Item 1.
Traditional G analysis focuses on functional aspect mainly because first of all we distinguish sentence parts to a principle subject & predicate, & object etc. After that the morphological nature of each word is described.
Traditional analysis can hardly be called perfect, it is not scientific enough. The reason for it lies in rather vague indefinite definitions of terminology. Sometimes it is difficult to see the border between 2 members. Difference between secondary parts of sentence is not determined.
Item 2.
Descriptivism
Limitations of traditional G were eliminated by descriptivism & later G trends. DL appeared in the USA at the beginning of the 20th century & it was called so, because it wanted to describe American Indian languages using structural methods. That is why later it developed into American structuralism.
The languages of American Indian belong to encooperaing type where sentence formally looks like indivisible unit & they were some regularities of word order. Tradition methods of analysis were not helpful at all. It was more convenient to describe linguistic forms in aspect of their distribituion. This notion was introduces in Leo Blummfield and his Harris & Charles Friies.
The basic notions – environmrnt & distribution. Environment – is the set neighbory elements of some unit. The notion of distribution is wider. It’s the total number of all potential environment where this element can occur. Distribution can be of 3 types:
contrastive – it is difference between 2 language units that occur in the same environment & it creates difference in meaning;
non-contrastive – difference between 2 language units that occur in the environment without difference in meaning. To wake - woke – woken or waked – waked. We can choose either this or that variant.
complimentary отношения дополнительной дистрибуции. 2 units are in complimentic В if only one of them occurs in some environment & the other one should be used only in some other type of distribution.
The theory itself was worked out by Ch. Fries. The whole word-stock was divided into classes only on the basis of distribution. According to him, if 2 language elements occur in the same distribution without change of meaning, they belong to the same class. Practically, the analysis was carried out on the basis of 2,000 real telephone conversations. Fries divided all grammar structures into minimal sentences, even clauses. He found out that all structures whatever different thy seemed were actually reduced to 7 elementary patterns. These patterns correspond to universal logical structures that can be found in any language (with some slight modifications).
NV – John came.
NV prep N John looked at Mary.
NVN – John saw Mary.
N is N – John is a teacher.
N is prep N – John is in bed.
N is В – John is out.
N is A – John is angry.
Ch. Fries analyzed environment of all elements in these 7 patterns. As a result he singled out 4 classes of notional words & 15 groups of functional words.
noun-like words f – prepositions, conjunctions.
verb-like words
adjective-like words t – determiners (articles, demonstrative pronouns).
adverb-like words.
Class-one words include not only nouns but also personal, indefinite, negative pronouns, numerals.
Class-three words include not only adjectives, but also participles, ordinal numerals.
The 4th class includes adverbs & prepositions that are used post positively.
t 3a 1a/he 2-d +- t 3b 1b/it 4
The old man saw a black dog there.
The distributional model shows the sentences objectively, because it represents objective distributional & it isn’t influenced by the subjectivity of meaning interpretation.
At the same time a holistic neglect of meaning can sometimes be misleading, because real semantic relations between words are not seen in this pattern, which is linear.
3 +1 f 1b а 3 +1 f 1b
English verbs and adverbs and old men and children.
In real speech there are a lot of grammatical constructions which correspond to the same distribuional pattern & essential differences between them are beyond this model.
The IC-method.
To some extend the above mentioned limitations were overcome by another method also introduced by descriptivists. A constituent is a linguistic element which is a part of a longer unit. An immediate C is one of the 2 Cs which build up some language unit.
This method consists in division of a G structure into 2 parts & each part should be meaningful.
“cutting”: beauti || ful | ly
IC1 IC2
IC1 IC2
Bracketing: ((beauti) (ful)) (ly)
IC1 IC2
IC1 IC2
Эта модель изображает предложение не как линейную последовательность, а как иерархию уровней членения. Предполагается, что членение предложения производится таким образом, что на каждом этапе членения выделяются максимальной длины (имеющие значения), то есть такие, которые в свою очередь, допускают максимальное число дальнейших членений. Так как длина НС должна быть максимальной, то их число на каждом этапе должно быть минимальным. И как правило деление осуществляется на бинарном принципе.
The next step is to represent relations between words in a grammatical structure. The scheme of the sentence-tree was introduced.
English | verbs || and ||| adverbs.
IC1 IC2
S
A NP(noun phrase)
N1 fN2
f
N2
English verbs and adverbs
This method focuses on the structure but at the same time it takes meaning into consideration. It is more detailed than distributional model, because its structure reflects the real order of uniting elements of the sentence. But not all sentences can be analyzed like that. One-member sentences & extremely complicated structures theoretically can be analyzed but the schemes are extremely complicated. Sometimes sentences can be syntactically ambiguous & this method is of of no use here either.
John is easy to please.
John is eager to please.
3a 3b 1a 2-s(+) 1b f t 3c 1d
My best friend meets me at the University every day.
At the same time in every L there are syntactically ambiguous sentences. Their formal structure coincides, but meaning is quite different. IC method fails to show this difference.
3a 3b 1a(he, she) 2-s+ 1b f t 1c (it) 3c 1d (it)
My || best |||friend | meets|||| me ||| at |||| the ||||| University || every ||| day.
