Statics and dynamics in language history
The historical development of language cannot be regarded as permanent instability. Many features of the language remain static in diachrony. They don’t change through time. In the first place they are some permanent Universal properties of all languages, such as: division of sounds into vowels and consonants; distinction and the main parts of speech and parts of the sentences, in a diction English has some parts of English vocabulary preserved through ages such as: most of pronouns, many form – words and words indicating the basic concepts of life. Many ways of word formation had remained historically stable. Some grammatical categories, for example: number in nouns degrees of comparison in adjectives have a little change, while other categories such as: case or gander have undergone great change. The proportion of stable and changeable features varies at different historical periods and at different historical levels, but we can’t find statics and dynamics both synchronic and diachronic which is linguistic change needs special consideration.
English morphology in dynamics (OE, ME, E New English).
Morphology is the subdivision of grammar that deals with the internal structure of words. Many words can be subdivided into smaller meaningful units called morphemes.
The morphology of Old English is quite different from that of Modern English, predominantly by being much more highly inflected. As an old Germanic language, Old English's morphological system is similar to that of the hypothetical Proto-Germanic reconstruction, retaining many of the inflections theorized to have been common in Proto-Indo-European and also including characteristically Germanic constructions such as umlaut.
Verbs in Old English are divided into strong or weak verbs. Strong verbs indicate tense by a change in the quality of a vowel, while weak verbs indicate tense by the addition of an ending.
Old English nouns were declined – that is, the ending of the noun changed to reflect its function in the sentence. There were five major cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, and instrumental.
Most pronouns are declined by number, case and gender; in the plural form most pronouns have only one form for all genders. Additionally, Old English pronouns reserve the dual form Middle English Morphology
loss of inflections
loss of grammatical gender
two noun cases: possessive and non-possessive
all adjective inflections lost, loss of weak/strong distinction
verbs: personal endings reduced, mood distinctions blurred
dual/plural distinction lost
change from synthetic to analytic language; reasons: interaction of different inflectional systems in English, French, and Scandinavian; reduction of unstressed final vowels; relative rigidity of word order; increasing use of prepositions and particles changes more visible in North of England.
Old English vocabulary in dynamics (Borrowings).
Modern estimates of the total OE vocabulary range from about 30.000-100.000 words. The OE vocab. was almost purely Germanic; except for a small number of borrowings, it consisted of native words, inherited from Proto-Germanic or formed from native roots and affixes.
Native words can be subdivided into some etymological layers coming from different historical periods: 3 main layers in the native words: 1) common Indo-European words. They constitute the oldest part of the OE vocab. Among these words: natural phenomena, plants, animals, agricultural terms, verbs denoting men’s activities, names of parts of the human body, terms of kinship, etc.; this layer includes personal and demonstrative pronouns and most numerals.
Verbs belonging to this layer denote the basic activities of man; adjectives indicate the most essential qualities.
foeder – Vater; bropor – Bruder; modor – Mutter; dohtor – Tochter; sunu – Sohn;
mona – Mond; niht – Nacht; woeter – Wasser; fyr – Feuer;
2) common Germanic words; The common Germanic layer includes words which are shared by most Germanic languages. This layer is certainly smaller than the layer of common IE words. Semantically these words are connected with nature, with the sea and everyday life.
screap – sheep; macian – make; hus – house; drincan – drink; land – land; safe – sea; wisdom – wisdom;
3) specifically OE words. Specifically OE, that is words which do not occur in other Germanic or non-Germanic languages. These words are few: OE clipian - call, OE brid – bird, wifman – woman and several others.
OE borrowings come from two sources: Celtic and Latin. There are very few Celtic loan-words in the OE vocabulary. Borrowing from Celtic is to be found only in place-names. The OE kingdoms Kent, Deira and Bernicia derive their names from the names of Celtic tribes. The name of York, the Downs and perhaps London have been traced to Celtic sources. Various Celtic designations of river and water were understood by the Germanic invaders as proper names: Ouse, Esk, Exe, Avon; Thames, Stour, Dover also come from Celtic. Many place-names with Celtic elements are hybrids; the Celtic component, combined with a Latin or a Germanic component, makes a compound place-name, e.g.: Celtic plus Latin: Man-chester, Win-chester, Lan-caster; Celtic plus Germanic: York-shire, Corn-wall, Devon-shire, Canter-bury.
