Brief contents of the course

Glossary of Linguistic Terms

1. 
   analytical form – аналитическая форма, составная форма, образованная сочетанием служебного и знаменательного слов
   
2. 
   free morphemes – свободные морфемы, образующие аналитические формы в качестве служебных слов
   
3. 
   auxiliary – вспомогательное, служебное слово
   
4. 
   substantial meaning – основательное значение, самостоятельное лексическое значение
   
5. 
   idiomatism – семантическая спаянность частей словосочетания, значение которого не выводится из значений отдельных частей
   
6. 
   compound predicate – сложное сказуемое
   
7. 
   syntactic relations – синтаксические отношения, между компонетами словосочетания или членами предложения (атрибутивные, объектные и др.)
   

аdditional reading

1. 
   стр. 26-28
   
2. 
   стр. 14
   
3. 
   стр. 90-91
   
4. 
   стр. 29
   

VI. Parts of speech and the principles of their classification

The words of the language, depending on various formal and semantic features, are divided into grammatically relevant sets of classes. Parts of speech are lexico-grammatical categories of words. The term was introduced in ancient Greece, where there was no strict differentiation between the word as a vocabulary unit and the word as a functional element of the sentence.
In modern linguistics, parts of speech are discriminated on the basis of the three criteria: semantic, formal, and functional. The semantic criterion is based on evaluation of the generalized meaning, categorial meaning of the part of speech (noun-things). Words are corelated with classes of reality. The formal criterion is based on the specific word-building features (-ness, -tion – nouns) and paradigmatic sets (-s, ‘s – nouns). The functional criterion concerns the syntactic role of words in the sentence typical of a part of speech or methods of combining with other words in the phrase. For example, verb combines with a noun (write a letter), with an adverb (write quickly) and in the sentence functions as a predicate. The said three factors of categorial characterization of words are referred to as, respectively, meaning, form, and function.
The difficulty in defining clear categories of words arises from having to apply the three criteria, which are often in conflict. (loyalty, cattle – are nouns by some definitions, but not by all, they don’t meet the morphological criterion, the paradigm, but ‘loyalty’ has a specific suffix, and ‘cattle’ means ‘thing’). A satisfactory definition can’t be based on such a thing as meaning. Some grammarians used different criteria for defining different parts of speech. Inconsistency might result in overlapping categories or in uncovered gaps. So, the right approach is the pole method – in every PS there is central part of words, which belongs to this class by all the criteria, and there is field of words, that can be attributed to the class only gradually.
Ancient Greek grammarians used only one criterion for classification of PS – formally morphological, a word was attributed to a class on the basis of its morphological changability.
Jespersen, a linguist from the Copenhagen school, offered a ‘three ranks theory’. He analyzed morphological and semantic features of words, but also their subordination in connected speech. He found that in every syntactic combination there is one word of supreme importance to which the others are joined as subordinates. This chief word is defined by another word, which in its turn may be defined by a third word, etc. The ranks of words are established according to their mutual relations. (primary, secondary, tertiary) – a furiously barking dog. In this classification morphological, semantic functions and the three ranks interfere with each other too often.
A different technique has been employed by American linguists Trager and Smith. They set up 2 systems of classes. One is based on inflectional criteria. We can distinguish nouns, personal pronouns, adjectives and verbs on this criterion. They are defined as words showing the following types of inflection:
Friend-friend’s-friends-friends’
I-me-my-mine
Nice-nicer-nicest
Go-goes-went-gone-going
The remaining words, which show no inflection at all, are classified together as particles. Trager and Smith’s second system is classified by syntactic criteria. The two systems do not match exactly. Though the facts of English are complex, and no simple system of PS can be expected to be adequate, the different criteria has to be worked into the most integrated system possible. London linguist Strang introduces a term “form-class meaning’. Words bear in themselves a lexical meaning, but what they do in the sentence results from the fact that they are members of classes. A full description of a language would include an inventory of all forms with their lexical and class functions, but this inventory will be too big to manage. So, lexical descriptions is carried out in the dictionary, while the establishment of classes, as having more general meaning, belongs to the grammar. One of the divisions is into variable and invariable words, The first class constitute an open class, whose members can’t be catalogues, they are subject to continual growth, can be described in the dictionaries by using synonyms and are at the lexical pole. Invariables constitute a closed system, in the sense that they cannot normally be extended by the creation of additional members, can be described in the dictionary by giving uses in a sentence and are at the grammatical pole, they are usually lexically empty. We can make a complete list of members of the closed system.

4. 
   The division into notional and functional parts of speech reflects the division into variable and invariable words. Notional parts of speech denote distinct lexical meaning and perform independent syntactic function in the sentence. They have certain grammatical categories, they can be connected with each other directly or with the help of the formal words. To the notional parts of speech belong the noun, the adjective, the numeral, the pronoun, the verb, the adverb, the stative.