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Morphological structure of a word. Various ways of word-building in Modern English.
The definiti9on of a morpheme: borrowing words from other lang-es is not the only way in which the voc-ry of the lang-e may be extended. A number of linguistic processes may operate to enable a speaker to create a new word. These processes are derivation (affixation), compounding, conversion, shortening, backformation.
Teach-er, help-less-ness, sports-man.
Like a word a morpheme has a sound form and meaning. Unlike a word a morpheme can’t be divided into smaller units and can’t be used separately, can occur in speech only as a constituent part of a word.
Semantic classification of morphemes:
root morphemes: they are lexical centers of the words, their basic constituent part (black-ness, London-er);
affixational morphemes: prefixes + suffixes = affixes: they have a generalized lexical meaning and part-of-speech-meaning –er, -est, –> doer of an action, noun-forming affixes.
Structural classification of morphemes:
free morphemes (root morphemes): friend, way, day, week;
bound morphemes (all the affixes): un-, less, pre;
semi-bound (can function as an affix and as a free morpheme): thing (free)–something (bound), like – manlike, do well–well-bred, well-done.
One of the most productive ways in which new words have been created is affixation (or derivation). It involves adding to an existing word either a suffix to an end or a prefix at the beginning.
Prefixes and suffixes are collectively known as affixes: help-less-ness = (n+less) +ness, specialist = (n+ist), chairmanship=(n+n)(chair+man)+suff.
Affixes:
prefixes:
prefixation is mostly typical of verbs;
prefixes change the lexical meaning of words: reread–read;
only some prefixes change the part of speech form: large–enlarge.
suffixes:
suffixation is mostly characteristic of nouns and adjectives;
suffixes Also change the lexical meaning of words: help–helpless;
the majority of suffixes change the part of speech form: black–to blacken, child–childless; only some suffixes don’t change part of speech: relation–relationship, child–childhood, brown–brownish; they transform a word into another semantic group: from concrete nouns to abstract nouns (child–childhood).
Convertion
It is another highly productive way of Modern English word-building.
Convertion is a type of word building in which from some word already existing in the lang-e a new word is made. The new word coincides with the old one in its phonetic shape but belong to a different word class.
A different category of part of speech and that’s why possessing a different paradigma and a different lexical meaning from that of original word.
Work (noun) –s, pl.; -‘s singular pos –> substantive
Work (verb): -‘s plural pos –> paradigma
-s: the 3-d person singular
-ed: past simple, participle II
-ing: present part., gerund.
There are two main cases of convertion:
formation of verbs from nouns and rarely from other parts of speech: v<–n, to doctor–doctor; v<–adj., to thin–thin; v<–preposition, to down–down;
formation of nouns from verbs and rarely from other parts of speech: n–>v, to cut–a cut; n<–conjunction.
The semantic relations between the words related through convertion:
verbs converted from nouns: if the noun refers to some object of reality, the convert6ed verb may denote:
action characteristic of the object (ape, a witness=to witness);
instrumental use of the object (hammer=to hammer);
location (with nouns denoting places, buildings): a bag= to bag;
temporal relations: winter=to winter;
nouns converted from verbs may denote:
moment of an action: to jump – a jump
place of an action: to drive– a drive;
object or result of an action: to cut–a cut, to find–a find.
Word composition or compounding
Compounding is a productive type of word formation. Compounds are made up by joining together at least two stems, mostly stems of notional parts of speech.
Compounds have different degree of complexity: they may consist of simple and derived stems (‘motorway’ is form from two simple words–motor and way).
Compounds are usually formed according to structural and semantical formulae and patterns.
Structurally it is a two-stem center. Semantically it possesses a combined lexical meaning (not a sum).
In a sentence it functions free and has quite a different reference to an object (marry-go-round). According to different degrees of motivation compounds are:
completely motivated (both components are used in their direct meanings: a housekeeper, a sportsman)
partially motivated (one component in the direct meaning, the other in indirect: a flowerbed (bed – indirect mean.), chatterbox (box-indirect));
completely non-motivated (there is no connection between the meaning of the compound and the lexical meaning of those components: eye-wash (smth said or done to deceive a porson)).
Idioms:
According to the structure compounds are divided into:
neutral (that is formed by simple placing of one stem after another without any linking element: a flowerbed, a shopwindow) –> simple (consist of simple affix less stems: a bedroom, a waller);
morphological compounds (with a linking element such as afroasian; spidomentre; sportsman, salesman);
syntactic (are formed from segments of speech preserving In their structure traces of syntagmatic relations typical of speech: articles, prepositions, adverbs: man-of-war, up-to-date).
