ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the variety of grammatical categories which may or may not be expressed in different languages and the way this area of language structure affects decisions in the course of translation. Grammatical structure also differs from lexical structure in that it is more resistant to change. Grammar is the set of rules which determine the way in which units such as words and phrases can be combined in a language and the kind of information which has to be made regularly explicit in utterances. Grammar is organized along two main dimensions: morphology and syntax. Morphology covers the structure of words, the way in which the form of a word changes to indicate specific contrasts in the grammatical system. Tense and aspect are grammatical categories in a large number of languages. The form of the verb in languages which have these categories usually indicates two main types of information: time relations and aspectual differences.
