never, so far, up to now. A finished past-time expression normally rules out the present perfect in the intended reading: *I have seen him yesterday → I saw him yesterday. This is not a ban on past-time expressions with every perfect form: By noon yesterday, she had already finished has a past perfect relative to a past reference point. Nor do for, already or yet uniquely select the perfect: She lived there for ten years and AmE Did you eat yet? are possible.
• She has gone to Paris (is still there) vs She has been to Paris (has visited and returned).
• Past perfect: past-in-the-past (When we arrived, the train had left); also backshifted perfect/past. Perfect progressive: duration + recency, possibly incomplete: I've been reading your book (still at it) vs I've read your book (finished).

3.5 Voice

Passive = BE + -ed participle; the active object becomes subject, the active subject is demoted to an optional by-phrase. Many passives are agentless (short) passives; their proportion depends on the corpus and register.

Types / gradient (CGEL):

• Central (true) passives — clear active counterpart, dynamic: The window was broken by vandals.
• Semi-passives — participle partly adjectival (gradable, very, seem): We were very interested in the results.
• Pseudo-passives / statal readings — state, no agent implied: The window was already broken when we arrived. Distinguish actional (event) vs statal (resultant state) readings — The vase was broken is ambiguous.
• get-passive (informal; often adverse or beneficial events; resultative): He got arrested. She got promoted.
• Prepositional passive: This bed was slept in by Napoleon. The doctor was sent for. (acceptable when the subject is genuinely "affected").
• Ditransitive verbs yield two passives: She was given the book (preferred) / The book was given (to) her.

Constraints: ordinary passivization requires a suitable object; prepositional passives extend this to some prepositional complements. Some transitive senses resist passivization, including the "middle" verbs of possession, suitability and measure: have (possess), lack, resemble, suit, fit, hold (contain), cost, weigh (measure sense) — The suitcase weighs 20 kg → *20 kg is weighed by the suitcase. Reflexive/reciprocal objects do not passivize. Note also the active with passive meaning (mediopassive): The book sells well. The shirt irons easily.

Functions of the passive:

1. Agent unknown, unimportant, or obvious (He was arrested).
2. FSP / information structure (Mathesius): keeps the theme in subject position and moves the rheme to end-focus (This church was designed by Wren — answer to "who designed it?"); maintains subject continuity across clauses.
3. End-weight: heavy agent NPs go comfortably last.
4. Register: impersonal scientific/academic and official style (The samples were analysed...).

3.6 Mood

Mood grammaticalizes the speaker's attitude to the factuality/actualization of the event: indicative (unmarked, factual), imperative (directive), subjunctive (including productive mandative uses and fossilized formulae). Indicative mood does not itself guarantee factual truth: Perhaps she is home.

Imperative: base form; usually no subject; negation and emphasis with do even for be (Don't be silly! Do come in!); subject retained for contrast/insistence (You stay here! Nobody move!); 1st person plural let's (Let's not argue / BrE informal Don't let's argue); tags: won't you? will you? shall we?

Subjunctive:

• Mandative subjunctive: base form (no -s, no tense, negation without do) in that-clauses after expressions of demand, recommendation, intention: verbs demand, insist, propose, recommend, request, suggest, order, urge; adjectives essential, important, necessary, vital, imperative, desirable; nouns demand, proposal, requirement, insistence. — I insist that he leave at once. It is essential that every child have the same opportunities. They requested that the meeting not be postponed. More frequent in AmE; BrE alternatives: mandative should (...that he should leave) or plain indicative (...that he leaves).
• Formulaic (optative) subjunctive — fossilized: God save the King! Long live the Queen! Heaven forbid! Come what may. Suffice it to say... Be that as it may. Far be it from me to criticize.
• Were-subjunctive (hypothetical): the only distinct form is were with 1st/3rd sg — If I were you...; I wish it were true; He behaves as if he were the boss; Were it not for your help... (inverted conditional). Informal was is common, but If I were you is fixed.

Terminology check: pedagogical descriptions sometimes call would + infinitive a conditional mood. In an analysis based on the finite verb, would is a modal auxiliary expressing remoteness, a hypothetical consequence or future-in-the-past; it is not a separate inflection of the lexical verb. State the framework before counting moods.

