7. Дәріс сабақтар тезистерi Lecture 1. Theme: Theoretical grammar. Its objects. General considerations on the Structure of English.

Language is means of forming and storing ideas as reflections of reality and exchanging them in the process of human intercourse. Language is social by nature; it is inseparably connected with the people who are its creators and users; it grows and develops together with the development of society.

Language incorporates the three constituent pans ("sides"), each being inherent in it by virtue of its social nature. These parts are the phonological system, the lexical system, the grammatical system. Only the unity of these three elements forms a language; without any one of them there is no human language in the above sense.

In earlier periods of the development of linguistic knowledge, grammatical scholars believed that the only purpose of grammar was to give strict rules of writing and speaking correctly. The rigid regulations for the correct ways of expression, for want of the profound understanding of the social nature of language, were often based on purely subjective and arbitrary judgments of individual grammar compilers. The result of this "prescriptive" approach was that alongside quite essential and useful information, non-existing "rules" were formulated that stood in sheer contradiction with the existing language usage, i.e. lingual reality. Traces of this arbitrary prescriptive approach to the grammatical teaching may easily be found even in to-date's school practice.

To refer lo some of the numerous examples of this kind, let us consider the well-known rule of the English article stating that the noun which denotes as object "already known" by the listener should be used with the definite article. Observe, however, English sentences taken from the works of distinguished authors directly contradicting this "rule".

I've just read a book of yours about Spain and 1 wanted to ask you about it."-"It's not a very good book, I am afraid" (S Maugham)

Let's take the rule forbidding the use of the continuous tense forms with the verb be as a link, as well as with verbs of perception. Here are examples to the contrary:

My holiday at Crone isn't being a disappointment (A. Huxley).

For the first time, Bobby felt, he was really seeing the man (A. Christie).

The "given examples of English articles and verbs forms, though not agreeing with the above "prescriptions", contain no grammar mistakes in them.

The said traditional view of the purpose of grammar has lately been re-stated by some modern trends in linguistics. In particular, scholars belonging to these trends pay much attention to artificially constructing and analyzing incorrect utterances with the aim of a better formulation of the rules for the construction of correct ones. But their examples and deductions, too, are often at variance with the real facts if lingual usage.

According to the idea of their creator, the prominent American scholar N. Chomsky, the first of the utterances, although nonsensical logically, was to be classed as grammatically correct, while the second one, consisting of the same words placed in the reverse order, had to be analyzed as a disconnected, "ungrammatical" enumeration, a "non-sentence". Thus, the examples, by way of contrast, were intensely demonstrative (so believed the scholar) of the tact that grammar as a whole amounted to a set of non-semantic rules of sentence formation.

However a couple of years later this assessment of the lingual value of the given utterances was disputed in an experimental investigation with informants-natural speakers of English, who could not come to a unanimous conclusion about the correctness incorrectness of both of them. In particular, some of the informants classed the second utterance as "sounding like poetry". To understand the contradictions between the bluntly formulated "rules" and reality, as well as to evaluate properly the separated from the expression of meanings; on the contrary, they are themselves meaningful. Namely, they are connected with the most general and abstract parts of content inherent in the elements of language. These parts of content, together with the formal means I through which they are expressed, are treated by grammarians in terms "grammatical categories". Such are, for instance, the categories of number or mood in morphology, the categories of communicative1] purpose or emphasis in syntax, etc. Since the grammatical forms and regularities are meaningful, it becomes clear that the rules of grammar must be stated semantically, or, more specifically, they must be worded functionally. For example, it would be fallacious to state] without any further comment that the inverted word order in the English declarative sentence is grammatically incorrect. Word order as an element of grammatical form is laden with its own meaningful functions. It can express, in particular, the difference between the central idea, of the utterance and the marginal idea, between emotive and unemotive modes of speech, between different types of style. Thus, if the inverted word order in a given sentence does express these functions, then its use should be considered as quite correct. E.g.:

In the center of the room, under the chandelier, as became a host, stood the head of the family, old Jolyon himself (J. Galsworthy).

