1. Grammaticalcategory and its characteristic features.
M.Y.Blokh defines the grammatical category as «asystem of expressing a generalized grammatical meaningby means of paradigmatic correlation of grammaticalforms». The forms united into agrammatical category possess a common general meaning thatgives a name to the category and each form possesses its own specific meaning thatpresents a specification of the general meaning and differentiates the form from the other form/forms within the category.The forms lives — lived — will live are united on the basis ofthe common general grammatical meaning oftense and constitute the grammatical category of tense. Within this category each form has its ownspecific meaning of tense: present, pastand future. The grammatical category of tense presents 'a specificlingual expression of objective (ontological) time, the grammatical category of case presents various relations between theaction and its participants, the grammatical category of number in nounsreflects the quantitative relations betweenhomogeneous objects of reality, the grammatical category of mood presents the relations between the action and realityas they are presented by the speakeretc. Such grammatical categories may also be called inherent. Conceptual grammatical categories are universal, theyexist in most of the languagesthough their volume and their scope may vary considerably in various languages. The grammatical category of number isthe most universal grammaticalcategory, all speech communities have linguistic means of encodingnumber, though these means differ greatly in different languages.
Agrammatical category is constituted on the basis of contrastive grammatical forms whichshare a certain grammatical meaning correlated to some general concept (time,number) and differ in more concrete meanings within the scope of the sameconcept. Such contrastive grammatical formsare called oppositions and all grammatical categories are based on oppositions. The method of oppositionalanalysis was introduced by Trubetskoy whoapplied it to the study of phonemes. Now the method of oppositional analysis is widely used in lexicology and grammar.
2. The subject. Meansof expressing the subject.
The subject is the independent member of atwo-member predication, containing the person component of predicativity.The subject is generally defined as a word or a group of words denoting thething we speak about. The subject of a simple sentence can be a word, asyntactical word-morpheme or a complex. As a word it can belong to differentparts of speech, but it is mostly a noun or a pronoun. A word used as a subjectcombines the lexical meaning with the structural meaning of “person”. So it isat the same time the structural and the notional subject. We may speak of asecondary subject within a complex. The syntactical word-morphemes there and itmay also function as secondary subjects (It being cold, we put on our coats. Iknew of there being no one to help them). The analysis of sentences like He wasseen to enter the house, is a point at issue. Traditionally the infinitive issaid to form part of the complex subject (He…to enter). Ilyishmaintains that though satisfactory from the logical point of view, thisinterpretation seems to be artificial grammatically, this splitting of thesubject being alien to English. He suggests that only HE should be treated as asubject, whereas was sees to enter represents a peculiar type of compoundpredicate. Some grammarians (Smirnitsky, Ganshina) speak of definite-personal, indefinite-personal,impersonal sentences, but it is a semanticalclassification of subjects, not sentences. If we compare the subject in Englishwith that of Russian we shall find a considerable difference between them. InRussian the subject is characterized by a distinct morphological feature – thenominative case, in English it is indicated by the position it occupies in thesentence. In Russian the subject is much less obligatory as a part of thesentence than in English. In English the subject may be a syntacticalword-morpheme, a gerund, or a complex, which is alien to Russian.
3. Means ofform-building in modern English.
Thegrammatical meaning finds its expression in a grammatical form whichis a means of expressing a grammatical meaning. There areseveral types of form-building in English. The mainsubdivision of form-building types is into synthetic andanalytical. In a synthetic type a grammatical meaning is expressed within a word, in ananalytical type a grammatical meaning is expressedwith the help of auxiliary words (plus suffixes). The synthetic types ofform-building in English include affixation (reads, shown, books, theirs etc.),sound interchange (take — took,shine — shone) and suppletivity (go — went, be-was, good — better — best}. .The only productive type in the present-dayEnglish is affixation, but the other two types are no less important, if onlybecause they occur in words which are most frequently used. Theanalytical type of form-building occupies avery important place in the grammatical structure of English as thelanguage has evolutionized from being mainly synthetical to becomingmore and more analytical, and analytical tendencies in the present day English are very strong. There exist theso-called half-analytical structures andthe analytical tendencies find theirreflection in many spheres of the language. Thus, the habit of expressing lexical and grammatical meanings separately findsits reflection in the fact that very often speakers of English express adverbialmeanings not with the help of adverbsbut with the help of adverbial phrases Adj. — way where the component way servesas a marker of the adverbial meaning, i.e. fulfils the function of an adverbializer, Let's do it (in) a different way. Suchstructures are sometimes referred to asanalytical adverbs.