According to the types of stems:
derivational (one of the stems is derived: babysitter)
contracted (one of the stem is shortened or contracted: tv-show, fbi-aqgent).
According to the degree of the symantic independence of stems: compounds:
subordinated (the components are neither structurally nor semantically equal in importance: the headmember is the second component: ababysitter);
coordinated (both stems are semantically equally important: both words are structural and semantic centers: fifty-fifty, zig-zag).
Shortening
Shortening words is the way of formation of new words by means of substituting a part of a word for a while.
Shortening:
graphical Shortenings is used in written speech: in letters, scientific books, newspaper, articles, … : Mr and Mrs, Dr, St, rd,…;
lexical Shortening is used in both: written and oral speech.
Ways or reading of graphical abbreviations:
as separate words (and they are substituted by words and phrases they represent );
as one word (FBI, MP);
as a succession of a sound denoting by the constituent parts: UN.
Among lexical abbreviations we should distinguish between lexical abbrev. Proper, deeping, blinded and ellipses.
Deeping consist in the cutting off of one or several syllables of a word: phone>–TELEPHONE.
Ellipses is anemition of a word or words in a phrase when the remaining part keeps the lexical meaning of whole phrase (pub=public house);
Blanding is compounding by means of clipped words: medicare=medical care; yaden=yard+garden.
Modern English Phraseology.
Lexico-semantic grouping in Modern English Lexicon
Meaning
grammatical meaning.
The branch of L. that is devoted to the studying of meaning is called semantics. All the linguists usually describe two types of meaning: they are grammatical and lexical meanings.
The grammatical meaning is clearly seen in identical sets of individual forms pf different words: girls, tables, lakes, plates – the gram. meaning is plurality.
Worked, played, finished– the gram. meaning of past tense.
In the processes of communication in a sentence a word has several gram. meanings (the girls dresses are beautiful)..
lexical meaning:
lexical meaning is not connected with changes of gram. forms of one and the same word. It remains stable and unchanged in a sentence a word is used in one of its lexical meanings. So, lex. Meaning is proper to a word as a lang-e unit in all its forms and distributions (go-went-gone).
The words ‘go’, ‘goes’, ‘went’, ‘going’, ‘gone’ have different gram. meaning but one and the same semantic component denoting the process of moving.
component of lexical meaning:
lexical meaning has a rather complicated structure and consists of several components. Most of the linguists distinguish between 3 main components of lexical meaning. They are:
the denotative component as the segment of the extra-linguistic world expressed in a word;
the significative component as a typical notion or concept, a complex of features, characteristic of an object; (denotate)
the relations of these 3 components (denotate, significate and a word) can be roughly illustrated by the famous semantic triangle of Ogdan and Richards.
Significate (=notion)
Word denotate (=object)
There is a direct relation between a word and a significate on the one side and a significate and a denotate on the other side. But there is no immediate relation between a word and a denotate. It is established through the significate.
connotative component or connotation:
connotation is defined an additional information to a word. Depicting an attitude of a person to an object.
emotional coloring: well-known (стил. нейтрально), famous (использ. в хорошем смысле), notorious (в плохом смысле).
Stylistic reference: stylistically words can be divided into:
Literary (‘bookish’): general and special (terms (are associated with a definite branch of science: influenza) and archaisms);
Neutral (can be employed in all styles of the lang-e and in all … of human activity);
Colloquial: general and special.
Special –> archaisms: nay=no, warrior=soldier, welkin=sky.
Special:
Slang (a sleeper–курс лекций, dirt=money);
Jargonizes: heavy cream=толстушка, acid=drugs, cold turkey=голая правда.
Vulgarisms: damn, hell, son of bitch.
the semantic structure of a word:
when we analyze the semantic structure of the words we notice that they are not units of a single meaning. Monosemantic words, i.e. words having only one meaning are comparatively few in number. They are mainly scientific terms and alike.
Most of words convey several notions and thus have several meanings. They are called polysemantic words.
Smirnitsky was the first who defined a unit of a word that possesses its own sound form and a lexical meaning. And which keeps unchangeable in sentagmatics and paradigmatics. And which was called a lexical semantic variant (LSV).
Vinogradov was the first to speak about the semantic structure of a word as an interrelated and interdependent unity of its alloswise.
