- •The subject of theoretical grammar, it’s purpose..
- •The grammatical structure of English language.
- •Morphology and syntax as two main parts of grammar.
- •Language as a system and structure. Levels
- •Systemic relations in language. Syntagmatic relations.
- •Systemic relations in language. Paradigmatic relations.
- •Linguistic units and their peculiarities.
- •The morphemic structure of the word as a language unit.
- •The word as the smallest naming unit and the main unit of morphology.
- •Lexical and grammatical aspects of the word. Types of grammatical meanings
- •Explicit grammatical categories.Implicit lexico-grammatical categories. Types and kinds of oppositions
- •Parts of speech. Different approaches to the system of parts of speech in Modem English.
- •Criteria for classification of words into parts of speech in Modem English: semantic, formal and functional. Notional and functional parts of speech
- •The Noun as a part of speech, its grammatical categories. The category of number and its peculiarities in Modem English.
- •The category of case. Different approaches to the category of case in Modem English
- •The problem of gender in English. Personal pronouns as gender indicators of nouns.
- •The Adjective as a part of speech. Problems concerning the category of degrees of comparison in Modem English.The Stative.
- •Substuntivisation of adjectives and adjectivization of nouns
- •The Verb. Finite and non-finite forms of the verb. The category of finitude
- •The Verb. The category of tense. The problem of existence of morphological future tense
- •21. The Verb.The category of aspect. Aspect opposition
- •22. The category of voice and its peculiarities in English
- •The problem of so-called Reflexive, Reciprocal and Middle voice in Modern English
- •The category of mood. The problem of mood opposition. Mood and modality
- •25. The verb. The category of person and number.
- •26. The Perfect forms in Modern English. Divergent views concerning the essence of the Perfect forms.
- •27. Syntax as a part of grammar. The main concepts of syntax.
- •28. Basic syntactic notions: syntactic units, syntactic relations, syntactic connections.
- •29. The phrase and the problem of its definition. The main distinctive features of the phrase as compared with those of the word and the sentence.
- •30. Nominal word combinations. Noun phrase with pre-posed and post-posed adjuncts.
- •31. Verbal word combinations. Types of verbal complements
- •32. Means of expressing syntactical relations between the components of subordinate phrases
- •33. The sentence and the problem of its definitions. The main essential features of the sentence. Implicit predication.
- •34. Classification of sentence acc. To the purpose of utterance and acc. To their structure. Two- member and one-member sentences.
- •35. Simple sentence. Principle, secondary and detached parts of the sent.
- •36. The utterance. Informative structure of the utterance.The theme and the rheme.
- •37. The utterance. Communicative and pragmatic types of utterances.
- •38. The composite sentence and the problem of coordination and subordination.
- •39. The criteria for classification of subordinate clauses.
- •SubjectandPredicateClauses:
- •2. Object Clauses:
- •3. Attributive Clauses
- •40. Text as a syntactic unit. Coherence, cohesion and deixis as the main features of the text.
- •41. Textual connective devices. Reiterations, collocation, endophoric relations.
- •42.Pragmatic approach to the study of language units.
- •43. Speech Act Theory. Classifications of speech acts.
- •According to their origin:
- •According to their function:
- •Classification
- •44. Indirect speech acts.
25. The verb. The category of person and number.
Verb is the most complex part of speech. First of all it performs the central role in realizing predication - connection between situation in the utterance and reality. That is why the verb is of primary informative significance in an utterance. Besides, the verb possesses quite a lot of grammatical categories. Furthermore, within the class of verb various subclass divisions based on different principles of classification can befound.
Verbs are words that express action or state of being.
Semantic features: the verb possesses the grammatical meaning of verbiality – the ability to denote a process developing in time.
Morphological features: the verb possesses such grammatical categories as: tense, aspect, voice, mood, person, number, finitude, temporal correlation.
Syntactic features: 1) ability to be modified by adverbs; 2) ability of the verb to perform the syntactic function of the predicate.
In English, only the third person present tense singular form expresses person grammatically; therefore, the verb forms are obligatorily associated with personal pronouns. Special mention should be made of the modal verbs and the verb be. Modal verbs, with the exception of shall/should and will/would, do not show person grammatically.
