Sound alternation

In modern English some word forms are built up by means of changing a sound inside of a root.

E.g. take – took, speak – spoke, foot – feet

Suppletive form of derivation is such a way of derivation when a word form is built up by means of using a word of a different stem.

E.g. be – am – is – are – was – were – been; good – better – best; go – went – gone

Analytical word forms are such forms, which are built up with the help of grammatical word morphemes.

E.g. She is coming in a minute.

Form class is a set of word forms, which differ by their stems, but have the same inflexion.

E.g. book s, table s, chair s etc.

The grammatical category is the opposition of at least 2 sets of form classes, contrasted on the basis of a certain general grammatical meaning.

Paradigm is a set of opposed form classes. It may contain several grammatical categories. The minimal paradigm coincides with a grammatical category.

E.g. a boy – boys – category of number

a boy – a boy’s test – category of case

a boy – a girl – a star – category of gender

Lexeme in grammar is a set of word forms which differ by their inflexions, but have the same stem.

E.g. smile – smiles – smiled – smiling

Classes of words

The problem of word classes is one of the most complicated in the history of language. The earliest attempts to describe them go back to such countries as India & Asia. Each stage of linguistics brought in its own way of dividing words into classes. The fact is quite natural, because classes of words inflect not only the structure of language, but also the depth of grammatical description.

Criteria for classification

The first attempt at classifying words was made by Henry Sweet. He thought that semantic, morphological and syntactic characteristics of a word should be taken into consideration at one & the same time. It was the opinion of Otto Jesperson as well. He classified the vocabulary into declinables (nouns, adjectives, verbs) and indeclinables (adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, interjections). With a slight variation this classification appeared in most traditional grammar books.

The Russian linguistics approach is more consistent. Russian linguists divided the word classes by the following 5 principles:

1. The general lexico-grammatical meaning of words.

2. The lexicogrammatical morphemes or stem-building elements; e.g. signi fy

3. Grammatical categories or paradigms

4. Distribution (combinability)

5. The function in sentence.

Types of classifications

1. Comprehensive classification was worked out by our Russian grammarians Khaimovich & Togovskaya. According to this classification there are 14 classes of words: noun, verb, statives (words of the category of state, e.g. asleep, awake etc), adjective, adverb, pronoun, numeral, conjunction, preposition, interjection, article, modal words (e.g. probably, perhaps, evidently), particles, responses (yes/no).
B.Ilyish considered articles to be not words, but grammatical morphemes. For Barkhudarov statives & adjectives belong to one & the same class. Ilyish, Barkhudarov & Kaushanskaya considered that there is no class of response words.

2. Morphological classification is based on morphological principle. It was introduced by H.Glesson. He divided words into classes according to their paradigm. There are 4 classes of words: noun, adjective, verb, personal pronoun. All the other groups are called syntactic groups.

3. Charles Frese divided all the words according to their functional syntactic features. He believed that all the words which can occupy the same position in the sentence must belong to the same class. He used the technique of substitution in the so called test-frames. He used 3 main test-frames.

a) The concert was good. (the structures meaning is thing and its quality at given time)

b) The clerk remembered the tax. (actor, action & thing acted upon)

c) The team went there. (actor, action & direction of the action)

All the words can fall in the same positions of the frames without affecting their general structural meaning can belong to one an the same class. Using this technique Charles Frese pointed out 4 classes: noun, adjective, verb, adverb. As for the rest of the words, he distributed them into 15 functional groups by means of the same method in extended test-frames.

Groups of word classes

Classes of words are subdivided into notional, functional & sentence words (interjections, modal words, emphatic particles, yes/no).