Different alloswise may be clealy seen in a context:
in different collocations (combinations): to stand –> straight, heat;
in different sentactical positions: to stand for (символ-ть), to stand out (выдел-ся);
in their phraseological peculiarities: to stand on end = стоять дыбом.
The meanings in a semantic structure of a word are not equal. Traditionally the basic meaning and the miner meanings are distinguished.
Basic meaning is kind of a center of a word round which all other miner meanings are organized.
Курелович, Шмелев and others defined basic meaning as one that is never depends on the context. They say, that is basic meaning that first occurs in our heads with the first mentioning of the word. (hard-has 1-st meaning, but the main is твердый, жесткий; table – has 15 meanings, blind – 8 meanings).
Miner meaning strongly depend on the context they are sintagmatically depended. And this context or correlations don’t make it possible to interpret this or that as a basic one (hard work).
Change of meaning
How words develop new meanings.
1. Pocess of semantic change: there are 2 groups of pocess of semantic change: extra-linguistic or historical and linguistic.
By extra-ling. pocess we mean different changes in a nation’s social life, its culture, knowledge, technology, arts, changes in all spheres of human activities. Newly created objects, new notions and phenomena must be named. One of the ways for providing new names for the newly created objects applying some old word to a new object or notion. (carriage–has a meaning and had of a weekl draw by horses; with the first appearance a rauilwayin England if receive a new meaning a railway ear).
Some changes of are duly to..
It is factors acting within the lang-e system.
ellipses: the verb ‘to starve’ in meaning of ‘умирать’ was habitually used in combinations with the word ‘hunger’ – ‘to starve of hunger’.
In the 14 century the verb ‘hunger’ gradually stopped to be used in this phrase. And the verb itself got this meaning.
Other examples of ellipses: a sit-down (demonstration), a monthly = monthly (magazine).
discrimination of synonyms: that is process of change in meaning of words due to collision of synonyms (the OE verb ‘steorfan’ (ME ‘to starve’) had the meaning to ‘punish’ then verb ‘to die‘ had been borrowing from the Scandinavian. These two synonyms which were very close in their meaning calleded and as a result the verb ‘to starve’ gradually changed into its present meaning–to die from hunger).
Other examples of discrim-n: ‘land’ was ‘земля’ in OE then – country –> ‘земля’, stool <– chair (french) –табурет.
semantic analogy: it is found out that one of the members of a synonymic set gets a new meaning. Other member of this set change their meaning accordingly (verbs synonymous with ‘catch’ got the meaning ‘to understand’).
2. nature of semantic change:
a necessary condition of any semantic change no matter what the poase is some connection some association between the old meaning and the new one. There are 2 kinds of these assoc-ns of meanings.
They are similarly of meaninga and contiguity of meanings.
Contiguity of meaning or metonymy may be described as the semantic process of assoc-ing of 2 represents. One of which makes part of the other or is closely connected with it.
Another words metonymy is a transference of meanings on the basis of contiguity.
Case of metonymy:
the name of a container is transferred to the things contained
the name of the thing contained is transferred to the container (school, institute–>for school building, un-ty building);
the name of the material is transferred for the product (iron–>an iron);
the name of the inventor –> what they have invented (a mackintosh is a water proof overcoat, made be …)
the names of countries, cities, town are transferred to product manufactured there (polland–>linen fabric);
similarity of meaning or metafora may be described as a semantic process of assoc-ing 2 represents one of which 2 represents in some way resembles the other.
Metafora is a transference of meaning in the basis of similarity.
Metafora may be based on the similarity of properties – appearance on form.
Bridge– мост, temperature: boiling hot (кипяток);
Position: the head of the foot of the page;
Color: lilac–сирень
Function of use : hand –рука, стрелка часов.
The Latin borrowing of different periods and their historical background
French as the most important foreign influence on the English language (at 2 historical periods)
Grammatical category of the Noun
The noun is the main nominative part of speech, having the categorial meaning of “substance” and “thingness”.
The noun is characterized by a set of formal features. It has its word-building distinctions, including typical suffixes, compound stem models, conversion patterns.
It has the grammatical categories of gender, number, case, article determination.
The most characteristic function of the noun is that of the subject in the sentence. The function of the object in the sentence is also typical of the noun. Other syntactic functions, i.e. attribute, adverbial and even predicative are not immediately characteristic of its substantive quality.