4. The predicate asthe main means of expressing predication. Types of predicates.
The Predicate is thepart of the sentence which expresses a predicative feature attributed to thesubject of the sentence. Like the subject, the predicate also carries out a triple function in the sentence:structural, semantic and communicative. Its structural function consists in establishing the syntacticrelations with the subject and other parts of the sentence. The semanticfunction of the predicate finds its expressionin attributing certain features to the subject. Its communicative function ismanifested in the fact that through the predicate and the expression ofpredication the sentence becomes a minimal unit of communication. As wehave already mentioned the predicate is 'the structural and semantic centre ofthe sentence. Sentences without a predicate (one member, nominative sentencesrefer to the periphery of English syntax).In the structure of a simple, two-member sentence the predicate usuallycarries out the function of the rheme, Hedisappeared. They arrived. Accordingto the form of expression predicates are divided into verbal and nominal, Themoon rose. The moon was pale. There exists one type of predicate which isvery frequent in English and which presents a combination of such verbs as have, get, give, take and a verbal noun (give a look, take abath, have a smoke). Traditionally such cases were referred to a third formal type of predicate, a phraseological predicate. However from the grammaticalpoint of view the most important characteristic of this type of predicateis not so much its phraseological but its analyticalcharacter (and all analytical structures arecharacterized by a certain idiomaticity of theircomponents). The distribution offunctions between the components of this predicate is similar to those within an analytical form — the verbexpresses the grammatical meaning and the verbal noun serves to name theaction, i.e. to express a lexical meaning. It is noteworthy that theverbal nouns which participate in these constructions can be derived from durative verbs only. The semanticdifference between the have a look (bite, say) construction and thecorresponding verb lies in the fact that it denotes a single episode, aninstance of the process whereas the corresponding verb denotes the whole ongoing process. Due to this semanticproperty the constructions of the havea look type specialize inexpressing aspective (iterative) characteristics ofthe action. It becomes evident if we compare, smoked and had asmoke; He looked at her and He had a look or two at her. The verbjust names an action whereas the combinationof the verb and a verbal noun points out either a single occurrence (Have a look) or at a number ofoccurrences (He took several glances in her direction). In spite of the distribution of functions between the verb and the verbalnoun similar to analytical forms these structures cannot be treated as analytical forms proper because they do not havethe same regularity as analytical forms(we can have a look, but cannot have a stare; we can have abite, but not an eat, one can take a nap, but cannot take aslumber). Besides the regular verbs such as have, give, get and take some other verbs canoccur in these constructions, She flipped a curt nod at Havers; She flashed a look at me. Forthese reasons such constructions must be treated as half-analytical forms, intermediate between analytical forms ofthe verb and syntactic combinations of a verb and the so-called 'light'object which corresponds to the generalanalytical tendency of the English language. The two formal types of thepredicate correspond to the two main semantic types: process predicate which expresses the action, the stateor the existence of the subject and qualificationpredicate which expresses the quality (property) of the subject. Theprocess predicate can be further subdivided into several types in accordance with the semantic types of verbs:existential ( There was a tavern in the town), statal(He slept), locative (The elephant lives in India),relational (He had a small ranch) and actional(The car broke down). The qualification predicate has threesubtypes: identifying (So you are the man we have been looking for), classifying( My friend is a student) and characterizing ( My wife is a bit of anactress. He was too German).Structurally the predicate may be divided intosimple and compound. Each of the formal types of the predicate may bepresented by a simple and a compound structure.We said good- bye — a simple verbal predicate; It was a lovely place-simple nominal predicate. Thepredicate is compounded by the introduction of modal or aspective components. We started saying good-bye — acompound verbal predicate; It must be a lovely place — a compoundnominal predicate. The two types of predicate can be contaminated which resultsin the formation of the so-called doublepredicate, He stared at me bewildered.Summing up the characteristics ofthe English predicate we must mention the following features: its analytical tendency, which is manifestedin the existence of analytical and half-analytical forms; its tendencytowards synonymization; its transitivecharacter, a direct object is often obligatory in the English sentence.