The properties of functional words are as follows:

1. Invariable.

2. They don’t function as the members of the sentence.

3. They have no modifiers.

4. They are not stressed as a rule.

Migration of words

This process of migration of words is usually called conversion. Conversion is a way of forming new words from already existing ones by means of changing their paradigm, lexico-grammatical meaning, combinability & function. It is possible to point out several types of conversion:

1. Verbalization of nouns. E.g. a doctor – to doctor

2. Substantivization of adjectives. E.g. a rich man – the rich.

3. Adverbalization of nouns. E.g. home – домашний очаг (уст.)

4. Substantivization of verbs. E.g. to break – a break.

The verb

It is the most complex part of speech, a system of systems.

1. It’s categorical meaning is process developing in time.

2. Word class’s constituting affixes: -fy, -ize, -en, sub-, mis-, un- etc.

3. It has 7 grammatical categories: tense, aspect, time correlation, mood, voice, person, number.

4. Distribution (combinability): combines with nouns & adverbs.

5. Syntactic function – predication.

The main division of the verb is between finite verbs & non-finite. As for the finite verbs, they have grammatical categories & the syntactic function is that of predication.

The non-finite forms (infinitive, gerund, participle) have purely semantic connection with other words. Of the 7 grammatical categories they have only 3: aspect, voice, time correlation. These categories are not connected with predication. All the functions of the non-finite verbs are nominal, except the function of a part of a compound verbal predicate. The non-finite forms can be used as subject, object, predicative, attribute & adverbial modifier. But in our linguistics both forms finite & non-finite belong to the same class, because of their semantic using, some common grammatical categories, their combinability. It can be proved by their transformational history.

E.g. bird sings – a singing bird; they arrived late – their arriving late.

These are 3 main classifications of the verb: morphological, semantic, functional.

1. Morphological classification is the way the verb builds up its basic forms (infinitive, past simple, participle I & II). All the verbs are subdivided into regular & irregular. The group of irregular verbs includes 7 subgroups which are the remnants of the old English 7 classes of verbs.
E.g. sit – sat – sat; build – built – built; cut – cut – cut etc.
According to their morphological structure verbs are divided into:

1) Simple: to go, to take, to read.

2) Derived: to misunderstand, to rewrite.

3) Compound (consisting of two stems): to broadcast, to whitewash.

4) Composite (consisting of a verb & a post-position of an adverbial origin): to give up, to take off, to switch on. It is productive way of forming verbs.

2. Semantic classification is based on a general semantic character of a verb: there are verbs of motion (to arrive, to come, to go), verbs of sense perception (to see, to hear, to feel, to notice), of mental activity (to think, to believe, to consider).
Besides verbs can be subdivided into: terminative & non-terminative. Terminative verbs denote actions which cannot develop beyond a certain inherent limit. The actions denoted by non-terminative verbs have no inherent limits.
E.g. terminative: to come, to take, to stand up, to sit down; non-terminative: to live, to love, to stand, to shine.
The majority of verbs are of double semantic character. They may be both terminative & non-terminative.

3. Functional classification is based on the structural role of the verb in the sentence. According to the syntactic function of the verb they are derived into notional & auxiliary.
Notional verbs are those which have a full meaning of their own & can be used without any additional words as a simple predicate.
E.g. She told the truth.
Notional verbs can be transitive & intransitive. Transitive verbs can take a direct object that is they express an action which passes on to a person or thing directly: to take to give, to send, to make etc.
There are verbs which can be used either with or without direct object: to read, to write, to hear etc.
E.g. He can read & write. (intransitive)
Intransitive verbs can’t take a direct object. Here belong: to stand, to sleep, to laugh, to think, to swim etc.
E.g. They laughed bitterly.
Some verbs in different context can be transitive & intransitive, such as: to open, to move, to change, to drop etc.
E.g. The door opened (intransitive). He opened the door (transitive).
Auxiliary verbs are those which have lost their meaning & are used as form words, thus having a grammatical function. They are used in analytical forms.
E.g. to be, to do, to have, shall, will, should, would

There are semi auxiliary verbs. They are used as a structural element in a syntactic unit. Here belong: link verbs, modal verbs, verb substitutes, emphatic verbs.