The noun is characterized by some special types of combinability. It is the prepositional combinability with another noun, a verb, an adjective, an adverb.
E.g. an entrance to the house;
to turn round the corner;
red in the face;
far from its destination.
The casal combinability characterizes the noun alongside of its prepositional combinability with another noun.
E.g. the speech of the President - the president's speech.
English nouns can also easily combine with one another by sheer contact. In the contact group the noun in pre-position plays the role of a semantic qualifier to the noun in post-position. E.g. film festivals, a cannon ball.
The lexico-grammatical status of such combinations has been a big problem for many scholars, who were uncertain as to how to treat this combination: either as one separate compound word or a word-group.
In the history of linguistics it is called “The cannon ball problem” (or the stone wall problem).
Category of number
The category of number is expressed by the opposition of the plural form of the noun and to the singular form of the noun. The strong member of this binary opposition is the plural, its productive formal mark is the suffix -(e)s [z,s,iz].
The non-productive ways of expressing the number opposition are vowel interchange in several relict forms, the archaic suffix -(e)n supported by phonemic interchange (child - children), the correlation of individual singular and plural suffixes in a limited number of borrowed nouns (datum - data).
In spoken English the productive allomorphs es,s are often used instead of the borrowed ones in formulas, sanatoriums, memorandums.
In some cases the plural form of the noun is homonymous with the singular form (sheep). Semantically, the meaning of the singular is “one”, as opposed to the meaning of the plural 'many', or “more than one”. It shows whether the noun stands for one object or more than one.
However language facts are not always so simple as that. Sometimes the singular form does not express singularity, i.e. one object, e.g. a fleet, a family, a crew, etc, or the plural form does not mean many objects (scissors, brains, etc).
A peculiar view of the category of number was put forward by A. Isachenko. According to this view, the essential meaning of the category of number of the noun is not that of quantity, but of discreteness (расчлененность).
Thus in “scissors” the category of plural number expresses discreteness and combines with the lexical meaning of the noun, which denotes an object consisting of two halves.
Thus, the grammatical category of number is closely connected with the lexical meaning of the noun. The real meaning of the noun becomes clear only syntagmatically, e.g. My family is large. My family are all early risers.
Some plural forms of English nouns undergo lexicalization. E.g. colours - знамя (flag), pains - effort, quarters - abode.
Some plural forms are used for stylistic purposes (sands, waters, snows), which do not mean plurality, but great expanses.
The nounal vocabulary is divided into countable nouns and uncountable nouns. Countable nouns generally comprise class nouns (конкретные), collective nouns (army), abstract concrete nouns (ideas, thoughts, joys) and nouns having one form for the singular and plural (sheep, deer).
The two subclasses of uncountable nouns are usually referred to as singularia tantum (only singular) and pluralia tantum (only plural). Singularia tantum is characteristic of the names of abstract notions (peace, love, joy, news, weather, courage, progress, friendship, etc), the names of the branches of professional activity (chemistry, architecture, mathematics, linguistics, etc), the names of mass materials (water, snow, steel, hair, etc), the names of collective inanimate objects (foliage, fruit, furniture, machinery, etc).
Some of these words can be used in the form of the common singular with the common plural counterpart (противная сторона, двойник), but in this case they mean either different sorts of materials, or separate concrete manifestations of the qualities denoted by abstract nouns, or concrete objects showing the respective qualities.
E.g. steel- steels; a joy - joys; a fish – fishes
He studies freshwater fishes (sorts).
She eats much fish (material).
I caught many fish.
a hair - hairs (волы);
a youth - youths (юноша).
So a variant of a class noun may belong to the singularia tantum. Singularia tantum may be combined with words showing discreteness, such as bit, piece, item, sort.
The pluralia tantum is characteristic of the uncountable nouns which denote objects consisting of two halves (trousers, scissors, tongs, spectacles, etc); the nouns expressing some sort of collective meaning (clothes, goods, earnings, wages, ourskirts, politics, contents, police, cattle, poultry); the nouns denoting some diseases and some abnormal states of the body and mind (measles - корь, rickets - рахит, mumps - свинка, creeps - мурашки, hysterics).
The pluralia tantum may be combined with such words as pair, set, group, bunch. So a variant of a class noun may belong to the pluralia tantum: e.g. a custom - customs; customs – таможня; a colour - colours; colours – знамя. Such variants may be considered as different nouns.
