14.Analytic and synthetic forms of English words. Analytic forms in the structure of English.

There are two basic types of means with the help of which grammatical forms are built: synthetical and analytical. Synthetical (synthetic) grammatical forms are built by means of the morphemic composition of the word. This includes the morphemic means: outer inflexion with the help of adding grammatical suffixes to the stems of the words, e.g.: cat - cats; inner inflexion, or vowel interchange inside the root, e.g.: goose - geese; and suppletivity, when different roots are combined within the same paradigm, e.g.: go – went. Analytical grammatical forms are built by the combination of the notional word with auxiliary words, e.g.: come - have come. Analytical forms consist of two words which together express one grammatical meaning; in other words, they are grammatically idiomatic: the meaning of the grammatical form is not immediately dependent on the meanings of its parts. Analytical grammatical forms are intermediary between words and word-combinations. Some analytical forms are closer to a word, because the two parts are inseparable in their grammatical idiomatism; for example, the forms of the perfect aspect: come - have come. The components of some other analytical forms are more independent semantically, and they are less idiomatic grammatically; for example, the degrees of comparison: beautiful - more beautiful – most beautiful. Such combinations of an auxiliary component and a basic component are treated by some linguists as free word-combinations, but as they are correlative members of grammatical paradigms and express some specific grammatical meaning, they should be recognized as analytical grammatical forms too. Some lexical means regularly involved in the expression of common grammatical meanings can also be regarded as marginal cases of suppletivity or specific analytical forms, e.g.: the use of quantifiers with uncountable nouns or repetition groups – a bit of joy, the last two items of news, thousands and thousands, etc.

Analytical grammatical forms are prevalent in English; modern English is an analytical type of language.

The analytical forms are:

a)Tense and aspect verb-forms (the Continuous form:

They are talking.

The Perfect form:

She has been to London

. thePerfect Continuous form:

He has been working since he came home.

All the other forms of the Future:

I’ll be backin no time.

I’ll be seeing him tomorrow. We’ll have laid the tables by the time the guests arrive.

Also the interrogative and the negative forms of the Present and Past Simple:

Do you play the piano? I didn’t know you were ill.

b)The Passive voice:

I was told about it yesterday.

c)The analytical form of the Subjunctive Mood:

If I had had the money I would have bought that house.

In all these analytical forms the form word is an auxiliary verb.

15.Grammatical categories of communication.Reduction of grammatical oppositions.

Grammatical categories are made up by the unity of that have the meanings have the same form (e.g. singular::plural). Due to dialectal unity of language and thought, grammatical categories correlate, on the one hand, with the conceptual categories and, on the other hand, with the objective reality. It follows that we may define grammatical categories as references of the corresponding. obiective categories. For example, the objective category of time finds its representation in the grammatical category of tense, the objective category of quantity finds its representation in the grammatical category of number. Those grammatical categories that have references in the objective reality are called referential grammatical categories. They are called significational categories. To this type belong the categories of mood and degree. Speaking about the grammatical category of mood we can say that it has modality as its conceptual correlate. It can be explained by the fact that it does not refer to anything in the objective reality - it expresses the speaker's attitude to what he says. The relation between two grammatical forms differing in meaning and external signs is called opposition -book::books (unmarked member/marked member). All grammatical categories find their realization through oppositions, e.g. the grammatical category of number is realized through the opposition singular::plural.

Grammatical categories are subdivided into several types. “Immanent”categories render the meaning innate (or, natural) for the words of a particular lexical class; for example, the category of number is innate for nouns since the referents denoted by nouns can potentially be counted. “Reflective” categories serve as a sign of formal correlation or agreement between the words in an utterance: in English the verbal number formally reflects the number characteristics of the noun or of the pronoun with which the verb corresponds in the utterance; in other words, the verbs agree with the nouns or pronouns in the category of number, e.g.: The man goes - The men go. For verbs the category of number is not immanent; it is reflective. Immanent categories can be either “transgressive” like the category of number, which transgresses the borders of the noun, or they can be “closed”, confined within the word-class; for example, the category of gender of nouns is not reflected by any other word-class in English, so it is a closed category. Another distinction is based on the changeability of the categorial feature. “Variable feature categories” are categories realized in changeable grammatical forms of words, e.g.: the category of number is a variable feature category, because most nouns have two forms, the singular and the plural, cat – cats. “Constant feature categories” reflect the classification of the words according to certain unchangeable categorial features, e.g.: the category of gender in English is a constant feature category - the noun woman is of feminine gender, substituted only by the feminine pronoun she, man is of masculine gender, invariably substituted by he, and tree - of neuter gender, substituted only by it.

Grammatical oppositions can be reduced in some contextual circumstances, when one member of the opposition is used with the meaning of the other member, or, in other words, substitutes its counter-member. This phenomenon in the theory of oppositions is treated as “oppositional reduction” or “oppositional substitution”.

Two types of oppositional reduction can be distinguished in grammar: neutralization and transposition. Neutralization takes place when the grammatical form, which is used, loses its own functional meaning and acquires the meaning of its counter-member; in other words, it becomes functionally equivalent with its oppositional counter-member. This type of oppositional reduction is stylistically indifferent (neutral); in most cases it happens when the weak member of the opposition is used in the meaning of the strong one, e.g.: The rose is my favourite flower (=Roses are my favourite flowers) - the singular, the weak member of the number category opposition, is used instead of the plural, the strong member. Transposition takes place in cases where one member of the opposition preserves to a certain extent its original functional meaning alongside the meaning of its counterpart; the two functional meanings are actually combined. This type of oppositional reduction is stylistically marked. Because of the combination of meanings and the additional stylistic colouring created, transposition can be treated as a grammatical mechanism of figurativeness, or a grammatical metaphor. In most cases it happens when the strong member of the opposition is used with the meaning of the weak one. E.g.: the waters of the ocean, the sands of the desert – the plural, the strong member of the number category opposition, is used instead of the singular, the weak member.