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Файл:Теоретическая грамматика = THEORETICAL GRAMMAR. Учебное пособие
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interjectional phrases, (Sup! = What’s up?, Excuse me!, Oh dear!, Thank
God!, etc.). Though secondary interjections can also include single-word
alarm words (Help!), swear and taboo words (Heavens!), and other words
used to show emotions (Drats!).
Function.In a sentence an interjection forms a kind of parenthesis. An
interjection may also be a sentence in itself (Alas!).
The function of most interjections is related to an expression of feeling,
rather than representing some idea or concept.
Interjections can be classied into three types according to their meaning:
volitive, emotive, or cognitive.
• function as imperative or directive expressions;
requesting or demanding something from the addressee (e.g. Shh! = «Be
quiet!»).
• are used to express emotions, such as disgust
and fear (e.g., Yuck! – expressing disgust: Boo! – signaling contempt as in
Boo! Shame on you).
• express thoughts which are more related to
cognition, or information known to the speaker of the utterance (e.g., Um! –
indicating confusion or thinking.
Interjections can serve as exclamations and curses – in this function
they give expression to private feelings or emotions. They can also serve
as response particles and hesitation markers and in this function that are
primarily directed at managing the ow of social interaction.
Unlike particles which cannot be independent utterances and are fully a
part of the syntax of the utterance interjections can stand alone and also are
always preceded by a pause, separating them from the grammar and syntax
of other surrounding utterances.
Nouns make up the largest class of words in most languages, including
English.
A noun is a word that refers to a thing (book), a person (Betty Crocker),
an animal (cat), a place (Oregon), a quality (softness), an idea (justice), or
an action (dancing).
Grammatical class of nouns is characterized by the categorical meaning
of “thingness” or substance.
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English nouns can be subdivided into proper and common. A proper
noun is a name given to a particular person or a thing. A comm on noun
is a name which is common to all persons or things of the same kind.
Also there is such a group as collective nouns. A collective noun denotes a
group of people, animals or things taken a whole. Such nouns are used as
singulars: family, crew, etc.
Classes of nouns. Nouns can be:
• animate and inanimate,
• countable and uncountable,
• concrete and abstract.
A concrete noun identies something material and non-abstract. An
abstract noun identies something immaterial and abstract.
English nouns have the following grammatical categories: a) a category
of number, b) a category of case, c) a category of gender.
CATEGORY OF NUMBER: Modern English distinguishes between
two numbers: singular and plural.
The singular number shows that one object is meant. The plural
shows that two or more objects are meant: student – students, girl –
girls, story – stories, etc.
Exceptional plural forms:
There are some closed groups of nouns which construct plural forms
differently:
(1) Some nouns add the non-productive sufxes -en, -ren: ox – oxen,
child – children, brother – brethren, etc.
(2) Seven nouns change their vowel (this process is known as sound
alternation): man – men, woman – women, goose – geese, foot – feet, tooth –
teeth, etc.
(3) A few nouns have the same form for both singular and plural. In
this case only the context enables to understand which meaning is intended:
sheep – sheep, deer – deer, salmon – salmon, aircraft – aircraft, offspring –
offspring, series – series, species – species, etc.
(4) A number of nouns (borrowed from Latin or Greek) have kept
the original plural: alga – algae, larva – larvae, bacterium – bacteria,
datum – data, phenomenon – phenomena, criterion – criteria, bacillus –
bacilli, locus – loci, nucleus – nuclei, stimulus – stimuli, codex – codices,
analysis – analyses, basis – bases, crisis – crises, etc.
(5) Some nouns present variations of usage with some other Latin
or Greek words, that is the original plural form vs Standard English one:
antenna – ae/-s, formula – ae/-s, aquarium – a/-s, maximum – a/-s, medium –
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a/-s, referendum – a/-s, forum – a/-s, focus – i/-es, fungus – i/es, cactus – i/
es, syllabus – i/es, radius – i/es, index – ices/-es, appendix – ices/-es, apex –
ices/-es, vortex – ices/-es, matrix – ices/-es, etc.
