TEMA 1 Core relevant themes of the English Grammar

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AULA 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
ESTUDOS AVANÇADOS DE 
LÍNGUA INGLESA – ESTUDOS 
GRAMATICAIS 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Prof. Leonardo Felipe Salmoria 
 
 
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In the following set of lessons, you will get to the core of the most relevant 
themes of the English Grammar, by using a descriptivist approach, in opposition 
to prescriptivism. The aim of this Grammar Studies is to describe the usage of 
the language, considering its set of rules, enabling you to evoke your very critical 
sense towards it. 
By the end of this lesson, you will be able to understand the most usual 
structural mistakes committed by Portuguese speakers through a thorough 
comparative grammar analysis, considering verbal inflection, agreements, and 
vocabulary errors. The lack of such comprehension is a blunder presented in a 
vast majority of English textbooks. 
TEMA 1 – NOTIONS OF MISTAKE, ERROR, AND MISCONCEPTION 
 According to Longman dictionary of contemporary English (1990, p. 665-
666), one of the entries for the word mistake reads: “to have a wrong idea about; 
something done wrongly, or something that should not have been done (...).” 
Following this conception, we should start this theme with a rather rhetorical 
question: What’s the difference, if there’s any, among Mistake, Error, and 
Misconception? 
1.1 Mistakes 
Mistakes are generally noticed by the person who commits it and are 
usually the result of carelessness. In these cases, the person is able to spot and 
correct it in due time. 
 [1] “As I was revising my text, I noticed I spelled ‘butter’ with a single ‘t’!” 
 Once the person knows it is wrong to spell ‘butter’ with a single ‘t’, in this 
case it is a mistake, or even an honest mistake. Some misspellings also occur in 
spoken language, referred to as mispronouncing though, but are thus easier to 
recast and correct. 
[2] “Mischievous is a bad adjective.” 
The stressed syllable in ‘Mischievous’ is ‘Mis’, not ‘chie’, also 
mispronounced by many as ‘chee’, but in fact it sounds like ‘chuh’. The stressed 
syllable in the word ‘Adjective’, also in [2], is ‘dje’, not ‘A’ as many does. 
From a Linguistic perspective, such deviations do not null the meaning of 
what is written, or uttered, once they belong to a communicative group, prone to 
 
 
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understand even the subtlest linguistic codes, like abbreviations and slangs (Swan, 
2005). 
1.2 Errors 
Errors are, though, carried on due to a lack of knowledge, or a 
misunderstanding, where the person is not aware of its consequences. In these 
cases, someone else, a teacher or an instructor, can come to their aid by 
intervention. 
 [3] “All birds can fly.” 
 According to [3] some species of birds are falsely perceived as flying, such 
as penguins and chickens. So, generalisations and assumptions are the very 
source of errors, because they fail to encompass minority groups, or any other 
variation. 
 [4] “Australia’s capital city is Sydney.” 
 Being Sydney the most notorious city, due to a lot of factors, such as the 
Olympics, or the worldwide famous milestones, people tend to take it as the federal 
centre of the country for its relevance, in fact Canberra, located over 150 miles 
away from Sydney, is Australia’s official capital city. 
 From a grammatical perspective, Errors are essentially the target 
prescriptivist grammarians aim at. It works as some sort of validation for its 
regulation, once the person who commits it hardly ever notices their error. 
 [5] “She don’t want to talk about it.” {incorrect} 
 [5a] “She doesn’t want to talk about it.” {correct} 
 In fluent speech, though, such agreement errors are usual among native 
speakers and can be described by Social Linguistics, a line of study that focuses 
on the historical change of the language as a living subject, shifting accordingly to 
a natural process (Schendl, 2001). You can find more about agreement errors in 
the upcoming sections. 
1.3 Misconceptions 
 Misconceptions are, nevertheless, a bit more complex. It is essentially an 
error, but it also refers to a range of beliefs and therefore lays beyond intervention, 
because once this false idea makes sense to the individual it will be nearly 
impossible to uproot it. 
 