The category of case
Case is the immanent morphological category of the noun, showing the relations of the object to other objects and phenomena.
This category is expressed in English by the opposition of the form in -'s [z, s, iz] usually called the possessive case, or more traditionally, the genitive case, to the unmarked form of the noun, usually called the “common” case.
The apostrophy serves to distinguish in writing the singular noun in the genitive case from the plural noun in the common case.
The genitive of the most of plural nouns remains phonetically unexpressed: the few exceptions concern only some of the irregular plurals: e.g. the actresses' dresses, the children's room.
But the common form is also capable of rendering the genitive semantics, e.g. the leg of the table. So there is no wonder that in the course of linguistic investigation the category of case in Engish has become one of the problems of theoretical discussion.
Four special views should be considered in the analysis of this problem.
1) The Theory of Positional Cases
Linguistic formulations of the theory may be found in the works of Deutschbein and other scholars. In accord with the theory of positional cases the unchangable forms of the noun may express different cases due to the functional positions occupied by the noun in the sentence.
Thus, the English noun, on the analogy of classical Latin grammar, would distinguish, besides the inflexional genitive case, also the non-inflexional, i.e. purely positional cases: nominative, vocative, dative and accusative.
E.g. the nominative case: The letter is here. (subject to a verb)
the vocative case: (address) Are you ready, students?
the dative case: (indirect object to a verb) She gave the students some books.
the accusative case: (direct object and also object to a preposition) The books were given by the teacher.
The case form is the morphological form of the noun, but the positional case theory substitutes the functional characteristics of the part of the sentence for the morphological features of the part of speech.
2) The Theory of Prepositional Cases
It is also connected with the old school grammar teaching. According to it, combinations of nouns with prepositions on some object and attributive word-groups should be understood as morphological case forms. Here belong the dative case (to + noun, for + noun) and the genitive case (of + noun).
Curme calls these prepositions “nflexional prepositions”, i.e. morphemes. It should follow from this that only the of-, to-, and for- phrases, but also all the other prepositional phrases in English must be regarded as “analytical cases”. As a result, the total number of such cases would become indefinitely large (Ilyish).
3) The Limited Case Theory
It is most broadly accepted among linguists at present. It was formulated by Sweet, Jespersen and was developed by Smirnitsky, Barkhudarov. It is based on the opposition of the possessive or genitive form as the strong member and the common, or “non-genitive” from as the weak member.
It is shown in full with animate nouns, and is restricted with inanimate nouns.
4) Postpositional Theory (No-Case Theory)
Thus view insists that the English noun has completely lost the category of case in the course of its historical development. The view is advanced by G.N. Vorontsova.
First, the postpositional element -'s is loosely connected with the noun, as it is used not only with single nouns, but also with whole word-groups. E.g. Somebody else's daughter. The blonde I had been dancing with's name was Bernice (Salinger). The girl in my class's mother.
Second, the 's can be attached to few nouns denoting living beings, in other cases the parallel prepositional construction is used.
Opposing this theory linguists consider the previous examples stylistically marked, the more self-dependent the construction with the case-sign 's, the stronger the stylistic colouring. Besides, according to statistical observation, the 's sign is attached to individual nouns in 96 percent of its textual occurrences.
Though the main meaning of the genitive case is possession, it undergoes modifications depending on the lexical meaning of the noun:
John's house - John has a house;
John's happiness - John is happy;
John's smile - John is smiling.
The meaning of possession is limited to nouns denoting animate things while the genitive of the nouns denoting lifeless things is metaphoric. E.g. the river's brink.
Nouns denting units of distance and time in the Genitive case do not express possession at all: a month's leave, a mile's distance.
Many grammarians find the Genitive polysemantic as it expresses:
1. possession: John's car - John has an car;
2. subject of the action: Mary's dream - Mary has a dream, or Mary dreams;
Sometimes it is difficult to distinguish between the possessive genitive and the subjective genitive.
3. Adverbial Genitive: Two hour's work – X works for two hours;
4. Objective Genitive: John's surprise - John was surprised or X surprised John.
5. Destination Genitive: children's room - room for children.
In modern English the Genitive and the of-phrase are synonyms and that's why they can be used side by side - the so called double genitive: e.g. a picture of grandfather's.
The genitive can be absolute (independent) and conjoint (dependent). The dependent genitive precedes the head-word and may be of two kinds:
1) The specific genitive (indicating the owner, the doer, bearer of state): uncle's car, my sister's illness. It can be replaced by the -of-phrase (except proper names). The minister's speech - the speech of the Minister; Mary's table.