Nouns which don’t show difference between singular and plural:
Many English nouns do not show difference between singular and plural.
They are classied into several groups.
(1) Nouns with the descriptive plural: snows, rains, waters, etc.
(2) Nouns with a fully lexicalized plural form (plural form develops a
completely new meaning): colour :: colours custom :: customs, etc.
(3) Pluralia Tantum nouns – nouns which have only a plural and no
singular forms: trousers, scissors, binoculars, jeans, etc.; and nouns of
indenite plurality: outskirts, remains, thanks, tropics, etc.
(4) Nouns which are singular in form but plural in their meaning: people,
livestock, etc.
(5) Singularia Tantum nouns – nouns which have only singular and no
plural form: air, milk, oxygen, oil, etc.; abstract notions: peace, music, etc.
Names of subjects, diseases, and games, such as linguistics, mathematics,
physics, mumps, billiards, etc. are always used in the singular.
Collective nouns and nouns of multitude:
These are nouns denoting
government, police, etc) and also of animals (cattle, poultry) which can be
used in two different ways: either they denote a group as a whole, or a group
as consisting of a number of individuals (My family is small – My family
are early risers).
CATEGORY OF CASE:
Case is the category of a noun expressing relations between the thing
denoted by the noun and other things, properties or actions, and manifested
by some formal sign in the noun itself.
Case expresses the relation of a word to another word in the word-group
or sentence.
The problem of case in Modern English is one of the most ambiguios
in grammar.
According to traditional approach there are two cases in English:
common case and possessive case.
Some scholars think that Modern English nouns have four cases:
nominative, genitive, dative and accusative.
The Genitive case is expressed by the -‘s inection and by the preposition
of. The Dative case is expressed by the preposition to and also by the word
groups of human beings (family, folk, party,
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order. The Accusative is distinguished from the Dative by the word order.
The Instrumental case is expressed by the preposition with. And the Locative
case is expressed by
M.Y. Blokh says that there exist four points of view on the problem of
case in English: 1) Theory of positional cases. According to it, the
English noun distinguishes genitive, nominative, vocative, dative, and
accusative cases.
2) Theory of prepositional cases. According to it, combinations of nouns
with prepositions should be viewed at as morphological case forms.
3) Theory of a limited inectional system. According to it there are two
cases in English: common case and possessive (genitive) case.
4) Theory of lost category of case. According to which the English noun
lost the category of case in the course of its historical development.
CATEGORY OF GENDER:
Both
Russian and foreign scholars share a point of view that the English
noun does not have category of gender, so Modern English noun does not
have category of grammatical gender.
Nevertheless, according to M.Y. Blokh, the category of gender is
expressed in English by the correlation of nouns with the personal pronouns
of the third person: he, she, it.
Thus, this point of view seems to be controversial. First, many nouns
in English are capable of expressing both feminine and masculine gender:
‘person’, ‘parent’, ‘friend’, ‘cousin’, ‘doctor,’ ‘teacher’, ‘manager’, etc.
Second, in the plural forms the gender distinctions are neutralized.
There is another approach. Some British and American scholars
identify grammatical category of gender with some groups of oppositions:
father – mother, son – daughter, brother – sister, husband – wife, uncle –
aunt, man – woman, boy – girl, gentleman – lady, king – queen, or, else,
cock – hen, bull – cow, etc. But the problem is that in such cases gender is
expressed on the lexical level.
Ways of expressing gender:
(1) Some nouns can express both feminine and masculine gender and
are called nouns of “common gender”: person, parent, friend, cousin, doctor,
president, etc.;
(2) There are some non-productive sufxes to express gender: actor –
actress, host – hostess, waiter – waitress, duke – duchess, prophet –
prophetess, lion – lioness, etc.;
the preposition in.
