Brief contents of the course

Brief contents of the course:

“T h e o r e t I c a l G r a m m a r of E n g l I s h”

I. Grammar as a linguistic study

The subject of theoretical grammar is a systematic study of the grammatical structure of Modern English. The difference between practical and theoretical grammar is that grammar theory makes it possible to understand the laws according to which any language functions. Practical grammar gives the rules of using the laws of the language in speech.

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  An early XX century Swiss scholar Ferdinand de Saussure commented on the correlation between those two phenomena: language is a system of means of communication; speech is the activity using language in the practical process. The structure of language is systematic, speech is linear; language is static, speech is dynamic, language is general, speech is concrete, language is social, speech is individual; language is reproductive, speech is productive; language is a means, speech is the purpose. We need the means of the language to make our speech understandable, but speech is necessary as the source of the language. Three aspects of the language – phonetics, vocabulary and grammar – are studied by three corresponding branches of linguistic science – phonology, lexicology and theoretical grammar.
  
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  History and methods of study of T.G.:
  

1. 
   Early descriptive (описательная) grammar – William Bullocar, 1585 “Brief Grammar of English” – the method of describing formal elements of the structure by applying the method of distribution ( distribution of language elements(phonemes, morphemes, lexems) according to the laws of the language.)
   
2. 
   The middle of the XIII century – prescriptive grammar: setting up a certain standard of correctness (school grammar, formal grammar).
   
3. 
   By the end of the XIX century – traditional system of grammar, descriptive and explanatory.
   

4. Young grammarians – late XIX – early XX century made an important contribution into the study of all the aspects of English, but their study was diachronical (диахронический, исторический), they didn't give the modern state of the language careful consideration, they spread phonological laws to the rest of the language, ignoring phycological and sociological factors.
The new method is the Modern Structural Linguistics, which claims of describing the structure of English on an entirely new, really scientific bases. Structural linguistics studied the language syncronically, namely described its modern state, tried to avoid subjective, but used only objective methods of study. Structural linguistics is represented by several different schools: Prague school (functional linguistics) Matezius, Trubetckoi studied the language as a functional system, connected with spheres of human activity, they take into consideration the meanings of the language phenomena(semantic approach), studied the language both synchronically and diachronically (the evolution of the language factors), study extra-linguistic factors, historical and cultural. American school is represented by descriptive linguistics (Blumfild, Glison), generative grammar,(порождающая грамматика), describing grammar as a mechanism, generating the correct speech according to the rules of a particular language. Inner structure can be studied and then applied for creation of artificial word combinations, phrases, sentences. The generative pattern is then tested from the point of veiw of its appropiacy. Transformational analysis (трансформационная грамматика) (Chomski, Liz) holds that some rules are transformational, i.e. they change one structure into another according to such prescribed conventions as moving (перемещение), inserting (включение), deleting (исключение), and replacing (замена). Eg.: Sharpness of animals’ sight; animals’ sight is sharp; animals see sharply. This method reveals two levels of syntactic structure: deep structure (an abstract underlying structure interpreting the information) and surface structure (syntactic features required to convert the sentence into a spoken or written version). They introduced a method of immediate constituents (метод непосредственных составляющих): every unit consists of two elements (root and affix in words, two words in a word combination). Copenhagen school (Brendal, Elmslev) introduced a new method – glossemantics, which studies the language as a system of signs, using the methods of math, this system of signs is not related with the contectual meaning. London school uses the method of discourse analysis (ситуационный контекст, социальные аспекты языка).
One of the modern methods of study is the comparative method (сравнительный), when similar language phenomena are compared with those of relative languages, as well as with facts that hipothetically existed in the previous historical stages of development of the language. It helps to study ways of development and changes of the language, the nature of borrowings, the degree of assimilation.