Typology of word groups in Russian and English

Person

Mood

Voice

Tense.

Aspect.

Typology of the verb in Russian and English

Verb is a universally used part of speech but its morphological features differ in different languages. In Russian the verb has gender, but in English it is not used and at the same time in English perfect forms make up the category of perfect vs. indefinite forms (time correlation) Besides differences exist in the system of Verbals. In Russian there are 2 of them – participle and adverbial participle (говорящий, сказавший, говоря) In English both of them are expressed by the participle that has 2 variants (Participle I and II). Besides in English Gerund is used which corresponds to Russian verbal noun.

The rest verbal categories coincide – aspect, tense, voice, mood, person.

In English and Russian there are 2 aspect forms but the grammatical meaning is specific in each language. In Russian there exists an opposition of perfective and imperfective aspects where the meaning is connected with logical completeness of an action. In English the difference between continuous and indefinite aspects shows the manner of action – a mere fact or a process. In Russian the perfective aspect is expressed derivatively with prefixes and affixes. (с-,за, -ть) Besides stress can denote aspect relations. Lexical means are also popular (говорить сказать) In English the only marker of aspect is the discontinuous morpheme (to be Ving)

In English the system of tenses is enriched through its development. Development of tense in Russian and English shows radical differences. In Russian the modern paradigm became more limited in comparison with Old Russian, it has been reduced from 7 to 3 forms.

Old Russian	Modern Russian	Old English	Modern English
7 forms	3 forms	2 forms	3 forms
Present веду, ведеши, веде(ть)   Imperfect (=past cont) ведяхъ, ведяше   Aorist (=Past Indefinite) ведохъ, веде Perfect (Present Perf) Есмь вел Far-Past (=used to) бяхъ вел   Future (= Fl) поведу Future Perfect буду велъ	Present     Disappeared   Perfective aspect Past     Future	Present ic cume   Past ic com	Present I come   Past I came   Future I shall/will come

In English the paradigm became wider, because in Middle English Future was added to past and present.

The category of voice shows relations between the subject and the object of the action. Most languages have active and passive meanings which are universal and it's possible to change the positions of the subject and the object. The rest voice meanings have some specificity.

Russian	English
3 forms		2 forms
Active	For transitive verbs only	Active	1) Active meaning (I read)
Passive	2) Reflexive meaning (He washes)
Middle-reflexive (-ся)	1) Reflexive meaning (он умывается)	3) Reciprocal meaning (They met each other)
2) Reciprocal meaning (встречаются)	4) Middle meaning (The book reads well)
3) Generalized reflexive meaning (он находится, мы оказались)	Passive

Most modal means coincide in 2 languages (modal words (возможно, вероятно, должно быть), modal verbs (can, must, may, мочь), moods (написал бы – should write)).

The primary subdivision of mood is reality/irreality which also coincide. The basic difference is in the structure of irreality. In Russian only one undifferentiated oblique mood is used. It is expressed by particle бы and the verb in the past which can also be linked with conjunction чтобы. The Russian form has no tense distinction like “желал бы я знать” but in English tense distinctions are expressed by perfect forms. Besides particle “бы” in colloquial speech the imperative form can denote supposition (скажи он это, приди он сейчас). The English oblique mood includes at least 4 forms:

1. Subjunctive I (If I be here, long live the king)
2. Subjunctive II (if he helped us)
3. Conditional mood (Would + Inf.)
4. Suppositional mood (Should + Inf.)

In any language 3 forms of person are used and it is a kind of universal. It corresponds to 3 basic roles of any communicative act:

1) the speaker

2) the addressee

3) non-participant of the action

In synthetic languages singular and plural forms are marked by inflections. In analytical languages the system of forms is minimal.

Typology of the word-group

1. Typological constants in syntax
2. Types of word-groups in Russian and English

a) Verbal WG

b) Nominal WG

c) Adjectival WG

d) Adverbial WG

Syntactic relations are universal for all flective languages (subordination, predication, coordination) but the means of their formal expression may differ. Most common means are:

· inflections – typical of synthetic languages.

· form words – analytical

· word order – analytical

The use of inflections results in agreement (concord) and case government. Agreement uses inflexions in both words in case of government inflexion is added to the adjunct only.

Word order is accompanied by adjoinment and inclosure.

Form words are accompanied by prepositional government.

Actually flective languages use different combinations of all these means, so it's only possible to state the priority of some technique.

Professor Gak compared syntactic means in a wide group of flective languages and on the basis of this comparison he introduced a specific syntactical classification.

Typology of syntactic links in English and Russian

Language type	Link	English	Russian
Zero type: A+B	Adjoinment	++ all parts of speech: a red dress two boys wrote a letter discussed problem	+ adverb, infinitive, adverbial participle (деепричастие) очень хорошо уметь читать молчишь, слушая
Morphological type: Ax+Bx     A+BX	Agreement     Case government	+ Only demonstrative pronouns: these pens, this pen   + Only pronouns: sent him/her/them	++ All parts of speech красная книга они делали первый удар ++ All parts of speech: полный радости доволен этим решать задачу
Analytical type: A+x+B	Prepositional government	++ All parts of speech: full of joy graduate from smth father of the boy satisfied with it	- (always accompanied by cases) Mixed type instead
Mixed type: A+x+Bx	Prepositional+ case government	+ Only in pron.: lives with him/her/us	++ All parts of speech: решить без труда, решивший без труда труд без отдыха трое в лодке

Conclusion:

This classification ones again proves that there are no pure language types. So, typological constants in syntax reveal specific combination of means used in each language.

Coordinative and subordinative word groups (WG) are most frequent in both languages. Predicative WG are disputable and if they are singled out, they are connected with the use of verbals.

Coordinative groups are isomorphic in Russian and English, it means that in both languages we can change the position of elements (father and son or sun and father). In both languages the same parts of speech are use in such WG and all components are used in the same syntactic function. Distinctions are mostly connected with subordinate groups.

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