Systemic Relations in Language
Level
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Syntagmatic relations
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Paradigmatic relations
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Phonemic
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b=o=y
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oy
oy
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Morphemic
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boy=s
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boy <> – boy
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Derivational
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teach=er
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teach – teach
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Lexemic
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good=teacher
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good – bad
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Syntactic
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A=teacher=is=giving=a= lecture
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A teacher is giving a lecture. – A teacher is giving a lecture, isn’t she?
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The language and speech units are interconnected and interdependent. This can easily be proved by the fact that the units of lower level are used to make up or to build the units of the next higher level: phones are used as building material for morphs, and morphs are used to build lexes and the latter are used to construct sentences. Besides, the homonyms that appear in the phonetical level can be explained on the following higher level, compare: - "er" is a homonymous morph. In order to find out in which meaning it is used we’ll have to use it on the lexicological level; if it is added to verbs like "teacher", "worker" then it will have one meaning but if we use it with adjectives like “higher”, “lower” it will have another meaning. Before getting down to “the theoretical grammar” course one has to know the information given above.
The distinction between language and speech was made by Ferdinand de Saussure, the Swiss scholar usually credited with establishing principles of modem linguistics. Language is a collective body of knowledge, it is a set of basic elements, but these elements can form a great variety of combinations. In fact the number of these combinations is endless. Speech is closely connected with language, as it is the result of using the language, the result of a definite act of speaking. Speech is individual, personal while language is common for all individuals. The distinction between language and speech was made by Ferdinand de Saussure, the Swiss scholar usually credited with establishing principles of modem linguistics:
1) Language is abstract and speech is concrete
2) Language is common, general for bearers while speech is individual
3) Language is stable, less changeable while speech tends to changes
4) Language is a closed system, its units are limited while speech tends to to be openness and endless.To illustrate the difference between language and speech let us compare a definite game of chess and a set of rules how to play chess.
Language is opposed to speech and accordingly language units are opposed to speech units. The language unit phoneme is opposed to the speech unit - sound: phoneme /s/ can sound differently in speech - /s/ and /z/). The sentence is opposed to the utterance; the text is opposed to the discourse.
A linguistic unit can enter into relations of two different kinds. It enters into paradigmatic relations with all the units that can also occur in the same environment. PR are relations based on the principles of similarity. They exist between the units that can substitute one another. For instance, in the word-group A PINT OF MILK the word PINT is in paradigmatic relations with the words bottle, cup, etc. The article A can enter into PR with the units the, this, one, same, etc. According to different principles of similarity PR can be of three types: semantic, formal and functional.
a) Semantic PR are based on the similarity of meaning: a book to read = a book for reading. He used to practice English every day - He would practice English every day.
b) Formal PR are based on the similarity of forms. Such relations exist between the members of a paradigm: man - men; play - played - will play - is playing.
c) Functional PR are based on the similarity of function. They are established between the elements that can occur in the same position. For instance, noun determiners: a, the, this, his, Ann's, some, each, etc.
PR are associated with the sphere of 'language'.
A linguistic unit enters into syntagmatic relations with other units of the same level it occurs with. SR exist at every language level. E.g. in the word-group A PINT OF MILK the word PINT contrasts SR with A, OF, MILK; within the word
PINT - P, I, N and T are in syntagmatic relations. SR are linear relations, that is why they are manifested in speech. They can be of three different types: coordinate, subordinate and predicative.
a) Coordinate SR exist between the homogeneous linguistic units that are equal in rank, that is, they are the relations of independence: you and me; They were tired but happy.
b) Subordinate SR are the relations of dependence when one linguistic unit depends on the other: teach қ er – morphological level; a smart student - word-group level; predicative and subordinate clauses - sentence level.
c) Predicative SR are the relations of interdependence: primary and secondary predication.
As mentioned above, SR may be observed in utterances, which is impossible when we deal with PR. Therefore, PR are identified with 'language' while SR are identified with 'speech'.
The grammatical structure of language is a system of means used to turn linguistic units into communicative ones, in other words - the units of language into the units of speech. Such means are inflexions, affixation, word order, function words and phonological means.
Generally speaking, Indo-European languages are classified into two structural types - synthetic and analytic. Synthetic languages are defined as ones of 'internal' grammar of the word - most of grammatical meanings and grammatical relations of words are expressed with the help of inflexions. Analytical languages are those of 'external' grammar because most grammatical meanings and grammatical forms are expressed with the help of words (will do). However, we cannot speak of languages as purely synthetic or analytic - the English language (Modem English) possesses analytical forms as prevailing, while in the Ukrainian language synthetic devices are dominant. In the process of time English has become more analytical as compared to Old English. Analytical changes in Modem English (especially American) are still under way.
The grammatical system of the English language, like of other Indo-European languages, is very complicated. It consists of smaller subdivisions, which are called systems too. In grammar they are morphological and syntactic ones.
In syntax we discriminate between the systems of simple and composite sentences, etc. Prof. V. V. Plotkin suggests the terms ‘morosystem’ implying the grammatical system of the language as a whole and ‘subsystem’ and ‘microsystem’ with reference to minor system.
Thus, the systemic character of grammar is beyond doubt. The phonological structure of language is also systemic. The question of the systemic character of vocabulary (word-stock) remains open. But of all lingual aspects grammar is, no doubt, most systemic since it is responsible for the very organization of the informative content of utterance.
>Language in general and grammar in particular are materialized in structure. Language structure is represented by a level stratification of its units. This structure is of hierarchical character. Graphically the level stratification of language can be depicted by following table (scheme):
Supra-proposemic
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Text, texteme, dicteme
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The highest communicative unit
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Promosemic (the level of major syntax)
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Proposeme (sentence)
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Communicative unit
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Phrasemic (the level of minor syntax)
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Phraseme (word-group)
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Polynominative unit
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Word level (lexemic)
|
align="left">Lexeme (word)
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Monominative unit
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Morphological (morphemic)
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Morpheme
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The smallest meaning full unit
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Phonological (phonemic)
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Phoneme
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Distinctive unit
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Level
|
Language unit
|
The nature of the unrepresenting level
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Units of language. Units of language are divided into meaningless and meaningful. Examples of the first kind: phonemes, syllable Meaningful are morpheme, word and others. The latter are called – language signs. They have both planes: that of content and that of expression. They are signemes.
As to the way of expressing lingual units are divided into segmental and supra-segmental. Segmental units consists of phonemes and form phonetic strings of various status (morphemes, syllables). Supra-segmental units do not exist by themselves, they are realized together with segmental units and express different modificational meanings which are reflected on the strings of segmental units. Supra-segmental units are intonation contours, streets, pauses and the like.
