- •1. The notion of the grammatical category: gr. Form & gr. Meaning. Means of form-building. Gr.Oppositions as the basis of gr. Categories. Types of oppositions. Reduction of gr. Oppositions
- •Typology of the Morphological Systems of r and e: Typology of parts of speech
- •3. Simple sentence as a monopredicative structure. The definitions of the sentence
- •The status of the sentence
- •Classification of sentences
- •Types of simple sentences
- •Primary and secondary sentence parts
- •4. Сomposite sentence as a polypredicative structure
- •Connectors
- •Inter-textual structure. (text units)
- •6. The word and its properties
- •2) Identity of the word (тождество).
- •The word as an arbitrary and motivated sign
- •Types of motivation
- •Phonetical motivation;
- •Morphological motivation;
- •Semantic motivation;
- •7. The problem of linguistic meaning
- •Main approaches to the study of meaning
- •Types of linguistic meaning
- •Differences between lexical and grammatical meanings
- •Types of connotative meaning
- •The structure of a polysemantic word
- •8. The etymological composition
- •9. Stylistic stratification of the english vocabulary. Literary and non-literary strata. The subsystems of the english lexicon: slang, jargon, euphemisms, neologisms, archaisms
- •Vulgarisms
- •10. The main and minor ways of word formation; affixation, conversion, compounding, blending, clipping, abbreviation, back formation
- •2 Types of word formation:
- •11. Lexical and grammatical valency of words. Collocations. Free word combinations vs. Idioms. Idioms: their characteristic features. Classifications of idioms
- •Language as a system of signs and as a structure. De saussure's dichotomies. The theory of sign
- •The relationship between language and thought. Language as a means of structuring and storing knowledge
- •Vygotsky’s view of the issue
- •Language and Thought from the Point of View of Cognitive Linguistics
- •Language as a means of communication. The processes of understanding and verbalizing. Text and discourse as units of communication
- •15. Relationship between language and culture. The specific feature of vocabulary and grammar as manifestations of world view
- •The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
- •16. Criteria for revealing the status of a phoneme
- •17. Mechanisms of speech sound production
- •In classifying consonants as different from vowels
- •Power mechanism
- •Vibrator mechanism
- •Resonator mechanism
- •Obstructer mechanism
- •18. Intonation as a component structure
- •Intonation
- •19. Reasons for phonetic modification
- •In regional and social accents of english
- •20. The geographical position and the environment of great britain
- •21. General review of the usa economics
- •Inventions and industrial development
- •Achievements of american economy
- •The American System of Government
- •1) The Legislative Branch of Power
- •2) The Executive Branch of Power
- •3) The Judiciary Branch of Power
- •The System of American Courts
- •Nominations, Campaigns and Elections
- •23. National and social population of great britain
- •Ancestors. Waves of invasion
- •Languages and nationalities
- •Social rates
- •Social class make-up
- •Migration waves
- •The ethnic dimension. Racism
- •24. The culture of great britain. Cultural realia
- •Traditions
- •The state opening of parliament
- •Changing the guard
- •Trooping the colour
- •The ceremony of the keys
- •Customs and traditions of scotland
- •English renaissance
- •The british museum
- •Some more museums of britain
- •The Tower of London
- •St. Paul's Cathedral
- •Some more cultural realia from the dictionary
- •25. The main historic periods of the usa
6. The word and its properties
(from Arnold!!!)
The word may be described as the basic unit of language. Uniting meaning and form, it is composed of one or more morphemes, each consisting of one or more spoken sounds or their written representation. Morphemes are also meaningful units but they cannot be used independently, they are always parts of words whereas words can be used as a complete utterance (e. g. Listen!). The combinations of morphemes within words are subject to certain linking conditions. When a derivational affix is added a new word is formed, thus, listen and listener are different words. In fulfilling different grammatical functions words may take functional affixes: listen and listened are different forms of the same word. Different forms of the same word can be also built analytically with the help of auxiliaries. E.g.: The world should listen then as I am listening now (Shelley).
When used in sentences together with other words they are syntactically organised. Their freedom of entering into syntactic constructions is limited by many factors, rules and constraints (e. g.: They told me this story but not *They spoke me this story).
The definition of every basic notion is a very hard task: the definition of a word is one of the most difficult in linguistics because the simplest word has many different aspects.
It has a sound form because it is a certain arrangement of phonemes; it has its morphological structure, being also a certain arrangement of morphemes; when used in actual speech, it may occur in different word forms, different syntactic functions and signal various meanings.
Being the central element of any language system, the word is a sort of focus for the problems of phonology, lexicology, syntax, morphology and also for some other sciences that have to deal with language and speech, such as philosophy and psychology, and probably quite a few other branches of knowledge. All attempts to characterise the word are necessarily specific for each domain of science and are therefore considered one-sided by the representatives of all the other domains and criticised for incompleteness. The variants of definitions were so numerous that some authors (A. Rossetti, D.N. Shmelev) collecting them produced works of impressive scope and bulk.
A few examples will suffice to show that any definition is conditioned by the aims and interests of its author.
(from the lecture!!!)
Irina Arnold defines the word as the basic unit of a given language. She resulted from the association of a particular meaning with the particular group of sound, capable of a particular grammatical employment.
She stated that the word can be studied from several aspects: phonological, semantic and grammatical.
Irina Arnold also pointed out the main important characteristics of the word:
The word is the unity of form and meaning.
The word is the basic unit of a language.
The word is indivisible.
The word is composed of1 or more morphemes.
The word is internally (внутренне) stable.
The word is positionally mobile.
The word is separable.
The word can enter syntactic structures.
The word possesses semantic integrity (целостность).
The famous Russian scholar professor Смирницкий in his theory of the word focused on 2 major problems (related to the integrity of the word). They are: 1) separateness of the word (отдельность);