СД.7 Теоретическая грамматика

МИНИСТЕРСТВО ОБРАЗОВАНИЯ И НАУКИ РФ
Федеральное государственное бюджетное образовательное учреждение
высшего профессионального образования
«Мурманский государственный гуманитарный университет»
(ФГБОУ ВПО «МГГУ»)
УЧЕБНО-МЕТОДИЧЕСКИЙ КОМПЛЕКС
ДИСЦИПЛИНЫ
СД. 7 ТЕОРЕТИЧЕСКАЯ ГРАММАТИКА
основная образовательная программа подготовки специалиста по специальности
050303.65 Иностранный язык с дополнительной специальностью, очная форма обучения
СД.5 ТЕОРЕТИЧЕСКАЯ ГРАММАТИКА
основная образовательная программа подготовки специалиста по специальности
050303 Иностранный язык (Английский язык), очно-заочная форма обучения
Утверждено на заседании
кафедры иностранных языков
факультета ФЖ и МК
протокол № 7 от 25 февраля 2013 г.
Зав. кафедрой
_________________________С.А.Виноградова
РАЗДЕЛ 1. Программа учебной дисциплины
Структура программы учебной дисциплины
1.1Автор программы Рахманкулова Людмила Кузьминична, кандидат филологических наук,
доцент кафедры английского языка и английской филологии Мурманского государственного
педагогического университета
1.2 Рецензенты: Н.А. Музычук, кандидат филологических наук, доцент, зав. кафедрой
журналистики МГИ
Т.В. Лобовская, кандидат филологических наук, доцент кафедры иностранных языков и методики
их преподавания МГПУ
1.3 Пояснительная записка
 Целью курса теоретической грамматики является описание грамматического строя
английского языка в свете общих принципов лингвистики
 Основными задачами курса являются:
- ознакомление студентов с основными проблемами морфологии и синтаксиса
английского языка и с методами лингвистического анализа, пользуемыми в сфере
грамматики;
- формирование
способности
критического
осмысления
существующих
многочисленных теорий по поводу того или иного грамматического феномена –
профессионального качества, необходимого в практической работе учителя
иностранного языка, имеющего дело с различными трактовками грамматического
материала в пособиях и учебниках, рекомендуемых для курса обучения
иностранному языку в учебных заведениях различного типа.
 Теоретическая грамматика английского языка является обязательной дисциплиной,
включенной в государственный образовательный стандарт высшего профессионального
образования по специальности.
Теоретическая грамматика, наряду с предшествующими ей курсами лексикологии и
теоретической фонетики и последующими курсами типологии и стилистики, а также
обобщающим курсом общего языкознания, принадлежит к дисциплинам, имеющим целью
описание языкового строя в целом и отдельных языковых уровней
 Студент должен знать:
– основные грамматические концепции
– методы грамматического анализа
– термины, используемые в различных грамматических теориях
– Студент должен уметь
– критически оценивать различные теоретические положения и концепции на основе
общих принципов лингвистики
- применять методы грамматического анализа для анализа конкретного языкового
материала с тем, чтобы проверять различные теоретические положения, так как овладение
методами лингвистического анализа является существенным фактором педагогизации
преподавания теоретической грамматики, оно способствует развитию у будущих учителей
умения объяснить суть грамматического явления.
 Учебно-методический комплекс составлен на основе соответствующих требований
государственного стандарта, а также на основе рекомендованных УМО по лингвистике
учебников и учебных пособий по теоретической грамматике в целом или отдельно по
разделам морфологии и синтаксиса. В учебно-методический комплекс входят примерное
содержание курса,
самостоятельная работа студентов, включающая вопросы и темы
семинаров, темы для самостоятельного изучения, примерные темы рефератов и курсовых,
тесты, а также вопросы и практические задания к экзамену по курсу и список
рекомендованной литературы
2
1.4. Извлечение (в виде ксерокопии) из ГОС ВПО специальности, включающие требования к
обязательному минимуму дисциплины и общее количество часов
1.5.Объем дисциплины и виды учебной работы
№
п/п
Шифр и
наименование
специальности
Курс
Семестр
Виды учебной работы в часах
Трудо- Всего ЛК ПР/
Сам.
емкость ауд.
СМ
работа
Вид
итогового
контроля
(форма
отчетности)
1.
050303
Иностранный
язык с доп.
спец. ОФО
4
7, 8
90
50
34
16
40
Экзамен
2.
050303
Иностранный
язык
(Английский
язык) ОЗО
3
5
140
26
20
6
114
Экзамен
1.6. Содержание дисциплины
1.6.1.Разделы дисциплины и виды занятий (в часах). Примерное распределение учебного
времени:
№
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Наименование темы,
количество часов
Введение: цели, задачи и структура курса.
Грамматическая теория: морфология и
синтаксис. Уровни и единицы языка.
Основные грамматические единицы –
морфема,
словоформа,
предложение.
Морфологическая классификация языков.
Синтаксические и аналитические формы
Тема 1: Грамматическая категория:
словоформа, формокласс, грамматическое
значение, маркированный и
немаркированный члены оппозиции.
Факторы, влияющие на модификацию
грамматического значения категории.
Тема 2: Теория частей речи
Тема 3: Существительное как часть речи
Тема 4: Прилагательное и слова категории
состояния
Тема 5: Английский глагол и его категории
Тема 6: Общие принципы описания
Вариант 1
Количество часов
Все ЛК ПР Сам.
го
раб.
ауд.
2
2
2
6
4
4
4
4
4
4
2
2
6
6
4
4
Вариант 2
Количество часов
Все ЛК ПР Сам.
го
раб.
ауд.
1
4
2
8
2
2
1
1
2
4
4
2
1
12
10
12
2
2
4
4
2
2
1
1
12
12
3
8.
9.
10.
11.
синтаксических единиц
Тема
7:
Синтаксические
теории
словосочетания
Тема 8: Общая характеристика признаков
предложения
Тема
9:
Структура
и
семантика
предложения
Тема 10: Понятие о коммуникативном и
прагматическом синтаксисе
ИТОГО
4
2
2
4
2
4
2
2
4
2
6
4
2
4
2
4
2
2
4
2
50
34
16
40
26
20
1
12
12
1
12
12
6
114
1.6.2. Содержание разделов дисциплины
Введение
Введение: цели, задачи и структура курса. Грамматическая теория: морфология и
синтаксис. Уровни и единицы языка. Основные грамматические единицы – морфема,
словоформа, предложение. Морфологическая классификация языков. Синтаксические и
аналитические формы
Тема 1.
Грамматическая категория: словоформа, формокласс, грамматическое значение,
маркированный и немаркированный члены оппозиции. Факторы, влияющие на модификацию
грамматического значения категории.
Специфика грамматических значений и принципиальное отсутствие разницы между
грамматическим и лексическим значениями в понятийном плане и релевантность разницы в
плане формы выражения. Способы выражения грамматических значений. Грамматическое
значение служебных слов, словосочетаний, структуры предложений. Грамматическое значение,
выраженное словоформой. Выявление грамматических форм слова в теории оппозиций.
Грамматическая категория как система привативных оппозиций формоклассов, объединяющих
словоформы с общеродовым и противоположным видовым значением. Привативный характер
оппозиции и маркированный и немаркированный члены оппозиции. Характеристика
немаркированного члена как способного в определенных условиях выражать всю область
значения грамматической категории. Особенности формального плана выражения
немаркированного члена – нулевая морфема. Принципы выделения грамматических категорий:
наличие содержания, выраженного формой, соотнесенность с противопоставленным
содержанием другой формы в рамках одной категории, невозможность выражения
противопоставленных значений одной категории в одной и той же словоформе, возможность
выражения одной и той же словоформой значений разных формоклассов разных категорий.
Инвариантное значение грамматической категории и факторы, влияющие на модификацию
значения категории: зависимые грамматические значения /лексико-грамматические значения/ и
систематизированный контекст. Лексикализация грамматических флексий как результат
взаимодействия грамматических и лексических факторов.
Тема 2.
Теория частей речи
Классы слов в лексикологии и грамматике. Логико-семантические основания деления слов
языка на морфо-синтаксические классы.
Основные причины спорности существующих классификаций частей речи:
1) принадлежность словаря языка к нечетким множествам, что вызывает принципиальную
невозможность построения логической классификации частей речи;
4
– принципиальную невозможность выделения конечного набора частей речи
– принципиальную невозможность разграничения между частью речи и ее подклассами
2) ненадежность и ограниченность основных принципов классификации частей речи –
принципов формы, функции и значения.
Перечень основных классификаций слов языка и критериев, лежащих в них на основе:
грамматическая концепция А.А Шахматова, учение Ф.Ф. Фортунова о грамматических классах
слов, концепции Л.В.Щербы, Г. Суита, О. Есперсена, дистибуционная система классов слов
Ч.Фриза. Служебные части речи в классификации Ч.Фриза.
Полевая структура части речи: ядро и периферия. Субкатегоризация слов речи как
отражение полевой структуры частей речи.
Дискуссионные проблемы английских частей речи. Правомерность выделения слов
категории состояния и герундия как частей речи. Герундий как часть речи или формокласс, или
грамматический разряд в рамках глагола.
Тема 3.
Существительное как часть речи
Общие характеристики существительного как части речи. Проблема субкатегоризации
существительного. Дополнительные критерии выделения существительных - деривационный и
коллокативный /коллокационный/.
Грамматические категории существительного
1. Категория числа
категория числа как грамматический способ выражения семантической категории
количества. Мотивированность форм категории числа в рамках исчисляемых
существительных и немотивированность в рамках неисчисляемых существительных.
Алломорфы, реализующие морфемы множественного и немножественного формоклассов.
Немножественный формокласс, выражающий, как немаркированный член грамматической
категории, не только единичность, но и отсутствие количественных характеристик, и
неопределенно- большое количество. Взаимодействие лексико-грамматического значения
существительных и грамматической категории, приводящая к лексикализации исходнограмматических форм.
2. Категория падежа
проблема категории падежа в английском существительном: наличие или отсутствие
категории падежа, различные трактовки количества формоклассов - от двух до
неопределенно-большого количества.
Причины отказа от категории падежа в английском языке: способность морфемы
родительного падежа функционировать в качестве синтаксического элемента,
оформляющего синтагмы и клаузы, что подвергает сомнению его природу как морфемы.
Возможные теоретические интерпретации данного явления английского языка: омонимия
двух языковых единиц - морфемы категории падежа и синтаксического элемента;
отсутствие морфемы и, следовательно, категории падежа, и наличие синтаксического
элемента, способного модифицировать как отдельные слова, так и синтаксические
образования; постулирование наличия категории, более узкой, чем падеж, действующей в
рамках атрибутного словосочетания.
5
Родительный падеж /при наличии двучленной категории падежа в английском языке/ как
маркированный член грамматической оппозиции и его значения. Неравномерность постулирования
падежных форм, выражаемых сочетаниями существительного с предлогом или порядком слов.
3.
Проблема
грамматической
категории
рода
в
английском
языке
Семантическая категория рода как отражение биологического пола и грамматическая
категория рода. Способы выражения биологического пола различными языковыми
средствами. Взгляд М.Блоха на категорию рода в английском языке.
4. Категория /определенности/ неопределенности английского существительного
Возможность интерпретации сочетания существительного и артикля как аналитической
формы слова и постулирования грамматической категории, представленной оппозицией трех
словоформ: определенный артикль + существительное, неопределенный артикль +
существительное, нулевой артикль + существительное. Статус артикля как слова или морфемы как
решающей для постулирования грамматической категории. Инвариантные и контекстуальнообусловленные значения артиклей. Роль артикля как дейктической единицы в коммуникации.
Тема 4.
Прилагательное и слова категории состояния
Общая характеристика прилагательных как части речи. Лексико-грамматические разряды
прилагательных. Различные трактовки категории степеней сравнения: как двухуровневой, с
выделением двух формоклассов на каждом уровне, или одноуровневой, с двумя формоклассами сравнительной и превосходной степенями, с выводом положительной степени за рамки категории
как не предлагающей высокую степень наличия качества по сравнению с имплицитной нормой, и
сравнительной и превосходной, которые могут обозначать малую степень наличия качества в
зависимости от терма сравнения.
Супплетивно-синтетические формы степеней сравнения и проблема аналитических форм
сравнения прилагательных. Аргументы «за» и «против» наличия аналитических форм степеней
сравнения: наличие или отсутствие лексического значения во вспомогательном слове, возможность
выражения одного и того же понятия лексически и грамматически, невозможность ориентации на
семантику языковой единицы без учета формальных характеристик.
Проблема слов категории состояния: отдельная часть или лексико-семантический, лексикограмматический подкласс в рамках прилагательного. Анализ формы, синтаксической функции и
лексического значения слов категории состояния и выявления отсутствия ингерентных черт слов
категории состояния по сравнению с прилагательным.
Субстантивизация прилагательных как процесс, результат которого -полная или
частичная ассимиляция. Виды субстантивизированных прилагательных и степень ассимиляции.
Тема 5.
Английский глагол и его категории
Общая характеристика глагола как части речи.
Субкатегоризация: морфологические подгруппы, функциональная классификация/
знаменательная: служебные - вспомогательные, связочные, модальные/, аспектные
характеристики, тип валентности и др.
Грамматические категории глагола:
1) Категория времени
6
Грамматическая категория времени как оппозиция двух формоклассов -немаркированного не
прошедшего, и маркированного прошедшего времени. Значения немаркированной формы.
Проблема будущего времени в категории времени. Статус сочетаний как аналитических форм
времени или словосочетаний, зависящий от трактовки их как полисемантических или
омонимических единиц.
2) Категория вида
Значение категории вида: характеристика действия. Возможные характеристики действия:
совершенность/несовершенность,
предельность/непредельность,
результативность,
повторяемость, неоднократность, начинательность, прерывистость, мгновенность, привычность
Аспектная
характеристика
глагола
как
часть
его
лексического
значения:
предельность/непредельность.
Значение категории вида в английском языке: маркированная форма представляет действие как
имеющее место в определенный момент времени, немаркированная форма охарактеризована
нейтрально. Взаимодействие аспектной характеристики глагола и значения категории вида.
Перфектные формы как формокласс категории вида. Факторы, препятствующие рассмотрению
перфектных форм как формокласса категории вида.
3) Категория залога
Значение залога. Количество и значение залоговых форм в различных языках. Морфосинтаксический характер залога в английском языке. Залог как бинарная оппозиция.
Возвратность, рефлективность, каузативность - значения немаркированной формы или значения
формоклассов. Значения пассивного формокласса. Лексические способы выражения пассивных
значений в английском языке. Сравнительный анализ русского и английского залогов.
4) Категория наклонения
Модальность как языковая категория и наклонение как ее грамматическая реализация.
Объективная и субъективная модальность. Значение наклонения. Категория наклонения как
бинарная оппозиция. Различные интерпретации возможных оппозиций в сфере английского
наклонения. Проблема сослагательного формокласса. Языковые образования, выражающие
сослагательное значение - аналитические формы или словосочетания.
Неличные формы
английского глагола. Синкретический характер неличных форм.
Грамматические категории неличных форм и их особенности.
Тема 6.
Общие принципы описания синтаксических единиц
Понятие о синтаксических единицах: словосочетании и предложении. Переходные случаи:
словосочетание или аналитическая форма, словосочетания или предикативная единица. Принципы
анализа синтаксических единиц: модель членов предложения. Понятие о главных и второстепенных
членах предложения. Иерархия рангов членов предложения. Недостатки концепции.
Дистрибуционные модели. Модель НС (непосредственно составляющих) Т - грамматика в двух
основных вариантах. Способы графической репрезентации структуры синтаксической единицы..
Основные синтаксические отношения: паратаксис, гипотаксис, предикация,сочинение, подчинение.
Тема 7.
Синтаксические теории словосочетания
7
Определение
словосочетаний.
Словосочетание,
синтагмема,
фраза.
Теория
словосочетания в отечественной и зарубежной лингвистике. В.В.Виноградов, экзо-и
эндоцентрические структуры Л. Блумфильда, теория словосочетаний Л.С. Бархударова, принципы,
лежащие в основе классификации словосочетаний - характер конституэнтов, наличие
определенной синтаксической связи. Ядерные глагольные и именные словосочетания.
Подчинительные словосочетания и их подклассы. Типы предикативных словосочетаний. Отличие
предикативных словосочетаний от простых предложений. Семантика словосочетаний:
соотношение значения словосочетания и значения его составляющих.
Тема 8.
Общие характеристики признаков предложения
Предложение как единица языка и единица речи, минимальное коммуникативное
образование - высказывание. Пропозиция, предложение, высказывание. Различные трактовки
пропозиции. Предложение как синтаксическая конструкция. Модальность и предикативность.
Референция и интенция как компоненты предложения - высказывания.
Тема 9.
Структура и семантика предложения
Конституэнтный анализ предложения: система членов предложения. Статус подлежащего и
сказуемого. Типы сказуемого.. Проблематические случаи -фразеологические и контаминированные.
Типы предикатов. Классификация дополнений. Определения и обстоятельства. Моно- и
полипредикативные предложения. Односоставные и эллиптические предложения. Структурнокоммуникативные типы предложения: повествовательное, вопросительное, повелительное,
характеристика и классификация полипредикативных предложений. Принципы классификации
полипредикативных единиц. Принципы классификации сложноподчиненных предложений.
Модальный и пропозициональный компоненты высказывания. Понятие о семантическом синтаксисе
/ролевой синтаксис/. Ч. Филлмор и его теории. Ролевой набор глагола, семантическая
конфигурация, поверхностные репрезентации. Наличие/отсутствие соотношения между членом
предложения и семантической ролью. Предикатно-агрументная структура пропозиции.
Сирконстанты. Пресуппозиция, фактивность, импликация и инференция
Тема 10.
Понятие о коммуникативном и прагматическом синтаксисе
Коммуникативные аспекты предложения. Упаковочные статусы по У. Чейфу. Теморематическое членение и лексико-грамматические способы его выражения. Типы
коммуникативного членения текстов.. Данное/новое. Фокус контраста. Способы выражения
значений определенности в коммуникации. Подлежащее и топик. Точка зрения и эмпатия. Речь
как действие. Перфомативные глаголы и теория речевых актов. Имплицитные способы
выражения речевых интенций: косвенные речевые акты.
1.6.3 Темы для самостоятельного изучения
8
№
п/п
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Наименование раздела
дисциплины.
Тема.
Форма
самостоятельной
работы
Введение
Тема:
1.Способы грамматического
формообразования
2.Формообразование и
словообразование
Кол-во часов
Выполнение
тестов
написание
рефератов,
подготовка
сообщений для
семинаров,
самостоятельное
изучение
Грамматические категории
выполнение
Темы:
тестов,
1.Принципы выделения
\написание
грамматических категорий
рефератов,
2.Зависимые грамматические
подготовка
значения
сообщений для
семинаров,
самостоятельное
изучение
Теория частей речи
написание
Темы:
рефератов,
1.Имя числительное
подготовка
2. Местоимение
сообщений для
3. Наречие
семинаров,
4. Служебные части речи и самостоятельное
служебные слова
изучение
2
Существительное как часть
речи
Темы:
1.Проблема аналитической
формы английского
существительного
2.Субкатегоризация
английского существительного
Прилагательное и слова
категории состояния
Темы:
1.Субкатегоризация
английского
прилагательного:проблема
стативов
2.Субстантивизация
прилагательных
Форма
контроля выполнения
самостоятельной
работы
проверка тестов,
защита рефератов,
заслушивание
сообщений
4
проверка тестов,
защита рефератов,
заслушивание
сообщений
4
проверка тестов,
защита рефератов,
заслушивание
сообщений
написание
рефератов,
подготовка
сообщений для
семинаров,
самостоятельное
изучение
4
проверка тестов,
защита рефератов,
заслушивание
сообщений
написание
рефератов,
подготовка
сообщений для
семинаров,
самостоятельное
изучение
2
проверка тестов,
защита рефератов,
заслушивание
сообщений
9
Английский глагол и его
категории
Темы:
1.Субкатегоризация
английского глагола
2.Неличные формы
английского глагола
3.Синкретический характер
причастия П
Общие принципы описания
синтаксических единиц
Темы:
1. Второстепенные члены
предложения в традиционной
модели анализа предложения
по членам предложения
2. Служебные слова в теории
Ч.Фриза
3.Способы выражения
модальной рамки английского
предложения
написание
рефератов,
подготовка
сообщений для
семинаров,
самостоятельное
изучение
4
проверка тестов,
защита рефератов,
заслушивание
сообщений
написание
рефератов,
подготовка
сообщений для
семинаров,
самостоятельное
изучение
4
проверка тестов,
защита рефератов,
заслушивание
сообщений
8.
Синтаксические теории
словосочетания
Темы:
1.Вклад американских
лингвистов в теорию
словосочетания
2. Субкатегоризация
объектных синтаксических
элементов
3.Ядерные словосочетания с
адвербиальбным и
адъективным ядром
написание
рефератов,
подготовка
сообщений для
семинаров,
самостоятельное
изучение
4
проверка тестов,
защита рефератов,
заслушивание
сообщений
9.
Общие характеристики
признаков предложения
Темы:
1.Модус и диктум
2.Типы модусных значений
3.Пропозициогальная
сенмантика
написание
рефератов,
подготовка
сообщений для
семинаров,
самостоятельное
изучение
4
проверка тестов,
защита рефератов,
заслушивание
сообщений
10.
Структура и семантика
предложения
Темы:
1.Структурнокоммуникативный тип
предложения
2. Структура пропозиции
написание
рефератов,
подготовка
сообщений для
семинаров,
самостоятельное
изучение
4
проверка тестов,
защита рефератов,
заслушивание
сообщений
6.
7.
10
11.
Понятие о коммуникативном и написание
прагматическом синтаксисе
рефератов,
Тема:
подготовка
Теория речевых актов
сообщений для
семинаров,
самостоятельное
изучение
4
проверка тестов,
защита рефератов,
заслушивание
сообщений
1.7 Методические рекомендации по организации изучения дисциплины
1.7.1.Тематика и планы аудиторной работы студентов по изучаемому материалу
Тема: Теория частей речи
План:
1.Логические, семантические и грамматические аспекты классификации частей речи:
2. Классификация слов языка на основе различных принципов:
3.Основные группы слов языка
4.Классификация слов в английском языке
Вопросы для коллективного обсуждения:
-традиционная классификация
-семантический критерий и его валидность
-грамматический (морфологический и синтаксический) критерий, его достоинства и недостатки
-части речи на основе значения,формы и функции
- дистрибуционная классификация Ч.Фриза
-полевая теория частей речи
-количество и краткая характеристика частей речи в английском языке
-проблема частей речи, специфичных для английского языка
Задания для самостоятельной работы:
-значимые и служебные слова
-функции и классы служебных слов
- слова-субституты
-принципы субкатегоризации
-субкатегоризация существительных, глаголов и прилагательных
Литература:
Основная
1. Иванова И.П., Бурлакова В.В., Почепцов Г.Г. Теоретическая грамматика современного
английского языка. М., Высшая школа, 1981. с.14-20.
2. Ilyish B.A. The Structure of Modern English. 1971, p.27-35
3. Bloch M.Y. A Course in Theoretical English Grammar. M., 1983, p.37-49.
4. Иванова И.П., Бурлакова В.В., Почепцов Г.Г. Теоретическая грамматика английского языка.
М., 1981, с.14-20. (части речи).
5. Лайонз Дж. Введение в теоретическую лингвистику. М., 1987, с.336-338, с.342-349.
6. Жирмунский В.М. О природе частей речи и их классификации. В сб.: «Вопросы теории частей
речи». Л., 1968 или его же – «Из лингвистического наследия академика Щербы Л.В.»
(«Вопросы языкознания», №6 1970.)
7. Ильиш Б.А. О частях речи в английском языке. В сб. «Вопросы теории частей речи», Л., 1968.
Дополнительная
11
1. Адмони В.Г. Полевая природа частей речи. В сб. «Вопросы теории частей речи», Л., 1968.
2. Реформатский А.А. Введение в языкознание. С.320-324.
3. .Бархударов Л.С. К вопросу о грамматических значениях и их передаче при переводах. ИЯШ
№3, 1972.
4. Мещанинов И.И. Члены предложения и части речи. Л., 1978, 229-253.
5. Маслов Ю.С. Введение в языкознание. М, «Высшая школа», 1987, с. 157-168. (Параграфы 183192).
6. Иофик Л.Л., Чахоян Л.П. Хрестоматия по теоретической грамматике английского языка. Л.,
1972, с.43-60.
Тема: Прилагательное и слова категории состояния
План:
1.Общие характеристики имени прилагательного в английском языке
2. Грамматическая категория степеней сравнения:
3. Проблема слов категории состояния
Вопросы для коллективного обсуждения:
- значение, форма, синтаксические функции английского прилагательного
- субкатегоризация по значению
- синтагматические субкатегоризации
- значение категории степеней сравнения английского прилагательного
- способы образования степеней сравнения
Задания для самостоятельной работы:
- различные точки зрения на структуру грамматической категории: кол-во формоклассов,
структуру оппозиций
-различные точки зрения на так называемые аналитические формы степеней сравнения
-артикль с превосходной степенью. Модификация значения формокласса превосходной
степени
- субстантивация прилагательных как следствие полевого принципа организации частей речи
- интерпретация слов категории состяния как части речи, отличной от прилагательного
-интерпретация слов категории состояния как субкатегоризационной группы в рамках
прилагательного
Литература
Основная:
1. Бурлакова В.В. Синтаксические структуры современного английского языка. М., 1984, с.77-80,
с.86-87.
2. Иванова И.П., Бурлакова В.В., Почепцов Г.Г. Теоретическая грамматика современного
английского языка. М., 1974, с.34-39.
3. Бархударов Л.С. Очерки по морфологии английского языка.