Segmental units form a hierarchy of levels. The lowest level is phonemic. It is formed by phonemes, which are not language signs, because they are purely differential (distinctive) units.Units of all the higher levels are meaningful. They are language signs (signemes) .
As the word is the main unit of traditional grammatical theory, it serves the basis of the distinction which is frequently drawn between morphology and syntax. Morphology deals with the internal structure of words, peculiarities of their grammatical categories and their semantics while traditional syntax deals with the rules governing combination of words in sentences (and texts in modem linguistics). We can therefore say that the word is the main unit of morphology.
It is difficult to arrive at a one-sentence definition of such a complex linguistic unit as the word. First of all, it is the main expressive unit of human language which ensures the thought-forming function of the language. It is also the basic nominative unit of language with the help of which the naming function of language is realized. As any linguistic sign the word is a level unit. In the structure of language it belongs to the upper stage of the morphological level. It is a unit of the sphere of' language' and it exists only through its speech actualization. One of the most characteristic features of the word is its indivisibility. As any other linguistic unit the word is a bilateral entity. It unites a concept and a sound image and thus has two sides - the content and expression sides: concept and sound form.
Literature
Iriskulov M., Kuldashev A. A course in theoretical English Grammar. T., 2008
М. Блох. Теоретическая грамматика английского языка. М., 1994
М. Блох. Теоретические основы грамматики. М.,2002
M. Blokh. A Course in Theoretical English Grammar. M., 1983
Lecture 3.
THE GRAMMATICAL STRUCTURE OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
Problems to be discussed
grammatical signals
grammatical meaning of a syntactic construction
The grammatical structure of a language
Key words: grammatical signals, grammatical meaning of a syntactic construction, grammatical structure of a language.
The grammatical structure of language is a system of means used to turn linguistic units into communicative ones, in other words – the units of language into the units of speech. Such means are inflexions, affixation, word order, function words and phonological means. Generally speaking, Indo-European languages are classified into two structural types – synthetic and analytic. Synthetic languages are defined as ones of ‘internal’ grammar of the word – most of grammatical meanings and grammatical relations of words are expressed with the help of inflexions (Ukrainian - зроблю, Russian, Latin, etc). Analytical languages are those of ‘external’ grammar because most grammatical meanings and grammatical forms are expressed with the help of words (will do). However, we cannot speak of languages as purely synthetic or analytic – the English language (Modern English) possesses analytical forms as prevailing, while in the Ukrainian language synthetic devices are dominant. In the process of time English has become more analytical as compared to Old English. Analytical changes in Modern English (especially American) are still under way
We can study the structure of language in a variety of ways. For example, we can study
classes of words (parts of speech),
meanings of words (semantics), with or without considering changes of meaning,
how words are organised in relation to each other (syntax),
how words are formed (morphology),
the sounds of words (phonology) and
how written forms represent these (lexicography).
There is no universally accepted model for doing this, but some models use the notion of a hierarchy, and this may prove fruitful for you. The framework (description of structure) you will study here is written to be comprehensive yet succinct. Elsewhere, in studying language theory, you will focus on a selective area, and investigate this in more detail.
It is commonly supposed that the major task in learning a new language is learning the lexical meanings of words. This is not in fact the case. The more important as well as the more difficult task is learning the grammatical structures and structure signals (Gleason: 98).
The basic significance of grammatical structures and structure signals in relation to major vocabulary is illustrated by the following text, which has been stripped of all major vocabulary.
In his _____ _____, [Socrates] was _____-ed in the
_____________ ____________ of his _______ and was ___________-ed with
___________ the _________._________ he __________-ed the ________
___________ _________ of ___________ and ________-ing. He ____-ed
the _______ with whom he _______ in _____ about the _____ _____
of ___. He was a ___ of _____ ____ and _____ _____ of
________. He was ______ _______ to ________ and
_____. In ________ he was ____-ed by a ______ _____ on the
________ of ________-ing _______ ______ and of _______-ing the
____. He was ______-ed ____ to _____. He _____-ed to _____.
_____ _____ after his _____ he _____ the _____.
The structure of sentences and word groups is clearly discernible, although the major lexical items have been omitted, with the exception of the subject of the paragraph, Socrates. For example, the sentence beginning in line 4 He ________-ed the _________ is evidently composed of the “subject” he, a verb in the past tense (indicated by the morpheme -ed), and an “object” (the ______); the object is then expanded by a relative clause, with whom …. Similarly, the native speaker of English knows that the sentence beginning in line 6 is that type of sentence in which the “subject” is identified. Taking He was a _______ as a sentence frame, any number of predicate nouns might be found to fit:
He was a philosopher
He was a Greek
He was a father
The predicate, however, is expanded by a prepositional phrase initiated by of. We therefore have this frame: He was a _______ of ______ _______. One might also fill in this frame at random:
He was a philosopher of great wisdom
He was a Greek of great renown
The choice of vocabulary is of course limited by the frame, i.e. by the grammatical structure. Given the frame, the speaker of English knows that certain possibilities are “ungrammatical”:
x He was a good
x He was a very
x He was a philosopher of extremely wisdom
This is to say that the native user of English instinctively knows which vocabulary items are possible choices for each slot.
The grammatical frame of reference is the system within which major vocabulary can be distributed in accordance with rules governing the filling of particular slots or the structure of phrases and the structure of the sentence. Violation of these rules produces phrases and sentences that are grammatically unacceptable or nonsensical.
The prior requirement for the use of a language is knowledge of the grammatical system, i.e. of the grammatical structures and structure signals. This means, with reference to the emasculated text given above, that one must be able to “read” the grammatical frame of reference before he can make any intelligent use of major vocabulary. This appears to be proved by the way in which we actually learn to read and understand languages. We know that a reader can make some sense of a text even when he doesn’t know all the major vocabulary, but that he can make no sense of a text for which the structure signals are missing or jumbled. He was a __________ of great wisdom makes some sense, even when the reader does not know the meaning of the word philosopher, represented here by a blank. But the reader can do little with a sentence like x Was philosopher of Socrates great a wisdom because the structure signals are jumbled. He might put a question mark at the end because he knows questions are often introduced by the verb (in contrast to assertions).
