E.g. work –worked

And grammatical category

Unlike lexis, grammar is characterized by a different kind of meaning. In lexis, words have individual meanings. In grammar words possess one generalized meaning.

run – ran the meaning of a past tense

take - took

tooth – teeth

girl – girls the meaning of plurality

man – men

But the general character of the grammatical meaning is not the essential difference between the two as lexical meanings can also be abstract (cf. hatred, evolution, connectivity, rapidity, sophistication, etc.). The major difference between lexical and grammatical meanings comprises the following features. Firstly, lexical meanings are more numerous since they are tied to concrete lexical items. Thus, each of the following lexical units a table, a house, a bird has its own meaning, but they have the same grammatical meaning, that of substantivity. Secondly, lexical meanings are individual, but grammatical meanings are superindividual, generalized. Thirdly, the grammatical meaning appeared later than the lexical one as the former was the generalization of the latter. Fourthly, the grammatical meaning or function is obligatory for all the units of lexicon whereas the lexical meaning can get lost (as it happened with the articles) or rather vague (conjunctions, prepositions, particles). Fifthly, the system of lexical meanings is idioethnic, specific for each language, the system of grammatical meanings is more universal. At last, lexical meanings can only be applied to lexical items, but the grammatical meaning is also connected with syntactic units. Thus the grammatical meaning can be understood as an item expressing some content and uniting groups of words and types of sentences on the basis of some generalized semantic parameters, such as substantivity, action, aspect, retrospect, gender, etc.

Thus the most general meanings related by language and expressed by systemic correlations of word-forms are defined in linguistics as categorial grammatical meanings. A.V. Bondarko singles out three major features of categorial grammatical meanings. They boil down to (1) the obligatory character of realization of a certain grammatical content in each lexical item belonging to this grammatical class; (2) invariability (absolute for some types and relative for others); (3) dependence on an integral closed system of formal grammatical means [Бондарко 2002: 247]. The forms in question can be found within definite paradigmatic series and are called grammatical forms. Grammatical forms are understood as morphological characteristics of a type of word. Grammatical forms are meant to express a grammatical meaning. In a broader sense they are defined as a material form within which a grammatical meaning finds its regular expression [Русский язык 2003: 97]. In a number of cases there may be several grammatical forms to express one grammatical meaning (e.g. plurality is expressed with - s,- es, other means).

Grammatical forms exist in a system of oppositions. The members of these oppositions differ only in form to express the particular manifestation of the general meaning of the category.

Grammatical forms united by one and the same meaning make up a grammatical category. The grammatical category is a system of expressing a generalized meaning by means of paradigmatic correlation of grammatical forms (M.Y. Blokh). Grammatical categories are classified according to different criteria: (1) the number of members making up the category, (2) the type of relations between the members of the category, (3) the field of grammar it belongs to, (4) character of its realization, and (5) the genetic content of a grammatical category.

The categories composed of two members are binary. There are also grammatical categories including more than two members, e.g. the degrees of comparison. Grammatical categories which are composed of opposing word-forms of one lexeme are called inflexional (e.g.: the category of case for nouns, the verbal categories of tense, mood, aspect, etc.). Grammatical categories which are not capable of opposing word-forms of one lexeme are called classifying, or lexico-grammatical categories (e.g.: the category of gender of Russian nouns). According to the field of grammar, grammatical categories can be morphological (categories of case, tense, degrees of comparison, etc.) or syntactic (predicativity, modality, transitivity, etc.). Grammatical categories may be overt and covert, according to the nature of means of their realization. Overt grammatical categories are explicitly expressed in the word-form and do not depend on the context (e.g., the form tables expresses plurality as one of the subcategories of the category of number). Covert grammatical categories are contextually bound, they are exposed due to the context (e.g., the verb to walk may express transitivity only in some contexts: He walks his dog in the park every evening) [Худяков 2005: 19-20]. Finally, according to the genetic source of their content, grammatical categories may be reflexive, cognitive, and lingual proper, or intralingual. Reflexive grammatical categories reflect certain parameters of the surrounding world (e.g., the category of tense reflects objective time, the category of number of nouns reflects singularity / plurality of real objects, etc.). Cognitive, or epistimic, grammatical categories result from the activity of human consciousness, they appear due to mental operations per se (e.g., the category of article determination, verbal categories of voice and mood). At last, a number of grammatical categories sprang into existence owing to the nature and inner mechanisms of the language (e.g., the category of case of nouns is necessitated by the fact that words should be related to each other in a sentence). These grammatical categories are intralingual, or lingual proper [Худяков 2005: 63-64].

