The notion ‘Grammar’ has several meanings:

1. one of the levels of language;

2. the science that studies the grammar course of the language;

3. a book;

4. the ability to speak (his grammar is perfect);

1) Generally, the language is subdivided into 3 levels:

• phonological (sounds),

• lexical (vocabulary),

• Grammar (structures).

2) The second meaning of the word Grammar is the science. There are 3 characteristics of language that are important to understand the nature of grammar: it is complex, productive and arbitrary (произвольный, непостоянный).

• a) e.g. They chose him (acc.) king. They chose him (dat.) a wife.

• b) Lishes rop pibs Pibs were ropped by lishes. Lishes are ropping pibs, etc.

• c) e.g. in the street – на улице or take the category of mood in Russian and in English

3) The word grammar is often used to refer to the book itself – students may often ask ‘Can I borrow your grammar?’ It’s obvious, of course, that ‘your grammar’ in this case means a grammar book, a book about grammar. But there is a real danger to think that grammar is what is in the book.

4) Grammar is something that can be good or bad, correct or incorrect. To be effective we must achieve clarity of expression. We need to know how to present ideas without confusion or unnecessary words by choosing language suited to our purpose. One student, on returning from the tundra, said (I even fixed the words) ‘I ain’t the one that come first, but I’m gonna speak for all us boys’. The intent is clear, but …

The systematic character of language

The special stress is laid on the systematic character of language. The systematic approach was worked down by Бодуэн де Куртене, Фердинанд де Соссюр (who outlined the definition).

They also outlined the difference between:

Language proper A system of means of expression

Speech proper The realization of the system of language in the process of interaction

Two fundamental types of relations between linguistic units:

Syntagmatic Paradigmatic

Linear relations between units in a segmental sequence (Morphemes in a word, words in a sentence )

Intra-systemic relations. They find their expression in the fact that each linguistic unit is included in a set of similar units with common formal and functional properties (Paradigm of forms)

Hierarchical structure of Language

Another approach to the analysis of language as a kind of system, language can be looked upon as a hierarchy of levels.

Units of Language are divided into segmental and supra-segmental. Segmental units consist of phonemes, which form syllables, morphemes, words. Supra-segmental units do not exist by themselves, but work together with segmental units (accents, pauses, patterns of word order)

Prof. Blokh M.Y. differentiates 6 levels:

Dictemic level (The dicteme is an elementary topical segmental unit of the continual text. So it is a combination of sentences forming a textual unity.)

Proposemic level (Sentences nominate situation or events and express predication. Their main function is that they show the relation of the denoted situation or event to reality (time or modality). Sentences are predicative units.)

Phrasemic level (Phrases are word combinations, they nominate complex phenomena)

Lexemic level (Words are nominative units, because they nominate things and phenomena. They are built up by morphemes.)

morphemic level (Morphemes are the smallest meaningful units built up by phonemes or one phoneme.)

phonemic level (Phonemes are meaningless units, their function is differential)

2 levels are central: words level and sentence level.

They are studied by morphology and syntax. Thus, morphology deals with morphemic structure and combinability, classification of words. Syntax - with sentences.

Chapter 2. Categorial structure of the word.

 There are 3 fundamental notions: grammatical form, grammatical meaning, and grammatical category. Notional words possess some morphemic features expressing grammatical meanings. They determine the grammatical form of the word.

Grammatical form is not confined to an individual meaning of the word because grammatical meaning is very abstract and general ex: oats-wheat: The grammatical form of oats is clearly plural and grammatical form of wheat is singular, but we can’t say that oats are more than one and wheat is one. So here we say that oats is grammatical. Plural and wheat is grammatical singular. There is no clear one-to-one correspondence between grammatical category of singular and plural and counting them in reality in terms of “one” and “more than one”.

A very vivid example confirming the rightness of this statement is connected with the category of gender with biological sex ex: bull-cow, so the grammatical form presents a division of a word of the principle of expressing a certain grammatical meaning.

