General characteristics of the contemporary English language system

All languages are classified on the ground of two basic principles – of their genealogy (origin and relations) and of their typology (structure).

Typological classification is one which is based on the distinguishing similarities and differences of the structures of languages independently on their affinity. It is also called Morphological classification as it studies forms, structures and ‘building’ components of languages.

Typological classification was firstly worked out, grounded and proposed by the brothers August and Fririch Sleggel (XVII/XIX). They distinguished inflectional (флективные), which have inflections, and non-inflectional (нефлективные), which do not have inflections, languages. Besides, they distinguished synthetic (earlier) and analytical (later) languages (Drawing 1.4).

V.Gumboldt (XVII/XIX) reworked the Sleggels’ classification and distinguished four types of languages: insulating (изолирующие или корневые), agglutinative (агглюнативные), incorporated (инкорпорирующие) and inflectional (флективные).

Insulating languages do not have affixes and express grammatical meanings with adjoining of certain words to others with the help of Syntacategorematic (auxiliary) words. There is no difference between root and stem in such languages. Words do not change and consequently do not have any indices of their syntactic correspondence with other words. The main means of syntactic combination is adjoining. Sentence, thus, is a definite sequence of unchangeable and indivisible words-roots.

For instance:

Chinese, Vietnam, Tibetan, etc.

Chinese:

Ma – mother

Ma – hemp

Ma – horse

Ma – to scold at

Ma ma ma. Мама ругает коня.

Ma чи ма. Мама едет на коне.

Agglutinative (glutten (Latin) – glue, agglutino – to glue) languages are the ones in which grammatical meanings are expressed with special affixes – ‘stickers’.

For instance:

Turkish, Georgian, Japanese, etc.

Turkish:

Lar – Plural form

Da – Prepositional (предложный) case

Masa – a table

Baba – a father

Masada – on the table

Masalar – tables

Masalarda – on the tables

Babada – on the father

Babalar – fathers

Babalarda – on the fathers

Incorporated (incorporatio (Latin) – including, joining to a set) or polysynthetic (polys (Greek) – a lot of, synthesis – joining up, association, formation) languages are those in which different parts of an utterance present amorphous words-stems (words-roots) which are incorporated into united complexes number of which, in their turn, are formed with auxiliary elements.

For instance:

Majority of the languages of South America, чукотский

Чукотский:

га – ма – a kind of the case which shows a sign with whom or with what

гапojгeма – with a spear

гаторпojгeма – with a new spear

гатанпojгeма – with a good spear

гатанпелwентепоjгeма – with a good metal spear

Inflectional languages express their grammatical meanings mainly with inflexions.

They are divided into synthetic and analytical.

Grammatical relations of words are expressed by the forms of these very words. A meaningful word alters and presents its new forms to express grammar relations For example: Russian, Ukrainian

A meaningful word is not able to alter. For that other words are used – auxiliaries. They help to express grammar relations or combine words in phrases or sentences. Peculiarity: auxiliary element (auxiliary verb) does not have a lexical meaning; notional verb does have that. For example: English, French

Drawing 1.4. Division of languages as for the systems of changes of their grammar forms

(synthetic languages and analytical)

Old English used to be a synthetic language and used to have its own system of inflections. Though with the time (foreign intrusions, wars, cultural ties) it altered and transformed into an analytical one. Nevertheless in English some synthetic forms are still used (look for example of the 2^nd characteristic of English brought under).

Characteristics of English:

1. Auxiliaries. Auxiliary verb does not have a lexical meaning; notional verb has that.

For instance:

She has already been preparing for three hours (both auxiliaries – has been – do not have lexical meanings) = Она готовится уже три часа.

She has a nice kid (has is not an auxiliary but a notional verb here, so it has a lexical meaning to obtain, to posses sth) = Она имеет милого ребенка = У нее есть милый ребенок.

1. Scarcity of flexible forms.

For instance alterations:

a) of the Noun (Singular and Plural forms): a chair (Sng) – chairs (Pl);

b) of the Verb (in accordance with Tense, Person, Number): we approach (Present Simple, Plural), he approaches (Present Simple, Third Person Singular), we, he, etc. approached (Past Simple);

c) of the Adjective (Degrees of Comparison): pretty (Neutral) – prettier (Comparative) – the prettiest (Superlative).

1. Homonymy (which refers to the phenomenon of similar spelling or pronunciation of words that have different lexical meanings).

For instance, homonymy of Grammar affixes:

Boys study (Plural, Nominative Case) – boy’s book (Singular, Possessive Case) – boys’ book (Plural, Possessive Case).

1. Absence of Grammatical Agreement of a noun and an adjective that attributes the noun.

For instance:

A big boy (he) \ girl (she) \ apple (it). Compare with Russian большой мальчик, большая девочка, большое яблоко.

1. Use of the Noun in the Common Case as a prepositional attribute.

For instance:

Table (noun) + lamp (noun) = table lamp (table is a prepositional attribute).

1. Formal double complete predicative center (when a verb obviously has a personal form).

For instance:

Compare: It is dark. and Темно.

1. Wide use of the assistant words.

For instance:

The Noun: one, they, that, this, those, etc.

The Verb: do, get, etc.

1. Wide development of secondary predicative combinations.

For instance:

Complex Object: They expected me to behave as they wanted but I was not going to allow them to manipulate me.

1. Direct word order.

For instance:

I have already been there.

Yesterday we gave him a book.