Theme 4. Grammatical oppositions and grammatical categories
Plan
1. The basic notions dealing with the analysis of the categorical structure of the word: grammatical form, grammatical meaning, grammatical category, paradigm.
2. Grammatical category as a unity of grammatical form and grammatical meaning. Means of its expression.
3. Grammatical opposition. Oppositional reduction. Types of oppositional reduction: neutralization and transposition.
A word may have several grammatical meanings. In order to make them clear and evident one is to arrange several different oppositions of various forms to the same form of this word. Let us take the verb (he) runs with a number of grammatical meanings: the 3rd person, singular, the present tense, the non-continuous aspect, the indicative mood, etc. Each of these meanings may be singled out in an opposition:
(I) run / (he) runs (the 3rd person);
(they) run / (he) runs (singular);
(he) ran / (he) runs (the present tense);
(he) is running / (he) runs (the non-continuous aspect);
(They insisted that he) run / (he) runs (the indicative mood).
In each of the pairs above the two members of the opposition are the forms of the same word to run identical in all respects but one: the very grammatical meaning we want to single out. These pairs are grammatical oppositions and each of the forms in a pair is an opposeme.
According to many modern scholars, everything in language acquires a linguistic value through opposition to something else. That is the methodology of the lectures offered to your attention. But some scholars object to this methodological principle of linguistic interpretation and manage to describe and explain the laws and rules of grammar without resorting to oppositions.
In English oppositions usually comprise two opposemes. They are binary oppositions. But one can find the oppositions of three, four and more members, e.g. three degrees of comparison (green – greener – greenest), three persons of personal pronouns (we, you, they), or six cases of Russian nouns. Besides different quantity of opposemes, the oppositions may be of three different qualities. According to the outstanding Russian linguist N.S. Trubetskoy, oppositions may be gradual, equipollentand privative.
The opposemes of the gradualopposition differ in the intensity (degree) of the same quality, e.g. the adjectives denoting temperature cool – cold – warm – hot (a more minute transition from heat to cold: hot – warm – tepid – lukewarm – mild – fresh – cool – chilly – frosty – icy).
Each opposeme in the equipollentopposition has its own characteristics, e.g. the Russian past tense пришёл shows the process before the moment of speech and future приду – after the moment of speech.
In a privative opposition only one opposeme expresses some meaning, the other being indifferent to this meaning: it simply has not got this meaning, e.g. bad / not bad; I spoke of having done it (before) / I spoke of doing it (before, at the moment of speech, after the speech moment).
In these lectures we shall follow such scholars as R. Jacobson, L.S. Barkhudarov and build the system of English grammar on binary privative oppositions. The opposeme which expresses the relevant meaning in a privative opposition is strong, or intensive, the other member of the opposition being weak, or extensive. Thus, plural of nouns is the strong member (boys are, people are), singular is the weak one (a boy is, water is). The possessive case of nouns is a strong member but the common case is the weak one (the boy’s book / the book). The continuous aspect refers to the non-continuous aspect of verbs as strong and weak opposemes (The boy is running quickly / The boy runs quickly).
If we take up the last example, we can see that only is running expresses the idea of a concrete action limited in time and represented in its development but runs may render any way the action takes place.
The meaning of the strong member of the opposition is very specific, so it is used rather seldom. The weak member of the opposition has fewer restrictions and is used more frequently. In the English text there are more verbs in the non-continuous form, nouns in the singular and in the common case than their opposemes.
Note: According to the computation based on 1997 verbs in various English texts, the students of one of the courses of our faculty assert that the active voice (weak opposeme) is thirteen times more frequent than the passive voice (strong opposeme).
In English the strong member of the opposition is marked formally, i.e. it has some grammatical marker, or exponent (underlined in the following examples): boys, boy’s, is running. The weak member is as a rule unmarked, i.e. it has no ending, no structural words or any other marker: boys / boy, the boy’s book / the boy, is running / run. It is identified only by the opposition to the strong opposeme.
Grammatical oppositions constitute grammatical categories. The principle parts of speech in English (the noun, the verb, the adjective and the adverb) have each a number of grammatical forms of the same word opposed to each other: different numbers and cases of nouns, different tenses, aspects, voices or moods of verbs, different degrees of comparison of adjectives and adverbs. It is on the basis of such oppositions that grammatical categories appear. The term category was introduced more than two thousand years ago by Aristotle. V.N. Yartseva gives the following definition: the grammatical category is a generalized abstract meaning systematically expressed in the language by the opposition of definite forms of the same word.
Note: The ancient theory of categories is somewhat overused and abused in modern grammar. Everything is labeled a category: parts of speech are lexico-grammatical categories; such features of parts of speech as number or tense are also categories and opposemes in these features, singular or the past tense are categories, too. To bring some order here we shall regard parts of speech (noun, verb, preposition, etc.) as word classes, such features as number or tense – as general grammatical categories and their subdivisions – singular, plural, past – as particular grammatical categories.
