ВІННИЦЬКИЙ ДЕРЖАВНИЙ ПЕДАГОГІЧНИЙ УНІВЕРСИТЕТ

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ВІННИЦЬКИЙ ДЕРЖАВНИЙ ПЕДАГОГІЧНИЙ УНІВЕРСИТЕТ

ІМЕНІ МИХАЙЛА КОЦЮБИНСЬКОГО

ІНСТИТУТ ІНОЗЕМНИХ МОВ

МАТЕРІАЛИ ДО КУРСУ

“ТЕОРЕТИЧНА ГРАМАТИКА АНГЛІЙСЬКОЇ МОВИ”

ДЛЯ СТУДЕНТІВ ГУМАНІТАРНИХ ФАКУЛЬТЕТІВ ПЕДАГОГІЧНИХ ВИЩИХ НАВЧАЛЬНИХ ЗАКЛАДІВ

(ОЧНА ФОРМА НАВЧАННЯ)

ЧАСТИНА 1

Укладач

доц.ЧУГУ С.Д.

Вінниця – 2006

Матеріали до курсу “Теоретична граматика англійської мови” для студентів гуманітарних факультетів педагогічних вищих навчальних закладів (очна форма навчання)” Частина 1: Навчальний посібник / Упорядник Чугу С.Д. – Вінниця: ВДПУ ім.М.Коцюбинського, 2006. - 108 с.

Рецензенти:

Кандидат філологічних наук, доц.Степанова І.С. (Вінницький національний університет)

Кандидат філологічних наук, доц.Гладьо С.В. (Вінницький державний педагогічний університет імені Михайла Коцюбинського)

Технічний редактор:

Клос Н.С.

Посібник складається з пояснювальної записки та двох розділів, в яких викладено положення про загальні підходи до вивчення лінгвістичних характеристик різнорівневих одиниць англійської мови, методику лінгвістичного аналізу мовних явищ, запропоновано низку практичних завдань для закріплення знань студентів з навчальної дисципліни “Теоретична граматика англійської мови”.

Пояснювальна записка

Частина 1 посібника складається з пояснювальної записки та двох розділів, в яких викладено положення про загальні підходи до вивчення лінгвістичних характеристик різнорівневих одиниць англійської мови, методику лінгвістичного аналізу мовних явищ, запропоновано низку практичних завдань для закріплення знань студентів з навчальної дисципліни “Теоретична граматика англійської мови”.

До навчально-методичного посібника включені інформаційно-навчальні матеріали про структурні та функціонально-семантичні особливості граматичних одиниць англійської мови морфологічного і синтаксичного рівнів, типологічні особливості системно-структурних зв’язків в англійській мові та широке коло питань теоретичного і практичного характеру, що відповідають вимогам програми. Зокрема розглядаються питання особливості категоризації мовних явищ, реалізації та актуалізації граматичних категорій, парадигматичні і синтагматичні відношення в англійській мові.

Посібник містить навчаючі і пояснюючі матеріали, практичні завдання, значну частину з яких складають завдання контролюючого характеру та матеріали для самостійного опрацювання, а також довідкові дані з теоретичної граматики англійської мови. В посібнику є також завдання для самоконтролю знань студентів, що можуть використовуватись для підготовки до заходів контролюючого характеру. Як одна з форм самостійної роботи з навчальної дисципліни студентам пропонуються теми для підготовки рефератів, що охоплюють сучасні проблеми лінгвістики.

На допомогу студентам до посібника включено матеріали інформаційного характеру, які є необхідними для професійної діяльності вчителів англійської мови. При підготовці посібника враховано особливості навчання студентов очної форми навчання.

Матеріали, включені до посібника, сприяють систематизації і розширенню знань студентов про типові граматичні явища і факти мови, формуванню у студентів уявлення про основні граматичні характеристики сучасної англійської мови, а також готують студентів до самостійного наукового пошуку в галузі сучасної лінгвістичної науки.

THEME 1 LECTURES 1-2

LANGUAGE PROPERTIES

OUTLINE

What is language (Definitions)

Objectives of Linguistics

Human language peculiarities

Communicative versus informative

Unique properties of the human language

Project

Objectives of Linguistics

In its most general sense linguistics is the study of language. It embraces all aspects of human communication, from a description of the sounds of speech to the analysis of the way in which the full complexities of thought are expressed in spoken or written form. Linguistics is often called “the science of language” and in many ways this is justified since it is concerned with observing facts about language, setting up hypotheses, testing their validity and accepting or rejecting them accordingly. Linguistics is scientific in its methodology. The linguist attempts to describe how a language works, not to give opinions as to how it should work or what is “correct” and “incorrect”.

Linguistics has two major roles:

1) to establish a workable theory of language at all levels from phonology to semantics;

2) to apply theoretical considerations to a description or analysis of language / languages.

Although there are many schools of thought regarding the development of a theory of language but there is a fundamental dichotomy between the data-orientated approach and a purely theoretical one. The former suggests that a theory can be deduced from observable data and disregards other considerations, whereas the latter puts forward a series of hypotheses to be tested not only against the observable data but against such considerations as a speaker’s intuitive knowledge.

Linguistic analysis begins with the identification of the sounds of speech, shows how these are combined into contrasting groups and meaningful elements and examines the structure of words and their relationship in larger structures.

Displacement

Animal communication is almost exclusively designed for this moment, here and now. It cannot effectively be used to relate events which are far removed in time and place. When your dog says CRRR, it is likely to mean GRRR, right now, because it does not appear capable of communicating GRRR, last night, over in the park. Now, human language-users are perfectly capable of producing messages equivalent to GRRR, last night, over in the park, etc. In fact, I'll be going back tomorrow for some more. They can refer to past and future time, and to other locations. This property of human language is called displacement. It allows the users of language to talk about things and events not present in the immediate environment. Animal communication is generally considered to lack this property.

However, it has been proposed that bee communication does have the property of displacement, e.g., when a worker bee finds a source of nectar and returns to the hive, it can perform a complex dance routine to communicate to the other bees the location of this nectar. Depending on the type of dance (round dance for nearby and tail-wagging dance, with variable tempo, for further away and how far), the other bees can work out where this newly discovered feast can be found. This ability of the bee to indicate a location some distance away must mean that bee communication has at least some degree of displacement as a feature. The crucial consideration involved, of course, is that of degree. Bee communication has displacement in an extremely limited form. Certainly, the bee can direct other bees to a food source. However, it must be the most recent food source. It cannot be that rose garden on the other side of town that we visited last weekend, nor can it be, as far as we know, possible future nectar in bee heaven.

The factors involved in the property of displacement, as it is manifested in human language, are much more comprehensive than the communication of a single location. It enables us to talk about things and places whose existence we cannot even be sure of. We can refer to mythical creatures, demons, fairies, angels, Santa Claus, and recently invented characters such as Superman. It is the property of displacement that allows the human, unlike any other creature, to create fiction and to describe possible future worlds.

Arbitrariness

It is generally the case that there is no 'natural' connection between a linguistic form and its meaning. You cannot look at any Arabic word, and from its shape, for example, determine that it has a natural meaning. The linguistic form of the word ‘dog’, for example, has no natural or 'iconic' relationship with that four-legged harking object out in the world. Recognizing this general fact about language leads us to conclude that a property of linguistic signs is their arbitrary relationship with the objects they are used to indicate. The forms of human language demonstrate a property called arbitrariness: they do not, in any way, 'fit' the objects they denote.

There are, of course, some words in language which have sounds which seem to 'echo' the sounds of objects or activities. English examples might be cuckoo, squelch or whirr, which are onomatopoetic, and which we have already noted are a part of the 'natural sounds' theory of language origin. In most languages, however, these onomatopoetic words are relatively rare, and the vast majority of linguistic expressions are in fact arbitrary.

For the majority of animal signals, there does appear to be a clear connection between the conveyed message and the signal used to convey it. This impression we have of the non-arbitrariness of animal signaling may be closely connected with the fact that, for any animal, the set of signals used in communication is finite. That is, each variety of animal communication consists of a fixed and limited set of (vocal or gestural) forms. Many of these forms are used only in specific situations (e.g. establishing territory) and at particular times (e.g. during fighting/hunting). As far as mating is concerned, the human seems to behave as if it is always open season, and the range and frequent novelty of linguistic expressions used in connection with that activity may provide evidence for another property of human language, normally described as 'productivity'.

Productivity

It is a feature of all languages that novel utterances are continually being created. A child learning language is especially active in forming and producing utterances which he or she has never heard before. With adults, new situations arise or new objects have to be described, so the language-users manipulate their linguistic resources to produce new expressions and new sentences. This property of human language has been termed productivity (or 'creativity', or 'open-endedness'). It is an aspect of language which is linked to the fact that the potential number of utterances in any human language is infinite.

Non-human signaling, on the other hand, appears to have little flexibility. Cicadas have four signals to choose from and monkeys have about thirty-six vocal calls (including the noises for vomiting and sneezing). Nor does it seem possible for animals to produce 'new' signals to communicate novel experiences or events. The worker bee, normally able to communicate the location of a nectar source, will fail to do so if the location is really 'new'. In one experiment, for example, a hive of bees was placed at the foot of a radio tower and a food source at the top. Ten bees were taken to the top, shown the food source, and sent off to tell the rest of the hive about their find. The message was conveyed via a bee dance and the whole gang buzzed off to get the free food. They flew around in all directions, but couldn't locate the food. (It is probably one way to make bees really mad.) The problem may be that bee communication regarding location has a fixed set of signals, all of which relate to horizontal distance. The bee cannot manipulate its communication system to create a 'new' message indicating vertical distance. According to Karl von Frisch, who conducted the experiment, " the bees have no word for up in their language". Moreover, they cannot invent one.

The problem seems to be that animal signals have a feature called fixed reference. Each signal is fixed as relating to a particular object or occasion. Among the vervet monkey's repertoire, there is one danger signal CHUT-TER, which is used when a snake is around, and another RRAUP, used when an eagle comes by. These signals are fixed in terms of their reference and cannot be manipulated. What would count as evidence of productivity in the monkey's communication system would be the utterance of something like a CHUTT-RRAUP type of signal when a flying creature that looked like a snake came by. That is, the monkey would be capable of manipulating its 'language' to cope with the new situation. Unfortunately, we have no evidence that the monkey could produce a new danger signal. The human, given similar circumstances, is quite capable of creating a new 'signal', after initial surprise, by uttering something along the lines of Wow, I don't believe it, an eagle-snake!

Cultural transmission

While you may inherit brown eyes and dark hair from your parents, you do not inherit their language. An infant born to Korean parents (who have never left Korea and speak only Korean), which is adopted and brought up from birth by English speakers in the United States, may have physical characteristics inherited from its natural parents, but it will inevitably speak English. A kitten, given comparable early experiences, will produce meow regardless.

This process whereby language is passed on from one generation to the next is described as cultural transmission. While it has been argued that humans are born with an innate predisposition to acquire language, it is clear that they are not born with the ability to produce utterances in a specific language, such as English. The general pattern of animal communication is that the signals used are instinctive and not learned.

In the case of some birds, however, there is evidence that instinct has to combine with learning (or exposure) to produce the right song. If those birds spend their first seven weeks without hearing other birds, they will instinctively produce songs or calls, but these songs will be abnormal in some way. Human infants, growing up in isolation, produce no 'instinctive' language. Cultural transmission of a specific language is crucial in the human acquisition process.

Discreteness

The sounds used in language are meaningfully distinct. For example, the difference between a ‘b’ sound and a ‘p’ sound is not actually very great, but when these sounds are part of a language like English, they are used in such a way that the occurrence of one rather than the other is meaningful. The fact that the pronunciation of the forms ‘pack’ and ‘back’ leads to a distinction in meaning can only be due to the difference between the p and h sounds in English. This property of language is described as discreteness. Each sound in the language is treated as discrete. It is possible, in fact, to produce a range of sounds in a continuous stream which are all generally like the p and b sounds. These physically different sounds could be conceived of as the spoken counterpart of a written set: b – p.

Duality

Language is organized at two levels or layers simultaneously. This property is called duality, or 'double articulation'. In terms of speech production, we have the physical level at which we can produce individual sounds, like n, b and i. As individual sounds, none of these discrete forms has any intrinsic meaning. When we produce these sounds in a particular combination, as in bin, we have another level producing a meaning which is different from the meaning of the combination in nib. So, at one level, we have distinct sounds, and, at another level, we have distinct meanings. This duality of levels is, in fact, one of the most economical features of human language, since with a limited set of distinct sounds we are capable of producing a very large number of sound combinations (e.g. words) which are distinct in meaning.