4. Gordon E.M., Krylova L.P. A Grammar of Present Day English. M., 1980, p.261-267.
5. Ilyish B. The Structure of Modern English. P.58-65.
Дополнительная:
1. Фолькович М.М. Функционально- семантические особенности английского прилагательного.
ИЯШ №5 за 1982г.
2. Смирницкий А.И. Морфология английского языка М.: Изд-во лит. на иностр. яз,1959
Тема: Английский глагол и его категории
План:
1.Общие характеристики глагола как части речи:
2.Грамматическая категория времени
12
3. Грамматическая категория залога
4.Грамматическая категория вида
5.Грамматическая категория временной отнесенности
6.Грамматическая категория наклонения
Вопросы для коллективного обсуждения
- категориальное (частиречное) значение глагола
- морфологический критерий
-синтаксические функции
-другие возможные критерии
-значение категории времени в целом и формоклассов в частности
-различные точки зрения на грамматическую категорию времени
-переходность и залог
- залог как морфо-синтаксическая категория
-значения непассивного формокласса и проблема взаимного,рефлексивного, среднего и
каузального залогов
– Видовая характеристика глагола и значения возможных видовых характеристик, выраженных
лексически
– Значение грамматической категории вида в индо-европейских языках
– Значение грамматической категории вида в английском, теоретическая интерпретация форм to
be + PI как формы грамматической категории времени
– Значение категории временной отнесенности
–
– Перфектные формы как формокласс категории времени
– Перфектные формы как формокласс категории вида
– Перфектные формы как формокласс особой категории, отличной от категории времени и вида
– Модальность как свойство высказывания
– Лингвистические средства выражения субъективной и объективной модальности
– Категория наклонения как морфологическое средство выражения модальности
– Различные точки зрения на количество формоклассов и оппозиций в рамках категории
наклонения
– Проблема формокласса сослагательного наклонения
Задания для самостоятельной работы:
– различные принципы субкатегоризации английского глагола: морфологические,
синтаксические и т. д.
– различные интерпретации shall / will – структур ( аналитические формы versus cвободные
словосочетания)
– -структура to be+P II как составное именное сказуемое и как простое глагольное сказуемое в
пассивном залоге
– Контекстуальные и лексические значения категории временной отнесенности
– Категория наклонения и структурно- коммуникативные типы предложения: вопрос,
побуждение, суждение
Литература
Основная:
1. Iofic L.L., Chakhoyan L.P. Readings in the Theory of Grammar. L., 1972, p.76.
2. Bloch M.Y. A Course in Theoretical Grammar. M., 1983, P.137-155, 176-184.
3. Иванова И.П., Бурлакова В.В., и др. Теоретическая грамматика современного английского
языка. М., 1981, с.46-50, ( § 1), с.53 (§ 1. 6. 12. 3), с.65, с.76 (§ 1. 6. 20 – 1. 6. 20. 2).
13
4. Уздинская Е.Н. Проблема синтагматической классификации глаголов в современном
английском языке. – В сб.: грамматические и лексико-семантические исследования в
синхронии и диахронии. Калинин, 1975, (посмотреть схему и подобрать примеры).
5. Ilyish B.I. The Structure of Modern English. L., 1971, p.76-85, 90-98.
6. Лайонз Дж. Введение в теоретическую лингвистику. М., 1987, с.322-324, с.328, начиная со
слов «Выше в данном разделе…» до с.329, заканчивая словами «Наличие или отсутствие…»,
с. 332-335.
7. Штелинг Д.А. Грамматическая семантика английского языка.М.,1996.
Дополнительная:
1. Смирницкий А.И. Морфология английского языка М.: Изд-во лит.на иностр. яз,1959
2. Бархударов Л.С. Очерки по морфологии английского языка. М., 1975.
3. Юрченко Г.Е. Глаголы с обязательной адвербиальной детерминацией в английском языке. – В
сб.: Теоретические вопросы английской филологии. Горький, 1974.
Тема: Общие принципы описания синтаксических единиц
План:
1. Основные синтаксические категории
2. Основные методы анализа предложения
Вопросы для коллективного обсуждения
- Общие характеристики основных синтаксических единиц: предложения и словосочетания.
Другие синтаксические единицы; клауза, подчинительное предложение, сложное предложение
- синтаксические связи, синтаксические отношения, синтаксическая позиция
- традиционная модель членов предложения; достоинства и недостатки. Семантика членов
предложения
-модель непосредственно составляющих и различные способы графической репрезентации
структуры предложения
-трансформационная грамматика
Вопросы для коллективного обсуждения
- дистрибуционная модель Ч.Фриза
-современные варианты Т-грамматики
Литература:
Основная:
1. Ilyish B. The structure of Modern English. L.,1971, p.171-172, 182,266-273.
2. Общее языкознание. Под ред. А.Е.Супруна. Минск, 1983. С. 135-138, 266 и далее
3. Лайонз Дж. Введение в теоретическую лингвистику. М.,1978, с.262-267
4. Бархударов Л.С. Структура простого предложения современного английского языка. М., 1966
с. 172-178
5. Иванова И.П., Бурлакова В.В., Почепцов Г.Г. Теоретическая грамматика современного
английского языка. М., 1981
Дополнительная:
1. Fries Ch. The Structure of English. P 189-194 ( The meaning of symbols and the first 7 formulae)
2. Смирницкий А.И. Синтаксис английского языка. М.: Изд-во лит. на иностр. яз, 1957
Тема: Теория словосочетания
План:
1.Общая характеристика словосочетания как синтаксической единицы
2. Принципы классификации словосочетаний
Вопросы для коллективного обсуждения
- определение словосочетания в отечественной и зарубежной лингвистике
14
- отличие словосочетаний от слов-композитов, аналитических образований и идиом
- словосочетания и предложения; сходства и различия
- типы синтаксических связей в словосочетании: ранговые синтаксические отношения (
сочинение, подчинение), содержательные синтаксические отношения (
предикативное,
обстоятельственное, атрибутивное и т.д.), аккумулятивная связь. Согласование, управлении.
-общие принципы классификации словосочетаний: характер конституэнтов, наличие
определенной синтаксической связи, однородность синтаксической связи словочетания,
структурные типы составляющих в словосочетании
- подчинительные структуры: ведущий элемент подчинительного словосочетания; ядерные
именные и глагольные словосочетания. Именные прогрессивные и регрессивные структуры.
Типы зависимых элементов глагольного словосочетания
- принципы классификации сочинительных структур
-вторичная предикативная связь и предикативные словосочетания. Типы предикативных
словосочетаний. Отличия предикативных словосочетаний от простых предложений.
Задания для самостоятельной работы:
-Теория рангов О. Есперсена
- эндо- и экзоцентрические структуры Л. Блумфильда. Подстановочный тест
- сочинительные словосочетания и их классификация по Л.С. Бархударову
Литература:
Основная:
1. .Burlakova V. Contribution of English and American linguists to the Theory of Phrase. M.,1071.
Chapter 1Y, part 1, p.40-49, part П, p.47-51
2. Бархударов Л.С. Структура простого предложения современного английского языка. М., 1966
с.44-49,116-118,128-131
3. Иванова И.П., Бурлакова В.В., Почепцов Г.Г. Теоретическая грамматика современного
английского языка. М., 1981. с.100-1098, 151-159, 162-168
4. Дополнительная:
5. Лайонз Дж. Введение в теоретическую лингвистику. М.,1978. с.245-247
6. Бурлакова В.В. Синтаксические структуры современного английского языка. М., 1984. с. 419, 35-74
7. Штелинг Д.А. О системности словосочетаний // Иностранные языки в школе, 1/1981
8. Bloch M.Y. A Course in theoretical English Grammar. M., 1983. p.229-236
9. Смирницкий А.И. Синтаксис английского языка. М.: Изд-во лит. на иностр. яз,1957
Тема: Общие характеристики предложения.
План:
1. Принципиальная невозможность дефиниции предложения
2.Структурный, коммуникативный и семантический аспекты предложения
3. Принципы классификации простого предложения
Вопросы для коллективного обсуждения
-структурные характеристики предложения
-основные компоненты семантики
предложения: модальная рамка, пропозиция,
коммуникативная предназначенность.
-пропозициональный компонент: аргументно-предикатная структура пропозиции, сирконстанты
-актуализация: предложение и высказывание, речевой акт
- квази-предложения их подтипы и отличие квази-предложений от собственно предложений
Задания для самостоятельной работы:
15
-модальная рамка: способы выражения
- односоставные и эллиптические предложения
- структурно-коммуникативный тип предложения: проблема отрицательных и восклицательных
предложений
Литература
Основная:
1. Иванова И.П., Бурлакова В.В., Почепцов Г.Г. Теоретическая грамматика современного
английского языка.М., 1981.с.164-181.
2. Ilyish B. The structure of Modern English. L.,1971, р.182-190, 250-253
3. Bloch M.Y. A Course in theoretical English Grammar. M., 1983.236-243
4. Бархударов Л.С. Структура простого предложения современного английского языка. М., 1966.
р. 172-187
Дополнительная:
1. Лайонз Дж. Введение в теоретическую лингвистику. М.,1978. р.262-267
2. Степанов Ю.С. Имена. Предикаты. Предложения. М.,1981. с.238
3. Смирницкий А.И. Синтаксис английского языка. М.: Изд-во лит. на иностр. яз,1957
Тема: Структура и семантика предложения
План:
1.Конституэнтный анализ предложения
2. Полипредикативные предложения
3. Семантика предложения
Вопросы для коллективного обсуждения
- система членов предложения. Статус подлежащего и сказуемого.
-моно- и полипредикативные единицы с точки зрения структуры, семантики, коммуникативного
задания; переходные случаи
-принципы классификации полипредикативных единиц: способ синтаксической связи,
равноправность предложений-компонентов
-сложносочиненные предложения: отношения между клаузами
-Структура ситуации и структура пропозиции: процесс, партиципанты – предикат, аргументы.
Падежная грамматика Ч.Филлмора. Семантические роли
-Типы предикатов. Понятие о сирконстантах. Ролевая структура глагола, семантическая
конфигурация и поверхностная реализация. Понятие пресуппозиции.
Задания для самостоятельной работы:
-типы сказуемого; проблематические случаи
- фразеологические
и контаминированные.
Классификация дополнений. Определения и обстоятельства.
-принципы классификации сложноподчиненных предложений
Литература:
Основная:
1. Иванова И.П., Бурлакова В.В., Почепцов Г.Г. Теоретическая грамматика современного
английского языка. М., 1981.с.183-204,230-237,241-248,260.
2. Ilyish B. The structure of Modern English. L.,1971, р.182-190. 264-279
3. Bloch M.Y. A Course in theoretical English Grammar. M., 1983.236-243
4. Ilyish B. The structure of Modern English. L.,1971, р.182-19
5. Кобозева И.М. Лингвистическая семантика.М.,2000. 217-224
Дополнительная:
16
1. Veikhman G.A. A New Look at English Syntax/M., 2002. §3.0.-3.3.,§ 3.2-3.2.5.
2. Кацнельсон С.Д. Заметки о падежной теории Филлмора // Вопросы языкознания (ВЯ), 1/1988
3. Смирницкий А.И. Синтаксис английского языка. М.: Изд-во лит. на иностр. яз,1957
Тема:. Коммуникативно-прагматические аспекты синтаксиса
План:
1. Категории коммуникативного синтаксиса
2.Прагматический синтаксис: речь как действие
Вопросы для коллективного обсуждения
- упаковочные статусы по У. Чейфу;
-темо-рематическая структура предложения и лексико-грамматические способы её выражения.
-данное/новое. Фокус контраста.
- теория речевых актов: иллокутивная функция и базовые речевые акты
Задания для самостоятельной работы:
- перформативные глаголы, перформативное употребление глаголов, способы экспликации
речевых актов
-имплицитные способы выражения речевых интенций
Литература
Основная:
1. Иванова И.П., Бурлакова В.В., Почепцов Г.Г. Теоретическая грамматика современного
английского языка. М., 1981.с.256-259,267-281.
2. Ilyish B. The structure of Modern English. L.,1971, р. 191-197
3. Bloch M.Y. A Course in theoretical English Grammar. M., 1983.236-243
4. Кобозева И.М. Лингвистическая семантика.М.,2000. 247-258
5. Дополнительная:
6. Veikhman G.A. A New Look at English Syntax/M., 2002. §2.2.0.-2.2.2.3
7. Смирницкий А.И. Синтаксис английского языка. М.: Изд-во лит. на иностр. яз,1957
1.8 Учебно-методическое обеспечение дисциплины
1.8.1. Рекомендуемая литература, учебные издания: учебники и учебные пособия, включая (при
наличии) их электронные версии:
Основная
1. Адмони В.Г. Основы теории грамматики. М. – Л., 1964
2. Арутюнова Н.Д.Предложение и его смысл. М.,1976
3. Бархударов Л.С. Очерки по морфологии современного английского языка. М.: Высшая школа,
1975
4. Бархударов Л.С. Структура простого предложения современного английского языка. М.:
Высшая школа, 1966 (электронный вариант)
5. Блумфильд Л. Язык. М., 1968
6. Bloch M.Y. A Course in Theoretical English Grammar. M., 1983
7. Бурлакова В.В. Основы структуры словосочетания в современном английском языке. Л., 1975
8. Ильиш Б.А. Строй современного английского языка. 2-е изд. Л.: Просвещение, Ленинград, отние, 1971 на англ.яз.
9. Иванова И.П., Бурлакова В.В., Почепцов Г.Г. Теоретическая грамматика современного
английского языка. М: Высшая школа, 1981 (в том числе электронный вариант)
10. Иванова И.П. Вид и время в современном английском языке. Л: ЛГУ, 1961
11. Rayevska N.M. Modern English Grammar.Kiev, Vyšča Scola Publishers, 1976 (электронный
вариант английский язык)
17
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
Смирницкий А.И. Морфология английского языка М.: Изд-во лит. на иностр. яз,1959
Смирницкий А.И. Синтаксис английского языка. М.: Изд-во лит. на иностр. яз,1957
Лайонз Дж. Введение в теоретическую лингвистику. М: Прогресс, 1978
Чейф У. Значение и структура языка. М: Прогресс, 1975
Жигадло В.н., И.П. Иванова, Л.Л. Иофик. Современный английский язык М:1956
Штелинг Д.А. Грамматическая семантика английского языка.М:1996
Дополнительная
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Есперсен О. Философия грамматики М: Из-во иностр. лит., 1958
Иоффик Л.Л. Сложное предложение в новоанглийском языке Л: ЛГУ,1968
Стеблин-Каменский М.И. Спорное в языкознании Л: ЛГУ, 1974
Fries C.C. The Structure of English. N.Y., Harcout Brace, 1952
Quirk R., Greenbaum S., Leech G., Svartvik J. A Grammar of Contemporary English. London:
Longman, 1972
Iofik L.L., L.P. Chakhoyan. Readings in the Theory of English .Л: 1972.
Leech G., J. Starvik. F Communicative Grammar of English. Moscow 1983
Энциклопедический словарь юного филолога /языкознание/. Сост. М.В. Панов. М.,1984
Лингвистический энциклопедический словарь. ( гл.ред. - Ярцева В.Н.) М., 1990
1.9. Материально-техническое обеспечение дисциплины
1.9.1. Перечень используемых технических средств. Нет
1.9.2. Перечень используемых пособий
1. Лекции по теоретической грамматике английского языка Л.К. Рахманкуловой (английский
язык, электронный вариант)
2. Lectures in Theoretical Grammar by ass. professor Volkova L.M, National Linguistic University
of Kiev
3. Шевченко В.Д. Основы теории английского языка учебное пособие. Самара, 2004.
1.10. Примерные зачетные текстовые задания
Тест по теоретической грамматике , 1 вариант
1. Tick off the letters of simple verbal predicates:
a) She must have been agitated
b) He will have translated the text by now
c) She had been awaiting for them
d) We can come
2. Tick off the letters of the terms which are alien to the theory of word-form building:
a) reduplication
b) suppletivity
c) grammatical subject
d) analytical forms
e) zero morpheme
3. Tick off the letter of the adverb round
a) There’s a post-office round the corner
b) He turned round and saw her
c) The sum was given in round figures
d) The watchman makes his rounds every hour
18
4. Tick off the letters of NP with postposed adjuncts (headed progressive)
a) old gray hat
b) the path to London
c) little black puppy
d) the table downstairs
5. Tick off the letters of structures designed to make grammatical subjects rhematic
a) There was a girl in the room
b) On the platform stood a woman
c) That treaty – they signed it!
d) As for Pete – well, he resigned
6. Tick off the letters of structures with 2 arguments
a) It rained
b) He made a terrible mistake
c) He had a walk
d) He smiled a smile
e) He smoked a cigarette
7. Tick off the letters of complex phrases
a) nicely worded remark
b) coming so quickly
c) teaching English grammar
d) sold coffee and beans
8. Tick off the letters of gerunds
a) opening speech
b) flying saucers
c) cleaning mixture
d) drinking horses
e) playing children
9. Tick off the letters of sentences with secondary predication
a) He wants to see where his father lives
b) I expected him to return soon
c) Breakfast over, we left the table
d) She kissed him and left the room
e) With his eyes bright, he looked happy and content
10. Tick off the letters of elementary phrases
a) rich in oil and coal
b) looking shocked yet smiling
c) dancing and singing songs
d) politically active youth
11. Tick off the letters of NP with the correct order of adjuncts
a) the same red garden big chairs
b) the big same red garden chairs
c) the same big red garden chairs
d) the same red big garden chairs
19
12. Tick off the letters of the sentences which represent the declarative communicative type
a) Did he really go there?!
b) If only he went there!
c) Go there!
d) If he goes there…
e) He didn’t go there
f) He went there
13. Tick off the letters of terms which are alien to the theory of word-classes
a) nouns
b) verbs
c) attributes
d) adverbs
e) objects
f) predicatives
14. Tick off the letters of sentences with 3 arguments(semantic roles)
a) They gave Jackson a picture
b) He left Ann a widow
c) They appointed Jack director
d) They regarded him as a genius
15. Tick off the letters of cases of upgrading
a) There were two plainclothes men at the entrance
b) He was noted for his to-the- second regularity
c) Better be an also-run than a never-was
d) No buts, only ands
16. Tick off the letters of the grammatical categories alien to the English verb
a) person
b) case
c) tense
d) number
e) degrees of comparison
17. Tick off the letters of sentences where the grammatical subject is not the agent
a) Mr.Smith works his secretary like a slaveowner
b) Ann feeds the child
c) Ann works nights
d) Money can buy everything
e) He was sent to prison
18. Tick off the letters of terminative verbs
a) to enjoy
b) to blame
c) to enter
d) to spring up
e) to admit
f) to work
19. Tick off the letters of sentences with link-verbs
a) The girl grew impatient
20
b) The girl grew a nice woman
c) The girl grew at her uncle’s
d) The girl grew potatoes at her uncle’s
Tick off the letters
20. of terms which are alien to the theory of syntactic functions
a) subject
b) predicate
c) adverb
d) adverbial modifier
e) particle
f) predicative
21. Tick off the letters of participles
a) dressing table
b) kicking legs
c) blotting paper
d) crying voice
e) walking stick
f) dancing girl
22. Tick off the letters of forms of one grammatical paradigm
a) has graced
b) gracious
c) graces
d) is gracing
e) graceful
f) was graced
23. Tick off the letters of durative (non-limited, cursive) verbs
a) to go
b) to jump off
c) to pass
d) to argue
e) to lie
f) to throw
24. Tick off the letters of forms which belong to the same form-class
a) will speak, will come, will do
b) will speak, spoke, spoken
c) costs, looks, brothers, Pete’s
d) long, longer, longish
e) are reading, will read, was read
25. Tick off the letters of sentences with compound nominal predicates
a) The young man had been sad and frightened
b) The girl looked at him suspiciously
c) The girl looked suspicious
d) The young man appeared suddenly
e) The young man appeared intelligent
21
26. Tick off the letters of sentences with the predicate incorporating one of its arguments
a) He send the picture by mail
b) He watered the flowers
c) They bottled the letter and threw it into the ocean
d) He clenched his fists
e) She shrugged indifferently
27. Tick off the letters of the preposition since
a) He left home in 1989 and has not been heard of since
b) Since last seeing you I have been ill
c) How long is it since I saw you last?
d) Since he is married , he cannot become your husband
e) I haven’t been home since her marriage
28. Tick off the letters of subjective genitive
a) children’s demand
b) children’s education
c) children’s toys
d) children’s language
e) children’s service
f) children’s diet
29. Tick off the letters of the sentence built on a different deep structure
a) John is easy to please
b) She is pleasant to look at
c) They are difficult to deal with
d) She is hard to question
e) She is quick to take the advantage
30. Tick off the letters of verbs which are transitive in their primary meaning
a) to read
b) to walk
c) to help
d) to teach
e) to live
f) to smile
31. Tick off the cases of downgrading
a) Are you a has-been or a might-have been?
b) Hang on a Sec, I’ll call him to the phone
c) No ifs, please
d) There was a sit-in strike
e) She smiled her hands-off smile most convincingly
32. Tick off the letters of the so-called “middle voice” meaning of the predicate verb
a) He meant business
b) Fragile things break easily
c) The patient walks two miles every day
d) The boy ran down the hill
e) Detergents sell well
33. Tick off the letters of word-forms built with the help of an additive morpheme
22
a)
b)
c)
d)
e)
f)
is cut
wrote
moves
more interesting
coming
men
34. Tick off the letters of the phrases which can have two IC interpretations
a) used car salesmen
b) Egyptian cotton shirts
c) Egyptian cotton load
d) young man habits
e) red wine spot
f) Russian mothers and kids
35. Tick off the letters of the two sentences which are connected by either space or time adverbials
a) There are several motives. First of all, we need to know the motives
b) A Mercedes was parked in the street. The car looked new.
c) The kids were back in time for dinner. They were very tired
d) Several people complained. And I did too.
e) We left Paris on Monday morning. By the same evening we were in Rome
36. Tick off the letters of inflectional morphemes
a) -s as in books. spaces
b) -age as in frontage, mileage
c) -ing as in flying ( I am flying to Rome)
d) -ly as in quickly, happily
e) -ed as in played, wanted
f) -en as in deafen, ripen
37. Tick off the letters of VP
a) first to come
b) coming again
c) pleasant to see
d) a table to eat off
e) begin doing
38. Tick off the letters of sentences with adverbial clauses
a) When a poetical young gentleman makes use of adjectives, they are all superlatives
b) They suggested, with unwillingness, that the Greens should leave the country with
no delay
c) Can we assume that this simple sentence has some bearing to reality?
d) This is a constituent which can occur in the same structure
e) No matter how strong he may be he won’t lift the box
f) There is no way out unless you speak up
39. Tick off the letters of the statives
a) bound for
b) angry
c) afloat
d) upset
e) lone
23
f) alone
40. Tick off the letters of terms used in TG
a) two-member sentence
b) sentence pattern
c) kernel sentence
d) sentence transform
e) derived sentence
f) sentence generation
41. Tick off the letters characterizing the properties of an infinitive
a) of verb and noun
b) of verb and adjective
c) of verb and adverb
d) of verb, adjective and adverb
e) of verb, adjective and noun
42. Tick off the letters of the sentences the constituents of which are joined asyndetically
a) Had it been because of the late arrival, nobody would have complained
b) Her ambitions were doomed to failure; he died young
c) I think she was very inexperienced at that time
d) If we were to collect and study them, perhaps we would be entitled to an opinion
e) She was not a woman who would suffer alone
43. Tick off the letters of coordinative phrases
a) The isle of Jersey
b) The island of unparalleled beauty
c) King Richard the Lion-Hearted
d) a friend of mine
e) ( she had) a button of a nose
f) tasteless yet wholesome
44. Tick off the letters of sentences built on predicative phrases
a) As he was being neglected, he decided not to offer any opinions
b) Being neglected, he decided to offer no views
c) His remarks being neglected, he stopped taking part in the discussion
d) As they neglected his remarks, he stopped taking part in the exchange
e) His heart broken and sad, he gave up his cherished dreams
45. Tick off the letters of the adjectives incapable of forming inflectional degrees of comparison
a) fat
b) thin
c) real
d) proper
e) comparative
f) perfect
46. Tick off
a)
b)
c)
d)
the letters of phrasal verbs
The blew up the bridge
They applied for a new job
The drowning man shouted for help
I wouldn’t like to attend to the matter
24
e) Drink up your milk quickly
Тест по теоретической грамматике, 2 вариант
1) Tick off the letters of compound verbal predicates:
a) He could have been nervous and shy
b) We shall have finished the work by noon
c) She is being looked upon with surprise
d) We can come
2) Tick off the letters of the terms which are alien to the theory of word-form building:
a) suffix
b) synthetic forms
c) adverbial modifier
d) auxiliaries
e) zero morpheme
3) Tick off the letter of the conjunction so
a) It is not so big as I expected
b) You may borrow the book so long as you keep it clean
c) I will have everything ready so as not to keep you waiting
d) The shops were closed so I couldn’t buy anything
e) Eric likes thing to be just so
4) Tick off the letters of NP with preposed adjuncts (headed regressive)
a) bright violet colour
b) the ticket to London
c) the puppy the size of a button
d) the room at the top
5) Tick off the letters of structures designed to make grammatical subjects thematic
a) As for the story – alas! it was soon forgotten
b) There will be a ball next Tuesday
c) The door opened and there stepped in a young woman
d) That smile – they remembered it for life
6) Tick off the letters of structures with 2 arguments
a) It smelled of cats
b) He offered a nice smile
c) He had a run in the park
d) He cast a suspicious glance
e) He spilt the milk
7) Tick off the letters of complex phrases
a) surprisingly beautiful hat
b) going home
c) buying French wine
d) broke wrists and ankles
25
8) Tick off the letters of participles
a) opening doors
b) flying birds
c) smelling salts
d) running dogs
e) laughing gas
9) Tick off the letters of sentences with secondary predication
a) He wants his relatives to let him alone
b) I suggest that they should return soon
c) His heart broken , he left England forever
d) Do you mind my mother’s visiting us?
