2. Main grammatical notions. Grammatical meaning and grammatical form.

Grammatical categories. Method of opposition.

1. Grammatical form

• Morphological synthetic:

- affixation

- sound interchange

- suppletivity

- stress (in Russian)

• Analytical

• Syntactic:

- formal words (prepositions, conjunctions)

- word order / position

- intonation

2. Grammatical meaning

• a general, abstract meaning which characterizes a certain grammatical class of words and is invariably associated with a certain grammatical form.

• If the lexical meaning of the word is rooted in its stem, the grammatical meaning relies mostly on the grammatical affixes of the word form.

• is highly generalized; the number of grammatical meanings is limited;

• is dependent (expressed only together with the lexical meaning):

Lishes rop pibs; Pibs are ropped by lishes; etc.

• is relative (revealed only in relation of the given word form to the other forms of the same word):

talks — a talk talks — talked

3. Grammatical category – a generalized grammatical meaning revealed through the opposition of grammatical forms representing the particular meanings of the category

Room^-- (Sg) vs rooms⁺ (Pl)

(categorial forms of the category of Number)

• neutralization - unmarked member expressing the meaning of the marked one;

• transposition - marked member in the meaning of the unmarked one (stylistically marked):

You are always interfering!

Features of grammatical categories:

• A grammatical category should be represented by at least two categorial forms.

• One word form can represent different grammatical categories (boys' – Pl, Poss.).

• One word form can express only one grammatical meaning of a certain category (boys is only Pl, but never Sg and Pl at the same time).

• One particular grammatical meaning cannot be expressed in all the forms of the word. Part of the paradigm should represent the opposite grammatical meaning of the category. Otherwise the category is lexico-grammatical.

Method of opposition: binary and ternary ( big ÷ bigger ÷ the biggest) Types:

• Privative (1 member has a certain distinctive feature – marked, strong; the other – unmarked, weak ) boy ÷ boys

• Equipollent (both members are marked) – am ÷ is

Gradual – the idea of gradation (adjectives) big ÷ bigger ÷ the biggest.

6. Notional and functional classes of words.

The four notional parts of speech form a lexical paradigm of nomination — a system of transposition of each member of the paradigm into the other members: wide (aj) – width (n) – widen (v) –widely (av)

Both traditional & Synthectico-distributional classifications divide words into notional & functional. Originally, they reflect the former morphological division of words into changeable & unchangeable. Modern linguistics differentiates not & fun parts of speech on the basis of: the prominence of their meaning, peculiarities of their combinability, the ability to be substituted by a word of a more general meaning (hyperonims table – furniture). Notional words are characterized by complete nom force, self-dependent functions in the S. They can be used in isolation & they can be by a word of a more general meaning. Functional words possess incomplete nom force, they have very wide lexical meaning. They perform non-self-dependent mediatory (linking,specifying) functions. They are characterized by obligatory combinability. Fries specified them: 1) words with unilateral combinability (articles, auxiliaries, modals); 2) words with bilateral combinability (prepositions & conjunctions which join words & word groups, not sentences); 3) heterogeneous class which unites introductory ‘it’, ‘their’,, interrogative words,interjections.. There are also structural words which can take the position of not words. They are often called PRO-words or substitutes. They constitute a class of words that takes an intermediate position between notional and functional words.

CLOSED-SYSTEM PRO-WORDS

Pronouns — function like / instead of nouns or adjectives;

pronominal adverbs (here, there, now, then) — deictic meaning;

numerals — function like nouns (cardinal) or adjectives (ordinal).