Grammatical category

Grammatical category is a … … … realized through … … …

Method of opposition: N.S.Troubetskoy  A.I.Smirnitsky

The essence of the method of opposition - … … …

Types of oppositions

(1) acc. to the number of members (elements): (2) qualitatively:

- … – 2 members - … e.g. ask ^-- ÷ asked⁺

- … – 3 members - … e.g. am ÷ is

- … – 4 members - gradual e.g. …

Oppositional reduction:

(1) … e.g. Tonight we start for London

(2) … e.g. She is always complaining of something

categories

Opposition of forms |

Types of opposition |

Meanings of the members |

Meaning of the category |

Peculiarities

Topic 2 Parts of speech

One criterion classifications

• Morphological

e.g. H.Sweet, Otto Jespersen:

• declinable words: - indeclinable words termed ‘particles’

Noun-words,

Adjective-words,

Verbs

• Syntactico-distributional

Charles Fries [fri:z]

‘each class of words is characterized by a set of positions in a sentence’

substitution testing

• 4 classes of form words (occupy 4 main positions in a sentence)

Classes of form words –

class 1 ~ nouns

class 2 ~ verbs

class 3 ~ adjectives

class 4 ~ adverbs

• Function words – outside the 4 main positions in a sentence

154 words – 15 classes

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• Pronouns are classed together with the word they substitute

Notional and functional words

criteria for differentiating:

1) the ‘prominence’ of their lexical meaning;

2) peculiarities of their combinability

3) ability to be substituted by a word of a more general meaning

4) ability to add / create new items

Notional words: Functional words:

(1) … … … (1) … … …

(2) … … … (2) … … …

(3) … … … (3) … … …

(4) … … … (4) … … …

Groups of functional words (function words – Ch.Fries)

• with a … combinability – articles, auxiliaries, modals, particles

• with a … combinability – prepositions & conjunctions which connect 2 or more notional words or word-groups

• heterogeneous subclass uniting introductory it / there, interrogative words, interjections, etc.

There may be groups of closed-system items (functional words) within an open class (notional words) – e.g. notional, functional & auxiliary verbs

The category of Number discreteness non-discreteness

count uncount

Non-pl. vs Pl. Sg only

oneness more-than-oneness Pl. only indiscrete entities

a single discrete multiplicity of discrete <… no boundaries entity entities