e) Her eyes were bright, she looked happy
10) Tick off the letters of elementary phrases
a) becoming surprisingly smart
b) looking shocked yet smiling
c) dancing and singing songs
d) politically active youth
11) Tick off the letters of NP with the correct order of adjuncts
a) the smallish perfect silver-black fur coat
b) the perfect smallish silver-black fur coat
c) the silver-black smallish perfect fur coat
d) the perfect silver-black smallish fur coat
12) Tick off the letters of the sentences which represent the declarative communicative type
a) Does he really go there?!
b) I wish he went there
c) Go there immediately!
d) If he goes there…
e) He hasn’t gone there
f) He will go there
13) Tick off the letters of terms which are alien to the theory of word-classes
a) notional words
b) subcategorisation
c) prepositions
d) pronouns
e) subjects
f) compound verbal predicates
14) Tick off the letters of sentences with 3 arguments
a) They gave Jackson a permission
b) He remembered her as a young girl
c) They nominated him president
d) She brought him a cup of coffee
15) Tick off the letters of cases of downgrading
a) There were two plainclothes men at the entrance
b) I hate his know-how approach
26
c) He is nothing but a has-been, like myself
d) No buts, only ifs
16) Tick off the letters of the grammatical categories alien to the English noun
a) person
b) case
c) tense
d) number
e) degrees of comparison
17) Tick off the letters of sentences where the grammatical subject is not the agent
a) The ball hit the child
b) Ann goes to church every Sunday
c) The book sells well
d) The ground is covered with ice
e) He locked the door
18) Tick off the letters of durative verbs
a) to carry
b) to catch
c) to discover
d) to live
e) to recognize
f) to lie (lay, lain)
19) Tick off the letters of sentences with link-verbs
a) The girl appeared nervous and silent
b) The girl appeared suddenly in the doorway
c) The girl appears to have many friends
d) The girl didn’t want to appear a fool
20) Tick off the letters of terms which are alien to the theory of syntactic functions
a) predicative
b) conjunction
c) stative
d) adverbial modifier
e) particle
f) attribute
21) Tick off the letters of participles
a) dressing table
b) kicking baby
c) writing paper
d) crying girl
e) walking shoes
f) singing child
22) Tick off the letters of forms of one grammatical paradigm
a) had blackened
b) black’s
27
c)
d)
e)
f)
blackish
has been blackened
black
will blacken
23) Tick off the letters of durative (non-limited, cursive) verbs
a) to speak
b) to refuse
c) to arrive
d) to mean
e) to stand
f) to drop
24) Tick off the letters of forms which belong to the same form-class
a) did, broke, told, closed
b) speak, spoke, spoken, speaks
c) long-legged, closed, provided ( in the meaning of IF)
d) short, shorten, shorter, shortish
e) is doing, will be done, did
25) Tick off the letters of sentences with compound nominal predicates
a) The young man was being very excited
b) The girl looked at him excitedly
c) The girl looked excited
d) The young man appeared suddenly
e) The young man turned honest and reliable
26) Tick off the letters of sentences with the predicate incorporating one of its arguments
a) He carpeted the floor
b) He hammered in the nail
c) They composed a very nice kind of music
d) Yt waved his hand
e) She nodded indifferently
27) Tick off the letters of the pro-form that
a) He never came back home that he had left in 1978
b) That book was left behind
c) How did you know that?
d) I can’t walk that far
e) It’s a different kind of car from that I am used to
28) Tick off the letters of classifying( descriptive, qualifying) genitive
a) She went to a women’s college
b) She spoke of her sister’s kids
c) He had a doctor’s degree
d) She ironed the boy’s new shirt
e) That boy’s answer was correct
f) Europe’s future is in danger
g) May’s suitcase was lost
29) Tick off the letters of the sentence built on a different deep structure
a) He is pleasant to talk to
28
b) She is easy to understand
c) She is very slow to see the trick
d) They are difficult to deal with
e) She is hard to please
30) Tick off the letters of verbs which are transitive in their primary meaning
a) to succeed
b) to borrow
c) to be
d) to break
e) to live
f) to smile
31) Tick off the cases of downgrading
a) I don’t like his “don’t- talk- to- me-or-I’ll –contradict- you” air
b) Hang on ,Pa, I’ll call him to the phone
c) It’s a must, actually
d) Her speech was full of “I’ll cut you off”s and “you shall not”s
e) Would you like a with or a without?
32) Tick off the letters of the so-called “middle voice” meaning of the predicate verb
a) He thought of their plan day and night
b) The box closed with a bang
c) The father returns home every other day
d) The boy jumped over the wall
e) This wool wears nicely
33) Tick off the letters of word-forms built with the help of an additive morpheme
a) was let
b) placed
c) washes
d) colder
e) geese
f) will vary
34) Tick off the letters of the phrases which can have two IC interpretations
a) old car salesmen
b) French cotton shirts
c) Eastern drug traffic
d) lether doctor’s bag
e) French wine spot
f) They can fish
35) Tick off the letters of the two sentences which are connected by conjunctions
a) There are several motives. First of all, we need to know the motives
b) A Mercedes was parked in the street. The car looked new.
c) The kids were back in time for dinner. They were very tired
d) Several people complained. And I did too.
e) We left Paris on Monday morning. By the same evening we were in Rome
36) Tick off the letters of inflectional morphemes
a) –ed as in booked , ordered
b) - ful as in spoonful, plateful
29
c)
d)
e)
f)
-ing as in interesting
-ly as in quickly, happily
-(e)s as in sees, goes
– ish as in longish, blackish
37) Tick off the letters of VP
a) last to come
b) came to see
c) hard to deal with
d) readiness to help
e) continue the work
38) Tick off the letters of sentences with adverbial clauses
a) I hope to visit you whenever I happen to be in London
b) He is quite comfortable where he is
c) What I want to do is to save us both
d) I wanted to ask why he was in such a hurry
e) Early as it was, we found her up and about
f) I was the only person who saw him go
39) Tick off the letters of the statives
a) fond (of)
b) amiable
c) ashamed
d) abroad
e) alive
f) active
40) Tick off the letters of terms used in TG
a) composite sentence
b) sentence pattern
c) surface structure
d) sentence transform
e) derived sentence
f) transformational rules
41) Tick off the letters characterizing the properties of a participle
a) of verb and noun
b) of verb and adjective
c) of verb and adverb
d) of verb, adjective and adverb
e) of verb, adjective and noun
42) Tick off the letters of the sentences the constituents of which are joined asyndetically
a) The rain fell softly, the house was quiet
b) Should he come, tell him to wait
c) I wish you had come earlier
d) What was done could not be undone
e) She fell silent, which was strange
43) Tick off the letters of coordinative phrases
a) The city of Rome
30
b) The treaty of Brussels
c) Bill, the valet
d) a teacher of John’s
e) ( it was) a jewel of a girl
f) bright but harsh
44) Tick off the letters of sentences built on predicative phrases
a) As the duty had been completed, the woman had three days’ leave
b) Being completed, the duty didn’t demand her attention
c) Her duty being completed, she could have three days’ leave
d) As she completed her duty, she could have three days’ leave
e) Her duty completed, her employers gave her three days’ leave
45) Tick off the letters of the adjectives incapable of forming inflectional degrees of comparison
a) immediate
b) pale
c) spontaneous
d) upper
e) adverbial
f) friendly
46) Tick off the letters of phrasal verbs
a) They called off the strike
b) She wouldn’t break off their relations
c) He doesn’t want to part with the car
d) Fill out the form quickly
e) Let’s hope for improvements
1.11. Примерный перечень вопросов к экзамену
I. Морфология
1. Полисемия и омонимия в английской морфологии.
2. Грамматические категории и факторы, влияющие на и ограничивающие их реализацию.
3. Инвариантное значение грамматической категории.
4. Грамматическая ценность словообразования.
5. Словоформы и словосочетания: сходства, различия, пограничные случаи.
6. Так называемые «лексические» и «грамматические» значения: сходства, различия, способы
выражения.
7. Классы слов и формоклассы.
8. Словоформы, формоклассы, грамматические категории.
9. Теория частей речи: принцип выделения частей речи.
10. Классы слов и их субкатегоризация в свете теории поля.
11. Индивидуальное лексическое значение слова и категориальное значение части речи: полное
совпадение и девиации.
12. Грамматическая релевантность субкатегоризации существительных и глаголов.
13. Экстралингвистическая мотивированность / немотивированность категории числа.
14. Морфолого-синтаксическая природа- 's.
15. Природа английского артикля.
16. Различные взгляды на систему времен в английском языке.
17. Вид и аспектуальная характеристика глагола.
18. Вид и время английского глагола.
19. Неличные формы глагола и их место в системе английского глагола.
20. Перфектные формы как формокласс грамматической категории.
21. Непассивный формокласс как немаркированная форма категории залога.
31
22. Модальность и наклонение.
23. Реализация модальных значений в английской морфологии.
II. Синтаксис
1. Основные синтаксические единицы.
2. Базовые понятия семантико-синтаксических теорий: предложение, высказывание, пропозиция,
речевой акт.
3. Основные свойства предложения: предикативность, структура, коммуникативность.
4. Аспекты семантики предложения: референционально-ролевой, коммуникативный,
коммуникативно-прагматический.
5. Принципы анализа предложения.
6. Традиционная модель членов предложения.
7. Дистрибутивные модели анализа предложения: модель Ч. Фриза и НС - модель.
8. 2 варианта Т-грамматики.
9. Падежная теория Ч. Филлмора.
10. Основные понятия коммуникативного синтаксиса: темо-ремное членение, акцентуация,
контраст, эмпатия, точка зрения.
11. Принципы классификации словосочетаний.
12. Принципы классификации предложений.
13. Семантика словосочетаний: соотношение значений компонентов и значения в целом.
14. Ядерные глагольные и именные словосочетания: принципы классификации.
15. Предикативные словосочетания и вторичная предикация.
16. Подтипы сочинительных словосочетаний.
17. Структурно-коммуникативные типы простого предложения.
18. Виды конституэнтного анализа предложения: члены предложения, непосредственные
составляющие, ядерные предложения.
19. Принципы классификации полипредикативных единиц.
20. Типы сложноподчинённых предложений.
21. Лексико-грамматические способы выражения ремо-тематического членения предложения.
22. Прямые и косвенные речевые акты.
23. Понятие о пресуппозиции: пресуппозиции императивов и вопросов.
1.12. Комплект экзаменационных вопросов (утвержденный зав. кафедрой до начала сессии)
Билет 1
1. Реализация модальных значений в английской морфологии
2. Основные синтаксические единицы
Билет 2
1. Модальность и наклонение
2. Базовые понятия семантико-синтаксических теорий: предложение, высказывание, пропозиция,
речевой акт.
Билет 3
1. Непассивный формокласс как немаркированная форма категории залог
2. Основные свойства предложения: предикативность, структура, коммуникативность.
Билет 4
1. Перфектные формы как формокласс грамматической категории
2 Аспекты семантики предложения: референционально-ролевой, коммуникативный,
коммуникативно-прагматический
Билет 5
1. Неличные формы глагола и их место в системе английского глагола
2. Принципы анализа предложения.
Билет 6
1. Вид и время английского глагола
32
2.Традиционная модель членов предложения.
Билет 7
1. Вид и аспектуальная характеристика глагола
2. Дистрибутивные модели анализа предложения: модель Ч. Фриза и НС - модель
Билет 8
1. Различные взгляды на систему времен в английском языке
2. 2 варианта Т-грамматики.
Билет 9
1. Природа английского артикля
2. Падежная теория Ч. Филлмора.
Билет 10.
1. Морфолого-синтаксическая природа- 's.
2. Основные понятия коммуникативного синтаксиса: темо-ремное членение, акцентуация,
контраст, эмпатия, точка зрения
Билет 11.
1. Экстралингвистическая мотивированность / немотивированность категории числа
2.Принципы классификации словосочетаний.
Билет 12.
1. Грамматическая релевантность субкатегоризации существительных и глаголов
2. Принципы классификации предложений
Билет 13
1. Индивидуальное лексическое значение слова и категориальное значение части речи: полное
совпадение и девиации
2 Семантика словосочетаний: соотношение значений компонентов и значения в целом..
Билет 14.
1. Классы слов и их субкатегоризация в свете теории поля
2 Ядерные глагольные и именные словосочетания: принципы классификации.
Билет 15
1. Теория частей речи: принцип выделения частей речи
2. Предикативные словосочетания и вторичная предикация.
Билет 16
1. Словоформы, формоклассы, грамматические категории
2. Подтипы сочинительных словосочетаний
Билет 17
1. Классы слов и формоклассы
2. Структурно-коммуникативные типы простого предложения.
Билет 18
1. Так называемые «лексические» и «грамматические» значения: сходства, различия, способы
выражения.
2. Виды конституэнтного анализа предложения: члены предложения, непосредственные
составляющие, ядерные предложения
Билет 19
1. Словоформы и словосочетания: сходства, различия, пограничные случаи
2. Принципы классификации полипредикативных единиц.
Билет 20
1. Грамматическая ценность словообразования
2. Типы сложноподчинённых предложений.
Билет 21
1. Инвариантное значение грамматической категории
2.Лексико-грамматические способы выражения ремо-тематического членения предложения
Билет 22
33
1. Грамматические категории и факторы, влияющие на и ограничивающие их реализацию
2. Прямые и косвенные речевые акты
Билет 23
1. Полисемия и омонимия в английской морфологии.
2. Понятие о пресуппозиции: пресуппозиции императивов и вопросов
1.13. Примерная тематика рефератов
Не предусмотрено
1.14. Примерная тематика курсовых работ
1. Вторично-предикативные структуры в ТГ.
2. Рефлексивы и категория транзитивности.
3. Типология коммуникативно-нерасчлененных предложений в современном английском
языке.
4. Имлицитные значения пассивного причастия.
5. Категория «объект» в традиционной грамматике и теории прототипов.
6. Морфо-синтаксическая и семантическая интерпретации среднезалоговых структур.
7. Квантификативные структуры в английском языке.
8. Типология условных предложений.
9. Категория собирательности в системе средств выражения множественности.
10. Типология относительных групп.
11. Категория залога и медиальные конструкции
12. Текстообразующие функции английского артикля
13. Семантика девербативов
14. Каузативные конструкции
15. Классификация пропозициональных глаголов
16. Категории коммуникативного синтаксиса
1.15 Примерная тематика квалификационных (дипломных) работ
1. Соотношение семной структуры глагола и структуры высказывания
2. Категоризация Nomina Acti
3. Типология рефлексивных конструкций
4. Функции и типы детранзитивизации
5. Семантика и прагматика медиальных залоговых структур
6. Интерпретация
структурно-коммуникативных
типов
предложения
прототипической теории
7. Вопрос как косвенный речевой акт
в
свете
1.16. Методика исследования (если есть)
1.Описательный метод
2.Трансформационный метод
3.Дистрибутивный метод
4. Метод компонентного анализа
5.Логико-семантический анализ
1.17. Балльно-рейтинговая система, используемая преподавателем для оценивания знаний
студентов по данной дисциплине
РАЗДЕЛ 2. Методические указания по изучению дисциплины (или ее разделов) и
контрольные задания для студентов заочной формы обучения
Не предусмотрены.
34
РАЗДЕЛ 3. Содержательный компонент теоретического материала
1.Basic grammatical notions
Outline
1.Types of meaning and means of their expression
2.The notions of a grammatical paradigm, form-class and grammatical category
3 . Factors of modified meaning in a grammatical category
1.Types of meaning and means of their expression
Meanings can be individual and categorial. The examples of individual meanings: book, green, word,
tree, insect. The examples of categorial meaning: plurality, progression, degree,cause,condition,
relation, dependence, manner. Individual and categorical meanings are expressed lexically. Categorial
meanings, especially the most important ones, are also expressed grammatically – by types of words (
parts of speech),by their subtypes within types ( uncountable nouns, transitive verbs, relative
adjectives),by their forms (forms of the past, plural, passive voice etc), by the structures of the phrase
and the sentence, by syntactic positions and functions etc.
2.The notions of a grammatical paradigm, form-class and grammatical category
Categorial meanings in morphology are expressed by means of word-forms. A system of wordforms of a word is its grammatical paradigm. Identical word-forms of different words of the same
class represent a form-class: e.g. boys, trees phones, children, cats, loves, manners ,looks, oxen
represent a form-class pf the plural of nouns. Contrastive form-classes - two, three or morebuild oppositions which are called grammatical( morphological) categories. E.g.
Grammatical category of Number in Nouns
the form-class of the Singular
The form-class of the Plural
member
members
piece
pieces
spade
spades
goose
geese
phenomenon
phenomena
door
doors
To form oppositions ( grammatical categories) the corresponding form-classes must nave
common and contrasting elements in their meaning: e.g. The form-class of the Plural and the formclass of the Singular both denote quantity, but the form-class of the Plural means “more than one”
(plurality) while the form-class of the Singular contrastively means “one”
(singularity).
Oppositions in grammar are mostly privative, which means that they are built on the pattern A –
not-A. The A member of the opposition is marked in meaning and form: its meaning is definite, and is
supported by a formal sign. E.g. the form-class of the Plural is marked in meaning, it is definite, it
always expresses plurality and formally it possesses the morpheme of the plural. The form-class of the
Singular is unmarked in meaning, its meaning is not clear-cut and definite. It may express other
meanings besides singularity: The tiger is a wild animal (certainly not one tiger) or in Russian: Гость
ноне пошел требовательный. Formally the meaning of singularity is not supported by explicite signs.
35
So, to establish a grammatical ( morphological) category it is necessary that two or more subtypes
of the same categorical meanings should be expressed by contrastive form-classes. Only one form-class
should be unmarked in meaning and form. Other form-classes ( or the other form-class) must be marked
in meaning and have formal signs to express the corresponding meaning(s).
One and the same word-form may belong to different form-classes of different grammatical
categories. E.g. played belongs to the form-class of Past within the category of Tense, to the form-class
of Active within the category of Voice, to the form-class of Common within category of Aspect, to the
form-class of the indicative within the category of Mood.
One and the same word-form cannot belong to different form-classes within one and the same
category.
3. Factors of modified meaning in a grammatical category
The meaning of a word-form may sometimes deviate from the standard meaning (invariant),
peculiar to its form-class due to the influence of the lexical meaning of the word, lexical or syntactic
context. E.g. the invariant of the form has dinner is the expression of the present time action. In the
context He has dinner with his father at 6 tomorrow under the influence of the specific lexical context
(the presence of the word tomorrow) the form denotes a future action. Or in the sequence “What is the
child doing?” “ The little devil is jumping over the fence” the form of the Continuous which as
invariant is supposed to express an uninterrupted progressive action starts to express a series of repeated
point actions due to the lexical character of the verb to jump.
Such modifications of the meaning of the grammatical word-form are called dependent (lexically
dependent or syntactically dependent), modified or secondary meanings
Questions to lecture 1
1. Can categorial meanings be expressed lexically?
2. What are the means of expressing meanings in grammar?
3. What are the means of expressing meaning in morphology?
4. What is a word-form?
5. What is a form-class?
6. Is the form-class the same as a part of speech?
7. What is a grammatical category?
8. What kind of oppositions is a grammatical category based on?
9. What is the difference between unmarked and marked form-classes?
10. What is the invariant?
11. Under what conditions can the meaning of a word-form be modified?
Task 1
Give the correct answer:
1. Individual meaning is expressed…
a. with lexical means only
b. with both lexical and grammatical means
c. with grammatical means only
2. Categorial meaning in morphology is expressed…
a. with syntactic functions
b. with phrase-structure
c. with grammatical paradigms
3. Form-classes are words with…
a. the same lexical and grammatical meaning
b. the same grammatical and different lexical meaning
c. different grammatical and the same lexical meaning
36
4. A grammatical paradigm of a word is the system…
a. of its lexico-semantic variants
b. of its grammatical forms
c. of its meanings
5. Form-classes of the same category should be opposed…
a. in meaning and usage
b. in meaning and form
c. in form
6. Form-classes have…
a. no common element in their meaning
b. only common elements in their meaning
c. contrastive and common elements in their meaning
7. The invariant of a word-form is…
a. dependent on the lexical context
b. dependent on the syntactic context
c. independent of both
8. A grammatical category must be based on the opposition including…
a. only one member
b. at least two members, one of them unmarked
c. At least two unmarked members
9. A word-form may belong to…
a. to different form-classes of the same category
b. to the same form-classes of different categories
c. to the different form-classes of different categories
2.Word-class theory
Outline
1. Criteria of classification of words into classes and their delimitations
2. Classifications of word-classes in foreign and home linguistics
3. Classifications based on a single principle
Words of any language can be divided into classes in accordance with their semantic,
morphological and syntactic features. These are the main three criteria of classification which are in this
or that way taken into consideration by any grammarian dealing with word-classes.
The criteria have limitations.
The semantic principle – the part-of the speech meaning - is misleading because only basic words
of a word-class (part of speech) possess it to a full extent. The part-of the speech meaning – the
categorical meaning – of “thingness” of nouns is displayed only by prototypical nouns denoting physical
objects. The majority of derived nouns still preserve their original categorical meaning. Such nouns as
darkness, kindness, thickness, derived from adjectives, still preserve the categorical meaning of
adjectives –that of “property”. Other nouns – a jump, a swim, a smoke –display the categorical meaning
peculiar to verbs – that of “process”. Non-original, derived verbs, on the other hand, instead of the partof –the speech meaning of “process” may display such meanings as “property” (to pale, to redden, to
thicken, to widen etc) or “state” or “relation” (to belong, to know, to contain, to resemble, to consist etc)
37
The morphological criterion can successfully function only in inflectional languages. In isolating
languages – where words do not have forms –it is useless. In inflectional languages it is helpful only
with those parts of speech which possess forms. In English it would be impossible to differentiate
particles from articles or prepositions in accordance with the morphological principle because they do
not have forms (grammatical paradigm).
The criterion of syntactic function is valid only with finite verbs. There is strict one-to-one
correspondence between finite verb and their function – grammatical predicate – in the sentence. But
other parts of speech are not so reliable syntactically. A noun may perform functions of a grammatical
subject (the apple is red), grammatical object (I ate an apple), attribute (She made an apple pie),
predicative (It was an apple) and an adverbial modifier (She came Sundays). On the other hand, an
adverbial modifier can be expressed by different parts of speech.
Depending on which of these three criteria predominates, grammarians refer to word-classes as
“semantic classes”, or “morphological classes”, or “syntactic classes”. Classifications of word-classes,
built on variously ranged main and secondary (derivational properties and typical collocations) principles
display great variosity. The exact number of word-classes for the majority of even well-known and
thoroughly investigated languages is not established. For example, besides obligatory nouns, adjectives,
verbs, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions and interjections in French O.I. Bogomolova also mentions
determiners, articles, pronouns and numerals. M. Grevisse adds to the obligatory list articles and
pronouns; determiners and numerals are treated as a single class, interjections are not recognized. V.G.
Gak considers articles and determiners to be one and the same class, and, besides numerals and
pronouns, also mentions particles and phrase-words.
There is not a single unanimously recognized classification of word-classes of either of any
particular language or language in general.
Within the Russian language F.F. Fortynatov, guided mostly by a formal criterion, speaks of three
major classes: complete words, meaning verbs, nouns, adjectives, infinitives and adverbs, partial words
and interjections. A.A. Schakhmatov singles out 4 large classes: notional words (nouns, adjectives, verbs
and some adverbs), non-notional (numerals, substantive pronouns, pronominal adjectives and
pronominal adverbs), functional words (preposition, connective, conjunction, prefix, particle) and
interjections. L.V. Scherba and V.V. Vinogradov also single out interjections as a special class. The
former scholar claims that interjections should stand outside the system of word-classes for they function
as sentences.
H.Sweet divides the English word-classes into declinables (those having a grammatical
paradigm) and undeclinables, thus relying on the formal principle. Subgroups within the two classes are
traditional: verbs, nouns etc. He also suggests a system based on syntactic properties of words. Nounwords include nouns, noun-pronouns (he, you, nobody, something), noun-numerals, the infinitive and the
gerund. Verb-words include finite verbs and again the infinitive, gerund and participle. The fact of nonfinite verbs included simultaneously into verb - and noun-words is treated by some grammarians as an
inconsistency, but they are actually words of mixed character: they have properties of both nouns and
verbs.
Inconsistencies of formal and syntactic properties of words led O. Jesperson, H.Gleason, like
H.Sweet to build “double” classifications: based on form and based on syntax (“position”).
According to Gleason only adjectives having a grammatical paradigm could be part of the
corresponding “formal” word-group. Words like beautiful, utmost, middle, top could not be “formal”
adjectives. But they together with adjectives having a grammatical paradigm could be part of
“adjectivals” - a word-group, built on positional principle.
An attempt to classify words into groups in accordance with a single principle belongs to
Ch.Fries. He is firmly convinced that words should be classified as elements of a sentence. He chooses
three sentences -the concert was good, the clerk remembered the tax, he went there - based on the most
typical simple sentence structures of English as frames, and singles out 4 important positions in these
frames. Position 1 is the position of the word concert in the first frame, clerk and tax in the second frame
and he in the third frame. All words which could occupy this position are called Class 1 words.
Alongside with traditional nouns, substantival pronouns like somebody, everything, the others, one,
38
someone, personal pronouns, substantivized adjectives the rich, the wounded also go into Class 1 words,
for they can occupy position 1. Position 2 is the position of the word was in the 1st frame, remembered in
the 2nd frame and went in the 3rd frame. It is obvious that modal verbs which are traditionally listed as
verbs do not go into Class 2 words. Class 3 words alongside with adjectives also include words capable
of filling in position 3 - the position of the word good in the 1st frame. Class 4 words are words capable
of filling position 4 -the position of the word there in the 3rd frame. It is clear that not all traditional
adverbs would suit Class 4.
