4. There are two criteria in classifying morphemes:
1). Positional
2). Functinal (semantic).
According to positional criterion morphemes are divided into: root morphemes and affixal morphemes (affixes,{prefixes, infixes, suffixes}). In other words, root morphemes are called free morphemes, while affixal are bound morphemes. A free morpheme is vand ?. a bound morpheme is one, that must appear with at least one other morpheme, bound or free. E.g.: "work"+"ed". Root morphemes are unlimited in number. Affixes are bound morphemes, they are limited in number, and may be exhaustedly elisted. Some words have more than one morpheme, they are compound words. E.g.: " bird-cherry ", "scare-crow". In English the majority of roots are free. But nevertheless there are bound root morphemes. They are the following.
E.g.: receive, conceive
retain, contain
transfer, refer.
Affix is a term denoting recurrent formative morphemes, other than roots. From the point of view of formal presentation we distinguish: overt [ouvit] and covert [kA vit]. Overt morphemes are represented explicitly: "retell", "asked"; covert morphemes coincide with 0(zero morpheme). Every morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit, thus "ed" conveys the morpheme of Past tense. We should differentiate form-building morphemes (that are grammatical) and word-building
morphemes (they are lexical). E.g.: movement , outline - word-building morphemes asked, asks, getting - form-building morphemes 5. Form-building morpheme is called word changing. Modern English extremely poor according to the word-changing, but there are some.
1). Affixation.
It is the use of epithets. E.g.: "bus" - "buses".
Only Suffixation is used in modern English. Prefixation was productive in old English period. For the formation of perfect participle
2). Sound Interchange.
Vowel interchange Consonant interchange
3). Supplative forms
"bad" - "worse" - "worst"
"go" - "went" - "gone"
"be", "is", "are", "am" - "was", "were" - "been".
All of 1), 2), 3) - belong to the syntactic way of form-building.
4). Analytical forms are particular word-combinations, made up of an auxiliary or a notional word.
LECTURE 4.
Analytical forms are very productive in modern English
Grammar deals with form-building .
is.....................................................ing
have................................................en frames
was..................................................ed
continuous morphemes
The matter is, that the analytical ???????? (can be put) consist of two meaningful morphemes. Analytical morphemes are not free word combination like "a red rose", neither are phraseological units like " red tape"(burocracy). Analytical forms can't be compared with words, they are word forms like synthetic forms, performing a definite grammatical function. The word
1. The definition of the word.
2. The characteristic features of the word.
3. The two planes of the word.
The word is the main object of lexicology as well. It is not easy to give rigorous definition of the word. Since it is very complex and many sided phenomenon. The term "word" denotes the basic unit of a given language, resulting from the associations of a particular meaning with the particular group of sounds, capable of the particular grammatical employment. Arnold, "The
English word". This working definition of the word implies that the word is simultaneously
a semantical and grammatical unit. There are many definitions of the word and none of them are generally accepted. The word is considered to be the minimal potential sentence, the minimal free linguistic form, the elementary component of the sentence, the sound symbol, the meaningfully integral and immediately identifiable unit.
The difficulty in defining the word compel some linguists to exclude the word from the basic unit of the language. L. Bloomfield school in US. That school linguists consider the morpheme and the phoneme to be the basic units of linguistic description, for the phoneme can be easily isolated from the context thanks to its minimal elementary segmental character. They consider the phoneme to be the minimal formal segment of language and the morpheme to be the ultimate
meaningful segment. The main drawback of descriptive linguistics is that they approach the definition of the linguistic units on a formal basis. The other linguists came to the conclusion, that such units must be defined by taking into consideration their formal and functional (semantic) features.
2. In actual speech people experience no difficulty in separating one word from another. Traditionally, linguists point out isolatebility as the most characteristic features of the word. One word can form a sentence ("Fire!", "Thanks!",...). Another characteristic feature of the word is its
uninterruptibility or indivisibility. Even if you take compound words, such as "blackberry", "blue-eyed", you won't be able to insert another word in the middle of this compound word. Third feature is a certain looseness in the sentence, i.e. that you may place the word in different parts of the sentence. E.g.: "The bat flew down."="Down flew the bat."But still, don't forget, that the English word-order is rigid unlike the Russian word order. Russian language is a highly developed morphological system. The set looseness is marked in writing by the graphic form of the word with certain spaces between the words.
In oral speech, every word is separated from its neighbours by one unit pause. Some difficulty is paused by the application of the term "word". Some linguists regard such group of words as work, worked, is working as one word. The whole group can't be used as a unit of speech, for the unit must belong both to language & speech. Of all the group, only the element "work" can be regarded as an objective unit of the language. All the grammeme are called lexeme. "A lexeme is a group of word forms, united by the common lexical meaning, but having different grammatical meaning."