 
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 [6] “The Earth isn’t round, it’s flat.” 
 Within the political spectrum we generally end up with fixed expressions 
such as: 
 [7] “All politicians are corrupt.” 
 All political stands are based on a particular ideology, and for that reason 
serve to a purpose, in which misconceptions like in [7] are widely spread, hence 
belonging to an inaccurate idea. 
 Grammatical misconceptions usually refer to the sought after the so-called 
Logical Pattern. However, no such thing is possible concerning Grammar Studies, 
once the abstractions that it raises are sometimes illogic (Murphy, 2018), like the 
jumble mess of irregular verbs. 
 [8] “Today I’ll eat Asian food, yesterday I eated Italian food.” {incorrect} 
 [8a] “Today I’ll eat Asian food, yesterday I ate Italian food.” {correct} 
 Or even when it comes to pronunciation rules: 
 [9] “I read on the news we should read more.” 
 The past tense of ‘read’ sounds like ‘red’. 
 The list of irregular verbs does not always follow a morphological pattern for 
their proper inflexion, so the Logical Pattern here leads to the misconception in [8]. 
The same example is also used to describe an error, because outside factors, 
such as previous knowledge of logical patterns, are then dismissed. 
 Even being merely an act of carelessness, mistakes can easily become 
errors that might eventually lead to misconceptions. And for that reason, here 
we intervene, working together, to avoid false ideas related to English grammar 
once and for all. 
TEMA 2 – STRUCTURE 
When we reflect about grammar studies, we think about structure, and 
according to the linguist Michael Swan, the English language`s “ancestor Anglo-
Saxon was a morphologically complex language (...). Modern English has traded 
in most of its grammatical inflections for word order and the use of function words.” 
(Swan, 2005, pg. 23). 
On the other hand, Portuguese grammarians refer to structure as some sort 
of homogeneity of a functional language and regards what Swan (2005) considers 
as a trade, the architecture of the language, which registers its diversity in a 
diachronic way (Bechara, 2001). 
 
 
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2.1 Comparative grammar 
Considering Grammar errors here we stand at the threshold of 
comparative grammar: Both English and Portuguese grammars share very similar 
structural rules, such as the syntactic word order. 
English {subject, verb, object}: “The Earth is round.” 
Portuguese {subject, verb, object}: “A Terra é redonda”. 
 Such similarities may give the false idea that both grammars are identical, 
structurally, leading the English learner to mistakenly take all the other rules for 
granted (Ting et al., 2010). 
Both English and Portuguese share the same Indo-European family, 
however they belong to different linguistic branches, being Portuguese a Romance 
language and English a Germanic language. But even so, there are several 
similarities apart from only word order; for example, the word classes are basically 
similar: Nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, and also function words such as 
articles, prepositions, pronouns, numerals and conjunctions. 
Another feature that causes big resemblance is the plural form with ‘s’. 
Nevertheless, we must be careful with this rule, since some nouns in English 
possess plural forms without the final ‘s’, which is added, unconsciously, by 
Portuguese speakers. Let’s take a closer look at a stretch from the song 
“Daughters” by the British band Wild Beasts: 
[10] “And all the pretty children sharpening their blades.” 
The possessive noun ‘their’ agrees with the plural noun ‘children’. 
Portuguese speakers struggle with the lack of its final ‘s’: 
[10a] “Andall the pretty childrens sharpening their blades.” 
The addition of the ‘s’, not only in ‘children’, but also in ‘mice’ - happening to 
become ‘mices’ or even ‘mouses’1, or ‘women’ becoming then ‘womens’ or even 
‘womans’ - is a usual error committed by Portuguese speakers, due to the slightest 
difference within its counterpart similarities. You will learn more about Plurals in 
the upcoming sections. 
 
