Morphological units

Objects and Tasks of Grammar

Grammar may be regarded рассмотрена either from a practical or a theoretical point of view. From the practical point of view, grammar is the art of language. The main object of practical grammar is to help the student to be master of the native or foreign language. From the theoretical point of view, grammar is the science of language. The task of theoretical grammar is to provide обеспечить an insight проникновение into the structure of the language under examination in the light of the general principles of linguistics.

The Main Branches of Grammar

The field of grammar is generally divided into two domains: morphology and syntax. Morphology studies the grammatical structure of words and the categories realized by them. Thus, a morphological analysis will divide the word girls into the root girl and the inflection -s, which realizes the plural number. Syntax studies the grammatical relations between words and other units within the sentence.

Most of a traditional grammar of English was devoted посвящена to aspects of morphology. Modern grammar of English is given over to syntax. There is relatively little in the English language to be accounted for under the heading of inflectional morphology, and in some grammars the notion of morphology is dispensed with altogether, its concerns being handled as the 'syntax of the word'.

MORPHOLOGICAL UNITS

Grammatical units represent bilateral elements possessing a directly observable material structure and directly unobservable content (or meaning). They form a hierarchy of interconnected elements, a rank scale. The position of a unit on this or that step of the rank scale depends on its size: the longer is the unit, the higher is its position on the scale.

The lowest grammatical unit is the morpheme. L. Bloomfield defines the morpheme as 'a minimal meaningful unit'. It is not clear from his definition what kind of meaning is understood. There are, as is well-known, inflectional, i.e. grammatical, and derivational, i.e. lexical morphemes. Inflectional morphemes form new grammatical forms of the same word, e.g.:

play -plays -played.

Derivational morphemes form one word from another, e.g.:

govern — government.

A comparison of inflectional and derivational morphemes has led J. Muir to the conclusion that they are radically different. Inflectional morphemes are not recursive; only one inflectional morpheme may occur in the structure of any word, e.g.: runs. Derivational morphemes may be recursive, e.g.:

boy + ish + ness.

If both a derivational and an inflectional morpheme occur in the structure of a word, then the derivational morpheme must precede the inflectional morpheme, e.g.:

novel + ist +s.

Inflectional morphemes form morphological sets, e.g.:

eat — eats - ate - eating ~ eaten.

Derivational morphemes do not form morphological sets and so cannot be fully accounted for in grammar; they may be considered to be on the border of grammar and lexicology. Russian linguists single out word formation (cjioeoo6po3oeanue) into a specific branch of linguistics, clearly distinct both from morphology and lexicology.

An inflectional morpheme as a unit of morphology is an exponent of grammatical meaning. The grammatical meaning of an inflectional morpheme is purely relational: it is revealed only by contrast with some other morpheme. Thus_; the morpheme -ed is felt to render the meaning of the past tense because it is opposed to the morpheme -(e)s of the present tense.

Inflectional morphemes are always bound morphemes. They cannot occur alone; they always form part of a grammeme (or word form).

The next grammatical unit on the rank scale is the word (a free naming unit) and its grammeme [I.B. Khlebnikova], When we speak of a word as a grammeme we disregard its lexical meaning but concentrate our attention on the kind of grammatical information it gives, e.g. the grammeme speaks shows the present tense, third person, singular number. A grammeme may be analytical in structure, e.g. has spoken. An analytical grammeme is equivalent to one word on the rank scale as it expresses one lexical and one grammatical meaning.

Inflectional morphemes and grammemes are characterized by a definite material structure of their own. (I.B. Khlebnikova does not recognize the existence of the so-called zero inflectional morphemes, as 'zero', in her opinion, means no morpheme at all.). They can be registered and enumerated in any language. Therefore, the system of morphological units is a closed system.