Latin influence on the OE vocabulary.
Early OE borrowings from Latin belong to war, trade, agriculture, building and home life. Among the Latin loan-words adopted in Britain were some place-names made of Latin and Germanic components, e.g. Portsmouth, Greenport, Greenwich.
belt - belt; butere - butter; camp - field, battle; candel - candle; catt - cat; ceaster - city; cetel - kettle; cupp - cup; cycene - kitchen; cyse - cheese;
Words pertaining to religion; words connected with learning.
orgel – organ; papa – pope; regol – religious rule;
Word meaning: the problem of definition, referential and functional approaches to meaning.
Every word has two aspects: the outer aspect (its sound form) and the inner aspect (its meaning). Sound and meaning do not always constitute a constant unit even in the same language. E.g. the word «temple» may denote «a part of a human head» and «a large church» In such cases we have homonyms. One and the same word in different syntactical relations can develop different meanings.
On the other hand, one and the same meaning can be expressed by different sound forms, e.g. «pilot» , and «airman», «horror» and «terror». In such cases we have synonyms.
Syntagmatics – linear (simultaneous) relationship of words in speech as distinct from associative (non-simultaneous) relationship of words in language.
Paradigmatics – 1) associative (non-simultaneous) relationship of words in language as distinct from linear (simultaneous) relationship of words in speech (syntagmatics); relation of units in absentia (e.g. synonymic, antonymic relationships.
Simple words consist of one root morpheme and an inflexion (in many cases the inflexion is zero), e.g. «seldom», «chairs», «longer», «asked».
Derived words consist of one root morpheme, one or several affixes and an inlexion, e.g. «deristricted», «unemployed».
Compound words consist of two or more root morphemes and an inflexion, e.g. «baby-moons», «wait-and-see (policy)».
Compound-derived words consist of two or more root morphemes, one or more affixes and an inflexion, e.g. «middle-of-the-roaders», «job-hopper».
When speaking about the structure of words stems also should be mentioned. The stem is the part of the word which remains unchanged throughout the paradigm of the word, e.g. the stem «hop» can be found in the words: «hop», «hops», «hopped», «hopping». So stems, the same as words, can be simple, derived, compound and compound-derived. Stems have not only the lexical meaning but also grammatical (part-of-speech) meaning, they can be noun stems («girl» in the adjective «girlish»), adjective stems («girlish» in the noun «girlishness»), verb stems («expell» in the noun «expellee») etc.
Plato’s work: words are names or labels for things. Aristotle: the smallest significant unit of speech. Modern linguists: Referential approach (psychological). The model is the result of attempts to find relations between words and things. Symbol- word. Referent- thing. Reference- meaning.
Sometimes it’s easy to understand the meaning of a words and it’s parts. S. Ullman distinguishes between transparent and opaque words. T. words are always motivated. O. words are conventional words. This distinguish goes back to the Greeks.
Motivation is the relationship existing between the phonemes or morphemic composition ans structural pattern of a word on the one hand and it’s meaning oh the other hand.
3 types of M.: 1.phonetical; 2.morphological; 3.semantic
When there use a certain similarity between the sounds of a word and the sounds referred to by the meaning of a word – phonetical. Morphological- it’s possible to guess the meaning of a word from it’s parts. (in newly coined words) Semantic motivation is based on the coexistence of direct and figurative meaning of the same word. Foot- a lower part of smth; part of a body. The foot of the mountain. Each word has a hard core of meaning, which stable, but can’t be modified by the context within certain limits. 2 types of context: linguistic (verbal); extralinguistic
L. the environment in which the word occurs as for the extra L. It consists of the entire cultural background against which we said this or that event.
Instead of the term “word» some linguists prefer the terms “lexical unit”, “lexical item” or “lexeme” . “Word” causes much confusion because it’s used orthographically, grammatically and lexically.
Polysemy and homonymy.
Polysemy is the capacity for a sign (e.g., a word, phrase, etc.) or signs to have multiple meanings (sememes), i.e., a large semantic field.
Most of lex. items in English are polysemantic.
Michael Breat: “Polysemy is a semantic universal”.
In case of polysemy, we deal with modification of the content plane. Different meanings of one & the same word are closely interrelated. Ex.: - family - She lost both of her parents. - parent - Envy is the parent of all evils. My family comes from Scotland. The cat family includes lions & tigers. (семейство кошачьих) A family of languages, etc.