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(3) Some nouns form gender using different roots (lexical distinction
of gender): bachelor – spinster; boy – girl; bull – cow; cock – hen; father –
mother; gentleman – lady; husband – wife; king – queen; lord – lady; sir –
madam; monk – nun, etc.;
(4) A number of nouns change sufx: actor – actress; adventurer –
adventuress; duke – duchess; host – hostess; lion – lioness; emperor –
empress; giant – giantess; prince – princess, etc.;
(5) There are cases when nouns change the ending: czar – czarina;
sultan – sultana; wizard – witch, etc.;
(6) Some nouns change a word-morpheme before or after: he-goat ::
she-goat; land-lord :: land-lady; man-servant :: maid-servant; grandfather :: grand-mother; Tom-cat :: pussy-cat; Billy-goat :: she-goat; maleelephant :: female-elephant; pea-cock :: pea-hen, etc.
So the category of gender in English is mostly semantic as it reects the
actual features of the named objects.
CATEGORY OF NUMBER:
The grammatical category of number is the linguistic representation
of the objective category of quantity. The category of number is realized
through the opposition of the plural and singular form.
The productive formal mark of the plural is the sufx –(e)s: dog – dogs;
clock – clocks; box – boxes.
Non-productive ways of expressing the number opposition are:
a) vowel interchange: man – men, etc.;
b) archaic sufx ox – oxen; child – children; brother – brethren,
etc.;
c) the correlation of individual singular and plural sufxes in some
borrowed nouns: formula – formulae; phenomenon – phenomena; alumnus –
alumni, etc.;
d) homonymous singular and plural forms: sheep – sheep, deer – deer;
sh – sh, etc.
may denote:
(a) oneness (individual separate object – a cat);
(b) generalization (the meaning of the whole class – The cat is a
domestic animal);
(c) indiscreetness (or uncountableness) – money, milk.
may denote:
(a) several objects – cats;
(b) inner discreteness (pluralia tantum) – jeans.
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Singularia tantum covers:
1) abstract notions (peace, love, joy, courage, etc.);
2) names of the branches of professional activity (chemistry, architecture,
mathematics, linguistics, etc.);
3) names of mass materials (water, snow, steel, hair, etc.);
4) names of collective inanimate objects (foliage, fruit, furniture, etc.).
Pluralia tantum covers:
1) names of objects consisting of two halves (jeans, trousers, scisors,
spectacles, etc.);
2) nouns with collective meaning (supplies, outskirts, clothes, contents,
politics, police, cattle, poultry, etc.);
3) names of diseases or some abnormal states of the body (measles,
mumps, hysterics, etc.).
Noun can function as:
• a subject of a sentence: ‘Cats like milk’, etc.
• an object: ‘People use bricks to construct buildings’, etc.
• a predicative: ‘I am now acting head teacher of this school’, etc.
An adjectiveis a part of speech which expresses the categorical meaning
of property of a substance: hard; peaceful, green, etc. Adjectives express
properties of objects: soft, exible, hot, cold, difcult, etc.
From the morphologicalpoint of view English adjective has neither
number or case, nor gender distinctions.
Adjectives are characterized by a specic set of word-building afxes.
Among them are:
a) productive sufxes: -; -; -; -ed(d) (hopeless, childlike,
childish, etc);
b) unproductive sufxes: -, -; -, -, -, -ent, -en, -
(careful, impossible, reliable, troublesome, important, dependent, wooden,
dangerous, etc.);
c) productive prexes: un-, - (unhappy, prewar, etc.);
d) unproductive prex: (impolite, impossible, etc.).
Adjectives can be subdivided into:
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1. simpleadjectives: good, red, etc.;
2. compoundadjectives: snow-white, life-giving, etc.
Derivative sufxes of the adjectives: -al, -ial (national, residential),
-ful (doubtful), -less (useless), -y (dusty), -like (ghostlike) are used to derive
adjectives from nouns; and there are two sufxes, -ive (progressive) and
-able (readable), to derive adjectives from verbs.
