Lecture 1. The subject of grammar.

(morphology, syntax, morpheme)

Grammar is the study of the way the sentences of a language are constructed. It comprises morphology and syntax.

Morphology is a grammatical teaching of a word.

Syntax is a grammatical teaching a sentence.

Morphology mainly studies words. But our speech both oral and written consist of sentences and it is

syntax that is the teaching of a sentence.

Syntax is the study of the rules for the formation of grammatical sentences in a language, thus the main unit of morphology is a word.

The word is a nominative unit of a language. It sis formed by morphemes.

Morpheme is the minimal grammatical unit of a language that can’t be divided into smaller independent grammatical parts. It is the smallest element in the expression which has a direct relationship which any point in the content system.

Thus, a morpheme is recurrent (meaningful) form which can’t in turn be analyzed into smaller recurrent (meaningful) forms. Hence, any analyzed word or formative is a morpheme.

A form which may be an utterance is free. A form which isn’t free bound. Thus, book, the man are free forms; -ing (writing), -er (writer) are bound forms.

A minimum free form is a word. A word is a form which may be uttered alone(with meaning) but can’t be analyzed into parts that may be uttered alone.

A non-minimum free form is a phrase. A bound form which is a part of a word is a formative.

A formative may be complex or minimum. The construction of free forms in a phrase is a syntactic construction.

The science of morphology studies the patterns of word in a particular language including inflection, derivation and composition.

And the grammatical classes of words are called parts of speech. They are also called lexico-grammatical categories. Every grammatical category is the expression of some general idea (some logical category) Thus, the gram. category “plural” express “more-than-oneness” and therefore falls under the widen logical categories of “number” and “quantity”, and the gram. category “tense” corresponds to the logical “time”. Gende is a distinction of certain words according as the indicate “sex or the lack of it”. Gende belongs only noun or pronoun. There are 3 gendes: masculine, feminine neuter.

Lecture 2. Part of speech

In modern theoretical grammar part of speech are discriminated on the bases of 3 criteria.

1. Semantic that is the categorical meaning of a word

2. Morphology of formal, it is the formal of a word

3. Syntactical or functional, that is the function of a word in a sentence

The above criteria make it a possible to divide words into: notional (знамен. Слово) and functional (служебные)

In the English language there are 6 kinds of words or notional part of speech: the noun, the pronoun, the numeral, the adjective, the adverb, the verb. There are also exist the functional part of speech: the article, the preposition, the conjunction, the interjection.

The features of the noun.

1. The categorical meaning of a substance

2. The grammatical categories of number, case and gende, the specific suffixal forms of derivation

3. The substantive functions in the sentence: subject, object, substantival predicative attribute.

The features of the adj.

1. The categorical meaning of property(qualitative and relative adjective are distinguished)

2. The formal criterion - the degrees of compression (for qualitative adj), they may have a suffixal form of derivation and an analytical forms of derivation.

3. Adjective functions in the sentence: attribute to a noun adjectival predicative

The features of the numeral

1. The categorical meaning – number (cardinal and ordinal numerals)

2. A suffixal form for derivation of ordinal numerals, the specific forms for compound numerals, a narrow set of simple numerals

3. The function of a numeral attribute and numeral substantive

The features of the pronoun

1. The categorical meaning of indication

2. A narrow set of various status

3. Substantive and adjectival functions

The features of the verb

The categorical meaning of the process, it express the finite process and non-finite process.

The forms of the verbal categories of person, tense, voice number, mood, aspect

The function of finite forms of the verbs. The number of the non-finite forms of the verbs

The function of adverb

The categorical meaning of the secondary property of process or another property

The forms of the degrees of comparison(for qualitative adv)

The function of various adverbial modifier