In reading a language we already know, we are often compelled by limited vocabulary to leave certain blanks in the text. We either fill them in by the general sense of the text, or by looking them up in a dictionary. Suppose one wishes to read the paragraph about Socrates but does not know all the words. Twenty-two vocabulary items are omitted in this version:
In his (1) life Socrates was (2)-ed in the (3) philosophy of his time and was (4)-ed with Archelaus the (5). Later he developed the (6) Socratic method of inquiry and (7)-ing He (8)-ed the people with whom he came in (9) about the right (10) of life. He was a man of (11) physique and great powers of (12). He was (13) indifferent to comfort and (14). In 399 B.C. he was tried by a popular (15) on the charge of introducing strange (16) and of (17)-ing the youth. He was (18)-ed to death. He (19)-ed to escape. (20) days after his (21) he drank the (22).
Although many of the words are missing, it is still possible to gain certain information from the text and guess at still more. If, however, twenty-two words like in, was, and, the, a, he were omitted instead of major vocabulary, how much more difficult it would be to make sense of the whole! Consequently, while we can get along in a language with a limited vocabulary, we cannot get along without knowledge of grammatical structure.
The complete text from which the two versions above were drawn reads as follows (it should be noted that not all the lexical choices are necessarily the best ones; an authority on Socrates might well prefer other major vocabulary than the words supplied):
In his early life Socrates was interested in the scientific philosophy of his time and was associated with Archelaus the physicist. Later he developed the famous Socratic method of inquiry and teaching. He questioned the people with whom he came in contact about the right conduct of life. He was a man of strong physique and great powers of endurance. He was completely indifferent to comfort and luxury. In 399 B.C. he was tried by a popular jury on the charge of introducing strange gods and of corrupting the youth. He was condemned to death. He refused to escape. Thirty days after his condemnation he drank the hemlock.
The role played by structure signals in the grammatical system of a language can be exemplifed in yet another way, namely by means of nonsense language. Nonsense language is created by employing lexically empty major vocabulary within the framework of the grammatical devices or structure signals of the language. In the often cited English nonsense sentence (Fries: 71). the signals -s, -ed, -s, in that sequence, indicate that the first and third words are “thing words and plural, that the middle term is an “action” word referring to past time. The syntactical relations among the three are also indicated by the sequence: Woggles must be the “subject” of the verb, ugged, and diggles the “object.” On the basis of the structure signals of English and without knowledge of the lexical meaning of a single word, it is possible to construct other “grammatically correct” sentences with these same terms:
(ii)
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Woggles ugg diggles
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(iii)
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A woggle uggs a diggle
|
(iv)
|
Woggles will ugg diggles
|
(v)
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Diggles have been ugged by woggles
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(vi)
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The woggles which ugged diggles were ugging woggles
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In our nonsense language use has been made of only two “thing” words and one “action” word, plus the structural items of standard English. We could enlarge the scope of our language by creating one new word:
(vii)
|
Waggles are fabothful
|
Our knowledge of English tells us that the morpheme -ful identifies the new word as a descriptive word; this is confirmed by its position after are in the sentence. On this basis we can now create an additional sentence:
(viii)
|
Waggles ugg fabothfully
|
and then expand it:
(ix)
|
The fabothful woggles ugged diggles fabothfully.
|
(ix) shows that fabothful may “modify” a “thing” word, and fabothfully an “action” word.
If we add the English structure word and to our repertoire, it is possible to introduce other structures, e.g.
(x)
|
Woggles and diggles have been ugged
|
in which two “subjects” are linked to a single verb. And may also link two sentences:
(xi)
|
Woggles ugg diggles and diggles ugg woggles
|
Nonsense sentences (i)–(xi) contain at least four sentence structures basic to English:
(a)
|
Woggles ugg fabothfully
|
(viii)
|
which may be transformed into a sentence with English lexical items:
|
Altos sing beautifully
|
|
(b)
|
Woggles are fabothful
|
(vii)
|
|
Sunsets are beautiful
|
|
(c)
|
Woggles ugged diggles
|
(i)
|
|
Teachers harassed students
|
|
(d)
|
Diggles have been ugged by waggles
|
(v)
|
|
Students have been harassed by teachers
|
|
English nonsense sentences demonstrate that grammatical structure in some important respects is independent of the lexical meaning of major vocabulary items. One does not learn the meaningful arrangement of words by learning major vocabulary. Teacher the students harassed the contains standard English vocabulary but is only a jumble of words. It is this important fact that justifies the assertion that in learning a language the prior and more important task is learning the structures and structure signals.
In the nonsense sentence, Woggles ugged diggles, -s, -ed, and -s are morphological variables providing clues to the structure of the sentence. They are called morphological variables because they have to do with the change in the form of words in contrast to some other possible form (woggles is shown by-s to be plural, in contrast to the singular form woggle, without -s).
According to Ch. Fries (32) the morphological and the syntactic signals in the given sentence make us understand that “several actors acted upon some objects”. This sentence which is a syntactic signal, makes the listener understand it as a declarative sentence whose grammatical meaning is actor - action - thing acted upon. One can easily change (transform) the sentence into the singular (A woggle ugged a diggle.), negative (A woggle did not ugg a diggle.), or interrogative (Did a woggle ugg a diggle?) All these operations are grammatical. Then what are the main units of grammar - structure.
Let us assume, for example, a situation in which are involved a man, a boy, some money, an act of giving, the man the giver, the boy the receiver, the time of the transaction - yesterday...
Any one of the units man, boy, money, giver, yesterday could appear in the linguistic structure as subject.
The man gave the boy the money yesterday.
The boy was given the money by the man yesterday.
The money was given the boy by the man yesterday.
The giving of the money to the boy by the man occurred yesterday.
Yesterday was the time of the giving of the money to the boy by the man.
"Subject" then is a formal linguistic structural matter.
Thus, the grammatical meaning of a syntactic construction shows the relation between the words in it.We have just mentioned here "grammatical meaning", “grammatical utterance”. The whole complex of linguistic means made use of grouping words into utterances is called a grammatical structure of the language.
All the means which are used to group words into the sentence exist as a certain system; they are interconnected and interdependent. They constitute the sentence structure. All the words of a language fall, as we stated above, under notional and functional words. Notional words are divided into four classes in accord with the position in which they stand in a sentence. Notional words as positional classes are generally represented by the following symbols: N, V, A, D.
The man landed the jet plane safely
N V A N D
Words which refer to class N cannot replace word referring to class V and vice versa. These classes we shall call grammatical word classes.
Thus, in any language there are certain classes of words which have their own positions in sentences. They may also be considered to be grammatical means of a language. So we come to a conclusion that the basic means of the grammatical structure of language are: a) sentence structure; b) grammatical word classes.
In connection with this grammar is divided into two parts: grammar which deals with sentence structure and grammar which deals with grammatical word - classes. The first is syntax and the second - morphology.