Due to their meaning adjectives fall into two classes:
(a) qualitative adjectives and relative adjectives. Qualitative adjectives
denote qualities (physical and mental) of substance: such as size, shape,
colour. Main features of qualitative adjectives are: 1) they have typical
sufxes: -ful, -less, -ous, -ent, -able, -y, -ish: careful, careless, dangerous,
comfortable, silvery, etc.; 2) adverbs can be formed from adjectives by
means of sufx -ly: merry – merrily; comfortable – comfortably; 3) most
of them have degrees of comparison: big – bigger – the biggest; 4) most
qualitative adjectives can be used as attributes and predicatives.
(b) relativeadjectives denote qualities of a substance through their
relation to materials (silken), place (Asian), time (weekly, annually), some
action (preparatory).
Main features of relative adjectives are: 1) they have typical sufxes:
-: wooden, Italian, analytical, etc; 2) they do not from
adverbs with the sufx -; 3) they do not have degrees of comparison;
4) they mostly function as attributes.
Relative adjective may acquire the meaning of a qualitative adjective
when they are used guratively: “a golden crown”: a relative adjective
„golden‟ is used in its primary meaning – “a crown made of gold”; but
“golden hair”: a relative adjective „golden‟ is used in its gurative meaning – “hair of the colour of gold”; thus it is possible to say: Her hair is even
more golden than her mother’s hair.
The category of comparison
expresses the quantitative characteristics of the quality expressed by the
adjective. There are three forms which constitute this category: the positive
degree, the comparative degree, the superlative degree.
The basic form (the positive degree) has no special formal mark: tall,
beautiful; the comparative degree is marked by two kinds of forms: synthetical forms with the sufx -er and analytical forms with the auxiliary word
more: taller, more beautiful; the superlative degree is also formed either
synthetically with the help of the grammatical sufx -est, or analytically
with the help of the auxiliary word most: tallest, most beautiful. Also, there
are some suppletive forms of degrees of comparison: bad – worse – worst.
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The positive degree denotes either the absence of comparison or equality/inequality in special constructions of comparison: He is tall; He is as
tall as my brother; He is not so tall as my brother. The comparative degree
denotes relative superiority: He is taller than my brother. The superlative
degree denotes absolute superiority: He is the tallest man I’ve ever seen.
The superlative degree can be used in contexts where no comparison is
meant to denote a very high degree of a certain quality: She is a most unusual
woman; It was most generous of you. This phenomenon is known as “the
elative superlative”. The formal mark of the difference between the two
cases is the use of either the indenite or zero article with the noun modied
by the adjective in the superlative degree: It was a most generous gesture.
Substantivization of Adjectives. Some adjectives can acquire features of
a noun – so they can be substantivized. It is possible to differentiate wholly
substantivized adjectives and partially substantivized. Wholly substantivized
adjectives acquire all the characteristics of nouns; partially substantivized
adjectives take only the denite article. When adjectives are fully substantivized, they make a new word – a noun which is connected with the adjective
only etymologically: a private – a private room, a native – a native resident,
etc. These nouns get such characteristics as number, case, article determination: privates, private’s, a private, the private, etc.
Some partially substantivized adjectives denote groups of people sharing
the same feature: the rich, the poor, etc. and abstract notions: the unforget-
table, the invisible, etc.
Substantivized adjectives can be used in some set phrases: in the nega-
tive; in the open; on the whole; in the main; in short, etc.
These adjectives also have comparative (to get the better of smth; a
change for the better) and superlative (in the least; for the best; at one’s
best) degrees.
Under certain circumstances adjectives can be substantivized – become
nouns. This phenomenon can be found in many languages (in Russian: уче-
ный совет – ученый).
Substantivized English adjectives acquire the following characteristic
features of nouns:
1) ability to form a plural;
2) ability to have a possessive case form;
3) ability to be modied by an adjective;
4) ability to have both denite and indenite article;
5) ability to functions as a subject and an object in a sentence.