5. Synthetic means ofform-building in modern English.
Thegrammatical meaning finds its expression in a grammatical form whichis a means of expressing a grammatical meaning. There areseveral types of form-building in English. The main subdivisionof form-building types is into synthetic and analytical. In asynthetic type a grammatical meaning is expressed within a word, in an analytical type agrammatical meaning is expressed with thehelp of auxiliary words (plus suffixes). The synthetic types of form-buildingin English include affixation (reads, shown, books, theirs etc.), sound interchange (take — took, shine — shone) andsuppletivity (go — went, be -was, good — better — best}. .The only productive type in the present-dayEnglish is affixation, but the other two types are no less important, if onlybecause they occur in words which are most frequently used. Theanalytical type of form-building occupies avery important place in the grammatical structure of English as thelanguage has evolutionized from being mainly synthetical to becomingmore and more analytical, and analytical tendencies in the present day English are very strong. There exist theso-called half-analytical structures andthe analytical tendencies find theirreflection in many spheres of the language. Thus, the habit of expressing lexical and grammatical meanings separately findsits reflection in the fact that very often speakers of English expressadverbial meanings not with the help of adverbs but with the help of adverbial phrases Adj. — way wherethe component way serves as a marker of the adverbial meaning, i.e.fulfils the function of an adverbializer, Let'sdo it (in) a different way. Such structures are sometimes referred to as analytical adverbs.
6. Secondary parts ofsentence. Difficulties of their classification.
The theory of the secondary parts (SP) is oneof the last developed sections of linguistics. The object is a SP of thesentence, referring to a part of the sentence expressed by a verb, a noun, a substantival pronoun, an adj., a numeral, or an adv., anddenoting a thing to which the action passes on, which is a result of theaction, in reference to which an action is committed or a property ismanifested, or denoting an action as object of another action. An object canrefer to any part of speech capable of being a part of the sentence. Attributeis a SP of the sentence modifying a part of the sentence expressed by a noun, asubstantival pronoun, a cardinal numeral, and any substantivizedword, and characterizing the thing named by these words as to its quality orproperty. The attribute, as distinct from the object, cannot modify a verb, an adj, an adv, the attribute expresses a property while theobject expresses a thing, but they both can modify a noun, a pronoun, anumeral. Adv modifier is a SP of the sentence modifying a part of the sentenceexpressed by a verb, a verbal noun, an adj, an adv,and serving to characterize an action or a property as to its quality orintensity, or to indicate the way an action is done, the time, the place,cause, purpose, condition, with which the action or the manifestation of thequality is connected.
7. Suffixation as ameans of form-building in modern English.
Thegrammatical meaning finds its expression in a grammatical form whichis a means of expressing a grammatical meaning. There areseveral types of form-building in English. The mainsubdivision of form-building types is into synthetic andanalytical. In a synthetic type a grammatical meaning is expressed within a word, in ananalytical type a grammatical meaning is expressedwith the help of auxiliary words (plus suffixes). The synthetic types ofform-building in English include affixation (reads, shown, books, theirs etc.),sound interchange (take — took,shine — shone) and suppletivity (go — went, be-was, good — better — best}. .The only productive type in the present-dayEnglish is affixation, but the other two types are no less important, if onlybecause they occur in words which are most frequently used. Theanalytical type of form-building occupies avery important place in the grammatical structure of English as thelanguage has evolutionized from being mainly synthetical to becomingmore and more analytical, and analytical tendencies in the present day English are very strong. There exist theso-called half-analytical structures andthe analytical tendencies find theirreflection in many spheres of the language. Thus, the habit of expressing lexical and grammatical meanings separately findsits reflection in the fact that very often speakers of English expressadverbial meanings not with the help of adverbs but with the help of adverbial phrases Adj. — way wherethe component way serves as a marker of the adverbial meaning, i.e.fulfils the function of an adverbializer, Let'sdo it (in) a different way. Such structures are sometimes referred to as analytical adverbs. The number of inflectional suffixesin modern English is very small: ‘s’ – the plural forms of nouns, the Genitivecase, used to build the 3 person singular; ‘ed’ – thepast tense, Part II in regular verbs; ‘ing’ – Part I,the Gerund; ‘er’ – the comparative degree of theadj.; ‘ist’ – the superlative degree – they arefairly productive in modern English; ‘en’ – the plural form of the noun ox –oxen, the past participle in irregular verbs; ‘ren’ –the plural form of the noun child; ‘ne’ – mine; ‘m’ –to build the objective case of the personal pronouns – him, them – they arenon-productive. The number of suffixes is small, but the frequency of their useis high.
8)Classific-n of subord. clauses:
2 approaches: (1) shows correlation of clauseswith parts of the sentence => a) the subject clause, b) the predicative, c)object, d) adverbial, e) attributive.
(2) correlates clauses with parts of speech& distinguishes: a) substantive clause – corresponding to subj., predic. & object clauses, b) adverbial clauses, c)adjectival clauses – corresponding to attribute cl.These 2 classifications correlate!!!