It is obvious that, although your dog may be able to produce woof, it does not seem to be a feature of the canine repertoire that the w, oo and f elements can be separated out as a distinct level of production. If your dog could operate with the double level (i.e. duality), then you might expect to hear oowf and even foow, each with different meanings.

Other properties

These six properties of displacement, arbitrariness, productivity, cultural transmission, discreteness and duality may be taken as the core features of human language. Human language does of course have many other properties, but these are not uniquely human characteristics.

The use of the vocal-auditory channel, for example, is certainly a feature of human speech. Human linguistic communication is typically generated via the vocal organs and perceived via the ears. Linguistic communication, however, can also be transmitted without sound, via writing or via the sign languages of the deaf. Moreover, many other species (e.g. dolphins) use the vocal-auditory channel. Thus, this property is not a defining feature of human language.

Similar points can be made about reciprocity (any speaker/sender of a linguistic signal can also be a listener/receiver); specialization (linguistic signals do not normally serve any other type of purpose, such as breathing or feeding); non-directionality (linguistic signals can be picked up by anyone within hearing, even unseen); and rapid fade (linguistic signals are produced and disappear quickly). Most of these are properties of the spoken language, but not of the written language. They are also not present in many animal communication systems which characteristically use the visual mode or involve frequent repetition of the same signal. Such properties are best treated as ways of describing human language, but not as a means of distinguishing it from other systems of communication.

Study questions

Be ready to discuss the questions. Give your grounds and provide examples:

1. What is language (its sounds, words, grammar)?

2. Can all human beings learn a language?

3. Are there any languages that do not use sounds?

4. Do primitive people have complete language or are their languages primitive?

5. Can you briefly explain what the term 'arbitrariness' means when it is used to describe a property of human language?

6. How do human beings acquire a language best?

7. Which term is used to describe the ability of human language-users to discuss topics which are remote in space and time? How does the mechanism work in this case?

8. Is the fact that linguistic signals do not normally serve any other type of purpose, such as feeding, a good reason to consider this a unique property of human language?

9. What is the term used to describe the fact that, in a language, we can have different meanings for the three words tack, act and cat, yet, in each case, use the same basic set of sounds?

10. What kind of evidence supports the idea that language is culturally transmitted?

Additional:

THEME 2 LECTURES 3-4

AND METHODS

Part 1

The scope of grammar

Types of grammar

Grammatical analysis

3.1 grammatical description

3.2 agreement

3.3 prescriptive and descriptive approaches

3.4 structural approach

4. Methods of analysis

4.1 oppositional

4.2 distributional

4.3 IC analysis

4.4 Transformational

Part 2

Tasks

Part 3

Basics of Sentence Parsing

Recommended reading:

1. Donnelly, Colleen. Linguistics for Writers. – NY: State University of New York Press, 1994

2. Huddleston, R. English Grammar: An Outline. – Cambridge: CUP, 1988

3. Iofik L, Chakhoyan L. Readings in the Theory of English Grammar. – L.: Prosveshchenije, 1967.

4. Lehman, Winfred. Language: An Introduction. – NY: Random House, 1993

5. Todd, L. An Introduction to Linguistics. – Longman: York Press, 1987

6. Yule, G. The Study of Language. – CUP, 1996

Study questions

Projects / reports

Competence and performance

1. The scope of grammar

A grammatical model of a language is an attempt to represent systematically and overtly what the native speaker of that language intuitively knows. A model is thus a system of rules that relates patterned sounds to predictable meanings and which reflects a speaker's ability to 'make infinite use of finite means.

As yet, there is no model for English which totally satisfies all requirements for an adequate grammar of the language, although many models have been advanced and they all have their uses. We shall look briefly at the different models advanced in this century in Britain and in the United States and we shall indicate their respective strengths and weaknesses.

The great expansion of linguistics as a discipline in the 1960s and 1970s was associated with advances which were then being made in theories of grammar. The work of Noam Chomksy and others not only generated great excitement within linguistics, but also had a considerable impact in other fields as diverse as psychology and architecture. Today, there is a more even balance in the major areas of linguistic research, but theories of grammar are still considered a central part of language study.

The idea of 'grammar' and of doing grammatical analysis, seems to frighten many people. In part, this may have to do with the nature of language itself - a grammar attempts to make generalizations about language structure, but language has the habit of being more complex in its structure than first appears and often evades simple analysis. However, the way grammar has traditionally been taught in schools in many parts of the world - almost as a matter of punishment than for any enjoyment of discovery and learning - has probably alienated generations of students. But it has to be admitted that linguists themselves have not been entirely helpful in this matter: a whole range of theories and terminologies have emerged in recent years and it is sometimes hard to keep up with changing and conflicting ideas about grammar issues, such for example as sentence structure.

In view of the revolutionary nature of some of the new theories of language, it may seem surprising that they still incorporate many traditional and familiar concepts and categories. Nouns and verbs, and subjects and objects, to name just a few, still appear in modern accounts of sentence structure. At the level of rudimentary description, less has changed than might be supposed.

The word 'grammar' is used by linguists in a variety of ways, which can be confusing to a newcomer to the discipline. The first ambiguity has to do with the scope of grammar: what range of language phenomena does it include? In the days when the study of language meant mainly the study of Latin and Greek, grammar was concerned largely with morphology (the study of word structure). This narrow focus was appropriate for the study of inflected languages, where the relations between words in a sentence is shown primarily by word endings. It was less suitable for the English language, but the focus of grammatical studies remained largely on morphology until well into the twentieth century. The American linguist, Zeilig Harris, was able to complain in 1946 that 'many grammars have carried little or no syntactic description.

As systematic techniques for analysing word order were developed in the second half of the century, so the term 'grammar' came to include both morphology and syntax (the study of how words are combined into longer stretches of language). Such a definition conforms to the traditional use of the word 'grammar' in linguistics, and it coincides, more or less, with popular everyday usage.

Some linguists, however, particularly those working in the tradition established by Chomsky, use 'grammar' to refer to the entire system of organization of language - including phonology and semantics, as well as morphology and syntax.

There is a further ambiguity attached to 'grammar'. Just as the word 'language' is used in two different ways - language and a language - so the word 'grammar' can be used to describe either the general structural properties of human language, or the characteristics of a specific language. The kind of grammar which Chomsky is associated with has become known as universal grammar, which reflects the first of these usages. On the other hand, we can use expressions such as a 'grammar of Sanskrit', to mean a description of the regular patterns of sentence and word structure in Sanskrit.

These different usages of 'grammar' may sound confusing, but in fact the meaning that different linguists intend is usually quite clear. A linguist who provides a general account of language tends to use the word 'grammar' in the wider sense - to include all the components of a linguistic theory. A linguist who provides an account of a particular language tends to use 'grammar' in the narrower sense - to include only morphology and syntax.

2. Types of grammar

The differences in the way the word 'grammar' is defined and used reflect the different motives and purposes for which grammars are designed. At least four kinds of grammar can be usefully identified, each of which employs different methods and frameworks to describe language:

Theoretical grammars: It is these that have revolutionized the study of language during the course of the second half of the twentieth century. Theoretical grammars aim to go beyond describing the morphology and syntax of a particular language, in order to discover what is universal to all languages. Their goal is to describe and to try to explain the general human phenomenon of language. This involves discovering what exactly it is that people 'know' when we say that they 'know' a language, how this knowledge is acquired by children, and how it can best be formulated. Not surprisingly, linguists do not necessarily agree on the precise nature of this human phenomenon, and they have different views about exactly what the grammar should try to explain. This means that theoretical grammars sometimes have very different starting points, and offer very different kinds of explanation. Theoretical grammars tend to use the term 'grammar' in a wider sense: to include all the components of a linguistic theory.

Descriptive grammars: These aim to make precise, systematic statements about the morphology and syntax of specific languages. They are often written for academics and students of a specific language, such as English, Italian or Pali, or for students, teachers and practitioners in language-related fields such as education or psychology. The best descriptive grammars make use of any relevant insights that have been gained by researchers working on theoretical grammars. A reference grammar is a descriptive grammar that aims to provide a fully comprehensive account of all the major morphological and syntactic structures of a language and that can be consulted on particular points of syntax in much the same way that a dictionary can be consulted about the meaning or spelling of individual words.

Pedagogic grammars: These are used by students and teachers involved in teaching or learning a foreign language. Typically they contain simplified, explicit accounts of the main morphological and syntactic structures of a language, often with exercises or drills intended to help students to learn these structures. Modern pedagogic grammars are usually informed by work in theoretical and descriptive linguistics, although they rarely discuss points of morphology and syntax in detail, and it would be difficult for them to achieve their objectives if they did.

Prescriptive grammars: Modern linguists make a clear distinction between descriptive grammars, which aim to give an objective description of how people actually speak, and prescriptive grammars, which lay down rules about how people ought to speak. The notions of 'bad' and 'good' grammar belong to the prescriptivist tradition. Some prescriptive grammars, usually older ones, are idiosyncratic and riddled with inconsistent value judgements. Their prescriptions often try to force speakers of English to conform to rules that were appropriate for Latin but are meaningless when applied to English: some recommend It is she, for instance, instead of It is her, because the verb to be in Latin was followed by a pronoun in the nominative (subject) case. It is pointless, however, to apply the patterns of sentence structure that exist in one language to those of another language: each language must be described in its own terms and the structure of Latin is very different from the structure of English.

Although linguists have generally been at pains to distance themselves from the prescriptivist tradition, prescriptive grammars continue to be bought and consulted regularly by large numbers of people. Native speakers seem to want clear norms for using their own language, and where there is variation between two forms (such as I'll come provided it isn't raining or I'll come providing it isn't raining) they want to be advised on which one to use. Modern prescriptive grammars now base their advice on the way educated speakers use language rather than on the author's personal whims and preferences.

3. Grammatical analysis

In the study of language one of the levels of description used is the linguistic expression presented as sequences of sounds which can be represented phonetically.

For example: The lucky boys

The same linguistic expression can be described as a sequence of morphemes. For example: The luck y boy s

/ / / / /

functional lexical / lexical /

/ /

derivational inflectional

With these descriptions, we could characterize all the words of a language in terms of their phonetic and morphological make-up.

However, we have not yet accounted for the fact that these words can only be combined in a limited number of patterns. We recognize that the phrase the lucky boys is a well-formed piece of English, but that the following two ’phrases’ are not at all well-formed:

*boys the lucky *lucky boys the

So, we need a way of describing the structure of phrases and sentences which will account for all of the grammatical sequences and rule out all the ungrammatical sequences. Providing such an account involves us in the study of grammar, both morphology and syntax, namely a grammatical description. The example below shows particular terms for the parts of speech, as illustrated in the sentence:

The lucky boys saw the clowns at

article adjective noun verb article noun preposition

the circus and they cheered loudly

article noun conjunction pronoun verb adverb

The study of grammar, as the study of the structure of expressions in a language, has a very long tradition going back to classical Latin and Greek. Since there were well-established grammatical descriptions of these older languages, it seemed appropriate to adopt the existing categories from their descriptions and apply them in the analysis of languages like English.

In addition to the terms used for the parts of speech, traditional grammatical analysis also gave us a number of other categories, including 'number', ’person’, 'tense', 'voice' and 'gender'. These categories can be discussed in isolation, but their role in describing language structure becomes clearer when we consider them in terms of agreement. For example, we say that the verb likes 'agrees with' the noun boy in the sentence The boy likes his dog. This agreement is partially based on the category of number, that is, whether the noun is singular or plural. It is also based on the category of person, which covers the distinctions of first person (involving the speaker), second person (involving the hearer) and third person (involving any others).

The different forms of English pronouns are usually described in terms of person and number, in that we have first person singular (I), second person singular (you), third person singular (he, she, it), first person plural (we), and so on. So, in the sentence The boy likes his dog, we have a noun boy, which is third person singular, and the verb likes 'agrees with' the noun.

In addition, the form of the verb must also be described in terms of another category, that of tense. In this case, the verb likes is in the present tense, which is distinguished from the past tense liked. The sentence is also in the active voice, with the boy doing the liking. An alternative is the passive voice, in which the liking is done to the boy, as in The boy is liked by his dog, or just The boy liked.

