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Билеты по теор. грамматике

1. Grammatical category and its characteristic features.

M.Y. Blokh defines the grammatical category as "a system of expressing a generalized grammatical meaning by means of paradigmatic correlation of grammatical forms". The forms united into a grammatical category possess a common general meaning that gives a name to the category and each form possesses its own specific meaning that presents a specification of the general meaning and differentiates the form from the other form/forms within the category. The forms lives - lived - will live are united on the basis of the common general grammatical meaning of tense and constitute the grammatical category of tense. Within this category each form has its own specific meaning of tense: present, past and future. The grammatical category of tense presents 'a specific lingual expression of objective (ontological) time, the grammatical category of case presents various relations between the action and its participants, the grammatical category of number in nouns reflects the quantitative relations between homogeneous objects of reality, the grammatical category of mood presents the relations between the action and reality as they are presented by the speaker etc. Such grammatical categories may also be called inherent. Conceptual grammatical categories are universal, they exist in most of the languages though their volume and their scope may vary considerably in various languages. The grammatical category of number is the most universal grammatical category, all speech communities have linguistic means of encoding number, though these means differ greatly in different languages.

A grammatical category is constituted on the basis of contrastive grammatical forms which share a certain grammatical meaning correlated to some general concept (time, number) and differ in more concrete meanings within the scope of the same concept. Such contrastive grammatical forms are called oppositions and all grammatical categories are based on oppositions. The method of oppositional analysis was introduced by Trubetskoy who applied it to the study of phonemes. Now the method of oppositional analysis is widely used in lexicology and grammar.

2. The subject. Means of expressing the subject.

The subject is the independent member of a two-member predication, containing the person component of predicativity. The subject is generally defined as a word or a group of words denoting the thing we speak about. The subject of a simple sentence can be a word, a syntactical word-morpheme or a complex. As a word it can belong to different parts of speech, but it is mostly a noun or a pronoun. A word used as a subject combines the lexical meaning with the structural meaning of УpersonФ. So it is at the same time the structural and the notional subject. We may speak of a secondary subject within a complex. The syntactical word-morphemes there and it may also function as secondary subjects (It being cold, we put on our coats. I knew of there being no one to help them). The analysis of sentences like He was seen to enter the house, is a point at issue. Traditionally the infinitive is said to form part of the complex subject (HeЕto enter). Ilyish maintains that though satisfactory from the logical point of view, this interpretation seems to be artificial grammatically, this splitting of the subject being alien to English. He suggests that only HE should be treated as a subject, whereas was sees to enter represents a peculiar type of compound predicate. Some grammarians (Smirnitsky, Ganshina) speak of definite-personal, indefinite-personal, impersonal sentences, but it is a semantical classification of subjects, not sentences. If we compare the subject in English with that of Russian we shall find a considerable difference between them. In Russian the subject is characterized by a distinct morphological feature - the nominative case, in English it is indicated by the position it occupies in the sentence. In Russian the subject is much less obligatory as a part of the sentence than in English. In English the subject may be a syntactical word-morpheme, a gerund, or a complex, which is alien to Russian.

3. Means of form-building in modern English.

The grammatical meaning finds its expression in a grammatical form which is a means of expressing a grammatical meaning. There are several types of form-building in English. The main subdivision of form-building types is into synthetic and analytical. In a synthetic type a grammatical meaning is expressed within a word, in an analytical type a grammatical meaning is expressed with the help of auxiliary words (plus suffixes). The synthetic types of form-building in English include affixation (reads, shown, books, theirs etc.), sound interchange (take - took, shine - shone) and suppletivity (go - went, be -was, good - better - best}..The only productive type in the present-day English is affixation, but the other two types are no less important, if only because they occur in words which are most frequently used. The analytical type of form-building occupies a very important place in the grammatical structure of English as the language has evolutionized from being mainly synthetical to becoming more and more analytical, and analytical tendencies in the present day English are very strong. There exist the so-called half-analytical structures and the analytical tendencies find their reflection in many spheres of the language. Thus, the habit of expressing lexical and grammatical meanings separately finds its reflection in the fact that very often speakers of English express adverbial meanings not with the help of adverbs but with the help of adverbial phrases Adj. - way where the component way serves as a marker of the adverbial meaning, i.e. fulfils the function of an adverbializer, Let's do it (in) a different way. Such structures are sometimes referred to as analytical adverbs.