9. The subject matter of theoretical grammar.The grammatical structure of the language.
The grammatical system of a language helps arrange lexical units intocoherent utterance (членораздельноевысказывание). Acoherent utterance is a structure which expresses a certain complete thoughtand is marked at all the lingual levels: at the phonetic level, at the lexicallevel, at the level of combinability and at the grammatical level. Thegrammatical system is a set of devices and their application rules which areemployed to produce a coherent utterance; the devices:
1.
2.
3.
As for the morphemes are concerned(the smallest unit capable of having a meaning). There may be lexical morphemesand grammatical morphemes. Lexical morphemes: root and affixationalmorphemes. Gramm morphemes mark certain grammaticalmeaning. The variants of the morphemes are called allomorphs.
As for form words they are:prepositions, conjunctions and auxiliary words.
The main unit of the grammaticalsystem is the grammatical category. The grammatical category is an oppositionof at least two forms of one and the same lexical unit based on a certaingeneral meaning which is more abstract than the meaning of the members of theopposition. As to the structure of the Gramm categorythere are several opinions:
1.
2.
E.g. Бархударев: time: Past – non-Past
So some linguists clame that the structure of the gr. cat. is based on theopposition of as many members as there are there, based on the certain generalmeaning (time: the Past, the Present, the Future), others think that the mainprinciple of the arrangement is the binary opposition/dichotomicopposition.
The grammatical form is the lexical nucleus + agrammatical marker. Sometimes they are referred to as word forms (словоформы)
The grammatical meaning is that whichdistinguishes one member of a paradigm from another.
Grammar in the systematic conception of language
Language — is a means offorming and storing ideas as reflections of reality and exchanging them in theprocess of human intercourse. Language incorporates 3 constituent parts whichform a unity.Phonological Lexical Grammatical systems
Thegrammatical system is studied by Grammar.
Itcan be regarded from the theoretical or practical point of view. The aim of theoretical grammar is to givetheoretical description of the grammatical system of a given language, todefine its grammatical categories, to study the mechanisms of formation ofutterances out of words. Theoretical grammar also considers variouscontroversial (mute) points.
Main grammar schoolsthe School of Classical Scientific Grammar: Henry Swift, Curme, Kruisinga. the School of American Structural or Descriptive linguistics: Bloomfield, Wells, Charles Fries, Hocket, Pike, Traiger & Smith. the School of Transformational or Generative Grammar: Harris, Chomski. the School of Russian (Soviet) linguists: Виноградов, Смирницкий, Воронцова, Бархударов, Реформацкий, Ильин, Солнцев.The systematic character oflanguage
The special stress is laid on the systematiccharacter of language. The systematicapproach was worked down by Бодуэн де Куртене, Фердинандде Соссюр (swiss, outlined the definition).
Outlined the difference between:
Languageproper Speechproper
A system of means of expression The realization ofthe system of language
in the process of interaction
Two fundamental types of relations between linguistic units:
Syntagmatic Paradigmatic
Linear relations between units Intra-systemicrelations. They find
In a segmental sequence their expression in the fact thateach
(Morphemes in a word, ling. unit is includedin a set of similar
words in a sentence ) units with common formal and
functionalproperties
(Paradigmof forms)
Another approach to the analysis of language as a kind of system,language can be looked upon as a hierarchyof levels:
Levelof text, it's the main linguistic unit.
Levelof SPU(It is made up of sentences, usually onesentence. SPU can coincide with paragraph in text, also exist in oral speech.)
Proposemiclevel(Sentences nominate situation or events andexpress predication. Their main function is that they show the relation of thedenoted situation or event to reality (time or modality). Sentences arepredicative units.)
Phrasemiclevel(Phrases are word combinations, they nominatecomplex phenomena)
Leximiclevel(Words are nominative units, because theynominate things and phenomena. They are built up by morphemes.)
morphemiclevel (Morphemes are the smallest meaningful unitsbuilt up by phonemes or one phoneme.)
phonemiclevel (Phonemes are meaningless units, their functionis differential.)
2 levels are central: words level and sentencelevel.
They are studied by morphology and syntax.Thus, morphology deals with morphemic structure and combinability,classification of words. Syntax — with sentences.
10. Syntax as part of Grammar. Main Units of English syntax.
There’s a debate about the precise (точный, определенный) status of syntax as a part ofgrammar.
1) Some linguists state that it shoulddeal with the function and the formationof word-groups within the sent-s.This approach is characteristic of early English syntax (18-19thcent.), which was concerned only with analysis of word-groups, their structureand relations between their elements.