3.7 Modality and modal verbs

Modality = the speaker's assessment of the proposition (likelihood) or of the actualization of the event (permission, obligation, volition, ability). Standard three-way classification (Palmer):

• Epistemic — speaker's judgement of truth/likelihood: He must be tired. It may rain.
• Deontic — permission, obligation, prohibition (an authority/norm): You must hand it in by Friday. You may leave.
• Dynamic — subject-internal ability/volition/disposition: She can read Old English. He won't listen (refusal).

Quirk's binary terms map onto this: intrinsic modality ≈ deontic (+ volition), extrinsic ≈ epistemic (+ ability treated as a kind of possibility). Use epistemic/deontic/dynamic in the exam unless asked otherwise; the sample test asks precisely for "the type of modality" of may, could not, cannot.

Meanings of the individual modals:

Negation asymmetries (favourite exam traps):

• mustn't = prohibition (deontic "obliged not to"); absence of obligation = needn't / don't have to.
• Epistemic must is negated by can't: He must be at home ↔ He can't be at home (*He mustn't be at home in BrE epistemic use).
• Past epistemic judgements use modal + perfect infinitive: He must have missed the train. She may/might have forgotten. It can't have been easy.

Periphrastic (suppletive) alternatives — modals lack non-finite forms, so periphrases complete the paradigm:

• have to (obligation, typically external; supplies future/perfect/non-finite forms: will have to, has had to, to have to) vs must (often speaker-imposed). have got to — informal BrE.
• be able to (ability: She has been able to walk again since the operation). could vs was able to: for a single achieved act in the past use was able to / managed to, not could (The fire spread quickly, but everyone was able to escape, not *could escape); could is fine for general past ability and with perception verbs (I could hear music).
• be allowed to (permission), be going to (futurity/intention), be bound to (confident necessity: It's bound to rain), had better (advisability: You'd better go), would rather (preference).

3.8 Non-finite verb forms

Non-finite forms lack finite tense and agreement. A modal selects a bare infinitive (can write); what is unavailable is a non-finite form of a central modal (to must, musting). Non-finite clauses normally occur dependently, though special independent uses occur (Why wait?). English has: infinitive (to + base, or bare), gerund (-ing), present participle (-ing), past (-ed) participle. CGEL merges gerund and present participle as "-ing participle", but Dušková and the KAJL exam keep them apart — the sample test explicitly asks "infinitive, participle, gerund". Non-finite clauses are the chief instrument of complex condensation (Vachek's term): English compresses into non-finite clauses what Czech expresses by finite subordinate clauses.

Combinations (voice/aspect within non-finites):

The perfect infinitive marks anteriority relative to a reference point: past-oriented He must have left, but also completion before a future point in She hopes to have finished by Friday.

The infinitive. To-infinitive functions:

With its own subject: for + NP + to-inf (For him to resign would be a mistake).

Bare infinitive after: modals; make, let, have + O (She made him cry — but passive restores to: He was made to cry); perception verbs (I saw her leave = complete event, vs saw her leaving = in progress); help (optionally); had better, would rather; Why (not) wait?; do pro-forms (He did nothing but complain).

Gerund vs present participle — how to tell them apart (same -ing form; the difference is functional):

• Gerund examples: Smoking is dangerous (S); I enjoy reading (Od); She's fond of dancing (prep. complement); Seeing is believing (S + Cs); It's no use crying; on entering the room. Verbs taking the gerund: avoid, enjoy, finish, keep (on), mind, suggest, deny, admit, risk, miss, can't help, give up, put off.
• Participle examples: the man standing at the door (postmodifier = reduced relative); Walking home, I met an old friend (adverbial, time); Having finished the letter, she posted it (perfect participle, anteriority); I saw her crossing the street (object complement); a crying child (attribute); absolute construction: Weather permitting, we'll fly.
• Dangling participle (avoid): *Driving to work, the rain started — an ordinary supplementary participle clause normally takes the main-clause subject as its understood subject. Absolute clauses (Weather permitting, …) and conventional speaker comments (Strictly speaking, …) have different structures or interpretations.
• Past participle: perfect (has written), passive (was written); attributive (a broken window); NP postmodifier (factors related to etymology — sample test!); adverbial (Seen from above, the town looks tiny); object complement (I had my hair cut; She found the door locked).

Infinitive vs gerund with a change of meaning:

Trap: to as preposition takes the gerund — look forward to seeing you, be used to getting up early, object to being treated like that (contrast modal-like used to get up early).