Besides these 4 main word classes he established approximately 150 -160 words which could not
occupy four main positions. By expanding the main frames ( introducing optional elements into them) he
distributes these 150-160 words, again in accordance with a positional principle, into 15 groups. He calls
them “function classes” (and some of them are really functional parts of speech in classical tradition) and
designates them with letters. Later they got names (given in brackets)
Group A (Determines )
The concert was good
A
1
2
3
A: the, a\an, every,no, my, our,their, each, all, both, some, any, few, more, most, much, twenty, John’s
Some can appear in Class 1 words, all, both may occur before the, and occur with Class 1 words
Group B
The student may have had to be moving
B
May
might
Must
would
have
had to
Be
Get
keep
The group goes with class 2 words and is a marker of class 2.There are 4 distinct subgroups
Group C ( degree)
The concert may not be good
Not
Group D
The concert may not be very good
Quite, awfully, really, awful, real, any, pretty, too, fairly, more, rather, most
This group takes position before a Class 3 word. If a Class 3 word has the form of the comparative
degree, additional words are: still, even, some, much, no.
Some of them can be used in relation to each other: very much too small
Group E
The concert and the lectures are good
And,or, not,nor,but,rather than
The words stand between words of the same part-of-speech class of one of the 4 classes
Group F
Mostly prepositions
Group G
Auxiliary do,did,does
Group H
There in There is|there are
Group I
Signals of question sentence, wh-words (why, where etc)
Group J
The orchestra was good after the new director came
When,so,whenever,nevertheless,because,therefore,although,and,since,but,before
Include sentence units into larger structures
39
Group K (introducers or response utterances )
Well,oh,now,why used at the beginning of sentences that continue the conversation
Group L
Yes,no
Group M (attention-getting signals)
Look,say,listen
Group N:Please
Group O: let’s
The absence of a universally recognized list of word-classes for particular languages or for the
Language as such does not signify faulty thinking or wrongly chosen criteria. The fact is that the socalled parts of speech form a sort of continuum: there are no hard and fast boundaries between words of
different groups. Two, three or more parts of speech may overlap, thus producing in marginal regions
units which may have properties of two or more parts of speech without demonstrating the complete
range of properties of at least one class. The so called verbal nouns like organization, drive, meeting,
comings and goings still preserve some properties of verbs. The statives -alone, afraid, aloof, alike. afire
etc - are somewhat different from what is understood by a traditional adjectives, so some grammarians
suggest to give them the status of a part of speech, while others are not prepared to be that radical and
still treat them as a subclass of adjectives. Why several is considered to be an adjective, while some is a
pronoun? Why not establish a new part of speech which will include the words mentioned above and a
lot more, expressing quantity? Adverbs like so, extremely are so different from adverbs like seldom and
usually, and they both are different from still another subgroup of adverbs -quickly and sadly - that three
independent parts of speech can be established, totally unlike each other in meaning, forms,
combinability. These are the facts of the language and they do not correlate easily with logical principles.
Questions to lecture 2
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
What are the major and minor principles of classification of words into groups?
What is the main drawback of a semantic criterion?
What is the limitation of a morphological criterion?
What conditions make the use of a syntactic criterion valid?
Why do the Russian scholars single out interjections as a separate group alongside with notional
and function words?
What criteria are taken into account by Anglo-Saxon linguists?
What principle is used by Ch. Fries?
What is the difference between traditional classification of functional parts of speech and Ch.
Fries’s “function words”?
Why is it impossible to give a clear-cut logical classification of parts of speech which will satisfy
at least the majority of grammarians, if not all of them?
Task 2
1. Another name for a word-class is…
a. a part of speech
b. a form-class
c. a derivational class
2. A syntactical class is …
a. a group of parts of speech which may perform the similar syntactic function in a sentence
b. a group of syntactic functions of sentence elements
c. a word-class which is mainly viewed from a syntactic point.
3. Morphological principle does not work in…
40
a. synthetic languages
b. agglutinating languages
c. isolating languages
4. A.A. Schakhmatov singles out the following word-groups larger than parts of speech:
a. notional, functional, substitutes and particles
b. notional, non-notional, functional and interjections
c. notional, functional and interjections
5. The scholar who suggested dividing words into declinables and undeclinables, and also, nounwords, verb-words etc is…
a. A.A. Schakhmatov
b. Ch. Fries
c. H. Sweet
6. According to H.Gleason, “adjectives” contained…
a. fewer adjectives than “ adjectivals”
b. more adjectives than “adjectivals”
c. as many adjectives as “adjectivals
7. Ch. Fries suggested a classification based on…
a. meaning of words
b. position in a sentence
c. syntactic function
8. Class 1 words in accordance with Ch. Fries’s principles were words that could occupy in the
sentence the clerk remembered the tax the position of the word…
a. the
b. clerk
c. remembered
9. It is impossible to give an unmistakably exact classification of words of language because…
a. an exact criterion has not been yet found
b. grammarians are silly
c. a language is not a logical phenomenon
3. The English noun and its categories
Outline
1. General characteristics of the English noun
2. The category of Number
3. The category of Case
4. The problem of the category of Gender
5. The problem of the category of definiteness/indefiniteness
1.
General characteristics of the English noun
As has been mentioned in the previous lecture, the class of nouns is the most important
nominating class, and as such a noun can denote not only things, but also properties, actions, states and
relations. The meaning of “thingness” which is generally accepted as a part-of-the speech meaning of
the noun refers only, in the strict sense of the word, to the so-called prototypical nouns ( semantic
nucleus of the class). Prototypical nouns denote objects, both animate and inanimate. They are basic,
non-derived words. Periphery of the noun class - words denoting processes, actions, states, properties,
41
relations etc. They are certainly not characterized by “thingness”, if only in the most abstract way. They
are mostly derived from other parts of speech (gracefulness, a drive, jealousy etc).
From the syntactical viewpoint the noun is the most polyfunctional part of speech.
Among its primary functions are those where noun is correlated with a substance in the situation
described by the sentence. So its primary functions are:
1.
The grammatical subject of the sentence
2.
The object - direct and indirect
3.
The agentive object ( He was invited by his friend)
4.
The instrumental object (He was stubbed with a knife)
5.
The predicate which expresses either identification (He is the man who stole the pig Это тот самый человек, который…) or classification (
6.
The apposition ( My friend, Mark Brownie, a psychiatrist, has left for Ruston)
7.
The adverbial modifier of place with a meaning of substance (I saw him in the street)
8.
The adverbial modifier of time, if expressed by temporal nouns ( night, evening, winter,
dawn etc)
In its secondary functions the noun loses its meaning of substance and is correlated with properties,
processes and properties of properties. Secondary functions of the English noun are the following:
1.
The predicate expressing qualification, characterization (She is a child, He is a monster)
2.
The attribute (A feeling of sadness engulfed him)
3.
The adverbial modifier of manner ( He reacted in anger)
4.
The adverbial modifiers of cause, condition, concession, purpose, time
The obvious conclusion is that the noun can perform any functions with the exception that of the
predicate. But if we admit the possibility of the simple nominal predicate in the English syntax (and such
sentence types as My ideas obsolete! (meaning - ну уж нет, мои идеи совсем не устаревшие!) and Splendid
game, cricket are recognized by B.Ilyish as sentences with simple nominal predicates, without a linking verb).
then we can say that the noun can perform all functions in the sentence.
According to the criterion of form the English noun has the following categories:
1. The category of number, which is universally recognized
2. The category of case, the existence of which is doubtful
The category of Gender as a morphological category is recognized only by M.Bloch, and the
decision whether there is a category of Determination (based on the oppositions language - the language - a
language) depends on the decision whether the English article is a word or a morpheme. If the article is a
morpheme then the combinations language - the language - a language will be word-forms and it is possible to
establish another morphological category of the noun and call it the category of Determination ( or by some
other name).
Actually, as the forms of the Number and Case are homonymous, in speech only two forms are
distinguished [ deı -deız], while in writing four forms can be distinguished:boy, boys, boy’s, boys’. Only
irregular nouns give a correct picture: child, children, child’s, children’s.
The subcategorisation of nouns (dividing them into smaller groups) is carried out in accordance
with different properties of nouns, such as their semantic, categorical, morphological, collocational, syntactic
features.
The most familiar subcategorisation groups are represented by the following groups:
1.
common/proper names
2.
concrete/abstract
3.
countable/uncountable
4.
discrete/indiscrete (three houses - three hours)
5.
animate/inanimate
6.
personal/zoonames
Some subcategorisation groups can be singled out within the framework of a certain grammatical
category. Thus, the subcategorisation into coutables, uncoutables, collective nouns, Singularia and Pluralia
Tantum words is important for the category of Number, and such groups as animate nouns (including names of
42
higher animals), names of geographical places, names of time, distance, measure are important for the category
of Case.
2. The category of Number
The universal categorical meaning of quantity may be expresses in different ways:
1.
Lexically, through the meaning of words (many, to double, to increase, a dozen,
incessantly etc) and word-combinations (now and again, again and again, day in, day out, used to etc)
2.
Through the lexico-grammatical (categorical) meaning of subcategorisation groups
(countable/uncountable, collective nouns, group terms like a flock of parrots, a brood of chickens, a herd of
buffaloes, a tribe of monkeys, a school of whales etc)
3.
By derivational patterns (polyphonic, multicoloured, co-star, reproduce etc)
4.
By syntactic structures (There were clubs and clubs, He swore, swore and swore! He would
sit for hours on his porch)
5.
Grammatically, with the help of the category of Number The morphological category of
Number is a grammatical realization of a larger semantic category of quantity
The category of Number in different languages may be based on different oppositions, and the
number of form-classes may be different. Classical Greek and Arabic had singular, dual and plural form-classes.
Fijian distinguishes between singular, dual, little plural and big plural (whether the size of objects are ment, or
their relative quantity - is not clear). The category of Number in Modern English is based on the opposition of
two form-classes, the Plural form-class and the Non-plural form-class:
Non-plural
Plural
Cat
Cats
Tree
Trees
Brush
Brushes
Ox
Oxen
Child
Children
mouse
mice
Sheep
Sheep
Crisis
Crises
phenomenon
phenomena
The forms like cat-cats, tree-trees, brush-brushes are regular and realized by a non-plural form
with a zero-morpheme and three phonetically conditioned allomorphs of the morpheme of the plural [-s, -z, -ız].
These forms characterize a majority of English nouns and constitute an open class: that is, all new nouns and the
majority of borrowings are apt to accept the regular forms within the category of Number.
There are only a few hundred nouns with irregular forms of the non-plural and plural (or only
plural) forms:
1.
Seven nouns form their plural with the help of a replacive morpheme
(mutation or umlaut): man-men, foot-feet, tooth-teeth, goose-geese, woman-women, mouse-mice, louse-lice
2.
Four nouns have an additive material morpheme -en, and in ywo cases it is
accompanied by a replacive morpheme as well: ox-oxen, aurochs-aurochsen, child-children, brother (in an
ecclesiastic sense) -brethren
3.
Some nouns form their plural and non-plural with the help of zero morphemes
[ǿ]:one deer- three deer, a trout -many trout, a Portuguese - a crowd of Portuguese, an aircraft - a dozen
aircraft, an offspring - a dozen offspring. Several animal names have two plurals.There is a regular plural, and
there is a “zero” plural form: I have two rabbits (the animals are treated as individuals), They were shooting
rabbit ( a category of game ). Such nouns as means, species also belong here: the only means is -what means are
at your disposal?( -s is not an ending in such nouns, but part of the root)
4.
Borrowings. Some have adopted the regular plural ending. Some have kept their
original foreign plural. And some permit both. There are no rules:
43
Source/e
nding
Latin/-us
English plural
Foreign plural
Both plurals
+-es
-i
Cactus-cactuses/cacti,
apparatus-apparatuses,
bacillus-bacilli, locus-focus -focuses/foci, nucleus campus-campuses, circus-circuses
loci, stimulus-stimuli
nucleuses/nuclei
,virus-viruses
Latin/-a
+-s
-ae
antennaarea-areas, dramalarva -larvae
antennas/antennae, formuladramas, dilemma-dilemmas
formulas/formnlae,
nebulanebulas/nebulae
Latin/+-s
-a
Maximum,
Album, museum,
premium
bacterium-bacteria, referendum, forum, spectrum,
erratum-errata, desideratum-desiderata
podium, curriculum, symposium,
medium, ultimatum
um
Latin/ex,-ix
Greek/-is
Greek/on
French/eau
French/s,-x
Italian/-o
+-es
suffix, prefix,infix
-ices
Index codex-codices, spadex- indexes/indices,appendixspadices
appendixes/appendices
+-es
-es
metropolis, glottis
analysis-analyses,basisbases, crisis-crises, diagnosis, ellipsis,
hypothesis, thesis, oasis
+-es
-a
Automaton, ganglion
electron, proton,
criterion-criteria,
neutron, horizon
phenomenon-phenomena
+-s
-x
Audeau,bureau,chatea
Cointreau
gateau-gateaux
u, tableau
-s,-x
chassis[ƒası]chassis[ƒasız.], chamois,corps
+-s
-i
Tempo, libretto,
solo, soprano, piccolo
graffito-graffiti, Mafiosovirtuoso
mafiosi
Regular forms are the most prototypical.
As to the meaning of the form-classes of the category of Number, the most prototypical meanings
belong to countable discrete nouns and express the opposition between one and more than one. But even within
the most prototypical nouns the meaning of one may be neutralized: a table is a piece of furniture - here the
noun table does not have the meaning of one, but denotes a class of objects, an extension, and therefore - a
certain plurality. The non-plural form seems to be the unmarked member of the opposition.
With other types of nouns the prototypical opposition tends to modifications:
1. Indiscrete nouns like hour, mile, acre, though countable, demonstrate a somewhat different
opposition of meaning in their plural and singular forms. Three tables mean three separate
objects, while three hours denote a single non-segmented period of time measured by a
certain conventional unit of time. So an hour means a certain single duration of time while
three hours mean a single duration of time only larger than an hour. Certainly there is no
opposition between one and more than one, at least in the same sense as with words like
table. Grammatical facts support this reasoning: it is impossible to say three tables is while
hour presupposes two variants: three hours are, three hours is. In the first case the
44
agreement between the noun and the verb is determined by the plurality of the
measurement units, in the second case - by the indiscrete singularity of the thing denoted
by the noun. Examples of indiscrete nouns in the plural modified by pronouns in the
singular also prove that such nouns are understood as a unity, a singularity: that six weeks
of calm madness, this twenty-seven miles of worst roads of Africa.
2. The plural form of the so-called Pluralia Tantum (Plural only) nouns is certainly motivated,
for such words as a) scissors, binoculars, jeans, shorts, trousers, glasses, tongs, pincers,
pliers, scales, shears, tweezers, spectacles, braces, pajamas, pants, suspenders etc denote
objects consisting of two parts ( “more than one” meaning) and such words as b) outskirts,
dregs, amends, annals, archives, arms, ashes, clothes, customs, earnings, goods, guts,
looks, remains, suds, wages denote more or less indefinite plurality. These nouns are not
used with an indefinite article and the verb in the singular.
NB: (* denotes an incorrect version) *one spectacles -one pair of spectacles, *ten braces,
these flannels, a garden shears, a curling tongs
3. Still another group of Pluralia Tantum nouns possesses the meaning of plurality, but the
form ( always the singular form) is not motivated by the meaning: vermin, livestock, cattle,
police, poultry. The verb is always in the plural:The police were seeking for the clues
4. Collective nouns or nouns of Multitude denoting mostly groups consisting of human
beings: army, audience, board (of examiners), choir, clan, class, club, committee,
company, crowd, family, flock, gang, group, herd, jury, orchestra, parliament, team, tribe
etc. These are nouns which mostly can be used in two ways: a) like regular nouns: a family
- three families from Dorset, b) the singular form can be used with verbs both in the
singular and in the plural: The Board is in the know - the Board are approving the scheme.
The difference reflects the difference of attitudes (pragmatic difference). The singular
stresses the non-personal collectivity of the group (totality): The Brigade is on the parade.
The plural refers to separate individuals within the group (distributivity): The Brigade are
above the average height.
Uncountable nouns should stand outside the category of Number, as they denote things having no
numerical characteristics and therefore incapable of demonstrating such semantic features as the opposition
between one and more than one, or even such non-prototypical numerical characteristics which are peculiar to
less prototypical types of countable nouns (indiscrete, Pluralia Tantum, collective nouns). But they are supposed
to take some form of the category of Number -either the plural or the singular, having the right to neither.
Neither the plural form not the singular form with uncountable nouns are motivated. The category of Number
seems to be a universal category from the point of view of form (each English noun has to have either the form
of singular, or the form of the plural, or both), but from the point of view of meaning it acts only within
countable nouns (it is semantically motivated only with countables).
Formally uncountable nouns can be classified into two types:
a. Those used only in the singular (substances or nouns of material: gold, furniture, sand, wine,
butter, water, snow etc., abstract nouns: music, home work, fun, proper nouns)
b. Those used only in the plural form, taking singular verbs and singular pronouns. They are: a)
news b)diseases: measles, mumps, rickets, shingle c) games: billiards, dominoes, skittles, darts d)
subject names: classics, linguistics, mathematics, economics, ethics e)countries and city names:
The United States, the Bahamas, the Netherlands, Flanders, Wales, Algiers, Athens, Brussels,
Naples
Some groups of uncountable nouns (those used in the singular) develop plural forms.It is obvious that
the correspondence between forms is far from the prototypical one and more than one. The categorial meaning
of the word (uncountability) does not go very well with the distinction one and more than one. Here the plural
forms are modified, and acquire meanings which have very remote reference to the original meaning of the
category of Number (one and more than one.) or to the original categorical meaning of the lexical unit
(uncountability). Modifications differ in type from one subcategorisation group to another:
1. With nouns denoting substances, materials modifications can be of two types:
45
.a.
The plural forms denote vast territories covered with large amounts of the substance in
question: The snows of Kilimanjaro, The waters of the Pacific ocean, the sands of the
Sahara.
.b. The nouns denoting food and drinks develop an additional meaning of a portion, sort,
brand or kind: Two beers, please, the wines of France
2. With nouns denoting feeling and emotion the plural forms mostly refer to situations or events, which
cause the feelings in question: The horrors of the war, his loves in Spain were rather unfortunate.
Modifications may go so far as to lose any connection with the category of Number. In this case the
plural form is not perceived as the grammatical form any more, and the -s -ending becomes a derivational affix
producing new words: air - воздух, airs - напыщенный вид, arm - рука, arms- вооружение, colour- цвет,
colours -знамена. This phenomenon is called lexicalization (of a grammatical morpheme).
3. The category of Case
The existence of the category of case depends on the linguistic status of the‘s-formant. In the English
language it functions in the following ways:
1. as a part of the word, like a morpheme: Mike’s, children’s
2. as a part of a phrase or sentence, like function words (articles, conjunctions, prepositiuons): Pete and
Mike’s room, The Professor of Oxford’s poetry, the man I saw yesterday’s son, somebody else’s
mistake
3. as a derivational morpheme producing new words: the baker-булочник, the baker’ -булочная St.
Paul- святой Павел, St. Paul’s - собор святого Павла, my mother - моя мать, my mother’s дом моей матери
It is obvious that it is impossible for one and the same language unit to be all three things at once. a
word, a grammatical morpheme and a derivational morpheme. Even a theoretically secure notion of homonymy
is of no help. We cannot say that we deal with three different linguistic units, absolutely independent of each
other, not related in any way, pure homonyms. We cannot say so, because the meanings of three units are
interrelated and semantically identical. There is no difference in relations between Pete and room (Pete’s room)
and between Pete and Mike and room (Pete and Mike’s room).
It is clear that that all three uses should belong to one and the same element, and it is most logical to
qualify it as a word, a function word. As a function word, it has the right to modify words
(Pete’s room) and syntactical units (the blonde I was dancing with’s name was…, The king of England’s
daughter).
In this case there is no category of Case in modern English, because the combination of two words - one
notional (Pete) and one functional (-‘s) do not bring about a grammatical form of one word - the case form of a
noun. Pete’s - is a word combination, a phrase, not a word-form.
Besides, the following additional arguments seem to support this point of view:
1. Unlike plural and singular forms, forms with the -‘s -element are not universal. Only a limited
group of nouns can be used with the -‘s -element:
a. personal names ( Mike’s car),
b. personal nouns ( the boys’ new toy),
c. collective nouns ( the government’s policy),
d. names of higher animals (the lion’s mane, the horse’s mouth),
e. geographical and institutional names (Europe’s future, the school’s history),
f. temporal nouns (a moment’s thought, a few days’ trip, a two years’ absence),
g. nouns of distance and measure (a shilling’s worth, a mile’s journey),
h. locative nouns (the city’s plan, the island’s industry)
2. The forms with the -‘s -element are syntactically limited: they mostly occur in front of the
noun they modify. Their absolute use is rare and is limited to cases of ellipses: an opera of
Verdi’s ( an opera of Verdi’s operas = one of Verdi’s operas), St.Paul’s = St.Paul’s
cathedral etc
46
3. The absolute majority of plural forms and some of the singular forms built oppositions
mostly in written speech. In oral speech the opposition between common and genitive forms
is neutralised and can be identified only by context
Still, there are traditionally-minded grammarians who are strongly inclined in favour of the existence of
category of Case in English nouns. First of all, the -‘s-element is the remnant of the ancient case system of
English - the old English genitive case morpheme. Second, the -‘s -element expresses the same categorical
meaning which is expressed by case-forms in those languages where the category of Case is unquestionable.
These two arguments are not very convincing. First, the -‘s-formant having been in the past an element of the
case system does not necessarily mean that it is still a case morpheme at present. Second, one and the same
categorical meaning may be expressed differently both in one and the language and in different languages. The
fact that the -‘s -element expresses the same meaning as the genitive case morpheme in Russian or German,
does not make the -‘s -element in English a genitive case morpheme. Simply this meaning is expressed in
Russian and in German grammatically, through a word-form, and in English it is expressed syntactically through the combination of a word, a phrase or a sentence with a function word - the -‘s -element.
Among those grammarians who accept the existence of the category of Case in English there is no unity.
There are those, who think that the number of form-classes within the English category of case is more than two
-three, four, five and even an indefinite number. The German scholar M. Deutschbein proposed the view of the
category of case consisting of nominative form-class ( a boy), genitive ( a boy’s and also of the boy ) dative (to
the boy, also by word order: He gave the boy), and the accusative ( word order). I.I. Meshchaninov logically
concluded, that once prepositions and word order are recognized as means of expressing case, the number of
form-classes may grow on indefinitely ( with the boy - instrumental form-class, in the boy - locative one and so
on).
This cannot be accepted, because case is a morphological category and is manifested by a formal sigh in
a noun - a grammatical morpheme (additive or zero), not a word-combination (with+the boy), the less so by a
purely syntactic means like word-order.
More sensible and traditionally-minded grammarians proceeding from the view of a morphological
character of the category of case accept only two form-classes within the category of Case based on the
following opposition:
Common form-class
Genitive form-class
Child
Child’s
Children
Children’s
Pete
Pete’s
boys
boys’
Sophocles
Sophocles’
The meaning of Case seems to be the following: it expresses relations between the thing denoted by a
noun and other things, properties and actions. The meaning of the Common Case form is very vague, wide and
indefinite, as is natural for non-marked form-classes. The genitive form-class as a marked member has more or
less clear-cut meanings:
1. Specifying genitive
a. possession ( Ann’s toys =Ann has toys, toys belong to Ann)
b. subjective genitive, where the noun in the genitive case denotes the doer of the action, and the
noun in the common case -the action itself ( Pete’s answer =Pete answers my question)
c. objective genitive, where the noun in the genitive case denotes the object of the action, and the
noun in the common case - the action itself (The robber’s arrest =the robber is arrested, X
arrested the robber)
d. genitive of origine, where the noun in the genitive case denotes the source or the cause of the
action( which is not mentioned) and the noun in the common case - the thing which comes into
being as a result of the unmentioned action (The general’s letter = the general performed the
action of writing, and as a result, a letter appeared)
e. genitive of measure, or equational genitive (a mile’s distance =a distance is a mile,)
2. Classifying or descriptive
47
The noun in the genitive case does not denote a thing, but a property: a doll’s face= a face like that of
a doll, a face which has a doll-like quality; sheep’s eyes =eyes like those of a sheep (silly,
thoughtless, stupid), a soldier’s uniform = like those worn by soldiers ( but not belonging to a certain
soldier)
This seems to be more a rather satisfactory interpretation of the category of Case for those who are
inclined to support the idea of existence of Case in Modern English and to disregard very disturbing facts which
tend to show that the -‘s -formant is a syntactical element, not a morpheme.
3. The problem of the category of Gender
Gender in those languages where it exists is a classifying grammatical category. It is grammatical
property which belongs to a word, a lexeme, a constant feature which does not vary from one form of one and
the same word to its another form. That is, if a certain word is of feminine gender, all its forms belong to the
same gender; it is the constant feature of the word as a lexical unit. So classifying grammatical categories do not
have form-classes (consisting of opposed forms of the same words), but rather groups, into which the lexemes
are divided, and these groups of lexemes are opposed to each other on the bases of the relevant property. Thus,
Russian nouns are divided into neuter, feminine and masculine nouns on purely formal grounds. The Russian
word стол belongs to masculine gender, because it has a certain ending and a certain system of case forms.