2) Other linguists think that syntaxshould study only the structure of sent-s.
3) There’s also a group of scholars whothink that syntax should deal with thestructure of both word-groups andsent-s. It is the most reasonable one and has actually prevailed in modernlinguistics.
Смирницкий: The analysis of the sentencestructure must be regarded as the main problem of syntax; while theword-groups’ is secondary.
· Joining the words into word-groupsis only the 1st step which precedes the formation of a sentence.
· A word-group is not complete eitherstructurally or semantically => It can’t be used as a unit of communication.
· A sent. can function as anindependent utterance, but a word-group functions only as an element of a sent.
Therefore, sent-s are units ofspeech, while word-groups are bricks in a sentence structure.
The fundamental feature thatdistinguishes a sent. from a word-group is that sent. is always associated witha certain intonation pattern (it’seither a statement, or request, etc.) A sent. without intonation can’t functionas a unit of speech; it remains a mere combination of words.
Basic English sentence patternscontain a verb in its finite form.
The presence of a verb in a sent. ischaracteristic not only of English, but also of all other European lang-s.
Sent-s without verbs are short andconvey only fragmentary information,the thought can’t be developed andelaborated unless there’s a verb in the sent.
When the noun and the verb in thefinite form follow each other in the sent., they become the subject and the predicate – the 2 main parts of which basicsent-s are built. They can accompanied by other words, and usually are, butthis doesn’t change their status as the main parts of the sent. For this reasonthe combination of subject & predicate is excluded by many linguists fromthe domain of word-groups. Some linguists suggested calling this combination a clause to distinguish it from aword-group.
In most general terms, a word-group is a logical and grammatical combination of 2 or more notional words whichdo not form a sent.
A sentence may be defined as thebasic unit of communication, grammatically organized and expressing a completethought. It is characterized by predication(correlation between the utterance & reality). The most universal means ofexpressing predication is intonation; under certain circumstances (a broadercontext) any word-gr. may become a sent. But in mostcases predication is conveyed through thefinite form of the verb (which expresses person, number, mood, tense,aspect, time correlation, voice).
Until recently, the sent. wasconsidered the upper unit of investigation. Since the sent. is a unit of speechit is seldom used in isolation. It is usually a member of a sequence of sent-s,which form a larger unit. This larger unit appears under different names inpublications of modern linguists: aparagraph, a discourse, a text. The new trend in linguistics, that studiesunits larger than a sent., is known under different names, too: hyposyntax, textgrammar,narrative grammar, discourse analysis, narrative analysis.
Narrative analysisstudies lexical & grammatical means which help to organize thestructure of a text. The part of narrative analysis, which is concerned withgram. means, is called text grammar.
So, these successive syntactic unitsform an hierarchy in the following order:
Word-groups => sentences =>paragraphs
11. Correlation btw various means of form-building in ME.
There are twoprincipal types of form-building means: synthetic and analytical.
The synthetic form-building means isthe expression of the relation of words in the sentence by means of a change inthe word itself. There are three types of the synthetic form-building means:
- affixation
- soundinterchange (morphological alteration)
- suppletion(suppletive means)
Affixationis the most productive means ofexpressing a grammatical meaning. The number of grammatical suffixes is small(8). They are:
-s, -ed, -ing, -er,-est, -en, -m (him, them, whom), zero.
Sound interchangeis a change of a sound in the root of theword. There exist two kinds of sound interchange – vowel and consonant ones(spend – spent). This type of form-building means is non-productive.
In suppletive forms there is a complete change of thephonetic shape of the root. Suppletive forms belongingto the paradigm of a certain word were borrowed from different sources.
Suppletiveformsare found in the paradigm of such words as TO BE, TO GO,degrees of comparison of the adjectives GOOD, BAD and incase-forms of some pronouns.
Блохnotesthat suppletivity can be recognized in the paradigmof some modal verbs too: CAN – BE ABLE, MUST – HAVE TO, MAY – BEALLOWED.
Moreover, he saysthat it can be observed in pronouns (ONE – SOME), NOUNS (INFORMATION– PIECES OF INFORMATION, MAN – PEOPLE).
Suppletiveformsare few in number, non-productive, but very important, for they are frequentlyused
Analytical formswere described as a combination of anauxiliary and a notional word.
This definition isnot precise enough and due to its ambiguity such word-combinations as TO THECHILD, MORE INTERESTING were treated as analytical forms.
To define a trueanalytical form the theory of splitting of functions should be taken intoaccount.
