Introductory Summary The study of language has three parts: phonology, semantics, and grammar. Of the three grammar seems to be the most difficult and the last-learned by children. Phonology sees words as combinations of sounds; semantics sees words as symbols referring to things and events around us; and grammar includes morphology, which studies the forms or endings of words, and syntax in its original sense, which sees words as parts of a rule-governed system that casts words into various roles and so structures the relations between words. This summary will be a galloping glimpse of that system and its most fundamental rules, roles, and relations,-- each in three phases: excerpt (from the system of rules), example, & exegesis (identification and explanation). 1. Some words are self-sufficient (can stand alone) and others can not. Hey! On your mark; get set; go! 'Hey' and 'go' depend on no other word and stand alone; 'get' is not dependent; 'on', 'your', and 'set' are dependent. 2. Sometimes a word is implicit (understood,- thought, but not actually spoken), and sometimes the grammatical (and logical) connection between words is implicit (not outwardly signalled by sound or sequence). [Get] on your mark. The phrase depends on an implicit verb. Great! I passed! [Things are] great [because] I passed! Obvious words are often elliptical (left out), and the grammatical or logical connection between words is often assumed. 3. Only full-fledged self-sufficient expressions like sentences can perform the full functions of language: to show feelings, to give directions, and to share information. Alas! Please, help me. I am lost. Interjections certainly show feelings, as do many adverbs or elliptical adverbial clauses ([if you] please); commands give directions; and declarative sentences share information. Actually, each of the three utterances above performs all the three functions in differing degrees. 4. Only exclamations (groups of interjections) and sentences are self- sufficient expressions. Each is based on one of the two self- sufficient word-types, interjections or verbs. All other word-types are dependent. 'Oh, my goodness!' is an exclamation made up of three interjections. 'We love discovering how words work.' This is a sentence in which all the other words ultimately depend on the main verb 'love'.} 5. A simple (one-clause) sentence is the smallest self-sufficient unit of explicit, symbolic and syntactic expression/impression. A symbol has a form, a meaning, and a reference all independent of each other (ghost [cf. der Geist], das Gespenst, le fantome, larva); an expression is syntactic when the relationship of its symbols are systematically adjustable and expandable. Students love learning. Good students should actively love the cumulative learning of new ideas. Serious learning earns the love of good students. The three symbols of the first sentence are kept in the same syntactic relation in the second grammatically expanded and symbol- enriched sentence. In the third sentence the syntactic relation of the three original symbols is completely changed, but the sense is still somewhat the same. 6. Predication is what a verb does. You think; you think thoughts; you are a thinker; you solve problems. The underlined words all assert and assign a dynamic relationship: an activity, action, production, property, or class-membership to the 'you' or the subject of assertion. 7. Every word that is in a sentence, but does not predicate, depends on some other word. All words in a sentence ultimately depend on the(/a) main verb. We love discovering how words work. All the words in the subordinate clause "how words work" depend on its verb 'work', but it and all the other words directly or indirectly depend on 'love'. For example the chain of direct  dependence leads from 'words' to 'love' as follows: words- work- discovering- love. 8. Three of the four basic sentence functions are dependence-based: A connector (depends on and) connects a word to something else in the sentence; a conditioner [modifier] (depends on a word and) conditions its sense; and a complement [terminal] (depends on a word and) completes its sense (i.e., its syntactic & semantic expectations). FIND THE FOUR FUNCTIONS IN THIS SENTENCE. pred. cond. cond. compl. conn. cond. compl. 9. The parts of speech are a historically composite set of descriptive categories that are helpful in analyzing the structure of a group of words. A part of speech is a name for a semi-syntactic, semi- semantic, dependency-based classification of a word-type that is often signalled by its form: PARTS of SPEECH The PART SYNTACTIC TARGET SEMANTIC REF Historical of Speech performs Function on Type by Function type FORM VERB Predicates 0/PT naming event/action -ize NOUN Complements Pred naming object -ity PRONOUN Complements Pred referencing obj/term th/wh- ADJECTIVE Conditions Term naming property -ous ADVERB Conditions Pred/Mod naming property -ly PREPOSITION Connect Term naming static relation short CONJUNCTION Connect P/PTM naming static relation th/wh- INTERJECTION 0 0 emote (direct, inform) vowel Identify the sentence functions of the words in the following sentence, perhaps labelling them 1-4 (pred comp cond conn): Poetae enim miras fabulas de forti Perseo saepe narrat. Try another sentence from the reading.