3.9 Valency — clause patterns (bridge to syntax; sample test Q19)

The verb's valency determines the clause pattern (Quirk's seven clause types):

Worked authentic example (sample test Q19): (a) an existing word has acquired particular connotations or meanings → S–V–Od, monotransitive (SVO); (b) which make it non-compositional or idiomatic → S(which)–V–Od(it)–Co(non-compositional or idiomatic), complex transitive (SVOC); (c) a frogman is not a person who... → S–V–Cs, copular (SVC).

Common traps (Ch. 3)

• Tense ≠ time: past form can express present unreality (If I knew) or politeness (Did you want...?); present can express future (when he comes).
• *I have seen him yesterday — a finished past-time adverbial normally excludes the present perfect in this reading. It does not exclude the past perfect or past progressive: By noon yesterday, she had finished; I was working yesterday.
• Czech vid is not English aspect: both perfect and progressive combine with both tenses.
• mustn't (prohibition) ≠ needn't/don't have to (no obligation); epistemic negative of must is can't.
• Single achieved past act: was able to / managed to, not could.
• Passive of ditransitives: prefer the personal subject (She was given the book).
• After make in the passive, to returns: He was made to wait.
• Mandative subjunctive has no -s and negates without do: ...that he not be told.

Exam-style questions (Ch. 3)

3.10 Analyse every layer of a verb phrase

For The files may have been being checked, may is the finite modal/operator; have + been forms perfect aspect, been + being progressive aspect, and being + checked passive voice. The lexical verb is check. The phrase is an intentionally dense grammatical example, not a recommended writing style. Simpler The file has been checked has third-person singular finite has, present tense, perfect aspect, passive voice, indicative clause mood. Person/number are not independently marked on every auxiliary.

HAVE has several grammatical uses and appears in an attested sample question (sample test Q20). Distinguish these uses:

Operator or not? Auxiliary HAVE (uses 3, 4, 9) behaves as an operator: Has she left? She hasn't left. So have I. Lexical HAVE (uses 1, 2, 6, 7, 8) normally takes do-support: Did you have lunch? How often do you have your car serviced? Stative have without do (Have you any money?) survives as formal BrE — a periphery phenomenon.

Worked authentic example (sample test Q20). Identify the uses/meanings of HAVE: (a) an existing word has acquired particular connotations — perfect auxiliary: purely grammatical, forms the present perfect of acquire, carries operator properties, no independent meaning. (b) a person who happens to have bulging eyes — full lexical verb, stative possession (inalienable attribute); non-progressive; takes do-support. (c) scholars have to deal with spoken and written language — semi-auxiliary have to: periphrastic expression of deontic necessity/obligation (≈ must), supplying the forms must lacks; followed by to-infinitive; do-support (Do scholars have to...?). The three differ in status on the auxiliary–lexical scale: pure auxiliary (a) — lexical verb (b) — semi-auxiliary with modal meaning (c).

Pronouns are closed-system items which stand in for or determine NPs; unlike nouns they retain person, gender and case distinctions — the most synthetic corner of English (a periphery-of-analyticity point).

4.1 Classification of pronouns

Relative pronoun choice: who/whom — personal antecedent; which — non-personal; whose — genitive for both (a word whose meaning is fixed); that — restrictive clauses only, both antecedent types, often preferred after superlatives/all/everything (all that glitters), impossible after prepositions (*in that) and in non-restrictive clauses; zero — restrictive clauses, only when not subject (the man Ø I met vs *the man Ø met me); sentential which refers to a whole clause (He was late again, which annoyed her).

Case usage issues (favourite test points):

• It's me — normal; It is I — hyperformal.
• After than/as: than I (am) formal vs than me informal — both defensible; be consistent.
• Coordination: between you and me (*between you and I is hypercorrection); John and I as subject, John and me as object.
• who/whom: whom obligatory directly after a preposition (to whom it may concern); clause-initially who is normal even as object (Who did you see?).
• us/we + noun: we students (subject), us students (object).
• Singular they for dual-gender/indefinite antecedents: Everybody thinks they are right.

Generic reference by pronoun: one (formal: One never knows), you (informal), we (inclusive authorial — "author + readers", as in the sample text), they (people at large / the authorities: They say...); the agentless passive serves the same purpose.