2 3 1 4 3 4 5 2 3
My 2 best3 friend1 meets4 me3 at4 the5 University2 every3 day
S
N
P VP
A
(pr) NP’ VP’ NP
A N VP’’ FT N A N
V N (pr) f N
T N
My best friend meets me at the Un Every day
Lecture 4
28.09.2010
TG method – generative-transformational method
This method of analysis was developed by Noam Chomsky in his book “syntactic structures”. According to this theory sentences have two structures – deep and surface ones (глубинная и поверхностная структуры предложения).
The SS is usually more complex and more variable. Deep S is connected with ideas and concepts that are usually simple and one sentence can contain several of such minimal ideas. In actual speech we use sentences of different length. And the shortest ones (declarative, active, indicative) are close to these elementary ideas.
According to Chomsky, such minimal sentences make the basis of grammar and they are universal for all l-s. But L differ in the way such concepts are expressed.
According to him, kernel sentences can undergo different transformations (transformational rules). These rules are specific for each language, but some of them coincide (active\passive; affirmative, negative, interrogative; indicative, imperative, oblique). As a result of such transformation we can get a several number of transform (variants of the sentence). That is why this grammar is called generative-transformational and it demonstrates the procedure of real formation of utterance in the mind of the speaker.
The friend meets (smb) (NV)
The friend is mine (N is A)
He is the best (N is A)
He meets me (NVN)
He does (it) at the university (NVprepN)
He does (it) every day (NVD)
TG G was the first approach to analyze meaning as the central element of syntactical structure. Every sentence can be divided into minimal kernel sentences and their comparison can show whether these sentences are the same or different in their meaning.
N1 A V
Mary is curious to know. – She herself is curious and she wants to know something. – Smb knows Mary, it is curious. (N2 V N1)
Conclusion: this analysis helps us compare deep and surface structures and to understand real meaning of the sentence.
Semantic trends in Grammar
Case Grammar\Semantic Case (теория семантического падежа)
After Chomsky with his D and S structures most linguists started their analysis with meaning. They used different methods but totally they are all called semantic trends. Case G was created by Chomsky’s pupil, American scholar Charles Fillmore. He shared Chomsky’s ideas about two structures but he went further on in the analysis of meaning. The focus point here is the verb. (“A verb is a potential sentence”.) – verbocentric theory.
According to Fillmore each verb has a definite number of case roles.
H
e
me a lie.
Case role 1 Case role 2 Case role 3
Relation between the verb and words related to it are of two kinds: obligatory and optional. According to ObR, all verbs are divided into 3 types – one-place verbs (одноместные глаголы). All ObR are called arguments. Optional are called links. Arguments and links can describe the deep sentence structure of each of them. Fillmore singled out a list of case roles, which were furthermore enriched by his followers.
Case Role
A-agent |
Pos. – possessor (The dress IS mine. ) |
I-instrument |
Char. – characterizer (He is CLEVER) |
E-experiencer (animate recipient of an action) |
Adr. – addressee (адресат) – He (agent) wrote a letter (factitive) TO ME\ He explained the rule to me (experiencer). |
P-patient (inanimate r of an action) |
N-nominizer (He is my BOSS) |
F-factitive (some phenomenon which appears as a result of an action) |
S - source |
L-locative |
G-goal |
T-temporative |
|
Chicago (temporative) is windy in winter.
Lecture 5.
05. 10. 2010.
A. V P I
A man opened the door with a key.
P V A I
The door was opened by a man with a key.
If we compare sentences like the given ones, we see, that traditional sentence parts do not coincide. But case roles of of related words remain the same.
Concsusions:
The same deep structure of the sentence can correspond to different surface structure & the same surface structure can be interpreted in 2 ways.
Languages differ mainly in surface structures, but deep structures are more universal. Because communicative demands are universal for all people.
Contensive grammar
This method is based on the previous achievements of grammar & was introduced in the 70-s by С. Д. Кацнельсон. The main idea is to study the ambiguous syntactical constructions in the aspect of content, meaning, but not its form, because form can be polysemantic & misleaded. One-to-one correspondence of form & meaning is a very rare phenomenon in any language.
Стол накрыт скатертью.
Стол накрыт официантом.
After a definition of case roles transformational analyses is added.
Meaning is not always clear & evident that results in ambiguity. It can be discarded through transformation & specification of semantic relations between components of the utterance.
Generative Semantics. Semantic Syntax.
This method was created by George Lakov, who also shared 2 ideas of Phillmore:
verb is the centre of the sentence
deep & surface structure.
But surface in his vision is expressed in identification of relations between elements of the sentence.
Each word is understood as a set of elements or components of meaning, later the terms seme, semantic marker or distinguisher were introduced to show the difference. That is why this method was named componential analysis. Not only semantic, but also grammatical markers can be singled out.
Boy: human, animate, concrete, male, grown up -.
Girl: human, animate, concrete, male -, grown up -.
Markers have 2 peculiarities:
they are always in binary relations;
markers are not of equal rank. There are higher markers. They are moore general in meaning, & lower – more specified.
Beauty: human -, animate -, concrete -, male -, grown up -.
This method became very popular in lexicology, because it shows slightest differences between related words. If we want to make a grammatically correct sentence, we shouldn’t ignore the lexical meaning of the words, because lexical filling of the same grammatical pattern, should be carefully selected. We shouldn’t combine words with contradictory markers.
Sincerity frightens the boy. (animate +)
The boy frightens sincerity. (animate -)