1.Types of morphemes & their characteristics. A morpheme is the smallest linguistic unit that has semantic meaning. In spoken language, morphemes are composed of phonemes (the smallest linguistically distinctive units of sound), and in written language morphemes are composed of graphemes (the smallest units of written language).The concept morpheme differs from the concept word, as many morphemes cannot stand as words on their own. Its actual phonetic representation is the morph, with the different morphs representing the same morpheme being grouped as its allomorphs.Types :Distributional classification.Taking in consideration the degree of self-dependence we single out free & bound morphemes. Free M. can built up words by themselves. They can be used freely.Bound – cannot form words by themselves. The are just segments or parts of word. ( handful – hand-free, full-bound).In the basis of formal presentation we define overt & covert M.Overt is a genuine or explicit M building up words.Covert can be defined as a contrastive absence of M expressive a certain function. (zero morpheme).(clocks – 2 overt M)

Segmental & Super segmental. S. are parts of M ( I see Mable – I seem able). S/s concerns stresses, pauses (present – present).

Additive & replacive. A. are outer grammatical suffixes (-ed, -er). R. replace one another ( drive-drove-driven).

If we take into consideration linear characteristics we can single out continuous & discontinuous M. C. are combined with each other in the same word, e.g.: worked. Dc. consist of two components used jointly to build the analytical forms of the words, e.g.: have worked, is working.

Full or meaningful morphemes are opposed to empty morphemes, which have no meaning and are left after singling out the meaningful morphemes; some of them used to have a certain meaning, but lost it in the course of historical development, e.g.: in the word ‘children’ child- is the root of the word, bearing the core of the meaning, -en is the suffix of the plural, while -r- is an empty morpheme, having no meaning at all, the remnant of an old morphological form.

Lexical M are met in roots & they range lexical meaning.Lexico-grammatical are met in suffixes & prefixes. Grammatical are met in flexions.

• 2.Grammatical form, meaning & category.Linguistics is based on 2 types of meaning – lexical & grammatical. Lexical is individual for it’s word. But grammatical one is more general. It unites some words with other words, irrespective of lexical meaning.Grammatical meanings of notional words are rendered by their grammatical forms. For example, the meaning of the plural in English is regularly rendered by the grammatical suffix –(e)s: cats, books, clashes. Grammatical meanings of individual grammatical forms are established as such in paradigmatic correlations: the plural correlates with the singular (cat – cats), the genitive case of the noun correlates with the common case (cat – cat’s), the definite article determination correlates with the indefinite article determination (a cat – the cat), etc.The generalized meaning rendered by paradigmatically correlated grammatical forms is called “categorial”. Category is a logical notion denoting the reflection of the most general properties of phenomena. Categorial meanings in grammar are expressed by grammatical paradigms. For example, within the system of the English noun the generalized, categorial meaning of “number” is expressed grammatically through the paradigmatic correlation (or, opposition in a paradigm) of two members, of two grammatical forms, each with its own grammatical meaning: the singular (e.g., cat) and the plural (cats). Thus, the definition of grammatical category is as follows: grammatical category is a system of expressing a generalized categorial meaning by means of paradigmatic correlation of grammatical forms. In other words, it is a unity of a generalized grammatical meaning and the forms of its expression.Grammatical categories are classified according several principles:

• Formal-logical, formal-proper. Logical categories denote extra-linguistic notions (time, number, degree of quality). Proper categories are used only for the sake of syntactical agreement (number of adj in russ, case, person of verbs).

• Fixed, changeable. Fixed demand that the same word in all it’s forms preserves the same category (e.g. gender, diclation (скл.), conjugation (спр.)). Changeable categories admit that the same word can have different meanings within the same categories (number, voice, tense)/.

• Overt, covert. Overt are expressed formally & it is called explicit way of expression. Covert are not expressed in the form of the word but we understand it from environment (in Eng. Definiteness/indefiniteness it is expressed formally by articles, in Russ. These meaning is also expressed but not grammatically (lex. Or syntactically), transitivity “to walk – to walk a dog”).

3.Types of grammatical oppositions. Reduction of oppositions.

Paradigmatic correlations, are exposed by “oppositions” of grammatical forms - the members of a paradigm. Grammatical opposition is a unity of 2 forms of the same word which shows the contrast in grammatical meaning. Each form here is called opposeme. In every opposition most grammatical qualities coincide with the exception of one which is differential between the forms & it gives the name to the opposition. This theory was first formulated by Trubetskoy & it was extended to gramma by his pupil Jacobson. He formulated the following rule:“Grammar of any language is based on this or that type of opposition & there are several types of them.” These types are singled out on a quantitative & qualitative principles:

• Binary privative opposition. The term “binary” means, that the opposition consists of two members, or forms (number, aspect); besides binary oppositions, there are oppositions, that may include more than two members (triple (degree of comparison, род в Рус., multiple (oblique moods).

• (always binary) The term “privative” means that the members of the opposition are characterized by the presence/absence of a certain differential feature, which serves as the formal mark of one of its members; in the example above, cat – cats, the ending of the plural is its formal mark.

