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Seminar 1

SYSTEMIC CONCEPTION OF LANGUAGE

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1. The systemic conception of language. The approaches towards language treatment. The notion of system. The communicative principle in the consideration of language.

2. The definition of a sign. The specific nature of language signs. Types of signs.

3. Paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations of language units. The role of F. de Saussure and I. A. Beaudoin de Courtenay in the development of linguistic theory. The notion of synchrony and diachrony.

4. Language levels and language units. The correlation of word, phrase, sentence, dicteme (utterance). The peculiar status of phoneme. Word and sentence as basic units of language.

Questions to be discussed:

1. What are the determining features of a system? How do they apply to language?

2. What is the functional relevance of the language unit?

3. What conceptual correlation is the language-speech dichotomy based on?

4. What is the correlation of syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations?

5. What is the difference between segmental and suprasegmental units?

6. What language levels are identified in the language system?

7. What conditions the non-overlapping of language levels?

8. What functions do the language units, representatives of the six language levels, perform?

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Seminar 2

PART I:

MORPHEMIC STRUCTURE OF THE WORD

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1. The morphemic structure of the word. The notions of morph, morpheme, allomorph.

2. The traditional classification of morphemes.

3. The allo-emic classification of morphemes.

4. The notion of distribution, types of distribution.

5. The principle of identifying free/bound, overt/covert, additive/replacive, continuous/discontinuous morphemes.

6. The notion of zero morpheme.

Questions to be discussed:

1. What is the basic difference between the morpheme and the word as language units?

2. What is a morph?

3. What does the difference between a morpheme and an allomorph consist in?

4. What principles underlie the traditional study of the morphemic composition of the word?

5. What principles is the distributional analysis of morphemes based on?

6. What are the determining features of the three types of distribution?

EXERCISES

I. Do the morphemic analysis of the words on the lines of the traditional and distributional classifications.

MODEL: Do the morphemic analysis of the word “inseparable”.

On the lines of the traditional classification the word “inseparable” is treated as a three-morpheme word consisting of the root morpheme “-separ-”, the prefix “in-” and the lexical suffix “-able”.

On the lines of the distributional analysis the root “-separ-” is a bound, overt, continuous, additive morpheme; the prefix “in-” is a bound, overt, continuous, additive morpheme; the suffix “-able” is a bound, overt, continuous, additive morpheme.

1. unmistakably, children’s (books), disfigured, underspecified, surroundings, presume, kingdom, brotherhood, plentiful, imperishable, unprecedented, oxen, embodiment, outlandish;

2. hammer, students’ (papers), sing–sang–singing–singer, really, proficient–deficient–efficient, gooseberry, unreproved, incomparable;

3. quiet, perceptions, wheaterina, bell, unbelievably, glassy, uncommunicative, inexplicable, infamy, strenuousness;

4. inconceivable, prefigurations, southernism, semidarkness, adventuresses, insurmountable, susceptibility, ineptitude, unfathomable, insufficiency, to prejudge, cranberry.

II. Define the type of the morphemic distribution according to which the given words are grouped.

MODEL: insensible–incapable

The morphs “-ible” and “-able” are in complementary distribution, as they have the same meaning but are different in their form which is explained by their different environments.

1. impeccable, indelicate, illiterate, irrelevant;

2. undisputable, indisputable;

3. published, rimmed;

4. seams, seamless, seamy.