Achievement of Normative Grammar in treating grammatical methods
There morphology remained more or less the same as in the previous grammar but in the syntax there were some important innovations. In the prenormative grammar there were 3 principle parts of the sentence: Subject; predicate; object. Now in the mid-19th century object was ranked among secondary parts of the sentence because it is subordinated to the verbs. Objects themselves were classified in this grammar into direct; indirect and prepositional. To denote secondary parts of the sentence number of the synonyms are used:
- Modifier
- Compliment (to be gloomy)
- Adjunct (a silly man – attributive; to buy a book – objective; to walk fast - adverbial)
The theory of the sentence was developed further. In the 19th century there appeared term “cause” (a combination of a subject and a predicate which however is not equal to a complete simple sentence). It is only used as part of a complex sentence.
Clauses can be coordinated and subordinated and as a result a composite sentence can be of 2 kinds:
- Complex (сложноподчиненное)
- Compound (сложносочиненное)
If we count all the structural kinds of English sentence we see the trichotomic division of sentence.
In normative grammar there even appeared the classification of subordinate causes which were time produced by Mason and Bain. There were given the names noun; adjective; adverb clauses. For the 1st time there were mentioned notion of the phrase. Lowth defined a phrase as a combination of 2 words. Though both prenormative and normative grammatical sentence had no scientific grounds and were purely descriptive still they accumulated quite a considerable number of important facts. Beside, normative grammar had a more creative character especially in syntax. They excluded the object from principle part of sentence introduced the notion of clause; introduced trichotomic sentence division and put forward the problem of phrase. Thus normative grammar produced good bases for the appearance of the scientific grammar. “Classical scientific grammar” the originator of it was H. Sweet. He proclaimed the principles of new grammar in his ground work “A new English grammar: logical and historical” published in London 1891 vol. 1 and 1892 vol.2.
The task of grammar is not to dictate the rules of correctness but to explain why people speak this or that way.
The 2nd is to give scientific analysis of linguistic phenomena, to define language concepts, categories and notions, that’s why this grammar is called scientific. Of all traditional grammar it reached the highest level of development that is why it is called classical grammar.
8.09.2010
The golden stage of classical scientific grammar lasted from the end of the 19th century to the 40es of the 20th century. The most prominent representatives are:
- H. Sweet
- O. Jepersen
- C.T. Onions
- E. Kruisinga (“A handbook of present day English grammar” 5 vol.)
- H. Poutsma(A handbook of English grammar)
- G. Curme (A grammar of the English language)
The problems which they faced. In morphology the traditional number of cases of this grammar fluctuated from 5 to 2. O. Jespersen described the nominative and objective cases for the pronouns. For the nouns he gave the common and the genitive case.
The 2nd problem is the parts of speech. Here H. Sweet was the 1st to put forward the scientific principles of the distribution
Grammatical meaning, form and function should be taken into consideration to define parts of speech. He produced his own classification, which however was not a success. Jespersen based his classification o the same principles and it was even a less success.
In syntax there was dominating trichotomic sentence division. Only E. Kruisinga expressed the idea that coordination of clauses doesn’t produce a composite sentence, because here each clause is equal to an independent simple sentence. Thus instead of the compound sentence The bell has gone, and the students are leaving the classroom we may as well use 2 independent simple sentences. Later in the mid-20th century this was developed by L.L. Iofic.
The theory of phrase. Here Krusinga subdivided phrase in close and loose syntactic groups. In case of close group words are connected by subordination E.G. these books, invited him. And in loose groups coordination is used and words do not depend on each other E.G. men & women.
Parts of sentence. Here we find 5 traditional parts such as subject, predicate, object attribute, adverbial modifier. To denote these secondary parts various scholars used various terms. R. Zandvoort preferred term adjunct and used term adnominal (john’s friend). G. Curme used the term modifier for the same purpose while Bryant used the term complement to denote the secondary parts of the sentence. Jespersen made an attempt to work out an original system of sentence part and called it the theory of ranks. In syntactic groups word may be long to different ranks which he classified as primary or the 1st rank. Primaries are absolutely independent. A secondary rank, these words depend on primaries. A tertiary (3rd rank), quaternary (4th rank).
E.G. A furiously(3) barking(2) dog (1).
This theory is quite logical if it is used to analyze phrases with the relation of successive subordination words. But if the theory is applied to sentence analyses it reveals some contradictions. In a sentence subject and predicate are both the principle parts of the sentence and none of them is subordinated to the other and the relations between them are such that cannot be called subordination. In order to overcome this contradiction in his later work (philosophy of grammar) he introduced 2 new terms: junction and nexus. In case of the relations junction one of the words is leading both in form and meaning
E.G. A silly man. A barking dog
While in case of nexus both words are equally important.
E.G. A dog barks. A girl is dancing.
Quite a new branch of syntax was introduced by Onions The theory of syntax structure. Taking into consideration the quality of the verb used as a predicate he described 5 patterns of a simple sentence in English.
1. S/P – Verb intrans. E.G The day dawns.
2. S/P – Verb link + Predicative. E.G. Mary lay dead.
3. S/P – verb transitive + Object. E.G. Cats catch mice
4. S/P – verb transitive +object (indirect)+object(direct)
5. S/P – verb transitive + Object + Predicative
Jespersen in his latest works (analytical syntax) tried to formalize sentence analyses and to represent sentence structures as formulas. To do this he introduced a number of symbols
- For subject – S
- For finite verb – V
- For non-finite verb – v
- M – modifier
E.G. Jane doesn’t want to come here. SVNv(I) v(I)M
He gave her a ring. SVOo.
The main contribution of classical scientific grammar is in the field of syntax. Here Kruisinga expressed non-traditional approach to the traditional one, having excluded compound sentence.