There is no semantic motivation. This formal system, classifying grammatical category of Gender is interwoven
with the semantic category of biological sex, which also finds its reflection in the language. Thus, the Russian
word мужчина formally is no different from женщина, it has the same case forms and belongs to the same
group of declension, but as it denotes males, it is correlated with the Russian pronoun он and is not perceived as
a “слово женского рода”. Besides, the semantic category of biological sex finds its reflection in derivation
(князь-княжна хулиган-хулиганка), and in the corresponding semes in the sememic structure of the
denotational meaning of certain words (петух-курица, cамец -самка, почтальон - почтальонша)
The English language does not have a grammatical category of Gender either classifying or wordforming. English nouns are not divided into neuter, feminine and masculine nouns. But sex distinction is a very
important notion in English as well as in other languages. Sex distinctions can be expressed in English by means
other than grammatical classifying grouping:
1. By textual correspondences with personal pronouns, especially if the word is of the so called
common gender ( The secretary entered. He was a young blue-eyed man of about twenty four)
2. derivationally (host-hostess, tiger-tigress, duke-duchess, ballerina, zarina)
3. by the male or female semes in the denotation of the word ( boy-girl, lord-lady, father-mother, bridebridegroom, bull-cow)
4. by the combination of the words of the common gender or genderically neutral words with words of
the 3rd group words ( boy -friend, girl-cousin, woman-pilot, male cat, bull-deer )
5. by combination with pronouns ( she-goat, he-cobra)
6. by combination with male or female names ( Tom-cat, Jack-ass, jenny-ass)
7. by strong or weak implication ( pussy cat; pussy is associated with smallness, prettiness and delicacy,
and therefore a pussy cat is more probably a she-cat than a he-cat. An effeminate hair-dresser, on the
other hand, is a male person, for effeminate has a collocational seme which in many dictionaries is
given in brackets: ( of males)
4.
The problem of the category of definiteness/indefiniteness
This category is proposed by those who consider combinations language- the language- a
language to be the forms of the noun and the opposition between them -the opposition of word-forms
within three form-classes of the category which they call the category of Definiteness/Indefiniteness, or
Determination. This interpretation is possible, if the and a are morphemes, which is doubtful. Morphemes
are parts of the corresponding words and cannot be separated from them( * He play well ed hockey), but
articles can (a ripe red apple). The meaning of the articles, which is said to be very general and vague just
48
like the meaning of many morphemes, cannot serve as an argument of articles being morphemes, for the
meaning of many notional and function words is also vague and abstract. The argument that the forms
like the language- a language may be analytical forms (and in this case the category is based on the
opposition of one synthetic form - language (with a ǿ-morpheme) and two analytical forms the languagea language ) is not valid either, because in English as well as in other Indo-European languages only
notional words perform the function of the auxiliary elements within analytical forms (do, will, be, have,
more, most, which act as auxiliary elements in analytical forms in English are primarily notional words verbs and adjectives). It is obvious that an article in English is neither a morpheme nor a notional word,
for it does not express a notion independently of the noun which it modifies ans does not perform an
independent syntactic function in the sentence. In fact, it behaves like a function word, which it
unquestionably is, and so the language- a language - a word-combination, a combination of a function
and a notional words, just like in the language, but the language. The obvious conclusion is that there is
no category of determination in English, and the corresponding meanings of definiteness/indefiniteness
are adequately espressed syntactically, with the help of word-combinations.
Questions to lecture 3
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
What makes nouns a very specific nominating class of words?
What are the characteristics of a prototypical noun?
How can the part-of -the speech meaning of nouns be characterised?
How is the noun different from other word-classes syntactically?
What are the non-prototypical groups of countable nouns within the category of Number?
Why do uncountable nouns belong to the category of number only formally?
What are the semantic modifications ( meanings departing from prototypical one -more than one)
within the category of Number?
8. What are the arguments in favour of the category of Case?
9. What are the arguments against the category of Case?
10. Why is the notion of Case with 2 form-classes preferable to the one of case with 4 form-classes?
11. What is the difference between the grammatical category of gender and the semantic category of
sex?
12. In which way does the status of the English article determine the presence/absence of the category of
Determination in modern English?
Task 3
1. The category of Number can be characterised semantically as…
a. partially motivated
b. motivated
c. non-motivated
2. The forms like man-men, foot-feet, tooth-teeth, goose-geese do not demonstrate…
a. the meaning of one-more than one
b. regular forms of the singular and plural
c. the distinction between forms of the plural and singular
3. The forms like cat-cats, tree-trees, brush-brushes differ from each other…
a. by methods of building word-forms
b. by grammatical morphemes of number
c. by allomorphs of one morpheme
4. M. Deutschbein expressed the opinion that the category of Case in English is based on …
49
a. the two form-classes
b. the four form-classes
c. an indefinite number of form-classes
5. The instance of the -’s-element being used as a derivational suffix is…
a. William and Mary’s reign
b. He works for Addison’s
c. It took an hour’s walk
6. The phrase the child’s piece of mind of the old man demonstrates the form-class meaning
of…
a. the genitive of measure
b. the classifying genitive
c. the genitive of origine
7. Non-grammatical means of expressing Gender are…
a. grammatical morphemes
b. word-forming morphemes
c. word-building morphemes
8. The grammatical category of Gender in Russian is based on the opposition of …
a. neuter, feminine and masculine
b. common, feminine and masculine
c. neuter, feminine and common
9. It is not possible to establish the grammatical category of Definiteness/Indefiniteness if
the and a(an)are…
a. grammatical morphemes
b. auxiliary words
c. functional words
4. The Eпglish Adjective
Outline
1. General characteristics of adjectives
2. The problem of analytical forms in the category of Degrees of Comparison
3. The problem of Statives
1. General characteristics of adjectives
The part-of -the speech meaning of adjectives is that of property devoid of temporal characteristics. If
property is understood as a hyperonym, then hyponymical meanings of the adjective are those of quality
(dirty, high), assessment (good, useful), relation (far, neighbourly), attitude (necessary, desirable) and state
(dry, angry, expectant, hopeful, sad).
Syntactically adjectives can perform the following functions:
1.
The attribute
a.
A preposed attribute ( in front of the modified word): There came a blind man
b.
A postposed attribute ( after the modified word): I’ve known him since times immemorial
2.
The predicative within the compound nominal predicate:The job was perfect, She died young
3.
The objective predicative: They painted the door green, They buried her young
50
Subcategorisation of adjectives may be based on semantic, derivational, grammatical and
syntactical features.
Traditional semantic subcategorisation is into qualitative and relative adjectives. Qualitative
adjectives denote properties as such, properties which describe an object by size, colour, shape, impression,
etc. The relation between noun and a qualitative adjective is the relation between a thing and its property.
Relative adjectives denote relations between at least two things - the one expressed by a modified noun and
the one expressed by a relative adjective: plastic case denotes a relation (the name of the relation: made of)
between two things: plastic and case. Agricultural machines = machines used in agriculture (again there are
two things - machines and agriculture, and relation between them - used in).
Soviet linguists, Ganshina and Vasilevskaya suggest tripartite division: into qualitative, relative and
quantitative adjectives like several, dozen etc.
Semantic subcategorisation has also morphological consequences: relative adjectives do not have
forms of the Degrees of Comparison. Nevertheless, this is not absolute. Relative adjectives in their
secondary uses, when they acquire qualitative and lose relative meaning, can be used within the category of
Degrees of Comparison: his face became woodener than ever, where wooden is not a relative adjective any
more, because it figuratively means indifferent, expressionless. Besides, among qualitative adjectives as
such there are groups, which do not have forms of degrees of comparison for semantic reasons. These are:
1. adjectives which denote non-gradable properties: blind, dead, deaf
2. adjectives denoting properties of the highest degree: absolute, perfect, superb, complete, entire
3. adjectives denoting a point on a certain scale: initial, middle, final ,central
Syntactically (from the point of view of function in the sentence) adjectives can be divided into 4
subcategorisation groups:
1. The so-called central adjectives, which can be used in both the main functions: that of an attribute
and predicative
2. Adjectives which can be used only as attributes: joint, live, lone, daily, weekly, woollen. These
are subdivided into 4 subclasses:
a.
emphasizers: a certain winner( winner who is sure to win), an outright lie, pure
fabrication( =sheer fabrication), a real hero
b.
amplifiers, denoting scale upward from the norm: a complete fool, a perfect idiot, a close
friend, entire salary, utter folly, the very end, mere ignorance
c.
adjectives related to adverbials: my former friend=formely, an occasional visitor
=occasionally(( visits), the late president, an excellent pianist
d.
adjectives derived from nouns: criminal law, an atomic scientist, a medical school
3. Adjectives which can be used only as predicatives : glad, averse(to),bound(for),abroad, ill and
all statives ( afraid, alone, ablaze, afar, asleep, awake, abroad)
4. Adjectives which can be used as predicates and attributes, but with a changed meaning specific to
each function: a late husband (= покойный)/ I was late (=опоздал), she is the right girl (=та
самая, нужная, подходящая)/ the girl was right (=права), a certain person (=некий)/ she is
certain that… (= уверена)
Still another classification is into inherent adjectives and non-inherent. The former characterise
the referent directly, the latter characterse some properties or relations into which the referent is
involved: my red-haired friend, where the adjective characterises the person? denoted by the word
friend, that is, the referent, and my old friend where old characterises not the person, but the relation of
friendship.
2.
The problem of analytical forms in the category of Degrees of Comparison
51
The only category of the English adjective is the category of Degrees of Comparison,
which is traditionally based on the opposition of the three form-classes:
Positive
Comparative
Superlative
large
larger
the largest
good
better
the best
beautiful
more beautiful
the most beautiful
The forms of the Degrees of Comparison are built with the help of additive morphemes er, -est. This is a regular means of forming Degrees of Comparison; very few adjectives build their forms
suppletively. These are the adjectives good, bad, little, many, much, old (in the meaning старший по
возрасту в семье), far. There is also a group of adjectives that build their forms either regularly, or with
the help of more and most: often, modern etc. Still another way of building the forms of the Degrees of
Comparison is with the help of more and most. beautiful, interesting ,exciting, wonderful, extraordinary
etc.
These formations -more beautiful, the most interesting - present a complex problem. They
could be analytical formations, that is, analytical forms of the Degrees of Comparison, formed with the
help of auxiliary words more and most, and the notional word -the adjective. Or they could be free
word-combinations, the total meaning of which is composed of the meanings of two adjectives more+beautiful (most + interesting).
The arguments in favour of the formations more beautiful, the most interesting being
analytical forms of the Degrees of Comparison are the following:
1. Such adjectives as beautiful, interesting are qualitative and as such are bound to
have forms of the Degrees of Comparison, either regular or otherwise. It so
happens, for phonetic reasons, that it is not convenient for them to have regular
forms. *Beautifuller,* interestingest sound clumsy. So they choose non-regular
forms.
2. The categorical meaning of more beautiful is equal to larger, and the most
interesting = the largest, so grammatically more=-er, most =-est
3. The relation between large-larger-the largest is the same as between beautifulmore beautiful -the most beautiful.
The contrary arguments are the following:
1. Not all qualitative adjectives can have Degrees of Comparison. There is a number
of qualitative adjectives that have no Degrees of Comparison: contemporary,
simultaneous, parallel, fundamental etc
2. The categorical meaning of more beautiful may be equal to larger, and the most
interesting = the largest, but that does not mean that if larger is a grammatical
form of the word, the formation more beautiful is also a grammatical -analytical form of the word. The categorical meanings are the same, but one and the same
meaning can be expressed differently - either grammatically, or lexically, or
syntactically or otherwise. Here the comparative meaning is expressed in two
different ways: by the grammatical morpheme, thus forming a word-form (largerthe largest) and syntactically, by joining together two words. one of which has
lexical meaning = -er : more +beautiful
3. The relations may be similar, but nothing prevents them from being expressed by
different means
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There are also some additional arguments in favour of the formations more beautiful, the most
interesting being free word-combinations:
1. more and most in more beautiful, the most interesting have the same meaning as
in word-combinations like more time, most people, which means that the
adjectives more and most ( which are in fact the forms of the Degrees of
comparison of the adjective much) in formations like more beautiful, the most
interesting have preserved their original lexical meaning and cannot be treated as
auxiliary words ( auxiliary words are supposed to lose their lexical meaning and
be used as grammatical elements only). So they are free word-combinations
2. Besides more beautiful, the most interesting there are also phrases like the less
beautiful, the least interesting and if more beautiful, the most interesting are to be
analytical forms nothing prevents from considering less beautiful, the least
interesting as analytical forms as well, which results in two sets of analytical
forms of Degrees of comparison. That is rather unusual, and it is more sensible to
consider them both to be free word-combinations.
The obvious solution is the following: the adjectives of the beautiful type are capable of
expressing different degrees of a corresponding quality, but they are not capable of having grammatical
Degrees of Comparison (with -er, -est ). But the English language successfully overcomes the difficulty,
employing its other means of expressing comparison of one object(s) with another in respect of a certain
property - syntactically, by composing phrases of the kind: more difficult, the most difficult, less difficult,
the least difficult, rather difficult, very difficult, extremely difficult etc. Not every one of them expresses
the idea of comparison, but some of them do.
3. The problem of Statives
The problem connected with words like aloof, astir, asleep, awake, alone etc is as
follows: whether they are a subcategorisation group of adjectives ( a type of adjectives) or a separate part
of speech, in between adjectives and verbs, and combining certain features of the two parts of speech.
Let us regard meaning, form and function - the main criteria for establishing a part of
speech - of this group of words an see if they are in any way different from meaning, form and function
of the adjective.
These words have a categorical meaning of state. This meaning, according to L,
Barkhudarov, is only a special variety of the meaning of property peculiar to adjectives... B.Ilyish, on the
other hand, is sure that the notion of “state” can very well be a foundation of a separate part of speech.
So the question is open.
Formally the words are characterised by the prefix -a ( not all of them). This cannot serve
a reason for singling them out as a part of speech. We do not establish a special part of speech on the
ground that the words in question have a special prefix or suffix.
Syntactically these words which are usually called statives, perform the same functions as
the adjectives. Mostly they are predicatives. Sometimes they are used as objective predicatives,
especially with the verbs find and have: he found the man alone, he had his enemies astir. Very rarely
they are used as postposed attributes, usually with dependent words: a child fast asleep, a man alive to
the beautiful and the unattainable. Sand even more rarely they are used as preposed attributes -this
concerns mostly the stative aloof, and the stative asleep, though asleep is used prepositively only with a
dependent word: an aloof manner, a fast asleep child. The fact that the statives are rarely used in the
primary function of an adjective - that of an attribute, especially prepositive attribute - cannot be
regarded a ground for establishing them as a special part of speech, because:
a. there are adjectives which are also limited in performing all fanctions peculiar to
adjectives ( see syntactic subcategorisation of adjectives in 1. General characteristics
of adjectives in this lecture).
b. statives do not perform any functions that are alien to adjectives.
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As for the combinability of statives, it is practically the same as that of pure adjectives:
a. they are combined with words more and the most: more ashamed than ever, his most
aloof attitude
b. like adjectives they can be combines with intensifying adverbs and prepositional phrases:
painfully adrift , completely asleep, intensively awake, alive with lightning.
So the obvious conclusion is that the statives are adjectives, non-prototypical adjectives.
sharing some properties with verbs, but nevertheless are adjectives.
Questions to lecture 4
1. What is the part-of the speech meaning of the adjective?
2. What is the difference between part-of -the speech meanings of adjectives proper and the so called
statives?
3. What are the primary syntactic functions of adjectives?
4. What are the major semantic subcategorisation groups of adjectives?
5. What is the difference between inherent and non-inherent adjectives?
6. What is the meaning of the category of Degrees of Comparison?
7. What are the generally accepted means of expressing the category of Degrees of Comparison?
8. What are the arguments in favour of the existence of the analytical forms of Degrees of comparison?
9. What are the arguments in favour of the formations more beautiful, the most beautiful being free
word-combinations?
10. What are the specific features of statives?
Task 4
1. The meaning which is not characteristic of the adjective is that of …
a. property
b. substance
c. relation
2. The meaning which is characteristic of the adjective is that of …
a. action
b. process
c. state
3. The syntactic functions of the adjective are…
a. that of the predicate
b. that of the predicative
c. that of the object
4. The adjective adjacent is…
a. a qualifying adjective
b. a relative adjective
c. a quantitative adjective
5. The category of the Degrees of Comparison expresses…
a. a greater degree of property
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b. a comparison of objects
c. a comparison of the degree of properties
6.
Such adjectives as senior and junior...
a. have no forms of comparison
b. have analytical forms of comparison
c. form degrees of comparison in a regular way
7. The argument in favour of more beautiful, the most difficult being analytical forms is…
a. that more and most do not lose their lexical meaning in these combinations
b. that more and most are notional words in these combinations
c. that more and most are functionally equal to -er and -est
8. The so called statives have the categorical meaning of…
a. attitude
b. state
c. relation
9. The ability of a stative to be combined with an intensifying adverb is its….
a. verbal quality
b. adjectival quality
c. neither verbal nor adjectival quality interesting
5. The English verb and its categories
Outline
1. General characteristics of the verb as part of speech
2. Category of Tense
3. Category of Aspect
4. Category of Voice
5. Category of Correlation(Retrospect)
6. Modality and Category of Mood
1. General characteristics of the verb as part of speech
It is rather convenient to speak of finite and non-finite verbs at the very beginning as they are
somewhat different as to meaning, form and function.
The part-of the speech meaning of the finite verb is that of a dynamic property, that is, property
which has temporal characteristics. Dynamic property presupposes processes, actions, states, relations,
attitudes and even qualities (to redden, to pale). Non-finite verbs - infinitive, gerund, participle 1 and
participle 2 - are not prototypical in this respect. Semantically, from the point of view of categorical
meaning they occupy an intermediate position between verbs and nominals (infinitive, gerund) or verbs,
adjectivals and adverbs (participle 1 and participle 2). The lexical meanings of the correlated finite and
non-finite verbs are identical
Syntactically finite verbs perform only one function in the sentence - the major function of the
predicate. Non-finite forms perform all possible functions but the predicate.
Morphologically the finite verbs have the forms of the following categories:
1.
The categories of Person and Number ( represented asymmetrically and sporadically)
2.
The category of Tense
3.
The category of Mood
4.
The category of Aspect
5.
The category of Voice
6.
The category of Correlation ( Retrospect)
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Non-finite verbs have only forms of Aspect, Voice and Correlation.
Subcategorisation of verbs can be based on structural, morphological, semantic, functional,
syntagmatic, collocational principles resulting in a great number of groups and subgroups some of which
are grammatically relevant.
Thus, structurally verbs can be simple, derived and compound. Another structural classification is
one-word verbs and phrasal verbs. Very often they are correlated lexically: to raise children =to bring
up children, to understand=to catch on, to pass=to walk past. The postposed element of a phrasal verb is
called an adverb, prepositional adverb, adverbial postpositive, postpositive prefix and even and adverbial
particle.
The problem with phrasal verbs is that they can be easily confused with one-word verbs which
can have prepositional objects: They turned on the light, they called on their friend. Turn on is a phrasal
verb, the light - its direct object. Call is a one-word verb, on their friend -prepositional object. The points
of difference are as follows:
1. The postpositive element in phrasal verbs is stressed, the preposition is not
2. The postpositive element in phrasal verbs can be used in front of or after the noun-object: they
turned on the light, they turned the light on; the preposition in prepositional objects is always used in
front of its object: They called on their friend, they called on him, * they called their friend on.
Functionally verbs can be divided into verbs of complete predication -those which can be used as
predicates - and verbs of incomplete predication -those which can be used only as parts of predicates.
These two groups can also be semantically characterised as notional, expressing notions of actions and
processes, and functional, expressing grammatical features and categorical dependent meanings, but not
actions and processes. Functional verbs can be:
1. Auxiliary verbs, which help to build forms of the verbs
2. Link-verbs or copulars which help to build compound nominal predicates
3. Modal verbs which help to build compound verbal predicates. Modals express an attitude to the
action expressed by the infinitive
An aspectual characteristic is the manner in which the action is shown to proceed. The action
may be shown as repetitive, habitual, single, continuous, completed, incompleted, resultative, durative,
momentous, point etc. These characteristic can be expressed derivationally (помнить, вспомнить), by
shift of stress (насыпа́ть -насы́пать), grammatically, through the forms of the category of Aspect, and
lexically, with the help of categorical seme in the lexical meaning of the word.
So in accordance with the aspectual characteristics expressed lexically verbs in English
can be limited (terminative), unlimited (durative) and of double nature. A relation of the action to a
limit is taken as a point of difference.
Limited verbs (arrive, catch, discover, bring, recognize, refuse) imply an achievement of a certain
limit beyond which the action cannot naturally continue. That is, the actions expressed by these verbs
aim at achieving a certain result, a change in the state of things, and after achieving the change, aim,
result the actions die a natural death. After you break something it is impossible to continue the action,
as this something is already broken.
Unlimited verbs denote actions and processes which do not have any limit in their realization.
The actions can go on indefinitely and their discontinuation is due to some external, extralinguistic
factor.These are verbs like to sleep, to belong, to enjoy, to carry etc.
The majority of verbs is of double character, that is, they can be limited and unlimited depending
on the context (to laugh – смеяться, засмеяться, to look –глядеть, поглядеть, to know – знать,
узнать)
Syntagmatically the verbs can be divided into transitive and intransitive ones.
Transitivity/intransitivity in English is a syntactical feature of a verb, the ability/inability of the verb to
combine with a direct object. Certainly this syntactic feature reflects a certain semantic feature of actions
and processes. Actions can be object-oriented, that is, directed at a thing, involving into the process a
thing ( in the general sense): to cover smth, to defeat smth, smb, to build smth etc. Actions can be
objectless, like to walk, to live, to disappear.
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Transitive verbs are those which are combined with a direct object (in some theories – with
indirect and prepositional objects as well) and mostly denote object-oriented actions.
Intransitive verbs are those which do not need any grammatical objects and mostly denote
objectless actions
Care should be taken not to confuse transitive verbs and object -oriented verbs, on the one hand,
and intransitive verbs and oblectless actions. True, they mostly coincide, but not always. In the sentence
he smiled a smile the verb is used as a transitive verb (with a direct object), though it is an objectless
verb. The action itself does not presuppose any thing to which it is directed. In the sentence he drinks
heavily the verb remains an object-oriented action, but it is detransitivized, that is, used without a
grammatical object.
In the English language the majority of verbs are polysemantic and can be transitive in one
meaning and intransitive in another meaning:He hurt his back( tr.), it won’t hurt to postpone the matter
(intr.); this horse kicks(intr.), kick the ball( tr.)
2. Category of Tense
The grammatical category of Tense is supposed to be associated with time, but there are many noncorrespondances between tense and time. Perception and interpretation of time is dependent on the culture
and epoch, national or racial make up, historical or philosophical dimensions. Very often tense distinctions
such as past, present and future are understood as a universal category, which is wrong. Languages can
categorize a temporal continuum differently. There could be a distinction between future and non-future,
past and non-past, between present and non-present. More sophisticated categorizations may distinguish
between far past and near past, or between near present and the nearest present. O.Espersen worked out a
7-member tense system which is fully or partially realized, as he says, in all languages. Primary notions in
his system are past, present and future. These are absolute tenses. They are further complicated by
notions before and after, which, added to primary notions, give four additional tenses: after the past,
before the past, after the future, before the future.
Things become more complicated as pure tense distinctions within the category of tense are very
rare. Tense distinctions are very closely interrelated with aspect or condition. In Classical Arabic tense is so
closely tied with aspect that tenses are qualified as complete or incomplete.
The prevailing view as to the English category of Tense is that it is based on the opposition of two
form-classes –The Past and Non-Past and expresses the relation between time of the action and time of the
utterance (as absolute tenses should). Non-Past form-class is an unmarked member, for it is expressed by a
zero morpheme and its meaning is wide, vague and indefinite. It can denote:
1. present actions in free contexts
2. future actions in specific syntactic and lexical contexts: we dine tomorrow with Mr. Silver, if he comes,
I‘ll let you know, see to it that he leaves tomorrow etc.
3. past actions( dramatic past): We had tea peacefully and he seemed quiet and happy. And all of sudden
he raises his head and says…
As is usual with non-marked forms, their spectre of meaning are wider and less definite, and can
include ( under specific conditions) even meanings expressed by marked forms.
The existence of The Future form-class is doubtful. The formations I,we shall/you,he, they will
cannot be 100% analytical forms, because in the majority of contexts they still preserve their modal lexical
meaning of willingness ( I’ll come if you ask me), habit (she’ll sit for hours), probability (that’ll be John),
general truth (oil will float on water).
B. Ilyish, proceeding from rather numerous cases where shall and will seem to be free of their
modal meanings and express, as he states, pure futurity (I am sorry, I will have to go –the context shows
that it is not willingness that is expressed here) suggests the following decision. He supposes that there are
two sets of shall and will:
1. Modal verbs shall and will, expressing obligation, threat, promoce, willingness, habit,
probability, general truth
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2. Auxiliary verbs shall and will,used to build analytical forms of the future form-class within
the category of English Tense.
So these two sets must be simply homonyms. But homonyms are supposed to have nothing in
common in their meanings. Is that really so with these two sets of verbs shall and will? Actually they have
something in common: the meaning of futurity. All modal verbs, shall and will including, have futurity as
one of the elements (semes) of their modal meaning. Consequently these two sets are not homonyms, and
there are no auxiliary shall and will. The meaning of futurity is one of the meanings of modal shall and
will, and becomes prominent in some contexts. There are no analytical forms of the future, there are no
primary grammatical means of expressing the future.
But the categorical meaning of futurity is a very important category semantically and it would be
wrong to suppose that the English have no notion of futurity and therefore do not express it linguistically.