Polysemy is a result of:
1. Shifts in application (сдвиг в употреблении) Ex.: adj. red: red ink (is really red); red hair; red deer; red cabbage; red Indian
2. Specialization Ex.: partner Basic meaning; a type of relationship between 2 or more people. - business partner - marriage partner - partner in crime
3. Metaphorical extension (a fundamental feature of any language)
Ex.: leaf of a tree – leaf of a book; hands of a person – hands of a clock
Polysemy has been complicated by the tendency of words to pick up the meanings from other dialects, languages & slang. Ex.: executive BrE – one who acts under the direction of somebody – исполнитель AmE – a manager now: AmE meaning is more widely used. New & old meanings become interrelated, form a hierarchy. They have some common semantic features, which preserve the integrity of the word.
In linguistics, a homonymy is, in the strict sense, one of a group of words that share the same spelling and the same pronunciation but have different meanings.
Homonyms can be of 3 kinds: 1. Homonyms proper (the sound & the spelling are identical) 2. Homophones (the same sound form but different spelling) 3. Homographs (the same spelling)
Ex.: 1.bat – bat - flying animal (летучая мышь) - cricket bat (бита); 2. flower – flour; sole – soul; rain – reign
3. tear [iə] – tear [εə]; lead [i:] – lead [e]
Homonymy differs from polysemy because there is no semantic bond (связь) between homonyms; it has been lost & doesn’t exist.
Homonyms appear as a result of:
1. The phonetic convergence of 2 words of different pronunciation & meaning. Ex.: race → a) people derives from Old Norwegian “ras” b) running, from French “race”
2. The semantic divergence or loss of semantic bond between 2 words polysemantically related before. Ex.: pupil→ a) scholar b) apple of an eye (зрачок)
To distinguish between polysemy & homonymy 3 factors should be taken into account:
1. The semantic proximity of them 2. The derivation capacity 3. The range of collocability
1. The semantic proximity.
The 1st way to establish polysemy or homonymy is to look for a central core meaning.
Ex.: sour – кислый - disagreeable (new meaning) juicy – сочный; a) the derivative meaning- to arrange- to equip- to build- They are related to the core meaning.b) the nominative meanings. - to cause, to begin; - to make smb seem guilty, to deceive smb. Nominative meanings are more isolated & may give rise to homonyms.
2. Derivation capacity Potential homonyms typically develop their own sets of derivatives. Ex.: custom – 1. обычай, 2. клиентура, 3. (мн.ч.) таможня. “custom” 1,2,3 are potential homonyms because they have different derivatives.
3. The range of collacability.
The word’s collacability is the functioning of the word in speech & the company it keeps with other items. Potential homonyms have quite different range of phraseology. Ex.: charge 1. price free of charge of no extra charg; 2. (when smb is guilty) responsibility to bring charges to press chargesto drop the charges. “Charge” 1, 2 are potential homonyms.
Principal ways of word formation.
Word-formation – the process of forming words by combining root and affixal morphemes according to certain patterns specific for the language (affixation, composition), or without any outward means of word formation (conversion, semantic derivation).
2 major groups of word formation:
1) Words formed as grammatical syntagmas, combinations of full linguistic signs (types: compounding (словосложение), prefixation, suffixation, conversion, and back derivation)
2) Words, which are not grammatical syntagmas, which are not made up of full linguistic signs. Ex.: expressive symbolism, blending, clipping, rhyme & some others.
Different types of word formation: COMPOUNDING is joining together 2 or more stems.
Types: 1) Without a connecting element: headache, heartbreak; 2) With a vowel or consonant as a linking element: speedometer, craftsman; 3) With a preposition or conjunction as a linking element: down-and-out (в ужасном положении, опустошенный); son-in-law;
PREFIXATION: Prefixes are such particles that can be prefixed to full words. But they are not with independent existence. Native prefixes have developed out of independent words; there is a small number of them: a-; be-; mid-;fore-; mis-. The system of English word formation was entirely upset by the Norman Conquest. From French English borrowed many words with suffixes & prefixes. A lot of borrowed prefixes in English: Auto-; Demi-; Mono-; Multi-; Semi-; Post-.