2) The classifying genitive (indicating quality of the class of similar objects): sheep's eyes, summer's day, a doll's face, mother's care. This genitive cannot be replaced by the of - phrase, but it may easily become a set-phrase.
Category of Gender (expression of gender)
In modern English gender as a grammatical category is characteristic of the 3-d person singular of the personal and reflexive pronouns: he - she - it; himself - herself - itself.
The division of nouns into masculine, feminine and neuter nouns (father, mother, table) is not grammatical but semantic.
The only gender - forming suffix of the feminine gender '-ess' is limited in use (actress, tigress, lioness). The masculine forming suffix '-er' is added only to one noun - widow - widower.
English nouns denoting animals are usually referred to neuter gender as nouns denoting inanimate things (Where is the cat? - It is in the garden).
When the idea of sex is stressed, such nouns may be of masculine or feminine gender, and sex if often shown by special words, i.e. lexically: Tom - cat, she - cat, lady - cat, male - elephant, he - dog, etc.
In poetry and high prose Engish nouns get gender reference when personified (love, sun, hatred, anger (masculine), moon (feminine)).
This is a traditional personification which originates from Latin literature. In English fables, fairy tales, nouns are personified and get gender at the writer's will: Next day the Rabbit went to see his friend the Sable; she had many daughters.
Feminine gender is given to a noun denoting an animal, bird or insect when maternal instinct is referred to: e.g. A bird betrays her nest when trying to conceal it.
When abstract nouns are personified, masculine gender is given to nouns denoting strength, strong feelings (anger, death, fear, war), feminine gender - to nouns associated with the idea of gentleness, beauty, peace (spring, kindness, dawn, etc).
In English soldiers' and sailors' slang nouns denoting vessels and vehicles are referred to feminine gender affectionally: She is a good boat. The new ship has started on her maiden voyage.
Category of Animateness - Inanumateness
This lexico-grammatical category divides objects into animate and inanimate things - living beings and lifeless objects of nature, events, facts, properties, actions, etc.
Modern English has no grammatical means of expressing this category but in noun it is expressed lexico-grammatcally through suffixes -or, -eer, -ee, -ist, -ite: Marxist, Kirovite, doctor, refugee, engineer, sexist.
In pronouns it is expressed lexically, by the second component in -body, -one, -thing. In reflexive pronouns it is expressed by the first component: himself, itself.
The category of animateness of pronouns is expressed in the opposites as follows:
personal: he, she - it;
possessive: his, her - its
his, hers - its;
reflexive: himself, herself - itself;
interrogative: who - what;
conjunctive: who - what;
whoever - whatever;
relative: who - which;
indefinite: somebody - something;
someone - something;
anyone - anything;
definite: everybody - everything;
negative: nobody - nothing;
no one - nothing.
Animateness - inanimateness is often expressed in nouns syntactically, i.e. when nouns denoting animate things are correlated with the pronouns she, he, who, whose, while nouns denoting inanimate objects are correlated with the pronouns it, its, itself, what, which, etc.
E.g. Еhe table is good, but it is expensive. The man is her, he is down.
Professor Yartseva finds another grammatical category in English nouns - that of activeness - passiveness which is revealed syntactically too, in the anaphoric use of the pronouns she, her, whose, who, it, its, which.
E.g. Englang has sent her representative to the conference (political agent). England is in the West. Its territory is small (mere territory).
The difference between active and passive nouns is also seen in the choice of the prepositional phrases with 'by', 'with' or ‘-of’, and the genitive case morpheme: e.g. The tree was burnt down by lightning (active). The ground is covered with snow (passive). The roof of the house is red (passive). The man's hat was on the table (active).
To conclude, in modern English the category of gender has been replaced by the category of animateness - inanimateness (activeness - passiveness).
Category of Definiteness - Indefiniteness
By this category grammarians understand the definiteness or indefiniteness of the object named (обозначаемый предмет).
The notion of definiteness-indefiniteness can be expressed by lexical means and grammatically, i.e. by the articles and the determiners.
The indefinite article expresses the indefiniteness of the object named. The definite article expresses the definiteness of the object named and singles it out of a class of similar objects.
The absence of the article is also meaningful and occurs when we would expect the indefinite article to be used with abstract nouns and nouns in the plural with which the indefinite article is not used since it is associated with the idea of “oneness”.