The word arrangement in the utterance express a narrative description, with the central informative element placed in the strongest semantic position in narration, i.e. at the end. Compare the same sort of arrangement accompanying a plainer presentation of subject matter:

Inside on a wooden bunk lay a young Indian woman (E. Hemingway). Compare, further, the following:

And ever, did his Soul tempi him with evil, and whisper of terrible things. Yet did it not prevail against, so great was the power of his love (O. Wilde) (Here the inverted word order is employed to render intense emphasis in a legend-stylized narration.) One thing and one thing only could she do for him (R. Kipling). (Inversion in this case is used to express emotional intensification of the central idea.)

Examples of this and similar kinds will be found in plenty in modern English literary texts of good style repute.

The nature of grammar as a constituent part of language is a better understood in the light of explicitly discriminating the two planes of language, namely, the plane of content and the plane of expression. .

The plane of content comprises the purely semantic elements contained in language, while the plane of expression comprises the material (formal) units of language taken by themselves, apart from the meaning rendered by them. The two planes are inseparably connected, so that no meaning can be realized without some material means of expression. Grammatical elements of language present a unity of content and expression (or, in somewhat-more familiar terms, a unity of form and meaning). In this the grammatical elements are similar to the lingual meanings, as we have stated above, is different in principle from the quality of lexical meanings.

On the other hand, the correspondence between the planes of content and expression is very complex, and it is peculiar to each language. This complexity is clearly illustrated by the phenomena of polysemy, homonymy, synonymy.

In cases of polysemy and homonymy, two or more units of the plane of content correspond to one unit of the plane of expression. For instance, the verbal form of the present indefinite (one unit in the plane of expression) polysematically renders the grammatical meanings of habitual action, action at the present moment, action taken as a general truth. E.g.:

1 get up at half past six in the morning. 1 do see your point clearly now. As a rational being, 1 hate war.

The morphemic material element -s/-es (in pronunciation [-s, -z, -iz]), i.e. one unit in the plane of expression, homonymically renders the grammatical meanings of the third person singular of the verbal present tense, the plural of the noun, the possessive form of the noun, i.e. several units of the plane of content. E.g.:

John trusts his friends. We have new desks in our classroom The chiefs order came as a surprise.

In cases of synonymy, conversely, two or more units of the plane of expression correspond to one unit of the plane of content. F-or instance, the forms of the verbal future indefinite, future continuous. and present continuous (several units in the plane of expression) can in certain contexts synonymically render the meaning of a future action (one unit in the plane of content). E.g.:

Will you come to the party, too? Will you be coining to the party, too? Are you coming to the party, too?

Taking into consideration the discrimination between the two planes, we may say that the purpose of grammar as a linguistic discipline is, in the long run, to disclose and formulate the regularities of the correspondence between the plane of content and the plane of expression in the formation of utterances out of stocks of words as part of the process of speech production.

Modern linguistics lays a special stress on the systemic character of language and all its constituent parts. It accentuates the idea that language is a system of signs which are closely interconnected and interdependent. Units of immediate interdependencies (such as classes and subclasses of words, various subtypes of syntactic construction, etc.) form different microsystem (subsystems) within the framework of the global macrosystem (supersystem) of the whole language.

Each system is a structured set of elements related to one another by a common function. The common function of all the lingual signs is (o give expression to human thoughts.

The systemic nature of grammar is probably more evident than that of any other sphere of language, since grammar is responsible for the very organization of the informative content of utterances [Blokh, 1986, II]. Due to this fact, even the earliest grammatical (realizes, within the cognitive limits of their times, disclosed some systemic features of the described material. But the

scientifically sustained and consistent principles of systemic approach to language and its grammar were essentially developed in the linguistics of the twentieth century, namely, after the publication of the works by Russian scholar Beaudoin de Courtency and the Swiss scholar Ferdinand de Saussure. These two great men demonstrated the difference between lingual synchrony (coexistence of lingual elements) and diachrony (different lime-periods in the development of lingual elements as well as language as a whole) and defined language as a synchronic system of meaningful elements at any stage of its

historical evolution.

