- •С.В. Иванова
- •Ббк 81.2 Англ
- •Foreword
- •Preface
- •Preface to the second edition
- •Major trends in Theoretical Grammar of the English language
- •Classical English grammar
- •Transformational grammar
- •Functional Communicative Approach
- •Cognitive Grammar and Cognitive Linguistics
- •Supplementary literature:
- •2. Major grammatical notions
- •Language as a system
- •Chart 1. Syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations
- •Chart 2. Paradigmatic patterns of a clause by m.A.K. Halliday
- •Interrogative→ “wh”
- •Indicative→ declarative→
- •Imperative → jussive38 →
- •Inclusive
- •Grammatical meaning, grammatical form and grammatical category
- •E.G. Work –worked
- •The notion of opposition in Theoretical Grammar
- •Synthetic and analytic forms
- •Morphology and Syntax as two main parts of grammar
- •Chart 3. The scope of morphology
- •Inflection word-formation
- •3. The notion of a morpheme
- •The idea and the definition of the morpheme
- •Types of morphemes
- •Problems connected with the notion of a morpheme
- •Characteristic features of inflectional morphology and types of word-form derivation
- •4. The parts of speech system
- •In foreign linguistics
- •Introduction to the problem
- •Classification of parts of speech suggested by Henry Sweet
- •3. O. Jespersen’s classification of parts of speech
- •4. Principles of the classification of words suggested by Charles Fries
- •Woggles ugged diggles
- •Uggs woggled digs
- •5. Classifications of parts of speech developed within structuralist linguistics
- •6. R. Quirk’s approach to the problem in his
- •Verb Preposition
- •Interjection
- •Modern grammars of contemporary English
- •5. The parts of speech system
- •In russian linguistics
- •The main criteria for the classification of parts of speech in Russian Linguistics
- •The concept of notional and formal words
- •6. The article
- •1. The status of the article in English
- •2. The number of articles in English
- •3. The categorial meaning and the functions of the article
- •7. Noun and its grammatical categories
- •Introduction. The categories of gender and number
- •The category of case
- •The syntactic function of the noun
- •8. The verb. General characteristics
- •The verb. General overview
- •2. The categories of person and number
- •3. The category of tense
- •9. The category of aspect
- •In modern english
- •The definition of aspect as a verbal category
- •Different approaches to the interpretation of aspect
- •The connection of the aspect interpretation with other lexicological issues: terminative and durative verbs
- •The correlation of the English aspect forms and Russian aspect forms
- •10. The category of retrospective coordination
- •The problem of the Perfect forms in the system of the English language
- •2. Different approaches to the interpretation of perfect forms
- •Interpretation of perfect forms as an independent grammatical category
- •11. The category of mood in modern english
- •1. The category of mood and its semantic content
- •Debatable issues connected with the interpretation of the category of mood
- •12. The category of voice
- •In modern english
- •The nature of the grammatical category of voice
- •2. Debatable problems within the category of voice
- •He told me a story.
- •3. The notion of transitivity
- •13. Syntax
- •Syntax as a branch of grammar
- •Units of syntactic description
- •The theory of phrase
- •Types of syntactic relations (linkage)
- •14. The sentence
- •The sentence: the problem of its definition
- •2. The sentence. Its major categories
- •3. Typology of the sentence
- •15. Sentence as an object of syntactic studies
- •Major features of the sentence as a syntactic unit
- •Syntactic structure of the sentence as an object of linguistic studies
- •Immediate constituents of the sentence: ic analysis
- •Adjoinment - the use of specifying words, most often particles: He did it – Only he did it.
- •The utterance. Informative structure of the utterance
- •Basic notions of pragmatic linguistics
- •Speech act theory. Direct and indirect speech acts. Types of speech acts
- •Discourse analysis as the study of language in use
- •Implicatures of discourse
- •Implicatures and indirectness
- •It is only due to making an assumption about the relevance of b’s response that we can understand it as an answer to a’s question.