 
1 ‘Mouse’ here meaning small rodents, not the computer accessory, which allows the plural 
‘mouses’. 
 
 
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2.2 Prescriptivism and Descriptivism 
According to the linguist Guy Cook (2003): “Dialects are regional and social-
class varieties of the language which differ from the standard in pronunciation, 
grammar, and vocabulary, and are seldom written down at all.” (Cook, 2003, p.13). 
 Standard is the term used to describe the teaching of English grammar, 
however dialect stands as an opposition to it, and is utterly subservient to it. Also 
referred to as RP (received pronunciation), many grammar studies focus on 
standard, for its pedagogical purposes. 
 Let’s take the usage of slangs, for example, in Kylie Minogue`s summer hit 
“Padam Padam”: 
 [11] “I know you wanna take me home, Padam.” 
 The slang ‘wanna’ is actually the contracted pronunciation of “want to” and 
is widely written down in lyrics, which makes it difficult for English learners to take 
it as an error. The famous memoir book “This is going to hurt” by Adam Kay, which 
tells the story of a young physician at his early years as general practitioner at the 
A&E unit of a big London hospital, would be referred to as: 
 [12] “This is gonna hurt.” 
 The same linguistic process in [11] happens in [12], and people hardly ever 
write it down, especially in formal writing. 
Basically, Grammar prescribes the rules to use a language disregarding any 
outside factor, on the other hand Linguistics describes the way grammar rules are 
used considering every outside aspect, such as social and historical context, and 
it is often referred to as dialect (Cook, 2003, p. 15). The relation that is established 
between Grammar and Linguistics can be defined as co-dependency, and for that 
reason we are going to use both in this course. 
THEME 3 – AGREEMENT ERRORS 
Comparing both English and Portuguese grammars, we stumble by the 
agreements; in both cases we have some peculiarities, especially regarding the 
infamous verb ‘to be’ – We deliberately skipped the pronoun ‘it’ due to a lack of an 
equivalent, and also to better exemplify the comparison with Portuguese: 
 
 
 
 
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Chart 1 – Comparison between subject pronouns 
Subject 
Pronoun 
Pronomes 
Pessoais 
Subject Pronoun 
+ Verb To Be 
Pronomes Pessoais 
+ Verbo Ser/Estar 
I Eu I am Eu sou/estou 
You Tu (vulgar 
“você”) 
You are Tu és/estás/Você 
é/está 
He/She Ele/Ela He/She is Ele é/está / Ela é/está 
We Nós 
(vulgar “a 
gente”) 
We are Nós somos/estamos / A 
gente é/está 
You Vós (vulgar 
“vocês”) 
You are Vós estais/Vocês estão 
They Eles/Elas They are Eles são/Eles estão 
Fonte: Leonardo Felipe Salmoria, 2023 
The chart 1 shows how different is the agreement in Portuguese, when 
compared with English, and how dim is the latter range of vocabulary, where 
several varieties happen in its counterpart language. The cliché verb ‘to be’ is often 
regarded as a too basic grammar rule, so many intermediate to advanced level 
students tend to mistakenly disregard it. However, many grammar errors come 
from those minor mistakes, as you can see in the upcoming sections. 
3.1 Possessive pronouns 
 When you need to know the owner of a specific thing, you use “a possessive 
pronoun to indicate that something belongs to someone or is associated with 
them.” (Collins Cobuild, 1990, p. 32). As the Portuguese grammar prescribes 
(Bechara, 2001), the possessive pronoun in the second person singular is 
‘Teu/Tua’ {Your}, but in the everyday communication Brazilians use ‘Seu/Sua’ 
{Your} instead. 
 [13] “Ela é muito sortuda, sua casa é linda” {third person} 
 [14] “Esta casa é sua ou dela?” {second person} 
 In [13] the possessive ‘Sua’ refers to ‘Ela’ {She}, the third person, not the 
second person. In English the same construction in [13], considering its meaning 
in everyday communication, would not make sense: 
 [13a] “She’s very lucky, your house is beautiful.” {incorrect} 
 
