Analyzing Grammar: An Introduction

Citation

Kroeger, P. R. (2005). Analyzing Grammar: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press.

Chapter Summary

The book has seventeen chapters, a Swahili data appendix, a glossary, references and two indexes (languages and subjects), in about 384 pages. In the preface the author describes it as a general introduction to morphology and syntax that is not about English or any single language, although English examples are used, especially for syntax, alongside examples from many other languages. The order runs from word structure to sentence structure and then back to more advanced points of morphology: Chapters 2 to 5 lay down basic tools, Chapters 6 to 12 work through parts of the clause and sentence, and Chapters 13 to 17 return to morphology.

Chapter 1: Grammatical Form

The opening chapter introduces form, meaning and use. Its opening example is the greeting "hello": its importance lies less in the information it conveys than in its use in social interaction, and in Teochew a friend is greeted with a question about whether one has eaten. The point is that grammatical analysis starts from the pairing of forms with meanings and functions.

Chapter 2: Analyzing Word Structure

An introduction to morphology and to techniques for analysing words. The chapter's sections deal with identifying the component parts of a word, the kinds of parts that combine into words, a method for displaying their arrangement, and an overview of the types of word structure found in the world's languages. It states that more complicated morphological structure is taken up in Chapters 13 to 17.

Chapter 3: Constituent Structure

The first chapter on syntax. Words are classified into syntactic categories (the traditional parts of speech) and grouped into constituents. The chapter discusses the evidence used to identify constituents and categories and then introduces tree diagrams for showing both grouping and linear order.

Chapters 4–5: Semantic Roles and Grammatical Relations; Lexical Entries and Well-Formed Clauses

Chapter 4 introduces semantic roles and grammatical relations, and works with phrase structure rules, a notation the book returns to later. Chapter 5 turns to the lexicon: it describes the lexical entry as the place where information specific to a word is stored, and concentrates on the properties of verbs that determine the structure of the whole clause.

Chapters 6–8: Noun Phrases; Case and Agreement; Noun Classes and Pronouns

Chapter 6 covers determiners, complements and adjuncts in the noun phrase, possessors, and some structural features of English noun phrases. Chapter 7 concerns the devices by which languages mark grammatical relations: word order, case and agreement. It starts from Malayalam, where word order is relatively free. Chapter 8 deals with sub-classes of nouns (gender and noun classifiers) and with pronoun systems.

Chapters 9–12: Tense, Aspect, and Modality; Non-Verbal Predicates; Special Sentence Types; Subordinate Clauses

Chapter 9 distinguishes tense, aspect and modality, noting that single affixes often encode more than one of them. Chapter 10 covers non-verbal predicates; the contents give no further detail. Chapter 11 treats questions, commands and other sentence patterns, concentrating on grammatical structure, with declaratives as the basic type. Chapter 12 introduces recursion and the embedding of one clause inside another.

Chapters 13–17: Derivational Morphology; Valence-Changing Morphology; Allomorphy; Non-Linear Morphology; Clitics

These chapters complete the book's treatment of morphology. Beyond the titles, the contents give no detail on them; Chapter 2 refers forward to them for the more complicated aspects of word structure.

Appendix: Swahili Data for Grammar Sketch

The closing exercise gives data on Swahili and asks the student to write a short prose "grammar sketch", using charts or trees where helpful, with a suggested outline.

Key Concepts

Chapters 1–3: Grammatical Form; Analyzing Word Structure; Constituent Structure

• Form, meaning and use: the idea that grammatical analysis must account for how forms are paired with meanings and used in interaction.
• Morphology and syntax: the structure of words and the structure of phrases and sentences, usually treated as separate sub-fields.
• Syntactic categories and constituents: the classes into which words fall and the groups into which they cluster.
• Tree diagrams: a method for representing grouping and word order.

Chapters 4–8: Semantic Roles to Noun Classes and Pronouns

• Lexical entry: the information about pronunciation, meaning and grammatical behaviour specific to one word.
• Complements and adjuncts: dependents that are selected by a head and those that are freely added.
• Grammatical relations: subject, object and the like, marked by word order, case or agreement.
• Gender and noun classifiers: two ways of sub-classifying nouns.

Chapters 9–17: Tense, Aspect, and Modality to Clitics

• Tense, aspect and modality: the three kinds of information often encoded in verbal morphology.
• Speech acts and sentence types: statements, questions and commands and the patterns that correspond to them.
• Recursion and embedding: a clause placed inside another clause.
• Derivation, allomorphy and clitics: the topics of Chapters 13 to 17, named in their titles.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• Clear statement of purpose. The preface says the book is for beginners who know only the most basic vocabulary for talking about language, and that it aims to help students write good descriptive grammars. It is not tied to one language, and examples come from many languages.
• Prose description as well as notation. The preface says that basic formal notations are introduced but equal emphasis is given to prose description, which suits readers heading toward descriptive work as well as theory.
• Topics beyond the usual first course. The author adds the typology of case and agreement, gender and pronoun systems and a short introduction to tense, aspect and modality, because the book is meant as a first step toward fieldwork on under-described languages.
• Practice built in. The publisher stresses a diverse range of problem sets and exercises, a glossary and a language index, and the Swahili appendix asks for a full grammar sketch as a capstone.

Limitations

• Not a fieldwork manual. The preface says that this is not a book about linguistic field methods, though methodology is addressed in places. Students planning documentation work will need a dedicated guide to elicitation, recording and ethics.
• Scope is morphology and syntax. As the preface and publisher description state, the subject is the structure of words and sentences; readers who need phonology, semantics or discourse analysis will need other books.
• English as the base language. The preface acknowledges that, because the book is written in English, English examples illustrate a number of points, especially in syntax, alongside examples from other languages.

Where It Fits in the Course

Among the typology and fieldwork books in this course list, Kroeger is the hands-on grammar-analysis book. Velupillai's An Introduction to Linguistic Typology surveys the major domains of grammar using data from hundreds of languages, and is more a map of cross-linguistic variation than a training in analysis; reading it beside Kroeger's Chapters 7 to 9 is a good pairing. Thomas Payne's Describing Morphosyntax is organised as an outline of a descriptive grammar for field linguists and is the natural next step once Kroeger's techniques are secure.

Bowern's Linguistic Fieldwork: A Practical Guide and Meakins, Green and Turpin's Understanding Linguistic Fieldwork cover elicitation, data management and ethics, the aspects Kroeger leaves aside. Croft's Typology and Universals is the advanced account of the method and theory of typology, for readers who want explanation of the patterns Kroeger helps them describe.

How to Use This Book

The book is meant for undergraduates and beginning graduate students who have had a first course in linguistics and are ready to learn to analyse grammar. The preface assumes only some knowledge of the most basic vocabulary for talking about language.

A practical plan: read Chapters 1 to 3 closely, since the techniques of identifying parts, constituents and categories are used throughout. Work through Chapters 4 to 8 next. Chapter 7 repays extra time because it introduces the three devices for marking grammatical relations. Choose among Chapters 9 to 12 according to the course, then read Chapters 13 to 17 as a morphology unit. Do the exercises as you go, since the book is built around analysis.

Finish with the Swahili grammar sketch in the appendix. If you are preparing for fieldwork, pair the book with a fieldwork guide, and if you want breadth across languages, read Velupillai alongside it.