4.2 Dummy (empty) IT and existential THERE

IT:

THERE (existential): There is a fly in my soup. Dummy there fills the subject slot while the notional subject stands after the verb (presentative function — FSP: introducing new referents). Evidence of subject status: inversion (Is there any hope?), question tags (There's a problem, isn't there?), raising (There seems to be a mistake), non-finite clauses (I expected there to be more people). Concord is with the notional subject (There are two flies; informal There's two flies). Distinguish the locative adverb there (Look over there! — stressed, meaningful).

4.3 Quantifiers

The assertive/non-assertive system:

Non-assertive contexts (where any-forms live): direct/indirect negation (I haven't seen anyone); questions (Did anybody call?); conditional clauses (If you need anything...); comparative clauses (better than any of us); after semi-negatives hardly, scarcely, seldom, rarely, few, little, only (hardly any money); after "negative-import" items deny, doubt, fail, prevent, reluctant, difficult, without, before, too (too tired to do anything).

Exceptions that examiners love:

• some in questions expecting/inviting "yes" — offers and requests: Would you like some tea? Could I have some water?
• any in assertive clauses = free choice ("no matter which"), usually stressed: Any child can do this. Take any card.
• some /sʌm/ stressed = "certain unspecified": Some people never learn.

Individual oppositions:

• much/many: much + non-count, many + count; in informal assertive clauses replaced by a lot of / lots of (He has a lot of money vs Does he have much money?); much/many fine in formal style and in non-assertive contexts.
• little/few vs *a little/a few: without a = negative orientation ("not enough": There is little hope; He has few friends); with a = positive ("some at least": a little hope, a few friends); quite a few* = a considerable number.
• each vs *every: each — two or more, individuating, determiner or pronoun (each of the boys; They each got a prize); every — three or more, totality-oriented, determiner only (*every of them); allows almost/nearly (almost every day) and periodicity (every two hours*).
• both/either/neither — the dual set: both = the two together; either = one of the two (or both: on either side of the river = on both sides); neither = negative dual (Neither answer is correct).
• all vs *whole: all (of) the day ~ all day vs the whole day; all is a predeterminer (all the students*).
• no/none: no = determiner (no money), none = pronoun (none of the money); none of + plural permits singular or plural agreement according to notional number and style; plural agreement is also standard in formal writing.

Common traps (Ch. 4)

• every and no are determiner-only; none and the -body/-one/-thing compounds are pronoun-only; most other quantifiers do both jobs — the sample test (Q12) asks exactly this: any discussion (determiner) vs Any of these (pronoun/head).
• Compound indefinites take singular verbs but allow singular they: Everybody has arrived, haven't they?
• Postposed adjectives with compounds: something useful, not *useful something.
• either after negatives (I don't know either of them), too only in assertive clauses.

Exam-style questions (Ch. 4)

4.4 Form, function and scope of quantifiers

A full answer gives class, inflection and function separately: these is a plural demonstrative; in these notes it is determinative, whereas in These are useful it heads the subject NP. Each of the notes is useful has singular head each; the plural noun inside the of-phrase does not control standard agreement. All the notes has all as predeterminer; every note has singular note and does not permit independent every of them.

The adverb is the most heterogeneous word class — its members have varied distributions; its centre is the -ly manner adverb, its periphery shades into particles, intensifiers and connectors (centre–periphery again).

5.1 Formation

• Adjective–adverb homomorphs (flat adverbs) — same form in both classes: fast, hard, early, late, long, straight, far, near, low, high, deep, daily/weekly/monthly (a fast car — drive fast; an early train — arrive early; a daily paper — published daily).
• Pairs with and without -ly, differentiated in meaning (see also Ch. 6): hard (intensely) / hardly (scarcely); late (after due time) / lately (recently); near / nearly (almost); high (position) / highly (figurative degree: highly praised); deep / deeply (emotionally: deeply moved); direct / directly; short / shortly (soon); free (without paying) / freely; most / mostly; right / rightly.
• Adjectives in -ly derived from nouns are not adverbs: friendly, lovely, silly, lively, cowardly — adverbial paraphrase needed: in a friendly way/manner. (kindly is both: a kindly old man / He kindly helped me.)

