A Grammar of Spoken English [antikvár]

Introduction The Grammar and the Dictionary. Every language, or variety of language, is made up of an enormous number of units vaguely considered and loosely designated as words. In each language (or variety of language), a word has one or more meanings or semantic functions. In order to know what particular meaning or meanings have become associated with a given word, we consult a dictionary. Thus the dictionary tells us that the word horse is associated with a certain animal, either by describing the animal or by giving the equivalent or equivalents of the word in the language assumed to be that of the reader. The dictionary tells us that the word take corresponds to certain activities (such as seizing, conveying, conducting, etc.), either by describing them or by giving the equivalents of the word in some other language. In similar ways, the dictionary furnishes us with the meanings of such words as good, five, quickly, or yesterday. All words having a character comparable to those quoted above are considered by Sweet^ as being independent sense-units, and he terms them Full Words. But in addition to such full words we find words which have little or no independent meaning, but merely express relations between the different parts of a sentence; instead of having distinct semantic functions they have syntactic or grammatical functions. Such words (e.g. of, to, the, is) are termed by Sweet Form-words. The distinction made between full words and form-words is in many ways a convenient one, but, as Sweet himself observes,^ "it is not always easy—or even possible—to draw a definite line between full words and form-words." The dictionary, then, gives us information concerning the functions (both semantic and grammatical) of words considered in detail. One who had no conception whatever of language and its nature might imagine that such information is all sufficient, » New English Grammar, §§52, 58. ^ Ibid., §61.