Теоретическая грамматика

1. The scope of theoretical grammar: two major parts of theoretical grammar; basic units.

Three aspects of linguistic structure

• the phonological system (phonology);

• the lexical system (lexicology);

• the grammatical system (grammar).

Theoretical grammar aims to represent a theoretical description of the grammatical system of a language

The two plans of language

• Plan of content

• Plan of expression

Correspondence between the two plans:

• Homonymy

• Polysemy

• Synonymy

Taking into account these two plans one can say that the purpose of grammar is to disclose the regularities of the correspondence between the plan of content and the plan of expression in the formation of utterances.

The plan of content comprises the purely semantic elements contained in a language. The plan of expression comprises the material (formal) units of language taken by themselves, apart from the meaning rendered by them. But the two plans of language are inseparably connected so that no meaning can be realized without some materials or formal means of expression.

Grammatical elements of language also represent a unity of content and expression and in this sense they are similar to the lexical elements but the quality of grammatical meaning is different from that of the lexical meaning. The correspondence between the two plans at the grammatical level is very complex and peculiar to each language. In English this complexity may be illustrated by the phenomena of polysemy, homonymy and synonymy

2. The systemic character of language and types of systemic relations.

Structure means hierarchical layering of parts in constituting the unity. In the structure of language there are four main structural levels: phonological, morphological, syntactical and supersyntactical. The levels are represented by the corresponding level units:

The phonological level is the lowest level. The phonological level unit is the phoneme. It is a distinctive unit (bag – back).

The morphological level has two level units:

1. The morpheme – the lowest meaningful unit (teach – teacher);

2. The word - the main naming (nominative) unit of language.

The syntactical level has two level units as well:

1. the word-group – the dependent syntactic unit;

2. the sentence – the main communicative unit.

The supersyntactical level has the text as its level unit.

Structural levels of language:

Language is a system of means of expression. Speech is a manifestation of the system in the process of communication.

General characteristics of the grammatical structure of language.

The grammatical structure of language is a system of means used to turn linguistic units into communicative ones, in other words – the units of language into the units of speech. Such means are inflexions, affixation, word order, function words and phonological means.

Systemic relations in language

Paradigmatic:

• semantic; Semantic PR are based on the similarity of meaning:

1. formal; Formal PR are based on the similarity of forms. Such relations exist between the members of a paradigm: man – men; play – played – will play – is playing.

2. functional. Functional PR are based on the similarity of function. They are established between the elements that can occur in the same position. For instance, noun determiners: a, the, this, his, Ann’s, some, each, etc.

identified with ‘language’

Syntagmatic:

1. coordinate; Coordinate SR exist between the homogeneous linguistic units that are equal in rank, that is, they are the relations of independence: you and me; They were tired but happy.

2. subordinate; Subordinate SR are the relations of dependence when one linguistic unit depends on the other: teach + er – morphological level; a smart student – word-group level; predicative and subordinate clauses – sentence level.

3. predicative. Predicative SR are the relations of interdependence: primary and secondary predication.

observed in utterances and identified with ‘speech’

3. The morpheme: definition, classifications, the method of determination.

A MORPHEME is the elementary meaningful lingual unit built up from phonemes and used to make words.

The morpheme meets three criteria:

• it’s a word or a part of a word that has meaning;

• it can’t be divided into smaller meaningful parts without violation or loss of its meaning;

• it can be found in various verbal environment with a relatively stable meaning.

The classification of morphemes.

According to the traditional classification morphemes are divided into roots (expressing the concrete part of the word meaning) and affixes (expressing the specificational part of the word meaning). The roots of notional words are classical lexical morphemes obligatory for any word. The affixes include prefixes and suffixes and they are not obligatory.

Prefixes are lexical morphemes that occur before a root. They constitute a small class of morphemes and often express the meaning of English prepositions and adverbs (dis=without disarm, disinherit; pre=before prehistoric, pre-recorded, preschool; ad=to, towards adverb).