Our final category in this case is that of gender, which helps us describe the agreement between boy and his in our example sentence. In English, we have to describe this relationship in terms of natural gender, mainly derived from a biological distinction between male and female. The agreement between boy and his is based on a distinction English makes between reference to male entities (he, his), female entities (she, her), and sexless entities, or animals, when the sex of the animal is irrelevant (is, its).

This type of biological distinction is quite different from the more common distinction found in languages which use grammatical gender. In this latter sense, nouns are classified according to their gender class and, typically, articles and adjectives take different forms to 'agree with' the gender of the noun. Spanish, for example, has two grammatical genders, masculine and feminine, illustrated by the expressions el sol ('the sun') and la luna ('the moon') respectively. German uses three genders, masculine der Mond ('the moon'), feminine die Sonne ('the sun') and neuter das Feuer ('the fire'). So, the grammatical category of gender is very usefully applied in describing a number of languages (including Latin), but may not be as appropriate in describing English.

It is one thing to adopt the grammatical labels (e.g. 'noun', 'verb') to categorize words in English sentences; it is quite another thing to go on to claim that the structure of English sentences should be like the structure of sentences in Latin.

There are, of course, many rules which generations of English teachers have attempted to instill in their pupils via corrections, as when the sentence Mary runs faster than me is 'corrected' to read Mary runs faster than I. And Who did you see? is 'corrected' to Whom did you see? And never begin a sentence with and.

It may, in fact, be a valuable part of one's education to be made aware of this 'linguistic etiquette', or the 'proper' use of the language. If it is a social expectation that someone who writes well should obey these prescriptive rules, then social judgments such as " poorly educated" may be made about someone who does not follow these rules.

The descriptive approach

It may be that using a well-established grammatical description of Latin is a useful guide for studying some languages (e.g. Italian or Spanish), is less useful for others (e.g. English), and may be absolutely misleading if you want to describe some non-European languages. This last point became clear to those linguists who wanted to describe the structure of North American Indian languages at the end of the nineteenth century. The categories and rules which were appropriate for Latin grammar just did not seem to fit the Indian languages encountered. As a consequence, throughout the present century, a rather different approach has been taken. Analysts collect samples of the language they are interested in and attempt to describe the regular structures of the language as it is used, not according to some view of how it should be used. This is called the descriptive approach and it is the basis of most modern attempts to characterize the structure of different languages.

One type of descriptive approach is called structural approach and its main concern is to investigate the distribution of forms (e.g. morphemes) in a language. The method employed involves the use of 'test-frames' which can be sentences with empty slots in them. For example:

The ________ makes a lot of noise.

I heard a_______ yesterday.

There are a lot of forms which can fit into these slots to produce good grammatical sentences of English (e.g. donkey, car, dog, radio, child, etc.). Consequently, we can suggest that because all of these forms fit in the same test-frame, they are likely to be examples of the same grammatical category' The label we give to this grammatical category is of course, 'noun' However, there are many forms which do not fit the test-frames above. Examples would be Cathy, it, the dog, a car, and so on. For these forms, we require different test-frames, which could be like this:

______ makes a lot of noise.

I heard ______ yesterday.

Among the forms which fit these test-frames are Cathy, Anna Banana, it, the dog, an old car, the professor with the Scottish accent, and many more. Once again, we can suggest that these forms are likely to be examples of the same grammatical category. The common label for this category is 'noun phrase'. By developing a set of test-frames of this type and discovering what forms fit the slots in the test-frames, you can produce a description of (at least some) aspects of the sentence structures of a language.

4. Methods of linguistic analysis

4.1 Oppositional analysis

The method of oppositional analysis is based on the principle of oppositions. It is equally effective on different linguistic levels (phonology, lexis, morphology and syntax). One of its possible applications in syntax is to describe different sentence-types and variants of one and the same sentence.

Different sentence-types (the opposites) are those that cannot be substituted for each other without changing the structural meaning of the sentence. Here belong:

a) two-member sentences as against one-member sentences,

e. g. Mary worked:: Mary! Work!

b) sentences differing in the arrangement of the main constituents of the sentences, e. g. We saw a river there:: There is a river there;

c) sentences differing in the case-form of the subject,

e. g. Jane was a happy girl:: Jane's was a happy life.

Variants of one and the same sentence-type are such as can be substituted for each other without changing the structural meaning of the sentence or distorting it beyond recognition. Here belong: a) positional, b) optional and c) stylistic variants.

Positional variants are referred to as context sensitive sentences in which one or more elements are left out but « can be unambiguously inferred from the preceding sentence.

The included positional variants are such as can be placed in the position occupied in the preceding sentence by a question word or a word which is repeated in the positional variant,

e. g. Who went there? — Mary. When did you see him? — I Yesterday.

Adjoined positional variants — such as can be optionally added to the preceding sentence,

e. g. I will go there. To-morrow.

Optional variants. Here belong extended sentences as against unextended sentences, e. g. I met her:: I met her in the park on Sunday.

Stylistic variants may be

a) emotional: I was there!

b) colloquial: Where from? Ever seen him?

4.2. Distributional analysis

The distribution of an element is the total of all environments in which it occurs, i. e. the sum of all the (different) positions (or occurrences) of an element relative to the occurrence of other elements.

The distributional value of the verb to get, for instance, will be shown by a set of its distributional formulas:

get + N (a notional verb) get a book

get + A (a copula-type verb) get cool

get + V_to (a semi-auxiliary verb get to think

of aspect)

get + V_ing get thinking

get + p + V_ing get to thinking

get + N +V_ing a causative verb get him work

get + N + V_ing get the watch going

get + N + V_en get it done

get + V_en (the so-called passive- get married

auxiliary)

have got + V_to (a modal verb) It has got to be done.

IC analysis

An English sentence is not just a collection of words. Rather it is a series of groupings of words, a series of constructions that cluster and nest inside other constructions. A basic sentence pattern consists first of all of a subject and a predicate. These are the immediate constituents of the sentence. Since the subject of a basic sentence is a noun cluster and the predicate is a verb cluster, we can say that the immediate constituents of a sentence are a noun cluster and a verb cluster. Each of the IC's of the sentence can in turn be divided to get IC's at the next lower level. For example, I the noun cluster may consist of a determiner plus a noun: (the girl). This construction may be cut between the determiner and the noun: the / girl. The IC's of this noun cluster are the and girl. The verb cluster of the sentence may be a verb plus a noun cluster (liked the music). The IC's of the verb cluster are: liked / the music. The IC's of the music are the and music. The diagram that follows displays the successive breaking down of each unit into two immediate constituents:

Sentence

Noun Cluster Verb Cluster

Determiner Noun Verb Noun Cluster

Determiner Noun

the girl liked the music

The IC model has certain advantages as a generating model because it indicates the groupings of the IC and it shows the order in which the generating of a sentence must proceed.

In spite of its merits the IC model cannot sometimes show that the relations between the elements of the two sentences are different, i. e. it cannot sometimes resolve ambiguity in homonymic patterns, e. g. John is easy to please and John is eager to please.

Immediate constituent analysis is an approach with the descriptive aims. The technique employed in this approach is designed to show how small constituents (or components) in sentences go together to form larger constituents.

This analysis of the constituent structure of the sentence can he represented in different types of diagrams. One type of diagram simply shows the distribution of the constituents at different levels.

Her father brought a shotgun to the wedding

This type of diagram can be substitute for each other at different levels of constituent structure.

Her father brought a shotgun to the wedding

The man saw the thief in a car

Fred took Jean to Honolulu

He came here

Labeled and bracketed sentences

An alternative type of diagram is designed to show how the constituents in sentence structure can be marked off via labeled brackets. The first step is to put brackets (one on each side) around each constituent, and then more brackets around each combination of constituents. For example:

The dog followed the boy

With this procedure, the different constituents of the sentence are shown at the word level [the], at the phrase level [the boy], and at the sentence level [The dog followed the boy].

We can, of course, label each constituent with grammatical terms such as 'Art' (= article). ’N’ (= noun), ’NP’ (= noun phrase), ’V’ (= verb), ’VP’(= verb phrase) and ’S’ (- sentence). In the following diagram, these labels are placed beside each bracket which marks the beginning of a constituent. The result is a labeled and bracketed analysis of the constituent structure of the sentence.

NP VP

Art N V Art N

The dog followed the boy

In performing this type of analysis, we have not only labeled all the constituents we have exposed the hierarchical organization of those constituents. In this hierarchy, the sentence is higher than and contains, the noun phrase. The noun phrase is higher than, and contains, the noun. We shall return to this concept of the hierarchical organization of grammatical structure in the next chapter.

Constituent analysis is not only for the description of English sentences. We can lake a sample sentence from a language with a structure quite different from English and apply the same type of analysis.

Transformational analysis

The transformational grammar divides all the sentences into kernel sentences and their transforms. The kernel sentences are the basic elementary sentences of the language from which all else is made. The kernel sentences are simple declarative unextended sentences. The transforms are syntactic constructions (sentences and phrases) derived from the kernel sentences, retaining their grammatical, relations, but having an additional grammatical meaning of their own. According to the additional grammatical meaning the transforms may be affirmative, interrogative, imperative, exclamatory, negative, passive, compound, complex, etc.

Transforms are derived from kernel sentences by certain transformational rules. These are:

1) The transformation of kernel sentences into other simple sentences (S®S);

2) The transformation of simple sentences into NP—nominalization (S®NP);

3) The transformations of two or more simple sentences into a complex or compound sentence (S₁+S₂+S₃).

Transformations in simple sentences imply the transformation of: 1) affirmation, 2) negation, 3) general question, 4) tag-question, 5) special question, 6) exclamation, 7) command or request, 8) the passive, 9) preposition introduction, 10) permutation (The pencil is here ® Here is the pencil), 11) introducer (The man appeared in the corridor ® There appeared a man in the corridor), 12) reduction (Do you like it? ® Like it? ).

The transformational procedures in simple sentences are carried out by means of:

1) expansion of VP or NP (His dreams came true ® All his dreams came true at last);

2) permutation (change of word-order) (He is here ® Is. he here? );

3) introduction of functional words (He came ® Did he come? ).

4) use of introducers (there, it) (The boy is here ® There is a boy here);

5) omission of the elements of the sentence (Do you like it ® Like it? );

6) change of the intonation contour (He was there ® Was he there? ).

The transformation of nominalization which converts the kernel sentence into a noun-phrase retaining the same semantic relations implies the following procedures:

1) deletion of the verb (The boy has a pencil ® The boy with a pencil);

2) the introduction of prepositions (The man is wise ® The wisdom of the man);

3) permutation of NP₁ and NP₂ (The bowl is for sugar ® A sugar bowl);

4) the derivation of the corresponding N from V (The bird sang ® The song of the bird);

5) transformation of V-finite into V_ing and V_to (We rely on it that he wilt come® We rely on him to come; we rely on his coming).

Tasks

1. What is the principal difference between the transformation of nominalization and transformations in simple sentences?

2. Define the main objectives of the labeling and bracketing procedures.

3. What are the pluses and minuses of the IC analysis?

4. What types of diagrams are used in the IC analysis?

5. Which diagram do you find most relevant/valid? Explain your choice.

6. What are the merits of distributional analysis?

7. How do the positional, optional and stylistic variants differ within the framework of oppositional analysis?

8. Describe the main aspects of the descriptive approach.

9. Describe the main aspects of the prescriptive approach.

10. Give your arguments for (or against) universal grammar. Provide your own examples.

11. Give your own definition of a grammatical model and explain its main aspects.

12. Work out a set of principles (a scheme, a grid, etc.) to help differentiate between different types of grammar.

13. Is it justified to include semantics and phonology in the scope of grammatical analysis? Provide your arguments.

14. Account for the use of the following terms in the definition of the grammatical model: model, patterned sounds, predictable meanings, infinite use, finite means.

Part 3

Basics of Sentence Parsing

Sentence parsing is done through a number of steps that help students to understand the structure of the sentence and the bonds between its structural and semantic parts as well the functions of different sentence members.

In order to represent the structure of the sentence graphically students are required to draw the scheme that will reflect the organisation of the analysed sentence adequately.

The steps to take are the following:

a) identify the main and secondary parts of the sentences;

b) draw the scheme of the sentence;

c) identify the types of relations between sentence parts;

d) speak on the characteristics of the parts of speech and their functions in the sentences.