If we take a group of words, united by the common grammatical meaning, we shall get a grammeme.
E.g.: sleeps, reads, tries, fucks - Grammeme.
A number of elements of the lexeme may vary from 1 ("must") to many.
E.g.: The lexeme, represented by the word "wright" Þ contains Þ 94 elements, expressed by 64 forms.
The number of words in a grammeme is practically limitless. But the gammeme having the meaning only Past tense, indicative mood, plural number, not perfect, not continuos aspects, contains only 1 word : were .The word is a nominative ( naming ) unit of language .It enters the vocabulary as its elementary component indivisible into smaller segments.The word is used for the formation of the sentence. The word is the basic unit of the language , which occupies the key position in the language. It's universal in its character. It is capable of performing any function in the language : nominative, significant, communicative & pragmatic. The functional sphere of the word is very wide. It may represent a morpheme ( free place ), a nominative sign ( desk ), A part of a word group ( a big fire ) & a sentence ( Fire! ).
3. A word is a linguistic sing. A linguistic sign is a bilateral entity, having it a content & formal side, which correlates with the concept & may indirectly reflect the objects & phenomena of objective reality ( extralinguistic reality ). Not all the linguistic signs have reference to the outer world. Being a bilateral linguistic sign, the word is characterized by 2 planes :
The plane of content
The plane of expression.
bombthe plan of expression
the plane of content
The first & the second are the dialectical unity of form and content. In the plane of expression, the word has its material representation. In oral speech it is represented acoustically by a group of sounds, in written speech - graphically. The plane of content includes the lexical meaning of word. The word exists in two dimensions, namely as a virtual polysemantic sign of the vocabulary, and as an actual sign, used in speech.
The virtual side of the language sign exists in the sphere of language. It is an unrealized word, while the actual side of the word belongs to the syntagmatic sphere of speech.
LECTURE N 5.
Theme : Grammatical categories.
Grammar abstracts itself from particular meanings of words and deals with the most generalized meanings, that may be proper to big groups of words with different lexical meanings.
In logic, the most general notions reflecting the most general properties of some phenomena are called categorial notions ( or categories ). The most general meanings in Linguistics are regularly expressed through the system of the paradigmatically organized word forms and are interpreted as categorial meanings.
According to the general methodological law, every content must have a certain material form of expression. If we take a generalized meaning of plurality we can find its material implementation in many word forms such as : streets, cars, houses, girls, students which make up a grammeme. The grammatical phenomena, like the word in lexicology are also characterized by the 2 planes : the plane of content ( meaning ) & the plane of form ( expression ).
Since the meaning of plurality is represented in many word forms, we may interpret it as a grammatical meaning & the word forms, representing it materially are called grammatical forms.
- Sthe plane of grammatical expression
- pluralitythe plane of grammatical meaning
The unity of the grammatical meaning with a grammatical form may testify to the existence of the grammatical category, but to establish grammatical category, we must find a system of paradigmatically correlated grammatical forms.
E.g.: boys can be correlated with boy's Since Within the noun we may come across the following paradigm, expressing the generalized notion of number.
E.g.: street - streets; ox - oxen ; foot - feet.
If we analyze the opposed forms street - streets, we may observe, that they are grammatically opposed, for 1 expresses singularity, the other - plurality. The 2 opposed meanings are united by a more abstract meaning of noun. This highly abstract meaning of noun represented by the paradigmatic correlation of 2 grammatical forms makes up a grammatical category. Likewise, we may establish the existence of the category of tense of the verb, but it will be represented by the grammatical opposition of 3 grammatical forms & grammatical meanings.
E.g. : ask - asked - will ask
present past future
The opposition of grammatical forms always represents the opposition of grammatical meanings.
The correlated elements of the grammatical opposition must posses common features & differential ones, i.e. one form must be unmarked, other forms must be marked by a certain morpheme.
"A grammatical category is a unity of a generalized grammatical meaning, with a set of paradigmatically correlated grammatical forms ".Professor Smirnitsky's Postulates of the Grammatical Category. Five postulates of the existence of grammatical categories. By this he defines grammatical category in a very convincing & exhausting way.
I. Any grammatical category must be represented by, at least, 2 grammatical forms. There're no languages in which you could find only one case form or one form of number. The minimal set of paradigmatically correlated forms is 2 forms.Category of case in English is represented by the opposition of 2 forms ( Common - Possessive ), Russian - 6 forms ( Падежи ).