4. The predicate as the main means of expressing predication. Types of predicates.

The Predicate is the part of the sentence which expresses a predicative feature attributed to the subject of the sentence. Like the subject, the predicate also carries out a triple function in the sentence: structural, semantic and communicative. Its structural function consists in establishing the syntactic relations with the subject and other parts of the sentence. The semantic function of the predicate finds its expression in attributing certain features to the subject. Its communicative function is manifested in the fact that through the predicate and the expression of predication the sentence becomes a minimal unit of communication. As we have already mentioned the predicate is 'the structural and semantic centre of the sentence. Sentences without a predicate (one member, nominative sentences refer to the periphery of English syntax). In the structure of a simple, two-member sentence the predicate usually carries out the function of the rheme, He disappeared. They arrived. According to the form of expression predicates are divided into verbal and nominal, The moon rose. The moon was pale. There exists one type of predicate which is very frequent in English and which presents a combination of such verbs as have, get, give, take and a verbal noun (give a look, take a bath, have a smoke). Traditionally such cases were referred to a third formal type of predicate, a phraseological predicate. However from the grammatical point of view the most important characteristic of this type of predicate is not so much its phraseological but its analytical character (and all analytical structures are characterized by a certain idiomaticity of their components). The distribution of functions between the components of this predicate is similar to those within an analytical form - the verb expresses the grammatical meaning and the verbal noun serves to name the action, i.e. to express a lexical meaning. It is noteworthy that the verbal nouns which participate in these constructions can be derived from durative verbs only. The semantic difference between the have a look (bite, say) construction and the corresponding verb lies in the fact that it denotes a single episode, an instance of the process whereas the corresponding verb denotes the whole ongoing process. Due to this semantic property the constructions of the have a look type specialize in expressing aspective (iterative) characteristics of the action. It becomes evident if we compare, smoked and had a smoke; He looked at her and He had a look or two at her. The verb just names an action whereas the combination of the verb and a verbal noun points out either a single occurrence (Have a look) or at a number of occurrences (He took several glances in her direction). In spite of the distribution of functions between the verb and the verbal noun similar to analytical forms these structures cannot be treated as analytical forms proper because they do not have the same regularity as analytical forms (we can have a look, but cannot have a stare; we can have a bite, but not an eat, one can take a nap, but cannot take a slumber). Besides the regular verbs such as have, give, get and take some other verbs can occur in these constructions, She flipped a curt nod at Havers; She flashed a look at me. For these reasons such constructions must be treated as half-analytical forms, intermediate between analytical forms of the verb and syntactic combinations of a verb and the so-called 'light' object which corresponds to the general analytical tendency of the English language. The two formal types of the predicate correspond to the two main semantic types: process predicate which expresses the action, the state or the existence of the subject and qualification predicate which expresses the quality (property) of the subject. The process predicate can be further subdivided into several types in accordance with the semantic types of verbs: existential ( There was a tavern in the town), statal (He slept), locative (The elephant lives in India), relational (He had a small ranch) and actional (The car broke down). The qualification predicate has three subtypes: identifying (So you are the man we have been looking for), classifying ( My friend is a student) and characterizing ( My wife is a bit of an actress. He was too German).Structurally the predicate may be divided into simple and compound. Each of the formal types of the predicate may be presented by a simple and a compound structure. We said good- bye - a simple verbal predicate; It was a lovely place -simple nominal predicate. The predicate is compounded by the introduction of modal or aspective components. We started saying good-bye - a compound verbal predicate; It must be a lovely place - a compound nominal predicate. The two types of predicate can be contaminated which results in the formation of the so-called double predicate, He stared at me bewildered. Summing up the characteristics of the English predicate we must mention the following features: its analytical tendency, which is manifested in the existence of analytical and half- analytical forms; its tendency towards synonymization; its transitive character, a direct object is often obligatory in the English sentence.

5. Synthetic means of form-building in modern English.

6. Secondary parts of sentence. Difficulties of their classification.

The theory of the secondary parts (SP) is one of the last developed sections of linguistics. The object is a SP of the sentence, referring to a part of the sentence expressed by a verb, a noun, a substantival pronoun, an adj., a numeral, or an adv., and denoting a thing to which the action passes on, which is a result of the action, in reference to which an action is committed or a property is manifested, or denoting an action as object of another action. An object can refer to any part of speech capable of being a part of the sentence. Attribute is a SP of the sentence modifying a part of the sentence expressed by a noun, a substantival pronoun, a cardinal numeral, and any substantivized word, and characterizing the thing named by these words as to its quality or property. The attribute, as distinct from the object, cannot modify a verb, an adj, an adv, the attribute expresses a property while the object expresses a thing, but they both can modify a noun, a pronoun, a numeral. Adv modifier is a SP of the sentence modifying a part of the sentence expressed by a verb, a verbal noun, an adj, an adv, and serving to characterize an action or a property as to its quality or intensity, or to indicate the way an action is done, the time, the place, cause, purpose, condition, with which the action or the manifestation of the quality is connected.