This meaning is very effectively expressed by various ( other than grammatical) language means:
1. by secondary, contextually or lexically determined meanings of grammatical forms
designed primarily for expressing other meanings, not futurity: the present tense and
common aspect form ( Make sure that he comes, the train arrives in two days, I’ll help if he
asks etc),the present tense and continuous aspect form (I am coming soon), the present tense
and perfect correlation form (I’ll see him when I have had my talk with New York)
2. by various lexico-syntactic structures like I’m going to allow this, he is about to leave, she
is ( un), likely( certain, sure),to get mad, he is on the point (on the verge) of becoming the
boss etc.
3. by the majority of modal verbs in appropriate contexts
3. Category of Aspect
The category of the manner of the action is one of the important characteristics of the action.
The manner of the action may be expressed by the lexical meaning of the verb. In English aspectual
characteristics of the verb are given in the subcategorisation of the verbs into limited (terminative) and
unlimited (durative).Slightly different aspectual characteristics are expressed grammatically by the two form
classes, which formally are contrasted by the use or non-use of the pattern to be +participle 1:
Writes - is writing
Wrote -was writing
Will write - will be writing
Has written - has been wrriting
These two form classes represent the category of aspect in Modern English
The basic difference in meaning is between an action going on continuously during a given
period of time (Continuous forms) and an action not thus described, unmarked in this respect (Common
forms). This difference is the difference in the way the action is shown to proceed. This is the grammatical
meaning of the category of aspect.
A lot of effort was made to give a definite interpretation to the continuous forms. O.Jesperson
and Irtenyeva treated the form as a means of exspressing an action serving as a frame to another action, or as
an action simultaneous with another action. While this is really so especially in the past tense and in complex
sentences, this is not so with the Present Continuous. There is no simultaneity in What is he doing? He is
reading. Simultaneity with the act of speech, to which Irtenyeva refers, is not he characteristic of the aspect,
but of present time.
Prof.Ivanova treats the forms in a peculiar way.She admits the existence of a continuous form, but
she thinks writes is not an aspect form at all, because its meaning is vague and cannot be properly defined.
The critisism is simple enough. Categories cannot consist of one form-class only. If a form-class singled out
it is inevitably contrasted with forms which are not the given form-class.
Not every verb can be freely used in the form of the continuous aspect, but when it is used,
then the action is described with an emphases. Descriptive character, expressiveness are due to the fact that
the actions are represented as unfolding right before the eyes of the speaker, as if he sees the actions and
58
processes which are impossible to see: Both were visibly hearing every word of the conversation. Can I see
you? But you are seeing me right now.
This expressiveness can account for the use of Continuous forms with ALWAYS and constantly
when the action is meant to be unlimimted by time. The emphatic force is due to the meaning of always
reinforced by the emphatic coloring of the Continuous form. The action is represented as never ceasing which
in the nature of things is not possible, and all this gives a sentence a stronger emotional colouring. This
meaning can be described as a modification of the meaning of the Continuous form in systemic contexts: due
to specific contexts the invariant is modified and a variant of meaning appears. In this particular case the
meaning of always demolishes the meaning of an action proceeding at a given moment –thus limited – but
reinforces the descriptive character of the Cont.form, and resulting meaning is that of strong emotional
colouring.
4. Category of Voice
The category of Voice in English is based on the morphological opposition of forms characterised by the
analytical pattern to be+Past Participle and forms not characterised like that. The former is traditionally called
the Passive form-class, the latter – the Active form-class:
The Active form-class
The Passive form-class
Kills
is killed
Is killing
is being killed
Have killed
have been killed
Will kill
will be killed
The Category of Voice is not only a morphological category. Besides the morphological opposition, it also
involves the changes in the syntactic structure of the sentence: He bought the picture -The picture is bought( by
him). The grammatical object of the active sentence becomes the grammatical subject of the passive sentence,
and the subject of the active sentence may disappear.
The meaning of the category may be defined as follows: the verb-form of the predicate shows which
element of the semantic structure –the semantic subject or the semantic object – occupies the position of a
grammatical subject of the sentence. That is, the category shows relations between two planes: the surface
structure –the syntactic structure – and the semantic plane. In some ways Voice is a paradoxical category. Verbal
categories should characterise properties of processes, but Voice characterises properties of the participants of
the processes. The verb-form shows whether the grammatical subject of the sentence, roughly speaking, codifies
the doer of the action or the object of the action. In ergative languages things ate more logical. The verb does not
change its form, but the word in the position of the grammatical subject shows by its grammatical form whether
it is an object or the doer.
In Indo-European languages Voice distinctions involve only transitive verbs. Intransitive verbs do not
show Voice distinctions; он пошел -* он был пошел (пошли), его пошли? Она убежала – *ее убегли, она
была убежана? (* -shows that non-existent variant is meant)
In English Voice is rather loosely connected with transitivity/intransitivity. Intransitives can be used as
transitives, and in their transitive uses can have passive forms:
Dance me over to the balcony - I was danced over to the balcony
Why don’t you walk me home? – Why am I not walked home?
They shone the flashlight on my face – The flashlight was shone in my face
The tent sleeps four people – ?Ten people are slept in the tent ( ? –shows that a rather dubious variant is
meant).
The variants like The house hasn’t been lived in and The bed hasn’t been slept in, where intransitive verbs
are used in the Passive, are very well familiar to language-learners.
Transitive verbs, by the way, can be used as intransitive as well: The window gives on the street
In many languages Voice is based on more than two oppositive form-classes. Greek, for one,
distinguished, besides active and passive forms, also a middle form-class (doing something for oneself or to
oneself). Semitic languages give the following neat pattern:
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Active
qätäle
he killed
passive
täqätle
he was killed
causative
`aqtäle
he caused to kill
reciprocal
täqatäle
he killed and was killed
reciprocalcausative
`aqqatäle
he caused them to kill each other
adjutative
`aqqatäle
he helped to kill
The idea of enlarging the number of form-classes within the English category of Voice is also very
appealing. The fact is, that the so-called Active Voice form-class, as the unmarked form, demonstrates various
modifications of meaning:
1. Prototypical active meaning, where the grammatical subject expresses the doer of the action:
He bought the picture
2. Non-prototypical middle meaning, where the grammatical subject expresses the thing
connected with the action. The action is represented as taking place within the thing codified by
the grammatical subject: the water boiled, the paper burned. The grammatical subject codifies
neither the doer nor the object, but something intermediate
3. Non-prototypical reflexive meaning, where the grammatical subject codifiers the doer of the
action that simultaneously is the object of the same action: He dressed (himself), He hurt
himself .The grammatical subject codifies both the doer and the object.
4. Non-prototypical reciprocal meaning, where the grammatical subject (denoting, as a rule at
least two entities) codifies agent1 and agent 2. The verb describes a reciprocal action; in which
agent1 performs an action directed at agent 2 that naturally in this relation is object1.
Simultaneously agent2 performs the same action, directed at agent1 that in this relation
becomes object2: They (Pete and Mike) greeted each other. Actually there are two identical
actions: greeting1, the agent of which is Pete and the object is Mike and greeting2, the agent of
which is Mike and the object is Peter. The grammatical subject codifies both the doer and the
object, not in the same but in two criss-crossing relations.
5. Non-prototypical causative meaning where the grammatical subject expresses the source or the
cause of the action, and the semantic subject (the doer) is represented as a grammatical object:
He marched his soldiers across the Alps.
.
Certainly there is a temptation to postulate a category of Voice in Modern English, consisting of the
following form-classes:
Active
He burned the paper
Passive
The paper was burned
Middle
The paper burned
Reflexive
He killed himself
Reciprocal
They killed each other
Causative
He jumped his dog
Each of these “form-classes” has a certain clear-cut meaning. But, to establish a form-class, in addition to
meaning there must be a special form as well. Middle and Causative “form-classes” do not have any original form.
Their forms coincide with the Active form. There is specific meaning not supported by specific form. Besides,
they are lexically limited. Middle meaning is restricted to the following groups of verbs:
1. those describing the action of the object, not the agent. These are the verbs like clink, ring, bang,
boil, burn, dry, crack, break etc. Certainly in Bill rang the bell it is not Bill who produces the
action described by rang, but the bell.
2. those which are neutral as to the object or to the agent, like begin, continue, stop: They began the
concert, the concert began.
3. A few verbs describing the actions of the agent, always used in middle constructions with
adverbials well, easily: This cloth washes easily, the book sells well, the dress wears well.
The special limiting feature of the causative “form-class” is the inherently intransitive character of the
verb.
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With reciprocal and reflexive cases things are different. They do seem to have a specific form.
The
reflexive form is said to be represented by an analytical form consisting of a verb+self-pronoun and the reciprocal
– by an analytical form consisting of a verb+ one another ( each other).
An analytical form is supposed to have a definite grammatical meaning, its parts cannot function as
separate lexical units and perform separate functions in a sentence, and an auxiliary element cannot be omitted
excepting cases of ellipses like he has seen and done everything ( has refers to both seen and done).
Combinations V+self-pronoun do not always demonstrate the reflexive meaning. In cases like
1. He killed himself
2. He dressed himself
3. She enjoyed herself
4. She found herself in an unknown street
5. She bought herself a new dress
only 1 and 2 have a reflexive meaning – denote an action produced by the agent and directed at himself. Other
cases should be excluded from the Reflexive “”form-class” as lacking the necessary grammatical meaning.
Case 2 should be also excluded, despite the meaning, for formal reasons, because with the verb to dress,
and some other verbs ( wash, shave) the self-pronoun is optional, and auxiliary element are not optional. So
obviously dressed himself is not an analytical form, because the self-pronoun does not behave like an auxiliary.
Case 2 seems to answer the two requirements - it has the necessary grammatical meaning and the selfpronoun is not optional ( he killed himself ≠ he killed ǿ, they differ in their grammatical meaning, the latter
denotes an action directed at an outside object and, without it, is grammatically incomplete). But it does not answer
the requirement that the parts of an analytical form are not supposed to be separate lexical units and be different
members of the sentence, for there are cases like
1. He killed himself and his wife (he killed his wife and himself), where his wife is a grammatical object.
It is combined with the self-pronoun with the help of a conjunction forming a parallel construction
and parallel constructions are known to join similar parts of the sentence. So self-pronoun is also a
grammatical object.
2. I am defending myself – an accused communist, where an accused communist is an apposition to the
self-pronoun, which shows that a self-pronoun is a separate member of the sentence, for auxiliaries
cannot have appositions attached to them, for they lack lexical meaning.
So, for different reasons neither of the combinations V+self-pronoun can be analytical forms of the verb,
expressing voice distinctions. They are free word-groups, syntactical combinations, some of which have reflexive
meaning, others expressing some other meanings.
The same line of reasoning can be used in reference to the so-called reciprocal “form-class”.
The obvious conclusion is that the Voice in English is based on the opposition of a marked form – Passive
and an unmarked form –Non-Passive, which, under the influence of changes in the syntactic pattern and specific
lexical meaning of the verb can modify its prototypical “active” meaning so as to express middle, reflexive,
causative and reciprocal meanings
5. Category of Correlation (Retrospect)
The position of the perfect forms in the verbal system has been treated in many different ways and the
main views are the following:
1. The perfect forms are forms of the category of Tense. This is the view of O. Jespersen, who
thinks that that the category of Tense in English is based on two basic forms, absolute
tenses – The Past and Present forms – and a relative tense form – The Perfect tense form.
2. The perfect forms are the forms of the category of Aspect. This is the view of G.N.
Vorontsova and others. They think that the category of Aspect in modern English is based
on the opposition of three form-classes: The Common, the Continuous and the Perfect. The
Common is unmarked, the Continuous describes the action in its progress, the Perfect has
the meaning of “retrospectiveness” or “result” or “successiveness”.
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These views are not groundless. The perfect forms very often express precedence (to a certain
moment or action which is determined in speech), and this meaning (“before”) is very much like temporal
meaning. On the other hand, the perfect forms can also express result, completion, and these meanings are
very much like aspectual meanings (manner of the realization of the action).
But there have been mistakes in these theories which can be summed up in the following way:
1. In regarding perfect forms as forms of Tense or Aspect the scholars did not pay attention
to the relation of perfect forms to the forms of Aspect and Tense established before. That is,
we must remember, that one and the same word-form may belong to different form-classes
of different grammatical categories, but it cannot belong to different form-classes of one
and the same category. The word-form is build belongs to the form-class of the Present (
category of Tense), form-class of the Passive ( category of Voice), form-class of the
Common ( category of Aspect), but it cannot belong simultaneously to the form-classes of
the Past and Present ( category of Tense), form-classes of Active and Passive ( within one
and the same category of Voice).
But has come belongs simultaneously to the form-class of Present and the formclass of Perfect, and had come – to the form-classes of Past and Perfect, so Present and
Perfect, Past and Perfect cannot belong to one and the same category, they must be formclasses of different categories.
There are also forms like has been doing, which are simultaneously Continuous
and Perfect, which again means that Perfect and Continuous must belong to different formclasses of different categories.
2. In establishing the meaning of the perfect forms the invariant has not been properly
distinguished from its modifications. The invariant is the most prototypical (and very often
the most frequent) meaning of the grammatical form. Modifications or variants are those
meanings which deviate from the prototypical meaning due to the influence of a specific
categorical semantics of a lexical unit (verb, in this case) and syntactic context. The
meaning of completion or result is not the meaning of the perfect forms. This meaning is a
modification appearing only if the meaning of perfect is combined with the categorical
meaning of terminative verbs: Terminative verb+ perfect form = result. If the verb is not
terminative, the meaning of result is absent: he has lived here; he has been waiting in the
room for hours etc.
So the meaning of result, completion are not the meanings of the
perfect
forms as such, they appear only in certain contexts.
Moreover, even precedence is rather doubtful as the invariant, for it can
disappear under the influence of a syntactic context: He waited quietly till he had finished,
but before he had answered, she made a grimace. In these contexts the actions in the
perfect form do not express precedence to the actions expressed by non-perfect forms.
The third view belong to A.I. Smirnitsky and accordingly the perfect forms do not belong either to the
category of Tense or to the category of Aspect. This is a category different from both and based on the
opposition of the Perfect form-class and the Non-Perfect form-class:
The Non-Perfect
The Perfect
Write
Is written
Is writing
Will write
has (have) written
has been written
has been writing
will have written etc
Its meaning is not so much of precedence, but of correlation. The information may be described by the
perfect as taking place in the preceeding period (though not always), but the most important thing is that it is
connected, correlated with the situation that follows (usually given in non-perfect forms) and important for
understanding it. The situation in the perfect can be interpreted as reason, cause, source of the following
action, and the following action – as a natural outcome, consequence or result of the action in the perfect.
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What is important is the correlation of two facts, and meaningfulness of the correlation for the interpretation
of the second fact (in the non-perfect form). The meaningfulness is disclosed only in larger contexts, the
perfect form itself only signifies that the correlation is present.
Smirnitsky calls the category Time Relation, Ilyish proposes a more neutral term Correlation, Bloch
suggests Retrospectiveness. No harm will be made if the category is noncommittally called the category of
Perfect.
6. Modality and Category of Mood
Modality is a linguistic category expressing whether the contents of the sentence coincide with or deviate
from reality from the point of view of the speaker. It is one of the indispensable characteristics of the utterance (
sentence).
Traditionally modality is subdivided into subjective and objective modalities.
Objective modality describes the relations between the contents of the utterance and reality as real or
unreal: he came1 – I wish he came2. In he came1 the form of the utterance shows that the speaker regards the
situation as real, whereas in he came2 the same situation is represented as unreal.
Subjective modality expresses the attitude of the speaker to the contents of the sentence, whether the
speaker considers the the state of things described in the sentence possible, impossible, probable, desirable,
necessary, obligatory, probable, obvious etc. In some theories subjective modality is organized into the following
scales:
1. wish, intention
2. obligation, necessity
3. probability, possibility
Language means used to express subjective and objective modality are numerous, complex and belong to
different language levels. Some of these means are illustrated by the following:
1. modal words like probably, evidently, possibly, maybe, obviously, seemingly,
allegedly,
luckily, unluckily etc. Intejections like alas, really or parenthetical expressions like
unquestionably, as is known, of course, certainly can also be listed here.
2. Intonation, a very powerful means of expressing modality. By intonation alone the speaker can
express his doubt as to the truth of the proposition: He is a genius?
3. Modal verbs with “I” predicate: I can (must, should, have to)
4. Sentence Moods, that is, the ability of the sentence structure to express statements, questions
and imperatives. Statements can express the falsity or the truth of the statement (as to its
relation to reality), questions express neutrality – the speaker does not say if the contents are
true or false (is she married? means that the speaker does not know which is true –she is
married or she is not married), and the imperative expresses the situation which is not real but
which the speaker considers desirable.
5. Sentence structures:
1. Fused sentence structures with the so-called semilink verbs of the type to
look, to seem, to become, to appear (=60 verbs all in all). They are called
so because modality and the predicate of the proposition are expressed
together, in a kind of fusion. In the sentence He seems to be ill the
proposition is ( he ( to be ill), and seems is the grammatical predicate
which at the same time expresses modality: seems presupposes that the
speaker perceives a certain state of things ( he is ill), but doubts if it is
really so. Types of fusion:
1. Attitude of the third party:
he is considered a genius
she is valued as a friend
they are found guilty
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Somebody (a third party) considers that the proposition (he is a genius) is true. The speaker does
not say for himself if he believes or not that (he is a genius) is true. He does not take upon himself the
responsibility for the truth of the proposition. But at least he says that it is true that somebody considers the
proposition ( he is a genius) to be true.
2. Attitude of the person expressed by the grammatical subject, to himself:
He considers himself a man
She imagines herself as artist
The person (he in He considers himself a man) thinks that the proposition (I am a man) is true. His
modality and simultaneously the predicate of the sentence are expressed in a fused fashion by the verb to
consider. The speaker of the utterance He considers himself a man does not take upon himself the
responsibility for the truth of the proposition (he is a man), but he takes upon himself the responsibility for
the truth of the statement He considers himself a man. ( Правда, и я в это верю, что он считает себя
настоящим мужчиной. Так ли это на самом деле – бог весть, но уж я уверен, что он
действительно считает себя мужчиной).
3. Attitude of the speaker of the utterance to the proposition:
He looks ill
She pretends to be interested
The speakers attitude to the propositions ( he is ill) and (she is interested) are clearly shown by
the predicates fused with modalily ( look shows that the speaker relies on visual perception, but is not
absolutely sure whether the proposition ( he is ill) is true; pretend shows that the speaker is sure that the
proposition ( she is interested) is not true.

Sentences divided into modal frame and proposition. Modal frames are expressed by main
clauses, and propositions – by subordinate clauses. The propositions describe the state of things (
facts, events, situations), and the modal frame – the attitude to the state of things given in the
proposition:
It is not true that brown bears live in the Arctic
It seems he is lazy
It is possible that there is life on the Mars
I don’t think he is a wise man
6. And last, but not least, modality can be expresses by a morphological category of Mood, through the wordform, synthetic (built with the help of a grammatical morpheme) or analytical (built with the help of an
auxiliary word and a notional word).
The category of Mood
The category of mood is traditionally considered to be built on the basis of three form-classes: the
Indicative, the Imperative and the Subjunctive.
The indicative form class shows by the form of the verb (unmarked form) that the actions and situations
described by the verb are regarded by the speaker as real. So these actions and situations must be represented as
taking place in the spheres of past, present and future.
Both the Imperative and Subjunctive form-classes are not associated so directly with tense characteristics
because they both refer to spheres that deviate from reality.
Besides traditional, there are other views on the Category of Mood:
1. The existence of the form-class of the Imperative is a subject of doubt,
because it does not seem to have a form of its own. Its form coincides with
the forms, already employed by the Present Simple and by the Infinitive.
The only thing which makes the form of the Imperative different from the
Present Simple is the negative form of the verb to be:
Present Simple: isn’t, am not, are not
Imperative: don’t be
The only thing which makes it different from the Infinitive is the negative form
in general:
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Infinitive: not to go
Imperative: don’t go
But nevertheless, Imperative is recognized by the majority of linguists,
though for different reasons. What is universally recognized is that it is a very vivid
and specific form. It does not have question-forms, it is used in sentences without a
subject, the subject – you – appears only in emphatic use. It is lexically limited.
Predicates denoting uncontrolled actions are not normally used in the Imperative
form: *BE a blue-eyed girl! *Loook doubtful!
The meaning is also specific. It expresses volition.It is used in the syntactic
structure aimed at expressing only one speech act –volition( requests and orders).
Other Mood forms are multifunctional. They may be used in utterances, expressing
different speech acts
2.
The second non-traditional view belongs to J.Lions. He suggests excluding the Indicative
form-class from the Category of Mood, for it, he says, does not express any modality ( But it does! It
shows that the contents of the utterance are regarded by the speaker as corresponding to reality). On the
other hand, he puts forward an idea of a Question Mood, which is open to critisim. Of course, questions
have a peculiar modality, but it is not so much expressed by the verb-form as by the sentence-structure as
a whole. The form of the verb in questions may be that of the Indicative or Subjunctive. Questions do not
have special verb-forms.
The most controversial form is that of the Subjunctive, expressing unreality. First of all, there are
too many forms, which can be divided into 2 groups:
 Those which are mainly used for expressing unreality ( they are mostly
archaic or regionally limited): be - if it be true! Were for all persons,
stem-form – I suggest that he g
 Those for which expression of unreality is only an additional,
secondary meaning occurring under certain conditions ( in specific
syntactic contexts): forms of the Past Simple and Past Perfect,
combinations of could, might, should, would+different forms of the
infinitive. The primary functions of these forms –temporal and modal
meanings
Secondly, there is absence of correlation between meaning and form. One and the same form may
express different meanings. Should, for example, is used to denote:
1. obligation: People should help each other
2. unreal conditional action: I should stay there if he asked me to
3. real action which is object of comment:How stragge that he
should say so!
4. unreal prospective action: I suggest that we should leave at
once!
Simultaneously, the same meaning may be expressed by different means. Unreal desirable action,
for example, may be expressed in the following ways:
1. You ought to have stayed behind
2. You should come immediately
3. I wish you hurried up
4. We recommend that he quit
Different systems of the category of Mood can be arrived at depending whether the classification is
based
on
meaning
or
form.
M.
Deuts
chbein, for one, speaks of the Category of Mood based on 16 form-classes. A. Smirnitsky suggests a
system of 6 form-classes (indicative, imperative, subjunctive I, subjunctive II, suppositional and
conditional).
There are two possible theoretic interpretations of the state of things with the so-called Subjunctive
Mood:
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1. There are specific forms of expressing unreality, only they happen to be homonymous with
the forms of the Past Simple, Past Perfect, modal verbs etc. Then, the existence of the
Subjunctive form-class would be established – if another theoretical justification is found,
the one which will explain the excessive number of forms.
2. There are no specific forms, the meaning of unreality is expressed by secondary,
contextually, lexically and syntactically bound meanings of forms of Tense, Correlation
(Perfect) and modal combinations. The explanation may run like this: the basic primary
meaning of the forms lived, had, played, swam and broke is the expression of the past
action. But, under the influence of a certain syntactic context the meaning of the past
changes and the forms start expressing unreal actions. Corresponding syntactic contexts
(patterns) can be described in the following way:
A) If …... should (would) +infinitive (If I knew I should act so)
B) I wish….. (I wish I knew)
C) It is time…. (It is time you did something)
Obviously, the Subjunctive meaning does not find its morphological expression as a Form-class
within the category of Mood. There is no single, original form for expressing unreality. But the meaning of
unreality is very important for communication and it has to be expressed. And so it is expressed – by
various language means which are more or less suitable: by combinations with modal verbs under syntactic
conditions which weaken the modal meaning and bring out and intensify the meaning of unreality (which
is part of the modal meaning as well), by secondary structurally and lexically conditioned meanings of
forms of tenses and forms of Perfect, by remaining and quickly dying out forms of the ancient Subjunctive,
which have long lost their systemic character.
So, the English category of Mood, strictly speaking, consists of two form-classes only –the
Indicative and the Imperative.
Questions to lecture 5
1. What are the verbal categories common to both finite and non-finite verbs?
2. What are the major principles of subcategorization of verbs?
3. What is the general idea of a universal tense-system (which is realizes in languages in this
or that way) worked out by O. Espersen?
4. What are the non-prototypical meanings of the Non-Past tense form-class of the English
category of Tense?
5. In which way the meaning of the manner of action can be expressed besides the category of
Aspect?
6. What is the meaning of the category of Voice?
7. What are the arguments in favour of the view that units like the water boiled, he hurt
himself are not the forms of the English category of Voice?
8. What is the meaning of the category of Correlation?
9. What are means of expressing Modality?
10. On what grounds is the Imperative form not treated by some authors as a form-class of the
category of Mood?
11. What are the arguments against a Subjunctive form-class within the category of English
Mood?
Task 5
1. The subcategorization of verbs into one word verbs and phrasal verbs is based:
a. on a semantic principle
b. on a syntactic principle
c. on a formal principle
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2. The non-finite forms do not have the category:
a. Of Voice
b. Of Person
c. Of Correlation
3. The non-finite verbs cannot perform the syntactic function of:
a. the predicate
b. the predicative
c. the object
4. The category of Tense in English is based on:
a. The opposition of two form-classes
b. The opposition of five form-classes
c. The opposition of 16 form-classes
5. In the category of Voice the verb in the Passive form shows that:
a. the grammatical subject is not the object of the action
b. the grammatical subject is the doer of the action
c. the grammatical subject is the object of the action
6. The Continuous form-class within the category of Aspect may express:
a. An action preceeding the moment of speaking
b. An action completed before some moment in the past
c. An emotionally colored attitude to an action
7. The Perfect forms are very much like the forms of Aspect because of:
a. Their form
b. Their syntactic properties
c. Their meaning
8. Modality is the property of:
a. Words
b. Phrases
c. Sentences
9. The category of Mood is:
a. A morphological means of expressing modality
b. A syntactical means of expressing modality
c. A lexical means of expressing modality
SYNTAX
6. Basic notions of syntax
Outline
1. Basic syntactic notions and units
2. Types of syntactic relations
3. Methods of analyzing a syntactic unit
1. Basic syntactic notions and units
Syntax deals with the way linguistic units and their meaning are combined in the linearly ordered
units – phrases (word-groups), sentences and texts.
