Contents

Grammar As A Science ………………………………………………. Introduction Into Morphology. Parts Of Speech……………………… The Verb ……………………………………………………………… The Noun……………………………………………………………… The Pronoun…………………………………………………………… The Adjective. The Adverb …………………………………………… The Numeral. The Article……………………………………………… The Functional Words…………………………………………………. Introduction Into Syntax………………………………………………. Composite Sentences…………………………………………………...

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G

NOTA BENE

i.e. – id est

Inflexions

RAMMAR AS A SCIENCE

1. Grammar as a science

1. What is the origin of the word ‘grammar’? 2. What is the difference between practical and theoretical grammar? 3. What is the main object of Grammar? 4. What are the traditional parts of Grammar? 5. What’s the difference between morphology and syntax?

The term ‘grammar’ goes back to a Greek word that may be translated as the ‘art of writing’.

Grammar may be practical and theoretical, the aim of practical grammar is to describe the grammar rules, the aim of theoretical one is to explain them.

The main object of Grammar is the grammatical structure of the language, i.e. the system of laws.

The grammatical structure of the language

Level	Language Unit
Phonological level	Phoneme
Morphological level	Morpheme, word
Syntactical level	Word-group, sentence
Supersyntactical level	Text

Traditionally grammar is divided into morphology and syntax.

Morphology includes the parts of speech and their grammatical categories.

Syntax includes the sentences and the parts of the sentence.

2. Language and speech

1. What’s the difference between language and speech? 2. What’s common between language and speech?

Language is the living form of thought. Language and speech are closely connected, for the language is realized in speech.

Language is opposed to speech in their basic units.

	Language		Speech
1	Phoneme	A	Sound
2	Sentence	C	Utterance
3	Text	D	Discourse

Language is the system of paradigmatic relations, i.e. the structure of various units and classes they form.

Speech is the system of syntagmatical relations, i.e. the combinations the same units form in the process of communication.

All the languages are different in the ways of expressing grammatical relations between words in word-groups and sentences.

• In Russian – by inflexions – synthetical.

• In English – by word-order and structural words – analytical.

3

sound interchange

suppletive form

Case

Mood

Degree

Paradigm

. General grammatical notions

1. What are the two types of meaning that every word has? 2. What is a grammatical form? 3. What are the four types of expressing grammatical forms? 4. What is a grammatical category? 5. What are the grammatical categories of the noun, verb, adjective and adverb?

Any sign has the meaning, e.g. the traffic lights are used to instruct the drivers and people to go or to stop. Thus, every sign in the system of the language has the definite meaning itself, it can be lexical and grammatical.

Compare: a book – books, a boy – boys, a dog – dogs

Sends – sent, see – saw, work - worked

All the given words have different lexical meaning, but the same grammatical meaning.

Grammatical form is the form of expressing grammatical meaning, there are 4 ways of expressing grammatical forms of words in English.

1) suffixes

2) sound interchange

3) suppletive forms

4) analytical forms

1) Suffixes are form-changing elements added to root of a word – inflexions.

-e(s) – plurality/ possessive case/ 3d sg

-ed – Past Simple/ Subjunctive Mood/ Participle II

-ing – ParticipleI/ gerund

-er/-est – degrees of comparison

2) Sound interchange is the use of different root sounds in different grammatical forms of a word. E.g. Speak – spoke, wife – wives

3) Suppletive forms are grammatical forms of a word coming from different roots. E.g. Be – am – is – are

4) Analytical forms are made up of two components - auxiliary and notional. e.g. I have written.

The general meaning of 2 or more grammatical forms opposed to each other makes up a grammatical category. e.g. Student – students

In English there are:

• The Category of Tense (Past, Present, Future)

• The Category of Aspect (Simple, Continuous, Perfect and Perfect Continuous)

• The Category of Voice (Active and Passive)

• The Category of Number (Singular and Plural)

All the parts of speech have the grammatical categories:

• Noun – number and case

• Verb – person, number, tense, aspect, voice and mood

• Adjective and adverb – degrees of comparison

The system of grammatical forms of a word is called paradigm.

Go – goes – went – gone – going

PRACTICE