Theory of english grammar

ENGLISH FACULTY

correspondent department

 

THEORY OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR

 

1. Morphology and syntax as part of grammar. Units of grammar, their functions and types of relations between them in language and speech.

Main units of Grammar are a word and a sentence. A word may be divided into morphemes, a sentence may be divided into phrases (word-groups). A morpheme, a word, a phrase and a sentence are units of different levels of language structure. A unit of a higher level consists of one or more units of a lower level.

Grammatical units - 2 types of relations:

• in the language system (paradigmatic relations)
• in speech (syntagmatic relations).

In the language system each unit is included into a set of connections based on different properties. F. ex., word forms child, children, child's, children's have the same lexical meaning and have different grammatical meanings. They constitute a lexeme.

Word-forms children, boys, men, books... have the same grammatical meaning and have different lexical meanings. They constitute a grammeme (a categorial form, a form class). The system of all grammemes (grammatical forms) of all lexemes (words) of a given class constitutes a paradigm.

Syntagmatic relations are the relations in an utterance.

Main grammatical units, a word and a sentence, are studied by different sections of Grammar: Morphology (Accidence) and Syntax. Morphology studies the structure, forms and the classification of words. Syntax studies the structure, forms and the classification of sentences. Morphology studies paradigmatic relations of words, Syntax studies syntagmatic relations of words and paradigmatic relations of sentences.

There is also a new approach to the division of Grammar into Morphology and Syntax. According to this approach Morphology should study both paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations of words. Syntax should study both paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations of sentences. Syntactic syntagmatics is a relatively new field of study, reflecting the discourse.

 

 

2. Grammatical meaning and grammatical form. Means of form-building. Synthetic and analytical forms.

The grammatical meaning and grammatical form are the basic notions of Grammar.

The grammatical meaning is a general, abstract meaning which embraces classes of words. The grammatical meaning depends on the lexical meaning. It is connected with objective reality indirectly, through the lexical meaning. The grammatical meaning is relative, it is revealed in relations of word forms, e.g. speak - speaks. The grammatical meaning is obligatory. Grammatical meaning must be expressed if the speaker wants to be understood.

The grammatical meaning must have a grammatical form of expression (inflexions, analytical forms, word-order, etc.). The term form may be used in a wide sense to denote all means of expressing grammatical meanings. It may be also used in a narrow sense to denote means of expressing a particular grammatical meaning (plural, number, present tense, etc.).

Grammatical elements are unities of meaning and form, content and expression. In the language system there is no direct correspondence of meaning and form. Two or more units of the plane of content may correspond to one unit of the plane of expression (polysemy; homonymy). Two or more units of the plane of expression may correspond to one unit of the plane of content (synonymy).

Means of form-building and grammatical forms are divided into synthetic and analytical.

Synthetic forms are built with the help of bound morphemes, analytical forms are built with the help of semi-bound morphemes (word-morphemes).

Synthetic means of form-building are affixation, sound-interchange (inner-inflexion), suppletivity. Typical features of English affixation are scarcity and homonymy of affixes. Another characteristic feature is a great number of zero-morphemes.

Though English grammatical affixes are few in number, affixation is a productive means of form-building.

Sound interchange may be of two types: vowel- and consonant-interchange. It is often accompanied by affixation: bring - brought.

Sound interchange is not productive in Modem English. It is used to build the forms of irregular verbs.

Forms of one word may be derived from different roots: go - went. This means of form-building is called suppletivity. Different roots may be treated as suppletive forms if:

1) they have the same lexical meaning;

2) there are no parallel non-suppletive forms;

3) other words of the same class build their forms without suppletivity.

Suppletivity, like inner inflexion, is hot productive in Modem English, but it occurs in words with a very high frequency.

Analytical forms are combinations of the auxiliary element (a word morpheme) and the notional element: is writing. Analytical forms are contradictory units: phrases in form and wordforms in function. In the analytical form is writing the auxiliary verb be is lexically empty. It expresses the, grammatical meaning. The notional element expresses both the lexical and the grammatical meaning. So the grammatical meaning is expressed by the two components of the analytical form: the auxiliary verb be and the affix ing. The word-morpheme be and the inflexion -ing constitute a discontinuous morpheme.

