5. Describe paradigm realisation of the grammatical categories below using the model:

MODEL: the category of number of English noun is realised in binary privative opposition of plural and singular (non-plural) forms. Plural form is a strong (marked, positive) member of the opposition, it is marked with specific synthetical forms, i.e. outer inflexion, suppletivity: girl - girls, tooth - teeth. Singular form is a weak (unmarked, negative) member of the opposition.

a) the category of case of English noun;

b) the category of person and number of English verb;

c) the category of mood of English verb.

6. Analyse the following oppositions; name the categories realized in each pair and their markers:

girl – girl’s, look – is looking, cat – cats, speak – will speak, small – smaller, to build – to be built, go – went – gone, interesting – more interesting – the most interesting.

7. A) Split into groups 1) synthetical forms, 2) analytical forms and 3) free word-combinations. Add a few examples of your own to each group:

works, to play, staying, is staying, is weak, more important, the job, have done, have (one’s hair) done, have been doing, smaller, less dangerous, men, a piece of advice, (she) cried and cried

b) Give your own examples:

1) outer inflexions – go - goes, ...

2) inner-inflexions – goose - geese, ...

3) suppletivity – go - went, ...

8. Read the sentences below. Find the cases of oppositional reduction of category of tense:

1) “I’m going with you”, she said. “Nonsense, my dear; I go straight into the City” (Galsworthy).

2) “An Englishman has some sense about working ... but an Irishman will work as if he’d die the moment he stopped” (Shaw).

3) “Frinstance last week we went into Rennes to do some shopping. A couple of French boys picked us up ... They were all right. So they chat us up. Di says we’re staying on our vacancies with a friend of her family’s.” She grimaced. “Then they want to drive out one day and see us...” (Fowles).

9. Comment on the categories below: decide whether they are a) immanent or reflective, b) transgressive or closed (if (a) is immanent), c) variable feature or constant feature categories:

1) the category of gender of English noun;

2) the category of gender of Russian adjective;

3) the category of degree of comparison of English adjective;

4) the category of person and number of English verb;

5) the category of transitivity of English verb.

Seminar 2 morphemes and words

Sources:

1. Блох, М.Я. Теоретическая грамматика английского языка. Любое издание.

2. Блох, М.Я. Практикум по теоретической грамматике английского языка / М.Я. Блох, Т.Н. Семенова, С.В. Тимофеева. – М.: Высшая школа, 2004.

Additional:

3. Хлебникова, И.Б. Основы английской морфологии: учебное пособие / И.Б. Хлебникова. – 3-е изд., испр. - М.: Высшая школа, 2004.

TASKS

1. Get ready to answer the questions below.

1. What is the difference between a morpheme, a word and an intermediary morpheme-like functional word? What is a morph? What kind of morphs are called allomorphs?

2. What is the difference between lexical and grammatical affixes? Which of the two, suffixes or prefixes, can be only lexical in the English language?

3. What are outer and inner inflexions? What is the difference between full and partial suppletivity?

4. What does IC-analysis stand for? What does distributional analysis aim at?

5. When are the morphs said to be in contrastive, non-contrastive and complementary distribution?

6. What are the distributional classes of morphemes?

7. What is a part of speech? Why is this term non-explanatory?

8. What are grammatically relevant properties to differentiate parts of speech?

9. What kind of classifications are called monodifferential / polydifferential?

10. What property(ties) was(were) used for parts of speech classification by prescriptive grammarians? What property(ties) was(were) used for parts of speech classification by H.Sweet?

11. What property(ties) was(were) used for parts of speech classification by Ch.Fries?

12. What property(ties) was(were) used for parts of speech classification by the representatives of complex approach? What are the shortcomings of this approach? What differs Blokh’s classification from the complex approach?