7. Suffixation as a means of form-building in modern English.

8)Classific-n of subord. clauses:

2 approaches: (1) shows correlation of clauses with parts of the sentence => a) the subject clause, b) the predicative, c) object, d) adverbial, e) attributive.

(2) correlates clauses with parts of speech & distinguishes: a) substantive clause - corresponding to subj., predic. & object clauses, b) adverbial clauses, c) adjectival clauses - corresponding to attribute cl. These 2 classifications correlate!!!

9. The subject matter of theoretical grammar. The grammatical structure of the language.

The grammatical system of a language helps arrange lexical units into coherent utterance (членораздельное высказывание). A coherent utterance is a structure which expresses a certain complete thought and is marked at all the lingual levels: at the phonetic level, at the lexical level, at the level of combinability and at the grammatical level. The grammatical system is a set of devices and their application rules which are employed to produce a coherent utterance; the devices:

As for the morphemes are concerned (the smallest unit capable of having a meaning). There may be lexical morphemes and grammatical morphemes. Lexical morphemes: root and affixational morphemes. Gramm morphemes mark certain grammatical meaning. The variants of the morphemes are called allomorphs.

As for form words they are: prepositions, conjunctions and auxiliary words.

The main unit of the grammatical system is the grammatical category. The grammatical category is an opposition of at least two forms of one and the same lexical unit based on a certain general meaning which is more abstract than the meaning of the members of the opposition. As to the structure of the Gramm category there are several opinions:

E.g. Бархударев: time: Past - non-Past

So some linguists clame that the structure of the gr. cat. is based on the opposition of as many members as there are there, based on the certain general meaning (time: the Past, the Present, the Future), others think that the main principle of the arrangement is the binary opposition/dichotomic opposition.

The grammatical form is the lexical nucleus + a grammatical marker. Sometimes they are referred to as word forms (словоформы)

The grammatical meaning is that which distinguishes one member of a paradigm from another.

Grammar in the systematic conception of language

Language - is a means of forming and storing ideas as reflections of reality and exchanging them in the process of human intercourse. Language incorporates 3 constituent parts which form a unity.

Phonological
Lexical
Grammatical systems

The grammatical system is studied by Grammar.

It can be regarded from the theoretical or practical point of view. The aim of theoretical grammar is to give theoretical description of the grammatical system of a given language, to define its grammatical categories, to study the mechanisms of formation of utterances out of words. Theoretical grammar also considers various controversial (mute) points.

Main grammar schools

the School of Classical Scientific Grammar: Henry Swift, Curme, Kruisinga.
the School of American Structural or Descriptive linguistics: Bloomfield, Wells, Charles Fries, Hocket, Pike, Traiger & Smith.
the School of Transformational or Generative Grammar: Harris, Chomski.
the School of Russian (Soviet) linguists: Виноградов, Смирницкий, Воронцова, Бархударов, Реформацкий, Ильин, Солнцев.

The systematic character of language

The special stress is laid on the systematic character of language. The systematic approach was worked down by Бодуэн де Куртене, Фердинанд де Соссюр (swiss, outlined the definition).

Outlined the difference between:

Language proper Speech proper

A system of means of expression The realization of the system of language

in the process of interaction

Two fundamental types of relations between linguistic units:

Syntagmatic Paradigmatic

Linear relations between units Intra-systemic relations. They find

In a segmental sequence their expression in the fact that each

(Morphemes in a word, ling. unit is included in a set of similar

words in a sentence ) units with common formal and

functional properties

(Paradigm of forms)

Another approach to the analysis of language as a kind of system, language can be looked upon as a hierarchy of levels:

Level of text, it's the main linguistic unit.

Level of SPU (It is made up of sentences, usually one sentence. SPU can coincide with paragraph in text, also exist in oral speech.)

Proposemic level (Sentences nominate situation or events and express predication. Their main function is that they show the relation of the denoted situation or event to reality (time or modality). Sentences are predicative units.)

Phrasemic level (Phrases are word combinations, they nominate complex phenomena)

Leximic level (Words are nominative units, because they nominate things and phenomena. They are built up by morphemes.)

morphemic level (Morphemes are the smallest meaningful units built up by phonemes or one phoneme.)

phonemic level (Phonemes are meaningless units, their function is differential.)