1. Link verbs: to be, to become, to grow, to turn etc.
Every notional verb may be used as a link verb. Link verbs have lost their meaning & are used in a compound nominal predicate which usually denotes the state or quality of a person or thing expressed by the subject. Link verbs have partly lost their original concrete meaning. Only one link verb has lost its meaning altogether. It is the verb to be. It can be combined with any part of speech used as a predicative. According to their meaning link verbs are divided into 2 large groups:
Link verbs of being and remaining: to be, to remain, to look, to smell, to stand, to lie, to shine, to seem etc.
Link verbs of becoming: to become, to get, to grow, to go, to turn etc.

2. Modal verbs have a certain modal meaning & are used as the first element in a compound verbal modal predicate. Modal verbs usually show the speaker’s attitude either to the action or to the state denoted by the infinitive. The modal verbs are: can (could), may (might), must, should, would, ought, shall, will, dare, need. The modal expressions are: to be + infinitive, to have + infinitive.

3. Verb-substitutes don’t name any action, but point to the action already mentioned in order to avoid repletion: do/did.
E.g. The girl scraped through the exam, & so did he.

4. Emphatic verbs: do/did.
E.g. Do be quite! I did know him.

The grammatical categories of the verb

The main approach to the description of grammatical categories is oppositional, because oppositions the main in morphology. Finite forms have 7 grammatical categories: tense, aspect, voice, mood, time correlation, person, number.

The grammatical category of tense is recognized by everybody. It reflects the objective category of time & expresses on this background the relations between the time of the action & the time of the utterance.

The main division of objective time is clear past, present, future. Thus the grammatical category of tense is represented by an opposition of 3 members showing the relations of the time and the action denoted by the verb to the moment of speech.

E.g. present – writes, past – wrote, future – will write

The time of the action can be expressed lexically with the help of such words and word combinations as: yesterday, a year ago, next week etc. It can also be shown grammatically by means of the category of tense. It is usual to express the notions of time graphically.

Past Present Future

The relation between the Present, the Past and the Future is complicated. The present in speech is not a point of the moment of speaking, but a more or less long period of time including this moment.

E.g. The Earth rotates round the Sun.

In the sentence we deal the Present, but this Present not only includes the present moment, but covers a long period of time starching in both directions from the present moment.

The Past is the time proceeding the present moment. The Future is the time following the present moment. Neither of them includes the present moment.

Tenses may be used absolutely and relatively. We say that the tense is used absolutely if it is used to show the time of the action with regard to the present moment (the moment of speech).

E.g. She loses her temper. She lost her temper. She will lose her temper.

But very often tense reflects the time of an action not with regard to the moment of speech, but to some other moment in the past, indicated by the tense another verb.

E.g. He said she lost her temper. He said she had lost her temper. He said she would lose her temper.

The Future-in-the-Past tenses don’t easily fit into a system of tenses represented by a straight line running out of the Past into the Future. Their starting moment is not the Present from which the Past and the Future are reckoned, but the Past itself. With regard to all Future-in-the-Past tenses we may say that the Past is a new center of the system. Thus the idea of temporal centers suggested by professor Ivanova seems quite logical in analyzing the Future-in-the-Past tenses.

Professor Irtenyeva put forward a different view on the English tense system. There are tenses centering in the Present and those centering in the Past. The former include the Present Simple, the Present Perfect, the Present Progressive, the Present Perfect Progressive, Future tenses. The latter include the all the Past and all the Future-in-the-Past tenses. Thus we have a two fold division of tenses.

The grammatical category of voice is represented by a binary privative opposition constituted by 2 from classes, active & passive, in which passive voice is the marked member of the opposition both in form “to be +participle II” and in meaning. Active voice is a weak member both in form & meaning.

As for the definition for the category:
1. The category shows the relation between the subject & the action.

2. It shows the relation between the subject and the object of the action.

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