1. Morphology and syntax as parts of grammar. Main units of grammar and types of relations between grammatical units in language and speech.

GRAMMAR: a structural element of language along with phonetics and vocabulary (lexis).

LANGUAGE: a system of means employed to reflect reality in the ideal form and exchange ideas in the process of communication.

SPEECH: the use of language by a speaking community in the process of communication.

Language and speech are inseparable:

• speech is impossible without language;

• language exists only in speech, is manifested in speech and is deduced from speech for the purposes of research.

Three structural parts of language:

• Phonetic system: the material, substance of language (sounds and prosody).

• Lexical system: the naming units of language (words and set phrases).

• Grammatical system: means of connecting naming units into utterances (word-changing, combinability, word order, prosodic means).

Two components of grammar:

1 Morphology is concerned with the structure of words (word-building and form-building).

• Morphemes and words/word-forms

• Paradigmatic relations of units.

2 Syntax studies combinations of words in sentences, organization of utterances.

• Phrases/word-groups and sentences/clauses

• Syntagmatic relations of units.

MORPHOLOGICAL UNITS

• The word is the smallest naming unit characterized by the unity of form and content/meaning.

• morphemes – the smallest /minimal meaningful units:

over-care-ful-ness dis-agree-d

MORPHEMES

• lexical (free morphemes – roots);

• lexico-grammatical (stem-building, or derivational affixes – prefixes and suffixes);

• grammatical (form-building suffixes – endings/inflexions).

• Morphs – speech/textual representations of the morpheme.

• Allomorphs – different variants of the same morpheme.

• Positive vs zero morphemes.

TYPES OF DISTRIBUTION

• complementary (allomorphs) – the same meaning in different environments:

books, dogs, children

• contrastive – different meaning in the same environment: played – playing

• non-contrastive – the same meaning in the same environment): learned – learnt

1 Syntagmatic relations

• linear relations of dissimilar units in a speech chain;

• unite linguistic elements which can combine, but not replace each other;

The elements connected syntagmatically produce a unit of a higher rank

Between phonemes

t - ea - ch vs ch - ea - t (* t - ch - ea)

Between morphemes

teach - er (* er - teach)

Between words

teachers and students

(*and teachers students)

2 Paradigmatic relations

• systemic relations observed in language;

• associative relations of partially similar units;

• unite elements which cannot combine but can replace each other in a speech chain.

A paradigm is a set of units related to each other by association with some distinctive feature, or category.

• LEXEME (common lexical meaning — different grammatical meanings)

(play plays played playing)

• GRAMMEME (common grammatical meaning — different lexical meanings)

(Played, smiled ,brought, spoke)