Thus the absence of the article means the absence of the indefinite article mostly and functions as such.
Indefiniteness Definiteness
a man the man
men the men
The determiners this, that, each, every, some, any, which, no, either, much, the conjoint possessive pronouns my, his, etc. are used to express definiteness or indefiniteness. E.g. That room was small. I took off my hat. One day, when we were in love; one wonderful morning in May...
Proper names are identified well enough not to need the articles or the determiners. But as soon as they are not, they are used with the article or some determiner: e.g.The Browns are out of the town. She married a Jackson.
In English article is a sign which expresses the category of determination (definiteness - indefiniteness) grammatically.
It may get the meaning of determination or indetermination only in speech, all the other so called meanings of the articles are its functions. The article itself cannot particularize or classify the noun. The article is a form word, which shows how the noun should be understood (a class noun, a unique thing, etc). So, the context plays the most important part in the use of articles in English Speech.
Grammatical category of the Verb
The verb is a part of speech, which expresses a process or action. The verb is characterized by a developed system of morphological categories. They are: tense, aspect, voice, mood, correlation, posteriority, person, number. Verbs are connected 1) with a preceding or following noun (children play, play chess); 2) with adverbs which is the most characteristic of the verb (play well); 3) occasionally with adjectives (married young). In a sentence a verb is always a simple verbal predicate.
Morphologically a verb may be in a finite form or non-finite (Indefinite, Gerund, Participle).
Syntactically verbs may be objective and subjective.
Semantically verbs may be terminative and non-terminative, the former expressing an action limited in time, the latter expressing an action having no limits in time.
The Category of Tense
The notion of absolute (physical) time with its division into past, present and future may not correspond to the grammatical tense, for tense is a linguistic category, often verbal. It shows the temporal relationship between the action in question and the moment of speaking.
The Past form shows that the time of the action belongs to the time sphere prior to the moment of speaking. The Future form shows that the time of the action is included in the time sphere following the moment of speaking. The Present form shows that the time of the action and the moment of speech belong to one and the same time sphere.
According to traditional grammar tense is a system of 3 member opposemes (writes - wrote - will write) showing the time of the action in relation to the moment of speech.
These 3 tenses may appear in the common or continuous aspect or in the form of the category of correlation (perfect).
Traditionally 16 tenses are distinguished in Modern English: 4 Indefinite, 4 Continuous, 4 Perfect and 4 Perfect Continuous. Most of them are made analytically.
But some scholars find only 3 “genuine tenses” in Modern English (professor Smirnitsky) - Indefinite Tenses. As to other tense-groups, they have the same time reference, e.g. the difference between the Indefinite and the Continuous Tense is not temporal but aspective. (E.g. I got up at 7. I was getting up at 7).
The Perfect forms express priority with regard to the moment of speaking and they are treated as relative tenses. The future-in-the past is also believed to be a relative tense.
Professor Smirnitsky was of the opinion that Future in the Past is a mood form (conditional) in meaning and form, while Khaimovich and Rogovskaya point out, that it belongs to a special grammatical category of posteriority (позднейшее обстоятельство) which is expressed by a system of 2 memeber opposemes: shall (will) come - should (would) come, the former has the meaning of absolute posteriority, the latter - relative posteriority. This category shows whether the action is posterior as to the moment speech or some moment in the past.
Professor Barkhudarov, following American linguists, denies the future tense in Modern English and treats “shall and will + Infinitive” as a modal phrase.
Thus the English verb has 2 tenses (present, past), category of correlation (non-perfect – vs -perfect), aspect (Non-continuous (Common) -vs- Continuous), category of posteriority (absolute future – relative future).
A different view of the English tense system has been put forward by professor Irtenyeva. According to this view the system is divided into two halves: that of tenses centering in the present, and that of tenses centering in the past. The view has the advantage of reducing the usual threefold division of tenses (past, present and future) to a twofold division (past and present) and each of the two future tenses is included into the past or the present system.
All these theories fail to serve practical purposes. The real use of these forms does not come under the frame of an ideal system. This happens because within each group of tenses the forms lack uniformity (единообразие) of the meaning and application. Most of the forms are characterized by various uses, i.e. at the same time they have basic meanings and marginal uses. E.g. Present Indefinite's basic meaning is that of permanent or recurrent (повторяющийся время от времени, периодический) actions (I get up at 7) but when used figuratively it may express a past action (Historic present), a general truth, an action taking place at the moment of speaking (I hear it).