 
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 [13b] “She’s very lucky, her house is beautiful.” {correct} 
The usage of the possessive pronoun in Portuguese is subjected to double 
meaning in discourse. ‘Seu/Sua’ can be used as second person, only if the 
personal pronoun agrees with: ‘Tu = Teu/Tua’ and ‘Você = Seu/Sua’. The trouble 
happens in: 
 [15] “Ela dirigiu seu carro”. 
 Who is the owner of the car in [15] is not quite clear, it could be either the 
second person or the third person. To avoid this type of ambiguity, it is thus used 
the possessive form ‘Dele/Dela’ (Bechara, 2001). However, such uncertainty does 
not happen in English: 
 [15a] “She drove her car” {The third person is the owner} 
 [15b] “She drove your car” {The second person is the owner} 
 In [15a] we actually use the object pronoun ‘Her’ to refer to the owner of the 
property, and the possessive pronoun ‘Hers’ as it follows: 
[14a] “Is this house yours or hers?” 
Based on the widely usage of ‘Seu/Sua’ instead of ‘Teu/Tua’ in both formal 
and informal speeches in Brazilian Portuguese, the error in [13a] is thus explained 
due to the false perception of a logical pattern of translation. 
3.2 The plurals 
Despite the usual errors with agreements concerning noun subjects, 
another usual and problematic would be the number agreement, or in plain 
language, the plurals. The Portuguese language is notorious for its strict rules of 
number agreements, differently from English rules, though. 
[16] “Os barcos azuis atracados ao porto” {3rd person plural} 
[16a] “O barco azul atracado ao porto” {3rd person singular} 
There are a total of four plural markers in [16], and when we compare with 
the same construction in English, it is possible to verify only one marker: 
[16b] “The blue boats docked in the harbour” {3rd person plural} 
[16c] “The blue boat docked in the harbour” {3rd person singular} 
In Portuguese the plurals are majorly marked with the letter ‘S’, which makes 
the usage of ‘Other’ vs. ‘Others’ indeed disturbing. It is very common for 
Portuguese speakers to confuse their usage. 
[17] “The others people” {Incorrect} 
[17a] “The other people” {Correct} 
 
 
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In the case above the word ‘people’ is a plural noun, singular though, 
agreeing to other, not others. Even if the noun is in a plural form, the rule still 
applies. 
[18] “The other players” 
The word ‘Others’ is a plural form, however it does not behave as a 
determiner. It is a pronoun referring to more than one person: 
[19] “Some actors are less talented than the others.” 
According to Michael Swan (2005), the different forms of the verb ‘to be’ is 
a trace of complex agreement rules from Indo-European languages, especially in 
the third-person with the addition of the letter ‘s’ in the end, without meaning 
plurals. You will learn more about verb tenses in the upcoming sections. 
THEME 4 – VERBAL ERRORS 
 The verb as a word class is divided in three groups: The full verbs, that act 
strictly as main verbs; The modal auxiliary verbs, that obviously act only as 
auxiliary verbs; And the primary verbs, that can act as both main verbs, and 
auxiliary verbs (Quirk et al., 2005). From a morphological perspective, the full verbs 
are split into regular and irregular verbs, which makes the tense inflexion such a 
hard task for Portuguese speakers. 
4.1 Present Continuous vs. Present Perfect 
 There are two tenses in English, the present and the past, and each one 
possesses a well-defined purpose. Some present tenses are used to describe both 
the future and the past, and onthe other hand, some past tenses are used to 
describe present situations due to the Perfect Aspect. In Portuguese it is very 
uncommon to use the perfect aspect to describe a past ongoing situation. 
 [20] “Eu tenho andado aprendendo inglês desde pequeno.” 
 [20a] “Eu estou aprendendo inglês desde pequeno.” 
To explain the function of the verbal phrase in [20a], grammarians use the 
term ‘Syncretism’, which is basically a combination of two aspects of a progressive 
tense: View and Fase (Bechara, 2001), and such cases are remotely similar to 
English, and for that reason [20] is not a grammatically correct sentence. 
[20b] “I am learning English since I was little.” {incorrect} 
 