5.2 Classification by meaning

• Space: position/direction (here, upstairs, abroad, north).
• Time: point (now, yesterday), duration (long, briefly), frequency (often, always, twice), temporal relationship (already, still, yet, afterwards).
• Process/manner: carefully, well, fast. The PP by hand has a similar adverbial function but is not an adverb (word class).
• Degree: amplifiers (very, completely, absolutely, utterly, entirely) vs downtoners (quite, rather, fairly, somewhat, a bit, almost, nearly, hardly, scarcely). Note quite = "fairly" with gradable adjectives (quite good) but "completely" with non-gradable ones (quite impossible).
• Modality/certainty: certainly, probably, perhaps, possibly.
• Viewpoint: politically, technically, morally (speaking).
• Focusing: restrictive only, just, merely, exactly; additive also, too, even.
• Connective: however, therefore, moreover, nevertheless (→ conjuncts).

5.3 Gradation

Only short adverbs (mostly homomorphs) inflect: soon(er), fast(er), hard(er), early (earlier), late(r), near(er), long(er). -ly adverbs take periphrasis: more carefully, most efficiently. Irregular: well – better – best; badly – worse – worst; much – more – most; little – less – least; far – farther/further – farthest/furthest.

5.4 Syntactic functions

A. As clause element — Quirk's four adverbial functions:

B. Other functions: modifier of adjective (very good, utterly wrong), of adverb (very well), of PP (right through the wall), of NP/determiner (quite a party, rather a mess, almost every day, nearly all); premodifier of noun (peripheral: the then president, the above example); postmodifier (the way ahead, the meeting yesterday); complement of preposition (from here, until now, by then, since then).

Common traps (Ch. 5)

• The same adverb can be adjunct or disjunct with different meaning: He didn't answer naturally (adjunct: in an unnatural manner) vs Naturally, he didn't answer (disjunct: as was to be expected); Happily, he didn't die (disjunct — fortunately) vs He didn't die happily (adjunct — manner). Position and intonation disambiguate.
• however is a conjunct, not a coordinator: it needs its own punctuation and is mobile (He was, however, wrong), unlike but.
• Many frequency adverbs favour mid-position, with alternatives depending on scope and emphasis: He has never seen it. She is always late.
• Adjective, not adverb, after copular verbs: It tastes good. I feel bad. (see Ch. 6).
• very modifies adjectives/adverbs, not verbs: I very much agree, not *I very agree.

Exam-style questions (Ch. 5)

5.5 Word class does not determine scope

In She answered surprisingly quickly, quickly modifies the verb and surprisingly modifies quickly. In Surprisingly, she answered quickly, the initial adverb is a disjunct evaluating the event. A word ending in -ly can thus modify a phrase or comment on a clause; commas, intonation and meaning work together.

6.1 Central vs peripheral adjectives

Four criteria of adjectivehood (CGEL): (1) attributive use; (2) predicative use after copular verbs (seem); (3) premodification by very; (4) comparison. Central adjectives satisfy all four; peripheral ones fail some:

Attributive-only adjectives:

• Intensifying: utter (nonsense), sheer (luck), mere (child), complete (fool), total (stranger), absolute, pure, real, outright.
• Restrictive/particularizing: main, chief, principal, sole, only, very (the very man), exact, particular, specific.
• Adverbial in sense (related to adverbs, "transferred epithets"): a hard worker (works hard), a heavy smoker (smokes heavily), a big eater, an old friend (the friendship is old — ambiguous with central old), the late president (= deceased/former), a former colleague, the present situation, an occasional visitor.
• Denominal/classifying: criminal law, medical school, atomic scientist, woollen — non-gradable (*very criminal law).

Predicative-only adjectives:

• The a-series (a useful distributional grouping, not a claim that all members share one etymology): afraid, asleep, alive, alone, awake, aware, alike, ashamed, afloat, ablaze. Attributive substitutes: asleep → a sleeping child; afraid → a frightened child; alive → a living author / a live broadcast.
• Health senses often favour predicative position (esp. BrE): well, ill, unwell (He looks ill / attributive → a sick man).
• Adjectives requiring complementation: fond of music, subject to approval, loath to admit it, tantamount to refusal.

Postpositive position: with compound indefinites (something useful, nobody present); institutionalized (French-order) expressions: attorney general, court martial, heir apparent, poet laureate, president elect, from time immemorial; after superlatives: the best solution possible/available/imaginable; position-sensitive pairs: the members present (= attending) vs the present members (= current); the people concerned/involved/responsible vs concerned parents; the city proper.