Onions was the 1st to described the patterns of the sentence, and Jespersen described form. He also differentiated the syntactic relation between the S. and Pr. On the one hand (nexus) and other parts of the sentence(junction). And this grammar prepared good bases for the beginning for the next kind of grammar which is known as structural or descriptive. Structural linguistics is a very important tried in the language theory of the 20th century. It was influenced by the ideas by such linguists: By Furtunatov, De Saussure.
Here 1st of all we come along a leading principle that language is a self-contained system organized according to its own inner rules.
15.09.2010 Структурализская грамматика
There are two possible approaches paradigmatic and Sintagmatic. The leading one of these 2 was paradigmatic. Language phenomena can be studied synchronically or diachronically (to trace the history of development of language forms). They were concentrated on synchronic analysis and they believed that diachronical one often leads to the mistakes. Structural linguistics was very influential language trend ad it was represented by 3 main schools. The first of them is known as POK (Prague linguistic circle). The most prominent representatives were Н. Трубецкой, Трынка, and Danish they are famous for their achievements for the study of phonemes and the theory of the informative sentence structure when the sentence meaning is subdivided to Theme-Rheme. The 2nd school of structural linguistics was located in Copenhagen and was originated by Hje. It was called the school of old semantics. According to this school language is the system of interrelations of its elements. And the 3rd school is represented by America and originated by Loanfield. He expressed the main principals of American structural grammar in his work titled “language” N-Y 1937. Descriptive grammarians criticized all the previous grammars for their subjective approach towards linguistic problems, for their purely syntactic definitions, for the lack of objective methods of the linguistic analysis.
American descriptive grammar work under the motto “the task of grammar is to give formal analysis or formal “, it was represented by Hill and Frances. The formal characteristics of linguistic units are contained in their structures, so all their research work was limited by the study of structures in language. The most prominent representatives are Ch. C. Fries “the structure of English” N-Y 1952. Hill “introduction to structures”.
According to their idea structure is a 2nd way of organization and combination of elements in language. They hoped that structural approach towards the problems of language will help them to make linguistics a kind of exact sciences. They excluded the study of meaning in language and they were concentrated on the study of language forms. The theory of American Descriptive Grammar was influenced by doctrine of behaviorism. According to the theory of behaviorism all human actions in general and his language usage in particular may be analyzed in stimulates and responds and the task is to observe the behavior of language and we can observe here what can be seen and what can be heard while meaning of language units cannot be observed thus it cannot be studied. And to observe language behavior American structuralists introduced their own methods of linguistics analysis which is called “immediate constitutes segmentation” the method of substitution and the method of distribution. The method of IC segmentation was introduced by Bufield. Structuralists claimed that they will work out universal methods of linguistic analysis which will be reliable in the study of all language units. He subdivided language units into the close and loose language forms, close forms make part of a larger construction. They cannot be used independently while loose forms can be used autonomously. Unendlessly. The method of IC segmentation consists in the division of a construction in such a way that as a result of this division there remain the smallest bound forms which cannot be divided further. There may be quite a number of stages in this segmentation and their order of appearance is indicated by vertical strokes. One stroke indicates the 1st stage of segmentation and so on. Firstly, between subject group and predicate group. After that sentence is rewritten form in transcription where they separated the phoneme from one another.
According to the idea of descriptive grammar this method was to replace the traditional analysis into their syntactic parts such as S,PR,O…. They rejected it because it took to the consideration the semantic relation between the words in the sentence.
The 2nd method: their distribution of a language element is the total of all environments in which it occurs. This method consists in finding all possible positions of a certain linguistic element in larger syntactic structures and to describe it we take into consideration the quality of the left and right adjacent.
E.G. A boy entered the room.
A boy – zero left distribution
Entered – right distribution
The little boy is in the room
Little – left distribution
John is (L) a boy (0)
John is a little (L) boy (0)
This method may be useful in the process of analysis of the polysimantic words
E.g. he turned grey. To be
He turned round the corner. The verb of notion повернуть
We need be flexible.
We need this dictionary.
The 3rd method is consists in substitutional diagnostical way.
E.G. The poor boy ran fast.
The method consists in finding all the possible forms which can occurred in the position of each word I such a frame.
The – this, one, two may all occur
Poor – may be substituted for little, clever and so on.
All the words which can stand in the same position belong to the same class or to the same class of speech. The methods of substitution and distribution were used in classifying parts of speech in English. Descriptivists claimed that they would work out universal methods analysis. In reality their method was more or less officiate in the study morphology but they failed in syntax.
22.09.2010
Syntax in descriptive grammar was most of all of criticism because syntactic relations cannot be analyzed on the bases of the formal methods only. Thus, no sentence definition was given this grammar all conjunctions were given the name of sentence includes. But they were not subdivided into subordinating and coordinating ones thus the difference between the complex and compound sentences were not revealed (exocentric, egocentric).
Harrold Whitehall used the term headed and non-headed word groups in the same meaning.
The theory developed by this grammar could not describe such complicated phenomena as syntactic homonymy and syntactic polysemy. In case of syntactic homonymy the constructions which are formally alike have different meaning and in case of polysemy 1 phrase or sentences can be interpreted in 2 meaning. Such cases could not be revealed on the base of the methods of American descriptive grammar.
e.g John is eager to please. John is easy to please.
Such facts were noticed by the representatives of American descriptive grammar who realized that their theory is not efficient enough to deal with some syntactic drawbacks. In order to overcome it they worked over the syntactic theory and thus originated a new kind of grammar which is known as transformational grammar or generative grammar. Their ground works are “co-occurrence and transformation in linguistic structures”. It was translated in Russian.
In this work 1st of all we find an attempt to overcome the drawbacks of descriptive grammar and secondly the task and creed of transformational grammar was proclaimed. According to these scholars the task of grammar is to work out a number of rules with the help of which grammatically correct sentences can be generated from the simplest syntactic structures which the called kernel or basic sentences.
This grammar has 2 stages. At the 1st stage it was preoccupied with the study it can be called generative syntax. In the 2nd they deled with the meaning it is called generative semantics.