SUFFIXATION: A suffix is a derivative final element, which is or was productive in forming new words. 2 groups: 1) A foreign word is combined with a native affix: full, less, ness: clearness, faithless, faithful. 2) Foreign affixes are added to native words: ance, al, ity, able. Semi suffixes are elements, which stand midway between full words & suffixes like, worthy, way, wise, a Godlike creature, trustworthy, clockwise, midway.
CONVERSION (zero derivation) A certain stem is used for the formation of a categorically different word without a derivative element being added: Bag – to bag; Back – to back; Bottle – to bottle.
CLIPPING: Consists in the reduction of a word to one of its parts: Mathematics – maths, Laboratory – lab, Captain – cap, Gymnastics – gym
3 types: 1) The first part is left (the commonest type): advertisement – ad; 2) The second part is left: telephone – phone; airplane – plane; 3) A middle part is left: influenza – flu; refrigerator – fridge.
BLENDING is part of two words to form one word (merging into one word): Smoke + fog = smog; Breakfast + lunch = brunch; Smoke + haze = smaze (дымка)
WORD MANUFACTURING A word or word combination that appears or especially coined by some author: Sentence – sentenceness; “I am English & my Englishness is in my vision” (Lawrence)
SOUND INTERCHANGE: Sound interchange is the way of word building when some sounds are changed to form a new word. It is non-productive in Modern English; it was productive in Old English and can be met in other Indo-European languages: e.g. to strike - stroke, to sing – song, hot - to heat (hotian), blood - to bleed (blodian) etc.
STRESS INTERCHANGE: Stress interchange can be mostly met in verbs and nouns of Romanic origin: nouns have the stress on the first syllable and verbs on the last syllable, e.g. `accent - to ac`cent. we have such pairs in English as: to af`fix -`affix, to con`flict- `conflict, to ex`port -`export, to ex`tract - `extract etc.
SOUND IMITATION: it is the way of word building when imitating different sounds forms a word. a) Sounds produced by human beings, such as: to whisper, to giggle, to mumble, to sneeze, to whistle etc.; b) Sounds produced by animals, birds, insects, such as: to hiss, to buzz, to bark, to moo, to twitter etc.; c) Sounds produced by nature and objects, such as: to splash, to rustle, to clatter, to bubble, to ding-dong, to tinkle etc.
Synonyms and Antonyms: definition and classification.
A synonym – is a word of similar or identical meaning to one or more words in the same language. They’re no two absolutely identical words because connotations, ways of usage, frequency of an occurrence are different.
Classification: 1. Total synonyms can replace each other in any given context, without the slightest alteration in denotative or emotional meaning and connotations (e.g. noun and substantive, functional affix, flection and inflection); is a rare occasion. Ex.: бегемот – гиппопотам. 2. Ideographic synonyms. They bear the same idea but not identical in their referential content. Ex.: To happen – to occur – to befall – to chance; Look – appearance – complexion – countenance. 3. Dialectical synonyms. pertaining to different variant of language from dialectal stratification point of view; Ex.: lift – elevator; Queue – line; autumn – fall. 4. Contextual synonyms. Context can emphasize some certain semantic trades & suppress other semantic trades; words with different meaning can become synonyms in a certain context. Ex.: tasteless – dull; Active – curious; Curious – responsive. Synonyms can reflect social conventions. Ex.: clever, bright, brainy, intelligent. 5. Stylistic synonyms. Belong to different styles: child; Infant; Kid; neutral; elevated; colloquial. It refers to situations when writers or speakers bring together several words with one & the same meaning to add more conviction, to description more vivid. Ex.: Safe & sound; Lord & master; First & foremost; Safe & secure; Stress & strain; By force & violence. 6. cognitive synonyms – s. which differ in respect of the varieties of discourse in which they appear; -7. contextual/context-dependent synonyms – similar in meaning only under some specific distributional conditions, when the difference between the meanings of two words is contextually neutralized: e.g. buy and get. - 8. referential synonyms – a vague term, concerns coreferential expressions, when one denotatum can be defined differently from different points of view and in different aspects: e.g. names Walter Scott and the author of 'Ivanhoe' are coreferential because they refer to one and the same denotatum – Sir Walter Scott; - 9. terminological synonyms – two existing terms for one denotatum: e.g. borrowing and loan-word; concept and notion (the difference between them is not discriminated by some linguists);
Antonym- a word that expresses a meaning opposed to the meaning of another word, in which case the two words are antonyms of each other. Antonyms - words of the same category of parts of speech which have contrasting meanings such as hat - cold, light - dark, happiness - sorrow.