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The major syntactic notions are: syntactic unit, syntactic form, syntactic meaning, syntactic function,
syntactic position, and syntactic relations.
The basic syntactic units are a word-group, a clause, a sentence, and a text. Their main features
are:
-- they are hierarchical units – the units of a lower level serve the building material for the units of a
higher level;
--as all language units the syntactic units have both form and meaning
-- they are of communicative and non-communicative nature – word-groups
and clauses are of non-communicative nature while sentences and texts
are of communicative nature.
Syntactic meaning is the meaning which is ascribed to syntactic patterns irrespective of the meanings of
separate words within the sentence or a phrase.
Green ideas sleep furiously. This sentence has syntactic meaning. Its structure speaks of thing having a
certain property and experiencing a certain type of state in a certain manner. It isquite correct
grammatically. However it makes no sense as lexical valences of the components are violated. .
Syntactic form may be described as the distributional formula of the unit (pattern).Usually it is
represented graphically or with the help of signs. Ex .John builds the house –
N1 + V + N2.
NP1 +VP+NP2
S+P+O
12d1
Syntactic function
In traditional terms it is used to denote syntactic function of a unit within the
sentence (subject, predicate, etc.).
Syntactic position is the position of an element. The order of constituents in syntactic units is of
principal importance in analytical languages. The syntactic position of an element may determine its
relationship with the other elements of the same unit:He made his rounds twice a day; he turned round;
he went round the corner; he rounded the talks
2. Types of syntactic relations
Syntactic relations are syntagmatic relations observed between syntactic units. Their nature and essence
have not been defined properly yet. There are different classifications of syntactic relations;
1. Hypotaxic (HR) and parataxic (PR) relatons. In one interpration HR are relations between
syntactic units which are not equal in status .One is dependent upon the other (subordination is
presupposed). PR are relations between elements of the same status (coordination and
conjoinment are presupposed). In another interpretation PR are relations of a non-differentiated
character. That is, the presence of a syntactic relation is obvious, but its semantic nature escapes
definition. These are syntactic relations between
words or word-groups in combinations like yes, please; no ,thank you; well, how?; why not?
HR in this interpretation are differentiated, that is they can be defined as subordination or
coordination.
2. In American descriptive linguistics syntactic relations are also grouped into differentiated and
non-differentiated. Differentiated relations are subdivided, in accordance with a substitution test
into endocentric and exocentric relations. Endocentric relations are relations in a syntactic unit,
one or all components of which can substitute the syntactic unit in a larger constraction.
EX:
Berries and mushrooms is a syntactic unit the components of which - Berries and mushrooms – are
joined by endocentric relation, because all components (notional components) can be used in a larger
syntactic unit instead of the whole phrase without violating the grammatical correctness and preserving
approximately original meaning:
They were picking berries and mushrooms
They were picking berries
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They were picking mushrooms
Dark- red berries is a syntactic unit the components (or the Immediate Constituents) of which - Darkred and berries – are also joined by endocentric relation, because one of the components can be used
instead of the whole phrase in a larger syntactic construction.
They were picking
They were picking berries
*They were picking dark-red (* denotes that the structure is non-existent or deficient)
As is seen from the previous examples, endocentric relations are subdivided into coordination (Berries
and mushrooms) and subordination (dark-red berries)
Exocentric relations are relations in a syntactic unit, neither of the components of which can be
used in a larger construction without violating the grammatical correctness and preserving approximately
original meaning:
He left the room, his hands in pockets
*He left the room, his hands
*He left the room, pockets
Exocentric relations are sometimes subdivided into predicative relations and prepositional relations.
NB: All the relations are based on different principles, sometimes not logically connected. The notions
of endo-and exocentric relations are based on the different results of a substitution test. The notions of
subordination and coordination are based on the equality\inequality of the components, while the notion
of predication is meaningful; at least it gives syntactic and semantic characteristics of the nature of the
components (components are, obviously, the subject and the predicate, or at least, components
resembling in their relation the subject and the predicate); prepositional relations do not speak of the
ranks, or semantic and syntactic features of the IC ( Immediate Constituents, components), but imply that
at least one of the components is a preposition. These heterogeneous principles resemble the
classification of people into those with blond hair, those who are clever and those who have large feet.
3. Barhudarov L.S prefers to speak of three major syntactic relations: subordination, coordination and
predication. In lectures by Volkova these relatios are given the following definitions:
Coordination (SR1) – syntagmatic relations of independence. SR1 can be observed on the phrase,
sentence and text levels. Coordination may be symmetric and asymmetric. Symmetric coordination is
characterized by complete interchangeability of its elements – pens and pencils. Asymmetric
coordination occurs when the position of elements is fixed: ladies and gentlemen. Forms of connection
within SR1 may be copulative (you and me), disjunctive (you or me), adversative (strict but just) and
causative-consecutive (sentence and text level only).
Subordination (SR2) – syntagmatic relations of dependence. SR2 are established between the
constituents of different linguistic rank. They are observed on the phrase and sentence level.
Subordination may be of three different kinds – adverbial (to speak slowly), objective (to see a house)
and attributive (a beautiful flower). Forms of subordination may also be different – agreement (this book
– these books), government (help us), adjournment (the use of modifying particles just, only, even, etc.)
and enclosure (the use of modal words and their equivalents really, after all, etc.).
Predication (SR3) – syntagmatic relations of interdependence. Predication may be of two kinds –
primary (sentence level) and secondary (phrase level). Primary predication is observed between the
subject and the predicate of the sentence while secondary predication is observed between non-finite
forms of the verb and nominal elements within the sentence. Secondary predication serves the basis for
gerundial, infinitive and participial word-groups (predicative complexes).
4. In . И.П.Иванова, В.В.Бурлакова, Г.Г.Почепцов. Теоретическая грамматика современного англ.
яз. syntactic relations like objective, attributive and adverbial are mentioned. Predicative relations
should enter the same classification, for these relations are based on the principle of the syntactic
function of the componenets. Besides the authors mention cumulative relations found between elements
joined by the same syntactic relation to their head (component on which they depend) but having no
immediate relations between themselves. These are relations between him a picture in the phrase I gave
him a picture or between three black in the phrase three black dogs
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3. Methods of analyzing a sentence (Sentence models)
The traditional sentence model (Members of the Sentence)
The method qualifies the parts of the sentence as main ones – the subject and the predicate – and
secondary ones: an object, an adverbial modifier and an attribute (let alone such functions as objective
predicative, agentive object, apposition and parenthesis). The qualification usually semantic. Formal
characteristics are also employed: part-of-the-speech class is mentioned and the grammatical form. On
the whole it is a rather powerful model, because it is many-aspected: it gives semantic, morphological
and part-of the-speech characteristics to a member of the sentence. Barhudarov L.S. gives the following
faults of the method:
- there are no clear-cut principles of segmenting the sentence into members of the sentence. Therefore
the boundaries between members are not clear. In he wants to go and she likes to know it is not clear
whether the infinitive is an object or part of the compound verbal predicate:
-there is no clear –cut difference between main and secondary parts. Secondary parts are said to be
dependent on the main parts, but there are secondary parts which are not dependent on either of the main
parts. They seem to refer to the sentence as a whole. There may be secondary parts depending on other
secondary parts. And very often the predicate – the main part – is characterized as depending on the
subject. Obviously the term dependence is used as an umbrella term (different things are meant by the
term depending on context):
- There are no criteria helping to distinguish between secondary parts, the more so that different
secondary parts can be expressed by the same parts of speech. In the phrase the construction of the
bridge the bridge can be qualified either as an object or as an attribute. The semantic criterion is of no
help, because the bridge can be understood as a property characterising the construction (What kind of
construction? the construction of the bridge), and, consequently, an attribute. Or it may be understood as
a thing, connected with the action described by the word construction (The construction of what? Of the
bridge). The form of the secondary part is of no help either: both the attribute and the object can be
expressed by nouns.
The Distributional sentence model of Ch.Fries
One of the attempts to overcome the faults of the traditional sentence model is the distributional
sentence model of Ch.Fries. It represents the sentence as a linear distribution of sentence components in
terms of positional classes ( classes 1, 2, 3 and 4 approximately corresponding to nouns, verbs,
adjectives and adverbs) and function words (15 classes, about 150 words). The sentence The police shot
the man in the red cap receives the following description:
D Ia 2-d D Ib f D 3 Ic ,
where D – determiner the, Ia - class 1 word police, 2-d – class 2 word shot, Ib - class 1 word man, f –
function word in, 3 –class 3 word red, Ic – class 1 word cap ( different letter indexes with class 1 words
show that they have different referents)
So, the model is capable of showing the sentence pattern, the number and part-of-the speech meaning
and even forms of the components – important characteristics of the formal structure of the sentence. But
it does not show syntactic relations between the components. It is common knowledge that relations do
not always connect immediately neighbouring members, and there could be relations between distantly
placed components. Thus sentences having the identical distribution of components but differing in
syntactic relations may get the same description, which is undesirable. Thus, the sentence the police shot
the man in the right arm gets the same interpretation as the previous one (D Ia 2-d D Ib f D 3 Ic), which is
wrong. In the red cap in the previous sentence is syntactically dependent (has syntactic relation with) on
the word man, while in the right arm is dependent on the verb
Immediate constituents of the sentence. IC analysis.
To grasp the real structure of the English sentence, one must understand not only words that occur in
mutual distribution, but also their syntactic connections in accordance with which they are arranged into
smaller and larger groups. . Each language has its own way of structural grouping. English has binary
phrase structure, which means that the phrase in English can always be divided into two elements
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(constituents) until we get down to the single word. All groups of words are arranged in levels. The name
given by linguists to these different levels of relationship is immediate constituents.
Thus, one way of analyzing a sentence is to cut it to its immediate constituents, that is, to single out
different levels of meaning.The segmenting on each level is done only once and results in getting the
biggest immediate constituents (IC), Thus. The sentence The old man saw a black dog there will get
the following stages and the following IC:
Stage 1: The old man | saw a black dog there.
( NP+VP)
Stage 2: The old man→ the || old man
(D+NP1 )
saw a black dog there → saw a black dog || there ( VP+ class 4 word)
Stage 3: the || old man → The || old ||| man
(D+class3 +class1)
saw a black dog || there →saw ||| a black dog || there. (class 2+NP2 +class 4)
In the final stage the result is:
The || old ||| man | saw ||| a |||| black dog || there.
This type of graphic representation is called bracketing. In the end, as is seen, we get the
same distribution of components as in Ch.Fries's model, but enriched as to the view of their
hierarchy, their dependency. Word do not enter the sentence separately, one by one as beads in a
necklace, but as members of syntactic groups. The syntactic dependences in a sentence are more
obvious if instead of bracketing the so-called "sentence tree" is used. The sentences The police shot
the man in the red cap and. The police shot the man in the right arm get the following "sentence
trees":
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It is obvious that this model is more powerful than the distributional, for it is capable
to show the difference of structures with identical distribution but different syntactic relations. But it is
not capable of showing the difference of sentences with identical distribution, identical syntactic
relations but different semantic structures. The sentences John is eager to please and John is easy to
please get the same interpretation:
It is clear, nevertheless, that semantically the sentences are not identical. The action of pleasing do not
have John as its subject in both sentences.
There are also minor demerits. There are problems with binary segmentation of discontinuous
structures, such as: Is John coming? John called Bill up, the best team in the world, and with coodinative
structures like John and Dick and Harry
Transformational-Generative Grammar. The Transformational grammar was first suggested by
American scholar Zelling Harris as a method of analyzing sentences and was later elaborated by another
American scholar Noam Chomsky as a synthetic method of ‘generating’ (constructing) sentences. The
main point of the Transformational-Generative Grammar is that the endless variety of sentences in a
language can be divided into kernel sentences, the simplest and most basic and transforms or derived
sentences. The finite number of kernels serve the basis for generating derived sentences by means of
syntactic processes called transformational rules. Different language analysts recognize the existence of
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different number of kernels (from 3 to 39). The following 7 kernels are commonly associated with the
English language:
NV
NVрN
NVN
N is N
N is p N
N is D
N is A
(John came)
(John looked at Mary)
(John saw Mary)
(John is a teacher)
(John is in bed)
(John is out)
(John is angry)
TR are divided into singulary, operating within kernel sentences, and generalized, operating within two
or more kernels with the aim of producing a transform. Singulary rules are the rule of passivisation (John
saw Mary → Mary was seen by John) or the rule making a general question out of a statement: John is
coming – is John coming? Generelized rules operate in approximately the following way:
Kernel sentences
Transforms and TR
I persuaded the doctor
I persuaded the doctor → I persuaded ___ ( TR deletion)
The doctor examined John
The doctor examined John→ The doctor to examine John (TR of
conversion)
I persuaded____+ the doctor to examine (TR of embedding) =
I persuaded the doctor to examine John
Actually the model is useful if not for generating sentences then for analyzing them. A lot of derived
sentences are ambiguous, that is, they have more than one meaning. For example, the sentence Visiting
relatives can be a nuisance can be interpreted in the following ways:
1. Relatives who come to visit are a nuisance
2. Going to visit relatives is a nuisance
The sentence It is too hot to eat can have 3 interpretations:
1. X (the dog) is too hot to eat
2. X1 ( the weather) is too hot to eat
X2 (the soup) is too hot to eat
Transformational method proves useful for analysing derived sentences by reducing them to their
kernels, thus clarifying their meaning, for kernel sentences are unambiguous, e.g
Flying planes can be dangerous.
This sentence is ambiguous, it can be understood in the following ways:
1. летать самолетами опасно
2. летящие самолеты опасны
3. управлять самолетами опасно
Which meaning is implied depends on which kernel sentences the derived one is composed of. In the
first meaning the derived sentence is reduced to the following kernels:
1. Planes fly
2. X is in the plane
3. It is dangerous
In the second case it is the result of the following kernels:
1. Planes fly
2. It is dangerous
The third meaning is reduced to:
1. X flies planes (X is a pilot)
2. It is dangerous
Kernel sentences in this way disclose the real meaning of the derived sentence – its deep structure. The
syntactic structure is called a surface structure.
The method actually was aimed at generating sentences, not analyzing them. The idea was that with the
help of a certain number of kernel sentences and TR an infinite number of correct English sentenced
could be generated even by a person not speaking the language.
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There was a stumbling block: the rules generated grammatically correct but inappropriate sentences like:
I drank the bread
The dog dispersed
To avoid this fault, the so-called semantic component was worked out, which tried to solve the problem
of the restriction on the cooccurrence ( совместная встречаемость) of certain items within a sentence,
that is, to put into operation selectional rules prohibiting the cooccurrence of words with conflicting
lexical valence ( water + broke into fragments.)
This interest in the semantic aspects of syntax brought about new syntactic theories focused on meaning
Questions
1. What are the basic syntactic units?
2. What is the difference between a syntactic position and a syntactic function?
3. What types of syntactic relations are based on ranks of the related syntactic units?
4. What types of syntactic relations are based on syntactic functions of one (or more) related
syntactic units?
5. What are the merits and faults of the traditional Sentence Model?
6. In which way are the Distributional and IC Sentence Models similar?
7. In which way are they different?
8. What are the aims of the Transformational Grammar?
Task 6
1. The basic syntactic units are:
a. The word, the phrase, the sentence
b. The phrase, the sentence, the text
c. The clause, the utterance, the word-form
2. The syntactic functions are
a. The subject, the predicate, the object
b. The noun-phrase, the verb-phrase
c. The Immediate Constituents (IC)
3. Hypotaxic relations are relations
a. Between units of the same rank
b. Between units the ranks of which are not equal
c. Non-differentiated relations
4. Exocentric relations are relations
a. Between units one of which can be used instead of the whole phrase
b. Between units all of which can be used instead of the whole phrase
c. Between units neither of which can be used instead of the whole phrase
5. The traditional Sentence model is based
a. On meaning ,part-of-the speech characteristics and forms of the words
b. On meaning and position
c. On formal features of the words and their position
6. The Distributional Sentence Model was worked out by
a. Ch. Fries
b. L.S.Barhudarov
c. B.A.Ilyish
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7. The IC Sentence Model us more powerful than the Distributional one because it
a. Reveals the semantic relations between components
b. Reveals syntactic relations between components
c. Reveals relations between sentences
8. The Transformational Sentence Model operates with
a. Parts of speech
b. Syntactic positions
c. Kernel and derived sentences
7. Theory of Phrase (word-combination)
Definitions concerning the word-group are a matter of dispute. The demarcation line is between the
so called narrow and wide definitions. In accordance with the latter the word-group is a combination
of at least two notional words which do not constitute the sentence but are syntactically connected,
and the syntactical connection is that of subordination. According to some other scholars (the
majority of Western scholars and professors B.Ilyish and V.Burlakova – in Russia), a combination of
a notional word with a function word (on the table) may be treated as a word-group as well? And any
type of syntactic relation is possible. The problem is disputable as the role of function words is to
show some abstract relations and they are devoid of nominative power. On the other hand, such
combinations are syntactically bound and they should belong somewhere.
General characteristics of the word-group are:
1) As a naming unit it differs from a compound word because the number of constituents in a wordgroup corresponds to the number of different denotatations: a black bird – черная птица, a blackbird –
дрозд;
2) Each IC (Immediate Constituent) of the word-group can undergo grammatical changes without
destroying the identity of the whole unit: to see a house - to see houses.
3) A word-group is a dependent syntactic unit, it is not a communicative unit and has no intonation of its
own.
Principles of classification of word-groups.
Word-groups can be classified on the basis of several principles, but almost always either the nature
of the components or the type and kind of the syntactic relation are involved:
1. In accordance with whether the phrase is built on homogeneous syntactic relations or
heterogeneous, the phrases can be divided into elementary and compound.
Elementary phrases are those demonstrating only one type
of
syntactic relation,
EX:
Very red apples. The IC of the phrase are Very red and
apples, and the syntactic relation is
that of subordination. Very red, in its turn, is also a phrase, consisting of two IC, and
the
relation
between the IC is again that of subordination.
So, syntactic relations found in the phrase are
homogeneous,
and the phrase is elementary.
Compaund phrases are those demonstrating more than one
type of syntactic relations,
EX:
To buy apples and bananas. The IC are to buy and apples and bananas, and the relation is that of
subordination. One of
the IC, apples and bananas, is also a phrase, and the IC are
connected through coordination. Therefore, the syntactic relations here are heterogeneous, and
the phrase is compound
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2. In accordance with the nature of the components the phrases can be divided into simple and
complex.
Simple phrases are those the components of which are
words, in complex phrases one or all
components are
phrases themselves,
EX:
Dangerously handsome young man, where both IC are
subordinate phrases
3. According to the type of syntagmatic relations: coordinate (you and me), subordinate (to see a
house, a nice dress), predicative (him coming, for him to come),
Subordinate word-groups.
Subordinate word-groups are based on the relations of dependence between the constituents. This
presupposes the existence of a governing IC which is called the head and the dependent IC which is
called the adjunct (in noun-phrases) or the complement (in verb-phrases).
According to the nature of their heads, subordinate word-groups fall into noun-phrases (NP) –
the roof of the house, the room upstairs, times immemorial; verb-phrases (VP) – to run fast, to see a
house, to be a teacher; adjective phrases (AP) – rich in mineral oil good, for you; adverbial
phrases (DP) – so quickly; pronoun phrases (IP) – something strange, nothing to do.
The formation of the subordinate word-group depends on the valence of its constituents. Valence
is a potential ability of words to combine. Actual realization of valency in speech is called combinability.
The noun-phrase (NP).
Noun word-groups are widely spread in English. This may be explained by a potential ability of the
noun to go into combinations with practically all parts of speech. The NP consists of a noun-head and an
adjunct or adjuncts with relations of modification between them. Three types of NP are distinguished
here:
a) with Preposed adjuncts (Premodification) that comprise all the units placed before the head: two
smart hard-working students. Adjuncts used in pre-head position are called pre-posed
adjuncts.These are
Adjectives: the right person, an angry wind, cold weather
Personal, demonstrative and indefinite pronouns: his book, those stories, some money
Participles 1 and 2: a broken heart, a smiling child
Gerunds: smelling salts, walking sticks, dancing halls
Numerals, both ordinal and cardinal: the second attempt, three dogs
Nouns in the common and genitive case: speech sound,Bob's wish
Premodification of nouns by nouns (N+N) is one of the most striking features about the grammatical
organization of English. It is one of devices to make our speech both laconic and expressive at the same
time. Noun-adjunct groups result from different kinds of transformational shifts. NPs with pre-posed
adjuncts can signal a striking variety of meanings:
Rosewood table –table made of rosewood
world peace – peace all over the world
wine bottle-bottle for wines
sea water- water from the sea
school child – a child who goes to school
The grammatical relations observed in NPs with pre-posed adjuncts may convey the following
meanings:
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1) subject-predicate relations: weather change;
2) object relations: health service, women hater;
3) adverbial relations: a) of time: morning star,
b) place: mountain river,
c) comparison: button eyes,
d) purpose: hair brush.
It is important to remember that the noun-adjunct is usually marked by a stronger stress than the
head.
According to their position all pre-posed adjuncts may be divided into pre-adjectivals and adjectiavals.
The position of adjectivals is usually right before the noun-head. Pre-adjectivals occupy the position
before adjectivals. They fall into two groups: a) limiters (to this group belong mostly particles): just,
only, even, etc. and b) determiners (articles, possessive pronouns, quantifiers – the first, the last).
b) With Postposed adjuncts (Postmodification) that comprise all the units all the units placed after the
head: students from Boston. Adjuncts used in post-head position are called post-posed adjuncts.These
are, most typically,
prepositional phrases.
The pattern of basic prepositional NPs is N1 prep. N2. The most common preposition here is ‘of’ – a cup
of tea, a man of courage. It may have quite different meanings: qualitative - a woman of sense,
predicative – the pleasure of the company, objective – the reading of the newspaper, partitive – the
roof of the house. Other illustrations: a woman in white, the man behind the house, the book on the shelf
adjectives
-Some native adjectives: times immemorial;
- borrowed adjectives, especially those coming from languages where adjectives are postposed:
blood royal, secretary general, inspector general
-adjectives originating from participles: the parties concerned
-adjectives ending in –able. –ible with preposed adjectives in the superlative degree: the most
beautiful girl imaginable, the best way possible;or with no ,every, only:no person imaginable, the only
way possible
Infinitives
Head-nouns with adjuncts-infinitives fall into 3 groups:
1. verbal nouns: a desire to help, a wish to see can be transformed into x desires to help, X wishes
to see
2. adjectival nouns: a willingness to go, a readiness to join→ X is willing to go, X is ready to join
3. substance nouns: a telegram to send, a book to read, which can be transformed into structures
with modal meaning → a telegram which must be sent, a book which can be read
non-prepositional noun-phrases
the head of these NP usually denote size, number, colour, age:
a child the same ag
the plank the right size
Ing-forms with dependent words, adverbs and prepositions are possible as post-posed adjuncts
c) Mixed modification that comprises all the units in both pre-head and post-head position: two smart
hard-working students from Boston, a politically active youth in a brown suit
The verb-phrase.
The VP is a definite kind of the subordinate phrase with the verb as the head. The verb is considered
to be the semantic and structural centre not only of the VP but of the whole sentence as the verb plays an
important role in making up primary predication that serves the basis for the sentence. VPs are more
complex than NPs as there are a lot of ways in which verbs may be combined in actual usage. Valent
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properties of different verbs and their semantics make it possible to divide all the verbs into several
groups depending on the nature of their complements
Classification of verb-phrases.
VPs can be classified according to the nature of their complements or in accordance with
transitivity\intransitivity of head-words. In the classification taking into account the nature of the
compliments the VP are divided into VP with nominal verb complements (to see a house), VP with
adverbial verb compliments (to behave well) and VP with mixed complementation ( To see a house
clearly)
Nominal complementation takes place when one or more nominal complements (nouns or pronouns)
are obligatory for the realization of potential valency of the verb: to give smth. to smb., to phone smb., to
hear smth.(smb.), etc.
Adverbial complementation occurs when the verb takes one or more adverbial elements obligatory
for the realization of its potential valency: He behaved well, I live …in Kyiv (here).
Mixed complementation – both nominal and adverbial elements are obligatory: He put his hat on he
table (nominal-adverbial).