1. He looked around the room for hidden microphones and cameras, but the place was so simple and modest he couldn’t imagine anyone trying to eavesdrop. /Grisham J. The Chamber. – NY: Dell, 1995. – P. 106/

2. In fact, he knew that he had thirteen days to go, and he accused me of trying to give him medication so he wouldn’t be any trouble when his time came. /Grisham J. The Chamber. – NY: Dell, 1995. – P. 608/

3. At the bottom of the stairway was a door which opened when he turned the knob, and John found himself in a narrow hall that ran the width of the church (Sipherd R. Dance of the Scarecrows. – Reader’s Digest Association: NY, 1996. – P.403)

4. The message on his answering machine was from a gallery-owner friend in New Haven, who was planning a show of John’s work in December and he hoped that John could make a quick trip to new Haven next Wednesday so that they could discuss the hanging of the paintings (Sipherd R. Dance of the Scarecrows. – Reader’s Digest Association: NY, 1996. – P.396)

Additional:

Study questions

1. Give the traditional terms for the grammatical categories of words in the following sentence

(e.g. boy = noun):

The boy rubbed the magic lamp and suddenly a genie appeared beside him.

2. What prescriptive rules for the ’proper’ use of English are not obeyed the following sentences?

(a) That's the girl I gave my roller skates to.

(b) He wanted to simply borrow your car for an hour.

3. Most modern attempts to characterize the structure of sentences are based on a particular approach. What is this approach called, and what general principle is adhered to in such an approach?

4. Present a labeled and bracketed analysis of this sentence:

The policeman chased a robber.

5. Given the following English translations of some other Gaelic words, can you translate the sentences which follow: mor ('big'), beag, ('small'), bhuail (' hit '), duine ('man').

(a) Bhuail an gille beag an cu dubh.

(b) Chunnaic an cu an duine mor.

6. A It has been claimed (Palmer, 1983) that English does not have a future tense form of the verb, although it does have many ways of referring to future time. Consider the following sentences and decide what kind of time-reference is involved. Then, consider whether the labels 'past', ’present’ and 'future' are appropriate for describing the verb forms used.

Water will freeze at zero degrees Centigrade.

I'll leave if you want.

If Bucky phones, tell him I am asleep.

I wish I had a million dollars.

Your plane leaves at noon tomorrow.

We 're going to visit Cairo next year.

She said Jim was leaving next week.

Shall we dance?

7. The types of grammatical descriptions we have considered would simply treat the following examples as English sentences and present a description of their form and structural organization. Is this what everyone considers as 'grammar'? Might there be more to say about sentences like these?

I don’t know nothing about that

You wasn't here when he come looking for you

There's hundreds of students in there

Do you wanna go? Are you gonna go?

8. Can you produce a single diagram, following the format of an immediate constituent analysis, which would incorporate all the constituents of the following sentences? What problems have to be resolved in an exercise like this?

A friend borrowed my car in June. They arrived yesterday.

My parents bought two tickets at Christmas. Suzy left.

THEME 3 LECTURE 5

BASIC GRAMMATICAL ASSUMPTIONS

AND NOTIONS

OUTLINE

1. The notion of grammatical opposition

2. Transposition of grammatical forms

3. Polysemy, homonymy and synonymy in grammar

3.1 Polysemy

3.2 Homonymy

3.3 Synonymy

Key terms: opposition, grammatical opposition, transposition, polysemy, homonymy, synonymy in grammar

Recommended Reading

1. Alova N., Starikova E. Seminars in Theoretical Grammar. – Ryiv: Vyscha Sckola, 1972

2. Huddleston, R. English Grammar: An Outline. – Cambridge: CUP, 1988

3. Morokhovskay E.J. Fundamentals of Theoretical English Grammar. – Kiev: Vysca Skola, 1992

Study questions

Project

English and globalization

Polysemy

A separate grammatical form can vary in meaning in different contexts of its use like words that are used as signs of many things/ In case of grammatical polysemy we observe various structural meanings inherent in the given form, one of them being invariable, i.e. can be found in any context of its use.

Contextual variation of component grammatical meanings as potentially implicit in grammatical form must be distinguished from so-called syncretism, i. e. plurality of the signified.

e.g. A simple verb-form may have as always inseparably present in it, the grammemes of mood, time, person, number

he works, she works; similarly: she is, she was, etc.

The study of potential polysemy in grammar must reasonably be associated with the problem of functional transpositions of grammatical forms leading to variation in their meaning in different contexts, linguistic or situational. Examine, for instance, the multiple semantic essence of the Present tense (Continuous Aspect) in Modern English which may express:

1. An action going on at the moment of speaking

You are behaving like a child.

2. Activities, properties

She is playing the piano well.

3. Repeated processes of increasing duration

She is always grumbling.

4. An action anticipated or planned in the future

We are seeing him tonight.

5. Order or command

You are not going in there! (= Don't go in there! )

The necessary meaning of the verb-form is always signalled by the context or situation, and no ambiguity arises.

Homonymy

Polysemy leads to homonymy. In case of homonymy the invariable structural meaning of a given grammatical form is no longer traced in different uses of this form. Vivid examples of homonymic grammatical forms will be found in the following patterns:

1. She said she would come soon.

2. // she knew this she would come at once.

3. He would come and tell us stories.

4. We asked him to slay here but he wouldn't.

5. If George is there he would know.

It should be mentioned that there is distinct plurality in function of some " grammatical" words (all, since, but, etc).

Observe, for instance, the grammatical nature of " all" in the following patterns:

1) Pronominal use: All is well that ends well.

2) Adjectival use: All day, all night.

3) Adverbial use, effective as a means of emphasis:

a) with adjectives: He is all wrong. That's all right.

b) with verb-forms: The sound did all confound her senses.

c) with adverbs and adverbial phrases: all too soon, all too late, all of a sudden.

d) with nouns: She is all goodness, I am all ears. She is all smiles.

4) In informal style all occurs as a coordinate terminating series where its use is idiomatic and highly exceptional: She is pretty and clever and all.

5) In idiomatic sentence-pattern:

You must sit still all you can ( = as still as you can).

Synonymy

Synonymy is a natural development at different levels of linguistic structure. It is a universal feature in all languages.

As for synonymy in grammar it is typical of grammatical forms and structures that coincide in their grammatical content but differ in subtle shades of their content or in stylistic value. In certain contexts grammatical synonyms are interchangeable.

Grammatical synonymic forms are traditionally classified into:

a) paradigmatic synonyms and

b) synonyms by function in speech, often referred to as contextual or situational.

Paradigmatic synonyms are found among the grammatical forms belonging in the paradigm of a given grammatical category.

Contextual synonyms are distinctly ones to be found on the speech level. Such grammatical forms go parallel by function in speech only.

Here are a few examples of paradigmatic synonyms:

Non-emphatic Emphatic

I come I do come

I came I did come

Come! Do come!

Compare also: However hard it should rain, we shall have to go

and However hard it rain, we shall have to go.

In these two sentences the grammatical forms 'should rain' and 'rain' are identical in their grammatical content but differ in stylistic value. The former is stylistically neutral, the latter is formal and bookish.

Functional transpositions at the grammatical level will furnish numerous examples of contextual synonymy. Here are some of them:

You always waste money on trifles — You are always wasting money

on trifles

I shall not come back to England — I am not coming back to

England

Syntactic synonyms may be well illustrated by such verb-phrases and their nominal counterparts as:

Birds are singing. — Birds are in song.

She thought deeply. — She was in deep thought.

The ice seemed suddenly appalingly — The ice seemed suddenly of thin. appalling thinness. (J. Galsworthy).

Compression of sub-clauses through nominalization will also illustrate synonymy on the syntactic level.

We rely on it that he will. — We rely on him to come, come.

We rely on his coming.

Study Questions

1. Give your examples of the grammatical forms based on the principle of opposition.

2. Point out and analyze the forms used in transposition in the following sentences:

1. That’s right too. I am always forgetting it.

2. This play reads well, much better than acts in fact.

3. The ship sails at twelve, doesn’t it?

4. Oh dear, when is the apple pie with custard coming?

3.Explain the following statement:

“ Grammatical polysemy is a result of metaphoric transference of meaning, based on association or analogy, on similarity or opposition”.

THEME 4 LECTURES 6-7

Morphemes and morphs

Word as a linguistic unit

Words and lexemes

Word formation

Recommended reading:

1. Blokh M.Y. A Course of Theoretical English Grammar. – M: Высшая школа, 1983. – С. 17-49

2. Morokhovskay E.J. Fundamentals of English Grammar: Theory and Practice. – Kyiv: Vysca Skola, 1993. – P.61-149.

3. O’Grady W., Dobrovolsky M., Aronoff M. Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction. – NY: St.Martin’s Press, 1989. – P. 90-125

4. Yule, G. The Study of Language. – Cambridge: CUP, 1997. – P. 74-85

Key terms: morphology, morph, morpheme (free, bound), words (simple, complex, compound), word classes (open, close), lexeme, word (lexical, grammatical), lexico-grammatical words, compounding, derivation, affication, conversion, stress shift, clipping, acronyms, blends, backformation, onomatopoeic words, multiple derivation

Tasks and Study Questions

Projects

Word formation processes

1. General Characteristics of the Word and Word Structure

LlanfairpwIlgwyngyUgogerychwyhndrobwIinantysiliogogogoch

(a town name in Wales)

How is it that we can use and understand words in our language that we have never encountered before? This is the central question of morphology, the component of a grammar that deals with the internal structure of words.

As with any other area of linguistic theory, we must distinguish between general morphological theory that applies to all languages and the morphology of a particular language. General morphological theory is concerned with delimiting exactly what types of morphological rules can be found in natural languages. The morphology of a particular language, on the other hand, is a set of rules with a dual function. First, these rules are responsible for word formation, the formation of new words. Second, they represent the speakers' unconscious knowledge of the internal structure of the already existing words of their language.

There are two basic types of words in human language—simple and complex. Simple words are those that cannot be broken down into smaller meaningful units while complex words can be analyzed into constituent parts. The word houses, for example, is made up of the form house and the plural marker -s, neither of which can be divided into smaller morphemes. While many English words consist of only one morpheme, others can contain two, three, or more.

e.g. hunt, boy, gentle, boy-s, hunt-er, hospital-ize, gentle-man, hospital-iz-alion, gentle-man -1i- ness

Morphology deals with the internal structure of complex words. The words of any language can be divided into two broad types of categories, closed and open, of which the latter are most relevant to morphology.

The closed categories are the function words: pronouns like you and she; conjunctions like and, if, and because; determiners like a and the; and a few others. Newly coined or borrowed words cannot be added to these categories, which is why we say that they are closed. The categories of words that are open are the major lexical categories: noun (N), verb (V), adjective (A), and adverb (Adv). It is to these categories that new words may be added. Because the major problem of morphology is how people make up and understand words that they have never encountered before, morphology is concerned largely with major lexical categories.

When we perceive the continuum of speech in a language with which we are familiar, we do not hear a string of individual sounds: we automatically associate groups of sounds into meaningful words.

Everyone will feel that he or she knows exactly what the words is and it is true that in our native language we seem to have a very clear intuitive idea of what constitutes a word. This is not necessarily connected with the notion of letters between spaces in the written languages, because even speakers of a language which has no written form can separate utterances into ‘word’. In spite of the fact that everyone is certain of what constitutes a word, the definition of such a unit has presented and still presents many problems for the linguist. In the written language it would perhaps be possible to define a word as ‘a form written between spaces’ but in speech we do not necessarily make pauses between words and in any case our division of the written language into words is very inconsistent. Other methods of defining ‘word’ have been tried with recourse for example to semantics, defining the word as a ‘unit of meaning’, but this is doomed to failure because many ‘units of meaning’ consists of more than one word: e.g. an automatic dish washer or a blow on the chin.

Furthermore, we can have ‘units of meaning’ which are not words. For example, we all recognize the meaning of re- in retell, reorganize etc, but we can’t call it a word. A syntactic definition of a word’s a unit which can add an inflectional ending will not take us very far because we can say “The King of England’s throne”, where the inflection ‘s is added to something which is certainly more than a word. Perhaps the most famous definition of ‘word’ is that of L. Bloomfield who defined it as a ‘minimum freeform’, which really means that it is the smallest unit which can be used alone to constitute a sentence. But even here, however, there are difficulties with marginal cases such as the or a in English or je in French, all of which we should probably want to label as words but none of which can stand alone.