Examples of grammatical categories: boy / boys, table / tables, lab / labs, etc. (singular / plural). The plural forms express plurality or ‘more-than-oneness’ as opposed to oneness or indifference to quantity in the singular form. This difference in meaning regularly corresponds to the formal opposition of no ending (zero-ending) and the ending -(e)s /z/. This correspondence of form and meaning (content) constitutes the grammatical category ‘the number of nouns’.
In the same way the meaning-form correspondence in other oppositions constitute other grammatical categories:
e.g. tense (past / non-past):
| called / call loved / love smiled / smile | -(e)d /d/ / no ending (Ø) |
| a process before the moment of speech / a process not specified as to its relation to the moment of speech |
case (possessive / common):
| the teacher’s bag / the teacher Peter’s book / Peter the boy’s toy / the boy | -’s /z/ / no ending (Ø) |
| possession, belonging / no idea of possession is expressed |
If a group of words are united by form without a corresponding semantical characteristics, or by meaning only, they do not build a grammatical or any other category.
The words lamp, damp, camp, stamp, tramp, cramp, vamp have the same phoneme combination -amp /æmp/ or the words straight, strange, strategy, straw, stream, street, strong, stress, strict, strike have an initial combination str- /str/, but they build no category because these formal coincidences are not united by some meaning common to all of them.
The words dog, cat, horse, cow, pig, sheep, goat are united by some meaning: they all designate domestic animals but they have no common formal exponent. There is no category (and certainly no grammatical category) of domestic animals in English.
The form of the past tense of Russian verbs may express perfect meaning: сломал, научил, построил, разыграл и т.д. But in Modern Russian (contrary to Old Russian and English) there is no special perfect form, so there is no grammatical category of perfect (general grammatical category of order) in Russian.
A grammatical category must be consistently expressed in a number of words. It cannot be found in only one word. Usually it embraces an unlimited number of lexemes (words) because new words constantly enter the vocabulary and acquire the grammatical categories of their part of speech. But there is a grammatical category in English which is covered by an exhaustive list of words. This is the general grammatical category of the case of pronouns with its two particular grammatical categories of the nominative and objective cases: I – me, he – him, she – her, we – us, they – them, relative and conjunctive pronouns who / whom and the interrogative who? / whom?. On the basis of this system we usually include here the similar forms of the nominative and objective cases you / you, that / that, an that is all.
There are parts of speech with no grammatical categories, e.g. English modal words, interjections, conjunctions, prepositions and some others.
Some grammatical categories have only one form:
e.g. the aspect – continuous: be Ving / non-continuous: V* (be taking / take);
the voice – passive be Ven / active V (be taken / take).
Others have several grammatical forms:
e.g. Number: plural
a) N(e)s / N (boys / boy);
b) Nen / N (oxen / ox);
c) N / N (sheep / sheep);
d) Nus / Ni (nucleus / nuclei);
Tense: past
a) Ved / V (called / call);
b) sound alternation (came / come);
c) V / V (put / put), etc.
But one of these forms is the leading one as it is more frequent in the text, embraces a greater quantity of words and is the only productive way used by new words in the language. That is the principle difference between English grammar, on the one hand, and Russian, German or Latin grammars, on the other, the latter having several equally important and widespread forms. To study a Russian, German or Latin grammatical category one is to take into account different forms which words take to express the same category. For example, three declensions of the Russian nouns: окно – окна – окну…, стена – стены – стене…, печь – печи – печи…, or five declensions of the Latin nouns: populas – populi – populo…, terra – terrae – terrae…, lex – legis – legi…, domus – domus – domui…, dies – diei – diei… .
Another example is two conjugations of Russian verbs: читаю – читаешь – читает…, стою – стоишь – стоит…, or four conjugations of Latin verbs: narrāre – narro – narras – narrant…, ridere – rideo – rides – rident…, scribere – scribo – scribis – scribunt…, audire – audio – audis – audiunt.
The grammars of these languages are more difficult to assimilate. Even native speakers make numerous mistakes as they mix up declensions and conjugations: *Местов нет; *Без пальт; *Без кочерг (кочергов) трудно топить; *Караул! Грабют!
In this respect English is much easier to learn, but only at the beginning when the material is elementary. Later on the number of exceptions increases. That is one of many reasons why senior schoolchildren lose interest in studying the language.
The historian of the English language C.L. Wrenn remarked: “English is among the easiest languages to speak badly but the most difficult to use well”.
References:
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3. Блох, М.Я. Теоретические основы грамматики: учеб. / М.Я. Блох. – 3-е изд., испр. – М.: Высш. шк., 2002. – С. 81-96.
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