Not every word, especially in analytical languages, is at the same time a grammeme. For instance, the noun milk is not a grammeme because it is not marked either for the grammatical category of case or the grammatical category of number common to English nouns. Nevertheless, I.B. Khlebnikova holds that every word is a unit of grammar as a part of speech. Parts of speech are usually considered a lexico-grammatical category since, on the one hand, they show lexical groupings of words; on the other, these groupings present generalized classes, each with a unified abstract meaning of its own. The latter makes parts of speech a grammatical notion since wide-range abstraction is characteristic of grammar.

The linguistic relationships between forms fall into two fundamentally distinct types: syntagmatic and paradigmatic. R. Quirk, S. Greenbaum, G. Leech and L Svartvik call syntagmatic relationships chain relationships, paradigmatic relationships -choice relationships. The chain relationship is an 'and' relationship, whereas the choice relationship is an 'or' relationship. Thus, if two units X and Y occur one after another in a larger unit, they are in a chain relationship: X + Y, e.g.:

The rain has stopped (Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English).

But if X and 7 can be substituted for one another in a larger unit, they are in a choice relationship: X/Y, e.g.:

I saw the cat/dog/house (P.H. Matthews).

Inflectional morphemes, words as parts of speech, and grammemes are paradigmatic by nature. They unite similar units on one paradigmatic axis to form a paradigm in which units relate to each other by association with some category. For instance, the inflectional morphemes and grammemes of tense form a paradigm the members of which are associated on the ground of the grammatical category of tense e.g.: plays - played - will play. Words as parts of speech are characterized by a set of paradigms predetermined by the part of speech nature of the word, e.g. nouns have number and case paradigms.

But inflectional morphemes, words as parts of speech, and grammemes are not purely paradigmatic. They possess certain syntagmatic characteristics, too. The syntagmatic properties of inflectional morphemes are realized at the grammeme level; the syntagmatic properties of words as parts of speech and grammemes are realized at the word combination, sentence, and sentencoid levels.

The paradigmatics of inflectional morphemes, words as parts of speech, and grammemes makes up the morphological system of the language [I.B. Khlebnikova].

№3.

grammatical category is a system of expressing a generalized обобщенный categorial meaning by means of paradigmatic correlation of grammatical forms. In other words, it is a unity единство of a generalized grammatical meaning and the forms of its expression.

The main notions of grammar are: grammatical category, gr form and gr meaning.

Grammatical meanings based on the phenomena of extra linguistic reality, e.g. the meaning of number in nouns that reflects the existing distinctions between one and more than one.

2. Grammatical meanings based on the subjective attitude of
the speaker to the phenomena of extra linguistic reality, e.g. the
meaning of mood in verbs. The indicative mood presents the action
as real; the imperative and the conjunctive — as something desired,
probable, or problematic.

3. Grammatical meanings predetermined linguistically, e.g. the
singular or plural form of the demonstrative pronouns this and that
depends on the singular or plural form of the following nouns. Cf:

this house - these houses (R, Murphy),

that room - those rooms (R. Murphy).

The classification will only profit if every stage of analysis is based on one principle. At the first stage, we classify grammatical meanings in accordance with the presence or absence of extra linguistic basis into those that reflect extra linguistic reality and those that have nothing to do with extra linguistic reality. At the second stage, grammatical meanings that reflect extra linguistic reality are further subdivided in accordance with the presence or absence of subjective evaluation of the speaker into subjective-objective and objective.

Each part of speech has a specific set of grammatical meanings. The English noun, for instance, has the grammatical meanings of number and case, the adjective - the grammatical meanings of degrees of comparison.

However, in view of the fact that parts of speech possess the structure of a field, with a compact core and a diffuse periphery, the grammatical meanings characteristic of a certain part of speech are not obligatorily to be found in all the words of the given part of speech. They are always common to the words forming the centre of this or that part of speech, i.e. the words that possess the lexico-grammatical meaning of the pan of speech in question. Thus, the grammatical meaning of number is characteristic only of countable nouns that denote things in the proper sense of the word. Uncountable nouns, which have the grammatical meaning of 'thingness', lack the grammatical meaning of number.

Grammatical meaning is always realized in this or that form.