The verb be is more grammaticalized in this respect: it takes an exception to the other verbs.
The category of person is represented in English by two-member opposition: third person singular – non-third person singular.
The category of number shows whether the process is associated with one doer or with more than one doer. The category of number is a two-member opposition: singular – plural.
26. The Perfect forms in Modern English. Divergent views concerning the essence of the Perfect forms.
The Modern English perfect forms have been the subject of a lengthy discussion which has not so far brought about a definite result. The position of the perfect forms in the system of the English verb is a problem which has been treated in many different ways and has raised much controversy. There are three major approaches to defining the essence of perfective forms in English:
according to Jespersen the category of perfect is tense category;
according to Vorontsova the category of perfect is aspect category;
according to Smirnitsky the category of perfect is neither one of tense, nor one of aspect but a specific category – “time relation” different from both.
If the Perfect were a tense category, then the present perfect/past perfect/future perfect would be a union of two different tenses. This is simply impossible.
The Perfect is not an aspect too.
Since the Perfect is neither a tense nor an aspect, it is bound to be some special grammatical category “time relation” or “correlation”.
27. Syntax as a part of grammar. The main concepts of syntax.
Syntax is the part of grammar which treats of phrases and sentences. Syntax deals with the way words are combined. It is concerned with the external functions of words and their relationship to other words within the linearly ordered units – word-groups, sentences and texts. Syntax studies the way in which the units and their meanings are combined. It also deals with peculiarities of syntactic units, their behavior in different contexts.
Syntactic units may be analyzed from different points of view, and accordingly, different syntactic theories exist. Kinds of syntactic theories:
1) Transformational-Generative Grammar. The Transformational grammar was first suggested by American scholar Zelling Harris as a method of analyzing sentences and was later elaborated by another American scholar Noam Chomsky as a synthetic method of ‘generating’ (constructing) sentences. The main point of the Transformational-Generative Grammar is that the endless variety of sentences in a language can be reduced to a finite number of kernels by means of transformations. These kernels serve the basis for generating sentences by means of syntactic processes. Different language analysts recognize the existence of different number of kernels (from 3 to 39). The following 6 kernels are commonly associated with the English language:
(1) NV – John sings.
(2) NVAdj. – John is happy.
(3) NVN – John is a man.
(4) NVN – John hit the man.
(5) NVNN – John gave the man a book.
(6) NVPrep.N – The book is on the table.
2) Constructional Syntax. Constructional analysis of syntactic units was initiated by Prof. G.Pocheptsov. This analysis deals with the constructional significance/insignificance of a part of the sentence for the whole syntactic unit. The theory is based on the obligatory or optional environment of syntactic elements. For example, the element him in the sentence I saw him there yesterday is constructionally significant because it is impossible to omit it. At the same time the elements there and yesterday are constructionally insignificant – they can be omitted without destroying the whole structure.
3) Communicative Syntax. It is primarily concerned with the analysis of utterances from the point of their communicative value and informative structure. It deals with the actual division of the utterance – the theme and rheme analysis. Both the theme and the rheme constitute the informative structure of utterances. The theme is something that is known already while the rheme represents some new information. Depending on the contextual informative value any sentence element can act as the theme or the rheme:
Who is at home? - John is at home. Where is John? – John is at home.
4) Pragmatic approach to the study of syntactic units can briefly be described as the study of the way language is used in particular contexts to achieve particular goals. Speech Act Theory was first introduced by John Austin. The notion of a speech act presupposes that an utterance can be said with different intentions or purposes and therefore can influence the speaker and situation in different ways:
Accordingly, we can distinguish different speech acts. Of special interest here is the problem of indirect speech acts: Are you leaving already? In our everyday activities we use indirect speech acts rather willingly because it is the best way to influence people, to get what we want and to be polite at the same time.
5) Text linguistics studies the text as a syntactic unit, its main features and peculiarities, different ways of its analysis.
6) Discourse analysis focuses on the study of language use with reference to the social and psychological factors that influence communication (Leo Spitzer’s, Zelling Harris).