Theoretical Grammar of English

Theoretical Grammar of English

1. The subject matter of Theoretical Grammar

2. Descriptive and Prescriptive Grammar

3. Morphology and Syntax

4. Content (notion) words and function Words

5. Morphemes: The Minimal Units of Meaning

6. Bound and free Morphemes

7. Grammatical morphemes.

8. Three main types of distribution of morphemes

9. Grammatical meanings

10. Categorial grammatical meaning. Grammatical category. Paradigm.

11. Grammatical oppositions.

12. Synthetical and analytical grammatical forms.

13. Parts of Speech (A General Overview)

14. The Noun

15. The Article

16. The Adjective

17. The Pronoun

18. Verb - A general overview

19. The Adverb. General

20. Types of syntagmatic groupings of words.

21. Phrase.

22. Sentence.

23. Actual Division of the Sentence.

24. Classifications of Sentences

25. Simple and Composite sentences – a general overview

26. The Principal and secondary parts of the sentence

27. Text as an Object of Linguistic Research.

28. Textual Categories.

29. Textual Units. Supra-Phrasal Unity and Paragraph.

1. The subject matter of Theoretical Grammar

The term grammar goes back to the Greek word γραμματική where gram (from γράμμα — «letter») meant something written. The part τική derives from τέχνη and meant art. Hence γραμματική is the art of writing.

Our course of theoretical grammar serves to describe the grammatical structure of the English language as a system where all parts are interconnected. The grammar of a language consists of the sounds and sound patterns, the basic units of meaning such as words, and the rules to combine all of these to form sentences with the desired meaning. The grammar, then, is what we know. It represents our linguistic competence. To understand the nature of language we must understand the nature of grammar, and in particular, the internalized, unconscious set of rules that is part of every grammar of every language.

Language is a means of forming and storing ideas as reflections of reality and exchanging them in the process of human intercourse. Language is social by nature; it is inseparably connected with the people who are its creators and users; it grows and develops together with the development of society.

Language incorporates the three constituent parts ("sides"), each being inherent in it by virtue of its social nature. These parts are the phonological system, the lexical system, the grammatical system. Only the unity of these three elements forms a language; without any one of them there is no human language in the above sense.

The phonological system is the subfoundation of language; it determines the material (phonetical) appearance of its significative units. The lexical system is the whole set of naming means of language, that is, words and stable word-groups. The grammatical system is the whole set of regularities determining the combination of naming means in the formation of utterances as the embodiment of thinking process.

Each of the three constituent parts of language is studied by a particular linguistic discipline. These disciplines, presenting a series of approaches to their particular objects of analysis, give the corresponding "descriptions" of language consisting in ordered expositions of the constituent parts in question. Thus, the phonological description of language is effected by the science of phonology; the lexical description of language is effected by the science of lexicology; the grammatical description of language is effected by the science of grammar.

Modern linguistics lays a special stress on the systemic character of language and all its constituent parts. It accentuates the idea that language is a system of signs (meaningful units) which are closely interconnected and interdependent. Units of immediate interdependencies (such as classes and subclasses of words, various subtypes of syntactic constructions, etc.) form different microsystems (subsystems) within the framework of the global macrosystem (supersystem) of the whole of language.