Lecture 6. Grammar aspect of the english language study

1. The grammatical categories.

2. The grammatical classes of words.

3. The simple sentence: communicative types.

4. The actual division.

5.The composite sentence.

Grammar (from Gr. grámma – “lеtter, writing”) is a science that studies syntactic relations and structural forms of language. Grammar is represented in grammatical categories, grammatical units, and grammatical forms.

The notion “grammar” means the “language structure”, i.e. the system of morphological categories and forms, syntactic categories and patterns, ways of word production. Study of grammar deals with abstraction and generalization, such as relations in cases, linking of words, structures of sentences, relationship between subject and its action, action and its object, etc.

The word that belongs to lexical and grammatical levels of language reveals characteristics inherent in both of them. The grammatical meaning of a word comprises mostly its meaning as a part of speech (morphological level).

The other important unit of grammar is sentence. Sentence is an informing unit built up of words according to a particular syntactic pattern, functionally burdened and intonationally organized. Sentence possesses such categories as predicativity, modality and actual division (syntactic level).

History of Grammar Studies

The origin of grammar thought is traced in works of Indian scholars – grammar books by Panini (5^th c. B.C.), Patanjali (2^nd c. B.C.), Chandra (5^th c. A.D.), and Jainendra (7^th c. A.D.). First Indian grammar consisted of nearly 4,000 rules (sūtras). Being composed with the maximum brevity, it described the entire Sanskrit language in all the details of its structure, with the unity which had no equivalent elsewhere. It is at once the shortest and the fullest grammar in the world. Two centuries later Panini’s grammar was supplemented with commentaries by another prominent grammarian Patanjali (Патанджалі). Patanjali considered relations between the sentence and judgement from philosophical point of view and gave his own definition of sentence as a single undivided utterance that expressed a single meaning. One of the main achievements of Indian grammatical theory was that it discovered the morphological structure of the word: the root, the stem, the suffix. Four parts of speech were differentiated: the noun, the verb, the preposition, and the particle. The noun was defined as a word that nominates an object, the verb – as a word that nominates an action. The preposition was considered as a determinator of nouns and verbs. The particles were divided into copulative, comparative, and empty (formal elements used in poetry). All types of declination and conjugation were investigated. Seven cases of the noun were described: nominative, genetive, dative, accusative, instrumental, ablative, and local.

In the Eastern countries the most well-known grammar school is the Chinese one. Ancient Chinese scholars, among them Lu Se (5-6^th c. A.D.), first divided words into “full” (notional – ши цзи) and “empty” (functional – сюй цзи). The only kind of grammar books was dictionaries of “empty” words; the 1^st of them appeared in 1592. In 1898 the 1^st Chinese grammar by Ma Цзяньжуана was published.

The ancient Greek-Roman grammar school existed from the 7^th c. B.C. – till the 6^th A.D. In The Categories by Aristotle logical and grammatical principles of the language study can be traced. Julius Caesar in his thesis About Analogies (54 B.C.) made an attempt to give grammatical description of the Latin language and to establish norms of its usage. The 1^st manual on Latin grammar was created by Eliy Donat in the 4^th c. A.D. It was considered as a model for many European languages. The ancient grammar tradition of language description according to parts of speech and grammar categories laid the foundation for the European linguistic studies. The European grammatical school has developed according to 4 main stages:

6-12^th c., grammar was considered as a supplementary discipline;

13-14^th c., grammar existed in opposition – philosophical grammar vs. practical one;

15-16^th c., interest in structure of national languages originated, and grammar books of national languages were created;

17-18^th c., “rational period” of grammar science and study of natural speech came to life.

The history of English grammar studies began late in the 16^th c. with the Pamphlet for Grammar (1586) by William Bullokar. Although W. Bullokar wrote his grammar in English and used a “reformed spelling system” of his own invention, many English grammars were still being written in Latin. Even as late as the 19^th c. Lindley Murray, the author of one of the most widely used English grammars, did not evode the influence of the Latin tradition. Robert Lowth, Bishop of Oxford and thereafter of London, scholar of Hebrew poetry and professor of Oxford, was the best known grammarian of the 18^th c. He published his only work on English grammar, A Short Introduction to English Grammar (1762). The aim of Lowth’ grammar was to present a standard for teaching his readers to express themselves with accuracy. Written in a simple manner, the book contained a large number of worked examples, which brought it popularity and commercial success. Lowth also employed footnotes in a new way – he offered there a critical analysis of the written mistakes. The 19^th c. proliferated in numerous grammatical books, such as Henry Sweet’s A new English grammar: logical and historical in two parts: Phonology and Accidence (1892) and Syntax (1896), John C. Nesfield’s English grammar: Past and Present (1900), A Manual of English Grammar and Composition (1898) which proved a success both in Britain and British colonies, H. E. Palmer’s Grammar of spoken English (1924) written for teaching English as a foreign language including a full description of intonation patterns. The next set of wide-ranging English grammars were written by Danish linguist Otto Jespersen, including his 7-volume Modern English grammar on historical principles (Sounds and Spelling, Morphology and Syntax) (1909-1940). O. Jespersen’s original contribution was in analysing various parts of sentence in terms of categories that he named rank, junction, and nexus, forgoing the usual word classes. His ideas inspired the later works of Noam Cholmsky and Randolph Guirk.

For further reading: Irtenyeva N.F. et al. A Theoretical English Grammar (Syntax), pp. 5-15; Alexeyeva I. Morphology of Modern English, pp.7-20; Robins R. H. General Linguistics, pp. 1-11.; Харітонов І. К. Теоретична граматика англійської мови, С. 4-6.