- •A List of Selected Bibliography
- •List of reference and practice books
- •Terminological dictionaries
- •Seminars in theoretical grammar
- •Contents
5. The parts of speech system
In russian linguistics
The main criteria for the classification of parts of speech in Russian Linguistics.
The concept of notional and formal words.
The classification of parts of speech adopted in Russian linguistics.
Disputable issues in the parts of speech system as viewed by Russian linguists:
the problem of statives;
the status of modal words;
prepositions and conjunctions.
The main criteria for the classification of parts of speech in Russian Linguistics
The generally recognized definition of parts of speech defines them as lexico-grammatical word-classes, which are characterized by a general, abstract grammatical meaning expressed in certain grammatical markers [Хлебникова 2001: 18]. The problem of the classification of words into parts of speech is still considered topical. Linguists claim that it will remain eternal for many generations of grammarians. What linguists try to overcome, working out different classifications, is the statement that “the largest word classes are convenient fictions” as “all the words in a proposed class are seen to be sharing some features, but few share all of them” [Crystal 1995: 207]. Nevertheless though the problem seems to be of a purely theoretical value, grammarians make heroic attempts at laying strong and solid foundations for their newly arising theories. The publication of new books (cf. Е.С. Кубрякова. “Части речи с когнитивной точки зрения М., 1997; А.Т. Кривоносов. «Система классов слов как отражение структуры языкового сознания (Философские основы теоретической грамматики). Москва – Нью Йорк: Изд-во «Че Ро», 2001) on this problem is a vivid example of this statement. Thus the natural question, which arises in this respect, is: why is it necessary to talk about parts of speech at all? David Crystal, the author of the “Encyclopedia of the English Language” points out that “the main reason is to be able to make general and economical statements about the way the words of the language behave” [Crystal 1995: 206]. He also adds “the task of word class identification is an interesting one for linguists, as it is not always obvious which are the best criteria to use” [Crystal 1995: 207].
Russian linguists are agreed on the idea that it is impossible to build a part of speech classification which will be based on the only criterion due to the complexity and heterogeneity of lingual forms52. Traditionally Russian linguists single out three criteria on which the classification of parts of speech may be based. They are meaning, form, and function.
By meaning we do not mean the individual meaning of each separate word, i.e. their lexical meaning, but the ‘abstract meaning’53, i.e. the meaning common to all the words of the given class and constituting its essence. Thus, the meaning of the noun is “thingness”. This applies equally to each noun and constitutes the structural meaning of the noun as a type of word. Similarly, the meaning of the verb as the type of word is that of “action” or “process”, whatever the individual meaning of a separate verb may happen to be (cf.: to get a letter ÷ to get dry, to go home ÷ to go mad, to grow potatoes ÷ to grow thin). The meaning of the adjective is some property.
By form we mean the morphological characteristics of a type of word. Thus, the noun is characterized by the category of number (singular & plural), the verb – by tense, mood, aspect, etc. Several types of words (prepositions, conjunctions, and some others) are characterized by invariability.
By function we mean the syntactical properties of a type of word. These are subdivided into two:
the way it combines with other words;
its function in the sentence.
The former deals with phrases. And the latter has to do with the sentence structure. For instance, the verb combines with the following noun (write letters) and also with the following adverb (write quickly). As to the latter characteristic, the syntactic function of the verb in a sentence, it is that of a predicate.
Thus, parts of speech are considered a lexico-grammatical category as they show lexical groupings of words, on the one hand; while on the other hand, these groupings present generalized classes, each with a unified, abstract meaning of its own. The grammatical character of word-classes mainly finds its manifestation in the ability to express grammatical categories in a set of formal markers. Each part of speech, as a generalized word-class possesses a certain valency, i.e. inner potential to combine with other word-classes in linear order (in actual speech). In accordance with this potency words make combinations (phrases, groups) [Хлебникова 2001: 7, 18].