There must be asplitting of functions between the elements of an analytical form. The first(auxiliary) element is the bearer of a grammatical meaning only. It iscompletely devoid of lexical meaning, and it is the second (notional) elementthat is the bearer of lexical meaning.
This process canbe complete (perfect form) or incomplete (continuous form). The idiomaticity of an analytical form is a characteristic of atrue analytical form. An analytical form functions as a grammatical form of aword.
Бархударовnotices that “analytical forms have a specific feature, a specific morphemewhich is called a discontinuous morpheme which comprises an auxiliary word anda form-building signal of a notional word. The root of a notional word is notincluded in the discontinuous morpheme (HAVE + -en; BE + -ing).
Analyticalforms are much more typical of ME. Synthetic form-building means are few innumber but widely used. Some grammatical suffixes are very productive.Analyticalforms comprise synthetic forms. Although sound interchange is non-productive itis extensively used through the paradigm of the irregular verbs. Though suppletive forms are found through the paradigm of very fewwords they are very frequently used words.
So we should conclude that English cannot becalled a purely analytical language. It is mainly analytical. The famous Danishlinguist Jespersen called English an ideal language. He even developed the ideaof superiority of analytical languages which reflects a more developedmentality.
12. Text grammar as part of linguistics. Basic units.
Textgrammaris a rather new branch of linguistics. Itdeals with the text. It considers the text the highest unit of speech. If weconsider isolated sentences in a discourse, we find that it’s very rare thatone sentence expresses the complete idea, which is clear without any context.
Textis an ordered sequence ofsentences combined of various types of logical, lexical and grammaticalcohesion conveying structurally organized info. Text is a product of oral andwritten speech. Galperin recognizes theexistence only of written text.
Those who studied the text as a unit cameto the conclusion that a text as a linguistic unit has its own semantic andstructural categories:
The main semantic categories:
- Information(Anytext should carry complete information; it should express a certaincommunication.)
- Profundity(thetext should have some depth, some food for thinking, some idea, which mayeither be expressed, or may be understood implicitly)
- Presupposition(thereshould be some level at which communicate otherwise there may be completemisunderstanding.)
- Completeness(Thetext should be complete in meaning, it shouldn’t be abrupt)
Structural Cathegories:
1) Integration (целостность)
- use certain logical connections and connectors, acertain composition, a certain word order.
2) Cohesion(связь)
- necessary property of anytext which differentiates it from disconnected utterances. There are variousmeans of text cohesion (когезия): syntactic, semantic, stylistic.
- BLOCH: gram.connectives. 1) Conjunction-likeconnectives – coordinative, subordinativeconjunctions and adverbial and parenthetical sentence connectors such as: yet,then, however, moreover. 2) Substitutional connection– use of substitutes: pronouns.
3) Retrospection & Prospection
- (means of text cohesion).Retrospection refers the reader to the preceding events, prospection– to the following events
4) Continuum
- the text should continuewithout breaking, it shouldn’t be abrupt. Deictic (связующие) elements, tense forms, number forms, mood forms
5) Polyphony
— agood text usually has more than one line of thinking, of reasoning, which ismost of all important for fiction
13. Analtyical forms andtheir role in form-building.
It’s more productive in Modern Eng.Traditionally an analytical form is defined this way: it consists of anauxiliary word and the basic element, which is a notional word. This definitionis ambiguous. And for that reason some strange forms are treated as analytical:Combinations of prepositions with nouns were treated as different analyticalforms: to the child wastreated as the Dative case of a noun. bythe child was treated as the Instrumental case of a noun. Many linguistscriticized this approach to defining analytical forms and certain theories havebeen worked out to differentiate analytical forms and free word-combinations.
1.The theory of the splitting of functions. According to this theory in atrue analytical form the auxiliary element should be the bearer of thegrammatical meaning only. It is devoid of lexical meaning. It is the notionalword that is the bearer of lexical meaning. According to this approach thereexist 2 types of analytical forms: completeand incomplete. In a complete analytical form the splittingprocess has completed and the aux.element iscompletely devoid of lex.meaning. e.g. In the form ofthe Perfect the verb to have has nomeaning of possession. In an incompleteanalyt.form the aux.elementretains traces of its lex.meaning. e.g. The form ofthe Continuous where the auxiliary beretains traces of it's meaning of the state.
2.Acc. to the second approach a true analyt.formis idiomaticin characteràthe overall meaning of the form is not immediately dependent on theindividual meaning of its constituents. It’s not a sum of meanings of itscomponents. Besides an analyt.form also functions asa grammatical form of a single word. If we proceed from this approach we shouldconclude that such phrases as mostinteresting are not an analytical form, because it is not idiomatic enough.