A.I. Smirnitsky established five obligatory requirements a grammatical category should meet to get this status. Firstly, every grammatical category is represented by at least two categorial forms. The only case or the only person will mean that there are no cases or persons whatsoever. Secondly, no categorial form can cover the whole of the word, i.e. be represented by all the word-forms of the given word. If a certain grammatical feature covers the whole of the word, it means that we deal with a lexico-grammatical category, e.g. the Russian word стол belongs to the masculine gender, but it does not change to form other genders. Thirdly, one and the same word form can combine different grammatical categories, e.g. person and number, etc. Fourthly, no word-form can combine two categorial forms of one and the same category, e.g. one form cannot express two cases simultaneously, or two numbers, etc. Fifthly, every grammatical form represents at least one categorial form, thus, it belongs to one grammatical category. There are no grammatical forms beyond grammatical categories [Смирницкий 1959: 8-9].

Categorial forms, in A.I. Smirnitsky’s understanding, are in other approaches termed grammemes. Thus a grammeme may be defined as an element of a grammatical category [АРСЛС 2001: 162], for example the grammatical category of number in English consists of two grammemes: noun forms expressing the singular and the plural meanings, cf.: boy ÷ boys. On the other hand, a grammeme may be narrowed down to and understood only as an elementary unit of a grammatical meaning [АРСЛС 2001: 162], for instance present, past and future are grammemes of the grammatical category of tense. B.S. Khaimovich and B.I. Rogovskaya give the following definition of the grammeme: “All the grammatical meanings of the word runs, inherent in the morpheme –s, unite this word with walks, stands, sleeps, skates, lives and a great many other words in a group we shall call a grammeme ” [Khaimovoch, Rogovskaya 1967: 19]. A grammeme is one of the terms applied to the description of the grammatical side of language.

Grammatical categories should be differentiated from notional and semantic categories. Notional categories stem from fundamental mental spheres (cf.: time, space, evaluation, aspect, modality, emotionality, gender, quantity, etc.) and represent human knowledge of general character[41]. Notional categories unlike grammatical categories are indifferent to concrete means of their manifestation. Sometimes they are called logical, philosophical or psychological categories. Thus a grammatical category is preceded by a notional category. That is why Otto Jespersen who introduced this notion in 1924 wrote that grammatical categories are symptoms or “foreshadowings” cast by notional categories. Moreover, O. Jespersen points out that a grammatical category is the terminal point in language development. It reveals the logic of a certain language: notional categories make up the basis of grammatical structure as they predetermine semantico-grammatical, or in other words, formal and notional structure of the language[42]. To become a grammatical category a notional category should get a systemic formal representation based on the principle of linguistic opposition. Thus a grammatical category has its notional aspect, diachronic (or historical aspect), and the linguistic aspect.

A semantic category is not supported by a system of grammatical forms to make it grammatical. A semantic category presupposes that some linguistic units are grouped together on the basis of some semantic feature. A semantic category may exist in different varieties. In lexicology a semantic category gets the status of a lexico-semantic category. A lexico-semantic category is defined as a class of words united by some semantic feature, e.g.: “names of countries”, “names of occupations”, etc. If the categorial seme is formally expressed by word-building affixes (e.g., names of doers: teach-er, sing-er, writ-er, etc.), then it becomes a word-building category [43]. It may also have the status of a functional semantic category existing in the form of a functional semantic field which comprises a group of linguistic units (morphological, syntactic, word-building, lexical as well as units of combined nature such as lexico-syntactic, etc.) belonging to various strata of language system which are interrelated and perform a certain function based on a definite semantic category (e.g.: temporal relations, aspectual relations, definiteness/indefiniteness, possessivity, existentiality, etc.)[44].

Thus, if a linguistic category may be interpreted as any group of linguistic units which can be singled out on the basis of a common feature, a grammatical category is characterized by a certain type of relationships between the categorial feature expressed by the grammatical category and its formal expression. The distinctive and constitutive feature of a grammatical category is its systemic character. A grammatical category has a structure which is understood as a definite correlation of grammatical forms opposed to one another. This systemic correlation of grammatical forms yields a certain grammatical meaning [Штелинг 1996: 107]. Due to its inner structured and systemic organization a grammatical category is a powerful instrument of linguistic description.