So, grammatical meaning is a very abstract generalized meaning which is linguistically expressed (there is always some indicator):

• e.g. pens –meaning of plurality; indicator – the morpheme
• e.g. has been working – the grammatical form indicates continuity and perfection
• e.g. the category of case. The grammatical meaning is here motivated. It shows relations of objects in extra-linguistic world:
• Peter’s head (part of a whole)
• Peter’s arrival (subjective Genitive relations)
• Peter’s arrest (objective Genitive relations)

№4. Oppositions can be classified into qualitative types:

• - privative (study - studied),
• - gradual (large – larger - largest),
• - equipollent (am - is - are),

and by the number of opposemes into binary, ternary, quaternary, etc.

N. S. Trubetzkoy, a member of the Prague Linguistic Circle, developed it at the turn of the 20^th century for the purposes of phonological research; later it became widely employed in the analysis of grammatical categories. Opposition members are characterized by two types of features: common features and differential features. Common features serve as the basis for uniting the grammatical forms within the same paradigm; in the example above, the two forms, cat and cats, are paradigmatically united as forms of one and the same word, sharing the categorical grammatical meaning of number. Differential featuresserve to differentiate the members of an opposition; for example, the grammatical form of the plural, cats, has an inflection, or a grammatical suffix, which the form of the singular, cat, has not.

И.С. Трубецким, представителем Пражского лингвистического кружка, в начале ХХ века в приложении к анализу фонологических единиц и стал позже активно использоваться для анализа грамматических категорий. Члены оппозиции характеризуются наличием двух типов признаков (черт, характеристик): общих признаков и дифференциальных (различительных) признаков. Общие признаки служат основой объединения грамматических форм в рамках одной парадигмы; в вышеприведенном примере две грамматические формы, cat – cats, объединяются в рамках единой парадигмы как формы одного и того же слова, передающие категориальное грамматическое значение числа. Дифференциальные признаки служат для разграничения членов оппозиции; в парадигме числа существительного грамматическая форма множественного числа, cats, обладает формальным показателем числа – окончанием, или грамматическим суффиксом, а форма единственного числа, cat, характеризуется его отсутствием.

On the basis of various combinations of common and differential features, several types of oppositions are distinguished. The prevalent type in English grammar is a binary privative opposition. The term “ binary ” means, that the opposition consists of two members, or forms; besides binary oppositions, there are oppositions, that may include more than two members.

По соотношению общих и дифференциальных признаков различают несколько типов оппозиций. Преобладающим типом оппозиций в грамматике английского языка является привативная бинарная оппозиция. Термин «бинарная» означает, что подобная оппозиция состоит их двух членов, или форм; помимо бинарных существуют также оппозиции, состоящие из более чем двух членов.

Besides privative oppositions, there are gradual and equipollent oppositions, which are minor types in morphology. Gradual oppositions are formed by a series of members which are distinguished not by the presence or absence of a differential feature, but by the degree of it. A gradual morphological opposition in English can be identified only in the plane of content in the category of comparison, cf.: big – bigger - biggest. Equipollent oppositions are formed by members, which are distinguished by a number of their own features. An equipollent morphological opposition in English can be identified in the plane of expression in the paradigms of suppletive forms, for example, in the correlation of the person and number forms of the verb be: am – are – is (was – were).

Помимо привативных оппозиций выделяют градуальные и эквиполентные оппозиции; они являются второстепенными в морфологии. Градуальные оппозиции образуются наборами членов, которые различаются не по наличию/отсутствию дифференциального признака, а по степени его выраженности. В морфологии градуальные оппозиции могут быть выделены лишь в плане содержания в рамках корреляции форм степеней сравнения, ср.: big – bigger - biggest. Эквиполентные оппозиции образуются наборами компонентов, которые отличаются друг от друга собственными положительными признаками. В морфологии английского языка эквиполентные оппозиции могут быть выделены лишь в плане выражения в парадигмах с супплетивными формами, например, в соотношении форм числа и лица глагола be: am – are – is (was – were).