 
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Considering the more usual construction in [20a], its English counterpart 
[20b] is using the Present continuous, which is an error, once the standard is using 
the Present Perfect: 
[20c] “I have been learning English since I was little.” {correct} 
The compound tenses in Portuguese to describe past ongoing situations, 
considering the exact form of English, is not possible, for that reason errors like 
[20b] are very usual for Portuguese speakers, especially Brazilian, once Gerund is 
not so usual in Portugal. You can find more about the Perfect Aspect in the 
upcoming lessons. 
4.2 There + be as a topic introducer 
 Another common grammar error committed by Portuguese speakers, due 
to Portuguese grammar rules, is the usage of the auxiliary verb ‘Ter’ {Have} as a 
substitute to the impersonal verb ‘Haver’ {There is/are}. According to Brazilian 
Portuguese linguist Marcos Bagno (2016), these verbs are exchangeable due to a 
natural social linguistic evolution. However, as an auxiliary verb, its function is to 
provide assistance to a main verb. The meaning of the verb ‘Ter’ {Have} as a main 
verb is the source of the usual error: 
 [21] “Have a film in which the ending is very unexpected.” {Incorrect} 
 [21a] “There’s a film in which the ending is very unexpected.” {Correct} 
 The Speaker is thus meaning there is a film with an unpredictable ending. 
Such phenomenon happens as a result of following strictly Portuguese grammar 
rules, due to formality in use: 
 [21b] “Há um filme cujo final é muito inesperado” {formal, less used} 
 [21c] “Tem um filme que o final é muito inesperado” {informal, more used} 
 The Portuguese light verb ‘Ter’ as an auxiliary verb is used more widely in 
both formal and informal speeches in Portuguese, and the lack of knowledge of its 
usage turns it into an error in English. 
 Famously, or infamously, horror films are popular among young Brazilians. 
Their lack of originality makes them object of great fascination, especially their 
cliché lines such as: “Is anybody there?” seconds before the clueless victim enters 
a dark room after a chilling clatter, and there is blood splatter all around. In both 
dubbed and subtitled versions we find a common ground; the auxiliary verb ‘Ter’: 
 [22] “Tem alguém aí?” 
 
 
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 Knowing the meaning of ‘Ter’ as ‘To have’, and considering the young age 
of the audiences, the ossification of this error ignites the construction: 
 [22a] “Have anybody there?” {Incorrect} 
[22b] “Is anybody there?” {Correct} 
The bizarre construction [22a] may be considered a misconception, once it 
is very hard to uproot it from most English students, especially intermediate to 
upper levels. 
THEME 5 – VOCABULARY ERRORS 
 As we have seen previously, grammar and linguistics possess a co-
dependency relationship, and for that reason we are going to focus in two particular 
errors, one in the syntax realm, the negation, and the other in the semantics realm, 
the false cognates, being the latter the utmost of the comparative grammar of this 
lesson. 
5.1 Double negatives 
 Syntactically, a clause negation refers to sentences which are negative in 
meaning (Quirk et al., 2005), and that is where the double negative error may 
occur. Even being a first-hand portrayal of black working-class women during the 
civil rights movement, “The help” poses a polemic once this book was written by a 
white woman, nevertheless here we can find a few examples of the usage of 
double negatives: 
 [23] “Leefolt don’t put up no dinky card tables like the other ladies do.” 
 Set in the early 1960’s, the first-person narrative focuses on illiterate black 
women, so double negatives and other agreement errors were usual. However, 
the English grammar prescribes the combination of negative and non-assertive 
items in a clause negation (Quirk et al., 2005), as we can verify in the stretch of 
British duo Aquilo’s song “Silent movies”: 
 [24] “Well I don’t know anyone else and I’m always all by myself.” 
 The intuitive construction ‘I don’t know nobody else here’, even happening 
commonly in informal speech, still poses an error, and due to its informality, it is 
hard for Brazilian speakers to spot it as an error, and they eventually end up writing 
them down in formal situations. The chart 2 illustrates the most common non-
assertive items to properly build up negative clauses: 
 