2 levels are central: words level and sentence level.

They are studied by morphology and syntax. Thus, morphology deals with morphemic structure and combinability, classification of words. Syntax - with sentences.

10. Syntax as part of Grammar. Main Units of English syntax.

ThereТs a debate about the precise (точный, определенный) status of syntax as a part of grammar.

1) Some linguists state that it should deal with the function and the formation of word-groups within the sent-s. This approach is characteristic of early English syntax (18-19^th cent.), which was concerned only with analysis of word-groups, their structure and relations between their elements.

2) Other linguists think that syntax should study only the structure of sent-s.

3) ThereТs also a group of scholars who think that syntax should deal with the structure of both word-groups and sent-s. It is the most reasonable one and has actually prevailed in modern linguistics.

Смирницкий: The analysis of the sentence structure must be regarded as the main problem of syntax; while the word-groupsТ is secondary.

Joining the words into word-groups is only the 1^st step which precedes the formation of a sentence.

A word-group is not complete either structurally or semantically => It canТt be used as a unit of communication.

A sent. can function as an independent utterance, but a word-group functions only as an element of a sent.

Therefore, sent-s are units of speech, while word-groups are bricks in a sentence structure.

The fundamental feature that distinguishes a sent. from a word-group is that sent. is always associated with a certain intonation pattern (itТs either a statement, or request, etc.) A sent. without intonation canТt function as a unit of speech; it remains a mere combination of words.

Basic English sentence patterns contain a verb in its finite form.

The presence of a verb in a sent. is characteristic not only of English, but also of all other European lang-s.

Sent-s without verbs are short and convey only fragmentary information, the thought canТt be developed and elaborated unless thereТs a verb in the sent.

When the noun and the verb in the finite form follow each other in the sent., they become the subject and the predicate - the 2 main parts of which basic sent-s are built. They can accompanied by other words, and usually are, but this doesnТt change their status as the main parts of the sent. For this reason the combination of subject & predicate is excluded by many linguists from the domain of word-groups. Some linguists suggested calling this combination a clause to distinguish it from a word-group.

In most general terms, a word-group is a logical and grammatical combination of 2 or more notional words which do not form a sent.

A sentence may be defined as the basic unit of communication, grammatically organized and expressing a complete thought. It is characterized by predication (correlation between the utterance & reality). The most universal means of expressing predication is intonation; under certain circumstances (a broader context) any word-gr. may become a sent. But in most cases predication is conveyed through the finite form of the verb (which expresses person, number, mood, tense, aspect, time correlation, voice).

Until recently, the sent. was considered the upper unit of investigation. Since the sent. is a unit of speech it is seldom used in isolation. It is usually a member of a sequence of sent-s, which form a larger unit. This larger unit appears under different names in publications of modern linguists: a paragraph, a discourse, a text. The new trend in linguistics, that studies units larger than a sent., is known under different names, too: hyposyntax, textgrammar, narrative grammar, discourse analysis, narrative analysis.

Narrative analysis studies lexical & grammatical means which help to organize the structure of a text. The part of narrative analysis, which is concerned with gram. means, is called text grammar.

So, these successive syntactic units form an hierarchy in the following order:

Word-groups => sentences => paragraphs

11. Correlation btw various means of form-building in ME.

There are two principal types of form-building means: synthetic and analytical.

The synthetic form-building means is the expression of the relation of words in the sentence by means of a change in the word itself. There are three types of the synthetic form-building means:

- affixation

- sound interchange (morphological alteration)

- suppletion (suppletive means)

Affixation is the most productive means of expressing a grammatical meaning. The number of grammatical suffixes is small (8). They are:

-s, -ed, -ing, -er, -est, -en, -m (him, them, whom), zero.

Sound interchange is a change of a sound in the root of the word. There exist two kinds of sound interchange - vowel and consonant ones (spend - spent). This type of form-building means is non-productive.

In suppletive forms there is a complete change of the phonetic shape of the root. Suppletive forms belonging to the paradigm of a certain word were borrowed from different sources.

Suppletive forms are found in the paradigm of such words as TO BE, TO GO, degrees of comparison of the adjectives GOOD, BAD and in case-forms of some pronouns.

Блох notes that suppletivity can be recognized in the paradigm of some modal verbs too: CAN - BE ABLE, MUST - HAVE TO, MAY - BE ALLOWED.

Moreover, he says that it can be observed in pronouns (ONE - SOME), NOUNS (INFORMATION Ц PIECES OF INFORMATION, MAN - PEOPLE).

