Neutralization

(the weak member replaces the strong one; stylistically neutral)

Oppositional Reduction

Transposition

(the strong member replaces the weak one; stylistically coloured)

e.g. Man conquers nature. e.g. She is always leaving things around.

(man – people) (leaves – is leaving)

Fig. 24

In case of neutralization one member of the opposition becomes fully identified with its counterpart. In other words, neutralization is the reduction of the opposition to one of its members.

Transposition takes place when one member of the opposition placed in the contextual conditions uncommon for it begins to fulfil two functions – its own and the function of its counterpart. Transposition is the use of a linguistic unit in an unusual environment or in the function that is not characteristic of it. As a result, transposition is always accompanied by different stylistic effects.

Grammatical classes of words

The parts of speech are classes of words. All the members of these classes have certain characteristics in common which distinguish them from the members of other classes. All the words of the English language are grouped into different types of classes. The problem of word classification into parts of speech remains one of the most controversial problems in modern linguistics. Parts of speech are differentiated either by a number of criteria, or by a single criterion.

There are four approaches to the problem:

1. Classical (logical-inflectional)

2. Functional

3. Distributional

4. Complex or traditional

The classical parts of speech theory goes back to ancient times. It is based on Latin grammar. According to the Latin classification of the parts of speech all words were divided into declinable and indeclinable parts of speech. Declinable words included nouns, pronouns, verbs and participles, indeclinable words – adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions and interjections. This classification is quite successful for Latin or other languages with developed morphology and synthetic paradigms but it cannot be applied to the English language because the principle of declinability/indeclinability is not relevant for analytical languages.

A new approach to the problem was introduced in the XIX century by Henry Sweet. This approach may be defined as functional. singled out nominative units and particles. 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 particles. However, though the criterion for classification was functional, Henry Sweet failed to break the tradition and classified words into those having morphological forms and lacking morphological forms, in other words, declinable and indeclinable (Fig. 25).