W. Francis: "The Structure of American English".
The Structural grammarian regularly begins with an objective description of the forms of language and moves towards meaning. An organized whole is greater than the mere sum of its parts. The organized whole is a structural meaning and the mere sum of its parts is a lexical meaning.
Five Signals of Syntactic Structure
1. Word Order - is the linear or time sequence in which words appear in an utterance.
2. Prosody - is the over-all musical pattern of stress, pitch, juncture in which the words of an utterance are spoken
3. Function words -are words largely devoid of lexical meaning which are used to indicate various functional relationships among the lexical words of an utterance
4. Inflections - are morphemic changes - the addition of suffixes and morphological means concomitant morphophonemic adjustments - which adopt words to perform certain structural function without changing their lexical meanings
5. Derivational contrast - is the contrast between words which have the same base but differ in the number and nature of their derivational affixes
One more thing must be mentioned here. According to the morphological classification English is one of the flexional languages. But the flexional languages fall under synthetical and analytical ones. The synthetical-flexional languages are rich in grammatical inflections and the words in sentences are mostly connected with each-other by means of these inflections though functional words and other grammatical means also participate in this. But the grammatical inflections are of primary importance. The Slavonic languages (Russian, Ukraine…) are of this type.
The flectional-analytical languages like English and French in order to connect words to sentences make wide use of the order of words and functional words due to the limited number of grammatical flexions. The grammatical means - order of words – is of primary importance for this type of languages.
Languages may be synthetic and analytical to their grammatical structure. In synthetic languages, such as German, Greek, Polish, Russian, Italian, Spanish, Finish, Turkish, Japanese, etc, the grammatical relations between words are expressed by means of inflections.
In analytical language (or isolating), such as English, the grammatical relations between words are expressed by means of form words and word order.
Analytical forms are mostly proper to verbs. An analytical verb-form consists of one or more form words, which have no lexical meaning and only express one or more of the grammatical categories of person, number, tense, aspect, voice, mood and one notional word, generally infinitive or a participle: e.g. He has come, I am reading.
However, the structure of a language is never purely synthetic or purely analytical. Accordingly in the English language there are:
1. Endings:
-s in the third form singular in the Present Simple He speaks
-s in the plural of nouns Girls
-s in the genitive case my brother’s book
-ed in the Past Simple worked
2. Inner flexion – man – men, speak – spoke
3. The synthetic forms of the Subjunctive Mood – were, be, have, etc.
One of the first lessons learned by the student of language or linguistics is that there is more to language than a simple vocabulary list. To learn a language, we must also learn its principles of sentence structure, and a linguist who is studying a language will generally be more interested in the structural principles than in the vocabulary per se."
"Sentence structure may ultimately be composed of many parts, but remember that the foundation of each sentence is the subject and the predicate. The subject is a word or a group of words that functions as a noun; the predicate is at least a verb and possibly includes objects and modifiers of the verb."
Meaning and Sentence Structure
"People are probably not as aware of sentence structure as they are of sounds and words, because sentence structure is abstract in a way that sounds and words are not. . . . At the same time, sentence structure is a central aspect of every sentence. . . .
"We can appreciate the importance of sentence structure by looking at examples within a single language. For instance, in English, the same set of words can convey different meanings if they are arranged in different ways. Consider the following:(5) The senators objected to the plans proposed by the generals.(6) The senators proposed the plans objected to by the generals.
The meaning of the sentence in (5) is quite different from that of (6), even though the only difference is the position of the words objected to and proposed. Although both sentences contain exactly the same words, the words are structurally related to each other differently; it is those differences in structure that account for the difference in meaning."
Information Structure: The Given-Before-New Principle
"It has been known since the Prague School of Linguistics that sentences can be divided into a part that anchors them in the preceding discourse ('old information') and a part that conveys new information to the listener. This communicative principle may be put to good use in the analysis of sentence structure by taking the boundary between old and new information as a clue to identifying a syntactic boundary. In fact, a typical SVO sentence such as Sue has a boyfriend can be broken down into the subject, which codes the given information, and the remainder of the sentence, which provides the new information. The old-new distinction thus serves to identify the VP [verb phrase] constituent in SVO sentences."
Producing and Interpreting Sentence Structures in Speech
"The grammatical structure of a sentence is a route followed with a purpose, a phonetic goal for a speaker, and a semantic goal for a hearer. Humans have a unique capacity to go very rapidly through the complex hierarchically organized processes involved in speech production and perception. When syntacticians draw structure on sentences they are adopting a convenient and appropriate shorthand for these processes. A linguist's account of the structure of a sentence is an abstract summary of a series of overlapping snapshots of what is common to the processes of producing and interpreting the sentence."
The Most Important Thing to Know About Sentence Structure
"Linguists investigate sentence structure by inventing sentences, making small changes to them, and watching what happens. This means that the study of language belongs to the scientific tradition of using experiments to understand some part of our world. For example, if we make up a sentence (1) and then make a small change to it to get (2), we find that the second sentence is ungrammatical, as indicated by the asterisk.(1) I saw the white house.(2) *I saw the house white."Why? One possibility is that it relates to the words themselves; perhaps the word white and the word house must always come in this order. But if we were to explain in this way we would need separate explanations for a very large number of words, including the words in the sentences (3)-(6), which show the same pattern.(3) He read the new book.(4) *He read the book new.(5) We fed some hungry dogs.(6) *We fed some dogs hungry."These sentences show us that whatever principle gives us the order of words, it must be based on the class of word, not on a specific word. The words white, new, and hungry are all a class of word called an adjective; the words house, book, and dogs are all a class of word called a noun. We could formulate a generalization, which holds true for the sentences in (1)-(6):(7) An adjective cannot immediately follow a noun."A generalization . . . like (7) is an attempt to explain the principles by which a sentence is put together. One of the useful consequences of a generalization is to make a prediction which can then be tested, and if this prediction turns out to be wrong, then the generalization can be improved. . . . The generalization in (7) makes a prediction which turns out to be wrong, when we look at sentence (8). (8) I painted the house white."Why is (8) grammatical while (2) is not, given that both end on the same sequence of house white? The answer is the most important thing to know about sentence structure . . .: The grammaticality of a sentence depends not on the sequence of words but how the words are combined into phrases."
Literature
Iriskulov M., Kuldashev A. A course in theoretical English Grammar. T., 2008
М. Блох. Теоретическая грамматика английского языка. М., 1994
М. Блох. Теоретические основы грамматики. М.,2002
M. Bloch. A Course in Theoretical English Grammar. M., 1983
Lecture 4.
