Gujarati Grammar
What the official syllabus says
Paper 1: Gujarati (Main Examination), Commission's list (in Gujarati):
- 13. ગુજરાતી વ્યાકરણ. (૪૦ ગુણ)
નોંધ: કુલ ૨૦ બહુવિકલ્પી પ્રશ્નો પુછવામાં આવશે. કોમ્પ્યુટરાઇઝ્ડ ખાસ પ્રકારની જવાબવહી (OMR Answer sheet) માં પ્રત્યેક ખોટા જવાબ તથા એક જ પ્રશ્ન માટે એકથી વધુ જવાબ અને એક પણ વિકલ્પ એનકોડ નહીં કરવાના કિસ્સામાં ૦.૬ (છ દશાંશ) ગુણ કાપવામાં આવશે.
In English: Gujarati grammar, 40 marks. In total 20 multiple-choice questions are asked, answered on an OMR answer sheet; each wrong answer, more than one answer to the same question, or no option encoded costs 0.6 marks.
The syllabus does not list grammar topics. The advertisement sets the paper's standard at the Gujarati subject (higher level) of the Gujarat Secondary and Higher Secondary Education Board, so the list below follows the standard school grammar of Gujarati. Gujarati terms are given in brackets, in Roman letters.
Topics in detail
Sounds, letters and spelling
- Vowels and consonants (svar, vyanjan); the letters of the Gujarati script and their pronunciation.
- Spelling rules (jodani): short and long i and u (hrasva and dirgha), anusvar, and commonly misspelt words; picking the correctly spelt word.
- Punctuation marks (viram chihno) and their use.
Word formation
- Joining of sounds (sandhi): vowel sandhi (svar sandhi), consonant sandhi (vyanjan sandhi) and visarga sandhi; joining and splitting words (sandhi-vigrah).
- Compounds (samas): dvandva, tatpurush, karmadharay, dvigu, bahuvrihi, upapad, madhyampadlopi and avyayibhav; naming the compound and splitting it (samas-vigrah).
- Prefixes and suffixes (upsarg, pratyay), and words formed with them.
- Kinds of words by origin: tatsam, tadbhav, deshya and words borrowed from other languages.
Parts of speech
- Noun (sangna) and its kinds; pronoun (sarvanam); adjective (visheshan); verb (kriyapad); adverb (kriyavisheshan).
- Postpositions (namyogi), conjunctions (sanyojak), interjections (udgarvachak) and particles (nipat).
- Gender (ling) and number (vachan) and their effect on agreement.
- Case relations (vibhakti) and their markers (pratyay).
Verbs and sentences
- Tense (kal): present, past and future, and their forms; moods (arth) such as the imperative.
- Participles (krudant): present, past, future, general and purposive (hetvarth) participles.
- Voice (prayog): kartari, karmani and bhave prayog; causative verbs (prerak); changing voice.
- Kinds of sentences: simple, compound and complex (saadu, sanyukt, sankul vakya); changing one kind into another; affirmative, negative, interrogative and exclamatory sentences.
- Finding and correcting errors in a sentence.
Vocabulary and usage
- Synonyms and antonyms (samanarthi, virodharthi shabdo).
- One word for a group of words (shabda samuh mate ek shabda).
- Words that sound alike but differ in meaning, and words with more than one meaning.
- Idioms (rudhiprayog): meaning and use in a sentence.
- Proverbs and sayings (kahevat): meaning and use.
Figures of speech and metre
- Figures of sound (shabdalankar): alliteration (anupras or varnasagai), yamak and others.
- Figures of meaning (arthalankar): upma, utpreksha, rupak, vyatirek, ananvay, shlesh, atishayokti, drashtant, arthantarnyas, svabhavokti, vyajstuti; identifying them in a line.
- Metre (chhand): short and long syllables (laghu, guru) and the ganas; syllabic metres (akshar-mel) such as anushtup, indravajra, upjati, vasantatilaka, mandakranta, shikharini, prithvi and shardulvikridit; moraic metres (matra-mel) such as doha, chopai and harigeet; identifying the metre of a line.
Answering the multiple-choice part
- With 0.6 marks lost for a wrong answer, for more than one answer, and for a question left with no option encoded, every question should be answered with care: a blank question also costs 0.6 marks under the note.
- Encoding the answers on the OMR sheet carefully and in time is part of the 3 hours.
Overlaps
Grammar underlies the whole paper: spelling, agreement and idiom are what make the essay, the formal writing and the translation correct.