The main axiom of transformational grammar is that every language in general and English in particular is consists of certain bases sentences which have the simplest structure and contain only essential parts. And from these with the help of transformational operations and innumerable number of more complicated sentences used in our speech can be generated. Their philosophical foundation of Jonskin’s theory was borrowed from Renais Decart “невидимый Бог создал видимый мир”.
The number of cornel sentences is limited in every language and for English was given by Leas. Various scholars gave different numbers.
NV, NVN etc.
All sentences contain their minimal number of sentence parts, only those without which a sentence doesn’t exist. They are simple, declarative, non-extended. All larger sentences are derived from the cornel sentences with the help of transformations. Transformation is a linguistic element to which a cornel sentence is subjected to operation and that expended and correct sentence is here. The number of sentences is great.
· E.G. reordering (commutation) a question may be derived from a simple sentence. John is in a room.
· Imbedding (insertion) to include. A negative sentence can be derived. John is (not) young.
· Deletion (elimination) a cornel may be divided. John returned late. John returned.
· The passive transformation. A girl writes a letter. A letter is written by a girl.
· WH transformation is used to derive special questions from declarative sentences.
Grammarians of this school believed that all complex sentences are derived from these cornel sentences.
1. A little girl entered the room.
2. A girl entered the room. NVN
3. A girl is little. N is Adj
If 2 construction share a word in common than 1 of the constructions can be imbedded into the other.
· The boy who knew the man spoke at the court.
· The boy knew the man
· The boy spoke at the court
· The boy who knew the man spoke at the court.
The method of transformation helps to interpret the syntactic homonymy and polysemy. Thus 2 sentences have the same structure.
A table cloth - - a snow ball
A cloth covers the table - - a ball is made of snow
Transformational theory can be used for the semantic analysis and in case of polysemy john’s trial.
27.10.10
Grammarians of this trend claimed to produce linguistic algebra where basic sentences would be the equivalents of numbers in maths and transformations would be the equivalents of the rules of summing, division, subtraction and multiplication.
Unlike structural grammar transformational grammar didn’t neglect the meaning of language units. They couldn’t but notice that as a result of transformations sometimes there appeared grammatically correct but semantically meaningless sentences.
E.G. Colorless green ideas slid furiously.
Here we see the negative result of transformations which led to the loss of sentence meaning.
Attempts of grammarians to overcome such negative results gave a rise to the 2nd stage of transformational grammar which was preoccupied mainly with problems of sentence meaning. That’s why the 2nd stage is called generative semantics or semantic syntax.
In addition to N. Chomsky the 2nd stage was developed by Ch. Fillmore “The case for case” – N-Y 1968.
W. Chefe – “the meaning and structure of language”
V.V. Bogdanov – “семантика. синтаксическая организация предложения”
According to generative semantics every sentence is a unit consisting of 2 lays or 2 structures: the semantic and the syntactic structure. The semantic structure is originated in the process of thinking in a human mind, so it’s not visible, that’s why it may be called deep or inner structure. This inner structure is shaped into a sentence with the help of transformations and appears as a surface structure or syntactic structure which is observable in written or oral form.
An important principal of generative semantics is that here the main part of the sentence which is responsible for the whole semantic structure is verb. And all other parts of sentence meaning are predicted by verbal valency and these other parts are called verbal cases.
Such a theory when verb is treated as a centre of the sentence is known as verbal-centric theory.
The number of verbal cases depends on the valency of a verb.
Verbs may be zero-valenced. They don’t need any other semantic part of a sentence but can generate it alone (вечереет, смеркается, морозит).
Mono-valenced verbs need 1 semantic pert to generate sentence meaning.
E.G. I’m running. (needs a doer) intransitive verbs.
Bi-valenced verbs need 2 additional cases to build a sentence meaning.
E.G. I read a book.
Three-valenced verbs need a doer of an action and 2 objects.
E.G. I sent them a letter. I asked you a question.
In addition to verbal valency the sentence meaning is also influenced by the semantic type of a verb itself. In a most general way verbs are subdivided it to those
· Denoting action (to like, to hate, to fear)
· State
· process
Verbal cases are subdivided into a number of semantic types.
E.G. father is planting the tree.
I’m hungry.
The frost killed the crops.
From the syntactic viewpoint the 1st part is subject. From the semantic viewpoint they are different verbal cases. The noun denoting a doer of an action is called AGENT (1). The noun denoting a person or thing undergoing a certain state is called PATIENT (2). If the doer of an action is expressed but any phenomena of nature (sun, wind, storm) is called ELLEMENTIVE (3).
A verbal case denoting the part of a sentence which is known as the object can be:
1. a thing acted upon (I eat an apple)
2. it can denote a person who gains from a certain action and this is called beneficiant (I gave him an apple)
In addition sentence may contain some modifiers indicating time of an action and called TEMPORATIVE (he went yesterday)
When indicating place – LOCATIVE (he went home).
Semantic structure is analyzed in terms which are different from traditional syntactic terms. It is obvious that various languages in general are similar on the level of semantic structures because these structures are regulated by the rules of human thinking and these rules are coordinated by the laws of logic. Various peoples reflect their knowledge of the outer word in similar notions and structures. That’s why it is possible to make successful translations from one language to another.
Formally various languages differ in relating one and the same idea.
E.G. Морозит – it’s freezing.
On the other hand, in 1 and the same language there may be syntactic synonyms when 2 or more different sentences have the same semantic structure.
John bought a car. – a car is bought by John. – It’s john who bought the car.
On the other hand in 1 and the same language there may be cases of syntactic homonymy, when the formal structure is the same but the semantic structures are different.
The boy runes fast – The book sells well.
The ideas of generative semantics are useful both for the interpretation of the cases of syntactic homonymy and polysemy or cases of syntactic synonymy in 1 language and also for the purposes of contrastive linguistic study.
