6) Grammatical meaning, form, categories.

There are 3 fundamental notions gr.form, gr.meaning, gr.category. Notional words

possess some morphemic features expressing grammatical meanings. They determing

the grammatical form of the word. Grammatical form is not confined to an individual

meaning of the word because gr.meaning is very abstract & general ex: oats-wheat: The

gr.form of oats is clearly plural and gr.form of wheat is singular, but we can’t say that

oats are more than one& wheat is one. So here we say that oats is gr.plural & wheat is

gr.singular. There is no clear one-to-one correspondence between gr.category of singular

& plural and counting them in reality in terms of “one”and “more than one”.

A very vivid example confirming the rightness of this statment is connected with the

category of gender with biological sex ex: bull-cow, so the gr.form presents a division of

a word of the principle of expressing a certain gr.meaning. Gr.meaning is very abstractive

generalized meaning, which is linguistically expressed.ex:Peter’s head-the gr.meaning of

the category of case showing the realtions between part and a whole. Gr.meaning is

always expressed either explicitly or implicitly.For instance:The book reads well-here the

gr.meaning of passivity is expressed implicitly. Gr.meaning is a system of expressing the

gr.meaning through the paradigmatic correlation of gr.forms-expressed by gr.opposition,

which can be of different types 1.Private 2.Gradual (large-larger-largest) 3. Equipollent

(am is are). By the number of the opposemes opposition may be binary, ternary,

quaternary and so on. Any opposition can be reduced. The most important type of

opposition is the binary-private opposition. The other type of opposition may be reduced to

this kind of opposition. Oppositional reductions (binary) 1.Neutralization /weak-strong

2.Transposition: strong-weak

How we express gr.meaning:1.inflexions-pen-pens, 2.sound alternation-replacive

morpheme-man-men,3.Analitycal means with the help of analytical forms (discontinuous

morphemes)

4.Suppletivity-different roots for gr.forms. I-me/go-went

7)Different aspects of English Syntax.

Traditionally, Grammar is said to have 2 branches: Morphology and Syntax. The basic

notions of Syntax are the phrase and the sentence. But nowadays even traditional schools

of linguistics accept the fact that Syntax turns out to have different aspects. These are

formal, semantic, communicative and pragmatic aspects. Formal syntax deals with the

plane of expression of syntactic units and all the rest deal with the plane of content.

Formal Syntax

The units and categories are defined according to the plane of expression. The weak

point of Formal Syntax is that one and the same syntactic phenomenon can be

classified differently: e.g. a trip to Moscow. This phrase can be identified as attributive or

objective or adverbial. So we shall have to choose the answer that seems to us to be the

‘better’ one, i.e. to apply personal taste and opinion. The result will inevitably be

subjective. The matter may also be settled by convention, i.e. we may declare that we

shall consider, say, every prepositional phrase modifying a noun to be an attribute (that

is actually done in most English grammars). That’s why the more general term

‘complement’ seems to be more suitable. On the whole, Formal Syntax gives priority to

the form of syntactic units. As a result, we’ve got a well-grounded system of structural

elements and means of syntactic relations at the levels of the phrase and the sentence.

These are well-known theories of parts of the sentence, types of syntactic relations,

subordinative and coordinative phrases, the head word and its adjunct in a subordinative

phrase. It is the description of the formal structure of syntactic units.

Semantic Syntax

The sentence is considered to be a complicated sign, the name of a situation. It’s the

aspect of semantic representation. e.g. John ordered Harry to leave. John expected Harry

to leave. The sentences have very different properties and they can be accounted for by

assuming some ‘higher’ level of representation. It reflects the difference in the meaning

of the sentences. Order is a three-place predicate; expect is a two-place predicate. Then

there must be some ‘higher’ or ‘more abstract’ level of representation than the surface

structure. W.Chafe claims that every sentence is built around a predicative element, which

is usually, though not always, accompanied by one or more nominal elements. In the

sentence Harriet sang there is a predicative element sang accompanied by the nominal

element Harriet. Traditionally we speak about the verb and the noun. But these terms

have been used most often for elements of surface or syntactic structures, not for semantic

elements. W.Chafe suggests the terms predicate and argument for verb and noun

respectively. Arguments may also be called participants or semantic roles. The objectives

of Semantic Syntax are to reveal the deep (semantic) structure of the sentence, compare it

to the formal surface structure and reveal the difference in the classes of arguments and

predicates, and thus build a semantic classification of arguments and predicates.

Communicative Syntax

The communicative meaning doesn’t contain the information about the subject of the

speech act; it doesn’t include denotation or subjective attitude. It deals with the

arrangement and structure of the process of communication itself. The grammatical

meanings are in the first place the meaning of grammatical person, actual sentence

division and communicative type of sentence. The communicative nature of grammatical

person is directly connected with verbal communication. The communicative categories

are the 1 person – the speaker and the 2 person – the listener. As to the 3 person, it is

opposed both to the 1 and 2 person and it is excluded from communication. An early

attempt to revise traditional communicative classification of sentences was made by the

American scholar Ch.Fries. He classified them according to the responses they elicit into

communicative and non-communicative. Communicative utterances are divided into

3 types:-Utterances regularly eliciting ‘oral’ responses only: greetings, calls, questions.

-Utterances regularly eliciting ‘action’ responses, sometimes accompanied by one of a

limited list of oral responses: requests or commands.-Utterances regularly eliciting

conventional signals of attention to continuous discourse: statements. Ch.Fries recorded

non-communicative utterances in incidental notes as he heard them - or rather as he

overheard them, for they occurred usually when the speaker was alone. The situations in

which they appeared were not those in which the speaker was using speech forms in

order to elicit particular responses from hearers. The utterances were not directed to a

listener – even to the speaker himself as a hearer. E.g. oh, wow, my God, goodness. They

have some ‘meaning’ because they are usually associated with particular situations.

Pragmatic Syntax

The object of Pragmatic Syntax is the relation between language units and their users,

and how these linguistic units are used in speech, on what conditions. This is the social

side of language. Pragmalinguistics studies ways of expressing different purposes of

communication of the speaker, i.e. his communicative intentions. Sentences of the same

structural type may turn out to be completely different: e.g. Come! (a command, a request),

e.g. I’ll watch you!(a statement of a fact, a menace, a promise). At first sight, the

difference between the sentences seems to be found in different contexts or situations. But

it’s not really so. Sentences which differ in their pragmatics also differ in their semantic

and structural properties. According to the principles of pragmalinguistics, communicative

intentions of the speaker are realized in speech acts. Each speech act is characterized by a

definite communicative intention underlying it. Such are statements of fact,

confirmations, refutations, agreements, disagreements, commands, requests, greetings,

recommendations, promises, menaces, etc. Among speech acts classified as pragmatic

utterance types, there are 2 types which are mutually opposed and which are crucially

important. These are constative utterances (constatives) and performative utterances

(performatives). Constatives express the speaker’s reflections of reality: e.g. he

congratulated me. He apologized. By pronouncing a performative, the speaker performs

his complete function. By saying I congratulate you; I apologize the speaker is

performing an action.