Present and Past Continuous's basic meaning is an action in progress at a definite moment in the past and present, but Future Continuous is oftener used to express a future action which is supposed to take place as a matter of course (само собой разумеющееся). E.g. I feel I shall be asking you the same question tomorrow.
Past and Future Perfect serve to express priority, but the basic meaning of Present Perfect is the completion of the action.
The Figurative Use of the Present
In Modern English the Present Tense is often used figuratively, to express a future action, a general truth or even a past action (historic or dramatic present).
E.g. Still waters run deep (general truth).
If he does not come, we'll go later (future).
When morning comes, we'll be far away.
What do we do next?
Later she sits down in a chair, says she does not feel well, gasps a bit and dies (historic or dramatic present).
The historic present is used in literary style to describe a succession of actions in the past - to make a vivid narrative of past events. Some linguists have tried to explain the use of the Present instead of the Future in clauses of time and condition as follows:
1) for economy's sake (E. Kruisinga);
2) the meaning of the conjuction is enough to show futurity (будущность) (Curme);
3) the present is used instead of the future only when a great degree of supposition - certainty is meant by the speaker, but the future tense remains in a clause of time or condition if a great degree of improbability (uncertainty) is expressed.
E.g. If you will come to me I will receive you as I say he may one day receive me.
Yes, if they will behave themselves (Shaw).
The Passive Voice and the lexical meaning of the Verb.
There is a close connection between the category of voice and the lexical meaning of the verb in M. E. Verbs of weak dynamic force (belong, fail, lack, own, possess, resemble) are not used in the passive construction because they do not express action and consequently the object to them is not acted upon: the child resembles his mother.
All the English subjective verbs (verbs that combine only with the subject) are not used in passive construction either, e.g. she usually sits here; because the voice member is always combined with object words. Objective verbs connected with the object directly are called transitive and all others are intransitive verbs. Sometimes the English active voice acquires passive meanings: the book sells well. The play reads better than acts. The figures would not add.
Category of Aspect
The categoty of aspect shows the manner in which the action is presented. The members of the aspect opposition are the Indefinite and the Continuous forms. The Indefinite form presents an action as a mere fact. That's why it is used to denote habitual, recurrent actions, well-known facts, succession of events, etc. The Continuous form presents an action as a developing process. It is used to denote an action going on at a given moment or period of time.
Professor Smirnitsky was the first to prove that aspect is inherent to the English verb and that it is expressed in a two - member opposeme: writes - is writing, the marked member of which is the Continuous aspect, the unmarked one is the common aspect.
The Continuous aspect may stress the development of the action or its temporary character: Are you feeling cold? You are not seeing him to advantage now. Some of the English verbs, which usually have no aspect opposites, can be used in the Continuous form to stress one of the above meanings.
Besides, the Common aspect has a very broad meaning; it can express even a continuous action if it is one of many in a succession (I worked in the garden for 2 hours, then I had a rest for an hour and after that I went for a walk).
As the main function of the common aspect is naming facts, it is used in stage directions: He covers his face. She runs to the door.
On the contrary the Continuous aspect gives an action a descriptive character or emphasis on the action itself: e.g. But I’m hoping she’ll come soon. The Continuous form may denote emotion: (irony, disapproval). E.g. somebody has been eating from my plate.
In general the use of aspect forms in M.E. is often connected with the lexical character of the verb: durative verbs are generally not used in the Continuous form, while terminative verbs in the continuous express a repeated action or an action which hasn’t come to an end.
E.g. He was bringing flowers (repeated action). He was stopping and leaning over gates.
Various aspective meanings of the verb can be expressed in M.E. lexically.
E.g. He used to bathe. He would gaze at the sea. She fell in love at first sight.
The category of aspect has for a long time been a problem because it has been treated with the same approach towards different languages. The category of aspect in Russian is based on a different principle, as the main meaning of the perfective aspect is the completion of the action. There is no correspondence between the meaning of the members of the aspect opposition in English and Russian.
E.g. ел – съел; but he ate – he was eating.
Some foreign grammarians consider the aspect to be a semantic category some others do not recognize the existence of this category in M.E. at all (Sweet, Gespersen). Still others do not separate it from the category of tense. A V. Plotkin point out that category of aspect includes the opposition 1) perfect vs. non-perfect and 2) continuous vs. non – continuous. The existence of the aspect category in English is still a disputed matter.