1. The Definition of theoretical grammar. The main branches of grammar.

2. Grammar meaning and grammar categories.

3. English in typological and morphological classification systems. Characteristic features of English grammar system: homonymy, poly-functionalism, conversion.

4.  Word classes. Parts of speech. Traditional and new word classes.

5. Nouns: categories and subclasses. The article and the problem of reference. Elements of the reference theory.

6. Adjectives: categories and subclasses.

7. Pronouns: categories and subclasses. Theory of deixis and pronouns.

8. Adverbs: categories and subclasses.

9. Non-traditional word classes: modal words, statives (<category of state> words).

10. Verbs: types of classifications and categories of the verb: tense and aspect.

11. Verbs: types of classifications and categories of the verb: mood and voice.

12. Function words and Interjections.

13. Syntax major units. Grammar of the phrase.

14. The sentence: definition and major categories.

15. Structural types of the sentence.

16. Semantic structure of the sentence.

17. Sentence information structure. The utterance theory:

18. Speech Act theory: direct and indirect Speech Acts.

19. The dialogue and the Principles of Communication.

20. The text: definition and major categories: coherence and cohesion.

21. Structural and semantic text units.

22. Text and discourse: presupposition, implication, intertextuality.

The Definition of theoretical grammar. The main branches of grammar.

Grammar is a branch of linguistics that studies the structure of the language, the system of relations between its constituent parts, word structure, word formation and the tendencies of connection of words in more complicated units, such as phrases and sentences.

Therefore the two major fields singled out within grammar are morphology, which studies word structure and word forms, and syntax, dealing with phrases, sentences and texts.

Theoretical grammar studies the language as a grammatical system whose elements are in a certain way interrelated to each other. Unlike practical grammar, characterised by its prescriptive approach, theoretical grammar is a descriptive discipline, which studies and analyses and interprets linguistic facts without prescribing rules of correct usage. One of its typical features is that theoretical grammar does not always come up with ready and ultimate decision, but, on the contrary, comes up with a number of theories and approaches for each problem.

2. Grammar meaning and grammar categories.

The basic notions of grammar are the grammatical meaning, grammatical form and grammatical category.

Grammatical meaning is a generalized, rather abstract meaning, common for a wide range of words under similar circumstances or performing similar functions and expressed through a formal sign (indicator), or, on the contrary, through the absence of a formal sign. These formal signs are specific for every language and express grammatical meaning only in conjunction with stems of certain grammatical categories. Thus, in the English language, the ending –s, being joined to the stem of a countable noun, indicates plurality, while its absence is the sign of singularity.

Grammatical category is a cluster of two or more grammatical forms, which are opposed or correlate to each other with respect to a certain grammatical meaning. These grammatical meanings correspond to special grammatical forms (although there also exists the phenomenon of morphological homonymy, for example, non-standard ways of indicating plurality). Without regular formal expression there are no grammatical categories. For instance, there exists a tendency, according to which inanimateness is expressed by the preposition of in the Genitive case, while animateness is expressed by the ending ‘s.

A grammatical category includes at least two opposed forms, though more are inherent in some of them. Thus, within the category of number of nouns only two possible forms are opposed: singular and plural, whereas the category of degree of comparison of adjectives numbers three form: positive, comparative and superlative degrees. With this in view, a grammatical category expressed by one grammatical form only cannot exist. AN opposition of at least two grammatical forms is indispensable.

As a general rule, a grammatical category acts as sort of a reflection of some extralinguistic reality. Thus, the category of tense indicates time, the category of number expresses quantity, the category of aspect stands for certain temporal relations. Nevertheless, it should be noted that in some LL there exist purely linguistic CC, such as gender in Russian or Spanish.

Grammatical categories differ in their scope. Some are wider than others. Thus it is typical to speak of general and dependant categories. The dependant one can only be realized within a restricted group of words. For instance, a part of speech is a general category, while the degree of comparison is only applicable to qualitative adjectives.