3. Plane of Content and Plane of Expression.

The nature of grammar as a constituent part of lan­guage is better understood in the light of discrimi­nating the two planes of language, namely, the plane of content and the plane of expression.

The plane of content comprises the purely semantic ele­ments contained in language, while the plane of expression comprises the material (formal) units of language taken by themselves, apart from the meanings rendered by them. The two planes are inseparably connected.

Grammatical elements of language present a unity of con­tent and expression (or a unity of form and meaning). In this the grammatical ele­ments are similar to the lingual lexical elements, though the quality of grammatical meanings is different in principle from the quality of lexical meanings.

On the other hand, the correspondence between the planes of content and expression is very complex, and it is peculiar to each language. This complexity is clearly illustrated by the phenomena of polysemy, homonymy, and synonymy.

In cases of polysemy and homonymy, two or more units of the plane of content correspond to one unit of the plane of expression.

E.g. the verbal form of the present indefinite (one unit in the plane of expression) polysemantically renders the grammatical meanings of

habitual action,

action at the present moment,

action taken as a general truth

(that is several units in the plane of content).

The morphemic material element -s/-es (in pronunciation [-s, -z, -iz]), i.e. one unit in the plane of expression (in so far as the functional semantics of the elements is common to all of them indiscrim­inately), homonymically renders the grammatical meanings of

the third person singular of the verbal present tense,

the plural of the noun,

the possessive form of the noun,

i.e. several units of the plane of content.

In cases of synonymy, two or more units of the plane of expression correspond to one unit of the plane of content.

E.g. several verbal forms can express the meaning of a future action.

4. Language Type

This traditional interpretation of the structural peculiarities of the "language type" is nowadays refutable as insufficient and to some ex­tent misleading. The matter is that the problem of the structural order of human languages is more complicated than it seems.

Human languages are not artificial static systems. In the course of time different spheres of human languages undergo certain changes. It is true that the historical changes in human life and society are reflected most actively and directly in the semantics of the nominative units of the language vocabulary.

As to the grammatical structure, it is relatively stable, its qualitative changes may take centuries and its development is evolutionary in character. In the course of time the accumulation of some new typological features takes place and the acquirement of such features may lead to the qualitative changes in the grammatical structure of the language. As a result, it may display the typological features of another "language type".

The evolution of human languages is caused by lin­gual and extralingual factors. But the development of the structure of language goes in the direction which is predetermined by the com­plex of favouring intralingual factors representing the so-called "ge­neral grammatical tendency" of the language. This notion is workable in the analysis of the typological changes which the grammatical struc­tures undergo. The general grammatical tendency may predetermine the transition of the grammatical structure from one order to another.

There are two main general grammatical tendencies according to which the grammatical structures of Indo-European languages develop:

analytization and synthetization

Analytization is the general grammatical tendency traceable in the development of some of the Indo-European languages. Analytization itself and the forms it assumes are not obligatory for the development of all the languages. The process of analytization varies in forms from language to language. In English, for instance, the process is extremely intensive and it manifests deep changes in the grammatical structure of the language, in its morphology and in its syntax as well.

Analytization as a complex of diachronic processes has been stimu­lated by some intralingual conditions available within the Old English language. An insight into the peculiarities of the Old English gram­matical structure makes us aware of the fact that the process started in syntax first.

Among other factors conditioning structural changes the functional synonymy of the means of syntactic connection should be mentioned. The functional identity of some case-inflections and pre­positions resulted in the redundancy of most inflections of the oblique cases. Thus, the decay of the Old English case-system seemed to be predetermined. The reduction of the noun-paradigm couldn't but in­fluence the standardization of the word-positions in the sentence and the fixation of the word-order in the nucleus of the sentence. Besides, analytical tendencies involve changed the forms of syntactic con­nection: agreement and case-government gave way to adjoinment and enclosure which are marked not by case-inflections but by the word-order.

Some other analytical innovations in syntax have been traced. Such syntactic processes as

condensation,

contamination,

replacement

clustering

have become very intensive in the English syntax. Steadily increasing reliance upon

prepositional phrases,

reater employment of subordinate clauses,

the increase of the verb + adverbial particle com­binations,

a tendency to use almost every word as lexico-syntactical

conversives

— these are a few of the recent developments in the Modern English syntax.

Analytical tendencies in the Morphology of English are different in character. They are vividly revealed in the spheres of Form-deriva­tion and Word-building.

It is evident that the reduction of the noun-paradigm did not cause its analytization and the morphology of the noun, its form-derivation and its word-building, remains synthetic in character. It is the form-derivation and the word-building of the Verb which have undergone changes. Since the Early Middle English period the paradigm of the verb has become highly developed and analytical in nature because most of the paradigmatic forms of the verb are derived as analytical formations:

e.g. Continuous, Perfect, Perfect Continuous and other verb-forms.

As to the analytical tendencies in the word-building of the verb, they are manifested by the productivity of those word-building devices which are considered to be characteristic of analytical languages: con­version, postposition formation and phrasing.

All these devices are rather productive for the derivation of English verbs. Alongside the analytization of the verb-paradigm and its word-building other analytical tendencies can be traced in the morpho­logy of English.

Firstly, the unification of grammatical forms has taken place in the paradigmatic derivation of the main word-forms.

Secondly, the process of analytization led to the new forms of the word-class determination: the determination of the class-membership by means of special function-words (determiners) has become regular.

Part 2

Sentence parsing

1. When Richie suddenly gave up the old apartment because he had stopped paying rent, he had let her know that he was looking in neighbourhoods Terry knew to be unsafe; after a week of this, Terri found them another apartment in the city, so that Elena would be closer, and when the landlord balked at Richie’s credit, Terri cosigned the lease. (Patterson. R.N. Eyes of the Child. – NY: Ballantine Books, 1996. – P.67)

2. In the almost ten years they lived together, Paget had recently calculated, they had eaten perhaps three thousand dinners in this same room – usually just the two of them, sitting under the eighteenth-century crystal chandelier at a walnut table that seated twelve – discussing the events of the day, or sports or politics or Carlo’s school friends or whatever came to mind. (Ibid, P. 3003)

3. At some point in my twenties, I understood that what I was doing was redefining myself, choosing things that weren’t predestined by who I was or the life I’d been given. (Ibid, p.455).

4. Terry did not argue; days before she had stopped asking questions; after a moment’s silence she said that it was important that the jury, before cloistering to reach a verdict, remember the people who loved Paget most; if the case was over, she added, there was nothing to keep her or Carlo from the courtroom. (Ibid, P. 483)

5. I never said it didn’t bother me, but I know what I did and didn’t do, why I acted as I did, and who it is that I really do care about. (Ibid, P. 515)

Part 3

Tasks and study questions