Agglutinating languages also present special problems here since they contain many units which cannot stand alone. In Japanese, for example, I must go can be translated by ikenakercbanarimasen which consists of the word go – ‘ik’ and several particles to give the meaning of obligation.

Even in speech we can recognize that words that words are made up of parts which have meaning and which can be used in different combinations to build different words.

Cf: happy – happiness; loud – loudness; slow – slowly.

We do not recognize such elements as –ness, -ly; -s as words. Units which are used to form words are called morphemes, the study of the way phonemes are combined into morphemes and morphemes into words is called morphology or morphemics.

We have already recognized –ness, -ly, -s as units of word formation but we can see that they do not constitute words in the same way as the units dog (s), quick, loud. This distinction tells us why morphemes are usually divided into two categories:

- free morphemes

- bound

Free morphemes are meaningful units of language structure which can be used independently or in combination with other morphemes. A word which consists of only one morpheme must consist of a free morpheme.

Bound morphemes are meaningful units with language structure which can only be used in conjunction with another morpheme, which can be either free or bound.

home – homes – homework

We can categorize different types of words according to the way in which they are formed from their constituent morphemes.

A simple word consists of a single morpheme (which must, of course, be a free morpheme)

e.g. cat, dog, elephant, sorry

A compound word is made up of usually two free morphemes used together to form a single lexical unit e.g. headline, blackbird, toothbrush.

A complex word consists either of a free morpheme together with a bound morpheme, or of two bound morphemes.

Free + bound

e.g kingdom, happiness; return, befriend, untie

Bound + bound

e.g. resist, conclude, invest

Word as a Linguistic Unit

From ancient times the Word has been recognized to be the central unit of the language. Many attempts have been undertaken to give a general characterization of the word as a linguistic form. But it is hardly possible to arrive at one exhaustible definition of the Word. Ferdinand de Saussure popularized the most workable theory that a word (or lexical item) is an association between a form and a concept. When several words are used together in a sentence, they may refer to some object in the world, i.e. their referent. This makes the Triangle of Signification, having a referent in the world but form and concept in the language.

form concept, sense

(in a LANGUAGE)

referent

(in a WORLD)

The Word is a linguistic unit, thus its ontological status is that of belonging to the elements of lingual reality. As any other linguistic unit the Word must be characterized with regard to its linguistic properties. The Word is a linguistic sign. A linguistic sign, as it is commonly defined, is a bilateral linguistic entity having its content and expression sides which correlates with the matters of concept and may indirectly reflect the objects and phenomena of objective reality.

The assertion that the Word is the main unit of language is not complete till it is specified that the Word is the main expressive unit of human language which ensures the thought-forming or expressive function of language, whereas the Sentence is the main communicative language unit.

Words and Lexemes

Syntax deals with combinations of words, as far as morphology studies the form of words. The term 'word', however, is used in a variety of senses, so that it will be helpful to begin with some clarification. Consider the sentences This tooth needs attention and These teeth need attention. Are tooth and teeth instances of the same word or of different words? In one sense they are clearly different: they differ in pronunciation, spelling, meaning and in their grammatical behaviour. In another sense, however, they are manifestations of a single element, and indeed they are traditionally said to be 'forms of the same word.

We thus have two distinct concepts here, the second more abstract than the first: so the word is often used in the less abstract sense and then it’s necessary to introduce the term lexeme for the more abstract one. If we say that tooth and teeth are different words, but forms of the same lexeme. Words will be represented in ordinary italics, lexemes in bold italics: tooth is the singular form of the lexeme tooth, while teeth is its plural form.

More precisely, we will say that tooth and teeth are different inflectional forms of tooth, and will speak of " singular and 'plural' here as inflectional properties.

Similarly with verbs: sang and sung, for example, are respectively the past tense and past participle forms of the lexeme sing. The set of inflectional forms of a lexeme constitutes an inflectional paradigm: the paradigm for tooth contains the two forms tooth and teeth, while that for sing contains sang, sung, sing and various others as the verb inflection is a good deal more complex than noun inflection.

The distinction we have drawn between word and lexeme makes our concept of word more precise, but there remains one further point to be clarified.

E.g. Consider the pairs

[The window was] clean and [I'll] clean [the window]

[She drew some cash from the] bank [by the post office]

and [She lay on the] bank [of the river]

The two cleans are forms of different lexemes: the first is a form of the adjective clean, which has cleaner and cleanest as its other forms, whereas the second is a form of the verb clean, which has cleaned, cleans, etc., as its other forms. The difference between the two banks is lexical rather than grammatical: they are different lexical items - i.e. different items of the vocabulary. I will distinguish between the term word used without qualification and lexicogrammatical word in such a way that the former does not presuppose any lexical or grammatical analysis while the latter does. Given this terminology, the two cleans or the two banks will be instances of the same word but of different lexicogrammatical words. We have more occasion to talk simply of words than of lexicogrammatical words.

The structure of the entire word may be represented by means ol either a sel < rf labeled brackets or a tree diagram, (Brackets and trees are also used to represent the structures of sentences).

The two types. of notation are for the most part interchangeable

Adj

De nation al ize ation

[[[hospital]N ize]V ed]V

Both ways indicate the details of the morphological structure of the word.

Study questions and tasks

1. Consider the following words and answer the questions below.

a) fly f) reuse k) spiteful p) preplan

b) desks g) triumphed l ) suite q) optionality

c) untie h) delight m) fastest r) prettier

d) tree i ) justly n) deform s) mistreat

e) dislike j ) payment o) disobey t) premature

i) For each word, determine whether it is simple or complex.

ii) Circle all of the bound morphemes. Underline all of the roots.

2. Consider the following words.

a) desks e) triumphed i) preplan (V) m) optionality

b) untie f) ageless j) fastest n) prettier

c) invalid (A) g) justice k) reuse o) mistreat

d) dislike (V) h) payment l) disobey p) preview (V)

i) Draw a tree structure of each word.

ii) For the word optionality, what is the base for the affix -ion? What is the base for the suffix -ity? Are either of these bases also the root for the entire word? If so, which one?

3. Each of the following columns illustrates a different morphological process.

Column1 Column 2

a) mouse/ mice f) ré cord/ recó rd

b) dive/ dove g) í mport/ impó rt

c) take/ took h) có nvict/ conví ct

d) goose/ geese i) í mprint/ imprí nt

e) eat/ ate j) ó utrage/ outrage

i) What morphological process is at work in column 1? Column 2?

ii) Describe in your own words the difference between the process exemplified in column 1 versus that in column 2.

iii) Think of at least one more English example to add to each column.

4. The following words can be either nouns or verbs.

a) record f) outline k) report

b) journey g) convict l) outrage

c) exchange h) imprint m) answer

d) remark i) reprint n) import

e) surprise j) retreat o) cripple

i) For each word, determine whether stress placement can be used to make the distinction between noun and verb.

5. Here are five instances where a new word is needed. Create a word for each of these definitions using the word formation process suggested. Fill in the blanks with new words.

a) Use an acronym.... for your uncle's second oldest brother.

" We visited my ___________ at Christmas."

b) Use onomatopoeia.... for the sound of coffee percolator at work.

" I can't concentrate because my perc is ____________ing."

c) Use conversation.... for wrapping something breakable in bubbles.

" You'd better ___________ that ornament or else it might break."

6. The words in column 2 have been created from the corresponding word in column 1. Indicate the word formation process responsible for the creation of each word in column 2.

Column 1 Column 2

a) automation → automate

b) humid → humidifier

c) stagnation, inflation → stagflation

d) love, seat → loveseat

e) é nvelope → envelop

f) typographical → typo

g) aerobics, marathon → aerobathon

h) act → deactivate

i) curve, ball → curve ball

j) perambulator → pram

k) (a) comb → comb (your hair)

l) beef, buffalo → beffalo

m) random access memory → RAM

n) megabyte → meg

o) teleprinter, exchange → telex

p) influenza → flu

7. Create new words for each of the following situations.

a) Use a product name.... for the act of scrubbing with Ajax.

" I ___________ed the tub after giving Fido a bath.

b) Use the proper name.... for the act of breaking dishes which Jonathan does regularly.

" He's going to ____________ all of my best dishes."

c) Use clipping.... for a course in ovinology (the study of sheep).

" Have you done your ______________ assignment yet? "

d) Use derivation.... for being able to be contacted.

" The counselor is not very ____________."

e) Use a blend.... for a hot drink made with milk and nutmeg.

" I'll have a ____________ and two peanut butter cookies, please."

8. Determine whether the words in each of the following groups are related to one another by process of inflection or derivation.

a) go, goes, going, gone

b) discover, discovery, discoverer, discoverable, discoverability

c) lovely, lovelier, loveliest

d) inventor, inventor's, inventors, inventors'

e) democracy, democrat, democratic, democratize

9. The following sentences contain both derivational and inflectional affixes. Underline all of the derivational affixes and circle the inflectional affixes.

a) The farmer's cows escaped. e) The strongest rower won.

b) It was raining. f) The pitbull has bitten the

cyclist.

c) Those socks are inexpensive. g) She quickly closed the

book.

d) Jim needs the newer version. h) The alphabetization

went well.

10. Think of your own examples to illustrate the most productive word formation ways.

SEMINAR 1

OUTLINE

Sign systems

Communicative context

Language and thought

Part 2

Topics for class discussion

Key terms: communicative function, expressive (representative) function, referentiality, extralingual referents, nomination, signification, nominators, significators, indexical sign, iconic sign, symbolic sign, semiotics, verbal thinking, communicative context, macro context, micro context, verbalization

Recommended reading:

1. Blokh M.Y. A Course of Theoretical English Grammar. – M: Высшая школа, 1983. – pp. 6-9.

2. Cognitive Exploration of Language and Linguistics // Ed. Dirven R. - Amsterdam, 1998

3. Morokhovskay E.J. Fundamentals of Theoretical English Grammar. – Kiev: Vysca Skola, 1984. – pp.3-12

4. O’Grady W., Dobrovolsky M., et al. Contemporary Linguistics. – NY: St Martin’s Press, 1994. – pp. 1-17

OF LANGUAGE

Index Icon Symbol

link form & meaning link form & meaning link form & meaning

based on contiguity based on similarity based on convention

Communicative context

Human language is the product of human society, it is the perfect means of human communication. The communicative function which is the primary socially conditioned one, presupposes mental, speech and communicative activities in the process of social intercourse.

The communicative function of language is realized under the appropriate conditions of the communicative context, i. e. the complex of different objective and subjective factors which influence the realization of the function by either favouring or restricting the process of speech communication.

There are two types of communicative context. The macro communicative context is represented by the social and cultural conditions of communication. The social status of the communicants, their cultural and philosophical outlook are the background factors which lay constraints on the communicative use of language.

The micro communicative context is the very objective speech situation in which the process of speech communication takes place.

Communicative grammatical theories deal with the speech conditions and with the processes of speech communication which predetermine the effectiveness of the communicative use of language.

According to the principles of the general " speech act" theory the communicative speech situation can be conventionally subdivided into the three spheres centering round the main components of such situations: the sphere of speaking with the Speaker as its center, the sphere of hearing with the Hearer (Addressee) in its centre and the lingually coded message or the Text.

4. Language and Thought

The fact that language can be used to express our thoughts gives rise to some interesting questions. How are language and thought related? Can we think without language? Is our thinking molded by the structure of our language? These are very difficult questions, thus, conflicting opinions have been advanced. The following observations review the latest developments concerning the problem of language and thought.

If we define thought as conscious mental activity, we can observe first that thought, or at least certain kinds of thought, can take place completely independently of language. The simplest example is that of music. We have all had the experience of being absorbed in listening to an instrumental work or mentally running through a familiar tune. Language is simply not involved. (The existence of music with lyrics is of course beside the point.) Musical composition is in no way dependent on language, so far as the actual process of creation is concerned, and the same would seem to be true of various other forms of creative or problem-solving activity.

Another example - The sculptor at work is in no significant sense guided by language. He may, of course, receive much of his instruction through language, talk about his creations, and even entertain himself with an internal verbal soliloquy as he chips away with hammer and chisel. But such verbalization does not appear to be instrumental in his creative activity. There may be many stretches of time during which he is so busy conceptualizing forms and techniques that words disappear entirely from his thoughts.