Morphological formation: simple adjectives (old), derived adjectives (care-ful, hope-less, rain-y, nation-al, un-kind), compounds (dark-blue, well-known) and participial formations (interesting, interested). Derivation creates a new lexeme; comparative -er in older is inflection. A suffix is evidence to combine with distribution, not a sufficient test on its own (-ly also occurs in adjectives such as friendly).

6.2 Gradation (comparison)

• Inflectional -er/-est: monosyllables (older, biggest; spelling big → bigger, dry → drier); disyllables in -y (happier), -le (simpler, nobler), -ow (narrower), -er (cleverer), plus a few like common, polite, quiet (both possible: commoner/more common).
• Periphrastic more/most: longer adjectives (more interesting), participial adjectives (more tired, most bored), most disyllables; also when two adjectives are coordinated (more kind and generous than...).
• Irregular: good–better–best; bad–worse–worst; far–farther/further–farthest/furthest; little–less–least; much/many–more–most; old–older–oldest but attributive family-internal elder/eldest (my elder brother; no than-complement: *elder than me).
• later/latest (time: most recent) vs latter/last (order: second of two / final); further = also "additional" (further information).
• Non-gradable uses: absolute (dead, married) and classifying (atomic, medical) senses normally resist very and comparison. A figurative or evaluative reading can become gradable (very British, more perfect); judge the sense in context rather than banning a form across all uses.
• Equality/inferiority: as tall as; not so/as tall as; less/least expensive. (Remember fewer + count, less + non-count in careful usage: fewer mistakes, less time.)

6.3 Order of adjectives in the NP

Two complementary descriptions:

1. CGEL premodification zones: precentral (peripheral intensifiers: certain, definite, sheer) → central (gradable, subjective-to-objective: charming, big, old) → postcentral (participles, colour: retired, broken, red) → prehead (provenance and denominal classifiers, closest to the noun: French, Gothic, medical, oak).
2. Practical sequence (OSASCOMP): opinion → size → age → shape → colour → origin → material → purpose + HEAD: a charming little old round brown French oak dining table (never used with all slots at once, but the relative order holds).

Governing principle: subjective/evaluative before objective; the more inherent and permanent the property, the closer to the head.

Word-order quirk with degree words: so big a house, too difficult a task, how strange an idea (adj + a + noun) vs such a big house. enough follows its adjective: big enough.

6.4 Adjective vs adverb

• After copular verbs (verbs of sensing/seeming/becoming) the complement is an adjective: It tastes good. The music sounds sweet. I feel bad (about it). He went pale. The milk turned sour. Compare He looks well (well is an adjective meaning healthy) and He looks carefully at the map (look is lexical; carefully describes the looking). Healthy well cannot naturally describe the soup's flavour.
• Pairs (cf. Ch. 5): hard/hardly, late/lately, near/nearly, high/highly, deep/deeply, free/freely, short/shortly, right/rightly — the -ly member usually has a figurative or evaluative sense.
• friendly, lovely, silly etc. are adjectives only (paraphrase for manner: in a friendly manner).
• Participial adjectives vs verbal participles (gradience): The book is very interesting / He seems interested (adjectives: very, seem) vs The problem is being discussed (verbal passive; *very discussed).

6.5 Substantivized adjectives (adjectival heads of NPs)

Contrast full conversion to noun — takes noun inflection: a criminal, criminals; a daily (newspaper), finals, a comic, a red. The poor is only partial conversion: it keeps adjectival behaviour (gradability, adverb modification) and lacks noun inflection — another centre–periphery/gradience exhibit.

Common traps (Ch. 6)

• the late president ≠ "the president who is late" — attributive-only sense "deceased/former".
• *an asleep child → a sleeping child; *The fool is utter → impossible; the child is afraid fine.
• elder cannot be predicative or take than: my elder sister but She is older than me.
• The poor needs help — wrong concord; the poor is plural: The poor need help.
• I feel badly — hypercorrect; standard: I feel bad.
• Order: *a French charming old table → a charming old French table.

Exam-style questions (Ch. 6)

6.6 Semantic classes and complementation

Adjectives may be stative/dynamic, gradable/non-gradable in a particular sense, and inherent/non-inherent. A heavy parcel weighs much (inherent); a heavy reader reads much (non-inherent). She is being helpful construes behaviour dynamically; ordinary She is tall describes a state. Position restrictions also concern senses and constructions: asleep is normally predicative, but modified a half-asleep child is possible.