Suppletive forms are few in number, non-productive, but very important, for they are frequently used

Analytical forms were described as a combination of an auxiliary and a notional word.

This definition is not precise enough and due to its ambiguity such word-combinations as TO THE CHILD, MORE INTERESTING were treated as analytical forms.

To define a true analytical form the theory of splitting of functions should be taken into account.

There must be a splitting of functions between the elements of an analytical form. The first (auxiliary) element is the bearer of a grammatical meaning only. It is completely devoid of lexical meaning, and it is the second (notional) element that is the bearer of lexical meaning.

This process can be complete (perfect form) or incomplete (continuous form). The idiomaticity of an analytical form is a characteristic of a true analytical form. An analytical form functions as a grammatical form of a word.

Бархударов notices that Уanalytical forms have a specific feature, a specific morpheme which is called a discontinuous morpheme which comprises an auxiliary word and a form-building signal of a notional word. The root of a notional word is not included in the discontinuous morpheme (HAVEа + -en ; BE + -ing).

Analytical forms are much more typical of ME. Synthetic form-building means are few in number but widely used. Some grammatical suffixes are very productive.Analytical forms comprise synthetic forms. Although sound interchange is non-productive it is extensively used through the paradigm of the irregular verbs. Though suppletive forms are found through the paradigm of very few words they are very frequently used words.

So we should conclude that English cannot be called a purely analytical language. It is mainly analytical. The famous Danish linguist Jespersen called English an ideal language. He even developed the idea of superiority of analytical languages which reflects a more developed mentality.

12. Text grammar as part of linguistics. Basic units.

Text grammar is a rather new branch of linguistics. It deals with the text. It considers the text the highest unit of speech. If we consider isolated sentences in a discourse, we find that itТs very rare that one sentence expresses the complete idea, which is clear without any context.

Text is an ordered sequence of sentences combined of various types of logical, lexical and grammatical cohesion conveying structurally organized info. Text is a product of oral and written speech. Galperin recognizes the existence only of written text.

Those who studied the text as a unit came to the conclusion that a text as a linguistic unit has its own semantic and structural categories:

The main semantic categories:

- Information(Any text should carry complete information; it should express a certain communication.)

- Profundity(the text should have some depth, some food for thinking, some idea, which may either be expressed, or may be understood implicitly)

- Presupposition(there should be some level at which communicate otherwise there may be complete misunderstanding.)

- Completeness(The text should be complete in meaning, it shouldnТt be abrupt)

Structural Cathegories:

1) Integration (целостность)

- use certain logical connections and connectors, a certain composition, a certain word order.

2) Cohesion (свя зь)

- necessary property of any text which differentiates it from disconnected utterances. There are various means of text cohesion (когезия ): syntactic, semantic, stylistic.

- BLOCH: gram.connectives. 1) Conjunction-like connectives - coordinative, subordinative conjunctions and adverbial and parenthetical sentence connectors such as: yet, then, however, moreover. 2) Substitutional connection Ц use of substitutes: pronouns.

3) Retrospection & Prospection

- (means of text cohesion). Retrospection refers the reader to the preceding events, prospection Ц to the following events

4) Continuum

- the text should continue without breaking, it shouldnТt be abrupt. Deictic (свя зующие) elements, tense forms, number forms, mood forms

5) Polyphony

- a good text usually has more than one line of thinking, of reasoning, which is most of all important for fiction

13. Analtyical forms and their role in form-building.

ItТs more productive in Modern Eng. Traditionally an analytical form is defined this way: it consists of an auxiliary word and the basic element, which is a notional word. This definition is ambiguous. And for that reason some strange forms are treated as analytical: Combinations of prepositions with nouns were treated as different analytical forms: to the child was treated as the Dative case of a noun. by the child was treated as the Instrumental case of a noun. Many linguists criticized this approach to defining analytical forms and certain theories have been worked out to differentiate analytical forms and free word-combinations.

1. The theory of the splitting of functions. According to this theory in a true analytical form the auxiliary element should be the bearer of the grammatical meaning only. It is devoid of lexical meaning. It is the notional word that is the bearer of lexical meaning. According to this approach there exist 2 types of analytical forms: complete and incomplete. In aа complete analytical form the splitting process has completed and the aux.element is completely devoid of lex.meaning. e.g. In the form of the Perfect the verb to have has no meaning of possession. In an incomplete analyt.form the aux.element retains traces of its lex.meaning. e.g. The form of the Continuous where the auxiliary be retains traces of it's meaning of the state.

