The Grammatical Category and the Meaning. The Theory of Oppositions in Grammar

Notional words, first of all verbs and nouns, possess some morphemic features expressing grammatical (morphological) meanings. These features determine the grammatical form of the word. Grammatical meanings are very abstract, very general. Therefore the grammatical form does not refer to a particular word, but unites a whole class of words. For instance, the meaning of the substantive plural is rendered by the regular plural suffix - (e)s, and in some cases by more specific means, such as phonemic interchange, and a few lexeme- bound suffixes.

In logic the most general notions reflecting the most general properties of phenomena are referred to as “categorial notions", or “categories”. That’s why grammatical meanings are referred in linguistics to as “categorial meanings” which express systemic correlations of word-forms in a language.

The categorial meaning (e.g. the grammatical number) unites the individual meanings of forms within a certain grammatical paradigm (e.g. singular-plural). In other words the grammatical category is a system of expressing a generalized grammatical meaning by means of paradigmatic correlation of grammatical forms. The ordered set of grammatical forms constitutes a paradigm. The paradigmatic correlations of grammatical forms in a category are exposed by the so-called “grammatical oppositions”.

The opposition (in the linguistic sense) may be defined as a generalized correlation of lingual forms by means of which a certain function is expressed. The correlated elements (members) of the opposition must possess two types of features:

common features (basis of contrast);

differential features (express the function in question)

The oppositional theory was originally formulated as a phonological theory but then it was successfully applied in the theoretical grammar.

Three main qualitative types of oppositions are distinguished: privative; gradual; equipollent.

By the number of members contrasted oppositions are divided into: binary (two members); ternary (three members); quaternary (four members).

The most important type of opposition in grammar is the binary privative opposition since all other types may be reduced to this one.

The binary privative opposition is formed by a contrastive pair of members in which one member is characterized by the presence of a certain differential feature (“marked”, “strong”, “positive” member +) while the other member is characterized by the absence of this feature (“unmarked”, “weak”, “negative” member -). For example, the opposition expressing the categorial meaning of plurality:

boy boys +

The gradual ternary opposition is formed by a contrastive group of members which are distinguished not by the presence of absence of a feature, but by the degree of it. For example, the opposition expressing the categorial meaning of comparison

big bigger biggest

The equipollent opposition in the system of English morphology constitutes a minor type and is mostly confined to formal relations only. An example can be seen in the correlation of the person forms of the verb “to be”:

am are - is

in various contextual conditions, one member of an opposition can be used in the position of the other. This phenomenon should be treated as “oppositional reduction” or “oppositional substitution”. For example: The tiger is

dangerous.T\\<i noun “tiger” is used in the singular, but it is quite clear that it stands for the whole class. In other words, this noun is used generically. Thus, in the light of the oppositional theory, the weak member of the categorial opposition of number has replaced the strong one.

Consider another example: Tonight we start for London.The verb in this sentence takes the form of the present, while its meaning in the context is the future. It means that the opposition “present-future” has been reduced, the weak member (the present) replacing the strong one (the future).

The oppositional reduction shown in the two cited cases is stylistically indifferent, in other words the meaning of the sentence remains unchanged. This kind of oppositional reduction is referred to as «neutralisation» of oppositions. So in case of neutralisation the weak member of the opposition replaces the strong one without any changes in the stylistic colouring of the sentence.

Another type of oppositional reduction is referred to as “transposition”. Transposition is a grammatical phenomenon when the strong member of the opposition replaces the weak one and the whole sentence acquires additional stylistic colouring. For example: that man is constantly complaining of something.The form of the present continuous in this example stands in sharp contradiction with its regular grammatical meaning “action in progress at the present time”. The contradiction is, of course, purposeful: by exaggeration, it intensifies the implied disapproval of the man's behaviour.

The study of the oppositional reduction has shown that it is effected by means of a complex and subtle mechanism which involves the inherent properties of lexemes, lexical and grammatical distribution of the replaced word-form and numerous situational factors, suchas the aim of communication, the speaker’s wish either toidentify or to characterize the denoted object, to reveal some facts or conceal them, to sound either flat or expressive, the speaker’s intention to evaluate the discussed objects, the interlolocutors' sharing or non-sharing of the needed information. Etc. AH these factors turn oppositional reduction into a very powerful means of text stylization.

The means employed for building up member-forms of categorial oppositions are traditionally divided into synthetical and analytical; accordingly, the grammatical forms themselves are classed into synthetical and analytical, too.

Synthetical grammatical forms are realised by the inner morphemic composition of words, while analytical grammatical forms are built up by a combination of at least two words one of which is a grammatical auxiliary (word- morpheme), and the other, a word of “substantial” meaning.

Synthetical grammatical forms are based on inner inflexion, outer inflexion and suppletivity.

Inner inflexion, or phonemic (vowel) interchange, is not productive in modem English, but is peculiarly employed in some basic lexemic elements: irregular verbs (the formation of the past simple and Past Participle), plural of the nouns.

Suppletivity is based on the correlation of different roots and is not productive either. Suppletivity is used in the forms of the verb “to be” and “to go”, in the irregular forms of the degrees of comparison, in some forms of personal pronouns.