1. The notion of opposition in Theoretical Grammar

The paradigmatic correlation of grammatical forms in a category are exposed by the so-called grammatical oppositions. The theory of grammatical opposition was first introduced in the Prague School by Prince Nikolai Trubetskoy in 1933. It was developed for the investigation of the phonological level of the language. Three main types of opposition were singled out for phonological analysis: privative, gradual and equipollent oppositions. The privative opposition may only be binary and is characterized by the opposition of two members one of which is marked by some feature and the other one is unmarked. The gradual opposition is characterized by the degree the feature is expressed. The equipollent opposition is based on the opposition of two non-opposed features. R. Jacobson further developed and radically transformed the theory of opposition. Moreover he extrapolated it on the grammatical level of linguistic description.

Opposition (in the linguistic sense) may be defined as a generalized correlation of lingual forms by means of which a certain function is expressed. The correlated elements (members) of the opposition must possess two types of features: common ones and distinctive ones. Common features serve as the basis of contrast, while distinctive features immediately express the function in question.

The most important type of opposition is the binary privative opposition. The binary privative opposition is formed by a contrastive pair of members in which one member is characterized by the presence of a certain distinctive feature (“mark”), while the other member is characterized by the absence of this feature. The member in which the feature is present is called the “marked”, or strong, or positive member and is commonly designated by the symbol + (plus). The member in which the feature is absent is called the “unmarked”, or weak, or negative member and is commonly designated by the symbol – (minus).

E.g. want ÷ wanted – the expression of the verbal present and past tenses is based on a privative opposition the distinctive feature of which is the dental suffix –(e)d. This suffix rendering the meaning of the past tense marks the past tense of the verb positively (I wanted) and the present tense is marked negatively (I want).

The binary nature of feature oppositions is an important and controversial aspect of R. Jacobson’s theory. Oppositions, according to R. Jacobson, can only have two values: “ + ” or “-“, standing for the presence or absence of quality in question. In the Prague School theory, oppositions may also be bilateral or multilateral according to the number of members. They may also be privative or gradual according to whether the members are distinguished by the presence versus absence, or by more versus less of a feature.

By allowing only binary features with + or – R. Jacobson treats all oppositions as, in effect, bilateral (binary) and privative. With oppositions only one question is relevant: Does X have the feature or not? Thus, according to R. Jacobson, “the dichotomous scale is the pivotal principle of linguistic structure”.

Linguists still discuss whether binarism is inherent in the language system or it is one of the convenient techniques designed by scholars. But all linguists are agreed that a grammatical opposition is the way a grammatical category functions [Штелинг 1996: 115].

A grammatical category must be expressed by at least one opposition of forms. These forms are ordered in a paradigm in grammatical descriptions. Thus, the whole grammatical system is based on oppositions. If there are no oppositions, there are no grammatical categories. This makes the theory of opposition one of the fundamental linguistic theories.

Nevertheless oppositions may be neutralized in speech. In this case the opposition disappears, its members ceasing to be opposed each other in a certain linguistic environment. Thus, for instance, the opposition table ÷ tables may be neutralized in the following sentence: A table is a piece of furniture, as the noun in the singular here does not express singularity, but a whole class of objects like a noun in the plural. Another example of neutralization is the so-called elative use of the superlative degree of adjectives (e.g., It was a most (=very) interesting book) when it equals a positive degree of comparison. Thus the opposition comes to be neutralized or annulled.

1. Synthetic and analytic forms

The means employed for building up member-forms of categorial oppositions are traditionally divided into synthetic and analytical. Accordingly, the grammatical forms themselves are classed into synthetic and analytical, too. Synthetic grammatical forms are realized by the inner morphemic composition of the word while analytical grammatical forms are built up by a combination of at least two words one of which is a grammatical auxiliary (word-morpheme), and the other a word of substantial meaning.

Synthetic grammatical forms are based on inner inflexion, outer inflexion, and suppletivity. Hence, the forms are referred to as inner inflexional, outer-inflexional, and suppletive.

Inner inflexion (grammatical infixation, or phonemic vowel interchange) is used in English in irregular verbs for the formation of the past simple and past participle; besides, it is used in a few nouns for the formation of the plural. The initial paradigmatic form of each lexeme in question should also be considered as inflexional [Блох 2008: 36].