MORPHOLOGY. THE MORPHEMIC STRUCTURE OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. TYPES OF MORPHEMES
Problems to be discussed
1. What is "Morphemic analysis"?
2. Morpheme-morph-allomorph
3. Types of morphemes from the point of view of their:
a) function
b) number correlation between form and meaning
Key words: Morphemic analysis , morpheme-morph-allomorph,criteria to classify morphemes
In English grammar and morphology, a morpheme is a meaningful linguistic unit consisting of a word such as dog, or a word element, such as the -s at the end of dogs, that can't be divided into smaller meaningful parts. Morphemes are the smallest units of meaning in a language.
There are two levels of morphological analysis: morphemic and derivational.
Morphemic analysis is the segmentation of a word into morphemes, their number and types.e.g. en/courage – en/courage/ment (2 morphemes – 3 morphemes)
The aim of morpheme analysis is segmentation of a word into morphemes, the defining of the number and type of these morphemes.
The basis unit of the morphemic analysis is the morpheme.
Morpheme is the smallest indivisible two-facet language unit which means an association of a certain meaning with a certain sound-form.
Morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of the language but its meaning is generalized: rewrite (re - denotes reversal of an action)
The procedure of morphemic analysis generally employed for the purposes of segmenting words into the constituent morphemes is the method of I m m e d i a t e and
U l t i m a t e C o n s t i t u e n t s .
This method deals with analysis of word-structure on the morphemic level.
It consists of breaking a word into the constituent morphemes – Immediate (ICs) and Ultimate Constituents (UCs).
We cut out the morpheme without which the word exists.
Each IC at the next stage of analysis is in turn broken into two smaller meaningful elements. The analysis is completed when we arrive at constituents incapable of further division, i.e. morphemes.
Ultimate constituent is part of a word which can not be futher divided. Immediate Constituent is part of the word which can be further divided.
The procedure of segmenting a word into its Ultimate Constituent morphemes, may be conveniently presented with the help of a box-like diagram.
Morphemes may be classified: a) from the semantic point of view,
b) from the structural point of view.
a) Semantically morphemes fall into two classes: r o o t - m o r p h e m e s and n o n - r o o t or a f f i x a t i o n a l m o r - p h e m e s . Roots and affixes make two distinct classes of morphemes due to the different roles they play in word-structure
b) Structurally morphemes fall into three types: f r e e morp h e m e s , b o u n d m o r p h e m e s , s e m i - f r e e ( s e m i - b o u n d ) m o r p h e m e s .
A f r e e m o r p h e m e is defined as one that coincides with the stem 2 or a word-form. A great many root-morphemes are free morphemes, for example, the root-morpheme friend — of the noun friendship is naturally qualified as a free morpheme because it coincides with one of the forms of the noun friend.
A b o u n d m o r p h e m e occurs only as a constituent part of a word. Affixes are, naturally, bound morphemes, for they always make part of a word, e.g. the suffixes -ness, -ship, -ise (-ize), etc., the prefixes un-, Semi-bound ( s e m i - f r e e ) m o r p h e m e s 1 are morphemes that can function in a morphemic sequence both as an affix and as a free morpheme. For example, the morpheme well and half on the one hand occur as free morphemes that coincide with the stem and the word-form in utterances like sleep well, half an hour,” on the other hand they occur as bound morphemes in words like well-known, half-eaten, half-done.
Result of morphemic analysis : monomorphic and polymorphic words
The procedure generally employed for the purposes of segmenting words into the constituent morphemes is the method of Immediate and Ultimate Constituents. This method is based on a binary principle, i.e. each stage of the procedure involves two components the word immediately breaks into. At each stage these two components are referred to as the Immediate Constituents (ICs). Each IC at the next stage of analysis is in turn broken into two smaller meaningful elements. The analysis is completed when we arrive at constituents incapable of further division, i.e. morphemes. In terms of the method employed these are referred to as the Ultimate Constituents (UCs). For example the noun friendliness is first segmented into the IC friendly recurring in the adjectives friendly-looking and friendly and the -ness found in a countless number of nouns, such ashappiness, darkness, unselfishness, etc. The IC -ness is at the same time a UC of the noun, as it cannot be broken into any smaller elements possessing both sound-form and meaning. The IC friendly is next broken into the ICs friend-and -ly recurring in friendship, unfriendly, etc. on the one hand, and wifely, brotherly, etc., on the other. Needless to say that the ICs friend-and -ly are both UCs of the word under analysis.
The procedure of segmenting a word into its Ultimate Constituent morphemes, may be conveniently presented with the help of a box-like diagram
In the diagram showing the segmentation of the noun friendliness the lower layer contains the ICs resulting from the first cut, the upper one those from the second, the shaded boxes representing the ICs which are at the same time the UCs of the noun.
The morphemic analysis according to the IC and UC may be carried out on the basis of two principles: the so-called root principle and the affix principle. According to the affix principle the segmentation of the word into its constituent morphemes is based on the identification of an affixational morpheme within a set of words; for example, the identification of the suffixational morpheme -less leads to the segmentation of words like useless, hopeless, merciless, etc., into the suffixational morpheme -less and the root-morphemes within a word-cluster; the identification of the root-morpheme agree- in the words agreeable, agreement, disagree makes it possible to split these words into the root -agree- and the affixational morphemes -able, -ment, dis-. As a rule, the application of one of these principles is sufficient for the morphemic segmentation of words.
According to the number of morphemes words are classified into monomorphic
and polymorphic. Monomorphiс or root-words consist of only one root-morpheme, e.g. small, dog, make, give, etc. All pоlуmоrphiс words according to the number of root-morphemes are classified into two subgroups: monoradical (or one-root words) and polyradical words, i.e. words which consist of two or more roots. Monoradical words fall into two subtypes: 1) radical-suffixal words, i.e. words that consist of one root-morpheme and one or more suffixal morphemes, e.g. acceptable, acceptability, blackish, etc.; 2)radical-prefixal words, i.e. words that consist of one root-morpheme and a prefixal morpheme, e.g. outdo, rearrange, unbutton, etc. and 3) prefixo-radical-suffixal, i.e. words which consist of one root, a prefixal and suffixal morphemes, e.g. disagreeable, misinterpretation, etc.
Polyradical words fall into two types: 1) polyradical words which consist of two or more roots with no affixational morphemes, e.g. book-stand, eye-ball, lamp-shade, etc. and 2) words which contain at least two roots and one or more affixational morphemes, e.g. safety-pin, wedding-pie, class-consciousness, light-mindedness, pen-holder, etc.
Morpheme – smallest non-segmentable meaningful unit of L.