Morphological classification:
-Root words form absolute antonyms.(write - wrong).
-The presence of negative affixes creates - derivational antonyms(happy - unhappy).
Semantical classification:
- Contradictory notions are mutually opposed and denying one another, i.e. alive means “not dead” and impatient means “not patient”.
- Contrary notions are also mutually opposed but they are gradable; e.g. old and young are the most distant elements of a series like: old - middle - aged - young.
- Incompatibles semantic relations of incompatibility exist among the antonyms with the common component of meaning and may be described as the relations of exclusion but not of contradiction: to say “morning” is to say “not afternoon, not evening, not night”.
The origin of English words: native and borrowed elements.
It is true that English vocabulary, which is one of the most extensive amongst the world's languages contains an immense number of words of foreign origin.
It should be taken into consideration that the English proper element also contains all the later formations, that is, words which were made after the 5th century according to English word-building patterns (see Ch. 5, 6) both from native and borrowed morphemes. The native element in English comprises a large number of high-frequency words like the articles, prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions, auxiliaries and, also, words denoting everyday objects and ideas (e. g. house, child, water, go, come, eat, good, bad, etc.). Furthermore, the grammatical structure is essentially Germanic having remained unaffected by foreign influence.
By the Indo-European element are meant words of roots common to all or most languages of the Indo-European group. English words of this group denote elementary concepts without which no human communication would be possible. The following groups can be identified.1
I. Family relations: father, mother, brother, son,
daughter. II. Parts of the human body: foot (cf. R. пядь), nose, lip, heart.
Animals: cow, swine, goose. Plants: tree, birch (cf. R. береза), corn (cf. R. зерно). V. Time of day: day, night. VI. Heavenly bodies: sun, moon, star. VII. Numerous adjectives: red (cf. Ukr. рудий, R. рыжий), new, glad (cf. R. гладкий), sad (cf. R. сыт). VIII. The numerals from one to a hundred. IX. Pronouns — personal (Scandinavian borrowing); demonstrative. X. Numerous verbs: be (cf. R. быть), stand (cf. R. стоять), sit (cf. R. сидеть), eat (cf. R. есть), know (cf. R. знать, знаю).
The Germanic element represents words of roots common to all or most Germanic languages. Some of the main groups of Germanic words are the same as in the Indo-European element. I. Parts of the human body: head, hand, arm, finger, bone. II. Animals: bear, fox, calf. Plants: oak, fir, grass. Natural phenomena: rain, frost. V. Seasons of the year: winter, spring, summer.1 VI. Landscape features: sea, land. VII. Human dwellings and furniture: house, room, bench. VIII. Sea-going vessels: boat, ship. IX. Adjectives: green, blue, grey, white, small, thick, high, old, good. X. Verbs: see, hear, speak, tell, say, answer, make, give, drink.
It has been mentioned that the English proper element is, in certain respects, opposed to the first two groups. Not only can it be approximately dated, but these words have another distinctive feature: they are specifically English having no cognates2 in other languages whereas for Indo-European and Germanic words such cognates can always be found, as, for instance, for the following words of the Indo-European group.
Star: Germ. Stern, Lat. Stella, Gr. aster.
Sad: Germ, satt, Lat. satis, R. сыт, Snscr. sd-.
Stand: Germ, stehen, Lat. stare, R. стоять, Snscr. stha-.
Here are some examples of English proper words. These words stand quite alone in the vocabulary system of Indo-European languages: bird, boy, girl, lord, lady, woman, daisy, always.
Modern scholars estimate the percentage of borrowed words in the English vocabulary at 65—70 per cent which is an exceptionally high figure.
Dwell on history and morphological classification of parts of speech in eng and ukr
The history of linguistic categorization of parts of speech in Europe begins with Plato who considered some language-related philosophical questions: why a dog is called a dog and not a cat. Some attention is devoted to analyzing a sentence into two major components - the nominal one (onoma) and the verbal one (rheme). Thus, Plato approached the problem of "noun-verb" distinction in terms of "subject" versus "predicate". Since Plato's focus was purely syntactic (i.e. based on sentential analysis), Platonic "nouns" and "verbs" do not exactly correspond to nouns and verbs as these are conceived nowadays.