E.g. take – took – taken, drive – drove - driven, keep – kept – kept, man – men, brother – brethren, etc.

Suppletivity, like inner inflexion, is not productive as a purely morphological type of form. It is based on the correlation of different roots as a means of paradigmatic differentiation. In other words, it consists in the grammatical interchange of word roots. A.I. Smirnitsky singled out three major requirements a suppletive form should meet. Different roots are recognized as suppletive forms in case (1) they coincide in their lexical meaning (e.g., good – better - best), (2) there are no synonymous non-suppletive forms (thus, e.g., people cannot be recognized as a suppletive form of the word person since the latter has its plural form persons), (3) other words of the same category have non-suppletive forms to express the same grammatical meaning (e.g. good – better – best vs nice – nicer – the nicest). Suppletivity is used in the forms of the verbs be and go, in the irregular forms of the degrees of comparison, in some forms of personal pronouns.

E.g. be – am - is - are – was – were, go – went, good – better, bad – worse, much – more, little – less, we – us, she – her, etc.

Nevertheless it is of interest to note that some grammarians insist on suppletivity in a broader morphological interpretation and recognize as suppletive some paradigmatic correlations of modal verbs, some indefinite pronouns and even some nouns, cf.: can – be able (to), must – have (to), be obliged (to); may – be allowed (to), one – some, man – people, news – items of news, information – pieces of information, etc. For cases like this Prof. Blokh puts forward the notion of lexical suppletivity [Блох 2008: 36, 50-51].

These unproductive synthetic means of English morphology are outbalanced by the productive means of affixation (outer inflexion) which amount to grammatical suffixation. Grammatical suffixes are used to build up the member and case forms of the noun; the person-number, tense, participial and gerundial forms of the verb; the comparative forms of the adjective and adverb.

E.g. boy – boys, go – goes, work – worked, small – smaller, etc.

As for the so-called analytical forms, the traditional view of the analytical morphological form recognizes two lexemic parts in it, stating that it presents a combination of an auxiliary word with a basic word. Moreover, “neither lexical nor grammatical meaning of an analytical form can be attributed to one of the elements of its structure, both belong to this structure as a whole” [Alexandrova, Komova 1998: 23]. This statement implies that analytical forms should be “grammatically idiomatic”, i.e. their relevant grammatical meaning is not immediately dependent on the meanings of their component elements taken apart. Considered in this light, the form of the verbal Perfect where the auxiliary have has utterly lost its original meaning of possession, is interpreted as the most standard and indisputable analytical form in English morphology. Its opposite is seen in the analytical degrees of comparison which, according to the interpretation cited above, come very close to the combinations of words due to lack of idiomaticity in the above sense. This viewpoint was supported by A.I. Smirnitsky and L.S. Barkhudarov.

As grammarians point out, in natural speech in some grammatical contexts analytical forms tend to become less integral, less global, and acquire the features of a word combination. The borderline between these two becomes very vague. On the other hand, there are also some cases in English when a grammatical form can obtain the status of an analytical form in a certain grammatical environment, while in others it may be interpreted as a word combination (e.g. the use of the verb should as part of the Suppositional mood form vs a combination of the modal verb should and a lexical verb, some cases of to be +Participle II may be recognized as a Passive voice construction while others may acquire the status of a phrase, e.g. The table is made by the cabinet-maker / The table is made of wood.

1. Morphology and Syntax as two main parts of grammar

When it comes to the division of grammar into its two main spheres: morphology and syntax, linguists take their stance towards this problem according to the linguistic trend they support. Major debatable issues within this problem are (1) whether to recognize the distinction between morphology and syntax, (2) if the distinction is recognized, where the boundary between them should be drawn and what might fall under the scope of either.

First of all, linguists may recognize this division as well as discard it. For instance, the traditional differentiation between morphology and syntax was strongly doubted by such renowned linguists as F. de Saussure, L. Hjelmslev, Z. Harris, Ch. Hockett. In the American structuralist tradition interest lay more on the morpheme as the basic unit in syntax than on its role within the word. Z. Harris (1946) recognized, e.g., only “morphemes and sequences of morphemes” and eschewed the word as a unit of description. This statement is indicative of the position of American structuralists who discarded the division into morphology and syntax as unnecessary. The initial point of study was the syntagmatic combination of linguistic units, directly observable, and not their paradigmatic, systemic properties.