2.Acc. to the second approach a true analyt.form is idiomatic in characteràthe overall meaning of the form is not immediately dependent on the individual meaning of its constituents. ItТs not a sum of meanings of its components. Besides an analyt.form also functions as a grammatical form of a single word. If we proceed from this approach we should conclude that such phrases as most interesting are not an analytical form, because it is not idiomatic enough.

3. Acc. to Бархударов a true analyt.form should posses a discontinuous morpheme (расчлененная морфема) which is a main distinguishing feature of an analyt.form (Блох doesnТt share this view). A discontinuous mrph. Consists of 2 elements - an auxiliary word and the f.-b. sign of a notional word. The root-mrph of the notional word. is not included. According to Бархударов there are only 3 analytical forms (Perfect, Passive, Continuous): Have+en (insymbolic denotation) in form of the Perfect. Ex. have arrived Be+en in form of the Passive Be+ing in form of the Continuous. And from this point of view such phrases as shall take, most interesting, by the child are not analytical forms. They are free word-combination.

14. Various classifications of sent-s.

(I) Structural

Sent-s are divided into simple & composite; composite sent-s are divided into compound & complex.

(II) Simple sent-s are divided into 4 major classes (their use correlates with different communicative functions).

1^st class: declarative sent-s, or statements. The subject is always present and usually precedes the verb.

2^nd class: interrogative sent-s, or questions. They are marked by one or more of the following criteria:

~ the aux. verb is placed in front of the subj.;

~ the initial position of an interrogative УwhФ-element (what, who, which, etc.)

3^rd class: imperative sent-s, or commands. Normally they have no grammatical subj., the verb is in the imperative mood.

4^th class: exclamative sent-s, or exclamations. They are introduced by what / how & have no invertion of the subj. and predicate.

NB: The structure of a certain sent. may be used for other communicative purposes, than those which are characteristic of the sent. of this class.

Ex.: The form of the statement may be used in questions (You will speak to John?)

The rhetorical question which functions forceful statement (Is that a reason for despair?)

() extended / unextended

A sent. which consists only of subj. & predicate - unextended.

If it contains one or more secondary parts (attributes, obj., adv. modifiers), the sent. is extended.

(IV) complete / incomplete

Complete sent. contains all structurally necessary elements:

- the subject + the predicate (if itТs a 2-member sent.);

- the subject + the predicate + object (if the predicate is expressed by trans. verb);

1-member sent. can also be complete and incomplete; in the imperative sent. verb is a necessary element, e.g. УStop!Ф vs. incomplete (usu. - in direct, coll. speech, make no sense outside their context, e.g. УYoursФ).

Incomplete (elliptical) sent-s Ц structures in which one of the main parts (subj. or pred.) or both are omitted / ellipted.

Elliptical sent-s are divided into 2 types:

- 1^st type: they are dependent on what has gone before (УJohnФ may be a reply to 2 questions: УWho did it?Ф & УWho did you see?Ф). These sent-s are contextually conditioned. In other words, their incomplete structure can be restored from a previous sent. This kind of ellipsis is called contextual or syntagmatic.

- 2^nd type: they donТt depend on what has gone before. Their structure can be restored from the paradigm of the analogous complete sent. This incompletence is purely grammatical as the structure doesnТt depend on the previous context. This kind of ellipsis is called grammatical or paradigmatic. Can be of 2 subtypes: 1) structures that can be completed in only 1 way; 2) structures which can be completed with the help of several paradigms (Cigarette?). Meaning depends on the situation or the situational context.

*1-member sent. can also be complete and incomplete; in the imperative sent. verb is a necessary element, e.g. УStop!Ф vs. incomplete (usu. - in direct, coll. speech, make no sense outside their context, e.g. УYoursФ).

15. Parts of speech and different principles of their classification.

The general definition of a part of speech: it is a lexical-grammatical word class which is characterized by a general abstract grammatical meaning, expressed in certain grammatical markers.

Within a part of speech similar grammatical features are common to all words belonging to this class.

A part of speech is a mixed lexical-grammatical phenomenon, because:

1) Words are characterized by individual lexical meanings.

2) Each generalized class of words (noun/verb/adj., etc) has a unifying abstract gram. meaning, for ex.: noun - substance, verb - process, adjective - quality of substance, adverb - quality of process.

3) Some parts of speech are capable of representing gram. meaning in a set of formal exponents; for ex.: the plural of nouns is expressed with suffix Цs. *this feature is not universal in all languages; for ex.: in synthetic lang-s, adj-s, numerals, pronouns are inflected in the categories of case, number & gender; while in analytical lang-s (Eng.) these word classes are devoid of gram. markers with the exception of a few pronouns.