The only productive way of form-building is the outer-inflexion, which is used to build up the number and case forms of the noun, the person-number, tense, participial and gerundial forms of the verb; the comparison forms of the adjective and adverb.

Lecture 4

The Theory of Grammatical Classes of Words

All words of language, depending on various formal and semantic features, are divided into grammatically relevant sets or classes, which are traditionally called “parts of speech”. It should be mentioned that this term is neither defining nor explanatory, but purely conventional (it was introduced in the grammatical teaching of Ancient Greek by Aristotle). In modem linguistics scholars refer to these sets of words as ‘Mexico-grammatical” series of words, or as “lexico- grammatical categories” [the term was suggested by Smimitsky].

Lexico-grammatical series of words are discriminated on the basis of the three criteria:

the semantic criterion presupposes the evaluation of the generalized meaning, which is characteristic of all words within the given set; this meaning is understood as the “categorial meaning of the part of speech”;

the formal criterion presupposes specific inflectional and derivational features common to all words within the given set;

the functional criterion concerns the syntactic role of words in the sentence typical of all words within the given set.

The said three factors of categorial characterization of words are conventionally referred to as, respectively, “meaning”, “form”, and “function”.

In accord with the described criteria, words on the upper level of classification are divided into notional and functional, which reflects their division in the earlier grammatical tradition into changeable and unchangeable.

To the notional parts of speech of the English language belong the noun, the adjective, the numeral, the pronoun, the verb, the adverb. Within the formula “nieaning-form-function” they have the following characteristics:

	Meaning	Form	Function
The Noun	Substance or thinness	Changeable forms of the number and case, specific derivational characteristics (-cr. -ist, -ness)	Substantive functions in the sentence: the subject, the object, the predicative
The Adjective	Property (qualitative and relative)	Forms of the degrees of comparison, specific derivational characteristics (-ful. -able. -ant. -less)	Attribute, predicative Attribute and all the all substantive functions
The Numeral	Number (cardinal and ordinal)	Specific forms of composition (-teen, -ty), derivation of ordinal numeral (-th)
The Pronoun	Indication (deixis)	Specific forms of the absolute Genitive pronouns (yours, ours)	Attribute and all the substantive functions
The Adverb	Secondary property (i.e., a property of another property or a property of a proces&/action/state)	Forms of the degrees of comparison, specific derivational characteristics (-ly, -wise)	Adverbial modifier
The Verb	Process/action/ state	forms of the person, number, tense, aspect, voice, mood, specific derivational characteristics (un-, dis-, -ize, -ate. -fy)	Predicate (the finite verb); attribute, adverbial modifier, all substantive functions (the non-fmite forms of the verb)

Contrasted against the notional parts of speech are words of incomplete nominative meaning and mediatory functions in the sentence. These are functional parts of speech. To the basic functional series of words in English belong the article, the preposition, the conjunction, the particle, the modal word, the interjection.

The meaning of all functional words is considered to be purely grammatical (i.e. they help to express meaning which is understood from the syntactic arrangement of words). Thus, the article expresses the identification or non-identification, the preposition expresses the dependencies of substantive referents, the conjunction expresses connections of phenomena, the particle unites the functional words of specifying and limiting meaning, the modal words express the attitude of the speaker to the reflected situation, the intetjection is a signal of emotions.

Each part of speech after its identification is further subdivided into subseries in accord with various semantico-functional and formal features. This subdivision is sometimes called “sub-categorization” of parts of speech. Thus, nouns are subcategorized into proper and common, animate and inanimate, countable and uncountable, concrete and abstract; verbs are subcategorized into fully predicative and partially predicative, transitive and intransitive, actional and statal, factive and evaluative, etc.

We have drawn a general outline of the division of the lexicon into part of speech classes developed by modern linguists on the lines of traditional morphology. It is known that the distribution of words between different parts of speech may to a certain extent differ with different authors, and the number of parts of speech differs with different grammarians - most textbooks differentiate from 8 to 13 parts of speech.

The main points of controversy between the classifications concern the status of several traditional parts of speech. Thus, the pronoun can, according to some theories, be recognized as a separate part of speech. According to other theories, all the units, traditionally termed “pronouns” should be distributed among two categories: the adjective (such pronouns as which, whose, both, all are proposed to be included here) and the determiner (the category used in the generative grammatical theories: the category encompasses all lexical units, which have indexical function and includes, apart from the articles, such pronouns as this, that, my his, her, etc). Likewise, the particle has been treated as a separate part of speech and also as a special type of the adverb. The article has been recognized as a separate part of speech by some scholars and as a kind of the pronouns by others.

