Lecture #2. Grammatical categories and grammatical morphemes
The most general meaning rendered by language and expressed by systematic correlation of forms of words are understood in Linguistics as categorical grammatical meanings: the grammatical number, the grammatical case…
The grammatical category is a system expressing a generalized grammatical meaning, by means of paradigmatic correlation of grammatical forms.
Grammatical categories are expressed by grammatical forms opposed to each other in some way.
In modern English as a rule we have binary privative opposition (бинарные приватные оппозиции). Parts of forms in which one form is characterized by a presence of a certain feature is called the marked opposition. The other member of that pair is characterized by the absence of that feature, and it is called the unmarked member opposition. Thus the category of number of the noun is expressed by the opposition of the plural form and the singular form: e.g. table-tables, fox-foxes
The plural form is the marked member of the opposition. It’s marked in form, because it is characterized by the ending –s. The category of voice is expressed by the opposition of the active voice and the passive voice. The passive voice is the marked member of the opposition, because it’s characterized by a pattern BE +Participle II. The active voice is the unmarked member of the opposition (it is not characterized by the pattern BE + Participle II).
Grammatical categories are also opposed in meaning. The meaning of the marked member of the opposition is usually more definite, more concrete than the meaning of the unmarked member of the opposition. Thus, in the category of number of the noun the plural form always denotes plurality –it denotes more than one object (e.g. dogs).
The singular form is wider in meaning. It may denote one object and many objects. e.g. There is a dog (one dog) in our garden. The dog is a domestic animal (the dog represents all dogs).
Within the category of voice the passive voice denotes that the subject is acted upon. e.g. He was asked at the lesson yesterday.
The Active voice has a wider meaning. e.g. He opened the door. The door opened. The subject didn’t act – it was acted upon.
Grammatical categories refer to the whole classes of words. Thus the category of number is characteristic of nouns and verbs. The category of voice is characteristic of verbs. The category of degrees of comparison is characteristic of adjectives and adverbs.
Grammatical categories are usually expressed with the help of various grammatical morphemes. The grammatical morphemes may be of several types:
‘OVERT morphemes (открытые).
They are grammatical inflections: books, asked, larger
2. Covered morphemes (закрытые). They include sound interchange:
Food-feed, write-wrote.
Sometimes vowel interchange may become wider with the change of consonants.
e.g. child-children.
Sometimes covered morphemes may be combined with overt: e.g. life-lives, wolf-wolves.
3. Suppletive morphemes. In this case the forms of one and the same word are formed from different roots: e.g. go-went, be-was.
4. Discontinuous morphemes (прерывистые). They are found in analytical forms of words. E.g. in the form is writing we have a discontinuous morpheme BE+ ing, was asked BE+ed.
5. Zero morphemes. In this case the absence of a morpheme indicates a certain grammatical meaning. E.g. in the pair book-books the form book denotes singular and is characterized by a zero morpheme. In the pair asked-ask the form ask denotes the Present tense and is characterized by a zero morpheme.
NOUN
The meaning: the general lexical meaning of this class of words is thingness.
Form: nouns have two grammatical categories: the category of number and the category of case.
Function: the noun is a multifunctional part of speech. Nouns are used in the functions of all the parts of the sentence.
E.g. The day is cold (subject).
He is a student (a predicative).
That was a question of great importance (attribute).
The boy took an apple (object).
They met in Moscow (adverbial modifier).
Besides, nouns may be used in the position of conjunctions and prepositions. E.g. He smiled the moment (=as soon as) he saw her. (the moment –in the position of the conjunction). He knows nothing with regard to (=about) this matter. (with regard to – in the position).
Nouns which are used in the position of conjunctions and prepositions have a tendency to change into conjunctions and prepositions and lose their noun characteristics. The most typical combinability of nouns is their combinability with articles and adjectives because in M. English only nouns combined with these words. Besides, the noun combines with verbs, pronouns, adjectives, nouns and prepositions (a letter of importance).
The category of number of the noun
I. The formation of the plural.
II. Countable and uncountable nouns.
III. Lexicalization of plural form.
I. The formation of the plural
The category of number is expressed by the opposition of the singular form and the plural form (table-tables).
The plural form is the marked member of this opposition. It’s marked in form because as a rule it is characterized by the overt morpheme -s. It is marked in meaning, because it denotes plurality. The singular form is the unmarked member of the opposition. It is not characterized by the overt morpheme –s. It is characterized by the zero morpheme and the meaning of the singular form is wider than the meaning of the plural form. It may denote one object and more than one.
Most of the nouns in the English language form their plural (form) with the help of –s. This uniformity of plural formation is characteristic of Modern English. We don’t find it in many other languages (окна, комнаты, мальчики –different endings in Russian and German). But there are several exceptions.
1. The nouns which have reserved their Old English plural forms. Here we have the following nouns:
a) man-men, foot-feet, mouse-mice.
They form their plural with the help of the covered morphemes. In Old English the covered morphemes belong to the declension of the root stems.
b) sheep-sheep, deer-deer.
The singular and the plural of such nouns are homonymous and are characterized by a zero morpheme. In Old English such nouns belong to the O-stems neuter.
c) ox-oxen, child-children, brother-brethren (братия).
These nouns form the plural by means of the overt morpheme –en. Some of them have sound interchange. They preserve the forms of N-stems.
2. The second group of exceptions includes nouns of Greek and Latin origin which have been borrowed into English rather recently and are not fully assimilated in the English language: e.g. phenomenon-phenomena, criterion-criteria /kraiti-/, radius-radii /reidiәs - reidiai/.
Many nouns of this group got assimilated and form their plural with the help of –s ending. The plural form of radius –radii or radiuses, formula-formulae /fo mjuli/ or formulas.
In the process of assimilation Greek and Latin endings of the singular are neglected and understood as the stem of the word. And the –s ending is added to the former ending of the singular.
II. Countable and uncountable nouns
With regard of the category of number English nouns may be divided into two groups: countable and uncountable. The countable nouns have the categories of number, the uncountable ones do not have it. Uncountable nouns include nouns which have no plural (e.g. water, chemistry) and nouns which have no singular (e.g. goods, trousers). The nouns which have no plural are called singularia tantum, the nouns which have only plural are called pluralia tantum.
The nouns of singularia tantum and pluralia tantum have no category of number, but on the analogy of (?) other English nouns they are treated as singulars or plurals and thus they combine with the verb in the singular or plural. Thus we say that milk is or the wages are not enough.
Singularia and pluralia tantum usually include nouns of a certain lexical meaning. E.g. singularia tantum include material nouns (gold, sugar); abstract nouns (love, friendship) and some collective nouns (humanity).
Pluralia tantum include nouns which denote things consisting of similar halves (e.g. trousers, eye-glasses) and nouns which denote a process (e.g. doings, goings).