Theoretical Grammar of Modern English for the juniors

2014-2015 a.y.

Seminar 1

The theme: “The Scientific Study of Human Language. The Theory of Grammar. The Mental Representation of Linguistic Knowledge.”

I. The issues to be discussed:

1. The great interest in Grammar never flagged and continued through the Medieval Period and Renaissance in an unbroken thread to the present time.

2. A bird’s-eye view of the field.

Types of Grammar and their leaders.

• Transformational Grammar (T.G.)

• Generative Grammar (G.G.)

• Transformational-Generative Grammar (T.G.G.)

• Prescriptive Grammar

• Pedagogical Grammar

3. Interface (interaction) of the Morphology with other Modules of Linguistics.

• Morphology and Syntax

• Morphology and Lexicon

• Morphology and Phonetics /Phonology

4. The main grammatical notions.

• Grammatical meaning

• Grammatical form

• Grammatical category

• Their interrelations

II. Practical Task:

Analyze paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations of the underlined words in the following text:

Margot asked: “What do you want?”

“I want the truth to be accepted that America has ruined its own and the world’s money system because of politics, greed and debt I want it clearly understood that bankruptcy can happen to nations as well as individuals and corporations…”

“The Moneychangers” by Arthur Hailey p.143

Issues for individual tasks

1. Make a Map of the Development of Grammar .

2. Make a report on the interface of the Theoretical Grammar in

general and Morphology in particular with other Modules of Linguistics.

IV. Glossaries to be learned and used during the activity:

1. Grammar

2. Descriptive

3. Transformational

4. Eliminate errors

5. Grammatical form

6. Grammatical category

7. Interface of linguistic modules

8. Modules of grammar: morphology and syntax

9. “ the doctrine of correctness”

References:

• Absolute Must

1. Block M.Y.“A Course in Theoretical English Grammar” Moscow, 1994 p.p.6-18

2. Iofik L. L. “Readings in the theory of English Grammar” Leningrad ,1972 p.p.5-43

3. Ilyish B.A. “The Structure of Modern English” Leningrad, 1971 p.p.5-18

4. Shershneva T.Yu. “Digest of Theoretical English Grammar” Almaty,2000 p.p.4-8.

• Further Reading

1. Иванова И.П., Бурлакова В.В., Почепцов Г.Г. «Теоретическая грамматика современного английского языка» Москва, 1981 стр.11-14

2. Жигадло В.Н., Иванова И.П., Иофик Л.Л. Москва, 1956 стр. 7-10

3. Смирницкий А.И. «Морфология английского языка» Москва, 1959 стр. 5-11

Reading to brush up the back-ground knowledge of English Grammar:

III .R.V. Reznik, T.S. Sorokina , T.A. Kazaritskaya

“A Grammar of Modern English Usage” M. 1998, p. 680

Worked out by Tuyakaeva D.Sh., dotcent

Theoretical Grammar of Modern English

2014-2015 a.y.

Seminar 2

I. The Theme: Introduction to Word-Structure.

Morphemes: the smallest units of meaning.

The issues to be discussed:

1.What is a word? Difficulties in clarifying the nature of the word.

2. Morphemes: the smallest meaningful units of language. The

difference between Morphemes, Morphs and Allomorphs.

3. Types of Morphemes: Roots, Affixes, Stems and Bases.

4. The Hierarchical Structure of Words. Different approaches to

the analysis of the Morpheme structure of the word.

a) Tree Diagram

b) Labeled Bracketing

c) According to the Traditional Grammar (view with a critical

eye the advantages and disadvantages each of the technique).