Grammatical meaning and grammatical form. Means of form-building. Synthetic and analytical forms

Morphology and syntax as part of grammar. Units of grammar, their functions and types of relations between them in language and speech.

Main units of Grammar are a word and a sentence. A word may be divided into morphemes, a sentence may be divided into phrases (word-groups). A morpheme, a word, a phrase and a sentence are units of different levels of language structure. A unit of a higher level consists of one or more units of a lower level.

Grammatical units - 2 types of relations:

- in the language system (paradigmatic relations)

- in speech (syntagmatic relations).

In the language system each unit is included into a set of connections based on different properties. F. ex., word forms child, children, child's, children's have the same lexical meaning and have different grammatical meanings. They constitute a lexeme.

Word-forms children, boys, men, books... have the same grammatical meaning and have different lexical meanings. They constitute a grammeme (a categorial form, a form class). The system of all grammemes (grammatical forms) of all lexemes (words) of a given class constitutes a paradigm.

Syntagmatic relations are the relations in an utterance.

Main grammatical units, a word and a sentence, are studied by different sections of Grammar: Morphology (Accidence) and Syntax. Morphology studies the structure, forms and the classification of words. Syntax studies the structure, forms and the classification of sentences. Morphology studies paradigmatic relations of words, Syntax studies syntagmatic relations of words and paradigmatic relations of sentences.

There is also a new approach to the division of Grammar into Morphology and Syntax. According to this approach Morphology should study both paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations of words. Syntax should study both paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations of sentences. Syntactic syntagmatics is a relatively new field of study, reflecting the discourse.

The grammatical meaning and grammatical form are the basic notions of Grammar.

The grammatical meaning is a general, abstract meaning which embraces classes of words. The grammatical meaning depends on the lexical meaning. It is connected with objective reality indirectly, through the lexical meaning. The grammatical meaning is relative, it is revealed in relations of word forms, e.g. speak - speaks. The grammatical meaning is obligatory. Grammatical meaning must be expressed if the speaker wants to be understood.

The grammatical meaning must have a grammatical form of expression (inflexions, analytical forms, word-order, etc.). The term form may be used in a wide sense to denote all means of expressing grammatical meanings. It may be also used in a narrow sense to denote means of expressing a particular grammatical meaning (plural, number, present tense, etc.).

Grammatical elements are unities of meaning and form, content and expression. In the language system there is no direct correspondence of meaning and form. Two or more units of the plane of content may correspond to one unit of the plane of expression (polysemy; homonymy). Two or more units of the plane of expression may correspond to one unit of the plane of content (synonymy).

Means of form-building and grammatical forms are divided into synthetic and analytical.

Synthetic forms are built with the help of bound morphemes, analytical forms are built with the help of semi-bound morphemes (word-morphemes).

Synthetic means of form-building are affixation, sound-interchange (inner-inflexion), suppletivity. Typical features of English affixation are scarcity and homonymy of affixes. Another characteristic feature is a great number of zero-morphemes.

Though English grammatical affixes are few in number, affixation is a productive means of form-building.

Sound interchange may be of two types: vowel- and consonant-interchange. It is often accompanied by affixation: bring - brought.

Sound interchange is not productive in Modem English. It is used to build the forms of irregular verbs.

Forms of one word may be derived from different roots: go - went. This means of form-building is called suppletivity. Different roots may be treated as suppletive forms if:

1) they have the same lexical meaning;

2) there are no parallel non-suppletive forms;

3) other words of the same class build their forms without suppletivity.

Suppletivity, like inner inflexion, is hot productive in Modem English, but it occurs in words with a very high frequency.

Analytical forms are combinations of the auxiliary element (a word morpheme) and the notional element: is writing. Analytical forms are contradictory units: phrases in form and wordforms in function. In the analytical form is writing the auxiliary verb be is lexically empty. It expresses the, grammatical meaning. The notional element expresses both the lexical and the grammatical meaning. So the grammatical meaning is expressed by the two components of the analytical form: the auxiliary verb be and the affix ing. The word-morpheme be and the inflexion -ing constitute a discontinuous morpheme.

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