Aristotle added a further distinct class of "conjunctions" (covering conjunctions, pronouns and the article) to the Platonic system. This class included all those words which were neither nouns nor verbs but which served to combine nouns and verbs. Aristotle included adjectives among the "verbs". The inflectional criterion was not yet at play. Both for Plato and Aristotle, parts of speech were unambiguously parts of sentences: words became nouns or verbs only when they were put into sentences, outside of a sentence they had no categorical affiliations.
“Parts of speech” are the basic types of words that English has. Most grammar books say that there are eight parts of speech: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, conjunctions, prepositions and interjections. We will add one more type: articles.
Here is a brief explanation of what the parts of speech are: Noun- a noun is a naming word. It names a person, place, thing, idea, living creature, quality, or action. Examples: cowboy, theatre, box, thought, tree, kindness, arrival.
Verb- a verb is a word which describes an action (doing something) or a state (being something). Examples: walk, talk, think, believe, live, like, want
Adjective- an adjective is a word that describes a noun. It tells you something about the noun. Examples: big, yellow, thin, amazing, beautiful, quick, important
Adverb- an adverb is a word which usually describes a verb. It tells you how something is done. It may also tell you when or where something happened. Examples: slowly, intelligently, well, yesterday, tomorrow, here, everywhere
Pronoun- a pronoun is used instead of a noun, to avoid repeating the noun. Examples: I, you, he, she, it, we, they
Conjunction- a conjunction joins two words, phrases or sentences together. Examples: but, so, and, because, or
Preposition- a preposition usually comes before a noun, pronoun or noun phrase. It joins the noun to some other part of the sentence. Examples: on, in, by, with, under, through, at
Interjection- an interjection is an unusual kind of word, because it often stands alone. Interjections are words which express emotion or surprise, and they are usually followed by exclamation marks. Examples: Ouch!, Hello!, Hurray!, Oh no!, Ha!
Article- an article is used to introduce a noun. Examples: the, a, an
Noun and its grammatical categories.
The only morphological category of the noun which is almost always marked in present-day English is that of number. Like in Ukrainian, it is mostly realized synthetically, i.e. through zero and marked inflexions respectively. Eg: child - children, ox - oxen, and correspondingly baths, cargos, jubilees, bushes, watches, countries, heroes/ vetoes, etc.
Traditionally the category of number is defined as the one that shows whether we speak of one subject or more than one. In the contrasted languages completely allomorphic, i.e. characteristic only to the English language, is the formation of plural number by way of sound interchange: foot -feet, tooth - teeth, goose - geese; man - men, woman - women; louse - lice, mouse-mice. A few simple light nouns have in Eng. one end the same form for singular and plural. Ex: ship, fish, pike, someone. Apart from generally Eng. there are some borrowed noun inflexions: curriculum- curricula, data-datum, and phenomena-phenomenon. Unlike Eng. Ukrainian number inflexions are determined by the declension root, gender of a noun, final consonant or vowel, which can be hard, soft or mixed: день-дні, море-море, крило-крила.
Isomorphic semantic groups of singularia tantum nouns:
Eng. Ukr.
1. Nouns denoting parts of the world: the north, south південь, північ, захід, схід
2. Names of materials: gold, silver, bread, coffee алюміній, мідь, цукор, сіль, пісок
3. Collective nouns: furniture, rubbish, mankind гарбузиння, селянство, жіноцтво
4. Abstract notions: information, business, courage, knowledge відвага, знання, прогрес, мир
Isomorphic semantic groups of pluralia tantum nouns
Eng. Ukr.