Another example still - Much the same is true of a person engrossed in solving a jigsaw puzzle. Suddenly perceiving that two independently completed sections belong together is in no way a linguistic accomplishment, although one may subsequently exclaim, " Aha! This must go over here! ”

A further argument for the existence of thought without language is the common experience of wishing to express some idea but being unable to find a satisfactory way to put it into words. If thought were impossible without language, this problem would never arise.

Nevertheless, much of our thought clearly does involve language, some of it in an essential way. Some scholars have lamented the " tyranny" of language and claimed that the " world view" of a person or community is shaped by the language used. However, the problem of assessing the influence of language on thought deserves to be treated with great caution. Certainly people have sometimes been misled by a blind reliance on words, but we can recognize such cases and set the record straight; if language were all that tyrannical, we would be unable to perceive that it sometimes leads us into error when we arc not being careful. Furthermore, we must entertain the possibility that when we think in words, our thought is not molded by language at all; there may be a more general human cognitive capacity at play, for which language merely serves as a medium, just as music serves as a medium for the composer's creative powers.

Scholars generally agree that words greatly facilitate certain kinds of thinking by serving as counters, or symbols, that can easily be manipulated. We all have a fairly good idea of what arithmetic is; we know how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide. We also know the word arithmetic, which serves as a label for this conceptual complex. When we think about arithmetic (how it fits into the rest of mathematics, how it is taught in our schools, whether our children are good at it, whether we like it), we can use the word arithmetic as a symbol in our thought Processes. It is much easier to manipulate the word arithmetic in our minds than to operate with the entire conceptual complex that this word symbolizes. Tire use of verbal symbols thus makes thought easier in '" any cases. One might even argue that some kinds of thinking would be impossible without the existence of these convenient counters to operate with.

Verbal labels are particularly important in the realm of abstract ideas. Justice, democracy, liberty, communism, and education are familiar terms, yet it would be very hard to pin down their meanings precisely. Justice does not evoke a concrete image in the way table does. We can usually agree on whether or not something is a table, but how sure can we ever be about justice? When is something correctly labeled obscene? Does the word liberty have any real significance? We certainly have at least a vague idea of what is meant by these terms, but their meanings tend to be quite elusive and to vary considerably from person to person. These concepts probably would not exist at all if there were no words for them, serving to gather and hold together a number of vague, not very coherent notions. Because they are abstract words like these are quite loosely tied to reality. In a sense, they are almost empty. If one is not careful, they can become emotionally charged labels functioning only to brand someone or something as good or bad. It is unfortunately very easy to call someone a communist or to do something in the defense of liberty, and it is very easy to be misled by the empty use of words.

What is the relation between our thought processes and the structure of our language? Is language a tyrannical master, relentlessly forcing our thinking to follow certain well-worn paths, blinding us to all other possibilities? Is our conception of the world crucially conditioned by the language we speak, as some people have claimed? These questions can be posed with respect both to words and to grammatical structures.

We have seen that a word can be helpful in forming, retaining, or operating with the concept it designates. We have also seen that no two languages match precisely in the way in which they break up conceptual space and assign the pieces to words as meanings: English distinguishes between green and blue while other languages use a single word to designate this entire range of the color spectrum; some languages have words for individual kinds of trees but lack a general term, analogous to English tree, to designate the entire class. Differences like these extend throughout the vocabulary and will be found no matter which two languages arc compared. Our question, then, is to what extent these differences in the linguistic categorization of experience are responsible for corresponding differences in thought.

There is little doubt that lexical differences have some effect on thought, at least in the sense that it is easier to think about things we have words for. We are accustomed to labeling some colors with the term red and others with the term blue. When presented with a typically red or blue object we can quickly name its color; the terms red and blue are readily available to us, for we have had lifelong experience in calling some things and others blue. We will have little trouble remembering the color of a red or blue object. Suppose, however, that you are presented -it-h an object that is an extremely dark shade of brown, so dark that it is 1mnst black. There is no common term in English for this particular color. Most likely you will hesitate to call it either brown or black, because it is not typical of the colors usually called brown or black. Eventually you may resort to a phrase like very dark brown or brownish black, but such a phrase will probably not come to mind so quickly and readily as red or blue. We are not so accustomed to distinguishing shades of brown from one another as we are to distinguishing red from blue. It will prove harder to remember a particular shade of brown (as opposed to other shades of brown) than to remember the color of a typically red object. If our language, on the other hand, had a separate word for this very dark shade of brown and if we were accustomed to categorizing objects of this color by describing them with this word, there might not be such difficulties.

Our thinking is thus conditioned by the linguistic categorization of experience in that it is easier to operate with concepts coded by single words than with concepts for which no single term is available. The way in which one's language breaks up conceptual space thus has at least a minimal effect on thought. But there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that this influence is in any significant way a tyrannical or even a powerful one. We are perfectly capable of forming and mentally manipulating concepts for which no word is available. We can make up imaginary entities at will and, if we so choose, proceed to name them. For example, imagine a unicorn with a flower growing out of each nostril. No word exists for such an entity, but it is easy to think about it nevertheless. We could dream up a name for it, but we do not have to.

What about the grammatical structures of a language? Do they force our thinking into certain customary grooves to the exclusion of other possibilities? Do they determine our way of viewing the world, as many scholars have maintained?

Overtly, languages sometimes display very striking differences in grammatical structure. Commonly, languages differ in the grammatical categories that are obligatorily represented in sentences. One such category is gender.

CF gender characteristics in English, German, Ukrainian, etc.

(These distinctions, by the way, are grammatical ones; they have nothing very directly to do with sex.)

Gender is of course only one example. Number, case, tense, and aspect are other categories often found in familiar European languages. And many languages mark categories that seem more exotic to speakers of English. It is not unusual for the plural to be marked differently depending on whether the objects involved are close together or scattered about. Certain Navaho verbs of handling, meaning such things as 'drop' or 'pick up, ' van' in form depending on the shape of the thing that is handled. Thus one form will be used if the object is round or amorphous in shape; another form will be used if it is long, slender, and rigid; and so on. Sentences in the Siouan languages contain markers indicating the speaker's estimation of the veracity of what is expressed.

No one denies that these overt grammatical differences exist. If two languages are different enough in structure, a literal, item-by-item translation of a sentence from one language into the other can seem most bizarre to speakers of the second language. It is quite another thing, however, to claim that these differences in grammatical structure entail significant differences in the thought processes of the speakers. No evidence has ever been presented to support this claim. Grandiose assumptions about one's world view being determined by the structure of one's language have never been shown to be anchored in fact. There is absolutely no reason to believe that the grammatical structure of our language holds our thoughts in a tyrannical, vise-like grip.

It is not really surprising that no such evidence has been found. The claims arc based on really very superficial aspects of linguistic structure. If French nouns are divided into two gender classes while English nouns are not, so what? No valid psychological conclusions follow from this arbitrary, rather uninteresting grammatical fact.

Part 2

Topics for Class Discussion

1. Functional view of the language

2. Basic functions of the language

3. Semiotic nature of the language.

4. Types of linguistic signs.

5. Language and thought: correlation or reflection?

SEMINAR 2

ANALYSIS OF LANGUAGE (I)

OUTLINE

Part 1

System and Structure

Types of Meaning in Grammar

Nuclear and Periphery

Key notions: system, structure, phoneme, morpheme, word, word combination, sentence, phrase, mononomination, polynomination, nuclear, periphery, function (differential, significative, nominative, predicative)

Part 2

Tasks and Study questions

Part 3

Sentence Parsing

Recommended Reading

1. Blokh M.Y. A Course of Theoretical English Grammar. – M: Высшая школа, 1983. – pp. 9-17.

2. Morokhovskay E.J. Fundamentals of Theoretical English Grammar. – Kiev: Vysca Skola, 1984. – pp.13-32

System and Structure

The systemic approach to language leads to the recognition of the systemic nature of human language. The systemic features are characteristic of the language as a whole and of the elements making up the whole.

The two notions " system" and " structure" are usually applied in the internal analysis of language.

The " system" is a synthesizing notion which implies the characterization of a complex object as a whole made up of separate parts. Language as a system is characterized as an orderly arrangement of cognate elements interrelated in the whole. The elements of the system are identified as components of the multitude. They possess the systemic value as the members of the given system which can be conceived through the establishment of the systemic relations, paradigmatic and syntagmatic, between the elements of the system because systemic components have no value apart from the system.

The structural view on language as a structure does not contradict the principles of the systemic approach to complex objects. This is an alternative but non-contradictory consideration of language with the focus on the mode of its internal organization. The notion " structure" which is basic for structural approach implies hierarchical layering of the parts in constituting the integrated whole. Language is not a pile of elements, it is a perfect constitution of the language units which are integrated in the structural whole.

Even the earliest grammatical theorists recognized the systemic nature of grammar, but the scientifically sustained and consistent principles of systemic approach to language and its grammar were essentially developed in the linguistics of the twentieth century, mainly in the works of the famous Russian scholar Beaudoin de Courtenay and the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure.

2. Structural levels of the Language

Language is a structural layering and the structure of language is conventionally segmented into a number of structural levels. The levels of language are not independent layers, there are no gaps in the level structure of language because of the integrant properties of the level units: phonemes are the integrants of morphemes, morphemes are the integrants of words, etc. Naturally, there are transition and boundary cases.

By common tradition the three main structural levels are distinguished in the structure of language which are represented by the corresponding level-units: phonological, morphological and syntactical levels.

The phonological level is the lowest language level. The phoneme is the phonological level unit which represents the features of the elements of the level and displays the features of the distinctive units of language.

The morphological level is the second of the main structural levels of language. There are two units at the morphological level which represent the two morphological sublevels: the Morpheme and the Word. The morpheme is the lowest meaningful unit of language and the word is the main nominative (naming) unit of language. Morphemes occur as meaningful parts of the word.

Morphemes are the integrants of words and there are elements which are intermediate between morphemes and words. These are known as " word-morphemes" because they display the features of both the word and the morpheme, they look like words but behave as morphemes. There are word-morphemes of lexical and of grammatical relevance. The first of these change the status and the meaning of the word (to give in, to bring up). The grammatical word-morphemes are of form-derivational value, they are auxiliary elements with the help of which analytical grammatical forms are derived (be + V-ing, have + V-en).

The syntactical level of language is the highest stage in the hierarchy of language units. The syntactical level units are the highest structural units of language which possess communicative value as the distinguishing feature of the elements of that level. The sentence is in fact the main communicative unit of language and it is the main syntactic unit too.

But there are several syntactic units which are hierarchically arranged at the level. Due to the law of hierarchy which governs the arrangement of the units in the structure of language and at its separate levels, the two sublevels are commonly distinguished at the syntactical level: the level of the Phrase and that of the Sentence. The phrase or word-group is the dependent syntactic unit distinguished as part of the sentence only.

Above the phrasemic level lies the level of sentences, the so-called proposemic level.

Its peculiar character lies in the fact that it expresses predication, i.e. shows the relations between the denoted event to reality, namely it shows whether this event is real or unreal, desirable, necessary, true or false, etc.

The sentence is produced by the speaker in the process of speech as a concrete, situationally bound utterance. At the same time it enters the system of language by its syntactic pattern which, as all the other lingual unit-types, has both syntagmatic and paradigmatic characteristics.

The sentence is not the highest unit of language in the hierarchy of levels. Above the proposemic level there is still another one, namely, the level of sentence-groups, " supra-sentential constructions".

The supra-sentential construction is a combination of separate sentences forming a textual unity. Such combinations are subject to regular lingual patterning making them into syntactic elements. The supra-sentential construction commonly coincides with the paragraph. Many linguists are inclined to regard the sphere of supersyntax as the domain of text linguistics which deals with the text-composition and with forming up the texts grammatically and stylistically.

3. Types of Meaning in Grammar

The morpheme is the elementary meaningful part of the word. It is built up by phonemes, so that the shortest morphemes include only one phoneme.

E.g.: ros-y, come-s [-zl.

The morpheme expresses abstract, " significative" meanings which are used as constituents for the formation of more concrete, " nominative" meanings of words.

The third level in the segmental lingual hierarchy is the level of words, or lexemic level. The word, as different from the morpheme, is a directly naming (nominative) unit of language: it names things and their relations. Since words are built up by morphemes, the shortest words consist of one explicit morpheme only.

Cf.: man; will; but; I; etc.

The next higher level is the level of phrases (word-groups), or phrasemic level.

