33) Function words in Modern English.

Function words (or grammatical words or synsemantic words or structure-class words) are words that have little lexical meaning or have ambiguous meaning, but instead serve to express grammatical relationships with other words within a sentence, or specify the attitude or mood of the speaker. They signal the structural relationships that words have to one another and are the glue that holds sentences together. Function words might be prepositions, pronouns, auxiliary verbs, conjunctions, grammatical articles or particles, all of which belong to the group of closed-class words. Function words belong to the closed class of words in grammar in that it is very uncommon to have new function words created in the course of speech, whereas in the open class of words (that is, nouns, verbs, adjectives, or adverbs) new words may be added readily (such as slang words, technical terms, and adoptions and adaptations of foreign words). Auxiliary Verbs are verbs whose function is to characterize the main verbs they accompany with shades of meaning pertaining to tense and/or modality. Conjunctions are uninflected function words that serve to conjoin words, clauses, phrases, or sentences. There are three basic forms: single word (however), compound (as long as), and correlative (so... that). In terms of function, conjunctions can be grouped into additive (so, thus), adversative (but, instead), causative (so, because), and temporal (after, then). Prepositions are uninflected function words that combine with nouns, pronouns, or noun phrases to form prepositional phrases that can have, in turn, adverbial or adjectival relationships with other words. Prepositions can be simple (as, of) or compound (next to, in view of) forms. Pronouns are inflected function words employed in place of nouns or noun phrases. In terms of form, pronouns are simple (nothing, herself) and compound (each other, one another). Also, some pronoun composites are used in relative clauses (all of whom, several of which). Pronouns are classified into the following classes: subject personal (I, he, we), object personal (me, him, us), possessive (mine, his, ours), reflexive (myself, himself, ourselves), demonstrative (this, these, such), relative (who, all, that), indefinite (each, anybody, none), reciprocal (each other, one another), and interrogative (how, who, why). Particles — convey the attitude of the speaker and are uninflected, as if, then, well, however, thus, etc. Interjection or exclamation may be a word used to express an emotion or sentiment on the part of the speaker.

34) Syntax as a part of grammar. Kinds of syntactic theories.

Syntax, originating from the Greek words συν (syn, meaning "co-" or "together") and τάξις (táxis, meaning "sequence, order, arrangement"), can in linguistics be described as the study of the rules, or "patterned relations" that govern the way the words in a sentence come together. It concerns how different words (which, going back to Dionysios Thrax, are categorized as nouns, adjectives, verbs, etc.) are combined into clauses, which, in turn, are combined into sentences. Syntax attempts to systematize descriptive grammar, and is unconcerned with prescriptive grammar (see Prescription and description). There exist innumerable theories of formal syntax — theories that have in time risen or fallen in influence. Most theories of syntax at least share two commonalities: First, they hierarchically group subunits into constituent units (phrases). Second, they provide some system of rules to explain patterns of acceptability/grammaticality and unacceptability/ungrammaticality. Most formal theories of syntax offer explanations of the systematic relationships between syntactic form and semantic meaning. There are various theories as to how best to make grammars such that by systematic application of the rules, one can arrive at every phrase marker in a language (and hence every sentence in the language). A modern approach to combining accurate descriptions of the grammatical patterns of language with their function in context is that of systemic functional grammar, an approach originally developed by Michael A.K. Halliday in the 1960s and now pursued actively in all continents. Systemic-functional grammar is related both to feature-based approaches such as Head-driven phrase structure grammar and to the older functional traditions of European schools of linguistics such as British Contextualism and the Prague School. A syntactic category is either a phrasal category, such as noun phrase or verb phrase, which can be decomposed into smaller syntactic categories, or a lexical category, such as noun or verb, which cannot be further decomposed. In terms of phrase structure rules, phrasal categories can occur to the left side of the arrow while lexical categories cannot.The lexical categories are traditionally called the parts of speech. They include nouns, verbs, adjectives, and so on. 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.

It should be noted that (3) differs from (4) because the former admits no passive transformation.

Transformational method proves useful for analysing sentences from the point of their deep structure:

Flying planes can be dangerous.

This sentence is ambiguous, two senses can be distinguished: a) the action of flying planes can be dangerous, b) the planes that fly can be dangerous. Therefore it can be reduced to the following kernels:

a) Planes can be dangerous b) Planes can be dangerous

X (people) fly planes Planes fly

Constructional Syntax. Constructional analysis of syntactic units was initiated by Prof. G.Pocheptsov in his book published in Kyiv in 1971. 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.

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.