1. What does the term "grammar" mean? What is a morpheme?

1. What does the term “grammar” mean? What is a morpheme?

1. Grammar, rules of a language governing the sounds, words, sentences, and other elements, as well as their combination and interpretation. The word grammar also denotes the study of these abstract features or a book presenting these rules. In a restricted sense, the term refers only to the study of sentence and word structure (syntax and morphology), excluding vocabulary and pronunciation. A common contemporary definition of grammar is the underlying structure of a language that any native speaker of that language knows intuitively. The systematic description of the features of a language is also a grammar. These features are

the phonology (sound), morphology (system of word formation), syntax (patterns of word arrangement), and semantics (meaning). Depending on the grammarian’s approach, a grammar can be prescriptive (i.e., provide rules for correct usage), descriptive (i.e., describe how a language is actually used), or generative (i.e., provide instructions for the production of an infinite number of sentences in a language). The traditional focus of inquiry has been on morphology and syntax, and for some contemporary linguists (and many traditional grammarians) this is the only proper domain of the subject. Grammar may be practical and theoretical. The aim of practical grammar is the description of grammar rules that are necessary to understand and formulate sentences. The aim of theoretical grammar is to offer explanation for these rules. Generally speaking, theoretical grammar deals with the language as a functional system. As for theoretical linguistic descriptions, they pursue analytical aims and therefore present the studied parts of language in relative isolation, so as to gain insights into their inner structure and expose the intrinsic mechanisms of their functioning. Hence, the aim of theoretical grammar of a language is to present a theoretical description of its grammatical system, i.e. to scientifically analyse and define its grammatical categories and study the mechanisms of grammatical formation of utterances out of words in the process of speech making.

In linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest component of word, or other linguistic unit, that has semantic meaning. The term is used as part of the branch of linguistics known as morpheme-based morphology. A morpheme is composed by phoneme(s) (the smallest linguistically distinctive units of sound) in spoken language, and by grapheme(s) (the smallest units of written language) in written language.The concept of word and morpheme are different, a morpheme may or may not stand alone. One or several morphemes compose a word. A morpheme is free if it can stand alone (ex: "one", "possible"), or bound if it is used exclusively alongside a free morpheme (ex: "im" in impossible). Its actual phonetic representation is the morph, with the different morphs ("in-", "im-") representing the same morpheme being grouped as its allomorphs.The word "unbreakable" has three morphemes: "un-", a bound morpheme; "break", a free morpheme; and "-able", a bound morpheme. "un-" is also a prefix, "-able" is a suffix. Both "un-" and "-able" are affixes.The morpheme plural-s has the morph "-s", /s/, in cats (/kæts/), but "-es", /ɨz/, in dishes (/dɪʃɨz/), and even the voiced "-s", /z/, in dogs (/dɒɡz/). "-s". These are allomorphs. Morphemes can be classified from different view-points:

1. functional

2. number correlation between form and content

From the point of view of function they may be lexical and grammatical. The lexical morphemes are those that express full lexical meaning of their own and are associated with some object, quality, action, number of reality, like: lip, red, go, one and so on. The lexical morphemes can be subdivided into lexical - free and lexical - bound morphemes. The examples given above are free ones; they are used in speech independently. The lexical-bound ones are never used independently; they are usually added to some lexical-free morphemes to build new words like- friend-ship, free-dom, teach-er, spoon-ful and so on. Taking into account that in form they resemble the grammatical inflections they may be also called lexical - grammatical morphemes. Thus lexical - bound morphemes are those that determine lexical meanings of words but resemble grammatical morphemes in their dependence on lexical - free morphemes. The lexical - bound morphemes are means to build new words. The grammatical morphemes are those that are used either to connect words in sentences or to form new grammatical forms of words. The content of such morphemes are connected with the world of reality only indirectly therefore they are also called structural morphemes, e.g., shall, will, be, have, is, -(e)s, -(e)d and so on. As it is seen from the examples the grammatical morphemes have also two subtypes: grammatical - free and grammatical - bound. The grammatical - free ones are used in sentences independently (I shall go) while grammatical - bound ones are usually attached to some lexical - free morphemes to express new grammatical form, like: girl's bag, bigger room, asked. From the point of view of number correlation between form and content there may be overt, zero, empty and discontinuous morphemes. By overt morpheme the linguists understand morphemes that are represented by both form and content like: eye, bell, big and so on. Zero morphemes are those that have (meaning) content but do not have explicitly expressed forms. These morphemes are revealed by means of comparison: ask –asks high –higher In these words the second forms are marked: "asks" is a verb in the third person singular which is expressed by the inflection "s". In its counterpart there's no marker like "s" but the absence of the marker also has grammatical meaning: it means that the verb "ask" is not in the third person, singular number. Such morphemes are called "zero". In the second example the adjective "higher" is in the comparative degree, because of the "- er" while its counterpart "high" is in the positive degree, the absence of the marker expresses a grammatical meaning, i.e. a zero marker is also meaningful, therefore it's a zero morpheme. There are cases when there's a marker which has not a concrete meaning, i.e. there's neither lexical nor grammatical meaning like: statesman. The word consists of three morphemes: state - s - man. The first and third morphemes have certain meanings. But "s" has no meaning though serve as a connector: it links the first morpheme with the third one. Such morphemes are called empty. Thus empty morphemes are those that have form but no content. In contemporary English there are cases when two forms express one meaning like:

He is writing a letter

Two morphemes in this sentence "is" and " - ing" express one meaning: a continuous action. Such morphemes are called discontinuous

2. Parts of speech

2.The parts of speech are classes of words, all the members of these classes having certain characteristics in common which distinguish them from the members of other classes. The attitude of grammarians with regard to parts of speech and the basis of their classification varied a good deal at different times. Only in English grammarians have been vacillating between 3 and 13 parts of speech. There are four approaches to the problem:

1. 
   Classical (logical-inflectional)
   
2. 
   Functional
   
3. 
   Distributional
   
4. 
   Complex
   

The classical parts of speech theory goes back to ancient times. It is based on Latin grammar. According to the Latin classification of the parts of speech all words were divided dichotomically into declinable and indeclinable parts of speech. The first of these groups, declinable words, included nouns, pronouns, verbs and participles, the second – indeclinable words – adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions and interjections. The logical-inflectional classification is quite successful for Latin or other languages with developed morphology and synthetic paradigms but it cannot be applied to the English language because the principle of declinability/indeclinability is not relevant for analytical languages.

A new approach to the problem was introduced in the XIX century by Henry Sweet. He took into account the peculiarities of the English language. This approach may be defined as functional. He resorted to the functional features of words and singled out nominative units and particles. To nominative parts of speech belonged noun-words (noun, noun-pronoun, noun-numeral, infinitive, gerund), adjective-words (adjective, adjective-pronoun, adjective-numeral, participles), verb (finite verb, verbals – gerund, infinitive, participles), while adverb, preposition, conjunction and interjection belonged to the group of particles. However, though the criterion for classification was functional, Henry Sweet failed to break the tradition and classified words into those having morphological forms and lacking morphological forms, in other words, declinable and indeclinable.

A distributional approach to the parts to the parts of speech classification can be illustrated by the classification introduced by Charles Fries. He wanted to avoid the traditional terminology and establish a classification of words based on distributive analysis, that is, the ability of words to combine with other words of different types. At the same time, the lexical meaning of words was not taken into account. According to Charles Fries, the words in such sentences as 1. Woggles ugged diggles; 2. Uggs woggled diggs; and 3. Woggs diggled uggles are quite evident structural signals, their position and combinability are enough to classify them into three word-classes. In this way, he introduced four major classes of words and 15 form-classes. Let us see how it worked. Three test frames formed the basis for his analysis:

Frame A - The concert was good (always);

Frame B - The clerk remembered the tax (suddenly);

Frame C – The team went there.

It turned out that his four classes of words were practically the same as traditional nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. What is really valuable in Charles Fries’ classification is his investigation of 15 groups of function words (form-classes) because he was the first linguist to pay attention to some of their peculiarities.

All the classifications mentioned above appear to be one-sided because parts of speech are discriminated on the basis of only one aspect of the word: either its meaning or its form, or its function.

In modern linguistics, parts of speech are discriminated according to three criteria: semantic, formal and functional. This approach may be defined as complex. The semantic criterion presupposes the grammatical meaning of the whole class of words (general grammatical meaning). The formal criterion reveals paradigmatic properties: relevant grammatical categories, the form of the words, their specific inflectional and derivational features. The functional criterion concerns the syntactic function of words in the sentence and their combinability. Thus, when characterizing any part of speech we are to describe: a) its semantics; b) its morphological features; c) its syntactic peculiarities.

The linguistic evidence drawn from our grammatical study makes it possible to divide all the words of the language into:

1. 
   those denoting things, objects, notions, qualities, etc. – words with the corresponding references in the objective reality – notional words;
   
2. 
   those having no references of their own in the objective reality; most of them are used only as grammatical means to form up and frame utterances – function words, or grammatical words.
   

It is commonly recognized that the notional parts of speech are nouns, pronouns, numerals, verbs, adjectives, adverbs; the functional parts of speech are articles, particles, prepositions, conjunctions and modal words.

The division of language units into notion and function words reveals the interrelation of lexical and grammatical types of meaning. In notional words the lexical meaning is predominant. In function words the grammatical meaning dominates over the lexical one. However, in actual speech the border line between notional and function words is not always clear cut. Some notional words develop the meanings peculiar to function words - e.g. seminotional words – to turn, to get, etc.

Notional words constitute the bulk of the existing word stock while function words constitute a smaller group of words. Although the number of function words is limited (there are only about 50 of them in Modern English), they are the most frequently used units.

 Notional words and function words in Modern English.

Parts of speech are traditionally subdivided into notional & functional ones. Notional parts of speech have both lexical & grammatical meanings (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, numerals, statives, pronouns, modal words). Functional parts of speech are characterized mainly by the grammatical meaning while their lexical meaning is either lost completely or has survived in a very weakened form.