 

 

3. Structure of words. Grammatically relevant types of morphemes.

The smallest meaningful units of grammar are called morphemes. Morphemes are commonly classified into free (those which can occur as separate words) and bound. A word consisting of a single (free) morpheme is monomorphemic, its opposite is polymorphemic.

According to their meaning and function morphemes are subdivided into lexical (roots),-lexico-grammatical (word-building affixes) and grammatical (form-building affixes, or inflexions).

Morphemes are abstract units, represented in speech by morphs. Most morphemes are realized by single morphs: unselfish. Some morphemes may be manifested by more than one morph according to their position. Such alternative morphs, or positional variants of a morpheme are called allomorphs: cats, [s], dogs [z], foxes [iz].

Morphemic variants are identified in the text on the basis of their cooccurence with other morphs, or their environment. The total of environments constitutes the distribution.

There may be three types of morphemic distribution: contrastive, non-contrastive, complementary. Morphs are in contrastive distribution if their position is the same and their meanings are different: charming - charmed. Morphs are in non-contrastive distribution if their position is the same and their meanings are the same: learned - learnt. Such morphs constitute free variants of the same morpheme. Morphs are in complementary distribution if their positions are different and their meanings are the same: speaks - teaches. Such morphs are allomorphs of the same morpheme.

Grammatical meanings may be expressed by the absence of the morpheme: book - books. The meaning of plurality is expressed by the morpheme -s. The meaning of singularity is expressed by the absence of the morpheme. Such meaningful absence of the morpheme is called zero-morpheme.

The function of the morpheme may be performed by a separate word. In the opposition work - will work the meaning of the future is expressed by the word will. Will is a contradictory unit. Formally it is a word, functionally it is a morpheme. As it has the features of a word and a morpheme, it is called a word morpheme. Word-morphemes may be called semi-bound morphemes.

 

 

4. Grammatical categories. Method of opposition (A.I. Smirnitsky).

Grammatical category is a system of expressing a generalized grammatical meaning by means of paradigmatic correlation of grammatical forms. Traditional categories are: the category of gender, number, person, case, tense, mood, voice.

The set of grammatical forms constitutes a paradigm. The paradigmatic relations of grammatical forms in a category are exposed in the so-called grammatical opposition. In other words, grammatical category is some total of all the oppositions of words.

E.g. the category of number. The opposition of 2 forms: pen – pens (z). The correlated members of the opposition must possess 2 types of features: common features (the basis of the contrast) and differential features (immediately express the function in question): pen (weak memeber) – pens (strong member).

Oppositions can be classified into qualitative types:

- privative: one  member has a certain distinctive feature; this member is called marked, or strong ( + ); the other member is characterized by the absence of this distinctive feature. This member is called unmarked, or weak (-): (study (-) - studied (+),

- gradual: members of the opposition differ by the degree of certain property: (large - larger - largest),

- equipollent: Both members of the opposition are marked (am⁺ - is⁺ - are⁺),

Most grammatical oppositions are privative. The marked (strong) member has a narrow and definite meaning. The unmarked (weak) member has a wide, general meaning.

In certain contexts the difference between members of the opposition is lost, the opposition is reduced to one member. Usually the weak member acquires the meaning of the strong member: We leave for Moscow tomorrow. This kind of oppositional reduction is called neutralization. The strong member may be used in the context typical for the weak member. This use is stylistically marked: He is always complaining. This kind of reduction is called transposition.

By the number of opposemes - into binary, ternary, quaternary, etc.

Types of categories:

- notional (of quantity, agent);

- semantic (of gender, modality);

- morphological (number and case of nouns; degrees of comparison of adjectives and adverbs; tense, voice, aspect, correlation, mood of verbs);

- syntactical (of predicativity, of agent).

Grammatical categories may be influenced by the lexical meaning. Such categories as number, case, voice strongly depend on the lexical meaning. They are proper to certain subclasses of words.

As grammatical categories reflect relations existing in objective reality, different languages may have the same categories. But the system and character of grammatical categories are determined by the grammatical structure of a given language.

 

 

5. Parts of speech as lexico-grammatical classes of words. 3 principles of classifying words into parts of speech.

Parts of speech are grammatical classes of words distinguished on the basis of 3 criteria: semantic, morphological and syntactic, i.e. meaning, form and function.

1. Meaning (Semantic Properties).

Each part of speech is characterized by the general meaning which is an abstraction from the lexical meanings of constituent words. (The general meaning of nouns is substance, the general meaning of verbs is process, etc.)

