- •The 2 branches of Grammar, their interconnection. Links of Grammar with other branches of Linguistics.
- •Hierarchic structure of language. Segmental and supra-segmental levels.
- •The plane of content and the plane of expression. Polysemy, homonymy, synonymy. Syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations. Language and speech.
- •4. Notion of the morpheme. Types of morpheme. Suffixes and inflexions. Types of word-form derivation.
- •Morpheme
- •In the tradition of the English school, grammatical inflexions are commonly referred to as suffixes.
- •Distributional analysis in studying morphemes. Types of distribution. Distributional morpheme types. Morphemic structure of the word
- •Allo-emic theory
- •On the basis of the degree of self-dependence
- •Ex: handful, hand – free morpheme, ful – a bound morpheme On the basis of formal presentation
- •On the basis of the segmental relation
- •On the basis of grammatical alternation
- •On the basis of linear characteristic
- •6. Grammatical meaning, form, categories.
- •9. Textual Grammar
- •3 Basic assumptions of textual grammar:
- •3 Types of them:
- •10. Parts of Speech. The criteria applied in discriminating parts of speech. The problem of notional and structural parts of speech.
- •11. The field-theory approach to parts-of-speech classification. Classification of parts of speech in English. Ch. Fries’s classification.
- •12. The noun as a part of speech. The problem of the category of gender.
- •Ilyish: The Noun in me has only 2 grammatical categories: number & case. The existence of case appears to be doubtful & has to be carefully analyzed.
- •13. The category of number of the noun.
- •14. The problem of the category of case of the noun. Different case theories.
- •15. The article.
- •Is the article a word or a morpheme?
- •The door opened and the young man came in./The door opened and a young man came in.
- •16. The adjective. Degrees of comparison. Substantivization of adjectives. Adjectivization of nouns.
- •18.The Verb as a part of speech. Classifications of the verb.
- •19. The category of aspect of the verb
- •E.G. We heard the leaves above our heads rustling in the wind.
- •Transposition
- •E.G. Miss Tillings said you were always talking as if it had been some funny business about me.
- •In the expressions of anticipated future (reverse transposition)
- •20. Composite sentence.
- •Compound sentence.
- •21. The Principal Parts of the Sentence: The Subject and the Predicate. Types of Predicate.
- •Compound
- •22. The Adverb and the Structural Parts Of Speech: Prepositions, Conjunctions, Particles, Modal Words, Interjections.
- •1) Nominal
- •2) Pronominal
- •25. The category of tense of the verb. The problem of perfect forms.
- •26. The Complex Sentence.
- •27. The category of mood of the verb
- •28. The Category of Voice
- •29. The Phrase, its definition. H. Sweet’s, e. Kruisinga’s, and o. Jespersen’s theories of the phrase.
- •3) Subordination implies the relation of head-word and adjunct-word. But there are degrees of subordination.
- •32. Notion of the sentence. Classification of sentences. Types of sentences.
- •34. The secondary parts of the sentence
- •35. Participle 2
The plane of content and the plane of expression. Polysemy, homonymy, synonymy. Syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations. Language and speech.
The plane of content comprises the purely semantic elements contained in language, while the plane of expression comprises the material (formal) units of language taken by themselves, apart from the meanings rendered by them. The 2 planes are closely connected, so that no meaning can be realized without some material means of expression. Grammatical elements of language present a unity of content and expression (or in other terms, a unity of form and meaning). In this the grammatical elements are similar to the lingual lexical elements, though the quality of grammatical meanings is different in principle from the quality of lexical meanings.
On the other hand, the correspondence between the planes of content and expression is very complex. The complexity is clearly illustrated by the phenomena of polysemy, homonymy and synonymy.
In cases of polysemy and homonymy, two or more units of the plane of content correspond to one unit of the plane of expression. In cases of synonymy, two or more units of the plane of expression correspond to one unit of the plane of content.
Lingual units stand to one another in two fundamental types of relations: syntagmatic and paradigmatic.
Syntagmatic relations are immediate linear relations between units in a segmental sequence (string). One of the basic notions in the syntagmatic analysis is the notion of syntactic syntagma. A syntactic syntagma is the combination of two words or word-groups one of which is modified by the other. There are 4 main types of notional syntagmas: predicative (the combination of a subject and a predicate), objective (the combination of a verb and its object), attributive (the combination of a noun and its attribute), adverbial (the combination of a modified notional word, such as a verb, adjective or adverb with its adverbial modifier). S.R. are observed in utterances (“in the presence”)
Paradigmatic relations are such as exist between elements of the system outside the strings where they co-occur. These intrasystemic relations find their expression in fact that each lingual unit is included in a set of connections based on different formal and functional properties. P.R. cannot be observed in utterances («in the absence»).
Paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations are not isolated from one another. P.R. co-exist with S.R. in such a way that some sort of syntagmatic connection is necessary for the realization of any paradigmatic series. This is revealed to the full in a classical grammatical paradigm. It presents a productive series of forms. e.g. do – does, did, has done, have been doing, etc – grammatical paradigm
A paradigmatic form – a constituent of a paradigm – consists of a stem and a specific element (inflexion, suffix, auxiliary word). e.g. He did it yesterday – syntagmatic relations in the sentence
The function of a grammatical paradigm is to express a categorial meaning.
The discrimination of language and speech is the fundamental principle of linguistics. Beaudoin de Courtenay and de Saussure demonstrated the difference between lingual synchrony (coexistence of lingual elements) and diachrony (different time-periods in the development of lingual elements as well as language as a whole) and defined language as a synchronic system of meaningful elements at any stage of its historical evolution. So, language is a system of means of expression, while speech is a manifestation of the system of language in the process of communication. The system of language includes the body of material units – sounds, morphemes, words, word-groups and rules of the use of these units. Speech comprises both the act of producing utterances and the utterances themselves. L. and S. form together an organic unity. Grammar connects L. with S., because it categorially determines the lingual process of utterances production. There are 2 different aspects – the system of signs (language proper) and the use of signs (speech proper). The generalized term “L.” is also preserved in linguistics, showing the unity of these 2 aspects. The sign (meaningful unit) in the system of language has only a potential meaning. In speech, the potential meaning of the lingual sign is “actualized” i.e. made situationally significant as part of the grammatically organized text.