In transformational grammar, concentrated on syntactic structures the distinction between morphology and syntax cannot appear at all, per definitionem. Instead of these terms James Muir in his book “A Modern Approach to English grammar. An Introduction to Systemic Grammar” (London, 1972) introduces the notions of Surface Grammar and Deep Grammar which cover the directly observable facts lying on the surface and associative, deep relations not obvious at first sight. But these notions are not fully compatible to morphology and syntax.

The first grammarian who is said to have introduced the distinction between morphology and syntax and used these terms is O. Jespersen. It is worth noting though that in traditional grammars morphology was studied under a different label. The term used was accidence (from Latin accidentia ‘things which befall’) defined in J.C. Nesfield’s grammar (1898) as “the collective name for all those changes that are incidental to certain parts of speech”. Thus, accidence had to do with number, gender, case of nouns, voice, mood, number person, and tense of verbs, as well as their classification into regular and irregular types [Crystal 1995: 197]. Interestingly, H. Sweet also describes the distinction between accidence and syntax.

In case the existence of the two main spheres of grammar is accepted, the problem arises ‘what functions of English morphological and syntactic units, located within the limit of a sentence, come within the province of morphology or syntax” [Хлебникова 2001: 16].

Most linguists agree that morphology is the study of the meaningful parts of words, but there have broadly been two ways of looking at the overall role played by these meaningful parts of words in language. One way has been to play down the status of the word itself and look at the role of its parts in the overall syntax, the other has been to focus on the word as a central unit.

For O. Jespersen and other representatives of English classical grammar morphology is limited to word-building. All morphological grammatical categories, according to O. Jespersen, lie within syntax. G. Curme introduces such notions as “syntax of the noun, verb, etc.” which leads to the confusion of morphological and syntactical phenomena. Case for him can be expressed either by a preposition and a noun (e.g.: of the boy, to the boy) or by the position in a sentence (e.g.: I saw the boy, where the boy is used in the Accusative case). But both positions in a sentence and a word-combination are syntactic notions. H. Sweet holds that “the business of syntax is <…> to explain the meaning and function of grammatical forms, especially the various ways in which words are joined together to make sentences” (H. Sweet cited from [Блох 2004: 13]). All this makes the detection of the Morphology-Syntax boundary quite complicated.

Though the terms have been used by linguists for over a century, opinions have varied as to the precise definitions of the subject-area and scope of the notions under analysis. Interest in classifying language families across the world in the XIX^th century led to the study of how languages were differently structured both in broad and narrow ways, from the general laws of structure to the study of significant elements such as prefixes and inflections. In the XX^th century the field has narrowed to the study of the internal structure of words, but definitions still vary in detail.

The usual definition of morphology runs as follows: morphology is that part of grammar which treats of the forms of words. Thus, morphology is about the structure of words [Crystal 1995: 197; Handbook of Linguistics 2004: 213]. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics defines morphology as the study of the grammatical structure of words and the categories realized by them [Matthews 1997: 233].

Obviously, morphology studies units of a smaller and a more compact kind, whereas syntax deals with larger units, whose types and varieties are hard to number and exhaust. As for the usual definition of syntax, it may be said to be this: syntax being that part of grammar which treats of phrases and sentences [Ильиш 1971: 12] is the study of the principles governing how words can be assembled into sentences [Huddleston & Pullum 2006: 6].

The definitions of morphology and syntax are based on the assumption that we can clearly distinguish between words and phrases. This, however, is far from being the case. Usually, the distinction, indeed, is patent due to the feature of indestructibility. On the other hand, language facts can admit controversial interpretations. For instance, has been found is evidently a phrase since it consists of three words and thus it would seem to fall under syntax. But it is also a form of the verb find and thus it would seem to fall under morphology. It is obvious that we have a lot of overlapping and these formations should be considered both under morphology and syntax [Ильиш 1971: 12].

Hence the Morphology-Syntax division is not universal due to the fact that languages can belong to different families. This division is especially important for those languages which show a distinct difference between a word and a morpheme, for the so-called synthetic languages. But for analytical languages this division loses its absolute value to a great degree. English is a classical analytic language in which morphology is scarcely represented.

As, on the whole, morphology is the description of “morphemes and their patterns of occurrence within the word” (Allerton), the scope of morphology, according to various linguistic conceptions, may include

ü the description of inflexions of the words of the language;

ü the description of morphological categories characterizing this or that language;

ü morphological processes;

ü word-building.

Дата добавления: 2017-01-14