Parts of speech are classified within the domain of morphology.

Modern classification of parts of speech is traced back to ancient Greek. Later this classification was applied to Latin and thus it found its way in modern languages.

The present day classification of parts of speech is severely criticized, when itТs applied to languages the structure of which is different to the structure of the Latin language. So the criticism is easily justified.

On the other hand the traditional division of words into parts of speech seems quiet natural and easy to understand & remember from the logical point of view.

So itТs not the classification itself that is wrong but it must be the principles of classification that should be criticized and reviewed.

The existing principles:

The semantic approach (based on the meaning).

In many schools the semantic principle was used for p/of/sp classification. It is based on the universal forms of human thought which are reflected in 3 main categorial meanings of words:

1) substance (предметность)

2) process (процессуальность)

3) property (свойства, качества)

In Medieval linguistics (Пор-Роя ль, 1660) p/of/sp are defined as invariants of the substance-logical plane.

However, this principle is open to criticism; it doesnТt always work; it can be hard to define a categorial meaning of a word

e.g. whitenessа - is it substance of a noun or property of an adjective?

action - it denotes process, but it isnТt a verb

The formal approach

Only form should be used as a criterion for the classification of the p/of/sp. (Henry Sweet, Cruisinga).

They distinguished between two classes of words:

declinable indeclinable (static forms)

(changeable forms) articles, prepositions, must

This criterion is also unreliable. It doesnТt take into account the way a word functions in the sentence. Must functions as many other verbs, for instance shall which has a declinable form.

This approach has limitations:

1) p/of/sp are morphological classes (Фортунатов), which means they are words with a similar paradigm. But this fact cannot be applied to the lang. such as Chinese, where morph. system is non-existent or poorly-developed.

2) p/of/sp are gr. word classes (Реформатский), he takes into account their morph an syntactical properties (form and function). This is the borderline between the second and the third approaches

The formal-semantic approach

Grammarians tried to take into consideration meaning, form & function.

It appears that in analytical, where English belong, itТs impossible to place a word without analyzing it in the sent. In addition to the analysis of the morphological features of this word.

This approach was developed by Russian linguists (Vinogradov, Smirnitsky, Ilyish).

There are three principles on which this classification is based:

1. meaning

the meaning common to all the words of a given class and constituting its essence.

e.g. thingness of nouns

process of verbs

2. form

the morphological characteristics of a type of word

e.g. noun is characterized by the category of number

prepositions, conjunctions and others are characterized by invariability

3. function

the syntactical properties of a type of word

a) the method of combining with other words (deals with phrases)

b) its function in the sentence (deals with sentences)

The syntactic (functional) approach

Only the syntactic function of a word should be taken into consideration as a criterion for p/of/sp classification.

* Charles FriesТ classification of words

Ch. F worked out the principles of syntactico-distributional (s-d) classification of English words. He was the follower of the famous linguist L. Bloomfield.

The s-d classification of words is based on the study of their combinability by means of substitution testing. The testing results in developing the standard model of four main УpositionsФ of notional words in the English sentence:

noun (N)
verb (V)
adjective (A)
adverb (D)

For his materials he chose tape recorded spontaneous conversation (250, word entries or 50 hours of talk). The words isolated from the records were tested on the three typical sentences (also taken from the tapes), which are used as substitution test-frames.

Frame A. The concert was good (always). [The thing and its quality at a given time]

Frame B. The clerk remembered the tax (suddenly). [УActor-action-thing acted uponФ Цcharacteristic of the action]

Frame C. The team went there. [УActor-action-direction of the actionФ]

As a result of those tests the following lists of words were established:

Class 1. (A) concert, coffee, taste, container, difference, etc. (B) clerk, husband, supervisor, etc.; tax, food, coffee, etc. (C) team, husband, woman, etc.

Class 2. (A) was, seemed, became, etc. (B) remembered, wanted, saw, suggested etc. (C) went, came, ran, lived, worked, etc.

Class 3. (A) good, large, necessary, foreign, new empty, etc.

Class 4. (A) there, here, always, then, sometimes, etc. (B) clearly, sufficiently, especially, repeatedly, soon, etc. (C) there, back, out, etc.; rapidly, eagerly, confidently, etc.

All these words can fill in the positions of the frames without affection their general structural meaning. Repeated interchanges in the substitutions of the primarily identified positional (notional) words in diff. collocations determine their morphological characteristics.