Functional parts of speech—the article, the preposition, the conjunction. Notional parts of speech are characterized by word-building & word-changing properties; functional words have no formal features & they should be memorized as ready-made units (but, since, till, until). Another most important difference between functional & notional parts of speech is revealed on the level of sentence. Where every notional word performs a certain synthetic function while functional words have no synthetic function at all. They serve as indicators of a certain part of speech (to + verb; a, the + noun). Prepositions are used to connect 2 words & conjunctions to connect 2 clauses or sentences.

3. Semantic types of the English nouns

3. The noun is the central lexical unit of language. It is the main nominative unit of speech. As any other part of speech, the noun can be characterised by three criteria: semantic (the meaning), morphological (the form and grammatical categories) and syntactical (functions, distribution).

Semantic features of the noun. The noun possesses the grammatical meaning of thingness, substantiality. According to different principles of classification, nouns fall into several subclasses:

1. 
   According to the type of nomination they may be proper and common;
   
2. 
   According to the form of existence they may be animate and inanimate. Animate nouns in their turn fall into human and non-human.
   
3. 
   According to their quantitative structure nouns can be countable and uncountable.
   

This set of subclasses cannot be put together into one table because of the different principles of classification. A proper noun is used for a particular person, place, thing or idea that is unique. It is generally spelled with a capital letter. Sometimes proper names can be used as common nouns: Ford ― a Ford = a car; Repin ― a Repin = a painter like Repin, etc. Common nouns can be classified into count nouns (denoting object that can be counted), uncount nouns (denoting object that cannot be counted) and collective nouns (denoting a group of persons) Count nouns may be concrete denoting animate (boy, child) or inanimate (table, book, tree) objects and abstract (idea, question, problem).Uncount nouns nouns may be abstract (fun, socialism) or material (bread,iron). Many uncount nouns can also beсome countable in certain contexts.(He bought an evening paper.- He bought wallpaper.) Collective nouns may be nouns of multitude (people, police, etc.) or collective proper (family, company, staff etc.) Collective nouns of multitude are used in the plural. Collective nouns proper are used in two ways: if you regard a particular noun as a single body, it is used in the singular: The audience was enormous. If you regard a noun as a group or persons, then it is used in the plural: My family are watching TV now.

4. Grammatical (syntactical) functions of the pronoun

4. The grammatical function of a pronoun is said to be the work or the job that the pronoun is doing in a sentence.

Pronouns can perform any of the following five functions:

• 
  Subject of the verb
  
• 
  Object of the verb
  
• 
  Complement of the verb
  
• 
  Object of the preposition
  
• 
  Apposition to a noun
  

Pronoun functioning as the subject of a verb

Here, the pronoun will always come before the main verb in the sentence. It is also the one the entire sentence focuses on. Simply put, whenever a pronoun is used as the subject in a sentence, then it functions as the subject of a verb.

Examples:

• 
  He is very sick.
  
• 
  You may let them come in.
  
• 
  I hate the way the movie ended.
  
• 
  She likes me.
  
• 
  It is a shame the way you mistreat the child.
  
• 
  They love soccer.
  
• 
  We voted for Barack Obama in the last election.
  

Pronoun functioning as object of a verb

A pronoun will function as an object of a verb when it comes after an action verb and receives the action of the verb.

Examples of pronouns functioning as object of verbs include the following:

• 
  James slapped me.
  
• 
  I kissed her.
  
• 
  Elton likes her a lot.
  
• 
  The hunter killed it.
  
• 
  You showed him the money.
  
• 
  The security spotted us.
  

Pronoun functioning as a complement of a verb

When a pronoun functions as a complement of a verb, what it basically does is it comes after a linking verb or state-of-being verb and receives no action from the verb.

Examples of pronouns functioning as complements of verbs include the following:

• 
  The thief was he.
  
• 
  It was I who called you last night.
  
• 
  The winner was he.
  
• 
  The visitor was she.
  
• 
  The men arrested in China were they.
  
• 
  It was you.
  

Pronoun functioning as object of the preposition

When a pronoun functions as an object of a preposition, it comes after a preposition. Any pronoun coming after a preposition is the object of the preposition.

Examples are as follow:

• 
  I bought the book for her.
  
• 
  The teacher is angry with us.
  
• 
  I want to go with you.
  
• 
  It is for you.
  
• 
  I took a picture of her.
  
• 
  Please give it to me.
  

The words for, with, of, to are all prepositions. It therefore goes without saying that all the highlighted pronouns coming after them are objects of the prepositions. For example, in the first sentence, the pronoun “her” is functioning as the object of the preposition “for”.

Pronoun functioning in apposition to a noun

When a pronoun functions in apposition to a noun, it comes after a noun in the sentence or statement and renames the noun or tells readers something more about the noun. Examples of pronouns functioning in apposition to nouns include the following:

• 
  The boys, those who killed the dog, have gone.
  
• 
  My friends, those who stood by me, have all been rewarded.
  

The pronoun “those” is functioning in apposition to the noun “boys” in the first sentence and the noun “friends” in the second sentence.