To level-forming phrase types belong combinations of two or more notional words. These combinations, like separate words, have a nominative function, but they represent the referent of nomination as a complicated phenomenon, be it a concrete thing, an action, a quality, or a whole situation.

Cf., a picturesque village; to start with a jerk; extremely difficult; the unexpected arrival of the chief.

This kind of nomination can be called " polynomination", as different from " mononomination" effected by separate words.

Above the phrasemic level lies the level of sentences, or " proposemic" level.

The peculiar character of the sentence (" proposeme" ) is determined by the fact that, naming a certain situation, or situational event, it expresses predication, i.e. shows the relation of the denoted event to reality. Namely, it shows whether this event is real or unreal, desirable or obligatory, stated as a truth or asked about, etc. In this sense, as different from the word and the phrase, the sentence is a predicative unit.

Cf.: to receive — to receive a letter — Early in June I received a letter from Peter

Thus, the functions of level units are different:

Part 2

Tasks and study questions

1. Comment on the following statements:

a) “Each system is a structured set of elements related to one another by a common function.” (Blokh, ibid., p.11)

b) “The systemic nature of grammar is probably more evidnt than that of any other sphere of language, since grammar is responsible for the very organization of informative content of utterances” (Blokh, ibid., p.11)

2. Enumerate the main characteristics of the language viewed

a) as a structure;

b) as a system

and analyze their significance for linguistic study.

3. Do you consider the description of the structural levels of the language consistent and valid? Provide your reasons.

4. Compare the nature/essence of lexical and grammatical meaning. Give examples.

5. Analyze the information about nucleus and periphery as they are defined in linguistics, think of examples of your own.

Part 3

Sentence Parsing

SEMINAR 3

OUTLINE

Part 1

Language and Speech

Language type

Part 3

Tasks and study questions

1. Language and Speech

Special attention should be paid to the differentiation of the " language" and " speech" planes because these analytical procedures of parting language proved essential and efficient for the adequate grammatical investigations.

The differentiation of the two planes " language" and " speech" is the primary concern of grammar. The problem in general is of philosophical relevance since it concerns the ontological status of lingual phenomena, and it has always been one of the most acute in linguistics. The differentiation of the two planes " language" and " speech" in the human language matter seems justified because the essence of the whole is revealed in the unity and opposition of its parts as:

" real" vs " ideal",

" actual" vs " potential",

" general" vs " concrete".

With this assumption in view, the " language—speech" dichotomy can be characterized as the following.

First of all, the relations between these two planes of language are correlative. These are the relations of actualization, manifestation and concretization.

The elements of the " language" plane are constructs which are ideal, abstract and potential. They cannot be described in physical terms of concrete actual lingual phenomena such as sounds, word-forms and utterances. The elements of the plane " language" are given by their generalized abstracted forms. But they do not exist if not actualized and concreticized by their speech counterparts which appear their speech manifestations, actualizations and concretizations in particular conditions of the language use. Human language exists through its speech manifestation which is actual speech product. It is the speech utterance, in the general meaning of the word, that is actual and perceptible. So the differentiation of the " language" and " speech" planes in human language can be recognized as valid.

The differentiation of the " language" and " speech" planes is essential for grammatical analysis because the orientation of grammatical studies may be different.

Thus, language in the narrow sense of the word is a system of means of expression, while speech in the same narrow sense should be understood as the manifestation of the system of language in the process of intercourse.

The system of language includes, on the one hand, the body of material units—sounds, morphemes, words, word-groups; on the other hand, the regularities or " rules" of the use of these units. Speech comprises both the act of producing utterances, and the utterances themselves, i.e. the text. Language and speech are inseparable, they form together an organic unity. As for grammar (the grammatical system), being an integral part of the lingual macrosystem it dynamically connects language with speech, because it categorially determines the lingual process of utterance production.

Thus, we have the broad philosophical concept of language which is analysed by linguistics into two different aspects — the system of signs (language proper) and the use of signs (speech proper).

The sign (meaningful unit) in the system of language has only a potential meaning. In speech, the potential meaning of the lingual sign is " actualized", i.e. made situationally significant as part of the grammatically organized text.

E.g. Text-grammar deals with the grammatical peculiarities of the actual speech product as the text is. Thus, its " speech" orientation cannot be denied. Special terminology is correspondingly used and appropriate methods are implemented by the Text-grammar for the investigation of textual material. On the contrary those grammatical studies which aim at the exposure of the essential regularities in the internal organization of human languages are surely " language" oriented. Such structural grammars should have appropriate terminological apparatus and implement linguistic methods satisfying the requirements of structural analysis

Thus language can be analyzed in two different aspects – the system of signs, i.e. language proper and the use of signs, i.e. speech proper. The sign in the system of language has only a potential meaning which is actualized, i.e. made situationally significant in a text as the product of speech.

2. Syntagmatics and Paradigmatics

Another way of segmentation is exemplified by the partition of language matter into the spheres of Paradigmatics and Syntagmatics. These are the two spheres where the systemic value of linguistic elements and their systemic relationships are realized.

. Originally the differentiation between paradigmatics and syntagmatics was based on the recognition of the two planes of language: " language" (langue) and " speech" (parole). In keeping with this, paradigmatics was identified with " language" whereas syntagmatics coincided with the sphere of " speech". Later on this saussurian postulate underwent revision and reinterpretation. It became clear that the given principles of the partition of language exemplify independent analytical procedures in the attempt of linguists to penetrate into the very essence of the internal organization of human language. In modern linguistics a clearcut distinction is made between the two language spheres: paradigmatics and syntagmatics. It is lingual units that stand to one another in these two fundamental types of relations: syniagmatic and paradigmatic.

Syntagmatic relations are immediate linear relations between units in a segmental sequence (string).

E.g.: The spaceship was launched without the help of a booster rocket.

In this sentence syntagmatically connected are the words and word-groups " the spaceship", " was launched", " the spaceship was launched", " was launched without the help", " the help of a rocket", " a booster rocket".

Morphemes within the words are also connected syntagmatically.

E.g.: space/ship: launch/ed; with/out; boost/er.

Phonemes are connected syntagmatically within morphemes and words, as well as at various juncture points (cf. the processes of assimilation and dissimilation).

The combination of two words or word-groups one of which is modified by the other forms a unit which is referred to as a syntactic " syntagma". There are four main types of notional syntagmas:

predicative (the combination of a subject and a predicate),

objective (the combination of a verb and its object),

attributive (the combination of a noun and its attribute),

adverbial ( the combination of a modified notional word, such as a verb, adjective, or adverb, with its adverbial modifier).

The other type of relations, opposed to syntagmatic and called " paradigmatic", are such as exist between elements of the system outside the strings where they co-occur. These intra-systemic relations and dependencies find their expression in the fact that each lingual unit is included in a set or series of connections based on different formal and functional properties.

In the sphere of phonology such series are built up by the correlations of phonemes on the basis of vocality or consonantism, voicedness or devoicedness, the factor of nazalization, the factor of length, etc. In the sphere of the vocabulary these series are founded on the correlations of synonymy and antonymy, on various topical connections, on different word-building dependencies. In the domain of grammar series of related forms realize grammatical numbers and cases, persons and tenses, gradations of modalities, sets of sentence-patterns of various functional destination, etc.

Unlike syntagmatic relations, paradigmatic relations cannot be directly observed in utterances. The minimal paradigm consists of two form-stages. This kind of paradigm we see, for instance, in the expression of the category of number: boy — boys. A more complex paradigm can be divided into component paradigmatic series, i.e. into the corresponding sub-paradigms (cf. numerous paradigmatic series constituting the system of the finite verb).

The paradigmatic and syntagmatic properties of linguistic units have always been in view of grammar. The corresponding traditional definitions of the main parts of Grammar are based on the wordcentric approach according to which the Word is assumed to be the main unit of language:

The wordcentric grammars which consist of the two independent parts with their own domains: Morphology and Syntax. The domain of Morphology is the paradigmatics of the word whereas the syntagmatics of the word is recognized to be the domain of Syntax. Morphology studies the forms of words and their paradigms, Syntax studies the combinations of words in word-groups and sentences.

3. Plane of Content and Plane of Expression

The nature of grammar as a constituent part of language is better understood in the light of discriminating the two planes of language, namely, the plane of content and the plane of expression.

The plane of content comprises the purely semantic elements contained in language, while the plane of expression comprises the material (formal) units of language taken by themselves, apart from the meanings rendered by them. The two planes are inseparably connected. Grammatical elements of language present a unity of content and expression (or a unity of form and meaning). In this the grammatical elements are similar to the lingual lexical elements, though the quality of grammatical meanings is different in principle from the quality of lexical meanings.

On the other hand, the correspondence between the planes of content and expression is very complex, and it is peculiar to each language. This complexity is clearly illustrated by the phenomena of polysemy, homonymy, and synonymy.

In cases of polysemy and homonymy, two or more units of the plane of content correspond to one unit of the plane of expression.

E.g. the verbal form of the present indefinite (one unit in the plane of expression) polysemantically renders the grammatical meanings of habitual action, action at the present moment, action taken as a general truth (several units in the plane of content).

The morphemic material element -s/-es (in pronunciation [-s, -z, -iz]), i.e. one unit in the plane of expression (in so far as the functional semantics of the elements is common to all of them indiscriminately), homonymically renders the grammatical meanings of the third person singular of the verbal present tense, the plural of the noun, the possessive form of the noun, i.e. several units of the plane of content.

In cases of synonymy, two or more units of the plane of expression correspond to one unit of the plane of content.

E.g. several verbal forms can express the meaning of a future action.

4. Language Type

This traditional interpretation of the structural peculiarities of the " language type" is nowadays refutable as insufficient and to some extent misleading. The matter is that the problem of the structural order of human languages is more complicated than it seems.

Human languages are not artificial static systems. In the course of time different spheres of human languages undergo certain changes. It is true that the historical changes in human life and society are reflected most actively and directly in the semantics of the nominative units of the language vocabulary. As to the grammatical structure, it is relatively stable, its qualitative changes may take centuries and its development is evolutionary in character. In the course of time the accumulation of some new typological features takes place and the acquirement of such features may lead to the qualitative changes in the grammatical structure of the language. As a result, it may display the typological features of another " language type".

The evolution of human languages is caused by lingual and extralingual factors. But the development of the structure of language goes in the direction which is predetermined by the complex of favouring intralingual factors representing the so-called " general grammatical tendency" of the language. This notion is workable in the analysis of the typological changes which the grammatical structures undergo. The general grammatical tendency may predetermine the transition of the grammatical structure from one order to another.

There are two main general grammatical tendencies according to which the grammatical structures of Indo-European languages develop:

analytization and synthetization

Analytization, for instance, is the general grammatical tendency traceable in the development of some of the Indo-European languages. Analytization itself and the forms it assumes are not obligatory for the development of all the languages. The process of analytization varies in forms from language to language. In English, for instance, the process is extremely intensive and it manifests deep changes in the grammatical structure of the language, in its morphology and in its syntax as well.

Analytization as a complex of diachronic processes has been stimulated by some intralingual conditions available within the Old English language. An insight into the peculiarities of the Old English grammatical structure makes us aware of the fact that the process started in syntax first. Among other factors conditioning structural changes the functional synonymy of the means of syntactic connection should be mentioned. The functional identity of some case-inflections and prepositions resulted in the redundancy of most inflections of the oblique cases. Thus, the decay of the Old English case-system seemed to be predetermined. The reduction of the noun-paradigm couldn't but influence the standardization of the word-positions in the sentence and the fixation of the word-order in the nucleus of the sentence. Besides, analytical tendencies involved into changes the forms of syntactic connection: agreement and case-government gave way to adjoinment and enclosure which are marked not by case-inflections but by the word-order. Some other analytical innovations in syntax have been traced. Such syntactic processes as condensation, contamination, replacement and clustering have become very intensive in English syntax. Steadily increasing reliance upon prepositional phrases, greater employment of subordinate clauses, the increase of the verb + adverbial particle combinations and a tendency to use almost every word as lexico-syntactical conversives — these are a few of the recent developments in the Modern English syntax.

Analytical tendencies in the Morphology of English are different in character. They are vividly revealed in the spheres of Form-derivation and Word-building.