SUMMARY
In general history of English grammar there are unequal periods:
| Prescientific grammars | period |
| 1. prenormative grammar 2. normative or presientific grammar | 16 century – mid 18th |
| Scientific grammar | |
The remarkable feature is that every grammar aimed of overcoming the drawbacks of the previous grammar and in doing this they originated a new grammatical theory, school or trend.
3.10.10 Basic features of English grammar.
From the structural viewpoint all European languages are subdivided into synthetic and analytical. The type of a language depends on what means or word-changing and word-connection dominate on it.
Word-changing is a linguistic operation which results in the change of a grammatical form of a word (number, tense, case, voice, gender). But the lexical meaning of a word and the part of speech remain unchanged in this case.
E.G. in Russian – with the help of inflexions – special grammatical endings, sometimes prefixes.
In analytical languages there is a decomposition of lexical and grammatical meanings of a word into several parts.
E.g. I will come.
Syntheses are inseparable link of lexical and grammatical meaning of a word into a unity, while analysis is a separation of these 2 meanings among several words.
In European usually there are coexisting both synthetic and analytic ways, but one is dominating and thus it preconditions the grammatical type of a language as a whole. In Russian there are some analytical forms (было решено, буду читать, более занимательный), but here their inflexional forms are most frequent, that’s why Russian is classified as synthetic language like Latin, old English.
On the other hand, English also has some inflexional forms (pen-pens, helps, write-wrote – inner inflexion, this-these). Inflexional forms in modern English are few, but analytical are positively dominating – analytical structure.
e.g. – the letter will have been answered by 3 o’clock.
WORD CONNECTION
In synthetic languages inflexions are used for word-connection. each word even taken alone in forms of its syntactic function in a sentence, that’s why word order is free.
The ways of word-connection is agreement, concord, government.
In case of agreement the subordinate word reproduces the grammatical forms of the head word.
E.G. жаркое солнце, жаркая печь, жаркий день.
Agreement is characteristic if attributive groups and it is found between subject and predicate.
In English cases of agreement are few – this story – those stories? John helps me.
In case of government the head word predicts the grammatical form of a dependent word.
В течение дня, saw him, nobody but me.
But since inflexions are very few other ways of word connection are prevailing here:
· adjoining – примыкание – when words simply form of one another without any change of their grammatical forms. E.G. in the theatre I met my sister. But adjoining is accompanied by the fixed word order which is not characteristic of synthetic language.
The use of prepositions.
Ножка стула – the leg of the chair.
Thus the general conclusion is there are prevailing analytical way of word-connection and word-changing.
ANALYTICAL WAYS OF WORD BUILDING
Word-building is a grammatical change the Aim of which is to derive a new lexical meaning which may result also in the change of a pert of speech. English is rich in suffixes and prefixes which are of various origin – Scandinavian, French etc. there are some peculiar ways which are predicted by the analytical type of its grammatical structure.
The most popular way is conversion. To paper the walls. The right use of conversion is based on the phenomenon of mono-syllabism. There are great number words consisting of 1 syllable only. Such words usually belong to the oldest layer of the English vocabulary (Anglo-Saxon origin). In old English Words of different parts of speech had their own typical endings. In the course of time the unstressed final syllables were reduced and thus lost their ability to distinguish 1 part of speech from another or 1 grammatical form from another. Later they were completely dropped the words were shortened and they remained only the root, consisting of 1 syllable.
Mono-syllabism is a convenient condition of a wide use of conversion. Word building, when is used in a syntactic position of a word of a different part of speech as a result it gets new grammatical forms and new syntactic functions.
E.G. a circle – to circle. A finger – to finger.
PHRASAL VERBS
They consist of a verb of simple structure (to put, make, look) + a postpositive (послелог) which is similar to a preposition or an adverb (in, to, up). The combination derives a new lexical meaning.
To put – put on – надеть to put up – остановиться to put up with – смириться
To make it up with smth. To make out – разобрать to make up for smth. – возместить ущерб.
To take off,
Many have synonyms among single words which are shorter. To make up with – to reconcile, to take after – to resemble, to put off – to postpone.
10.11.10
Derivation of compounds from 3 syntactic groups.
The infinite phrase can be transformed to gerund. To watch a bird – watching a bird
After reordering we get a compound noun – bird-watching – to bird-watch
In the same way syntactic group “to sit for a baby” served for 3 compound words - baby-sitting; to baby-sit; a baby-sitter.
Summarizing the ways of word building we may conclude that analytical features are characteristic not only of English grammar but word-building as well.
BASIC FEATURES OF ENGLISH SYNTAX
The fixed word order.
In inflectional languages each word in a sentence even taken alone informs of its syntactic function that’s why word order is free in such languages.
In analytical languages like English words have very few inflections and taken alone the word doesn’t inform of its syntactic function and quite often we cannot say definitely what part of speech it is that is why here the syntactic function of a word depends greatly on its position in a sentence. Most of all, the function of a noun is predicted by its position regarding the verb. Thus, 3 essential parts of sentence subject, predicate, object, have fixed position in a sentence.
e.g. the hunter killed a bear
the change of word order may changed the sentence meaning
e.g. the bear killed the hunter
or the sentence meaning may ruined
john eats an apple – john an apple eats.
The word order performs a number of important functions:
· it expresses syntactic relations between the parts of a sentence
· Word-order helps to distinguish communicative tapes of a sentence.
· It serves to mark the most important part of a sentence bearing a new piece of information.
· Inversion – textual cohesion. In this case 2 sentences are connected to each other by placing 2 logically related words in a contact position. E.g. she didn’t like novels. Poems she preferred.
· Inversion may be used for emphases to underline the part of a sentence. E.g. very ill she looked that day.
· To organize a sentence rhythmically - inversion
All the functions can be observed in other languages as well but In English they are of extreme importance because of its analytical character.
