- •11. Grammatical category. Grammatical meaning. Grammatical form
- •Verbs. A grammatical category is a unit of grammar based on a morphological
- •It is more or less universally recognised that word-meaning is not
- •Interrelation of which determine to a great extent the inner facet of the word. These
- •Vocabulary of the language. In English this distinction is not a grammatical
- •Vs. Waitress” is not universal enough to build up a grammatical category. It does
- •The door opened and the young man came in./The door opened and a young man came in.
3. . Morphemic structure of the word.
Morpheme – is one of the central notions of grammatical theory, without which no serious attempt at grammatical study can be made. Morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of the language.
There are may be zero morphemes that is the absence of morpheme. It indicates a certain meanings (book-books).Zero morpheme indicates singular form, s-morpheme plurality.
In traditional grammar the study of the morpheme was conducted in the light of 2 criteria (positional and semantic). The combination of these criteria gives us a classification of morphemes.
According to their position-can be prepositional(prefix),central (root)&postpositional(suffixes&inflexions).
According to semantic criteria roots are the bearers of meaning. Prefix&suffixes-have lexico-semantic function.
Inflexions have no lexical meaning or function, however an inflexion morpheme can get a lexical meaning in some special cases (colour-colours//custom-customs)-lexicalization.
Morphemes can be: -free&bound(Bound morphemes cannot form words by themselves, they are identified only as component segmental parts of words. On the contrary, free morphemes can build up words by themselves, i/e/ can be used “freely”.e.g. handful – the root hand is a free morpheme, the suffix –ful is a bound morpheme.)
-overt &covert (Overt morphemes are genuine, explicit morphemes building up words; the covert morpheme is identified as a contrastive absence of morpheme expressing a certain function. The notion of covert morpheme coincides with the notion of zero morpheme in the oppositional description of grammatical categories.
e.g. clock-s - 2 morphemes (a lexical morpheme and a grammatical one)
clock-Ø – 2 morphemes (the overt root and the covert (implicit) zero morpheme Ø)
-segmental&suprasegmental (Supra-segmental morphemes are intonation contours, accents, pauses.)
-additive (Additive morphemes are outer grammatical suffixes, as they are opposed to the absence of morphemes in grammatical alternation: e.g. look-ed; small-er
On the basis of linear characteristics, “continuous (linear)” morphemes and “discontinuous” morphemes are distinguished.
The discontinuous morpheme is a 2-element grammatical unit, which is the analytical from comprising an auxiliary word and a grammatical suffix:e.g. be … ing – is going (continuous)
have … en – has gone (perfect)
be … en – is taken (passive)
Continuous morpheme is uninterruptedly expressed.
6. The category of tence.
Grammatical tense is a way languages express the time at which an event described by a sentence occurs. In English, this is a property of a verb form, and expresses only time-related information. Tense, along with mood, voice and person, are three ways in which verb forms are frequently characterized, in languages where those categories apply. There are languages (mostly isolating languages, like Chinese) where tense is not expressed anywhere in the verb or any auxiliaries, but only as adverbs of time, when needed for comprehension; and there are also languages (such as Russian) where tense is not deemed very important and emphasis is instead placed on aspect. The exact number of tenses in a language is often a matter of some debate, since many languages include the state of certainty of the information, the frequency of the event, whether it is ongoing or finished, and even whether the information was directly experienced or gleaned from hearsay, as moods or tenses of a verb. Some grammarians consider these to be separate tenses, and some do not.
18. Simple sentence.
A simple sentence contains one subject and one verb. The subject (sometimes called the object) comes before the verb. The verb comes after the subject to describe what the subject is doing or has done.
The singer bowed. Noun phrase / Subject = The singer Verb phrase / Verb = bowed
The baby cried. Noun phrase / Subject = The baby Verb phrase / Verb = cried
The girl ran. Noun phrase / Subject = The girl Verb phrase / Verb = ran
In traditional grammar the noun phrase is called the subject.