II. No grammatical category can be represented by all the word forms of the word. If some grammatical meaning is inherent in all the word forms of the given word, we shall deal here not with a grammatical category but with lexico-grammatical category. Such is the Category of Gender in Russian. We can't change the noun according to the category of Gender, i.e. masculine, feminine, neuter.The set meanings of Gender are inherent in certain nouns. Some nouns belong to masculine gender, other - to feminine, and still other - neuter.
E.g. : дом, улица, небо
III. One word form may combine different grammatical categories. E.g. : the form " speaks " combines 5 categories ( grammatical meanings ) - tense, 3rd person, singular number, indicative mood, active voice.
IV. No word form can combine 2 categorial meanings ( grammatical meaning of the same category ) of 1 and the same category. You can not find singular and plural in one word form simultaneously.
E.g. : boys , boy
V. Every word form must represent at least one categorial form or belong to some grammatical category. There are no word forms without grammatical categories. In modern linguistics, it's generally accepted, that a grammatical category is represented by an opposeme of, at least, 2 forms. It follows from the theory workedout by linguist Nicolas Treubetskoy about binary opposition in Linguistics. He applied the opinion to phonology, but lateron he thought, that this method works very well in other spheres of Linguistics.Different parts of speech have different N. Of grammatical categories.
E.g. : the English verb is the most developed system from point of view of categories. Some think the verb has 6 grammatical categories, others ð 8 grammatical categories.
Tense
Person
Number
Mood
Voice
Aspect
Taxes
English noun has 2 categories ( number, case ). Adjective ð degree of comparison.
LECTURE N6.
3. Charles Friese's theory of the classes of words.
Every language contains ______ of words. When describing them, we should analize whether one word separately or unite them into classes possessing more or less common features. Linguists make use of both the approaches. A dictionary usually describes individual words. Grammar mostly deals with clases of words, traditionaly called parts of speech. The term " part of speech " is conventional. The well-known linguist Shcherba Z.V., Professor Smirnitsky prefer to use lexico-grammatical categories "; Professor Blokh operates with the term " grammatical classes of words "; Charles Fries calls the same thing " positional classes "; Professor Ilyish, the linguists Heimovich & Rogovskaya speak about " lexico-grammatical classes of word ". Up to this day, there's no generalagreement among the grammarians as to the number of the parts of speech, especially contraversial is the problem of delimiting parts of speech оn the basis of some common principles.
The 1st to introduce words into classes was Aristotle, who lived in between 384 - 322 B.C. Being a founder of logic Aristotle equated the relation of ideas in human mind with the relation of word in speech and established grammatical categories in terms of logic. He introduced in Grammar the notion of " subject " and "predicate ". His criterion for descriminating between parts of was the ability of words to express the parts oflogical proposition, i.e. the subject, the predicate and the copula.
Accordingly, Aristotle established 3 parts of speech : the name, the verb and the conjunction. By the " name " he meant the word which can perform the function of the subject. The " verb " represented the predicate. And by the conjunction he denoted all the functional words, such as prepositions, articles, conjunctions, particles.
Aristotle teaching was later continued by other scholars.Still the confusion of Grammar with the categories of logic remained.2.In the history of the part of speech there have been different criteria, according to which the part of speech have been singled out. Fortunatov concidered the parts of speech to be the formalgrammatical classes. His classification was purely morphological. He divided all the words into changeble and unchangeble. To the first group he refered noun, verb, adjective.
Others were unchangeble.
Shakhmatove's classification followed the syntactical principle. It proved to be one-sided.
The principles , оn which classifications are usually based nowadays , are 3 in number: meaningformfunction.
The meaning of the words, belonging to the class of the noun. The abstract meaning has thingness ( or substance ). The meaning of thingness applies to the meaning of the noun and constitutes the meaning of the noun as part of speech. Similarly , the meaning of the verb as a part of speech is action or process. The general meaning of a part of speech is neither lexical nor grammatical, but it is connected with both and we call it lexico-grammatical meaning. In the classical theory of the part of speech a semantic feature was a leading criteria in establishing a part of speech. In the structural linguistics (Ferdinand de Sausur ) the semantic principle was ignored ( Charles Fries ). There were Friese's supporters in Soviet Linguistics as well ( Leontyev, Shapkin etc. ). Their delimiting the classes of words. Besides, the words of different parts of speech are distinguished through their morphological features, their forms, their morphemes. The second principle of delimiting parts of speech is _____ of form. Grammatical forms represented grammatical categories. Thus, the noun is characterized by the categories of number and case; the verb - by the categories of tense, mood, voice, aspect, person and number.