THEORY OF GRAMMAR

Literature:

1. Каушанская, В.Л. Грамматика английского языка, 2006.

2. Грамматика английского языка: Морфология. Синтаксис. Учебное пособие для студентов педагогических институтов и университетов по специальности № 2103 "Иностранные языки". - СПб., СОЮЗ, 1999. - 496 с.

3. Ильиш, Б.А. Строй современного английского языка, 1965.

4. Блох, М. Я. Теоретическая грамматика английского языка, 1999.

Lecture 1. Grammar: general notions

Language is a means of forming and storing ideas as reflections of reality and exchanging them in the process of human intercourse. Language is social by nature; it is connected with the people who are its creators and users; it grows and develops together with the development of society.

Modern English is an analytical language. An analytical language would seem to be:

1. Comparatively few grammatical inflections (case inflections in nouns, adjectives, personal inflections in verbs);

2. A wide use of prepositions to denote relations between objects and to connect words in the sentence;

3. The word order to denote grammatical relations.

There are several senses in which the term “grammar” is used.

The 1^st thing meant by “grammar” is “the set of formal patterns in which the words of a language are arranged in order to convey larger meanings.”

The 2^nd sense in which the people use the word “grammar” is linguistic etiquette”.

The 3d meaning of grammar is the branch of linguistic science which is concerned with the description, analysis, and formularization of formal language patterns.

Grammar is the branch of linguistic science which is concerned with the total signals by which a given language expresses its meaning or the total structure of a language.

The aim of theoretical grammar is to present a theoretical description of a grammatical system.

Grammar is traditionally divided into two parts – morphology and syntax.

Morphology is the part of grammar which treats of the forms of words.

Syntax is usually defined as that part of grammar, which treats of the rules according to which words are connected in the sentence, and also of various types of sentences, their structure and meaning.

Grammatical categories are generalized grammatical meaning characteristic of a certain language that are expressed by changes in the forms of words and combinations of words in sentences. The category should be based in opposition.

The noun: number – the opposition of Sg and Pl.; case – the opposition of common case and the genitive case.

The adjectives: degrees of comparison the opposition of the positive, comparative and superlative degrees.

The pronoun: number – the opposition of Sg and Pl.; case – the opposition of nominative and objective; person – the 1^st, the 2^nd, the 3^rd.

Numerals: the category of numerical qualification – the opposition of cardinal and ordinal.

Verb: voice – the opposition of active and passive; tense – the opposition of Present, Past and Future; person – the 1^st, the 2^nd, the 3^rd; mood – the imperative, the subjunctive, the indicative.

Lecture 2. PARTS OF SPEECH

1. Parts of speech: its classification.

Henry Sweet: Three main features characterizing the parts of speech, namely meaning, form and function:

1. Meaning: the meaning common to all the words of the given class (not the individual meaning, lexical). The meaning of the substantive is “thing-ness”; the meaning of the verb is “process”.

2. Form: the morphological characteristics of a type of a word. The noun is characterized by the category of number (singular and plural), the verb by tense, mood, etc.

3. Function: the syntactical properties of a type of word: its methods of combining with other words; its function in the sentence.

According to his classification:

Declinable (склоняемые)

• noun-words: noun, noun-pronoun, noun-numeral, infini­tive, gerund,

• adjective-words: adjective, adjective-pronoun, adjective-numeral, participles.

• verb: finite verb, verbals (infinitive, gerund, parti­ciples)

indeclinable (particles):

• adverb,

• preposition,

• conjunction,

• interjection.

According to B.Ilyish (Борис Александрович Ильиш), he gives the following classification of the parts of speech dividing them into two categories: notional and formal. Notional words are words which denote things, actions etc. The formal words are words which denote relations and connections between the notional words.

The term “formal words” refers to words whose function in building up a phrase or a sentence. They are prepositions and conjunctions.

The noun, the adjective, the pronoun, numerals, the stative, the verb, the adverb, prepositions, conjunctions, particles, modal words, interjections.

According to В.Л. Каушанская, the notional parts of speech: the noun, the adjective, the pronoun, the numeral, the verb, the adverb, the words of the category of state; the modal words, the interjections; the structural parts of speech express relations between words or sentences: the prepositions, the conjunction, the particle, the article.

2. The noun (or substantive).

The noun is a part of speech which denotes living beings (boy, girl, bird, etc.), lifeless things (table, chair, book, etc.), abstract notions (kindness, strength, fight, etc.).

Nouns have the category of number (singular and plural: a girl - girls) and the category of case: the common case and the genitive case.

Function: 1) combining with words to form phrases: with adjectives – large room, with noun – iron bar, with the verb – children play, with prepositions – in a house, the definite or indefinite articles – the room, a room; 2) functions in the sentence – the subject, the predicative, an object, an attribute, an adverbial modifier.

According to the morphological composition nouns can be:

• Simple – nouns which have neither prefixes nor suffixes: map, fish, work, etc.

• Derivative – nouns which have derivative elements (prefixes or suffixes or both): reader, cruelty, actress.

• Compound – nouns built from two or more stems: appletree, snowball, etc.

According to their meaning nouns are divided into:

Proper (собственные): individual names - personal names; - the names of months and days; - geographical names; Names of ships, hotels, clubs

Common (нарицательные) - class nouns: a person or thing which belongs to a class: book, shop, etc.; - collective: a number or collection of similar individuals or things regarded as a whole unit: family, people, etc.; - nouns of material: denote s material: gold, tea, water; - abstract nouns: denote some quality, state, action, idea: kindness, sadness, fight.

The nouns can be countable (that can be counted) and uncountable (that cannot be counted).

The noun in ME has only two grammatical categories, number and case.

The category of number.

It is expressed by the opposition of the plural form of the noun to the singular.

The singular number shows that one object is meant, and the plural shows that more than one object is meant. The opposition “one – more than one”. The strong member of the oppo­sition is the plural, its productive formal mark being the suffix -(e)s (-z, -s; -iz) as presented in the forms dog-dogs, clock-clocks, box-boxes. The productive formal mark correlates with the absence of the number suffix in the singular form of the noun.

English countable nouns have two numbers: singular and plural. The plural form is formed:

- adding the ending -s (-es): nose – noses, day – days, piano – pianos;

- by changing the root vowel: man – men, woman – women, foot – feet, tooth – teeth, goose – geese, mouse – mice, louse – lice;

- borrowed from Latin or Greek they keep their Latin or Greek plural forms: datum – data, phenomenon – phenomena, etc.

Two types of nouns which have only one form. The nouns which have only a plural and no singular are usually termed “pluralia tantum” (Latin “plural only”), and those which have only a singular are termed “singularia tantum” (Latin “singular only”).

The pluralia tantum: trousers, scissors, outscirts; mathematics, politics, physics, politics.

The singularia tantum: milk, butter, peace.

The category of case.

The category of case indicates the relation of the noun to the other words in the sentence.

In OE the noun had 4 cases: Nominative, Genitive, Dative, and Accusative with their own endings.

In ME nouns have two cases: a common case (uninflected) and a genitive case or possessive (inflected): father – father’s.

The category of gender.

Gender does not find regular morphological expression. In Old English it was indicated by its own form. In Modern English it has become entirely a matter of sex or the absence of sex. There are three ways to express gender:

1. real sex division: a boy – a girl, a mother – a father, a sister – a brother;

2. change of the ending: an actor – an actress;

3. by placing a word before it: he comes, she comes.

Lecture 3. The article.