Main grammatical notions. Grammatical meaning and grammatical form.

Grammatical categories. Method of opposition.

Grammatical form

• Morphological synthetic:

- affixation

- sound interchange

- suppletivity

- stress (in Russian)

• Analytical

• Syntactic:

- formal words (prepositions, conjunctions)

- word order / position

- intonation

Grammatical meaning

• a general, abstract meaning which characterizes a certain grammatical class of words and is invariably associated with a certain grammatical form.

• If the lexical meaning of the word is rooted in its stem, the grammatical meaning relies mostly on the grammatical affixes of the word form.

• is highly generalized; the number of grammatical meanings is limited;

• is dependent (expressed only together with the lexical meaning):

Lishes rop pibs; Pibs are ropped by lishes; etc.

• is relative (revealed only in relation of the given word form to the other forms of the same word):

talks — a talk t alks — talked

3. Grammatical category – a generalized grammatical meaning revealed through the opposition of grammatical forms representing the particular meanings of the category

Room^-- (Sg) vs rooms⁺ (Pl)

(categorial forms of the category of Number)

• neutralization - unmarked member expressing the meaning of the marked one;

• transposition - marked member in the meaning of the unmarked one (stylistically marked):

You are always interfering!

Features of grammatical categories:

• A grammatical category should be represented by at least two categorial forms.

• One word form can represent different grammatical categories (boys' – Pl, Poss.).

• One word form can express only one grammatical meaning of a certain category (boys is only Pl, but never Sg and Pl at the same time).

• One particular grammatical meaning cannot be expressed in all the forms of the word. Part of the paradigm should represent the opposite grammatical meaning of the category. Otherwise the category is lexico-grammatical.

Method of opposition: binary and ternary (big ÷ bigger ÷ the biggest) Types:

- Privative (1 member has a certain distinctive feature – marked, strong; the other – unmarked, weak)boy ÷ boys

- Equipollent (both members are marked)– am ÷ is

Gradual – the idea of gradation (adjectives) big ÷ bigger ÷ the biggest.

 

Notional and functional classes of words.

The four notional parts of speech form a lexical paradigm of nomination — a system of transposition of each member of the paradigm into the other members:
wide (aj) – width (n) – widen (v) –widely (av)

Both traditional & Synthectico-distributional classifications divide words into notional & functional. Originally, they reflect the former morphological division of words into changeable & unchangeable. Modern linguistics differentiates not & fun parts of speech on the basis of: the prominence of their meaning, peculiarities of their combinability, the ability to be substituted by a word of a more general meaning (hyperonims table – furniture). Notional words are characterized by complete nom force, self-dependent functions in the S. They can be used in isolation & they can be by a word of a more general meaning. Functional words possess incomplete nom force, they have very wide lexical meaning. They perform non-self-dependent mediatory (linking,specifying) functions. They are characterized by obligatory combinability. Fries specified them: 1) words with unilateral combinability (articles, auxiliaries, modals); 2) words with bilateral combinability (prepositions & conjunctions which join words & word groups, not sentences); 3) heterogeneous class which unites introductory ‘it’, ‘their’,, interrogative words,interjections.. There are also structural words which can take the position of not words. They are often called PRO-words or substitutes. They constitute a class of words that takes an intermediate position between notional and functional words.

CLOSED-SYSTEM PRO-WORDS

Pronouns — function like / instead of nouns or adjectives;

pronominal adverbs ( here, there, now, then) — deictic meaning;

numerals — function like nouns (cardinal) or adjectives (ordinal).

Parts of speech. Principles of classification.

The words of the lang. are divided into gr. classes which differ in formal and semantic features. Traditionally they are called parts of speech (p/of/sp). This term is purely conventional and was introduced in the gr. teaching of Ancient Greece. The problem of the p/of/sp is the most controversial one.

1 Principle The Semantic Approach

It is based on the universal forms of human thought which are reflected in 3 main categorial meanings of words: substance, process, property.

1. However, this principle is open to criticism; it doesn’t always work; it can be hard to define a categorial meaning of a word e.g. whiteness - is it substance of a noun or property of an adjective? action – it denotes process, but it isn’t a verb 2 Principle The Formal Approach Only form should be used as a criterion for the classification of the p/of/sp. (Henry Sweet) They distinguished between two classes of words: declinable (changeable forms) indeclinable (static forms) articles, prepositions This criterion is also unreliable. It doesn’t take into account the way a word functions in the sentence.

2. 3 Principle The Syntactic (Functional) Approach

Fries. The Structure of English. NY, 1956)

Based on the syntactic distribution of words;

three minimum free utterance test frames (diagnostic frames) to fill the positions with the words under the test;

words that fit into a position without changing the structural meaning of the sentence belong to the same form-class

Classes of words are recognized by their formal devices (morphemes) and the position in the utterance – not their concrete lexical meaning

Notional classes of words

• Class 1 ~ N + Prn, Num (cardinal);

• Class 2 ~ Vb – Aux & Modal;

• Class 3 ~ Adj + Prn, N's, Num (ordinal);

• Class 4 ~ Adv

154 functional words (individual, unique) arranged in 15 classes. They can be distributed among the three main sets: specifiers of notional words (determiners of nouns, modal verbs, functional modifiers and intensifiers of adjectives and adverbs) interpositional elements, determining the relation of notional words to one another (prepositions and conjunctions) refer to the sentence as a whole (question words, attention-getting words, words of affirmation and negation, sentence introducers (it, there))

Criteria classification

Vinogradov –> Russian grammar

Smirnitsky, Ilyish –> English grammar

There is a unity of classification criteria:

1. Semantic (lexico-grammatical meaning);

2. Morphological (grammatical categories and derivational patterns);

3. Syntactic (combinability and function)

Typical types of combinability 1) Left-hand;prepositional connection with another noun or an adj, an adv: an enterance to the house, the turn round the corner; 2) casal combinability characterizes the noun alongside of its prepositional combinability with another noun. (E.g. the speech of the President - the president's speech.)

3)contact combinability (E.g. film festivals, a cannon ball.)

The three criteria applied to notional parts of speech:

• NOUN: 1) substance;

2) number & case; derivational suffixes;

3) combinability with A, Prp, Adj, Vb; functions of S, O, C.

• ADJ: 1) property of substance;

• 2) degrees of comparison; derivational suffixes;

3) combinability with N, Adv, Vb; functions of M_n C_s .

VERB: 1) process;

2) tense, voice, aspect, mood, person, number,order; derivational suffixes;

3) combinability with N, Adj, Adv; function of P.

ADV: 1) property of process;

2) degrees of comparison; derivational suffixes;

3) combinability with Vb, Adj, Adv; functions of M_v .

Criteria applied to formal / functional parts of speech

• Categorial meaning:

Article — specification of the noun;

Preposition — relations between Ns and other wds;

Conjunction — connection of wds and phrases;

Interjection — expressing emotions;

Particle — specification and limitation of meaning

• Syntactic characteristics (combinability)

PRONOUN

• Pronouns have no referential meaning. Their lexico-grammatical meaning is deixis — indication, pointing to things and properties.

• The morphological and syntactic criteria – are different in different subgroups of pronoun.

• Noun pronouns (personal, indefinite, absolute possessive) and adjective pronouns (demonstrative, relative, conjoint possessive, indefinite).