Grammatical meaning is a very abstractive generalized meaning, which is linguistically expressed. ex: Peter’s head -the grammatical meaning of the category of case showing the relations between a part and a whole.

Grammatical meaning is always expressed either explicitly or implicitly:

• e.g. pens –meaning of plurality; indicator – the morpheme

• e.g. has been working – the grammatical form indicates continuity and perfection

• e.g. the category of case. The grammatical meaning is here motivated. It shows relations of objects in extra-linguistic world:

For instance: “The book reads well”. Here the grammatical meaning of passivity is expressed implicitly. Here the subject is not active, it can’t be the doer of the action. While the form of the verb is active, the meaning is passive.

Grammatical meaning is a system of expressing the grammatical meaning through the paradigmatic correlation of grammatical forms-expressed by grammatical opposition

Different modes of expressing grammatical meaning:

1. inflexions (work-er-o – work-er-s). Homonymy of grammatical morphemes (-ing – Gerund and Participle I); 

2. sound alternation ( man – men, have - has);

3. analytical means (analytical forms). A discontinuous morpheme. Prof. Barkhudarov thinks that analytical forms are always marked with the help of discontinuous morphemes (have+ -en; be + -ing; be + -en). Criteria to differentiate analytical forms: - The general grammatical meaning of an analytical form comprises all the components of the form. Each component taken separately doesn’t render any information about the general meaning of the form. - There are no syntactic relations between the components of an analytical form. Originally they developed from free syntactic combinations, mainly from some types of compound predicates.

4. Syntactic relations in the context are possible only for the whole form; the components can’t have syntactic relations separately: has never done.

5. suppletivity (I – me, go – went, bad - worse).

The term ‘category’ derives from a Greek word which is otherwise translated as ’predication’ (in the logical, or philosophical, sense of ‘attributing properties’ to things). Traditional categories are: the category of gender, number, person, case, tense, mood, voice.

Grammatical category (GC) - is a system of expressing a generalized grammatical meaning by means of paradigmatic correlation or grammatical forms. (Blokh)

The set of grammatical forms constitutes a paradigm. The paradigmatic relations of grammatical forms in a category are exposed in the so-called grammatical opposition. In other words, grammatical category is some total of all the oppositions of words.

• e.g. the category of number. The opposition of 2 forms: pen – pens (z), cats (s), boxes (iz), men, oxen

The opposition is a generalized correlation of lingual forms by means of which a certain function is expressed. The correlated elements must possess two types of features:

common differential

the basis of contrast immediately express a function in question

The notion of GC is central in Theoretical Grammar, it's very important to single out the GC of different types of speech. For that purpose the oppositional theory was worked out. It was originally formulated as a phonological theory.

According to the number of opposed members oppositions can be:

Binary More than binary (ternary, quaternary, etc.)

Three main qualitative types of opposition:

privative (отрицательная) Based on a morph. differential feature which is present in its strong (marked) member (+) and absent in its weak (unmarked) member (–) work (-) – worked (+) The differential feature is the suff. –(e)d

gradual A contrastive pair or group of members which are distinguished not by the presence or absence of a feature but by the degree of it big – bigger – biggest (the GC of comparison)

equipollent (равноценный) A contrastive pair or group in which the members are distinguished by different positive features.In morph. it is mostly confined to formal relations am – is – are (correlation of the person forms of the verb to be)

In various contextual conditions one member of the opposition can be used instead of the other, counter-member. This phenomenon is called “oppositional reduction” or oppositional substitution”.

e.g. Man conquers nature. (“man” is used in the sg. but it stands for people in general. The weak member of the categorical opposition of number has replaced the stronger member.)

Tonight we start for London. (The opposition “present –future” has been reduced, the weaker member (present) replacing the strong one (future)).

Types of categories

• - notional (of quantity, agent);

• - semantic (of gender, modality);

• - morphological (number and case of nouns; degrees of comparison of adjectives and adverbs; tense, voice, aspect, correlation, mood of verbs);

• - syntactical (of predicativity, of agent).