Practical tasks

The Subject of Theoretical Grammar

Points for discussion:

1. What is grammar?

2. What is the difference between theoretical and practical grammar?

3. What is the aim of theoretical grammar?

4. How is grammar connected with other disciplines?

5. The subject of theoretical grammar.

6. Syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations. Give your own examples.

7. What language levels are identified in the language system?

8. What is the difference between segmental and suprasegmental units?

9. What functions do the language units perform?

Exercises

Exercise 1. Use the frame of the hierarchy of units and analyze the following sentences.

Discourse

(sentence)

Clause

Phrase

Word

phoneme/grapheme

1. You kind of have to nail him to the wall.

2. I have inevitably covered a great deal of familiar ground.

3. You are easy to cook for.

4. It is perhaps more likely that they were associated with locomotion from the beginning.

5. If you really think so, it’s meaningless.

Recommended Literature

1. Иванова И.П., Бурлакова В.В., Почепцов Г.Г. Грамматика современного английского языка. – М., 1981.

2. Bloh M.Y. A Course in Theoretical English Grammar – Moscow, 2000.

3. Ilyish B.A. The Structure of Modern English. – Moscow. – Leningrad, 1971.

Morphemic structure of the word. Categorial structure of the word

Points for discussion 1

1. What is the correlation between notional and functional words?

2. What is the basic difference between the morpheme and the word as language units?

3. What is a morph?

4. What is a morpheme?

5. What does the difference between a morpheme and an allomorph consist in?

6. What principles underlie the traditional study of the morphemic composition of the word?

7. What principles is the distributional analysis of morphemes based on?

8. With what meaning of morpheme are we concerned in grammar?

9. Give the definitions of “suffix”, “inflection” , “ending”.

10. What types of word-form derivation do you know?

Exercises:

Exercise I. State the morphological composition of the following words.

Snow, sandstone, impossibility, widower, opinion, exclamation, passer-by, misunderstanding, inactivity, snowball, kingdom, mother–of-pearl, population, pretty, bushy, homeless, thoughtful, improbable, shaky, deep-blue, illegible, courageous, to worry, to forbid, to retell, to retire, to do away, to befriend, to disobey

Exercise II. State the meaning of the affix.

Un-, in-, dis-, non-, re-, mis-, en-, de-, over-, under-, pre-, post-, anti-, counter-, co-, inter-, ex-, sub-, super-, trans-, ultra-, -er, -or, -ist, -ian, -ee

Exercise III. Do the morphemic analysis of the words on the lines of the traditional and distributional classifications.

MODEL: Do the morphemic analysis of the word “inseparable”.

On the lines of the traditional classification the word “inseparable” is treated as a three-morpheme word consisting of the root “-separ-”, the prefix “in-” and the lexical suffix “-able”.

On the lines of distributional analysis the root “-separ-” is a bound, overt, continuous, additive morpheme; the prefix “in-” is bound, overt, continuous, additive; the suffix “-able” is bound, overt, continuous, additive.

quiet, perceptions, unmistakable, bell, unbelievably, glassy, inexplicable, semidarkness, sing – sang- singing – singer, disfigured, underspecified, outlandish.

Exercise IV. Group the words according to a particular type of morphemic distribution.

MODEL: worked – bells – tells – telling – spells – spelled – spelt – felled – bell

Spells – spelled: the allomorphs “-s” and “-ed” are in contrastive distribution (=fells - felled);

Bell – bells: the allomorph “-s” and the zero allomorph are in contrastive distribution

Spelt – spelled: allomorphs “-t” and “-ed” are in non-contrastive distribution;

Worked – spelled: the allomorphs “-ed” [t] and “-ed” [d] are in complementary distribution.

1. burning – burns – burned – burnt;

2. dig – digs – digging – digged – dug – digger

3. light – lit – lighted – lighting – lighter

4. worked – working – worker – workable – workaholic.

Recommended Literature

1.Иванова И.П., Бурлакова В.В., Почепцов Г.Г. Грамматика современного английского языка. – М., 1981.

2.Bloh M.Y. A Course in Theoretical English Grammar – Moscow, 2000.

3.Ilyish B.A. The Structure of Modern English. – Moscow. – Leningrad, 1971.

4. Хлебникова И.Б. Оппозиции в морфологии. – М., 1969