- •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
28. The Category of Voice
Wrote – was written
Morphological category; meaning – direction of the action, whether the action is represented as issuing from its subject or as experienced by its object.
The voice of the English verb is expressed by the opposition of the passive form of the verb to the active form. The sign marking the passive form is the combination of the auxiliary be + past participle of the conjugated verb. The passive form (the strong member) expresses reception of the action by the subject; the active form (the weak member) expresses “non-passivity”.
He wrote this letter yesterday. – This letter was written yesterday.
But The bells rang and The fabric washes easily. Is it the active voice? Why do we have the sentences They rang the bells and She washed the fabric. These are causative constructions.
The category has much broader representation in the system of the English verb than in the system of the Russian verb, since in English not only transitive, but also intransitive objective verbs including prepositional ones can be used in the passive.
e.g. I’ve just been rung up by the police. She was undisturbed by the frown on his face. The dress has never been tried on.
Still, not all objective verbs are used in the passive. Thus, all verbs can be divided into 2 large sets: passivized and non-passivized.
Pr. Blokh: whether the category of voice is represented in the system of the verb as a whole or is confined only to the passivized verbal set? – The border b/w passivized and non-passivized verbs is rigid, so it’s a full-representative category.
Passive voice - 2 controversial problems:
1) The form – get and become (He got wounded in the war. He became surprised).
- the verbs get and become retain to some extent their lexical meaning;
- though Passive is a dependent form (Active is the basic one and Passive is a mere transform) there isn’t full correspondence between Active and Passive:
e.g. The boy resembles his father. The hat suits you. – I am surprised. He was killed in the war. The radio was invented by Popov (theme-rheme).
Passive constructions:
Direct Passive (The letter was written yesterday.)
Indirect Passive (I was given a very interesting book.)
Prepositional Passive (The doctor was sent for.)
Phraseological Passive (Care should be taken not to confuse these words.)
Adverbial Passive (The house has not been lived in for many years.)
2) Passive constructions and compound nominal predicates: The floor was washed only yesterday. – The floor is washed. Action: result. How to treat the 2nd case? Either as Statal Passive (simple verbal predicate) or a phrase (compound nominal predicate). The presence of the by-phrase, the continuous form of the verb, non-terminative verbs, the presence of modal verbs, the use of adverbials indicate passive constructions. e.g. The is closed. The shop is closed at 7.
Some linguists distinguish 3 more voices:
Middle voice. Greek had the middle voice, the same is in Semitic languages. The weak point – there is no distinct set of forms. Prof. Barkhudarov considers the middle meaning to be part of the active voice meaning. If it were part of the passive voice meaning it would be possible to use the by-phrase: ٭The bells rang by John; ٭The fabric washed by the girl.
Pr. Blokh: lacking both regularity and an outer form of expression, it is natural to understand the middle voice uses of verbs as cases of neutralizing reduction of the voice opposition. The peculiarity is that the weak member of opposition used in the position of neutralization does not fully coincide in function with the strong member, but rather is located somewhere in b/w the 2 functional borders.
e.g. She was delightful to look at, witty to talk to – altogether the most charming of companions.
Reflexive voice: He hurt himself. Meaning – the action is concentrated on one and the same person. Form – verb + reflexive pronoun. But reflexive pronouns can be omitted and the meaning of reflexivity remains: He shaved and dressed. Pr.Ilyish: He hurt himself and the child. Does the reflexive pronoun make part of the analytical verb form or is it always a separate secondary part of the sentence? The solution is arbitrary.
Not always reflexive pronouns can be omitted: He found himself in a dark room.
Reciprocal voice: They met each other at the station. Meaning – mutuality of the action. The subject is often plural. Form – verb + reciprocal pronoun (each other, one another). But They met at the station.
Here Pr. Ilyish states the same problem of the status of the reciprocal pronoun as in the reflexive voice.
Conclusion: if we insist on external being obligatory to form a voice (certainly in combination with meaning), we should refer all the cases mentioned previously to the active voice (non-passive): He opened the door. The door opened. The book reads well. He shaved. They kissed. So, it’s a poly-functional form.