Devika Panikar
δάσκαλος (dáskalos) means the teacher in Greek. Devika Panikar has been teaching English Language and Literature since 2006. She is an Assistant Professor with the Directorate of Collegiate Education under the Government of Kerala. She teaches at the Government Colleges coming under this directorate and is now posted at the Department of English, Government College for Women, Thiruvananthapuram. This website is a collection of the lecture notes that she prepared by referring to various sources, for her students’ perusal. It has been compiled here for the sake of future generations.
Immediate Constituent Analysis
The advent of generative grammar with the publication of Chomsky's monograph Syntactic Structures in 1957 was a scientific revolution. From the beginning, this revolution was directed almost exclusive...
Paragraph Features
A paragraph is a collection of sentences that all relate to one main idea or topic. Good writing in any form has the following characteristics, which is true of well-written paragraphs as well. The ...
The Structuralist View of Grammar
The beginning of the 20th century was marked by a new approach to grammar suggested by linguists like Ferdinand de Saussure and American linguists such as Franz Boas, Edward Sapir and Leonard Bloomf...
One Word Substitutes
One word substitution is the process of using one word for a phrase. As the phrase indicates, they are the words that replace a group of words or a full sentence effectively without creating any kind ...
The ‘Bloomfieldians’
Linguistics in the United States has been very strongly influenced by the necessity of describing as many as possible of the hundreds of previously unrecorded languages existing in North America. Si...
Paragraph Writing
Originating from the ancient Greek term paragraphe meaning 'marked passage', a paragraph is a group of sentences that introduces, presents, develops and winds up one main idea on a topic. The idea i...
Modern Linguisitics: Aims and Attitudes
Linguistics is commonly defined as a science of language. A scientific description is carried out systematically based on objectively verifying observations and within the framework of some general ...
Basic Sentence Patterns
A Basic or a Kernel sentence is the simplest form of sentence which is simple (not complex or compound), declarative and affirmative and is in the active voice. Such sentences can be broadly class...
The Writing Process
A simple, lucid style of writing is often the product of long years of practice in using the language in the written context of various kinds. The writing process involves a series of stages. Essen...