Morphological Division of Grammar of Language

ФЕДЕРАЛЬНОЕ ГОСУДАРСТВЕННОЕ БЮДЖЕТНОЕ

ОБРАЗОВАТЕЛЬНОЕ УЧРЕЖДЕНИЕ ВЫСШЕГО

ПРОФЕССИОНАЛЬНОГО ОБРАЗОВАНИЯ
«ДОНСКОЙ ГОСУДАРСТВЕННЫЙ ТЕХНИЧЕСКИЙ УНИВЕРСИТЕТ»

(ДГТУ)

Методические указания

к семинарским занятиям по теоретической

грамматике английского языка

для специальности 45.05.01 «Перевод и переводоведение»

Методические указания к семинарским занятиям по теоретической грамматике английского языка разработаны на кафедре «Научно-технический перевод и профессиональная коммуникация» ДГТУ и имеют целью оказать помощь студентам в организации самостоятельной работы при подготовке к практическим занятиям по данной дисциплине и успешному прохождению итогового контроля (сдаче зачета).

Составители:к.филол.н., доц. Величко Е.В.

Рецензенты:к.филол.н., доц. Краснова Е.В.

Seminar 1

Grammar in the Systemic Conception of Language

1. The constituent parts of the language system and their corresponding linguistic disciplines.

2. The difference between the practical and theoretical grammar.

3. The aim of theoretical grammar of a language.

4. The two planes of language: the plane of content and the plane of expression.

5. Syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations of lingual units.

6. The division of units of language into segmental and supra-segmental.

7. Six levels of language and their functions.

Practical assignments:

I. Analyze the sentences and comment on the interaction between the grammatical and lexical levels of language.

1. He stopped reading and put the book aside. He saw an advertisement and stopped to read it.

2. He went on speaking as if nothing had happened. After a short introduction he went on to speak about the situation on the stock exchange.

3. He can’t join us right now as he is talking over the phone. He is constantly talking over the phone.

II. Disambiguate the meaning of the sentences by reading them in two different ways and comment on the interaction between the prosodic and syntactic levels of the language.

1. I have instructions to leave.

2. She spoke with a pretty French accent.

3. He gave her dog biscuits.

III. Analyze the sentences and point out the peculiarities of the grammatical structure of English manifested in them.

1. Do you serve crabs here? – We serve anyone, sit down.

2. Call me a taxi, please. – OK, you are a taxi.

3. He kept his dog in his bedroom. He kept looking at us. The girl kept quiet.

4. We try harder. We dry harder.

5. He married a poor girl. He married a poor man.

6. He gave her dog biscuits.

7. Age is strictly a matter of mind over matter, if you don’t mind it doesn’t matter.

IV. Find and correct mistakes in the following sentences and point out their causes.

1. This mistake I will never make again.

2. I find very convenient to use a dictaphone.

3. He never wanted that I should be his partner.

Seminar 2,3

Morphological Division of Grammar of Language

1. The definition of the morpheme. The word and the morpheme, their correlation in the level structure of the language. Intermediary phenomena between the word and the morpheme.

2. Traditional classification of morphemes: positional and functional (semantic) criteria. Roots and affixes. Lexical (derivational, word-building) and grammatical (functional, word-changing) affixes.

3. The IC-analysis of the morphemic structure. Grammatical relevance of derivational affixes; lexical (word-building) paradigms. The peculiarities of grammatical suffixes (inflexions) in English. Outer and inner inflexion.

4. The “allo-emic” theory in morphology: morphs, allomorphs and morphemes. Distributional analysis in morphology; contrastive, non-contrastive, and complementary types of distribution.

5. Distributional classification of morphemes: full and empty (zero morphemes), free and bound, segmental and supra-segmental, additive and replacive, continuous and discontinuous morphemes.

6. The general notion of category. Grammatical form and grammatical meaning. Grammatical category as the system of expressing generalized grammatical meaning by means of paradigmatic correlation of grammatical forms.

7. Oppositional basis of the grammatical category. Oppositional analysis of the grammatical forms. The types of oppositions: binary and supra-binary oppositions, privative, equipolent and gradual oppositions.

8. Privative binary opposition as the most important type of categorial opposition in grammar; its structure. The strong (marked) and the weak (unmarked) members of the opposition.

9. Grammatical category in communication: the problem of oppositional reduction (neutralization and transposition) of grammatical forms in the process of their functioning.

10. Synthetical and analytical grammatical forms. The types of synthetical grammatical forms: inner- inflectional, outer-inflectional, suppletive. The types of analytical grammatical forms: strong and weak. Their place in the grammatical system of the English language.

Practice Assignment