 
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Chart 2 – Negatives and their non-assertive items 
Negative Non-assertive 
No Any 
Neither Either 
None Any 
Nothing Anything 
Nobody Anybody 
No one Anyone 
Nowhere Anywhere 
Fonte: Leonardo Felipe Salmoria, 2023 
 Auxiliary verbs are generally used to build up negative clauses, so non-
assertive items in the chart 2 can be used. As we compare two obscure artists, 
Dave Ronald and Patrick Wolf, we can see two different negative sentences: 
 [25] “I don’t have time to waste. You’ve kind of left me sore.” 
 [26] “I’ve got no time for victims, and I don’t think it was all that bad.” 
 In both cases time is not expendable, but we have verb negation in [25] and 
a clause element negation in [26]. In Dave Ronald’s song “I don’t have time to 
waste” [25] it is used the formal contracted structure of auxiliary ‘do’ with ‘not’, 
whilst Patrick Wolf’s sinister song “The childcatcher” [26] presents a more British 
usage of negative structure by negating the element ‘time’ not the verb ‘have’. 
 As in Portuguese the double negative is not an error, but simply a matter of 
Pragmatics, once it is agreed that the occurrence of two negative elements in 
clause negation works more like an emphasis, it is then accepted for Portuguese 
speaker that this rule does apply in English, when, in fact, it does not. 
5.2 False cognates 
 Considering language in use, referred to as Linguistic rather than Grammar, 
another very common mistake relies on vocabulary; The false cognates, when it 
comes to comparative grammar, is a common sense, and also deserves more 
attention. 
 Extremely common in any foreign language learning process, a false 
cognate is perceived as words sharing similar sounds, spelling or structures as the 
learner’s mother tongue, when in fact their meaning is far from alike. 
 
 
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Chart 3 – Most usual false cognates 
English spelling Portuguese definition Portuguese false cognate 
Pretend Fingir Pretender 
Intend Pretender Entender 
Fabric Tecido Fábrica 
Push Empurrar Puxar 
Sensible Sensato/a Sensível 
Terrific Excelente/Ótimo Terrível 
College Faculdade Colégio 
Ingenuity Criatividade Ingenuidade 
Fonte: Leonardo Felipe Salmoria, 2023 
 And the list goes on. But, as you can see in the chart 3, some false cognates 
can lead to alarming or embarrassing situations, as much as any grammar mistake, 
error, or even misconception. On the contrary, a good dictionary always near is 
never embarrassing. 
 
 
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COOK, G. Applied linguistics. First edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 
2003. 
Collins Cobuild – English Grammar. First edition. Suffolk:William Collins Sons & 
Co Ltd, 1990. 
Longman dictionary of contemporary English. Essex: Longman Group UK 
limited, 1990. 
QUIRK, R. et al. A comprehensive grammar of the English language. Twentieth 
edition. Essex: Longman Group Limited, 2005. 
SCHENDL, H. Historical linguistics. First edition. Oxford: Oxford University 
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SWAN, M. Grammar. First edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. 
TUNG, S.-H.; MAHADHIR, M.; CHANG, S.-L. Grammatical Errors In Spoken 
English Of University Students In Oral Communication Course. Gema online 
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<https://core.ac.uk/display/11491394?utm_source=pdf&utm_medium=banner&ut
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