Brief contents of the course

Additional reading

1. 
   Б. А. Ильиш «Строй современного английского языка» (на англ. яз), стр.5-11.
   
2. 
   И.П. Иванова, В.В. Бурлакова, Г.Г. Почепцов «Теоретическая грамматика современного английского языка» (на рус.яз.), стр. 3
   

3. 
   М.Я. Блох «Теоретические основы грамматики» (на рус.яз), стр. 7-42
   

4. 
   М.Я.Блох «Теоретическая грамматика английского языка», (на англ.яз.) стр.7-13
   

5. 
   М.Я. Блох «Практикум по теоретической грамматике английского языка»(на англ.яз), стр. 7-44.
   

II. Grammar form, meaning, category

1. Theoretical grammar has to study the elements presenting a unity of content and expression (structure and meaning), and they sometimes contradict each other. For these occasions, we will use the notions of polar and intermediary elements of the set. Within a complex system of interrelated elements, polar phenomena are the most clearly identifiable, they stand to one another in an utterly unambiguous opposition. Intermediary phenomena are located in the system in between the polar phenomena, making up a gradation of transitions. By some of the properties intermediary phenomena are similar or near to one of the corresponding poles, while by other properties they are similar to the other, opposing pole. The example is the definition of a word as the smallest unit of the language, possessing positional independence and capable of syntactic functioning, and a morpheme as the smallest meaningful unit not possessing the positional independence. Notional word (noun, verb) and the morpheme (root, affix) should be described as the opposing polar phenomena among the meaningful segments of the language. As for functional words (particle, auxiliary verb, preposition) in “to speak”, have spoken, “of the room”, they occupy intermediary positions between the poles, and their very intermediary status is gradational. Sometimes it is more convenient to describe them as words, sometimes – as morphemes.
Morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit. Though it is formed by phonemes, as a meaningful component of the word it is elementary, indivisible into smaller segments that could have a significative function. A phoneme is a mono-sided unit, while morpheme is a double-sided unit, characterized by unity of form and meaning. The notion of morpheme was first intorduced by a Russian linguist Ivan Boduen de Curtene as a general name for two main components of the word: root and affixes. Scholars of Copenhagen school call every grammar meaning of a form a separate morpheme: «runs» has three morphemes –root, that of singular number and that of the third person. American descriptivists suggest finding morphemes while dividing wordforms into separate parts. They also include stress and intonation into the list of morphemes.
Affixes – prefixes and suffixes. All the prefixes in English are used for word-building, forming new words from the roots. So are some of the suffixes (-able, -izm, -tion, -ly, etc). Prefixes and word-building suffixes (derivation morphemes) are studied by lexicology, as they belong to the vocabulary. We are only interested in them in so far as they are grammatically relevant, if they show that the word belongs to a certain part of speech, they serve to distinguish one part of speech form another, which is a grammatical matter, not lexical. The meanings of the root morphems also belong to lexicology and are not the subject of TG. Word-changing morphemes, represented in Russian by suffixes and inflections (бежать – бежал – бежала), in English are represented only by suffixes, which make another form of the same word, without any change in its lexical meaning. There is not the slightest difference in lexical meaning between “live” and “lived” or between “house” and “houses”. However, in some special cases it can add lexical meaning to the word, for instance, if the plural form of a noun develops a meaning which the singular form has not: “colours” means “flag”.

2. 
   In identification of morphemes the distributional method plays an important role. The distribution of a unit may be defined as the total of all its environments. It was first used in phonology where it remains the leading method of identification of phonemes. Three main types of distribution are discriminated in the distributional analysis, i.e. contrastive distribution, non-contrastive distribution, and complementary distribution. Different morphs (forms of morphemes) can be either in contrastive, or in non-contrastive distribution. For example, the suffixes –ed or –ing are seen only in completely different environments and they have in these different environments completely different meanings (contrastive distribution): “The book is translated. He is translating the book. He has translated the book.” This drives us to conclusion that these two morphs are different morphemes. The suffixes –t/-d in learned/learnt are seen in the same environment and have the same meaning (non-contrastive distribution): “He has learned/learnt. The poem is learned/learnt.” These are free variants of the same morpheme. Complementary distribution concerns morphs with the same function, but different in form. If their environments are always different, that means that the difference in form is explained by the different environments. These morphs are in complementary distribution and are the allomorphs (variants) of the same morpheme. For example, are –t, -d and –id different morphemes or allomorphs of the same morpheme? Since they are never seen in the same environment and have the same function, they are allomorphs of the same morpheme in complementary distribution. This type of distribution is the most important for analytical purposes, because it helps establish the identity of the elements of the language that look different. (suppletive forms).
   

The morphemes are in complementary distribution if they always change together with change of the environment (a banana – an apple, a banana – the banana – contrastive). Grammar forms in contrastive distribution are different morphemes, as they are necessary to convey different grammar meaning, there is nothing more to make the forms different. In case of complementary distribution it is the environment that makes the forms different, not the meaning. They are allomorphs of the same morpheme, their difference is irrelevant for the grammatical meaning. If you say ‘changs’ instead of ‘changes’, the first word simply will not have any meaning in English. Or ‘stopz’. But if you say ‘changed’ instead of ‘changes’ it will have a different grammar meaning, as ‘es’ and ‘ed’ are in contrastive distribution.
3. Morphemes build grammatical form of the word. GF is language means which expresses grammatical meaning. GM which the word acquires by adding affix to the root is the meaning that expresses relations of this word to other words in the word combination. Grammatical meanings are abstract and general. Therefore the grammatical form unites a whole class of words, so that each word of the class expresses the corresponding grammatical meaning together with its individual, concrete semantics. The most general grammatical meanings expressed by systemic correlations of word-forms are categorial grammatical meanings. GC is intergration of two and more grammatical forms opposed or coordinated according to their grammatical meaning. The categorial meaning (number of nouns) unites the individual meanings of the correlated paradigmatic forms (singular-plural). The ordered set of grammatical forms expressing a categorial function constitutes a paradigm. Face-faces, branch-branches, book-books, film-films, life-lives, tooth-teeth, mouse-mice, phenomenon-phenomena, nucleus-nuclei. The paradigmatic correlations of grammatical forms in a category are exposed by grammatical oppositions. Members of the opposition must have two types of features: common features and differential features. Common features (stem) serve as basis of contrast, while differential features (0-suffix) express the function (singular-plural). Three main types of oppositions were established in phonology: privative (presensce-absense of formal feature), gradual (distinguished by the degree of the feature – degrees of comparison) and equipollent (distinguished by different positive features – person forms of the verb ‘to be’). By the number of members contrasted, oppositions were divided into binary and more than binary (tenses, degrees of comparison). A grammatical category must be expressed by at least one opposition of forms, ordered in a paradigm. In all the few grammatical suffixes in English the initial paradigmatic form of each opposition is distinguished by the zero suffix.
4.Grammatical categories can be constant, which reflect the static classification of words (transitivity-intransitivity of verbs) and variable (tense, voice, person). Some marginal categorial forms may acquire intermediary status, being located in-between the corresponding categorial poles. For instance, the nouns singularia tantum and pluralia tantum present a case of hybrid variable-constant formations, since their variable feature of number has become ‘rigid’ or ‘lexicalized’: news, advice, people, scissors, jeans.