It is evident that the reduction of the noun-paradigm did not cause its analytization and the morphology of the noun, its form-derivation and its word-building, remains synthetic in character. It is the form-derivation and the word-building of the Verb which have undergone changes. Since the Early Middle English period the paradigm of the verb has become highly developed and analytical in nature because most of the paradigmatic forms of the verb are derived as analytical formations: Continuous, Perfect, Perfect Continuous and other verb-forms.

As to the analytical tendencies in the word-building of the verb, they are manifested by the productivity of those word-building devices which are considered to be characteristic of analytical languages: conversion, postposition formation and phrasing. All these devices are rather productive for the derivation of English verbs. Alongside the analytization of the verb-paradigm and its word-building other analytical tendencies can be traced in the morphology of English. Firstly, the unification of grammatical forms has taken place in the paradigmatic derivation of the main word-forms. Secondly, the process of analytization led to the new forms of the word-class determination: the determination of the class-membership by means of special function-words (determiners) has become regular.

Part 2

Sentence parsing

1. When Richie suddenly gave up the old apartment because he had stopped paying rent, he had let her know that he was looking in neighbourhoods Terry knew to be unsafe; after a week of this, Terri found them another apartment in the city, so that Elena would be closer, and when the landlord balked at Richie’s credit, Terri cosigned the lease. (Patterson. R.N. Eyes of the child. – NY: Ballantine Books, 1996. – P.67)

2. In the almost ten years they lived together, Paget had recently calculated, they had eaten perhaps three thousand dinners in this same room – usually just the two of them, sitting under the eighteenth-century crystal chandelier at a walnut table that seated twelve – discussing the events of the day, or sports or politics or Carlo’s school friends or whatever came to mind. (Ibid, P. 3003)

3. At some point in my twenties, I understood that what I was doing was redefining myself, choosing things that weren’t predestined by who I was or the life I’d been given. (Ibid, p.455).

4. Terry did not argue; days before she had stopped asking questions; after a moment’s silence she said that it was important that the jury, before cloistering to reach a verdict, remember the people who loved Paget most; if the case was over, she added, there was nothing to keep her or Carlo from the courtroom. (Ibid, P. 483)

5. I never said it didn’t bother me, but I know what I did and didn’t do, why I acted as I did, and who it is that I really do care about. (Ibid, P. 515)

Part 3

Tasks and study questions

1. Provide extended answers to the following questions:

1. What is the linguistic nature of syntagma?

2. Enumerate the most significant changes in the English language syntax.

2. Explain the following statement:

1. Language can be analyzed in two different aspects – the system of signs, i.e. language proper and the use of signs, i.e. speech proper.

2. Analytical tendencies involved into changes the forms of syntactic connection, as a result, agreement and case-government gave way to adjoinment and enclosure which are marked not by case-inflections but by the word-order.

SEMINAR 4

PROTOTYPES IN GRAMMAR

OUTLINE

Part 1

Grammaticalisation.

Recommended reading

4. Huddleston, R. English Grammar: An Outline. – Cambridge: CUP, 1988

5. Langacker, R.W. Language and Its Structure. – NY: CUP, 1986

Projects

Grammar of advertisements

Grammar of songs

Grammar of chats

Gender-related grammar

1. The language-particular level and the general level

The description of a language usually comprises three major components: phonology, grammar and lexicon. Phonology describes the sound system: consonants, vowels, stress, intonation, and so on. The two most basic units of grammar are the word and the sentence.

One subcomponent of grammar, called morphology, deals with the form of words, while the other, called syntax, deals with the way words combine to form sentences.

Lexicon, or dictionary, lists the vocabulary items, mainly words and idioms (such as a couch potato, give up, and so on), specifying how they are pronounced, how they behave grammatically, and what they mean.

It is important that we distinguish between the study of linguistic form and the study of meaning as all three of the major components are concerned with aspects of both. The special term semantics is applied to the study of meaning, and linguists accordingly distinguish phonological semantics (covering such matters as the meanings expressed by stress and intonation), grammatical semantics (dealing with the meanings associated with grammatical categories such as past tense, interrogative clause, and so on) and lexical semantics (the meanings of vocabulary items).

The relation between form and meaning in grammar is by no means straightforward. This is why it is necessary to explain the model or framework of grammatical description and the methodological approach adopted. It is advisable that we should begin with the question of how to define the various grammatical categories - categories such as noun, subject, clause, tense, and so on (there will inevitably be a considerable number of them).

In this respect it is important to distinguish two levels at which our grammatical categories need to be defined:

the language-particular level and the general level.

At the language-particular level we are concerned with the properties that characterise the category in the particular language under consideration, in our case it is English. At this level we investigate, for example, how nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc., behave differently in English sentence structure, how English distinguishes between the subject and object of a verb, and so on.

At the general level, by contrast, the researchers’ concern is with the properties that are common across different languages to categories such as noun, verb, adjective, subject, object.

To make the distinction more concrete, let’s consider the part-of-speech analysis of the underlined words in the following sentences:

The boss had watched the secretary destroy the files

The boss had witnessed the destruction of the files

At the language-particular level we have the criteria that lead us to put such words as boss, secretary, etc. into one part-of-speech, and the words as had, watched, etc. into a second. At the general level we use the criteria that lead us to call the first class 'noun' and the second 'verb'. We do not devise a fresh set of terms for each new language we describe but draw, rather, on a large repertoire of general terms. It is important to realize that definitions at the general level provide a principled basis for applying these terms to the various categories that need to be differentiated in the grammatical description of particular languages.

To clarify the point let’s have a closer look at these very sentences. According to the standard traditional definition (unfortunately quite often used in normative school grammars) of a noun as ‘the name of a person, place or thing’ can be hardly considered accurate as it will automatically exclude the noun ‘ destruction’ because it obviously does not denote a concrete object. Nevertheless, it is included into the noun class by all grammarians due to the fact that it enters the structure of the sentence the way the other nouns do, that is in accordance with its grammatical ‘behaviour’ that is distinctly different from that of ‘destroy’.

As for the verb destroy it takes an expression like the files as its complement’. Nouns do not take complements of this kind. To get a complement we have to use a different structure – more likely the structure with of (destruction of …). Besides the noun destruction, like other nouns, enters into constructions with the definite article, which is not possible with the verb destroy. It is these properties as well as the possibility to use modifiers with nouns (the surreptitious destruction of the files) that help distinguish between nouns and verbs at the language-particular level. At the general level the definition should be reformulated to avoid misunderstanding. Thus saying that ‘noun’ is the part of speech that contains among its most elementary members those words that denote persons, places or concrete objects we do not exclude the noun’ destruction’ because it has the same grammatical properties as other nouns.

2. Grammaticalisation

Linguists recognise a grammatical category in analysing a given language only if it is grammatically distinguishable from other categories in the language. To take a very obvious example, we will not recognise 'pointed noun' as a subclass of nouns containing words like pin or spire which denote pointed objects, because there is nothing grammatically special about such words: they are not grammatically distinguishable from words like circle or bed. A satisfactory definition or explication of a grammatical category must thus surely make reference to the kind of properties that justify its inclusion in the analysis, properties based on its distinctive grammatical behaviour. This means that the definition of the grammatical category is different from a notional definition completely, as notional definitions are based mostly on the semantic properties of the linguistic expressions, e.i. on their meaning rather than on their grammatical form.

Objections to notional definitions apply, however, only at the language-particular level. At the general level we are concerned with naming and identifying across languages categories that have already been established by language-particular criteria, and here it is perfectly legitimate to make use of notional definitions. This is not to say that general definitions will be based exclusively on meaning, but normally they will be expected to include some reference to meaning. Although we do not find a one-to-one relation between categories of grammatical form and categories of meaning, we do not expect to find grammatical categories that have no connection at all with semantic categories. Rather they will have their basis in semantics, and a general definition will need to indicate what is the semantic basis for a given category.

Some general categories are universal: all languages, for example, distinguish between nouns and verbs. Many, however, belong in only a subset of languages.

All languages enable their speakers to ask questions where the set of answers is respectively closed and open: for Are you tired? the answers are Yes and No, whereas Where are they going? has an indefinite number of possible answers: To Canberra, To New York, and so on. But not all the languages have different patterns for such sentences.

The distinction between statements and closed questions is grammaticalised in English by the different positions of the subject, but there are languages where it is expressed by a difference in intonation rather than by a difference in grammatical construction, and this type of language therefore has no grammatical category of closed interrogative clause. Similarly there are languages which have no grammatical distinction (as opposed to an intonational one) corresponding to that found in English between the open interrogative Where are they going? and the declarative They are going somewhere, and here the grammatical category of open interrogative clause will likewise not be applicable. It is for this reason that our general definitions incorporate a condition of grammaticalisation. Thus this definition will be satisfied only in languages where the semantic category is grammaticalised - grammaticalised more specifically in the structure of the clause.

As a second example, consider the category 'imperative clause'. Imperative contrasts with 'declarative' and 'interrogative', as illustrated in the following sentences:

Be generous! Imperative

You are generous Declarative

Are you generous? Interrogative

An imperative clause is commonly defined as one that is used to issue a command or request. But it is easy to see from the following examples that this will not work as a language-particular definition.

Have a good holiday Imperative

Passengers are requested to remain seated Declarative

Would you mind speaking a little more slowly? Interrogative

as all these are imperative with different degree of intensity.

Again, then, we will need to reformulate the traditional definition so as to make clear that it is to be interpreted at the general level: the term 'imperative clause' will be applied to a grammatically distinguishable class of clauses whose members are characteristically used as commands/requests. The fact that these examples are analysed as imperative clauses is now no longer a problem: they are assigned to the same clause class because they are like Be generous! not so much in respect of their grammatical form, but because they would most naturally be used as commands or requests. Although we do not find a one-to-one relation between categories of grammatical form and categories of meaning we do not expect to find the grammatical categories that have no connection with semantic categories. Rather they have their basis in semantics, thus the semantic distinction between statements, questions and requests/commands leads to the grammatical distinction between declarative, interrogative and imperative sentences. Thus, these arise through grammaticalisation, i.e. the process of grammatical differentiation on the basis of semantic differences.

Study questions

1. Think of the examples of your own to explain the difference between the definitions of grammatical categories at the language-particular and the general levels.

2. Analyze the case system in English and in Ukrainian in terms of grammaticalisation.

3. Exemplify prototypes of English and Ukrainian

3.1 nouns;

3.2 tense forms;

3.3 adverbs.

Part 3

Sentence parsing

1. Charlie stands there watching her; even from this distance he can hear the creak of the chain as the swing moves, and then, for no reason at all, Charlie is afraid that his sister will look up and see him, so he takes off as fast as he can, and even though he feels certain he is heading in the wrong direction, he doesn’t stop until he is all the way home.

2. She will call an assembly, she’ll invite Ed Reardon to come, she’ll find a speaker from AIDS organization who specializes in education, she will not put this issue up for the school board to debate; their discussion of the assembly might drag on for weeks and her students need to know now what AIDS is and how they can and cannot be exposed.

3. Nearly every night after dinner, when the children are in bed, Ivan goes back to the Institute; none of his colleagues asks him any questions, they’re used to what anyone else would consider odd working hours; last year there was one graduate student from California everyone called Vampire – he worked only from nine at night until dawn, no one had ever seen him during the day.

4. Two girls Amanda sincerely hates, not just because they are snobs who won’t speak to anyone who doesn’t have pierced ears, come in as Amanda’s fixing her hair; everybody at Cheshire knows their names, Mindy and Lori; Mindy, who’s on the gymnastic team, had better leotards than anyone else, really neat ones that the grandmother sends her from LA.

5. Amanda herself is in good spirits, no one said anything awful to her, and her teacher, who Amanda thinks is too pretty and young to be a teacher, called her aside and told her that it was a pleasure to have her in class and that if she missed any time her work could be sent home to be made up.

Lecture Materials

Lectures 1-2 Language properties 5

Lectures 3-4 Grammatical analysis: approaches and

methods 18

Lectures 5 Basic grammatical assumptions and

notions 39

Lecture 6-7 Word: lexical and grammatical aspects 47

Seminar Materials

Seminar 1 Basic assumptions of the external analysis

of language 61

Seminar 2 Basic assumptions of the internal analysis

of language (I) 76

Seminar 3 Basic assumptions of the internal analysis

of language (II) 85

Seminar 4 Prototypes in grammar 97

Test Yourself (Test questions) 106

ВІННИЦЬКИЙ ДЕРЖАВНИЙ ПЕДАГОГІЧНИЙ УНІВЕРСИТЕТ

12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Следующая ⇒

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