Suffixes are placed after a root and can be both lexical and grammatical. They play a greater role in the structure of English than prefixes. They express different morphological categories: noun possessive (‘s) and plural ((e)s-en), verb past tense (ed), comparative (er) and so on.

Prefixes and lexical suffixes have a word-building function and are usually studied in lexicology.

Free and bound morphemes.

Morphemes are of two kinds: free and bound. A free morpheme is one that can be uttered alone with meaning (Example: bright). A bound morpheme unlike free one can’t be uttered alone with meaning, it’s always added to one or more morphemes to form a word (Example: brightEN). All affixal morphemes are bound. Roots are numerous and most of them in English are free morphemes, but there are also bound (Example: POSSible – both morphemes are bound, proHIBIT, inFLATE/deFLATE).

Bound morphemes can be further classified as derivational (lexical) or inflectional (grammatical).

Derivational morphemes, when combined with a root, change either the semantic meaning or part of speech of the affected word. For example, in the word happiness, the addition of the bound morpheme -ness to the root happy changes the word from an adjective (happy) to a noun (happiness). In the word unkind, un- functions as a derivational morpheme, for it inverts the meaning of the word formed by the root kind.

Inflectional morphemes modify a verb's tense or a noun's number without affecting the word's meaning or class. Examples of applying inflectional morphemes to words are adding -s to the root dog to form dogs and adding -ed to wait to form waited.

4. The grammatical structure of the word: grammatical meaning and grammatical form; the notion of opposition; grammatical categories.

The word combines in its semantic structure two meanings – lexical and grammatical. Lexical meaning is the individual meaning of the word (e.g. table).

Grammatical meaning is the meaning of the whole class or a subclass.

Besides, the noun ‘table’ has the grammatical meaning of a subclass – countableness.

The grammatical meaning may be explicit and implicit. The implicit grammatical meaning is not expressed formally (e.g. the word table does not contain any hints in its form to it being inanimate). The explicit grammatical meaning is always marked morphologically – it has its marker. In the word cats the grammatical meaning of plurality is shown in the form of the noun; cat’s – here the grammatical meaning of possessiveness is shown by the form ‘s; is asked – shows the explicit grammatical meaning of passiveness.

The implicit grammatical meaning may be of two types – general and dependent. The general grammatical meaning is the meaning of the whole word-class, of a part of speech (e.g. nouns – the general grammatical meaning of thingness). The dependent grammatical meaning is the meaning of a subclass within the same part of speech.

Grammatical forms.

Grammatical forms fall into two main groups: synthetical and analytical. Synthetical grammatical forms are realized by the inner morphemic composition of the word. Synthetical grammatical forms are based on:

• inner inflexion (phonemic vowel interchange) – take-took;

• outer inflexion;

• suppletivity (correlation of different roots) – go-went, good-better.

Inner inflexion and suppletivity are not productive today what one can’t say about outer inflexion. Outer inflexion is represented by grammatical suffixation and is used to create:

The notion of opposition.

Any grammatical category must be represented by at least two grammatical forms (e.g. the grammatical category of number – singular and plural forms).

The linguistic opposition is generalized correlation of lingual forms by means of which a certain function is expressed. In other words it’s relation between two grammatical forms differing in meaning and external signs (Example: book::books (unmarked member/marked member)).

Oppositional substitution.

In various contextual conditions one member of the opposition may be used in the position of the other member. It is called oppositional substitution or oppositional reduction. It can be of two types: neutralisation and transposition.

In case of neutralisation the weak member is used due to its more general semantics. The oppositional substitution in this case is stylistically neutral.

Alongside with stylistically neutral substitution there is also stylistically coloured one that is called transposition.

Grammatical categories.

Grammatical categories are made up by the unity of identical grammatical meanings and realized by means of oppositions: house-houses (category of number), large-larger (category of comparison).

Grammatical categories may be of two types:

1. immanent (that is innate to a given class of words);

2. reflective (serving as a sign of correlation of words of different classes).