7.Classification of phrases
8. The Infinitive Historically, the infinitive is a verbal noun. Hence its double nature: it combines the features of the verb with those of the noun. It is the form of the verb which expresses a process in general, i.e. a process that is not restricted (i.e. concretized) by person, number, tense, and mood. Because of its general process meaning, the infinitive is treated as the head-form of the whole paradigm of the verb. The infinitive has two presentation forms: marked and unmarked. The marked infinitive is distinguished by the grammatical word-morpheme to, historically a preposition. Similar to other grammatical word morphemes, to can be used to represent the corresponding construction as a whole (e.g. You can read any of the books if you want to). It can also be separated from its notional part by a word or phrase, usually of adverbial nature, forming the so-called split infinitive (e.g. We need your participation, to thoroughly investigate the issue.) The marked infinitive is an analytic grammatical form. The other form of the infinitive is unmarked; it is traditionally called the bare infinitive. It is used in various analytic forms (non-modal and modal), with verbs of physical perception, with the verbs let, bid, make, help (optionally), with a few modal phrases (had better, would rather, would have, etc.), with the relative why. The infinitive combines the properties of the verb with those of the noun, as a result it serves as the verbal name of a process. It has the grammatical categories of voice, aspect and temporal correlation. Consequently, the categorial paradigm of the infinitive includes eight forms: the indefinite active, the continuous active, the perfect active, the perfect continuous active; the indefinite passive, the continuous passive, the perfect passive, the perfect continuous passive. to take — to be taking to have taken — to have been taking to be taken —to be being taken to have been taken — to have been being taken
The continuous and perfect continuous passive can only be used occasionally, with a strong stylistic colouring. It is the indefinite infinitive that constitues the head-form of the verbal paradigm. The verbal features of the infinitive. Like the finite form of verb, the infinitive distinguishes the categories of aspect, voice, and temporal correlation. The paradigm of the infinitive is determined by the semantico-syntactic properties of the process. If the process is intransitive, we cannot derive voice forms e.g. to walk – to be walking vs. *to be being walked to have walked – to have been walking vs. *to have been being walked The nounal features of the infinitive. Semantically and morphologically, the infinitive is much more similar to the verb than to the noun: its verbal features outweigh its nounal features. Similar to the noun, the infinitive can be used as the subject or part of the subject, the predicative, and the attribute.
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9 и 15. Parts of speech. Different approaches.
The parts of speech are classes of words, all' the members of these classes having certain characteristics in common which distinguish them from the members of other problem of word classification into parts of speech still remains one of the most controversial problems in modern linguistics. The artitude of grammarians with regard to parts of speech and the basis of their classification varied a good deal at different times. Only in English grammarians have been vacillating between 3 and. 13 parts of speech. There are four approaches to the problem:
Classical (logical-inflectional)
Functional
Distributional
Complex,
The classical of speech theory is.based on Latin grammar. According, to the Latin classification of the parts of speech all words were divided dichotomically into declinable and indeclinable parts of speech. declinable words, included nouns, pronouns, verbs and participles, indeclinable words - adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions and interjections. Based on the the principle of declinability/indeclmability is not relevant for analytical languages. Functional - To/nominative parts of speech belonged noun-words (noun, noun-pronoun, noun-numeral, infinitive, gerund), adjective-words (adjective, adjective-pronoun, adjective-numeral, participles), verb (finite verb, verbals - gerund, infinitive, participles), while adverb, preposition, conjunction and interjection belonged to the group of articles. A Distributional approach to the parts to the parts of speech classification can be illustrated bythe classification introduced by Charles Fries. He wanted to avoid the traditional terminology and establish a classification of words based on the ability of words to combine with other words of different types. At the same time, the lexical meaning of words was not taken into account. In modern linguistics, parts of speech are discriminated according to three, criteria: semantic, formal and functional. This approach may be defined as complex. The semantic criterion presupposes the grammatical meaning of the whole class of words (general grammatical meaning). The formal criterion reveals paradigmatic properties: relevant grammatical categories, the form of the words, their specific inflectional and derivational features. Thus, when characterizing any part of speech we
are to describe: a) its semantics; b) its morphological features; c) its syntactic peculiarities. The linguistic evidence drawn from our grammatical study makes it possible to divide all the words of the language into: those denoting things, objects, notiona, qualities, etc. - words with the corresponding references the objective reality. – notional words those having no references of their own in the objective reality; most of them are used only as grammatical means to form up and frame utterances - function
11. Grammatical category. Grammatical meaning. Grammatical form
The general notions of grammar which determine the structure of language
and find their expression in inflection and other devices are generally called
grammatical categories. As is known, a grammatical category is generally
represented by at least two grammatical forms, otherwise it cannot exist. A simple
case of oppositions in pairs of grammatical forms will be found, for instance,
between the Singular and the Plural in nouns, or between Active and Passive in
Verbs. A grammatical category is a unit of grammar based on a morphological
opposition of grammatical meanings presented in grammatical forms.