Besides privative oppositions, there are gradual and equipollent oppositions, which are minor types in morphology. Gradual oppositions are formed by a series of members which are distinguished not by the presence or absence of a differential feature, but by the degree of it. A gradual morphological opposition in English can be identified only in the plane of content in the category of comparison, cf.: big – bigger - biggest. Equipollent oppositions are formed by members, which are distinguished by a number of their own features. An equipollent morphological opposition in English can be identified in the plane of expression in the paradigms of suppletive forms, for example, in the correlation of the person and number forms of the verb be: am – are – is (was – were). (Present, Past, Future – Simple).

In real speech privative oppositions are most popular because when we want to express some idea not in detail but approximately we do not find opposemes from gradual & equipollent oppositions but we generalize them to a binary type.

Reduction of grammatical oppositions.

The theory of Gram. opp-s by Jacobson is very popular in modern linguistics, it is steal in development & professor Blokh formulated the law of reduction of oppositions. It’s aim is to systematize & explain mechanisms of unusual facts in language. In some cases a category can be reduced.

Reduction is the use of one opposeme instead of the other when the whole opposition looses it’s distinctive force. R. can be on 2 ways: neutralization & transposition.

N. is disappearance of one of the forms for some words or constructions (custom (обычай) – customs (обычаи), customs (таможня); present instead of future in clauses of time or condition).T. is the use of some grammar form in unusual environment for changing lexical meaning or some stylistic effect. It can be of 2 types: descending & ascending. In D. type we use marked form instead of unmarked (We, Elizabeth 2); in A. type we use unmarked form instead of marked (many a day).

4.Synthetic & analytical means of form building.There are two basic types of means with the help of which grammatical forms are built: synthetical and analytical. Synthetical (synthetic) grammatical forms are built by means of the morphemic composition of the word. This includes the morphemic means: outer inflexion with the help of adding grammatical suffixes to the stems of the words, e.g.: cat - cats; inner inflexion, or vowel interchange inside the root, e.g.: goose - geese; and suppletivity, when different roots are combined within the same paradigm, e.g.: go – went. Analytical grammatical forms are built by the combination of the notional word with auxiliary words, e.g.: come - have come. Analytical forms consist of two words which together express one grammatical meaning. Analytical grammatical forms are prevalent in English; modern English is an analytical type of language.

5.Parts of speech classification. Notional words & functional words. The traditional term “parts of speech” is accepted by modern linguistics as a conventional, or “non-explanatory” term (“name-term”) to denote the lexico-grammatical classes of words correlating with each other in the general system of language on the basis of their grammatically relevant properties.Parts of speech are classified according 4 criteria:

• Semantic. Each part of speech has it’s own categorical meaning. Substantivity for nouns, action of process for verbs, quality for adjectives.

• Formal (morphological). It is connected with possible ways of form building &with grammatical categories this part of speech has.

• Functional is connected with synthetic roles this word fulfils in the sentence.

• Distributional describes each part of speech from the view point of it’s environment.

• In reality non of these criteria is absolute, because each of them works not for all words on the same part of speech.

Classifications: Henry Sweet: takes into consideration morphological principle.

- declinable (nouns, adjectives, verbs), - indeclinable (adverbs, conjunctions, prepositions, articles, particles& interjections).

By syntactic approach: - noun words (noun-pronouns, noun-numerals, infinitive), - function like/as nouns (adjective words, adjective pronouns, adjective numerals, participles), - verbal group (finite/non-finite form of verb).

Jespersen functional approach: functional approach:

- primary (subject of the sentence)

- secondary (define the primary words)

- tertiary (submit to this secondary group) e.g. furiously(3) barking(2) dog(1)

Pr. Admony propose field theory the new nucleus of the field occupied with words possessing all the properties of the giving parts of speech. 1) Verb: action or state; ex.: (to) be, have, do, like, work, sing, can, must. 2) Noun: thing or person; ex.: pen, dog, work, music, town, London, teacher, John. 3) Adjective: describes a noun; ex. 69, some, good, big, red, well, interesting. 4) Adverb: describes a verb, adjective or adverb; ex.: quickly, silently, well, badly, very, really. 5) Pronoun: replaces a noun; ex.; I, you, he, she, some. 6) Preposition: links a noun to another word; ex.: to, at, after, on, but. 7) Conjunction: joins clauses or sentences or words; ex.: and, but, when. 8) Interjection: short exclamation, sometimes inserted into a sentence; ex.: oh!, ouch!, hi!, well.

Notional words & functional.

This opposition exists in most languages because they are words that name objects, actions, qualities & their meaning is denotative & they are words that do not name objects & phenomena but they establish relations between them.

The meaning of functional words is relative.

Parts of speech:

Autosemantic (notional parts of speech) – noun, verb, pronoun, adjective, adverb, numeral.

Synsemantic (function words) – preposition, conjunction, particle, article, auxiliary verb, copula, interjection.