Language is the narrow sense of the word is a system of means of expression, while speech in the same narrow sense should be understood as the manifestation of the system of language in the process of intercourse.

The system of language includes, on the one hand, the body of material units-sounds, morphemes, words, word-groups; on the other hand, the regularities or "rules' of the use of these units. Speech comprises both the act of predicting utterances, and the utterances themselves, i.e. the text. Language and speech are inseparable, they form together an organic unity. As for grammar (the grammatical system), being an integral part of the lingual macrosystem it dynamically connects language with speech, because it categorially determines the lingual process of utterance production.

Thus, we have broad philosophical concept of language which is analyzed by linguistics into two different aspects - the system of signs (language proper) and the use of sings (speech proper). The generalizing term "language" is also preserved in linguistics, showing the unity of these tow aspects( Блох, 1986,18).

The sign (meaningful unit) in the system of language has only a potential meaning. In speech, the potential meaning of the lingual sign is "actualized", i.e. made situationally significant as part of the grammatically organized text.

Lingual units stand to one another in two fundamental types 1 relations: syntagmatic and paradigmatic.

Syntagmatic relations are immediate linear relations units in a segmental sequence (string). E.g.

The spaceship was launched without the help of a booster rocket.

In this sentence syntagmatically connected are the words and word-groups the spaceship, was launched, the spaceship was launched, was launched without the help, the help of a rocket, a booster rocket.

Morphemes within the words are also connected syntagmatically. E.g.: space/ship; launch/ed; with/out; boost./er.

Phonemes are connected syntagmatically within morphemes and words, as well as at various juncture points (cf. the processes of assimilation and dissimilation).

The combination of two words or word-groups one of which is modified by the other forms.a unit which is referred to as a syntactic! "'syntagma". There are four main types of notional syntagmas: predicative (the combination of a subject and a predicate), objective! (the combination of a noun and its attribute), adverbial (the combination of a modified notional word, such as a verb, adjective, or adverb, with its adverbial modifier).

Since syntagmatic relations are actually observed in utterances, they are described by the Latin formula as relations "in praesentia" ("in the presence").

The other type of relations, opposed to syntagmatic and called "paradigmatic", are such as exit between elements of the system outside the strings where they co-occur. These intra-systemic relations and dependencies find their expression in the fact that each lingual unit is included in a set or series of connections based on different formal and functional properties.

In the sphere of phonology such series are built up by the correlations of phonemes on the basis of vocality or consonantism voicedness or devoicedness, the factor of nazalization, the factor or length, etc. in the sphere of the vocabulary these series are founded on the correlations of synonymy and antonymy, on various topical connections, on different word-building dependencies. In the domain of grammar, series of related forms realize grammatical numbers and cases, persons and tenses, gradations of modalities, sets of sentence patterns of various functional nature, etc.

Unlike syntagmatic relations, paradigmatic relations cannot be directly observed in utterances, that is why they are referred to as relations “in absentia”(“in the absence”).

Paradigmatic relations coexist with syntagmatic relations in such a way that some sort of syntagmatic connection is necessary for the realization of any paradigmatic series. This is especially evident an a classical grammatical paradigm which oresents a productive series of forms each consisting of a syntagmatic connection of two elements: one common for the whole of the series(stem), the other specific for every individual form in the series (grammatical feature – inflexion, suffix, auxiliary word). Grammatical paradigms express various grammatical categories.

The minimal paradigm consists of two-form stages. This kind of paradigm we see, for instance, in the expression of the category of number: boy-boys. A more complex paradigm can be divided into component paradigmatic series ,i.e. into the corresponding sub-paradigms(of. numerous paradigmatic series constituting the system of the finite verb). In other words, with paradigms, the same as with any other systematically organized material, macro-and micro-series are to be discriminated.