As far as the complexity of the morphemic structure of the word is concerned all English words fall into two large classes:
segmentable words, i.e. those allowing of segmentation into morphemes
Ex. agreement, information, fearless, quickly, door-handle
non-segmentable words, i.e. those not allowing of such segmentation.
Ex. house, girl, woman, husband
The morphemic analysis aims at splitting a segmentable word into its constituent morphemes — the basic units at this level of word-structure analysis — and at determining their number and types.
adult-hood re-e-valu-ate
barbar-ian re-in-state
gaunt-let de-press-ed
star-dom test-ify
relat-ion-ship legal-ize
Three types of morphemic segmentability of words are distinguished: complete, conditional and defective.
Types of segmentability:
complete segmentability – you can easily split a word, the morphemic structure of which is transparent enough, as their individual morphemes clearly stand out within the word lending themselves easily to isolation.
Ex. adult-hood
star-dom
relat-ion-ship
ex-pos-able
mis-apply
conditional – semantically is not possible
Ex. re-ceive
de-ceive
ceive looks like a root, but it is not a root, segmentation is doubtful
ceive is pseudo morphene
re-tain, con-tain, de-tain (the sound-clusters [ri-], [di-], [кэn-] seem, on the one hand, to be singled out quite easily due to their recurrence in a number of words, on the other hand, they undoubtedly have nothing in common with the phonetically identical morphemes re-, de- as found in words like rewrite, re-organise, deorganise, decode neither the sound-clusters [ri-] or [di-] nor the [-tein] or [-si:v] possess any lexical or functional meaning of their own. The type of meaning that can be ascribed to them is only a differential and a certain distributional meaning: the [ri-] distinguishes retain from detain and the [-tein] distinguishesretain from receive, whereas their order and arrangement point to the status of the re-, de-, con-, per- as different from that of the -tain and -ceive within the structure of the words.)
barbar-ian
re-quire
3. defective segmentation – components never occur in other words or very seldom, one the component morphemes is a unique morpheme in the sense that it does not, as a rule, recur in a different linguistic environment.
Ex. en-hance
hance is a unique morpheme
ham-let - деревушка
dis-may
straw-berry
cran-berry
rasp-berry
A unique morpheme is isolated and understood as meaningful because the constituent morphemes display a more or less clear denotational meaning. There is no doubt that in the nouns streamlet (ручеек), ringlet (колечко), leaflet, etc. the morpheme -let has the denotational meaning of diminutiveness and is combined with the morphemes stream-, ring-, leaf-, etc. each having a clear denotational meaning. Things are entirely different with the word hamlet. The morpheme -let retains the same meaning of diminutive-ness, but the sound-cluster [hæm] that is left after the isolation of the morpheme -let does not recur in any other English word with anything like the meaning it has in the word hamlet. It is likewise evident that the denotational and the differential meaning of [hæm] which distinguishes hamlet from streamlet, ringlet, etc. is upheld by the denotational meaning of-let.
The same is exemplified by the word pocket which may seem at first sight non-segmentable. However, comparison with such words as hogget (ягненок), lionet (ягненок), cellaret (погребок), etc. leads one to the isolation of the morpheme -ethaving a diminutive meaning, the more so that the morphemes lock-, hog-, lion-, cellar-, etc. recur in other words (cf. hog, hoggery; lion, lioness; cellar, cellarage). At the same time the isolation of the morpheme -et leaves in the word pocket the sound-cluster [роk] that does not occur in any other word of Modern English but obviously has a status of a morpheme with a denotational meaning as it is the lexical nucleus of the word. The morpheme [роk] clearly carries a differential and distributional meaning as it distinguishes pocket from the words mentioned above and thus must be qualified as a unique morpheme.
Morphemes may be classified:
a) Semantically morphemes fall into two classes:
1. root-morphemes(the root-morphemes are understood as the lexical centres of the words, as the basic constituent part of a word without which the word is inconceivable. The root-morpheme is the lexical nucleus of a word, it has an individual lexical meaning shared by no other morpheme of the language. Besides it may also possess all other types of meaning proper to morphemes1 except the part-of-speech meaning which is not found in roots. The root-morpheme is isolated as the morpheme common to a set of words making up a word-cluster, for example the morpheme teach-in to teach, teacher, teaching, theor-in theory, theorist, theoretical)
2. non-root or affixational morphemes(include inflectional morphemes or inflections and affixational morphemes or affixes. Inflections carry only grammatical meaning and are thus relevant only for the formation of word-forms, whereas affixes are relevant for building various types of stems — the part of a word that remains unchanged throughout its paradigm. Lexicology is concerned only with affixational morphemes.
Affixes are classified into prefixes and suffixes: a prefix precedes the root-morpheme, a suffix follows it. Affixes besides the meaning proper to root-morphemes possess the part-of-speech meaning and a generalised lexical meaning).
b) Structurally morphemes fall into three types:
1. free morphemes(coincide with the stem or a word-form. A great many root-morphemes are free morphemes, for example, the root-morpheme friend — of the noun friendship is naturally qualified as a free morpheme because it coincides with one of the forms of the noun friend).
2.bound morphemes(occurs only as a constituent part of a word. Affixes are, naturally, bound morphemes, for they always make part of a word, e.g. the suffixes -ness, -ship, -ise (-ize), etc., the prefixes un-, dis-, de-, etc. (e.g. readiness, comradeship, to activise; unnatural, to displease, to decipher).
All unique roots and pseudo-roots are-bound morphemes. Such are the root-morphemes theor- in theory, theoretical, etc.,barbar-in barbarism, barbarian, etc., -ceive in conceive, perceive, etc.
3. semi-free (semi- bound) morphemes(can function in a morphemic sequence both as an affix and as a free morpheme.
Ex. the morpheme well and half on the one hand occur as free morphemes that coincide with the stem and the word-form in utterances like sleep well, half an hour,” on the other hand they occur as bound morphemes in words like well-known, half-eaten, half-done.
Two groups of morphemes should be specially mentioned.
1. morphemes of Greek and Latin origin often called combining forms
Ex. telephone, telegraph, phonoscope, microscope
The morphemes tele-, graph-, scope-, micro-, phone- are characterised by a definite lexical meaning and peculiar stylistic reference: tele- means ‘far’, graph- means ‘writing’, scope — ’seeing’, micro- implies smallness, phone- means ’sound.’ Comparing words with tele- as their first constituent, such as telegraph, telephone, telegram one may conclude that tele- is a prefix and graph-, phone-, gram-are root-morphemes. On the other hand, words like phonograph, seismograph, autograph may create the impression that the second morpheme graph is a suffix and the first — a root-morpheme.
