6. Systemic relations in language. Paradigmatic relations.

A linguistic unit can enter into relations of two different kinds. It enters into paradigmatic relations with all the units -that can also occur in the same environment. are relations based on the principles of similarity. They exist between the units that can substitute one another. According to different principles of similarity PR can be of three types: semantic, formal and functional.

Semantic PR are based on the similarity of meaning: a book to read = a book for reading.

Formal PR are based on the similarity of forms. Such relations exist between the members of a paradigm: man - men; play - played'- will play ~ is playing.

Functional PR are based on the similarity of function. They are established between the elements that can occur in the same position. ​

7. Linguistic units and their peculiarities.

In fact, the word is considered to be the central (but not the only) linguistic unit of language' Linguistic units (or in other words - signs) can go into three types of relations:

a)​The relation between a unit and an object in the world around us (objective reality). - refers to a definite piece of furniture. It may be not only an object but a process, state, quality, etc. .

This type of meaning is called referential meaning of a unit. It is semantics that studies the referential meaning of units. b)​The relation between a unit and other units (inner relations between units). No unit can be used independently; it serves as an element in the system of other units. This kind of meaning is called syntactic. Formal relation of units to one another is studied by syntactics (or syntax). c) The relation between a unit and a person who uses it. As we know too well, when we are saying something, we usually have some purpose in mind. We use the language as an instrument for our purpose (e.g.). One and the same word or sentence may acquire different meanings in communication. This type of meaning is called pragmatic. The study of the relationship between linguistic units and the users of those units is done by pragmatics.l

8. The morphemic structure of the word as a language unit.

The morphemic structure of the word can be analyzed in a linear way; for example, in the following way: underestimates - W= {[Pr +(R+L)]+Gr}, where W denotes the word, R the root, L the lexical suffix, Pr the prefix, and Gr the grammatical suffix.

IC-analysis, like many other ideas employed in the study of the morphemes, was developed by an American linguist, Leonard Bloomfield, and his followers within the framework of an approach known as Descriptive Linguistics (or, Structural Linguistics). Immediate constituents analysis in structural linguistics starts with lingual units of upper levels: for example, the immediate constituents of a composite sentence might be clauses, each clause in turn might have noun phrase and verb phrase as constituents, etc.; the analysis continues until the ultimate constituents – the morphemes – are reached.

Free morphemes, like town and dog, can appear with other lexemes (as in town hall or dog house) or they can stand alone, i.e., "free".

Bound morphemes like "un-" appear only together with other morphemes to form a lexeme. Bound morphemes in general tend to be prefixes and suffixes. Unproductive, non-affix morphemes that exist only in bound form are known as "cranberry" morphemes, from the "cran" in that very word.

Derivational morphemes can be added to a word to create (derive) another word: the addition of "-ness" to "happy," for example, to give "happiness." They carry semantic information.

Inflectional morphemes modify a word's tense, number, aspect, and so on, without deriving a new word or a word in a new grammatical category (as in the "dog" morpheme if written with the plural marker morpheme "-s" becomes "dogs"). They carry grammatical information.

Allomorphs are variants of a morpheme, e.g., the plural marker in English is sometimes realized as /-z/, /-s/ or /-ɨz/.

There are two basic types of means with the help of which grammatical forms are built: synthetical and analytical. Synthetical (synthetic) grammatical forms are built by means of the morphemic composition of the word. This includes the morphemic means, which were described in the previous unit: outer inflexion with the help of adding grammatical suffixes to the stems of the words, e.g.: cat - cats; inner inflexion, or vowel interchange inside the root, e.g.: goose - geese; and suppletivity, when different roots are combined within the same paradigm, e.g.: go – went. Analytical grammatical forms are built by the combination of the notional word with auxiliary words, e.g.: come - have come. Analytical forms consist of two words which together express one grammatical meaning; in other words, they are grammatically idiomatic: the meaning of the grammatical form is not immediately dependent on the meanings of its parts. Analytical grammatical forms are intermediary between words and word-combinations. Some analytical forms are closer to a word, because the two parts are inseparable in their grammatical idiomatism; for example, the forms of the perfect aspect: come - have come. The components of some other analytical forms are more independent semantically, and they are less idiomatic grammatically; for example, the degrees of comparison: beautiful - more beautiful – most beautiful. Such combinations of an auxiliary component and a basic component are treated by some linguists as free word-combinations, but as they are correlative members of grammatical paradigms and express some specific grammatical meaning, they should be recognized as analytical grammatical forms too. Some lexical means regularly involved in the expression of common grammatical meanings can also be regarded as marginal cases of suppletivity or specific analytical forms, e.g.: the use of quantifiers with uncountable nouns or repetition groups – a bit of joy, the last two items of news, thousands and thousands, etc.

Analytical grammatical forms are prevalent in English; modern English is an analytical type of language.