6.1. The Grammatical Categories

In the view of dialectical unity of language and thought the nature of linguistic categories can be conceived only in their correlation with conceptual and objective categories that represent a triad: “objective – conceptual – lingual” realities.

Conceptual Reality

Objective Lingual

reality reality

Category is a form of thinking that represents universal features and relations of the objective reality, general regularities of the development of all material, natural, and spiritual phenomena. Aristotle differentiated 10 objective categories: substance, quantity, quality, relations, place, time, location, state, action and subjection to action.

The most general notions reflecting the most general properties of phenomena are referred to as “logical or conceptual categories” in logic. They are: subject (cуб’єкт), object (об’єкт), predicate (предикат), temporality (темпоральність), aspectuality (аспектуальність), diminutivity (демінутивність), topicality (топікальність), mediality (медіальність), instrumentality (інструментальність), possessivity (посесивність), reflexivity (рефлексивність), ingressiveness (інгресивність), definiteness (дефінітність), quantitiveness (квонтитивність).

The most general meanings rendered by language and expressed by systematic correlations of word-forms are interpreted as grammatical categories in linguistics. They are the categories of tense, aspect, mood, voice, case, person, number, gender. Classes of words or parts of speech are characterized by expressing these categories.

There are grammatical categories that correlate with objective ones. They are called referential because they have their objective referents. The correlation is not direct but via the conceptual categories. Such grammatical categories as tense, aspect and number are referential because they correlate with definite objective categories. The correlation can be illustrated by the following triangle.

Temporality

Aspectuality

Quantitiveness

Time Tense

Manner of action Aspect

Quantity Number

The grammatical category of tense expresses some aspects of the conceptual category of temporality. Temporality is the conceptual reflection of objective time, and time is the objective referent of the grammatical category of tense. Thus, the correlation of referential grammatical categories with objective phenomena is indirect and intermediate.

Among the grammatical categories one can mention the categories of tense, aspect, mood, voice, case, person, number, degree of comparison, and gender. In English the category of tense renders information about temporal relations. It is found in verb forms of present, past, and future. The category of aspect is expressed by verbs as completed, ongoing, recurrent or habitual. For example, the perfect tense forms imply that the action is completed. The category of mood expresses certainty / uncertainty and speaker’s intent that are represented by Indicative, Imperative, and reduced forms of Subjunctive, Conditional, and Suppositional moods. The category of voice shows the relationship of verb arguments to one another. English distinguishes active and passive forms of the verb and uses the periphrastic construction (be + PII) to realize the passive. The category of case indicates the role of the subject, direct object, and possessor. It is represented in noun declensions (common – girl & possessive – girl’s portrait), personal pronouns (nominative – I & objective – me), and prepositions. The category of person is signaled via grammatical person, specifically in personal pronouns (1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd), lacking distinction between 2^nd pers. sg and pl, in reduced forms of the verb in the present and future tenses (am, is, -s, shall / will). The category of number describes count distinction (quantity) encoded in inflexions of singular and plural forms of nouns (regular plurals a boy – boys, irregular plurals a formula – formulae, zero ending a deer – deer, umlaut a man – men, foot – feet, absolute sg wisdom, money, sand, progress, absolute pl evidence, thanks, goods, overheads, collective nouns people, the poor, pair nouns scales), personal and demonstrative pronouns (I – we, he / she / it – they; this – these, that – those), verbs in the present tense forms (am, is / are, has / have, gives / give), and partially in the past tense forms (was / were), and articles (a – only sg, the – only pl). The category of degree of comparison is realized in adjectives and adverbs (positive – comparative – superlative: hot – hotter – the hottest; many – more – the most). The category of gender that existed in the OE period in masculine, feminine, and neutral forms of nouns, pronouns, and adjectives has been lost to a large extent in modern English. It is preserved in personal, possessive, and relative pronouns (he / his, she / her, it / its, who / whom – which) and can be traced on morphological level in forms of feminine suffixes -ess & -ette (stewardess, usherette), on semantic level as biological gender in some nouns, like man, woman, in traditional substitution of some nouns by gender marked pronouns, e.g.: ship – she.

For further reading: Mоrоkhоvskа Е. Y.. Fundamentals of English Grammar: Тhеоry and рrаctice, pp. 156-163; Alexeyeva I. Morphology of Modern English, pp. 30-39, 44-46, 57, 65-103; Robins R. H. General Linguistics, pp. 227-231; 255-264.