This general meaning is understood as the categorial meaning of a class of words, or the part-of-speech meaning.

Semantic properties of a part of speech find their expression in the grammatical properties. To sleep, a sleep, sleepy, asleep refer to the same phenomenon of objective reality, but they belong to different parts of speech, as their grammatical properties are different.

So meaning is a supportive criterion which helps to check the purely grammatical criteria, those of form and function.

2. Form (Morphological Properties)

The formal criterion concerns the inflexional and derivational features of words belonging to a given class, i.e. the grammatical categories (the paradigms) and derivational (stem-building, lexico-grammatical) morphemes.

This criterion is not always reliable as many words are invariable and many words contain no derivational affixes. Besides, the same derivational affixes may be used to build different parts of speech: -ly can end an adjective, an adverb, a noun: a daily; -tion can end a noun and a verb: to position.

Because of the limitation of meaning and fonn as criteria we mainly rely on a word's function as a criterion of its class.

3. Function (Syntactic Properties)

Syntactic properties of a class of words are the combinability of words (the distributional criterion) and typical functions in the sentence.

The three criteria of defining grammatical classes of words in English may be placed in the following order: function, form, meaning.

Parts of speech are heterogeneous classes and the boundaries are not clearly cut especially in the area of meaning. Within a part of speech there are subclasses which have all the properties of a given class and subclasses which have only some of these properties and may have features of another class. So a part of speech may be described as a field which includes both central, most typical members, and marginal, less typical members. Marginal areas of different parts of speech may overlap and there may be intermediary elements with contradictory features (statives, modal words, pronouns). Words belonging to different parts of speech may be united by a common feature and constitute a class cutting across other classes (f. ex., determiners). So the part-of-speech classification involves overlapping criteria and scholars single out from 9 to 13 parts of speech in Modern English.

 

 

6. Morphological and syntactico-distributional classifications of words into parts of speech (H.Sweet, O.Jespersen, Ch. Fries.)

Alongside of the three criteria principle of dividing words into grammatical classes there are classifications based on one principle, morphological or syntactic.

The founder of English scientific grammar H.Sweet finds the following classes of words: noun-words, including some pronouns and numerals; adjective-words, including pronouns and numerals; verbs and particles. O.Jespersen names substantives, adjectives, verbs, pronouns and particles. In both cases the term particles denotes words of different classes which have no categories.

The opposite criterion, distributional, is used by the American scholar Ch. Fries. Each class of words is characterized by a set of positions in the sentence, which are defined by substitution testing.

As a result of distributional analysis Ch.Fries singles out four main classes of words, roughly corresponding to nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs, and 15 classes of function words.

 

 

7. Notional and functional classes of words.

Notional parts of speech are open classes - new items can be added to them, they are indefinitely extendable. Functional parts of speech are closed systems, including a limited number of members. They cannot be extended by creating new items.

The main notional parts of speech are nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. Members of these four classes are often connected by derivational relations: strength - strengthen.

Functional parts of speech are prepositions, conjunctions, articles, particles. The distinctive features of functional parts of speech are: 1) very general and weak lexical meaning; 2) obligatory combinability; 3) the function of linking and specifying words.

Pronouns constitute a class of words which takes an intermediary position between notional and functional words. On the one hand, they can substitute for nouns and adjectives, on the other hand, pronouns are used as connectives and specifiers. There may be also groups of closed-system items within an open class (notional, functional and auxiliary verbs).

A word in English is very often not marked morphologically and it is easy for words to pass from one class to another (round as a noun, adjective, verb, preposition). Such words are treated either as lexico grammatical homonyms or as words belonging to one class.

 

 

8. The category of number of the Engliss noun.

The category of number is proper to count nouns only. Usually words which lack a certain category, have only one form, that of the weak member of the opposition. Non-counts may be singular or plural. So subclasses of non-count nouns constitute a lexico-grammatical opposition “singular only - plural only”: snow, joy, news - contents, tongs, police.

The general meaning revealed through the grammatical opposition a book - books is number, or quantity, or “oneness - more than-oneness”. The general meaning revealed througli the lexico-grammatical opposition is “discreteness - non-discreteness”. The opposition “discreteness - non-discreteness” is semantically broader than the opposition “oneness - more-than-oneness”. It embraces both countable and uncountable nouns. Singular presents the noun-referent as a single indiscrete entity. Plural presents the referent as a multiplicity of discrete entities (separate objects - houses; objects consisting of separate parts - scissors; various types - wines, etc.).