3.Acc. to Бархударовa true analyt.form should posses a discontinuousmorpheme (расчлененнаяморфема)which is a main distinguishing feature of an analyt.form (Блохdoesn’t share this view). Adiscontinuous mrph. Consists of 2 elements – anauxiliary word and the f.-b. sign of a notional word. The root-mrph of the notional word. is not included. According to Бархударовthere are only 3 analytical forms (Perfect,Passive, Continuous): Have+en(insymbolic denotation)in form of the Perfect. Ex. havearrived Be+enin form of the Passive Be+ing in formof the Continuous. And from this point of view such phrases as shall take, most interesting, by the child arenot analytical forms. They are free word-combination.
14. Various classifications of sent-s.
(I) Structural
Sent-s are divided into simple& composite; composite sent-s are divided into compound& complex.
(II) Simple sent-s are divided into 4 major classes (their use correlateswith different communicative functions).
1st class: declarative sent-s, or statements. The subject is always presentand usually precedes the verb.
2nd class: interrogative sent-s, or questions. They are marked by one or moreof the following criteria:
~ the aux. verb is placed in frontof the subj.;
~ the initial position of aninterrogative “wh”-element (what, who, which, etc.)
3rd class: imperative sent-s, or commands. Normally they have no grammaticalsubj., the verb is in the imperative mood.
4th class: exclamative sent-s, or exclamations. They are introduced by what / how &have no invertion of the subj. and predicate.
NB:Thestructure of a certain sent. may be used for other communicative purposes, thanthose which are characteristic of the sent. of this class.
Ex.: The form of the statement may be used in questions (You will speakto John?)
The rhetorical question whichfunctions forceful statement (Is that a reason for despair?)
(III) extended / unextended
A sent. which consists only of subj.& predicate – unextended.
If it contains one or more secondaryparts (attributes, obj., adv. modifiers), the sent.is extended.
(IV) complete / incomplete
Completesent. contains allstructurally necessary elements:
— the subject + the predicate(if it’s a 2-member sent.);
— the subject + the predicate +object (if the predicate is expressed by trans. verb);
1-member sent. can also be complete and incomplete; in the imperativesent. verb is a necessary element, e.g. “Stop!”vs. incomplete (usu. – in direct, coll. speech, make no sense outsidetheir context, e.g. “Yours”).
Incomplete(elliptical) sent-s –structures in which one of the main parts (subj. or pred.)or both are omitted / ellipted.
Elliptical sent-s are divided into 2 types:
- 1st type: they are dependent on whathas gone before (“John” may be a reply to 2 questions: “Who did it?” & “Whodid you see?”). These sent-s are contextually conditioned. In other words,their incomplete structure can be restored from a previous sent. This kind ofellipsis is called contextual or syntagmatic.
- 2nd type: they don’t depend on whathas gone before. Their structure can be restored from the paradigm of theanalogous complete sent. This incompletence is purelygrammatical as the structure doesn’t depend on the previous context. This kindof ellipsis is called grammatical or paradigmatic. Can be of 2 subtypes: 1) structures that can be completed in only 1 way; 2) structures which can be completedwith the help of several paradigms (Cigarette?).Meaning depends on the situation or the situational context.
*1-member sent. can also be complete and incomplete; in the imperativesent. verb is a necessary element, e.g. “Stop!”vs. incomplete (usu. – in direct, coll. speech, make no sense outsidetheir context, e.g. “Yours”).
15. Parts of speechand different principles of their classification.
The general definition of apart of speech: it is a lexical-grammatical word class which is characterized by ageneral abstract grammatical meaning, expressed in certain grammatical markers.
Within a part of speechsimilar grammatical features are common to all words belonging to this class.
A part of speech is a mixed lexical-grammatical phenomenon,because:
1) Words are characterized byindividual lexical meanings.
2) Each generalized class ofwords (noun/verb/adj., etc) has a unifying abstractgram. meaning, for ex.: noun – substance, verb – process, adjective – qualityof substance, adverb – quality of process.
3) Some parts of speech arecapable of representing gram. meaning in a set of formal exponents; for ex.:the plural of nouns is expressed with suffix –s. *this feature is not universal in all languages; for ex.: insynthetic lang-s, adj-s,numerals, pronouns are inflected in the categories of case, number &gender; while in analytical lang-s (Eng.) these wordclasses are devoid of gram. markers with the exception of a few pronouns.
