Grammar

Here are some examples of Scots which were culled from the internet through Google:

1. A sortae contrast tae the movie o life
2. Wis Wee Jock no wan o they West Highland terriurs?
3. They're no real dugs attaw - jist ornarymental sortae hings.
4. We jist sortae went to the door in proper rotation
5. Ye jist cannae reason wi Voldie when he's in that kindae mood.
6. I hae a kindae saft accent
7. It's kindae based oan an amalgam o incidents an observations
8. Morally he's probably right, but I do kindae think that dozens of strikers in the league would have done precisely what I suggested

All of these examples contain the 'words' sortae or kindae.  This exercise is about the grammar of these words.

1. The words sortae and kindae are each contractions of two separate words.  What are the two separate words in each case?

Answer...

sort of and kind of

2. What part of speech or lexical category do the words sort and kind belong to in the formal, standard English versions of 1 and 4, which are given below:
• A sort of contrast to the movie of life
• You just can't reason with Voldie when he's in that kind of mood

Answer...

They are nouns.

3. How did you work out that sort and kind belong to that lexical category?

Answer...

You can use a substitution test, as in A type/manner of contrast to the movie of life.  Since manner is a noun, then sort must also be a noun (in this context at least – there is another word sort which is a verb, as in he sorted the clean shirts from the dirty ones).  You can also think about the grammatical context: what kinds of words appear in the frame that _____ of [noun]; for example – that piece of pie looks delicious; that smell of gas hasn't gone away

4. When sort and kind join with of to make sortae and kindae in 3 and 7, has the lexical category of the newly formed word changed?  If so, what to?

Answer...

Yes.  Again, use a substitution test.  What kinds of word can replace kindae in 7?  Here are some possible candidates:
I do really/honestly/truly/partially think that dozens of strikers …
All of these words are adverbs (the –ly ending is often a marker that a word is an adverb); they show the extent to which the speaker is confident of the assertion he's about to make: really and honestly make a strong assertion, partially and kindae make a weaker assertion, so the speaker isn't really as confident about the truth of what he's saying.

5. What's the point of knowing this?

Answer...

One of the ways in which languages change is that forms which have a very clear meaning on their own (like kind and sort) can sometimes come to have a grammatical or even pragmatic meaning over time, particularly when they occur in a particular context (like kind of/kindae and sort of/sortae).  Other examples of this kind of change include the use of like and all in the contexts be like and be all as markers of reported speech (and I was like no way, and she was like get lost, and I was like you get lost; then she was all why are you like that, and I was all I'm not like anything, and she was all…).  Such changes are often stigmatised or ridiculed, but they are part of a regular kind of language change called grammaticalization.

Language change only occurs if there is variation; so looking at different varieties can help us to understand how languages change.  So while English in England and the US typically has be like, Scots has a further variant, be like that.  Have a search on the Scots corpus (www.scottishcorpus.ac.uk) for the following phrases and see what you get: I'm like that; she's like that.

Having a knowledge of how grammar works – and being able to understand how words fit into different categories is part of grammar – can give you a greater understanding of how language is used and manipulated by speakers and writers.