THE USE OF SUBSTITUTION AND REPRESENTATION WORDS
In English there should be observed the rule of structural completeness of a phrase and a sentence. It means that all obligatory parts without which a phrase or sentence cannot exist should be present in them. In Russian it is not so.
e.g. an attributive phrase may lose its noun in a dialogue – какую блузку ты хочешь купить – белую
to achieve structural completeness special function words are used in English. They may be of a nominal and verbal character. The linguistic operations performed in this case are called substitution and representation.
In case of substitution a function word stands for 1 word from the preceding context. – to do –
e.g. john ran faster that I did.
Nominal are:
· One
· So
· That
· It
o e.g. which of this books did you like best – the one in English
o a mother was happy and so was her daughter.
o Your essay is better than that of your friend
o It’s nice to meet you
The 2nd operation is called representation. In this case the function word is used for 2 or more words from the previous context.
Nominal representatives are possessive pronoun:
1. Dependent (my, your, our, their)
2. Absolute (mine, yours, theirs)
Indefinite pronouns (few, any) may also be use
e.g. do u have many friends – have some.
Verbal representatives are a lot – modal verbs, auxiliary verbs, link verbs, the particle TO and negative particle NOT.
Would you like to come to us – I would be delighted to.
The implied part can be quite a long group of words which haven’t to be repeated.
Representation and substitution words perform a number of important functions:
o The provide Structural completeness
o Stylistic – help to avoid repeating words
o Provide economy of speech efforts
o Semantic – the change of a representative word can lead to the introduction of new information e.g. may I have a piece of your cake – oh, you must.
THE IMPORTANCE OF SYNTACTIC CONTEXT IN English
This context is important:
1. To distinguish 1 part of speech from another because due to mono-syllabism “turn” can be a noun and a verb conversion also contributes to the homonymy of part of speech. E.g. double
2. Tendency to nominalization
11.11.10
Some scholars think that tendency to nominalization makes English a static language. They may be right because no dynamism is observed in a sentence. His look is an express of contempt. If we say: he is looking at me contemptuously, here we find process. But the English prefer the 1st way.
Complex condensation.
In English there are complex parts of the sentence consisting of 2 essential parts. The 1st one is noun/pronoun + verbal (gerund, inf., partical1,2,) the ties are so close if we ruin them the sentence meaning is either destroyed or changed.
E.G. I hate you to go away. I like children to be quite.
Such constructions make a transition between a simple object (I know the truth) and a clause (I know it to be true)
Can form the function of any part of sentence. They provide the economy of language forms without any loss of information.
QUOTATION GROUPS
In English a border line between a word and a phrase is rather indistinct. A phrase and even a sentence may perform the function characteristic.
It is a phrase or a sentence simple or composite which performs in a sentence the function of a single part of a sentence. Most usually it is used as an attribute to the noun.
E.G. they led a cat-and-dog life.
In English there is no agreement between an adjective and a noun that is why quotation groups may appear before a noun. From the syntactic structure quotation groups can be equal to a phrase (1st a cat-and-mouse play); to a whole sentence (I-don’t-show-any-emotion attitude); to the sentence (mamma-thinks-i-am-foolish hairdo)
Quotation groups are popular in Russia as well but can appear after the noun modified because in Russian a pre-positive attribute should agree with the noun in case, number and gender, but quotation groups cannot do it. In Russian they are usual taken in to “” to show their unity.
Quotation groups can be used as nouns and depending on their syntactic role they may get the formal features of those parts of speech on which place they occur.
2 семестр
8.02.11
THEORIES OF THE ORIGINE OF THE ANALYTICAL STRUCTURE OF MODERN ENGLISH.
It is a well known fact that old English was a typical inflectional language like Latin, Russian, gothic while modern English is an analytical language and this means that gradually the language changed its grammatical structure. This is a very rare case that’s why a lot of suppositions were put forward in order to explain this reconstruction. Those numerous theories have some features in common so they can be classified into 4 main theories.
The 1st theory was put forward by the school of Young Grammarians. Among the representatives we can mention Fortunatov and Paul. The representatives of this school explained the loss of inflections by English and its reconstruction into the analytical language referring to the phonetic factors which were at work many centuries ago.
Their theory as follow, the nut shell:
Originally in English, as well as in other Germanic languages, there was a free stress system which was proved by Verner. But according to this theory and psycho-linguistic approach the speakers of ancient Germanic languages realized that in the process of communication the root of a word is most important, so it was pronounced most energetically. As a result the stress became fixed on the root syllable. Consequently the final unstressed syllables which are usually inflections began to be pronounced in a weakened way and suffered phonetic reduction and finally were dropped completely. At first sight the theory seems to be quiet logical but there are some contradictory points in it.
1st of all the fixation of the stress of the root might hardly be the only reason for the loss of inflections. E.G. in Finnish there are about 14 cases though the stress is also fixed on the root. In Hungarian there are about 20 cases.
The preposition which according to this theory substituted for the lost inflections actually began to be used simultaneously parallely with the inflections but not after the loss of them.
The second theory was developed by Jespersen and it’s known as THEORY OF PROGRESS. This author believed that analytical languages are more perfect than inflectional ones and so high qualities of the English analytical language are explained by high intellectual qualities of English speakers. Jespersen expressed his ideas in the work titled “growth and structure of the English language”. The theory of progress contains mainly an appraisal of the qualities of English. The author explains high qualities of English by a long working tendency to simplify and clear the language of the intricate inflectional forms and the grounds for the simplification of grammar can be found in a highly developed manner of thinking of the speakers of English. He believed that the loss of inflections helps to economize brain work. Proving superiority of English he put forward a number of arguments which however can be objected too.
1st: Grammatical forms in analytical languages are shorter than in others so process of speaking takes less physical efforts but there are a lot of facts contradicting this statement
E.G. the letter is being written. The letter will have been answered by the noon
2nd: analytical languages have few grammatical forms and they do not burden speaker’s memory but this scarcity of grammatical forms often leads to the homonymy
E.G. one and the same form of bare infinitive can be the form of all 3 moods in English: imperative, indicative, subjunctive. You go there every day. Go there! I suggest you go there.