? they are composed of a suffix and a prefix
Solution: these morphemes are all bound root-morphemes of a special kind and such words belong to words made up of bound roots (do not possess the part-of-speech meaning typical of affixational morphemes).
2. morphemes occupying a kind of intermediate position, morphemes that are changing their class membership.
Ex. The root-morpheme man- found in numerous words like postman ['poustmэn], fisherman [fi∫эmэn], gentleman['d3entlmэn] in comparison with the same root used in the words man-made ['mænmeid] and man-servant ['mæn,sэ:vэnt] is pronounced, differently, the [æ] of the root-morpheme becomes [э] and sometimes disappears altogether.
Some linguists: man=er (denoting an agent rather than a male adult).
We can hardly regard [man] as having completely lost the status of a root-morpheme. Besides it is impossible to say she is an Englishman (or a gentleman) and the lexical opposition of man and woman is still felt in most of these compounds (cf. though Madam Chairman in cases when a woman chairs a sitting and even all women are tradesmen). It follows from all this that the morpheme -man as the last component may be qualified as semi-free.
holic – semi-suffix (alcoholic, chocoholic, speedoholic)
gate=scandal (Irangate, Camillagate)
In most cases the morphemic structure of words is transparent enough and individual morphemes clearly stand out within the word. The segmentation of words is generally carried out according to the method of Immediate and Ultimate Constituents.This method is based on the binary principle, i.e. each stage of the procedure involves two components the word immediately breaks into. At each stage these two components are referred to as the Immediate Constituents. Each Immediate Constituent at the next stage of analysis is in turn broken into smaller meaningful elements. The analysis is completed when we arrive at constituents incapable of further division, i.e. morphemes. These are referred to Ultimate Constituents.
Morphemic analysis under the method of Ultimate Constituents may be carried out on the basis of two principles: the so-calledroot-principle and affix principle.
According to the affix principle the splitting of the word into its constituent morphemes is based on the identification of the affix within a set of words, e.g. the identification of the suffix -er leads to the segmentation of words singer, teacher, swimmer into the derivational morpheme - er and the roots teach- , sing-, drive-.
According to the root-principle, the segmentation of the word is based on the identification of the root-morpheme in a word-cluster, for example the identification of the root-morpheme agree- in the words agreeable, agreement, disagree.
4) . The main aim, principles and methods of derivational analysis.
The analysis of the morphemic composition of words defines the ultimate meaningful constituents (UCs), their typical sequence and arrangement, but it does not reveal the hierarchy of morphemes making up the word, neither does it reveal the way a word is constructed, nor how a new word of similar structure should be understood.
Ex. words unmanly and discouragement morphemically are referred to the same type as both are segmented into three UCs representing one root, one prefixational and one suffixational morpheme. However the arrangement and the nature of ICs and hence the relationship of morphemes in these words is different — in unmanly the prefixational morpheme makes one of the ICs, the other IC is represented by a sequence of the root and the suffixational morpheme and thus the meaning of the word is derived from the relations between the ICs un- and manly- (‘not manly’), whereas discouragement rests on the relations of the IC discourage- made up by the combination of the. prefixational and the root-morphemes and the suffixational morpheme -ment for its second IC (’smth that discourages’). Hence we may infer that these three-morpheme words should be referred to different derivational types: unmanly to a prefixational and discouragement to a suffixational derivative.
The nature, type and arrangement of the ICs of the word is known as its derivative structure. Though the derivative structure of the word is closely connected with its morphemic or morphological structure and often coincides with it, it differs from it in principle.
According to the derivative structure all words fall into two big classes:
1. simplexes or simple, non-derived words (words which derivationally cannot’ be segmented into ICs, the morphological stem of simple words, i.e. the part of the word which takes on the system of grammatical inflections is semantically non-motivated and independent of other words).
Ex. hand, come, blue, anxious, theory, public
2. derivatives(words which depend on some other simpler lexical items that motivate them structurally and semantically, i.e. the meaning and the structure of the derivative is understood through the comparison with the meaning and the structure of the source word. Hence derivatives are secondary, motivated units, made up as a rule of two ICs, i.e. binary units).
Ex. words like friendliness, unwifely, school-masterish, etc. are made up of the ICs friendly + -ness, un- + wifely, schoolmaster+-ish. The ICs are brought together according to specific rules of order and arrangement preconditioned by the system of the language. It follows that all derivatives are marked by the fixed order of their ICs.
Method of immediate constituents
Derivational level of analysis aims at finding out the derivative types of ws, the interrelations between them and at finding out how different types of derivatives are constructed. Derivational analysis enables one to understand how new ws appear in the L.
There are many approaches to the questions mentioned above. According to Zellig Harris "The morphemic analysis is the operation by which the analyst isolates minimum meaningful elements in the utterances of a language, and decides which occurrences of such elements shall be regarded as occurrences of "the same" element".
The general procedure of isolating the minimum meaningful elements is as follows:
Step 1. The utterances of a language are examined (obviously) not all of them, but a sampling which we hope will be statistically valid. Recurrent partials with constant meaning (ran away in John ran away and Bill ran away) are discovered; recurrent partials not composed of smaller ones (way) are alternants or morphs. So are any partials not recurrent but left over when all recurrent ones are counted for. Every utterance is composed entirely of morphs. The division of a stretch of speech between one morph and another, we shall call a cut.
Step 2. Two or more morphs are grouped into a single morpheme if they:
have the same meaning;
never occur in identical environments and
have combined environments no greater than the environments of some single alternant in the language.
Step 3. The difference in the phonemic shape of alternants of morphemes are organized and stated; this constitutes morphophonemics
Compare the above said with the conception of Ch. Hockett.
Ch. Hockett :
Step 1. All the utterances of the language before (us) the analyst recorded in some phonemic notation.
Step 2. The notations are now examined, recurrent partials with constant meaning are discovered; those not composed of smaller ones are morphs. So are any partials not recurrent but left over when all recurrent ones are accounted for: therefore every bit of phonemic material belongs to one morphs or another. By definition, a morph has the same phonemic shape in all its occurrences; and (at this stage) every morph has an overt phonemic shape, but a morph is not necessarily composed of a continuous uninterrupted stretch of phonemes. The line between two continuous morphs is a cut.
Step 3. Omitting doubtful cases, morphs are classed on the basis of shape and canonical forms are tentatively determined.
Step 4. Two or more morphs are grouped into a single morpheme if they fit the following grouping - requirements:
they have the same meaning;
they are in non-contrastive distribution;
the range of resultant morpheme is not unique.