It is more or less universally recognised that word-meaning is not
homogeneous but is made up of various components the combination and the
Interrelation of which determine to a great extent the inner facet of the word. These
components are usually described as types of meaning. The two main types of
meaning that are readily observed are the grammatical and the lexical meanings to
be found in words and word-forms.
The most general meanings rendered by language and expressed by systemic
correlations of word-forms are interpreted in linguistics as grammatical meanings.
Grammatical meanings are very abstract, very general. Therefore the
grammatical form is not confined to an individual word, but unites a whole class of
words, so that each word of the class expresses the corresponding grammatical
meaning together with its individual, concrete semantics. Grammatical meanings
ranged in oppositions and presented in grammatical forms build grammatical
categories.
Grammatical forms can be morphemes, synthetic forms, and grammatical
word combinations, which are analytical forms. Synthetic forms unite both lexical
and grammatical meanings in one word. In analytical forms there two or more
words in which at least one element is an auxiliary. The auxiliary is a constant
element of an analytical structure, which is devoid of lexical meaning (it renders
grammatical meanings and is a purely grammatical element). Analytical structures
must be differentiated from free syntactical word combinations. In free syntactical
word combinations all the elements possess both lexical and grammatical
meanings.
Cf. waiter and waitress
The distinctions of gender in Russian are universal. They refer to all the
Vocabulary of the language. In English this distinction is not a grammatical
phenomenon. The grammatical category of gender is lost. What we have now is
some gender distinctions existing as the remnant of history. The distinction “waiter
Vs. Waitress” is not universal enough to build up a grammatical category. It does
not possess the level of grammatical abstraction characterized by an unlimited
range of occurrence.
Cf. book and books
-s is a form-building morpheme that builds a grammatical form because it is
characterized by the level of grammatical abstraction realized in an unlimited range
of occurrence.
19. Noun as a part of speech
A noun, or noun substantive, is a part of speech (a word or phrase) which can co-occur with (in) definite articles and attributive adjectives, and function as the head of a noun phrase.
The word "noun" derives from the Latin nomen meaning "name", and a traditional definition of nouns is that they are all and only those expressions that refer to a person, place, thing, event, substance, quality or idea. They serve as the subject or object of a verb, and the object of a preposition. That definition has been criticized by contemporary linguists as being quite uninformative. For example, it appears that verbs like kill or die refer to events, and so they fall under the definition. Similarly, adjectives like yellow or difficult might be thought to refer to qualities, and adverbs like outside or upstairs seem to refer to places. But verbs, adjectives and adverbs are not nouns, so the definition is not particularly helpful in distinguishing nouns from other parts of speech.
Case, number, and gender
In sentences, noun phrases may function in a variety of different ways, the most obvious being as subjects or objects. For example, in the sentence "John wrote me a letter", "John" is the subject, and "me" and "letter" are objects (of which "letter" is a noun and "me" a pronoun). These different roles are known as noun cases. Variant forms of the same noun—such as "he" (subject) and "him" (object)—are called declensions.
The number of a noun indicates how many objects the noun refers to. In the simplest case, number distinguishes between singular ("man") and plural ("men"). Some languages, like Arabic (and also Saami and Aleut ) also distinguish dual from plural.
Many languages (though not English) have a concept of noun gender, also known as noun class, whereby every noun is designated as, for example, masculine or feminine.
Category of number.
English countable nouns have 2 categories of number:
singular
plural
І. The plural form is formed be adding the ending -s, -es, pronounced as /z/, /s/, /iz/.
2. if the noun ends in –y presided by a consonant. –y is changed into –i + -es-
Category of case.
Case indicates the relations of the noun ( or pronoun ) to the other words in the sentence. Nouns denoting living beings and some nouns denoting lifeless things have two cases:
the common case.
the genitive case.
The genitive case is formed by:
‘s – is used with the singular and plural nouns not ending in –s:
a man’s job, men’s job, a child’s voice, a children’s voice.
b) a simple apostrophe (‘)is used with plural nouns ending in –s:
the students’ hostel, the Smiths’ car.
other names ending I –s can take “ ’s ” or the “ ’ ” alone:
The problem of gender.