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But such units as the poor, the rich, the Chinese, the English, etc. do not
form a plural form using -s and they have no possessive form; they cannot
be used in the singular meaning and with the indenite article. So such
adjectives are called partially substantivized.
The main functions an adjective performs in a sentence are:
• (either in preposition to the noun modied or in post-
position): a suspicious man; a man suspicious of his wife;
• in a compound nominal predicate: The man was very
suspicious of his wife.
Verb is the most complex grammatical class of words in English. It is
the only part of speech that has a morphological system based on the six
categories (a category of person, a category of number, a category of tense,
a category of aspect, a category of voice, and a category of mood). Besides,
there such verb-forms as: Innitive, Gerund, Participle I, Participle II.
The categorical meaning of the verb is a process presented dynamically
and developing in time.
All English verbs (according to the formal aspect) can be divided into
two groups: regular verbs and irregular verbs.
Person and number are specic verbal categories reected in the verb
due to the agreement of the subject with the verb-predicate. The categories
of person and number are closely connected with each other. In the system
of the present tense the inection -(e)s is used for the third person singular,
while the other persons remain unmarked. The modal verbs have no personal
inections. The verb ‘to be’ has three suppletive personal forms for the
present tense (am, are, is) and two forms for the past (was, were).
The category of tense has both synthetic (inection -(e)s for the Present,
the inection -ed for the Past) and analytical forms “will/shall + innitive”
for the Future). Irregular verbs also have different patterns of sound
alternation (write – wrote – written; be – was/were – been; go – went – gone).
The category of aspect is expressed by the analytical forms: “be + Present
Participle” for the Continuous; “have + Past Participle” for the Perfect.
The oppositional differentiation within the category of voice is based on
the marking of the Passive with the analytical form “be + Past Participle”.
The morphological category of mood has both synthetic (the bare innitive,
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the specic form were) and analytical (should/would + innitive) forms of
expressions.
GRAMMATICAL CLASSES OF VERBS:
Verbs falls into a number of subclasses. The rst division is between
notional verbs, semi-notional and functional verbs.
Notional verbs represent the bulk of the verbal lexicon. This class
includes such grammatically relevant semantic subclasses as statal verbs,
denoting the state (be, live, suffer, know, see, etc), actional verbs, expressing
the action (do, act, make, go, take, etc).
There are also personal and impersonal verbs. Objective verbs take any
objects, including prepositional ones. Transitive verbs are able to take direct
objects, but there are also ditransitive verbs, taking a direct object and an
indirect object as their valency partners, or complex-transitive verbs, taking
a direct object and an adverbial as their valency partners.
Semi-notional and functional verbs serve as markers of predication as
they show the connection between the content of the sentence and reality.
These predicators include auxiliary verbs, link-verbs, modal verbs, and
semi-notional verbal introducers.
Auxiliary verbs (be, have, do, will, would, etc) constitute the grammatical
elements of the categorical forms of the verb.
Link verbs introduce the nominal part of a compound predicate
(a predicative / complement). Their function is to link the subject with its
predicated feature of identication or qualication.
Modal verbs (can, may, must, should, ought to, need, etc) are used with
the innitive as predicative markers expressing the relational meanings of
the subject attitude type, that is – ability, obligation, permission, advisability,
probability, etc.
Semi-notional verbal introducers are distributed among the sets of verbs
of discriminatory relational semantics (seem, happen, turn out, come out,
etc), of phasal semantics (begin, start, continue, stop, etc), of subject – action
relational semantics (try, manage, fail, want, like, love, etc).
NONFINITE FORMS OF VERBS. English verbals include four forms:
the Innitive, the Gerund, the Present Participle (Participle I), and the Past
Participle (Participle II).
Verbals or the non-nite forms of the verb are the forms of the verb
intermediary in many of their lexico-grammatical features between the verb
and the non-processual parts of speech. While the nite forms perform only
one syntactic function in the sentence (that of a predicate), the non-nite
forms perform various syntactic functions except that of the nite predicate.
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