Words, Parts of Speech and Forming Grammatically Correct Sentences

Words and Rules in a Language

Words are the most basic elements of human communication. Each language has words for every item the speaker needs to communicate with others.

Phrases are constructed out of one or more related words.

Sentences are made up of a sequence of Phrases. A sentence in any language is the minimum set of words that will communicate a complete idea.

Consider the Sentence "I know English".

"know" is the Verb that specifies the action in the sentence. "I" specifies who performs the action and is called the Subject of the sentence. "English" is the Object of the sentence as it specifies what I know.

Linguists have theorized that ALL of the world's 6,000+ languages follow an Universal Grammar in sentence construction.

• The Sentence Rule

  A complete sentence consists of a Subject Phrase, a Verb and an Object Phrase.
  The order of the Subject, Object and Verb will vary by language

Parts of Speech

The main Parts of Speech in English are:

Noun -a word (other than a Pronoun) used to identify any of a class of people, places, or things (common noun), or to name a particular one of these (proper noun)   table, dog, teacher, Canada

Pronoun -a word that can function by itself as a noun phrase and that refers either to the participants in the discourse (e.g. I, you) or to someone or something mentioned elsewhere in the discourse (e.g. he/she, it, this)   I, you, we, he/she, it, this

Verb -a word used to describe an action, state, or occurrence   (to) work, (to) learn, (to) eat

Adjective -a word or phrase naming an attribute, added to or grammatically related to a noun to modify or describe it   big, red, easy, soft

Determiner -a modifying word that is used with a noun to point to a specific instance of the noun   the, this, that

Adverb -a word or phrase that modifies or qualifies an adjective, verb, or other adverb or a word-group, expressing a relation of place, time, circumstance, manner, cause, degree   slowly, quietly, well, often

Preposition -a word governing a noun or pronoun and expressing a relation like time, place and direction to another word or element in the clause   at, to, in, over

Conjunction -a word used to connect clauses or sentences or to coordinate words in the same clause   and, but, if

In this chapter we will color-code the parts of speech to make them easy to identify.

Parts of Speech Assignment based on Usage of the Word

We will illustrate this with a sample sentence.

Sentence

Example of the Application of Grammar Rules

In this sentence:

• The Verb "wrote" specifies the action
• The action is performed by "the boy" which makes "the boy" the Subject of the sentence
• The result of the action, "a letter" is the Object of the sentence

The Subject, Verb & Object composition of a sentence is universal in all languages. The sequence of these three components (S,V,O) will be different across languages.

English is a called a Head-First language and the Verb occurs before the Object. Sentences in English will always follow the S-V-O sequence.

Bangla (like other Sanskrit-derived "Indic" languages) is called a Head-Final language. In these languages, the Verb will occur after the Object. Sentences in Bangla will always follow the S-O-V sequence.

Because of this "switch", the English phrase sequence of "Subject-Verb-Object" will always be "Subject-Object-Verb" when translated to Bangla.

• Order of Subject, Object & Verb

  English is a "Head-First" language. An English Sentence will always have a "Subject-Verb-Object" or "S-V-O" structure.
  Bangla is a "Head-Final" language. A Bangla Sentence will always have a "Subject-Object-Verb" or "S-O-V" structure.

The Subject and Object Phrases

• The Minimal Subject/Object Rule

  A minimal Subject or Object is made up of a Noun with an optional Determiner.

Determiners

You would want to use a Determiner when you are pointing to a specific person, place or thing. For example, you can say "dog" to point to a class of animals called dogs as in "dogs eat meat". Or you can be more specific and say "the dog ate my homework". If the dog you are pointing to is nearby you would probably say "this dog ate my homework" while a dog further away would be referred to as "that dog ate my homework".

There is a set of determiners that are formed as the possessive case of a pronoun or noun. Using the construct above, the dog could be "my dog", "your dog" or "his/her dog". Here, "my" means "belonging to me". "your" means "belonging to you" and "his/her" means "belonging to him/her". A longer list of possessive determiners will be shown in a later chapter.

In everyday speech, these six Determiners -- the, this, that, my, your and his/her -- and should handle most situations.

• The Determiner Rule

  A Determiner is used to specify an instance of a noun.
  • The Determiner "the" is handled by simply adding a suffix -Ta to the noun -- the dog becomes কুকুরটা (kukuroTa). "This" for nearby and "that" for distance are expressed as এই (ei) and ওই (Oi) respectively and put before the Noun. The Noun is always tagged with the -Ta suffix.
  • Possessive Pronoun Determiners like "my, your, his/her" are formed from the Pronouns by adding the "-ar" sound to the Pronoun. This will result in আমার, তোমার, ওর (amar, tOmar, Or) to describe the Noun.

Common Determiners

Determiners applied to Nouns

The starter rules have only dealt with Subject-Object-Verb structure of English/Bangla Sentences and the use of 3 Parts of Speech - Nouns, Determiners and Verbs.

These rules can be supplemented by other rules as we introduce Pronouns, Adjectives, Adverbs, Conjunctions and Prepositions into the Grammar.

Bangla Sentence Structure

To form a Sentence, all the Rules specified above will apply, especially the Subject-Object-Verb sentence construct. We just have to use the Bangla words to form the Bangla Sentence. We will continue with the sentence "The boy wrote a letter".

First, we will find the Bangla words.

The English (Head-First,SVO) sentence would be constructed in the following way:

The Bangla (Head-Final,SOV) sentence would be:

So the English
The boy wrote a letter
is
ছেলেটি একটা চিঠি লিখেছে (chheleTi ekoTa chiThi likhechhe) in Bangla.

In this example, we created a grammatically correct Bangla sentence by applying the Subject-Object-Verb structure rule to the vocabulary of the equivalent Bangla words.

The Significance of Universal Grammar Rules

This means that the language learner does not have to memorize the sequence of words in every language they learn. If they understand the universal grammar syntax, and they understand the "switches" set for the language, then the learner will be able to construct grammatically correct syntax.

All that we now need is an adequate vocabulary of Bangla words that lets us express our thoughts.

In subsequent chapters, we will set up rules for the different Parts of Speech that will make up the sentences that will best express our thoughts. We will then give you a starter set of words for each of the different Parts of Speech that you will encounter.