This chapter begins (1.1) by looking at prescriptive and descriptive approaches to grammar, and at different sources of linguistic data. It goes on to discuss the approach to syntax in traditional grammar, looking at grammatical categories (1.2) and grammatical functions (1.3). 1.4 considers aspects of syntax which are potentially universal before going on to consider the nature of universals, the architecture of grammars, and the Strong Minimalist Thesis. 1.5 examines parameters of variation between languages, before turning to consider the role of parameter-setting in language acquisition, and outlining Principles and Parameters Theory (1.6). The chapter concludes with a summary (1.7), and a set of bibliographical notes (1.8). There is a free-to-download Students’ Workbook that includes a separate set of exercise material for each core section and a Students’ Answerbook. The free-to-download Teachers’ Answerbook provides detailed written answers for every single exercise example. The free-to-download Powerpoints provide a more vivid and visual representation of the material in each core section of the chapter.

This chapter explores two kinds of intra-clausal relations: grammatical functions and semantic roles. Each such relation allows us to describe the dependencies that exist between a predicator and the units that it combines with to make phrases of various kinds. The grammatical functions discussed include subject, (direct and indirect) object, predicative complement, oblique complement, and modifier. The chapter explores diagnostics used to identify each of these grammatical functions in a sentence. For instance, tag questions, agreement, and subject-auxiliary inversion can tell us if a given constituent is a subject or not. We note here that a key to understanding the syntax of English is the recognition that the mapping between form (categorial type) and function is not one-to-one; mismatches, as when a clause or even a PP serves as a subject, are possible. The chapter describes cases in which a given grammatical function can have various categorical realizations. We see that semantic roles (or participant roles) are combined in the manner they are because they reflect what kind of event, state, or relation the sentence depicts. One cannot, for example, have an event of transfer without a donor, gift, and recipient. The chapter gives examples of semantic roles like agent, theme, patient, location, source, and goal. We observe that, although there are instances in which it is difficult to diagnose an argument’s semantic role, semantic roles can be of use in classifying verbs into distinct subclasses.

This chapter provides a synchronic and diachronic overview of morphological case in the Germanic languages, as well as its relationship to phonology, syntax, and semantics. After some terminological and typological preliminaries, I begin with coverage of the different case inventories found in the various Germanic languages, laying out the relevant morphological details and the tracking the changes that effected the steady reductions in the systems across historical stages. I then move on to a description of how the cases in a given inventory are distributed across grammatical environments, and how this correlates with syntactic, semantic, and lexical factors. Finally, I tackle a series of empirical and theoretical questions surrounding the interactions of case with other grammatical phenomena, which are of general cross-linguistic interest, but where the Germanic languages have played an especially important role in the literature. These include how cases relate to grammatical functions, the status of apparent oblique subjects and `quirky case‘, and more broadly what case phenomena might tell us about how morphology interfaces with syntax.