3rd: analytical languages have very few exceptions because of the regular ways of creating grammatical forms. But in we take strong verbs or the plural form of many nouns with irregular ways of deriving their plural (goose – geese; sing - sang) they all need memorizing and the number of exceptions in English is considerable.
4th: rules of governing and syntax also provide regular and logical usage. Here we may contradict to the use of prepositions and we may find a lot of alogical cases. Most of them we should memorize definite prepositions after certain units (typical of, rich in, refer to, insist on). On the other hand prepositions themselves are poly-functional and express different relations (written by, passed by the station, has come by 5 o’clock)
5th: a more abstract character of English in comparison to other languages is illustrated by articles in ability to think in abstract way. Curme called articles “an expression of English common sense”.
Jespersen’s theory actually does not give any explanation why English has changed its grammatical structure but it tries to prove advantages of analytical languages over inflectional ones.
“The theory of substratum or mixture of languages”
In case of foreign invasions they come into contact two languages: the language of the invaders and the language of the concord people. And one of the languages in this case serves as the foundations upon which a new system of communication is developing which should be understandable, intelligible both for the native people and invaders. This language which is used as a foundation for a new system of communication is called substratum.
In case of English the theory of substratum is illustrated by the development of English after the Scandinavian conquest. In this case old English or anglo-saxon was mixing with the languages spoken by the Danish invaders. The mixture of languages took place here which was possible because both old English and Danish belonged to the same language group of Germanic languages. In the majority of cases the stames of words were similar or even identical in the 2 languages while the inflections were different and this fact might often cause difficulties in the process of understanding. That’s why according to the authors of this theory the inflections began to be pronounced indistinctly this reason they were reduced and finally completely dropped.
There is no doubt common sense in this theory because language development is regulated not only but its systematic changes but also by political, economic, historical life of the society. But in case of foreign invasions it is usually the vocabulary of the language which is influenced most strongly. While the grammatical system of language cannot be penetrated so easily.
The Scandinavian invaders settled mainly in the north of the country so the mixture of the languages should have affected the northern dialect of English while actually it influenced central and southern dialect as well.
10.02.11
THE FUNCTIONAL THEORY
M. HORN, Barhudarov.
According to their viewpoint linguistic elements which had lost their functional value and could no longer distinguish 1 grammatical form from another suffered the process of phonetic reduction. Ambiguous forms cannot perform their functions properly either. Even in old English the number of ambiguous forms was considerable. Quite often in noun declension 2 or 3 cases of 4 might have the same inflection.
In all these cases the polyfunctional inflections lost their grammatical value, that’s why they were reduced and later they were dropped completely. Inflections might also be reduced and lost if there were grammatical synonyms. In old English there were 2 ways of expressing addressee. It was the preposition to and the flection in the dative case and they were used together. In such cases one of the means was redundant And might be dropped. In English inflections were lost but prepositions have survived.
The theory seems to be quite logical but still there are some facts which need explanation.
Until the 17th century there were in English 2 means indicating the 2nd person singular. The pronoun THOU SAY-EST (ты говоришь). In the 17th century both means of the 2nd person singular were lost though it would have been logical to retain personal pronoun.
On the other hand both means expressing the possessive relations and the preposition and they both coexist in the language though the 1st means might have been lost.
Each of the 4 theories has its own advantages and disadvantages. They demonstrate different approaches towards the problem: the psycho-linguistic, the socio-historical approach and the linguistic approach proper. Probably, only taken together we may find some explanation why the English language has suffered striking grammatical changes which led to the reconstruction of its grammatical type in general.
THE PROBLEMS OF MORPHOLOGY.
THE THEORY OF PARTS OF SPEECH.
In the pre-scientific grammars old english was influenced by latin from which English grammars borrowed the system of 8 parts of speech. Noun, verb, pronoun
In the 17th century B. Jonson added the article here and J. Brighton added the adjectives calling them qualities. But at this stage there were no scientific grounds for the distribution of words into parts of speech. Such grounds were mentioned for the 1st time by Sweet in the end of 19th century. He believed that parts of speech should be described on the grounds of grammatical meaning, form and function.
In his own system he 1st of all divided all parts of speech into 2 large groups.
1) Declinable:
- Noun words: Nouns proper, Noun-pronoun (personal, indefinite, interrogative), Noun – numeral, Infinitive, gerund
- Adjective words: adjective proper, adjective- pronoun (possessive, demonstrative, defining), adjective-number, participle 1, participle 2.
- Verb words: verb finite, infinitive, participle 1, participle 2, gerund.
2) Indeclinable: adverb, preposition, conjunctive, interjection
His classification is characterized by some contradictory points because he didn’t follow his own 3 principles simultaneously. At the first stage the leading principal was form when he divided words into declinable and indeclinable. And within the declinable group the principal was the function. He neglected the grammatical meaning of words as a result some of them appeared in 2 classes simultaneously.
On the other hand numerals and pronouns were divided between 2 classes nouns and adjectives. Adverbs appear among indeclinable words though some of them can change their form because they have degrees of comparison. E.G. he ran faster.
Jespersen worked out the system of 5 pats of speech which were nouns; adjectives; pronouns with which he combined numerals, articles and interrogative adverbs (where, when. why); verbs and particles with which he included particles proper, conjunctions, interjections, prepositions and adverbs. For this 5th group he was criticized because it looked like a dump of incompatible parts of speech.
WORD CLASSES IN AMERICAN DISCRIPTIVE GRAMMAR.
The principle motto of this grammar was “Formal Analysis of formal linguistic units”. Both grammatical and lexical meanings of words were excluded from linguistic analysis they criticized all the previous classification words bases on the semantic approach. They proclaimed that the form of a word is enough to distribute it into a certain class. Ch. Fries tried to prove this idea giving such examples as @white-whiteness-whiten@. The meaning of all 3 words is the same, it is colour, but they belong to different parts of speech because their forms are different. To prove the importance of form he worked out the method of “nonsense” words.
