Parts of language. Grammar as a part of language

Language can be viewed upon

Language – a system of linguistic signs following certain rules that are the base for speech.

Speech – the manifestation of language.

Creativity of language is rule-governed, and this is a characteristic feature of all levels of language.

Linguistic competence

· =knowledge

· Based on a set of rules according to which language works

· That enables to create and understand new utterances

Language – a structured system of signs used for forming, storing and exchanging information in the process of human communication.

Phonological, grammatical and lexical systems are parts of language. They are closely connected. This can be proved because they study the same object but from different points of view.

Phonetics presents the material side of language.
Lexicon deals with naming the most relevant things of the material and non-material world (the world inside us).
Grammar helps organize thought according to the rules of a concrete language.

Sometimes grammatical forms make some changes in the lexical meaning of words.

e. g. to go is a verb of motion but in its continuous form and followed by an infinitive it means 'intention to do something in the immediate future'.

A case when a grammar form gives rise to a new lexical unit is called lexicalization.

Historically grammar inflexions are derived (производны) from pronouns (местоимения) and prepositions (предлоги). When words become grammar endings it is a case of grammaticalization.

GRAMMAR

Grammar is a set of principles by which a language functions.

As a linguistic discipline grammar is divided into practical (normative, or descriptive) and theoretical. Practical Grammar gives the description of the grammatical system of a language. Theoretical Grammar describes and explains peculiarities of the grammatical system of a language on the scientific basis.

There are several approaches to the study of the English language.

Traditional Grammar treats the nine parts of speech (nouns, verbs, adjectives, numerals, adverbs, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections-междометия) according to their formal features and functions in the sentence.

Some words can belong to more than one part of speech.

Structural Grammar treats the two types of meaning (lexical and structural) in the aspect of their influence on the meaning of the whole sentence. The lexical meaning is that meaning which is registered in the dictionary. The structural meaning depends on the position in the sentence.

Transformational Grammar studies all possible sentences people are able to produce. In transformational Grammar all sentences are divided into basic (or kernel-ядерное предложение) and transformations. Transformations appear in the result of adding, deleting, or rearranging the words of a kernel sentence.

Grammar consists of two parts: morphology and syntax.

2. Morphology and Syntax as parts of Grammar.

Morphology is traditionally defined as that part of grammar which studies morphemes and morphological structure of words.

Syntax is that branch of grammar which studies the syntactic functions of words and the syntactic structure of word combinations and sentences.

The traditional approach to the difference between morphology and syntax was based on the character of language units. Traditionally morphemes are always treated by morphology while sentences – by syntax. This approach is based on the assumption (предположение) that we can always distinguish between words and phrases. Sometimes the borderline is not clear. There are sometimes cases of overlapping (наложение). For example, such combinations as will come, is reading can be studied in morphology where they are forms of words and in syntax where they are treated as free word combinations.

Difference between morphology and syntax from another angle. Every grammatical unit has two types of relations: paradigmatic (in the system of language) and syntagmatic (established in speech).

a)paradigmatic: are those established between different forms of the same ling unit or between structurally homogeneous elements united on the basis of possessing some common part.

Thus it can be traced (обнаружено) between the forms of one word (is reading, reads), or between the same forms of different words (e. g. reading, asking).

Forms of the type boy, boys, boy's, boys' have the same lexical meaning but different grammatical meanings. Thus, they constitute (составляют) a lexeme. Word-forms of the type boys, children, people, men have the same grammatical meaning but different lexical meanings. They form a grammeme. Together they form a paradigm.

Paradigm is a unity of all lexemes and all grammemes of a given class of words.

We cannot observe paradigmatic relations in speech; they are systematic, thus often called " in absentia".

b) syntagmatic: Syntagmatic relations are the relations in an utterance (between ling units of the same level): I like children.. This may be found between morphemes in the structure of words.

Syntagmatic relations are typical of utterances, so they are often referred to as relations " in praesentia".

Morphology seems to be more abstract than syntax since it studies forms extracted from their natural surroundings, it does not study actual ties between words in an utterance. On the other hand, morphology will not seem so abstract if we take into consideration the fact that it studies units which are very compact while syntax treats sentences which are naturally much larger units.