- •1) The theoretical course of grammar. Relationships between theoretical and normative grammar. Language and speech.
- •5) The transformational method and its application to the English grammar.
- •2) Grammar and phonetics. Grammar and lexicology.
- •3. Methods of grammatical investigation. The distributional method and its application to the English language
- •4) The method of Immediate Constituents and its application to the English language
- •7) Morphology and syntax. Their relationship and boundary lines between them
- •6) The notion of opposition in grammar (nouns, verbs, adjectives)
- •8) The notions of grammatical meaning and grammatical forms as applied to the English language.
- •9) Grammatical categories in Modern English
- •11. Types of word-form derivation in English. Inflectional morphemes, sound alternation, zero morpheme.
- •10) The basic morphological notions: word-morpheme, morph, allomorph.
- •12. Analytical forms, suppletivity, grammatical homonymy.
- •14) Controversy in Parts of speech. Classification of parts of speech.
- •15) Charles Fries classification of words and its character
- •16) The noun. Its definition, grammatical meaning, morphological characteristics, syntactical functions.
- •17) The noun. Its grammatical categories. Problem of gender in Modern English
- •18) The noun. The category of number and its peculiarities in the English noun. Singularia tantum and pluralia tantum.
- •19) The noun. The category of number and its peculiarities in the English noun. Collective nouns and nouns of multitude.
- •35. The Sentence. Classification of sentences according to their structure.
- •20) The noun. The category of case. Different approaches to the category of case in Modern English. Mutual relations of number and case.
- •40. The Predicate. Types of predicates. Simple and compound Nominal Predicates.
- •38. The main parts of the sentence. Their definition.
- •22) The verb. Its definition, grammatical meaning and morphological classification of verbs,
- •23) The verb. Semantic-syntactical classification of verbs.
- •29. The Verb. The category of Voice, its definition. Different views on the problem. Relationship of voice and transitivity and intransitivity of verbs.
- •37. The Sentence. Types of complex sentences and their structure.
- •24. The Verb. The problem of aspect. Definition of this category. English and Russian aspects compared.
- •30. The Verb. The category of Voice, its definition. Different views on the problem. The question of the reflexive voice.
- •28. The Verb. The category of Mood. Definition, different conceptions of the mood system in English and objective reasons for the existing controversy.
- •25. Controversy concerning the category of aspect. Assessments of different approaches to continious forms.
- •27. The verb. The perfect. Controversy concerning the essence of perfect forms. Assessments of different views on the problem. The category of time correlation.
- •26. The Verb. The category of tense, its definition. System of tenses in the English Verb.
- •41.The Predicate. Types of predicates. Compound Verbal Predicates. Mixed types.
- •31. The problem of the subject matter of Syntax. Basic syntactical notions. The phrase and the sentence.
- •39.The Subject. Types of the subject.
- •32. Syntax. The phrase definition, types of phrases.
- •36. The Sentence. Types of coordination within the compound sentence.
- •33. The Phrase. Ways of expressing syntactical relations within a phrase (agreement, government, adjoinment, enclosure)
6) The notion of opposition in grammar (nouns, verbs, adjectives)
Ferdinand de Sausser suggested that the system of a language should be studied on the opposition of its concrete forms (units). Later on Trubetskoy and Jacobson developed his idea. The opposition is a pair of grammatical forms, opposed to each other both in meaning and in form. For example – cat- cats, dog– dogs; see – saw, look – looked; fast – faster, weak – weaker.
The first member of the opposition is called unmarked and the 2nd is called marked member.
8) The notions of grammatical meaning and grammatical forms as applied to the English language.
Every word has a lexical meaning and grammatical meaning. For example the verb ‘tells’ has a lexical meaning ‘говорит’. The grammatical meaning is the following: the 3rd person singular, common aspect, indicative mood, active voice, Present Tense, non-perfect, and it denotes action.
The lexical meaning of a word is the designation of some phenomena of objective reality. It is an outcome of abstraction, but it’s not too abstract to lose the concrete features to designate a thing.
Grammatical abstraction has gone much further than lexical abstractions. Grammatical meaning of a word is the meaning of a very general character which is common to a group of words.
For example, all the nouns irrespective of their lexical meaning are united by their grammatical meaning of substantivity. The meaning to action is common to verbs. The meaning of quality is common to adjectives.
The grammatical meaning may also reflect in a very general way the relations between the given thing and other objects, existing in reality (‘Mary’s cat is sitting in front of her’).
The grammatical meaning may also reflect the forms of the existence of the given phenomena. Thus, the grammatical meaning of tense shows the relation of the action to the moment of speaking (‘spoke, speak, will speak’). The grammatical meaning of action is to show the character of the development of the action (“He speaks German well” and ‘He is speaking German now’). The grammatical meaning of the category of mood is to express the relation of the action to reality from the speaker’s point of view (‘It’s high time the children went to bed’-subjunctive mood and ‘It’s high time for the children to go to bed’ – indicative mood).
The grammatical meaning of the category of voice is to express the relations between an action and its subject or object (‘I gave him a pen’ and ‘I was given a pen’).
9) Grammatical categories in Modern English
A grammatical category is the unity of a grammatical meaning and a corresponding grammatical form. The grammatical categories may be more or less abstract. They may be general and particular. A general category should always consist of at least 2 particular categories.
Thus, the general category of tense consists of 3 particular categories – Present, Past, Future. The general category of case consists of 2 particular categories – common and possessive.
In the system of the English noun we distinguish the following categories – the category of number (singular and plural) and the category of case (common and possessive). In the system of the modern English adjective we distinguish the category of degrees of comparison (positive, comparative and superlative). In the system of the English verb there are following categories: the category of tense (which consists of 3 particular categories – Past, Present and Future), of aspect (common and continuous), of person (the 1st, 2nd and 3rd), of number (singular and plural), of voice (active and passive), of mood (imperative, indicative, subjunctive), of time relation (perfect and non-perfect).