Woggles ugged diggles.
Uggs woggled digs.
Woggs diggled uggles.
He worked out his own system of word classes using the methods of substitution, distribution and the method of “nonsense” words. He also used the so called substitutional diagnostic frame which were actually simple sentences.
Frame “A”: the concert was good there. Class 1 – class 2 – class 3 – class 4.
Frame “B” the young clerk remembered the tax suddenly.
The words of these 4 classes are very frequent in general usage and they make about 67% of all the words used in any text. And the other 33% are function words. They are only 154 all together but every 3rd word in a text is a function word. He distributed them into 15 groups which were given the names of English letters.
Group A: unite all the fords that can substitute for the word “the” in frame A. class one markers or determinals.
Group B: unites traditional modal verbs
Group C: “not”
Group D: adverbs of degree: extremely, awfully
Group E: coordinating conjunctions
Group F: prepositions
Group G: to do
Group H: the introductory “there”
Group I: interrogative pronouns and adverbs(who, which what, how)
Group J: subordinating conjunctions (till – until, as since, in case)
Group K: interjections (come-come)
16.02.11
Group L: sentence utterances: yes; no
Group M: attention getting signals: listen
Group N: please in request sentences
Group O: let’s or let us to express inducement
When we deal with function words summarized in 15 groups above mentioned we can’t replace them by nonsense words. Ch. Fries said that 1 should know them as items. Because a nonsense word in this case may ruin the sentence meaning: the boy VAB given the money.
If the words of 4 essential groups make 67% of all any text the other 33% are left for function words which in Fries’s account are only 154 in the language in general.
Fries rejected and cririsized all the previous defenitions of parts of speech but in his own classification there are some drawbacks and contradictory points:
1. If we look at the words of group A, which are called one class determinals, it is obvious that some of the words can occupy the position of class 1 themselves: this is all I want to know. Here THIS occupies the position of class 1. John’s concert was good.
2. Modal words: certainly, really, surely, etc. are not reflected in Fries’s classification at all. He mentioned only 1 particle NOT. Such particles as merely, yet, only, etc. are not classified
3. Interrogative pronouns and adverbs are included by him into Group I and at the same time they appear again in Group J as suborning conjunctions.
Summarizing we may say that his classifications as well as the others described in American descriptive grammar are not exact as they claimed them to be. As for transformational grammar it didn’t deal with this problem, because it was preoccupied with the sentence study.
PARTS OF SPEECH IN RUSSIAN GRAMMARS OF ENGLISH.
Parts of speech belong to the sphere of linguistic universals. In the theory of parts of speech developed by Russian scholar we find some features of influence made by American practical grammar (Sweet) and the ideas of the scholars of Russian (Vinogradov, Scherba). In russian grammars of English parts of speech are described on the grounds of:
- Grammatical meaning
- Formal characteristics
- Syntactic functions
Notional words have both lexical and grammatical meanings, which should not be mixed. The lexical meaning is concrete and individual and it differentiates 1 word from another even if they are synonyms there is still a slight difference of their lexical meanings. Grammatical meaning is generalized and abstract meaning it does not denote an individual object, but it gives a notion typical of a great number of words belonging to the same class: a child, potato, a tree, window, a desk, a dog are very different in their lexical meaning, but their grammatical meaning is the same.
In the same way we can describe the grammatical meaning of verbs as action.
The grammatical meaning of adjective – quality; adverbs – quality of a quality. Pronouns have the general meaning of leixis (значение указательности). Conjunctions – relations between 2 situations.
Each part of speech is characterized by the grammatical meaning of its own which is common for all the words belonging to the same part of speech.
FORMAL CHARACTERISTICS
Formal features of word are materialized in 2 kinds of language means: word-building and word-changing affixes.
As for word-changing suffixes in English they are few and not so efficient as in inflectional languages. In Russian they are numerous and helpful.
In English formal characteristics of words are reliable and classifying parts of speech if we deal with word-building suffixes; While word-changing ones are few. There are also cases of homonymy between various suffixes. Homonymy between the words of various parts of speech is also produced by such a way of word-building as conversion (move, finger).
SYNTACTIC FUNCTIONS
In general each part of speech is characterized by its leading syntactic functions (it is typical of a noun to be a subject or an object in a sentence). THE NUMBER OF SYNTACTIC FUNCTIONS PERFORMED by each part of speech depends on their combinatoric abilities. The verb can combine with a noun, pronoun, and adverb. It does not combine with adjectives only link words can do it. Syntactic compatibility of a noun is also restricted by its Semantic compatibility.
In general various parts of speech may have a number of syntactic functions in common: though the function of an attribute is typical of an adjective.
E.G. a new house. A brick house.
Noun has a category of number and case but if we look at the subclasses of nouns more attentively it turns out that the statement very often is not true.
| Classes of nouns | Number | case |
| 1. Class nouns | 100% | Approximately 70% |
| 2. Proper names | 10% | 60% |
| 3. Abstract nouns | 50% | - Exceptions only |
| 4. Nouns of material | - | - |
This difference of properties can be discovered in each notional part of speech. That’s why the field approach to the description of parts of speech was suggested by Zernov.
17.02.11
Due to this fact the field approach seems to be reasonable for representing the structure of each part of speech on the one hand, and the relations between various parts of speech on the other hand. The field has 2 essential parts – the centre and periphery.
| Relative adjectives |
| Qualitative adjectives |
| Nouns of material |
| Abstract nouns |
| Proper names |
| Class nouns |
| Pronouns |
Each part of speech has part of its own but each field may partially overlap or cross. Adjectives have only centre.
Some pronouns behave like nouns.
