17) The pronoun. The categories of case and number. Subclasses of pronouns.

The meaning of the pronoun as a separate post of speech is somewhat difficult to

define. In fact, dome pronouns share essential peculiarities of nouns (he), while

others have much in common with adjectives (which). This made some scholars think

that pronouns were not a separate part of speech at all and should be distributed

between nouns and adjectives. However, this point of view proved untenable and

entailed insurmountable difficulties. The meaning of pronouns as a part of speech can

be stated as follows: pronouns point to the things and properties without naming them.

Thus, e.g., the pronoun ‘it’ points to the thing without being the name of any

particular class of things. As far as form goes, pronouns fall into different types. Some

of them have the category of number (Sg and Pl), e.g., ‘this,that’. Some pronouns have

the category of case (‘he-him, somebody-somebody’s’) Function. Some pronouns

combine with verbs (‘he speaks’, ‘find him’), while others can also combine with the

following noun (‘this room’). In the sentence, some pronouns may be the subject

(‘he’, ‘what’) or the object, while others are the attribute (‘my’). Pronouns can be

predicatives. There are two grammatical categories in the Eng pronoun: case and

number. 1) Case. Some pronouns distinguish between 2 cases which are best termed

nominative and objective. These are as follows: nom – I, he, she, we, they, who; obj –

me, him, her, us, them, whom. A certain number of pronouns have a different case

system, namely they distinguish between a common and a genitive case. These are

‘somebody, anybody, one, another’ and a few more. All other pronouns have no

category of case. 2) Number. The category of number has only a very restricted field

in pronouns. It is found in the pronouns this/these, that/those, other/others. The method

by which each of the words ‘this’ and ‘that’ forms its plural is quite individual and

unanalysable from the viewpoint of the modern language (the question is one of the

history of English). As to the pronouns ‘I/we, he, she; it/they’ as well as ‘my/our’ or

‘myself/ourselves’, it must be stated that there is no grammatical category of number

here. These are separate words.

Subclasses of pronouns. The system of pronouns in modern English has a binary

structure (it consists of two components, each having two semantic spheres – denotation

and signification; the latter is characterized by no distinctions of gender, person, number).

According to professor Stelling, there are two main subclasses of pronouns, each of

which is divided into denotation and signification. 1^st class: indefinite personal, personal,

possessive and reflexive pronouns. The semantics can be defined through the indefinite

personal pronoun ‘one’. It’s the meaning of generalization that differs the pronoun ‘one’

from indefinite personal pronouns ‘we’ and ‘you’. (One must do one’s best – On

entering the building you will see a tower). 2^nd class: demonstrative, indefinite,

negative, relative, interrogative and conjunctive pronouns. On the level of signification

there are only demonstrative pronouns, all the rest are on the level of denotation, they

discriminate person-non-person: anyone-anything, who-what, which (interrogative),

who, which – that (relative), who-what (conjunctive). The link between signification and

denotation is ‘that’ (signification – demonstrative, may point to any object;

denotation – relative)

18) The verb as a part of speech. Classification of verbs.

Verb is a part of speech with grammatical meaning of process, action. Verb performs the

central role of the predicative function of the sentence. Verb is a very complex part of

speech and first of all because of it’s various subcalss division. If we admit the existence

of the category of finitude as Prof.Blokh does that we’re divide all the verbs into 2 large

sets: the finite set and non-finite set. They are profoundly different from each other. Here

we will talk about the finite verbs. As we have said the general processual meaning is in

the semantics of all the verbs including those denoting states, forms of existence and

combinability. It mainly combines with nouns and with adverbs. Syntactical function is

that of the predicate, because the finite verb expresses the processual categorial features

of predication that is time, voice, aspect and mood. Verbs are characterized by specific

forms of word-building. The stems may be simple ex: go, take, read. Sound replacive:

food-feed, blood-bleed. Stress replacive existence; Import-impOrt The composite verb

stems ex:to black mail. According to their semantic structure the finite verbs are

divided into:

-notional which possess full lexical meaning

-seminotional – they have very general faded lexical meaning

a.auxiliary verbs-they perform purely grammatical function

b.modal verbs-they express relational meaning, ability, obligation and so on.

c.link verbs-introducing predicative which is expressed by noun,adj,phrase (to seem)

Here we’re to mention of the existance of the notional link verbs, this are verbs which

have the power to perform the function of link verbs and they preserve their lexical value.

Ex:The Moon rose red. Due to the double syntactic character, the hole predicate is

reffered to as a double predicate (a predicate of double orientation). Notional verbs-the

1-st categorization on the basis of the subject process relation. The verbs are divided

into actional and statal. Actional-express the action, performed by the subject

(do,act,make). Statal verbs-they denote the state of their subject (be,stand,know). The

2-nd categorization is baised on the aspective characteristic. Two aspective subclasses

of verbs should be recognized in English limitive (close,arrive) and unlimitive (behave,

move). The basis of this division is the idea of a processual limit. That is some border

point beyond which the process doesn’t exist. The 3-rd categorization is based on the

combining power of the verbs. The combing power of words in relation to other words in

syntactically subordinate positions is called their syntactic valency. Syntactic valency

may be obligatory & optional.The obligatory adjuncts are called complements and

optional adjuncts are called supplements. According as verbs have or don’t have the

power to take complements, the notional words should classed as complimentive

(transitive and intransitive) or uncomplimentive (personal and impersonal)

Terminative – denote actions which can’t develop beyond a certain limit (to stand up,

to sit down, to come, to take). Non-terminative – have no limit (to love, to sit, to

work, to walk)