 

 

9. The category of case of the English noun.

boy – boy’s  boys – boys’

Approaches to the category of case in English:

English has 2 cases (the limited case theory).

The number of cases in English is more than 2 (the theory of positional cases, the theory of prepositional cases).

There are no cases at all with English nouns.

These approaches are possible due to a difference in the interpretation of case as a grammatical category.

It is based on explicit oppositional approach to the recognition of grammatical categories. H.Sweet, O.Jespersen, Prof. Smirnitski, Prof. Ilyish: Case is a category of a noun expressing relations between the thing denoted by the noun and other things and properties, or actions, and manifested by some formal sign in the noun itself (an inflexion or a zero sign). Case can’t be expressed by the phrase preposition+noun or by word order.

Prof.Blokh: Case is an immanent morphological category of the noun manifested in the forms of noun declension and showing the relations of the nounal referent to other objects and phenomena. It is a morphological-declensional form. So, this is the traditional grammar approach.

The theory of positional cases (Nesfield, Deutschbein, Bryant): the unchangeable forms of the noun are differentiated as different cases due to the functional positions occupied by the noun in the sentence.

e.g. Мать(Им.) видит дочь(Вин.). Дочь (Им.) видит мать(Вин.).

e.g. The mother bought her boy a coat: mother –  the Nominative case, boy – Dative, coat – Accusative.

e.g. The mother bought a/the coat for her boy: boy – Dative.

Thus, the English noun would distinguish, besides the inflexional Genitive case, also purely positional cases: Nominative, Vocative, Dative and Accusative. The number of cases can be reduced to 3 (M.Bryant): Nominative, Genitive and Objective in accordance with pronouns I – me.

J.Lyons:

1) Nominative - Bill died.

2) Accusative – John killed Bill.

3) Dative – John gave the book to Tom.

4) Genitive – It was Harry’s pencil.

5) Instrumental – John killed Bill with a knife.

6) Agentive – John was killed by Bill with a knife.

7) Comitative – John went to town with Mary.

The weak point lies in the fact that they substitute the functional characteristics for the morphological features of the word class.

The strong point: it rightly illustrates the fact that the functional meanings can be expressed in language by other grammatical means, in particular, by word-order (rose garden – garden rose).

The theory of prepositional cases (analytical theory or the theory of analytical forms): combinations of nouns with prepositions in certain object and attributive collocations should be understood as morphological case forms. Prepositions - according to Curme – are grammatical elements equivalent to case forms. There can be as many cases as there are prepositions. e.g. of Peter, with Peter, to Peter – of, with, to are lexically empty words like has done.

Weak points:

1. There can be no oppositions, they are synonyms.

2. A paradigm is limited and there are too many prepositions.

3. Prepositions are not empty words; they are relational words (they show relations).

4. Each prepositional phrase would bear then another, additional name of ‘prepositional case’ and the total number will expand greatly.

The theory of possessive postposition: the case category has been destroyed. The –‘s is a syntactical element which is similar to prepositions. But a preposition begins the construction while the element –‘s closes it. So it can be called post-position.

Strong points:

1. This postpositional element may not be applied to all the nouns, but mostly to nouns denoting living beings. The use of –‘s is optional.

2. One and the same element is used both with nouns in the Singular and in the Plural (man-man’s, men-men’s/ boy-boy’s, boys-boys’). This morpheme is not dependent on the meaning of plurality. Number and case are expressed separately. 3. The post-positional element can be applied not only to nouns: yesterday’s lecture, somebody else’s book, Mary and Peter’s parents (Mary’s and Peter’s parents).

4. There are instances of Absolute Genitive: chemist - chemist’s

Weak points: -‘s can be added to phrases, but these are occasional examples. 94% comprise instances where –‘s is added to single nouns. The function of these nouns is always definite – an attribute.

A compromising view: splitting into 2 (Helen’s book and somebody else’s book are 2 different instances). In some examples –‘s is not a case-forming morpheme. We can’t deny that.

What to choose: the theory of limited cases, positional, analytical theories or to deny the existence of the category of case in modern English?