In linguistics, the term gender refers to various forms of expressing biological or sociological gender by inflecting words. For example, in the words actor and actress the suffix -or denotes "male person" (masculine), and the suffix -ress denotes "female person" (feminine). This type of inflection, called lexical gender, is very rare in English, but quite common in other languages, including most languages in the Indo-European family. Normally, Modern English does not mark nouns for gender, but it expresses gender in the third person singular personal pronouns he (male person), she (female person), and it (object, abstraction, or animal), and their other inflected forms. When gender is expressed on other parts of speech, besides nouns and pronouns, the language is said to have grammatical gender. Grammatical gender may be partly assigned by convention, so it doesn't always coincide with natural gender. Furthermore, the gender assigned to animals, inanimate objects and abstractions is often arbitrary. Gender can refer to the (biological) condition of being male or female, or less commonly hermaphrodite or neuter, as applied to humans, animals, and plants. In this sense, the term is a synonym for sex, a word that has undergone a usage shift itself, having become a synonym for sexual intercourse.
21. Pronoun
(1) The meaning of the pronoun as a separate part of speech is somewhat
difficult to define. In fact, some pronouns share essential peculiarities of nouns
(e.g. he), while others have much in common with adjectives (e. g. which). This
made some scholars think that pronouns were not a separate part of speech at all
and should be distributed between nouns and adjectives. However, this view
proved untenable and entailed insurmountable difficulties. Hence it has proved
necessary to find a definition of the specific meaning of pronouns, distinguishing 21
them from both nouns and adjectives. From this angle the meaning of pronouns as
a part of speech can be stated as follows: pronouns point to the things and
properties without naming them.
Form. As far as form goes pronouns fall into different types. Some of them
have the category of number (singular and plural), e. g. this, while others have no
such category, e. g. somebody. Again, some pronouns have the category of case (he
— him, somebody — somebody's), while others have none (something).
Function. (a) Some pronouns combine with verbs (he speaks, find him),
while others can also combine with a following noun (this room). (b) In the
sentence, some pronouns may be the subject (he, what) or the object, while others
are the attribute (my). Pronouns can be predicatives.
Numeral
The treatment of numerals presents some difficulties, too. The so-called
cardinal numerals (one, two) are somewhat different from the so-called ordinal
numerals (first, second).
Meaning. Numerals denote either number or place in a series.
Form. Numerals are invariable.
Function. (a) As far as phrases go, both cardinal and ordinal numerals
combine with a following noun (three rooms, third room); occasionally a numeral
follows a noun (soldiers three, George the Third). (b) In a sentence, a numeral
most usually is an attribute (three rooms, the third room), but it can also be subject,
predicative, and object: Three of them came in time; "We Are Seven" (the title of a
poem by Wordsworth); I found only four.
27. he category of case. The problem of article determination.
Ilyish:Case is the category of a noun expressing relations between the thing denoted by the noun and other things, or properties, or actions, and manifested by some formal sign in the noun itself (e.g. inflection, zero-morpheme).
The problem of case in ME nouns is one of the most disputed problems in English grammar. The views on the subject differ widely.
Views: The number of approaches is due to a difference in the interpretation of the category of case. LIMITED CASE THEORY: Ilyish doesn’t recognize any case expressed by non-morphological means preposition + Noun is not a case form English nouns have 2 cases: common case (e.g. father) and genitive case (e.g. father’s);
POSITIONAL CASE THEORY: The number of cases in English is more than 2 (3, 4, 5 …); the case may be expressed by prepositions or by word order;
Curme: PREPOSITIONAL CASE THEORY – there are as many cases as there are prepositions (e.g. of Peter, to peter, with Peter…etc)
Хаймович/Роговская:
The category of case of nouns is the system of opposemes (girl-girl’s) showing the relations of the noun to other words in speech.
Case is one of those categories which show the close connection (a) between language and speech, (b) between morphology and syntax.
a.the members of the case opposeme John-John’s are united paradigmatically on the basis of their syntagmatic differences.
b.Though case is a morphological category it has a distinct syntactical significance. Common case the functions of subject and object; possessive case the function of an attribute.
The category of article determination.
Blokh: The semantic purpose of the article is to specify the nounal referent, to define it in the most general way, without any explicitly expressed contrasts.
In the absence of a determiner, the use of the article with the noun is quite obligatory, in so far as the cases of non-use of the article are subject to no less definite rules than the use of it.
??? Is article a purely auxiliary element of a special grammatical form of the noun which functions as a component of a definite morphological category, or is it a separate word, i.e. a lexical unit in the determiner word set, if of a more abstract meaning than other determiners.
??? Can “article + noun” be a form of the noun?
If we agree that the group “article + noun” is an analytical form of the verb we shall have to set up a grammatical category in the noun which is expresses by one or the other article or by its absence. That category might be called DETERMINATION. In this case we could also find a “zero article”.If we stick to the view that the group is a peculiar type of phrase, no “zero article” is possible.
The role of articles in actual division of the sentence.