Adjectives select complements: fond of poetry (PP), eager to leave (infinitive), glad that you came (finite content clause), worth reading (-ing form). The whole AdjP may be a subject complement; its internal complement is a different level of analysis.

Tick each item you can do from memory, with an example:

Units and classes

• [ ] Define morpheme / morph / allomorph; give the three plural allomorphs and their rule.
• [ ] Distinguish free/bound and lexical/grammatical morphemes; derivation vs inflection.
• [ ] Name the three word-class criteria and say why syntax decides in English (conversion: round).
• [ ] List open classes vs closed-system items and explain "closed system".
• [ ] List the surviving English inflections and four analytic devices.
• [ ] Explain centre vs periphery (Prague School) with three morphological examples.

Nouns

• [ ] Classify irregular plurals: voicing, mutation, -en, zero, foreign (+ doublets indexes/indices).
• [ ] Singularia vs pluralia tantum: news, physics, measles vs scissors, outskirts, cattle, police; collective nouns and BrE dual concord.
• [ ] Count/non-count shifts: a paper, two coffees, a hair, chicken; partitives (a piece of advice).
• [ ] Genitive: form incl. clitic status and group genitive; six meanings; s- vs of-genitive choice factors; double, elliptic and local genitives.
• [ ] Article uses: situational, anaphoric (direct/indirect), cataphoric, sporadic, logical; the four generic patterns and why *A tiger is dying out fails.
• [ ] Gender: covert/notional, pronoun tests; dual-gender and common-gender nouns; she for ships.

Verbs

• [ ] NICE properties + the four extra modal criteria; the auxiliary–main verb scale (central modals → semi-auxiliaries → main verbs).
• [ ] Tense vs time; two morphological tenses; six uses of the present; secondary uses of the past (backshift, hypothetical, attitudinal); five+ ways to express the future.
• [ ] Progressive: temporariness, stative verbs and their dynamic shifts (You're being silly).
• [ ] Perfect: continuative, experiential, resultative, hot-news; adverb compatibility; gone/been.
• [ ] Passive: formation, gradient (central/semi-/pseudo-), get-passive, prepositional passive, middle-verb constraints, FSP functions.
• [ ] Mood: imperative grammar; mandative, formulaic and were-subjunctive + BrE should alternative.
• [ ] Epistemic vs deontic vs dynamic; two meanings each for must, may, can, will, should; mustn't vs needn't; modal + perfect infinitive; could vs was able to; periphrastic substitutes.
• [ ] Non-finites: functions of the to-infinitive; bare-infinitive contexts; gerund vs participle diagnostics; perfect/passive combinations; remember/stop/try + inf/ger contrasts.
• [ ] The seven clause patterns (SV ... SVOA) for valency questions.
• [ ] HAVE: nine uses (stative, dynamic, have got, perfect auxiliary, have to, causative + -ed/bare inf/-ing, had better) and their operator behaviour — rehearse sample-test Q20.

Pronouns and quantifiers

• [ ] Eight pronoun classes with forms; case usage issues (between you and me, who/whom, singular they).
• [ ] Relative pronoun choice incl. that/zero restrictions and sentential which.
• [ ] Dummy it (prop, anticipatory S/O, cleft) and existential there (subject evidence).
• [ ] Assertive/non-assertive/negative series; non-assertive contexts; some in offers; free-choice any; few/a few; each/every; both/either/neither; no/none.

Adverbs

• [ ] Formation: -ly spelling rules; flat adverbs; -ly pairs (hard/hardly, late/lately); friendly is not an adverb.
• [ ] Semantic classes incl. amplifiers/downtoners (quite good vs quite impossible).
• [ ] Adjunct / subjunct / disjunct / conjunct with tests and the naturally/happily ambiguity.
• [ ] Comparison incl. irregulars (well/better/best).

Adjectives

• [ ] Four adjectivehood criteria; attributive-only (utter, mere, main, late) and predicative-only (afraid, asleep) sets with substitutes.
• [ ] Postpositive patterns (something useful, president elect, members present).
• [ ] Comparison rules incl. elder/older, farther/further, less/fewer; non-gradables.
• [ ] Premodifier order (zones / OSASCOMP) with a worked NP.
• [ ] Adjective after copular verbs (tastes good, feel bad, looks well).
• [ ] Substantivized adjectives: the poor / the unknown / the English vs full conversion (a criminal).