8. Parts of speech: criteria for discrimination and two principal types.

Parts of speech.

A sentence is an arrangement of words in their capacity as parts of speech. If we as listeners or readers don’t catch the identity of these parts we can’t understand with certainty the message being communicated.

The criteria for discrimination

• Semantic: presupposes the evaluation of the generalized meaning.

• Formal: reveals the specific inflectional and derivational features.

• Functional: concerns the syntactic role of the word in the sentence.

These 3 factors are traditionally referred to as meaning, form and function.

Notional and function parts of speech

The notional parts of speech are words with the corresponding references in the objective reality (nouns, pronouns, numerals, verbs, adjectives, adverbs).

The function parts of speech are words having no references of their own in the objective reality; used only as grammatical means to form up and frame utterances (articles, particles, prepositions, conjunctions and modal words).

8. Syntax: units, relations and functions.

Syntax, on the other hand, deals with the way words are combined.

It is concerned with the external functions of words and their relationship to other words within the linearly ordered units – word-groups, sentences and texts.

Syntax studies the way in which the units and their meanings are combined. It also deals with peculiarities of syntactic units, their behavior in different contexts.

Syntactic unit is always a combination that has at least two constituents.

The basic syntactic units:

a word-group a clause a sentence a text

Characteristic features:

• hierarchical

• of double nature (sides of content and expression)

• communicativeness

Syntactic notions

Syntactic meaning is the way in which separate word meanings are combined to produce meaningful word-groups and sentences.

Syntactic form is a distributional formula of the unit (John hits the ball – N1 + V + N2.)

Syntactic function is the function of a unit within the sentence.

Syntactic position is the position of an element that determines its relationship with the other elements of the same unit.

Syntactic relations are syntagmatic relations between syntactic units.

They can be of three types:

• coordination (SR1) - syntagmatic relations of independence (copulative, disjunctive, adversative, causative-consecutive);

• subordination (SR2) - syntagmatic relations of dependence (agreement, government, adjournment, enclosure);

• predication (SR3) - syntagmatic relations of interdependence (primary (sentence level) and secondary (phrase level).

• Syntactic function is the function of a unit on the basis of which it is included to a larger unit: in the word-group a smart student the word ‘smart’ is in subordinate attributive relations to the head element. In traditional terms it is used to denote syntactic function of a unit within the sentence (subject, predicate, etc.).

8. Communicative syntactic units: notions of sentence and utterance; theme and rheme.

Sentence is the central syntactic construction used as the minimal communicative unit that has its primary predication, actualises a definite structural scheme and possesses definite intonation characteristics.

Essential features of the sentence as a linguistic unit:

structural characteristics: subject-predicate relations;

semantic characteristics – it refers to some fact in the objective reality. Utterance is the unit of speech.

The main categories of the utterance are the theme and the rheme.

The theme is the information that has already been introduced before (given information).

The rheme is the information that is introduced for the first time (new information).

8. Communicative syntactic units: text and its essential characteristics.

Text is a sequence of sentences connected logically and semantically which convey a complete message.

Text is the unit of the highest (supersyntactic) level.

It manifests itself in speech as discourse.

Textual basic integrative properties are coherence, cohesion and deixis.

Coherence is a semantic or topical unity of the spoken or written text.

It is usually achieved by means of the theme and rheme progression.

There are various types of it:

• T1 R1 (T2) R2 (T3) R3;

• T1 R1, T1 R2, T1 R3;

• T: T1 R1, T2 R2, T3 R3.

Cohesion is a succession of spoken or written sentences.

• Textual (additive, adversative, causal, temporal).

• Lexical (reiteration and collocation).

Cohesive ties are formed by endophoric relations:

• anaphoric;

• cataphoric.

Deixis means ‘identification by pointing’.

Deictic expressions are typically pronouns, certain time and place adverbs (here, now, etc.), some verbs of motion.

There are five major types of deictic markers:

• person,

• place,

• time,

• textual,

• social (absolute and relational).