Step 5. It is very important to remember that if in this procedure one comes across to alternative possibilities, choice must be based upon the following order of priority: tactical simplicity; morphophonemic simplicity; conformity to canonical forms.
Thus the first cut of utterance into the smallest meaningful units is called morph. The morphs that have identical meanings are grouped into one morpheme. It means the morphs and morphemes are speech and language units that have both form (or shape) and meanings. The smallest meaningful unit of language is called a morpheme while the smallest meaningful unit of speech is called a morph. There’s a notion of allomorph in linguistics. By allomorphs the linguists understand the morphs that have identical meanings and that are grouped into one morpheme. There may be another definition of the allomorphs: the variants (or options, or alternants) of a morpheme are called allomorphs.
Compare the above said with Harris’s opinion.
Some morphs, however, and some may be assigned simultaneously to two (or more) morphemes. An empty morph, assigned to no morpheme. (All the empty morphs in a language are in complementary distribution and have the same meaning (none). They could if there were any advantages in it, be grouped into a single empty morpheme (but one which had the unique characteristic of being tactically irrelevant), must have no meaning and must be predicable in terms of non-empty morphs. A portmanteau morphs must have the meanings of two or more morphemes simultaneously, and must be in non-contrastive distribution with the combination of any alternant of one of the member morphemes and any alternant of the other (usually because no such combination occur).
The difference in the phonemic shape of morphs as alternants of morphemes are organized and stated; this (in some cases already partly accomplished in Step 1) constitutes morphophonemics.
In particular, portmanteaus are compared with the other alternants of the morphemes involved, and if resemblances in phonemic shape and the number of cases warrant, morphs of other than overt phonemic content are recognized, some of the portmanteaus being thus eliminated.
The Types of Morphemes
Morphemes can be classified from different view-points:
Functional; 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.
Thus there are two approaches to classify morphemes: functional and number correlation between form and content.
The first one can be shown in the following scheme:
Morphemes
lexical grammatical
free bound free bound
The second one can also be shown in the same way:
Morphemes
|
overt
|
Zero
|
empty
|
discontinuous
|
Form
|
+
|
-
|
+
|
+-
|
Meaning
|
+
|
+
|
-
|
+
|
Who can tell me the difference between language and speech? Language is a collective body of knowledge, it is a set of basic elements, but these elements can form a great variety of combinations. In fact the number of these combinations is endless. Speech is closely connected with language, as it is the result of using the language, the result of a definite act of speaking. Speech is individual, personal while language is common for all individuals. To illustrate the difference between language and speech let us compare a definite game of chess and a set of rules how to play chess.
Language is opposed to speech and accordingly language units are opposed to speech units. The language unit phoneme is opposed to the speech unit - sound: phoneme /s/ can sound differently in speech - /s/ and /z/). The sentence is opposed to the utterance; the text is opposed to the discourse.
Literature
Iriskulov M., Kuldashev A. A course in theoretical English Grammar. T., 2008
М. Блох. Теоретическая грамматика английского языка. М., 1994
М. Блох. Теоретические основы грамматики. М.,2002
M. Blokh. A Course in Theoretical English Grammar. M., 1983
Lecture 5.
THE PROBLEM OF GRAMMATICAL CATEGORIES
Problems to be discussed
1.grammatical category
2. types of grammatical categories.
3. Lexical and Grammatical Meaning
Key words:
levels of grammatical description ,constituent part, grammatical system, prescriptive, explanatory, kernel, informative value, speech act, coherent, cohesive, grammatical formation of utterance, grammatical structure of language
A grammatical category or grammatical feature is a property of items within the grammar of a language. Within each category there are two or more possible values (sometimes called grammemes), which are normally mutually exclusive. Frequently encountered grammatical categories include:
tense, the placing of a verb in a time frame, which can take values such aspresent and past
number, with values such as singular, plural, and sometimes dual, trial, paucal, uncountable or partitive, inclusive or exclusive
gender, with values such as masculine, feminine and neuter
noun classes, which are more general than just gender, and include additional classes like: animated, humane, plants, animals, things, and immaterial for concepts and verbal nouns/actions, sometimes as well shapes
locative relations, which other languages would represent using grammatical cases or tenses, or by adding a possibly agglutinated lexeme such as a preposition, adjective, or particle.
Although the use of terms varies from author to author, a distinction should be made between grammatical categories and lexical categories. Lexical categories (considered syntactic categories) largely correspond to the parts of speech of traditional grammar, and refer to nouns, adjectives, etc.
A phonological manifestation of a category value (for example, a word ending that marks "number" on a noun) is sometimes called an exponent.Grammatical relations define relationships between words and phrases with certain parts of speech, depending on their position in the syntactic tree. Traditional relations include subject, object, and indirect object
M.Y. Blokh defines the grammatical category as "a system of expressing a generalized grammatical meaning by means of paradigmatic correlation of grammatical forms". It’s a unity of form & mean-g. 1)The general notion on which a gram. category grounds is gram. mean-g. 2)The forms united into a grammatical category possess a common general meaning that gives a name to the category and each form possesses its own specific meaning that presents a specification of the general meaning and differentiates the form from the other form/forms within the category. The forms lives - lived - will live are united on the basis of the common general grammatical meaning of tense and constitute the grammatical category of tense. Within this category each form has its own specific meaning of tense: present, past and future. 3) gram. categories don’t nominate objects or units of lang., instead they express relations between lang. units. The grammatical category of tense presents a specific lingual expression of objective time, the grammatical category of case presents various relations between the action and its participants, the grammatical category of number in nouns reflects the quantitative relations between homogeneous objects of reality, the grammatical category of mood presents the relations between the action and reality as they are presented by the speaker etc. Such grammatical categories may also be called inherent (неотъемлемый, присущий). 4) Conceptual (понятийные) grammatical categories are universal, they exist in most of the languages though their volume and their scope may vary considerably in various languages. Gram. cat-s represent lang. realization of universal cat-s of human thinking. That’s why gram. cat-s typical of a particular lang. are unique. The grammatical category of number is the most universal grammatical category, all speech communities have linguistic means of encoding number, though these means differ greatly in different languages. 5) A grammatical category is constituted on the basis of contrastive grammatical forms which share a certain grammatical meaning correlated to some general concept (time, number) and differ in more concrete meanings within the scope of the same concept. Such contrastive grammatical forms are called oppositions and all grammatical categories are based on oppositions. The method of oppositional analysis was introduced by Trubetskoy . Now the method of oppositional analysis is widely used in lexicology and grammar.
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