1. Some nouns like: opera classes, scales, сани, ворота, цимбали, граблі
2. Names of remains: sweepings, scraps, slops вершки, зметене, вишкребки
3. Names of some games: cards, yards, drafts, skittles шашки, карти, дротики
4. Some abstract and complete notions: outskirts, contents, means будні, злидні, хрестини, заручини
5. Some geographical names: the Urals, the Bermudes, the Carribeans Бермуди, Альпи, Черкаси
The category of case. Case shows relation of words in the sentence expressed by morphological forms of a certain nominal part of speech. English nouns have only two cases – the common case (the uninflected form) and the possessive case (the 's inflected form). Such relations are also expressed by the word order. It is mostly used only with nouns denoting living beings. E.g. my father's house, the house of my father. As to Ukr. nouns we may have 6 or 7 cases, marked singular or plural oppositions in the nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, locative and vocative case. Group possessive. Contrary to the Ukrainian language in which the 's sign of case is related to only one word, in English the 's sign may be related to more than one word – to a whole group of words. E.g. Mary and Ann's room, the man over there's dog. The category of Gender. The classical of gender contains three members: masculine, feminine and neuter. The morphological category of gender in Ukr. is identified through separate inflexions of nouns, the inflexions of attributes “adjectives” and the inflexions of verbs that conjugate with the noun. E.g. ріс молодий каштан, текла холодна вода, бігло маленьке лоша. In comparison with English the majority of scientists believe that the grammatical category of gender had disappeared from the English language by the end of the Middle English period. What has survived the time is the possibility of lexical indication of the biological sex. Means that provide this indication are purely lexical and derivational. E.g. boy-girl, bull-cow, sheep-goat, and suffixes:- ist scientist- er/or actor, emperor- ess actress- o hero- ine heroine All likeless things in Eng. unlike in Ukr. are generally associated with pronoun it (and in Ukr. that is neuter). The tree and its leaves. A stone and its age. In Ukr. on the contrary each noun irrespective of its being alike or likeless belongs to a complete vocabulary, gender. E.g. stone and wolf in Eng.→ it; in Ukr.→ ч.р. In spoken English some life and lifeless nouns may be referred to different genders when they are personified. E.g. sheep→ she. The names of vessels and vehicles like coach, car, carriage are usually associated with feminine gender. So are the names of hotels and inns. The names of celestial voice may be of 3 genders: the sun is he; the moon, paradise is she.
The problem of the category of tense
The idea of locating situations in time is a purely conceptual notion. All the events are referred to one of the three time dimensions – the present, the past or the future. All human languages have ways of locating in time but they do differ in lexicon and grammar in establishing location in time. The Ukrainian language the objective time has the three mentioned above dimensions. English offers much more forms for the expression. The three temporal dimensions can be expressed by means of different English verb forms: Indefinite (Present, Past, Future), Continuous (Present, Past, Future), Perfect (Present, Past, Future), Perfect Continuous (Present, Past, Future).
When we speak about the category of tense in English several problems arise. One of them is even connected with a number of tense aspect form. The matter is that the category of tense in English is inseparably connected with the category of aspect (indefinite, continuous). Thus, speaking about the problem of the category of tense in English we cannot but mention the problem of polysemy of the English grammatical form. E.g. the form "speak" expresses 6 different grammatical categories. It is not an easy question to answer how many tense are there in English. Some scientists say that English has 16 tenses if one takes into account that tense is expressed by the form which points to the category of aspect. At this we must add that they are in the active voice. But if to take into account the fact that we don't disregard the category of aspect, then we should not disregard the passive voice. If to take into account the polysemy and the possibility for English to have active and passive for transitive verbs then the statistics count about 26 tense - aspect- voice forms of which 16 are in the active and only 10 are in the passive forms. Speaking about the problem of the category of tense and the category of aspect we must solve the question of what they belong to. The category of tense answers the question "when", that's it relates to the type of the action. The category of aspect usually answers the question "how", it doesn't relate to the type of the action, but rather to the manner of that action. So, this category is not a temporal category. Category of tense is realised both synthetically and analytically
Tenses (present, past, future) 1. Absolute use of tenses |
I work. He works. I worked. He will work. He said she had been seen in London. They asked if 1 could translate that passage into Japanese. |
Я працюю. Я працював. Він читає. Він читав. Він читатиме. Він буде читати весь свій вік. Він прокинувся був, а потім знову заснув. |
Isomorphism also exists a) in the correlation of the time of action in the matrix close with the time of the expressed action in the subordi nate clause: He says she lives in Kyiv. He said she lived in Kyiv. He will say she will live in Kyiv. Or: she will say that she lived in Kyiv or she thought that she came/would come. Or: 1 thought she had come. Similarly in Ukrainian: Він каже, що вона прийшла; він скаже, що вона прийде/що вона вже приходила; він казав, що вона приходила/ приходила була; b) Isomorphism is also observed in the existence of tenses not correlating with the time of actions expressed in the matrix/ main clause, eg: He -will say that he knows/ knew, had known it. Він скаже, що вона пришила (приходила) приходила була; с) Iso morphism is likewise observed in the existence of some identical forms expressing those same subjunctive mood meanings referring to present or future or to some past action/event. For example: