Traditional grammar

• Concepts and ideas about the structure of language that Western societies have received from ancient Greek and Latin sources.

• The best known terms from that tradition are those used in describing the parts of speech. 

• Traditional grammar has also given us a number of other categories:

• Number

• Person

• Tense

• Active and passive voice

• Gender

The Parts of Speech

• The lucky boys found a backpack in the park and they opened it carefully

The lucky boys found a backpack in

article adjective  noun verb     article noun preposition

the park and they opened it carefully

article noun conjunction pronoun verb pronoun adverb

• Noun N       boy, backpack, dog, school, roughness, earthquake,love

• Articles Art a, an, the

• Adjective Adj happy, large, strange

• Verb  V go, talk, be, have

• Adverb Adv slowly, yesterday, really, very

• Preposition         Prep at, in, on, near, with, without

• Pronoun Pro she, herself, they, it, you

• Conjunction Conj and, because, when

Agreement

• the grammatical connection between two parts of a sentence, as in the connection between a subject (Cathy) and the form of a verb ( loves chocolate).

• Cathy loves her dog

• The verb loves agrees with the noun Cathy ( loves not love).

• Number (singular or plural)

     Person:

• 1st person = speaker ( I)

• 2nd person = hearer ( you)

• 3rd person = others ( he, she, it, ...)

• In the sentence Cathy loves her dog, we have a noun Cathy, which is 3rd person singular, and we use the verb loves (not love) to agree with the noun.

Grammatical gender

• A grammatical category designating the class of a noun as masculine or feminine (or neuter), in contrast to other types of gender.

• Natural gender is based on sex (male & female).

• Grammatical gender is based on the type of noun (masculine & feminine).

Spanish  German 

masculine (el sol = the sun) masculine (der Mond = the moon) 

feminine (la luna = the moon) feminine (die Sonne = the sun) 

neuter (das Feuer = the fire) 

Traditional Analysis

                                  First person singular     (I)   love amo

• Present Second person singular (you) love amas

• Tense Third person singular (she) loves amat

• active First person plural (we) love amamus

• voice Second person plural (you) love amatis

 Third person plural (they)   love amant