Parts of speech are classifiedwithin the domain of morphology.
Modern classification of partsof speech is traced back to ancient Greek. Later this classification wasapplied to Latin and thus it found its way in modern languages.
The present day classificationof parts of speech is severely criticized, when it’s applied to languages thestructure of which is different to the structure of the Latin language. So thecriticism is easily justified.
On the other hand thetraditional division of words into parts of speech seems quiet natural and easyto understand & remember from the logical point of view.
So it’s not the classificationitself that is wrong but it must be the principles of classification thatshould be criticized and reviewed.
The existing principles:
The semantic approach(based on themeaning).
In many schools the semanticprinciple was used for p/of/sp classification. It is based on the universalforms of human thought which are reflected in 3 main categorialmeanings of words:
1) substance (предметность)
2) process(процессуальность)
3) property (свойства,качества)
In Medieval linguistics (Пор-Рояль, 1660) p/of/sp are defined as invariants of thesubstance-logical plane.
However, this principle isopen to criticism; it doesn’t always work; it can be hard to define a categorial meaning of a word
e.g. whiteness — is it substance of a noun or property of anadjective?
action – itdenotes process, but it isn’t a verb
The formal approach
Only form should be used as acriterion for the classification of the p/of/sp. (Henry Sweet, Cruisinga).
They distinguished between twoclasses of words:
declinable indeclinable (static forms)
(changeable forms) articles,prepositions, must
This criterion is alsounreliable. It doesn’t take into account the way a word functions in thesentence. Must functions as manyother verbs, for instance shall whichhas a declinable form.
This approach has limitations:
1) p/of/sp are morphological classes (Фортунатов), which means they are words with a similar paradigm.But this fact cannot be applied to the lang. such as Chinese, where morph.system is non-existent or poorly-developed.
2) p/of/sp are gr. word classes (Реформатский), he takes into account their morph ansyntactical properties (form and function). This is the borderline between thesecond and the third approaches
The formal-semantic approach
Grammarians tried to take intoconsideration meaning, form & function.
It appears that in analytical,where English belong, it’s impossible to place a word without analyzing it inthe sent. In addition to the analysis of the morphological features of thisword.
This approach was developed byRussian linguists (Vinogradov, Smirnitsky,Ilyish).
There are three principles onwhich this classification is based:
1. meaning
the meaning commonto all the words of a given class and constituting its essence.
e.g. thingness ofnouns
process of verbs
2. form
the morphologicalcharacteristics of a type of word
e.g. noun is characterized by the category ofnumber
prepositions,conjunctions and others arecharacterized by invariability
3. function
the syntacticalproperties of a type of word
a) the method of combining with other words (deals withphrases)
b) its function in the sentence (deals with sentences)
The syntactic (functional) approach
Only the syntactic function ofa word should be taken into consideration as a criterion for p/of/spclassification.
*Charles Fries’ classification of words
Ch. F worked out theprinciples of syntactico-distributional (s-d)classification of English words. He was the follower of the famous linguist L.Bloomfield.
The s-d classification ofwords is based on the study of their combinability by means of substitutiontesting. The testing results in developing the standard model of four main“positions” of notional words in the English sentence:noun (N) verb (V) adjective (A) adverb (D)
For his materials he chosetape recorded spontaneous conversation (250,000 word entries or 50 hours oftalk). The words isolated from the records were tested on the three typicalsentences (also taken from the tapes), which are used as substitutiontest-frames.
FrameA.The concert was good (always). [The thing and its quality at a given time]
Frame B.The clerkremembered the tax (suddenly). [“Actor-action-thing acted upon” –characteristicof the action]
FrameC. The team went there. [“Actor-action-directionof the action”]
As a result of those tests thefollowing lists of words were established:
Class 1.(A) concert,coffee, taste, container, difference, etc. (B) clerk, husband, supervisor, etc.; tax, food, coffee, etc. (C) team,husband, woman, etc.
Class 2.(A) was, seemed,became, etc. (B) remembered, wanted, saw, suggested etc. (C) went, came, ran,lived, worked, etc.
Class3.(A) good, large, necessary, foreign, new empty, etc.
Class 4. (A) there, here,always, then, sometimes, etc. (B) clearly, sufficiently, especially,repeatedly, soon, etc. (C) there, back, out, etc.; rapidly, eagerly,confidently, etc.
All these words can fill inthe positions of the frames without affection their general structural meaning.Repeated interchanges in the substitutions of the primarily identifiedpositional (notional) words in diff. collocations determine their morphologicalcharacteristics.