- •Lecture 1 The Subject Matter of Grammar
- •The Evolution of English Grammars
- •The XX th Century Linguistic Schools
- •Prague Linguistic School (Functional Linguistics)
- •The Asymmetry of a Linguistic Sign
- •American Descriptive Linguistics
- •Transformational and Transformational Generative Grammar
- •Semantic Syntax
- •Methods of Linguistic Analysis
- •Parsing (Traditional Syntactic Analysis)
- •The Oppositional Method
- •The Distributional method
- •The ic Method (method of immediate constituents)
- •The Transformational Method
- •The Method of Deep and Surface Structures
- •The Functional Sentence Perspective Method (fsp)
- •The Componential Method
- •The Contextual Method
- •The Levels of Language
- •The Morphological Structure of me
- •The Classifications of Morphemes
- •Paradigmatics and Syntagmatics
- •Parts of Speech Classifications of Parts of Speech.
- •Notionals and Functionals
- •Heterogeneity
- •Field and Periphery
- •Subcategorization
- •Onomaseological approach
- •The Noun The General Properties of a Noun
- •The Category of Gender.
- •The Category of Number
- •The Category of Case
- •Debated Problems within the Category of Case
- •Genitive Constructions (n’s n)
- •The Article Debated Problems
- •The Functions of Articles in a Sentence
- •Lecture 3 The Verb The General Properties of a Verb
- •The Category of Tense
- •Classifications of Tenses
- •The Future Tense
- •The Present Tense
- •The Past Tense
- •The Future-in-the-Past Tense
- •The Category of Aspect
- •The Category of Time Relation (or Correlation)
- •The Category of Voice
- •The Category of Mood
- •The Indicative Mood
- •The Imperative Mood
- •The Subjunctive Mood
- •Points of Similarities with the Finites
- •Points of Differences with the Finites
- •Debated Problems within The Verbals
- •The Functions of Non-Finites
- •Materials for Lecture 4 syntax
- •Types of Syntax
- •The theory of the phrase
- •Devices of Connecting Words in a Phrase
- •Debated Problems within the Theory of the Phrase
- •Classifications of Phrases
- •The theory of the simple sentence
- •The Definition of a Sentence
- •Syntactic Modelling of the Sentence
- •Semantic Modelling of the Sentence
- •The Notion of a Syntactic Paradigm
- •Structural Classification of Simple Sentences
- •Predicative Constructions Within a simple sentence we distinguish primary and secondary (independent/ dependent) elements, the structural nucleus and its adjuncts.
- •Syntactic Processes
- •The Principal Parts of a Simple Sentence
- •The Secondary Parts of a Simple Sentence
- •An Object
- •An Adverbial Modifier
- •An Attribute
- •Debated Problems within a Simple Sentence
- •A composite sentence
- •A Compound Sentence
- •I. The General Notion of a Complex Sentence.
- •2. The Status of the Subordinate Clause.
- •3.1. Classifications of Subordinate Clauses.
- •3.2. Types of Subordinate Clauses.
- •4. Connections between the Principal and the Subordinate Clause.
- •5. Neutralization between Subordination and Coordination.
- •6. The Character of the Subordinating Conjunction
- •7. Levels of Subordination
- •Syntactic Processes in the Complex Sentence.
- •9. Communicative Dynamism within a Composite Sentence( Compound and Complex) and a Supra-phrasal Unit.
Lecture 1 The Subject Matter of Grammar
Grammar - is the study of the structure of human language.
Grammar studies the formal properties of words and sentences. It cosists of morphology and syntax. Morphology describes how words are structured and formed, how their constituents (morphemes) are classified and combined. Syntax describes how words are arranged and combined into phrases and sentences, how phrases and sentences are classified and combined into larger structures.
The Evolution of English Grammars
In the development of English grammars there have been several grammars: prescientific normative (from the XVI-th century till the beginning of the XX - th century) grammar; 2. scientific explanatory grammar. (from the turn-of-the century up to the middle of the 20th century) .
Prescriptive Normative grammars prescribed and proscribed. They prohibited wrong, improper constructions and forms. They set up (postulated) standards of correctness. They made use of the rules of ancient Latin grammars which served as a model for almost all European grammars. They used the same terminology and distinguished the same word classes: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, etc.
1891 can be counted as the beginning of the classical scientific grammar, which is represented by the names of Henry Sweet and Otto Jespersen (1860-1943), The Great Dane. My Fair Lady, There is a motion-picture musical My Fair Lady about a linguist who wagers that he can transform the diction of a Cockney-accented flower seller to that of an upper-class lady, from the play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw. Professor Henry Sweet served as the prototype for B. Shaw’s Professor Higgins . Scientific grammars did not proscribe anything. That was a new approach. This grammar defined general grammatical categories. It anticipated Ferdinand de Saussure’s synchronic approach. It proposed new techniques of linguistic description.
The epoch of these scholars is now called Traditional grammar.
The XX th Century Linguistic Schools
Traditional grammar is criticized by newer grammars for: 1. its obscuring (ignoring) language itself as an intra-linguistic phenomenon; 2.its focusing on logical and psychological (extra-linguistic) considerations; that is, for its being meaning-oriented; 3. its being atomistic.
Newer grammars of the XX century came to describe language as a system. This approach was initiated by Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), a Swiss linguist, a pioneer in structuralism and semiotics. He profoundly contributed to the theoretical foundations of language studies. His great work “The General Course of Linguistics” (1916) is the starting point for the XX th century linguistics.
The most important structural and semiotic postulates which underlie the leading linguistic theories of the XX th century:
1. Language is a social phenomenon;
2. Language is a structured system of linguistic signs, which are interdependent and interconnected.
3. Language has two aspects: the system of language “la langue” and the actual linguistic behaviour or manifestation of this system “la parole” (speech). The system of language is a paradigmatic, vertical aspect. A paradigm is a vertical set of all possible forms of a word ( a girl, girls, a girl’s hat, girls’ hats). The relations between these forms are invariable. Speech is a horizontal linear syntagmatic aspect of language. A syntagm is a linear sequence of elements (He disliked the enthusiasms of American girls).. The relations wthin a syntagm are variable. Paradigmatic relations are based on substitution, syntagmatic relations are based on co-occurrence (совместная встречаемость.)
4. A study of language (la langue) can be diachronic or historical, focusing on historic change or synchronic (descriptive) treating language as a self-contained system at a given moment of its existence. F. De Saussure preferred the synchronic descriptive approach to the historic study of language.
5. A linguistic sign is bilateral, that is, it has two aspects: form and meaning. The relations between them are asymmetrical.
6. Language is a system, the elements of which are related by means of similarities and differences, i.e. (id est lat. – то есть) oppositions. We find oppositions on all linguistic levels. So, language can be studied on the basis of oppositions. On the phonological level: long vowels are opposed to short vowels, voiced consonants are opposed to voiceless consonants. On the morphological level: the plural number of nouns is opposed to the singular On the syntactical level: composite sentences are opposed to simple ones. On the lexico-semantic level words are opposed to each other: male:: female; man :: woman; God :: Satan, angel :: devil, etc.
F. de Saussure revolutionised linguistics. He introduced structuralism as a method of analysis which was broadly used in the XXth century humanities (linguistics, literary studies, sociology, philosophy), arts, etc.
The ideas of F. de Saussure affected highly the Prague linguistic school, which created functional linguistics. Under his influence American linguists introduced Structural descriptive grammar, Transformational and Transformational generative grammar.