Function words are treated in linguistics in a different view point. Some linguistics regard functional words as empty words. It means that they are devoid of lexical meaning. But at the same time such empty words can be meaningful because they make speech coherent.

Traditional grammar finds in functional words not only grammatical but also lexical meaning. But it is not denotative but naming relations between other parts of speech. Relations of time, course, place (after, during, before).

All functional words are classified according to their function:

Syntactic function (connectors) – link notional words but there are some differences. Prepositions link words, conjunction link clauses, copula unites subject & the predicate. (prepositions, conjunctions, copula).

Morphological f. (determiners) – makes the article more precise. Articles determine nouns are definite or indefinite. Auxiliary verbs have 2 functions: 1) to determine gram. form 2) to determine communicative sentence type (negative/interrogative).(article, auxiliary verb).Communicative f. (specifies) – are used to specify the speaker’s intension. They give logical expressiveness on some word in the sentence like particles. Interjections specify emotions of the speakers. (particle, interjections).

6.Noun as part as speech. In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition.The syntactic rules for nouns differ from language to language. In English, nouns may be defined as those words which can occur with articles and attributive adjectives and can function as the head of a noun phrase.In traditional English grammar, the noun is one of the eight parts of speech. they are all and only those expressions that refer to a person, place, thing, event, substance, quality, quantity, or idea, etc. This is a semantic definition.

Classification of nouns in English:Proper nouns (also called proper names) are nouns representing unique entities (such as London, Jupiter, or Toyota), as distinguished from common nouns which describe a class of entities существо (such as city, planet, person or car).ountable and uncountable nounsCount nouns are common nouns that can take a plural, can combine with numerals or quantifiers (e.g., one, two, several, every, most), and can take an indefinite article (a or an). Examples of count nouns are chair, nose, and occasion.Mass nouns (or non-count nouns) differ from count nouns in precisely that respect: they can't take plural or combine with number words or quantifiers. Examples from English include laughter, cutlery, helium, and furniture. Collective nouns are nouns that refer to groups consisting of more than one individual or entity, even when they are inflected for the singular. Examples include committee, herd, and school (of fish). Concrete nouns refer to physical entities that can, in principle at least, be observed by at least one of the senses (for instance, chair, apple, Janet or atom). Abstract nouns, on the other hand, refer to abstract objects; that is, ideas or concepts (such as justice or hatred).

7.Number: Singular, Dual, Plural

Nouns in some languages reflect the number of objects to which they refer. English distinguishes only two numbers, singular and plural. The former is used to indicate singular objects or referents that can be neither singular nor plural (mass nouns like contemplation). Plural sometimes refers to singular objects, too, e.g. glasses, so the category is clearly grammatical and not semantic.

Some languages, Arabic or Old Church Slavonic, for example, also distinguish objects occurring in pairs by assigning dual number to the noun and a few languages distinguish a paucal, used for referring to a few objects without specifying number.

8. The category of case of English nouns.It’s a form of a noun showing the relations of that noun to other words in the sent. It helps to define the syntactic function of the N. in the sent. It’s a morphological category in English, because it’s represented by dif. w-forms of one and the same noun. Most linguists regard it as such & agree that the Eng. noun has 2 distinct cases, because it has 2 distinct form cases.

The genitive case- is built up by the opposition of 2 forms (the com.case & the genet.case). The form of the gen. case is marked. The formal marker is the case morpheme is represented by a number of phonol. conditioned allomorphs [s, z, iz]. It’s characterized by a number of points limit in its use in the lang. Its mainly applied to names of human beings, but it can be used with some inanimate nouns: esp. denoting time & space relations (yesterday’s paper) and some adverbs…

The common case- this form is unmarked & is represented by a zero morpheme. In plural nouns the case morpheme & the number morpheme are very often expressed by one & the same morpheme “ ‘ “: boys’ toys. In nouns that build up the plural with the help of other means but “s” ( children, women) the case morpheme is expressed separately by the suffix ‘s which follows the morpheme of number.The mean-g of the common case is very broad & extensive, it simply shows that this or that N is non-genetive. It can be used in any syntactic positions in the sent. The use of nouns in the common case is very frequent (98%).

The method of transformational analysis: the mean-g of gen.case:

1) possessive (John’s car, the bird’s nest) = John has a car

2) the subjective genitive (doctor’s advice, my husband’s arrival). Can be transformed: the doctor adviced…- the doer/subject of the action

3) the objective mean-g (John’s punishment, surprise) 2 ways of transformation: John was punished, smb surprised John- the sufferer of the action.

4) adverbial genitive (2 hours’ work)

5) genitive of destination (men’s shoes)

The number of cases in Modern English: there are dif. views on this problem. Historically there was one common case system for both nouns & personal pronouns in old English. Some scholars try to introduce a 3 case system. According to them nouns & personal pronouns have nominative case. Other scholars(J.Curme): find 4 cases –nominative, genitive, dative, accusative. Prof. Voroncova thinks that the category of case doesn’t exist in English because it’s not a case inflection(окончания).