According to the nature of the head-verb VP are divided into:
1. VP, the head of which can be both transitive and intransitive verbs. The verb compliment
of such VP is called an extention. These are the types of extention
V
V
V
V
V
V
V
V
V
V
D
DP
A
AP
рN
p NP
p In
p Id
p Ving
p VingP
crying loudly (The most typical extention)
flying high in the air
stood, angry
stood, red with anger
living in Paris
returning in a few days
going to it
returning from there
leaves without waiting
leaves without saying a word
V NP
waiting two hours
walking five miles
V Id
standing there
V Iself
working himself
2. VP, the head of which can be only a transitive verb. The complement is called an object
complement. The further subclassification may be based on types of object complements One
of the classification of object complements is based on the following principles:
 Type of relation between the head and the complement ( always non-prepositional,
prepositional or non-prepositional depending on the position of the object complement,
always prepositional)
 The structure of the object complement (simple or complex)
The principles, working together, bring about the following result:
1. OC ( object complement) 1 – always non-prepositional , simple ( to send the doctor
away) and complex (to find the car gone)
2. OC 2 – prepositional or non-prepositional depending on the position of the OC,
simple (to send him a book; to send a book to him)
3. OC 3 –always prepositional, simple ( to send for the doctor) and complex ( to rely on
the money being paid)
3. VP, the head of which is an intransitive verb. The complement is called a qualifying
complement. The most typical heads – link-verbs – are to be and to become. They are most frequent in
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this function and devoid of lexical meaning, and so most appropriate to serve as a connection between
ideas expressed by the subject and the predicative. Semi-copulars, such as to look, to seem, to appear, to
prove, to turn (he turned red) besides connecting function, contribute into the phase a certain lexical
meaning of their own, though weakened. But actually the rest of the intransitives can also appear in this
function. They, unlike to be and to become, fully preserve their lexical meaning, acquiring also the
function of the copular (link-verb):
The sun rose red → The sun rose+the sun was red
She died young→ She was young+she died
The qualifying complements are usually expressed by nouns and noun phrases:
Vi N(P)
becoming a sailor, be a good sailor
Adjectives and adjective phrases:
Vi A(P)
becoming angry, looking very angry
Pronouns and pronominal phrases:
Vi In(P)
becoming something, being anything else
Numerals (quantifiers):
Vi Q
returned three (They had gone out two, returned three)
Verbals:
V1 to V(P)
seeming to forget it
Vi Ving(P)
sat reading a book
Vi Ven(P)
seeming disturbed
Predicative word-groups.
Predicative word combinations are distinguished on the basis of secondary predication. Like
sentences, predicative word-groups are binary in their structure but actually differ essentially in their
organization. The sentence is an independent communicative unit based on primary predication while the
predicative word-group is a dependent syntactic unit that makes up a part of the sentence. The
predicative word-group consists of a nominal element (noun, pronoun) and a non-finite form of the verb:
N + Vnon-fin. There are Gerundial, Infinitive and Participial word-groups (complexes) in the English
language: his reading, for me to know, the boy running, etc.)
Coordinate word-groups
Coordinate word-groups consist of IC which are equal in rank, though not always belong to the same
part of speech:
They walked slowly and in silence
Selia was pretty and a good companion
The peculiarity of coordinate phrases is that they are not binary, and may consist of an indefinite number
of IC.
In accordance with explicitness\implicitness of means of expressing syntactic relations the
coordinate phrases are divided into:
1. syndetic ( means of expressing syntactic relations are explicit, they are conjunctions and
connectives): good as well as just, resourceful though unsuccessful, both unfortunate and wrong
2. asyndetic (implicit means, such as intonation and word order): warm, pleasant; the young man
Edgar
Syndetic coordinate phrases are divided into simple and correlative in accordance with the nature of the
conjunction:
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a. Simple syndetic correlative phrases are those the IC of which are connected with a continuous
conjunction ( conjunction which is not broken into parts by IC of the phrase); these are but, or,
rather ,as well as, yet, than etc.: It was the sound of a horn, harsh and loud; She was precious
but remote; Arthur refused everything but a piece of bread; May uttered no word good or
bad ; this book is structural rather than historical ; Repeated though small-scale attempts
b. Correlative syndetic coordinate phrases are those the IC of which are connected with a
discontinuous conjunction ( the elements of which are separated by IC ): these are both…and,
either…or, neither…nor, now… now ,from…to, not…but: either a gerund or a participle, now
with one man now with another, not merely possible but necessary
Asyndetic coordinate phrases in accordance with possibility\impossibility of inserting a conjunction are
divided into:
a. copulative and
b. appositive phrases.
Copulative asyndetic coordinate phrases are those where the conjunction is absent, but possible:
hot, dusty, tired out. The IC are separated by commas, or by intonation juncture
Appositive asyndetic coordinate phrases are those where the conjunction is not possible. They are
almost always binary. The IC are usually expressed by nouns, noun phrases, substantive pronouns and
pronominal phrases. The semantic feature is the same referent for the ICs: King Lear, Joh the Baptist,
Jack the Ripper; Bill, the grocer's boy; you boys; professor Chad; next morning, Christmas Day; The
Volga – the longest river of Europe
8. General properties of a sentence
It is rather difficult to define the sentence as it is connected with many lingual and extra lingual aspects –
logical, psychological and philosophical. Those who learnt some traditional grammar will remember the
old definition of a sentence as "a complete expression of a single thought". This notional (logical)
approach is too vague to be of much help.Another definition (which probably belongs to a despaired
linguist) is that the sentence is something that begins with a capital letter and ends with a full stop. The
definition is faulty in at least 3 counts, one of them being that there are also question and exclamation
marks
ending
the
sentence.
According to academician G.Pocheptsov, the sentence is the central syntactic construction used as the
minimal communicative unit that has its primary predication, actualises a definite structural scheme and
possesses definite intonation characteristics. This definition works only in case we do not take into
account the difference between the sentence and the utterance. The distinction between the sentence and
the utterance is of fundamental importance because the sentence is an abstract theoretical entity defined
within the theory of grammar while the utterance is the actual use of the sentence. In other words, the
sentence is a unit of language while the utterance is a unit of speech.
The most essential features of the sentence as a linguistic unit are a) its structural characteristics
– subject-predicate relations (primary predication), b) its semantic characteristics – it represents a
fragment of reality: situations, facts, events. This representation is called a proposition. Communicative
and pragmatic characteristics are mostly vivid in an utterance, but they can also be features of a
sentence as a language unit (at least in some sentences).
The sentence possesses modality and predication. Modality is a linguistic category expressing whether the
contents of the sentence coincide with or deviate from reality from the point of view of the speaker. It is one of the
indispensable characteristics of the utterance (sentence).
Traditionally modality is subdivided into subjective and objective modalities.
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Objective modality describes the relations between the contents of the utterance and reality as real or
unreal: he came1 – I wish he came2. In he came1 the form of the utterance shows that the speaker regards the
situation as real, whereas in he came2 the same situation is represented as unreal.
Subjective modality expresses the attitude of the speaker to the contents of the sentence, whether the
speaker considers the the state of things described in the sentence possible, impossible, probable, desirable,
necessary, obligatory, probable, obvious etc. In some theories subjective modality is organized into the following
scales:
4. wish, intention
5. obligation, necessity
6. probability, possibility
Language means used to express subjective and objective modality are numerous, complex and belong to
different language levels. Some of these means are illustrated by the following:
6. Modal words like probably, evidently, possibly, maybe, obviously, seemingly, allegedly,
luckily, unluckily etc. Intejections like alas, really or parenthetical expressions like
unquestionably, as is known, of course, certainly can also be listed here.
7. Intonation, a very powerful means of expressing modality. By intonation alone the speaker can
express his doubt as to the truth of the proposition: He is a genius?
8. Modal verbs with “I” predicate: I can (must, should, have to)
9. Sentence Moods, that is, the ability of the sentence structure to express statements, questions
and imperatives. Statements can express the falsity or the truth of the statement ( as to its
relation to reality), questions express neutrality – the speaker does not say if the contents are
true or false ( is she married? means that the speaker does not know which is true –she is
married or she is not married), and the imperative expresses the situation which is not real but
which the speaker considers desirable.
10. Sentence structures:
3. Fused sentence structures with the so-called semilink verbs of the type to
look, to seem, to become, to appear (=60 verbs all in all). They are called
so because modality and the predicate of the proposition are expressed
together, in a kind of fusion. In the sentence He seems to be ill the
proposition is ( he ( to be ill), and seems is the grammatical predicate
which at the same time expresses modality: seems presupposes that the
speaker perceives a certain state of things ( he is ill), but doubts if it is
really so. Types of fusion:
4. Attitude of the third party:
he is considered a genius
she is valued as a friend
they are found guilty
Somebody (a third party) considers that the proposition ( he is a genius) is true. The speaker does
not say for himself if he believes or not that (he is a genius) is true. He does not take upon himself the
responsibility for the truth of the proposition. But at least he says that it is true that somebody considers the
proposition ( he is a genius) to be true.
5. Attitude of the person expressed by the grammatical subject, to himself:
He considers himself a man
She imagines herself as artist
The person (he in He considers himself a man) thinks that the proposition ( I am a man) is true. His
modality and simultaneously the predicate of the sentence are expressed in a fused fashion by the verb to
consider . The speaker of the utterance He considers himself a man does not take upon himself the
responsibility for the truth of the proposition (he is a man), but he takes upon himself the responsibility for
the truth of the statement He considers himself a man. ( Правда, и я в это верю, что он считает себя
настоящим мужчиной. Так ли это на самом деле – бог весть, но уж я уверен, что он
действительно считает себя мужчиной).
6. Attitude of the speaker of the utterance to the proposition:
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He looks ill
She pretends to be interested
The speakers attitude to the propositions ( he is ill) and (she is interested) are clearly shown by
the predicates fused with modalily ( look shows that the speaker relies on visual perception, but is not
absolutely sure whether the proposition ( he is ill) is true; pretend shows that the speaker is sure that the
proposition ( she is interested) is not true.

Sentences divided into modal frame and proposition. Modal frames are expressed by main
clauses, and propositions – by subordinate clauses. The propositions describe the state of things (
facts, events, situations), and the modal frame – the attitude to the state of things given in the
proposition:
It is not true that brown bears live in the Arctic
It seems he is lazy
It is possible that there is life on the Mars
I don’t think he is a wise man
6. And last, but not least, modality can be expresses by a morphological category of Mood, through the wordform, synthetic (built with the help of a grammatical morpheme) or analytical ( built with the help of
an auxiliary word and a notional word).
Predication is understood in the following ways:
1. as a correlation with an actual situation
2.as a combination of two concepts: the subject ( logical, not grammatical), the theme of thought, and
the predicate, which expresses the property ascribed to the subject in the act of thought. According to
this view the sentence the boy is running along the street is divided into the subject (the boy) and the
predicate ascribing to it the property of running along the street.
3.as a relation between structural elements of the sentence – grammatical subject and grammatical
predicate. Predication in this interpretation is subdivided into primary (expressed by grammatical
agreement between the subject and the predicate in marking which the finite verb plays an essential
part) and secondary, where there is no agreement, no finite verb and, consequently, no subject and
predicate: The night being cold ( he closed the window).
The referential aspect of the sentence is the ability of its elements (and especially its nominal
parts) to refer to the things of objective reality. The nominal parts of the sentence have a referential
potentiality which is fully realized only in an utterance.
9. Aspects of the structure of Simple and composite sentences
Mono-and polypredicative( simple and composite) sentences are differentiated on the number of
predicative lines ( explicit subject-predicate relations expressed with the help of a finite verb). Naturally,
polypredicative sentences are those possessing more than one predicative line: When he came home he
found nobody there.
There are also transient structures,
a. based both on primary and secondary predication: the best thing would be for you to tell
everything; the boss having seen the picture, the staff prepared to listen to the verdict;
b. based on ellipsis: you are as good as everybody else ( is); the conduct of the widow must
be twice as careful as that of a matron (must be)
The structurally simple sentence, nevertheless, based on one predicative line may correspond to
more than one situation, thus semantically approaching the composite sentence:
Smoking is harmful (primary situation concerns the harms of smoking; but smoking in itself is a situation
= X smokes. So situation (x smokes) is built into the sentence describing another situation ;
[ (x smokes) is harmful], that is the sentence describes a situation which, as one of its parts, includes
another situation.
The simple sentence (structurally) contains 2 situations: he returned to Britain a millionaire = he
returned to Britain+he became a millionaire.
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The classification of Simple sentences may be based on a lot of principles, the major being
classifications based on form (structure) and those based on meaning. The classifications based on
structure may take into account the following features:
Minimal structure –expanded structure
Two-member sentence –one-member sentence
Pessonal - indefinite-personal – impersonal (according to the nature of the subject)
With nominal predicates (compound and simple) - with verbal predicates (compound and simple)
The classifications based on meaning may also be based on a lot of features, such as semantic types of
predicates, according to which the meaning of the sentences are characterised
a. as expressing "essence" (his dream is to fly, The Earth 9s the third planet of the Solar
system), "quantification"(We are four, There ate three windows), "quality" (The grass is
green), "relation" (Moscow is larger than Murmansk She is not our sister), "location" (The
mother is in the garden, the letter is from Moscow) etc
b. as based on states, that is, situations which are static, not changing with the time (to
belong, to breathe); activity – dynamic situations with temporal characteristics, which do
not have natural end to their realization (to talk, to sit); аccоmplishments, dynamic
situations with natural end to their realization (to get dry); achievements, which describe
immediate transition from one state to another (to untie)
c. as based on situations characterized as stative objectless, dynamic objectless, objective
stative , objective dynamic
The most important classification is the classification of sentences into communicative types (
Sentence Mood), for this classification is structural, on the one hand (it gives important structural and
formal characteristics to each communicative type), and, on the other hand it is semantic and is based on
different types of basic communicative purpose. The Basic communicative types, universally recognized,
are Statements, Questions and Imperatives. Other, less often recognized communicative types are
Exclamations and Optatives. The communicative purpose of the statements is to provide information, of
the questions –to ask for information, of Imperatives – to express volition. Each type is structurally
marked –intonation, word-order, specific words (WH-words in questions) and specific word-forms ( the
imperative Mood verb-forms in Imperatives), punctuation marks etc. There are also specific lexical
limitations (that is, impossibility of modal expressions of assurance and certainty, or verbs denoting
uncontrolled actions in Imperatives: Be a blue-eyed girl!) and also grammatical limitations (
impossibility of past actions in the Imperatives).
The Composite sentences are traditionally divided into Compound (IC of which are coordinated,
and the ranks of UC are equal) and Complex (The ICs of which are not equal , there is a principle clause
and a subordinate clause ) composite sentences. Both may be classified into syndetic and asyndetic
types.Sentences joined together by means of special function words designed for this purpose are
syndetic, those joined without function words are asyndetic (or contact-clauses):
a. syndetic compound sentences: he frowned his eyebrows and she felt irritation
b. syndetic complex sentences: he will come if he wants
c. asyndetic compound sentences: she looked nice; he was the very pucture of a gentleman
d. asyndetic complex sentences: had he been alone he would have been frightened; he
thought he was mad
The complex sentences
.
Despite the fact that IC are a principle and a subordinate clauses, that does not mean that the principle
clause is independent of the subordinate. It may be dependent both structurally and semantically: ср.
русский Я тот, кому внимала ты…; or the sentence What I want to do is what I mustn't do, where 2
subordinate clauses are What I want to do and what I mustn't do, whereas the main clause is equal to ---is
----, two empty positions for the subject and the predicative and a link-verb.
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The number of subordinate clauses may be infinite and they may be either of the same rank, or
subordinated to each other or both:
that stood on the hill
that faced the river
a.
Jack built a house
that had a big garden
that was painted blue
that delighted everyone
b. Jack built a house that stood on the hill which went down to the river that flew between
grass-covered banks which were inhabited by an armada of water-birds and little wateranimals.
c. Jack built a house that stood on the river which flew between grass covered banks.
The classification of complex sentences is mostly based on the function of the subordinate clause or the
type of connection of the main and subordinate clauses.
In accordance with the first principle the subordinate clauses are classified into subject,
predicative, object , attributive and adverbial clauses.
In accordance with the second principle the subordinate clauses are subdivided into those
a. which are incorporated into their main clause (matrix clause) in the capacity of a
member of the main sentence: I will buy what you tell me to buy ( If the subordinate
clause is removed the main clause loses its grammaticality)
b. which modify a certain member of the main clause, but are not part and parcel of the main
clause: I saw the girl who had a red dress on ( If the subordinate clause is removed the
main clause is grammatically correct, but sometimes may be semantically deficient : She
was a woman with a profile that resembled a Greek statue
c. which modify the main clause as a whole, the least dependent and in some way resemble
the clause of a compound sentence: Both girls were in red hats, which didn't happen very
often
The Compound sentence
The process of coordination involves the linking of structures of equal grammatical rank —
independent clauses in compound sentences asyndetically or with the help of coordinative conjunctions
and the correlatives
It is natural that the semantic relations between the coordinate clauses depend to a considerable
degree on the lexical meaning of the linking words (conjunctions and correlatives). The functional
meaning of some of them is quite definite and unambiguous. Such is, for instance, the conjunction but
implying contrast or dissociation between the related items; its meaning is so distinct that there can
hardly be any item in the sentence to change the adversative signification as made explicit by this linking
word. So and for show several relationships, among them purpose, cause, result, or inference, or and nor
indicate what might be described as alternation, choice or opposition. Even and, which is considered to
have a very weak lexical meaning, is not purely a coordinator. It usually indicates an additive
relationship, and sometimes it intensifies, or indicates continuous and repeated action, as in: She waited
and waited. She talked and talked and talked. They went around and around. Obviously conjunctions
cannot be considered as empty connecting words, and there is always selection in their use in terms of
style and purpose
.Linking words (coordinative conjunctions and the correlatives) in co-ordination can be rated as
follows:
a) Copulative, connecting two members and their meanings, the second member indicating an
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addition of equal importance, or, on the other hand, an advance in time and space, or an intensification,
often coming in pairs, then called correlatives: and; both... and; equally... and; alike... and; at once...
and; not... nor for neither, or and neither); not (or never)... not (or nor)... either; neither... nor, etc.
b) Disjunctive, connecting two members but disconnecting their meaning, the meaning in the second
member excluding that in the first: or and in questions whether... or with the force of simple or; or...
either; either... or, etc., the disjunctive adverbs else, otherwise, or... or, or... else.
c) Adversative, connecting two members, but contrasting their meaning: but, but then, only, still, yet,
and yet, however, on the other hand, again, on the contrary, etc.
d) Causal, adding an independent proposition explaining the preceding statement, represented only by
the single conjunction for: The brook was very high, for a great deal of rain had fallen over night.
e) Illative, introducing an inference, conclusion, consequence, result: namely, therefore, on that
account, consequently, accordingly, for that reason, so, then, hence, etc.
f) Explanatory, connecting words, phrases or sentences and introducing an explanation or a
particularisation: namely, to wit, that is, that is to say, or, such as, as, like, for example, for instance,
say,
let
us
say,
et
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It is important to remember that sometimes there is no formal link binding the members together
since the logical connection forms a sufficient tie and makes it abundantly clear. Upon close
investigation, however, it will become clear that such apparently independent sentences are not
absolutely independent and one of them implicitly stands in some grammatical relation to the
other.The dependence of the second ( and the following clauses) upon the leading clause is more
pronounced. The dependence ( and interdependence) may be expressed:
1. by anaphoric pronouns and possessive determiners in the second clause,
referring to NP in the leading clause: I saw a most beautiful girl; she
sat on the garden bench combing her hair
2. Correspondence of tenses in the clauses
3. Lexical and synonymic repetitions or meaningful correlations of
lexemes in the clauses: It took place on Monday, and today was only
Tuesday
4. Pronominalisation in the following clause of verbal elements of the
leading clause: They met him, and this meeting was not that much
joyous
Questions
1. What is the difference between mono-and polypredicative sentences?
2. What is a predicative line (bond)?
3. What are the types of transient cases?
4. What are the principles of classification of a simple sentence?
5. What are the traditional types of composite sentences?
6. What is the difference between compound and complex sentences?
7. What are the principles of classification of complex sentences?
8. What do the meaningful relations between clauses of a compound sentence depend on?
Tasks
1. The sentence the night being cold he closed the window is
a. A simple sentence
b. A transient case
c. A compound sentence
2. The sentence I want him to come is based on
a. Primary and secondary predications
b. Two primary predications
c. One primary predication
3. The sentence They were expecting the arrival of the bride when the telegram came describes
a.
b.
c.
2 situations based on 2 predicative lines
3 situations based on 2 predicative lines
3 situations based on 3 predicative lines
4. In accordance with the number of predicative lines the sentences are divided into
a. Simple and composite
b. Simple, composite and compound
c. Compound, complex and composite
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10. Pragmatic aspects of a sentence
Pragmatic syntax is the study of the ability of language users to use the language (the sentences)
in their speech activity in accordance with the context so that to achieve non-lunguistic aims.What
do we mean by ‘appropriate context’?
In our everyday life we as a rule perform or play quite a lot of different roles – a student, a
friend, a daughter, a son, a client, etc. When playing different roles our language means are not the
same – we choose different words and expressions suitable and appropriate for the situation. We use
the language as an instrument for our purposes. For instance,
(a) What are you doing here? We’re talking
(b) What the hell are you doing here? We’re chewing the rag
have the same referential meaning but their pragmatic meaning is different, they are used in
different contexts. Similarly, each utterance combines a propositional base (objective part) with
the pragmatic component (subjective part). It follows that an utterance with the same propositional
content may have different pragmatic components:
It’s hot
just mentioning of the fact
explanation
menace
objection
inducement to do something about it
To put it in other words, they are different speech acts. That is, speech acts are simply things
people do through language – for example, apologizing, instructing, menacing, explaining
something, etc. The term ‘speech act’ was coined by the philosopher John Austin and developed by
another philosopher John Searle.
John Austin is the person who is usually credited with generating interest in what has since
come to be known as pragmatics and speech act theory. His ideas of language were set out in a
series of lectures which he gave at Oxford University. These lectures were later published under the
title “How to do things with words”. His first step was to show that some utterances are not
statements or questions but actions. He reached this conclusion through an analysis of what he
termed ‘performative verbs’. Let us consider the following sentences:
I pronounce you man and wife
I declare war on France
I name this ship The Albatros
I bet you 5 dollars it will rain
I apologize
The peculiar thing about these sentences, according to J.Austin, is that they are not used to
say or describe things, but rather actively to do things. After you have declared war on France or
pronounced somebody husband and wife the situation has changed. That is why J.Austin termed
them as performatives and contrasted them to statements (he called them constatives). Thus by
pronouncing a performative utterance the speaker is performing an action. The performative
utterance, however, can really change things only under certain circumstances. J.Austin specified
the circumstances required for their success as felicity (happiness) conditions. In order to declare
war you must be someone who has the right to do it. Only a priest (or a person with corresponding
power) can make a couple a husband ad wife. Besides, it must be done before witnesses and the
couple getting married must sign the register. To realise the speech act of request the following
conditions are necessary:
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1. The action or situation, describes in the propositional component of the sentence, is not
supposed to exist in the moment of locution ( it is strange to ask somebody to open the
window, if it is already open)
2. The addressee is supposed to be capable of fulfilling the request ( it is strange to ask an
invalid in a wheelchair to open the window
3. The addressee is supposed to have more possibilities to realize the request than the
addresser ( it is strange to ask somebody in the far end of the room to open the window if
you are already near the window and are quite capable of performing the action)
4. The Speaker is supposed to be fully aware of the fact that the addressee has no weighty
reasons to refuse to perform the request ( it is strange to request a person who has been
complaining since morning about people who open window on a cold winter day and has
been demonstratively coughing and sneezing )
Performatives may be explicit and implicit. Let us compare the sentences:
I promise I will come tomorrow – I will come tomorrow;
I swear I love you – I love you.
On any occasion the action performed by producing an utterance will consist of three related acts (a
three-fold distinction):
1) locutionary act – producing a meaningful linguistic expression, uttering a sentence. If you have
difficulty with actually forming the sounds and words to create a meaningful utterance (because
you are a foreigner or tongue-tied) then you might fail to produce a locutionary act: it often
happens when we learn a foreign language.
2) illocutionary act – we form an utterance with some kind of function on mind, with a definite
communicative intention or illocutionary force. The notion of illocutionary force is basic for
pragmatics.
3) perlocutionary act – the effect the utterance has on the hearer. Perlocutionary effect may be
verbal or non-verbal. E.g. I’ve bought a car – Great! It’s cold here – and you close the window.
Classifications of speech acts. Indirect speech acts.
It was John Searle, who studied under J.Austin at Oxford, who proposed
a detailed classification of speech acts. His speech act classification has had a great impact on
linguistics. It includes five major classes of speech acts: declarations, representatives, expressives,
directives and commissives:
Speech act
Declaration
I pronounce you man and wife
You're fired
Representative
It was Sunday
He is a hero
Expressive
I apologise
Many happy returns of the day!
Commissive
Don't speak so loudly
I'll come soon!
Direction of fit
From words to the world
s-speaker, x-situation
S causes X
From the world to words
S believes X is true
From the world to words
S feels X
From words to the world
S intends X
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J.Searle can also be merited for introducing a theory of indirect speech acts. Indirect speech acts
are cases in which one speech act is performed indirectly, by way of performing another: Can you
pass me the salt? Though the sentence is interrogative, it is conventionally used to mark a request –
we cannot just answer “yes” or “no”. According to modern point of view such utterances contain
two illocutionary forces, with one of them dominating.
Another classification of speech acts was introduced by G.Potcheptsov. It is based on purely
linguistic principles. The main criterion for pragmatic classification of utterances is the way of
expressing communicative intention. This classification includes six basic speech acts:
constatives, promissives, menacives, performatives, directives and questions. More details can be
found in the book by И.П.Иванова, В.В.Бурлакова, Г.Г.Почепцов “Теоретическая грамматика
современного
английского
языка”,
С.267-281.
89
РАЗДЕЛ 4. Словарь терминов (глоссарий)
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
Р
АЗДЕЛ 5.Практикум по решению задач (практических ситуаций) по темам лекций (
одна из составляющих частей итоговой государственной аттестации)
Не предусмотрен
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РАЗДЕЛ 6. Изменения в в учебно-методическом комплексе, которые произошли после
утверждения учебно-методического комплекса
Характер изменений Номер
и
дата
в УМК
протокола заседания
кафедры, на котором
было принято данное
решение
Подпись
заведующего
кафедрой,
утверждающего
внесенное изменение
Подпись
декана
факультета
(проректора
по
учебной
работе),
утверждающего
данное изменение
.
РАЗДЕЛ 7. Учебные занятия по дисциплине ведут:
ФИО, ученое звание и
степень преподавателя
Рахманкулова Л.К.
Учебный
год
2007-2008
Факультет
Специальность
ФФиЖ
050303
«Иностранный язык
с доп.
специальностью»
99