Seminar 3

1) Be ready to define the following terms:

lexical meaning, grammatical meaning, grammatical form, explicit grammatical meaning, implicit grammatical meaning, general grammatical meaning, dependent grammatical meaning, grammatical category, referential grammatical categories, significational categories, immanent grammatical categories, reflective grammatical categories, constant (unchangeable, derivational) categories, variable (changeable, demutative) categories, lexicalised formations, grammaticalised formation, grammatical oppositions, privative oppositions, gradual oppositions, equipollent oppositions, binary oppositions, more than binary (ternary, quaternary, etc.) oppositions, neutralization/reduction, transposition

2) Be ready to discuss the following questions:

1. The interconnection between the notions of grammatical category and opposition.

2. The differential features of privative, gradual and equipollent oppositions.

3. The private binary opposition as the most important type of opposition.

4. The notion of neutralization and its stylistic characteristics.

5. The notion of transposition and its stylistic characteristics.

3) Practical assignments.

3.1. Define the types of the oppositions and interpret the categorial properties of their members in privative terms.

MODEL: play - played

The words ‘play – played’ make up a binary privative opposition. The strong member is ‘played’; its differential feature is the denotation of a past action. The marker of this categorial meaning is the grammatical suffix ‘-ed’.

1. k – g, a: – ә – i:

2. he - she, he - they, he - it, we - they;

3. intelligent - more intelligent - the most intelligent;

4. I understand - I am understood;

5. tooth - teeth, pincers - a pair of pincers;

6. am - is;

7. he listens - he is listening;

8. mother- room.

3.2. Build up the oppositions of the categorial forms and define the types of the oppositions:

efficient, have defined, they, information, he, more efficient, vessel, we, define, the most efficient, are defined, I, vessels, will define, bits of information, defined, less efficient, a most efficient.

3.3. Point out in the given situations the reduced grammatical forms, state the type of the oppositional reduction.

MODEL: You must remember that your son will be a what-you-call-him. In this sentence we observe a transponized use of the phrase (the opposition is ‘word – phrase’) accompanied by a stylistic effect: ‘a what-you-call-him’ conveys a connotation of contempt and belongs to a colloquial register.

1. Morning! Brilliant sun pouring into the patio, on the hibiscus flowers and the fluttering yellow and green rags of the banana-trees (Lawrence).

2. Did you ever see such a thing in your lives? (Coppard)

3. On the left of me was something that talked like a banker, and on my right was a young fellow who said he was a newspaper artist. (O.Henry)

4. The glow remained in him, the fire burned, his heart was fierce like a sun (Lawrence).

5. She is too good, too kind, too clever, too learned, too accomplished, too everything (James).

6. She reminisced about Henrietta's squeezes, her impromptu dances where she loved to do the polka and it was Wilson who could pick up the ‘do-you-rernembers’ and add onto them with memories of her own (Forster).