Another, closely related group of problems in discriminating parts of speech is the lack of uniformity in either meaning, form, or function among words making up a given part of speech. Thus, some prepositions have been shown to possess lexical meaning (i.e., they designate entities in the extra linguistic world). For example, the preposition on designates a specific type of spatial relation between the book and the table in the sentence The book is on the table. However, other prepositions, like of and to in the sentences 1 met a friend of mine and I gave a book to him, do not have any lexical meaning - they do not designate any entities in the outside world and are used only to grammatically relate words within the sentence. In a similar manner, in the category of the adverb one distinguishes the so called postpositions, some of which have clearly lexical meaning (e.g.. He turned over the page, We thought it over) and some of which seem to have lost their lexical content (e.g., 1 have to look after my children. Look out!). There is also formal diversity within a given part of speech (which very often results from semantic differences). Some adjectives and adverbs do have the changing forms of the degrees of comparison (e.g., good/better/the best; to run fast/faster/fastest), while others - don't (e.g., wooden; tonight, tomorrow). There is much diversity among different items of a given part of speech in terms of function. F'or example, some verbal forms may be used in a wide range of syntactic functions thus becoming difficult to be discriminated from other parts of speech. Thus, the infinitive and the gerund may be used as subjects, objects, attributes, adverbial modifiers, as well as nominal and verbal parts of compound predicates, which are functions typical of the noun.

Alongside of the three-criteria principle of dividing the words into grammatical (lexico-granimatical) classes the syntactico-distributional classification of words was developed in the works of A.M.Peshkovsky, L.Bloomfield. Z.Harris and especially Ch.Fries. This kind of classification is based on the study of words’ combinability by means of substitution testing. The testing results in developing the standard model of four main “positions” of notional words in the English sentence: those of the noun (N), verb (V), adjective (A), adverb (D). Pronouns are included into the corresponding positional classes as their substitutes words standing outside the “positions” in the sentence are treated as functional words of various syntactic values.

Here is how Ch. Fries presents his scheme of English word-classes. For his materials he chooses tape-recorded spontaneous conversations comprising about 250.000 word entries which were tested on the three typical sentences:

Frame A: The concert was good (always).

Frame B: The clerk remembered the fax (suddenly).

Frame C: The team went there.

As a result of successive substitution tests on the cited “frames” the following lists of positional classes of words were established:

Class 1. (A) concert, coffee, taste...

2. clerk, husband, supervisor... fax, food, coffee...

3. team, husband, woman...

Class 2. (A) was, seemed, became...

2. remembered, wanted, suggested...

3. went, came, ran

Class 3. (A) good, large, necessary, foreign, new, empty...

Class 4. (A) there, here, always...

2. clearly, sufficiently, especially...

3. there, back, out; rapidly, eagerly, confidently...

These lists were formed on the principle that words from them can fill in the positions of the frames without affecting their general structural meaning, such as:

Frame A: thing and its quality at a given time

Frame B: actor-action-thing acted upon-characteristic of the action

Frame C: actor-action-direction of the action

Functional words are exposed in the cited process of testing as being unable to fill in the positions of the frames without destroying their structural meaning. These words form a limited group of 154 units.

The identified group of functional words can be distributed among the three main sets:

specifiers of notional words: determiners nouns, modal verbs as specifiers of notional verbs, functional modifiers and intensifiers of adjectives and adverbs;

interpositional elements, determining the relations of notional words: prepositions, conjunctions;

words referring to the sentence as a whole: question-words (what, how...), inducement-words (lets, please...), attention-words, words of affirmation and negation, sentence introducers it, there).

Comparing the syntactico-distributional classification of words with the traditional part of speech division of words, one can see the similarity of the general schemes of the two:

the opposition of notional and functional words, the four cardinal classes of notional words (pronouns being pro- nounal and pro-adjectival elements),

the presentation of notional words as open sets, the interpretation of functional words as syntactic mediators and their formal representation by the list.

The unity of notional lexemes finds its essential demonstration in an inter­class system of derivation. For example: strength - to strengthen - strong - strongly; nation - to nationalize - national - nationally.

This derivational series that unites the notional word-classes can be named the “lexica! paradigm of nomination”. The general order of classes in the series evidently corresponds to the logic of mental perception of reality: first objects and their actions, then the properties of the former and the latter. Still, the actual initial form of a particular nomination paradigm can be represented by a lexeme of any word-class. For example:

a nounal paradigm (N—»): power-to empower- powerful-powerfully; a verbal paradigm (V—>): to suppose-supposition-supposed-supposedly; an adjectival paradigm (A—*): clear - clarity - to clarify - clearly; an adverbial paradigm (D—►): out - outing - to out - outer.

On the other hand, the universal character of the nomination paradigm is sustained by suppletive completion, both lexemic and phrasemic. For example: an end - to end - final - finally; wise - wisely - wisdom - to grow wise.

In conclusion, it is necessary to stress the idea that the whole of the lexicon on the upper level of classification can be divided intathree unequal parts.

1. The first part of the lexicon forming an open set includes an unlimited number of notional words which have a complete nominative function. It is represented by nouns as substance names, verbs as process names, adjectives as primary property names and adverbs as secondary property names. The whole notional set is represented by the four-stage derivational paradigm of nomination.

2. The second part of the lexicon forming a closed set includes substitutes of names (pro-names). Here belong pronouns and broad-meaning notional words,

3. The third part of the lexicon also forming a closed set includes specifiers of names. These are functional words of different status.