In this way each part of speech can be represented in the form of its own field. But this fields are not isolated but partially cross one with another because various parts of speech may have some features in common. Thus the field approach helps to show, to revile their differences between subclasses within 1 and the same part of speech, on the other hand to represent their interrelations existing between various parts of speech.
INTERCHANGES BETWEEN DIFFERENT PARTS OF SPEECH
THE SUBSTANTIVASATION OF ADJECTIVES.
In this case a formal adjective joins the class of nouns and acquires and gets its grammatical features and functions. The phenomenon is known in all European languages: in French – un home savant à savant – ученый. There are 2 degrees of substantivasation: the full substantivasation and partical. In case of the full substantivasation the former adjective gets all nominal features:
1. It combines with both articles: a native – the native
2. ability to form the plural
3. to have the form of genitive case if a living being is implied
4. an ability to be modified by an adjective: an old native
5. to be a subject or an object in a sentence: yesterday I ran into relative
in case of the partial substantivasation there is only 1 indicator of nominal feature it is the definite article. They usually have a collective meaning, and words are not used in the plural while the predicate is in plural.
Substantivized adjectives are distributed into several groups:
1. fully substantivized adjectives naming persons and nationalities: a native, A Russian, An Italian
2. Partially substantivized adjectives, having the collecting meaning and naming classes of people: the aged, the blind, the unemployed. Here also belong the words naming nationalities: the Dutch, the English, the English were not liked right now. The predicate is in the plural.
3. Abstract notions: the good, the usual, the contrary, the impossible, the inevitable/ here the predicate is in the singular. The impossible has happened.
4. The nouns of material in the collective meaning: goods, greens, sweets, vegetables, valuables.
The opposite viewpoint is known as adjictivasation of nouns. In this case 1 noun is place before another without any change of its form and becomes an attribute to the 2nd noun: an apple tree, a stone wall, a cannon ball. Scholars are discussing and putting forward different ideas concerning the status of the 1st noun in such combinations.
E.G. according to the 1st point here we deal with free combinations of 2 nouns. Jespersen said, the 1st element her is an adjective or at least is approach a state of an adjective. Shubin: the 1st noun should be called the attributive noun. 4th: here we have compound nouns consisting of 2 stems. However they are spelled as 2 different words and they can be transformed into prepositional phrases: a progress report – a report about progress; A film festival – a festival of films. If we take a compound (a theatre goer) we can’t say A GOER TO THE THEATR; a woman driver =/ a driver of woman. The prevailing viewpoint is that we have a combination of 2 nouns because the 1st of them cannot have the degree of comparison thus it could not be called an adjective but it can be used in the plural like a noun: carpets prices; goods van. Nominal combinations may consist not only of 2 but more nouns and thus they may a string of nouns which are in certain syntactic relations to each other: a speech sounds research centre.
Such streams of nouns are very characteristic of professional language. In a very laconic form providing language economy they describe complex notions events and ideas.
THE VERB AND ITS GRAMMATICAL CHATEGORIES.
Described on the ground of 3 principles the verb has the following features:
According to the Grammatical meaning. In a most generalized way verbs express actions. In a more specific way we can divide verbs into 3 classes naming:
1. action proper: to run; to speak
2. action of state: to fear, to frighten
3. verbs of process: to heat, to boil, to fade, to melt
according to formal characteristics. The verb has the most elaborate : tense and aspect, voice and mood. There are used different means for expressing this categories:
1. inflections: write-wrote, brother – brothers – brother’s
2. in the majority of cases are expressed with the help of function words: auxiliary verbs – has come; is invited; personal pronoun.
Finite verbs in a sentence are always predicates. Non-finite verbs make part of the predicate and of all notional parts of speech the verb has the greatest valiancy and it can combine with various parts of speech and can predict the greatest number of parts of sentence in comparison to other parts of speech.
CLASSIFICATION OF VERBS
Verbs can be classified on the semantic and grammatical grounds. At the 1st stage we may divide all the verbs into notional and functional verbs. Notional verbs have a lexical meaning of their own and in a sentence they can form a predicate taken alone. These verbs can be distributed into a number of semantic groups: verbs of sense perception (to hear, to smell, to taste); verbs of mental ability (to guess, to presume, to think); verbs of motion (to walk, to move); verbs of speech (to chat; to speak); verbs of possession (to belong, to own); etc.
Function verbs are subdivided into modal verbs; link verbs and auxiliary verbs. These verbs do not name any definite action and they may be completely devoid of the lexical meaning of their own like auxiliaries or if they have a shade of meaning it is very specific like in modal verbs.
Modal verbs make part of the compound predicate and the show whether the action expressed by the following infinitive is obligatory, possible, probable, recommended for the doer which is expressed by the subject.
24.02.11
Function verbs. Link verbs.
They make the 1st part of compound nominal predicate which doesn’t name any action but describe the subject of a sentence ascribing different qualities to it.
E.G. Mary is: a girl, is 20, is my sister.
The link verb describes the person, number and tense.
According to their meanings function verbs are subdivided into 2 groups.
The verbs of the 1st group are called the verbs of being. The show that subject of a sentence is in a certain state. Here belong: to be, to remain, to keep, to feel, to continue, to stand, to lie.
Link verbs are followed by adjectives. The girl stood motionless. I feel unhappy.
The verbs: to smell, to taste, to sound are also included into this group, because they are followed by adjectives: the music sounds sad; the roses smell delicious.
The verbs of the 2nd group are called the verbs of becoming: to grow, to get, to go, to fall: the girl turned pale; the mother grew old.
The verbs of the 3rd group are auxiliary verbs. They have no meaning of their own and used for pure grammatical purposes to derive questions, negations, analytical forms: they have returned home.
One and the same verb can be used for different purposes. He has 3 children – notional verb used to possess. In the sentence: has he done it – functional verb; he has to wait long – modal verb.
We may observe constant transitions from 1 class to another and 1 verb may be used for different purposes.
GRAMMATICAL MEANINGS OF THE VERB