Functional words are exposed in the cited process as being unable to fill in the positions of the frames without destroying their structural meaning. These words form limited groups totaling 154 units. They can be distributed among the three main sets:

1) specifiers of notional words (determiners of nouns, modal verbs, functional modifiers and intensifiers of adjectives and adverbs)

2) interpositional elements, determining the relation of notional words to one another (prepositions and conjunctions)

3) refer to the sentence as a whole (question words, attention-getting words, words of affirmation and negation, sentence introducers (it, there))

**The Parts of Speech in English:

Traditionally:

1. The Noun (categories of number, case and def./indef.)

2. The Adj (the category of degrees of comparison)

3. The verb (the tense, the aspect, the voice, the time-correlation, the mood, the person, the number)

4. The Adverb (the d of comp)

5. The Pronoun (the notional parts of speech (declinable))

6. The Numeral Form (Function) Words

7. The prepositions

8. The Conjunctions

9. The Particles

10. The Interjection

11. The Modal Verbs

12. The Sentence Words (Yes! No!)

Some disputable problems:

1) The Adj - s which begin with УaФ (afraidЕ) and УillФ - where to refer them? Sometimes they are included in the group of adj as a special kind of predicative adj - s. Another point of view: they constitute a special PoS which is called the category of state.

2) Where to refer pronouns? notional or form words. But theyТre somehow in between. They are more notional than functional because they are very important text building elements mostly anaphoric but sometimes cataphoric

3) The Article. In some grammars we find that the A is considered to be a part of speech and + in some modern grammars.

15. Parts of speech and different principles of their classification.

The general definition of a part of speech: it is a lexical-grammatical word class which is characterized by a general abstract grammatical meaning, expressed in certain grammatical markers.

Within a part of speech similar grammatical features are common to all words belonging to this class.

A part of speech is a mixed lexical-grammatical phenomenon, because:

1) Words are characterized by individual lexical meanings.

Parts of speech are classified within the domain of morphology.

Modern classification of parts of speech is traced back to ancient Greek. Later this classification was applied to Latin and thus it found its way in modern languages.

On the other hand the traditional division of words into parts of speech seems quiet natural and easy to understand & remember from the logical point of view.

So itТs not the classification itself that is wrong but it must be the principles of classification that should be criticized and reviewed.

The existing principles:

The semantic approach (based on the meaning).

In many schools the semantic principle was used for p/of/sp classification. It is based on the universal forms of human thought which are reflected in 3 main categorial meanings of words:

4) substance (предметность)

5) process (процессуальность)

6) property (свойства, качества)

In Medieval linguistics (Пор-Роя ль, 1660) p/of/sp are defined as invariants of the substance-logical plane.

However, this principle is open to criticism; it doesnТt always work; it can be hard to define a categorial meaning of a word

e.g. whitenessа - is it substance of a noun or property of an adjective?

action - it denotes process, but it isnТt a verb

The formal approach

Only form should be used as a criterion for the classification of the p/of/sp. (Henry Sweet, Cruisinga).

They distinguished between two classes of words:

declinable indeclinable (static forms)

(changeable forms) articles, prepositions, must

This criterion is also unreliable. It doesnТt take into account the way a word functions in the sentence. Must functions as many other verbs, for instance shall which has a declinable form.

This approach has limitations:

3) p/of/sp are morphological classes (Фортунатов), which means they are words with a similar paradigm. But this fact cannot be applied to the lang. such as Chinese, where morph. system is non-existent or poorly-developed.

4) p/of/sp are gr. word classes (Реформатский), he takes into account their morph an syntactical properties (form and function). This is the borderline between the second and the third approaches

The formal-semantic approach

Grammarians tried to take into consideration meaning, form & function.

It appears that in analytical, where English belong, itТs impossible to place a word without analyzing it in the sent. In addition to the analysis of the morphological features of this word.

This approach was developed by Russian linguists (Vinogradov, Smirnitsky, Ilyish).

There are three principles on which this classification is based:

4. meaning

the meaning common to all the words of a given class and constituting its essence.

e.g. thingness of nouns

process of verbs

5. form

the morphological characteristics of a type of word

e.g. noun is characterized by the category of number

prepositions, conjunctions and others are characterized by invariability

6. function

the syntactical properties of a type of word

a) the method of combining with other words (deals with phrases)

b) its function in the sentence (deals with sentences)

The syntactic (functional) approach

Only the syntactic function of a word should be taken into consideration as a criterion for p/of/sp classification.

* Charles FriesТ classification of words

Ch. F worked out the principles of syntactico-distributional (s-d) classification of English words. He was the follower of the famous linguist L. Bloomfield.

noun (N)
verb (V)
adjective (A)
adverb (D)