M.Blokh. A Course in Theoretical Grammar (стр. 4 из 9)

Generally speaking, the major tense-distinction in English is undoubtedly that which is traditionally described as an opposition of past::present. But this is best regarded as a contrast of past:: non-past. Quite a lot of scholars do not recognize the existence of future tenses, because what is described as the 'future' tense in English is realized by means of auxiliary verbs will and shall. Although it is undeniable that will and shall occur in many sentences that refer to the future, they also occur in sentences that do not. And they do not necessarily occur in sentences with a future time reference. That is why future tenses are often treated as partly modal.

5. The Category of Aspect

The category of aspect is a linguistic representation of the objective category of Manner of Action. It is realized through the opposition Continuous::Non-Continuous (Progressive::Non-Progressive). The realization of the category of aspect is closely connected with the lexical meaning of verbs.

There are some verbs in English that do not normally occur with progressive aspect, even in those contexts in which the majority of verbs necessarily take the progressive form. Among the so-called ‘non-progressive’ verbs are think, understand, know, hate, love, see, taste, feel, possess, own, etc. The most striking characteristic that they have in common is the fact that they are ‘stative’ - they refer to a state of affairs, rather than to an action, event or process. It should be observed, however, that all the ‘non-progressive' verbs take the progressive aspect under particular circumstances. As the result of internal transposition verbs of non-progressive nature can be found in the Continuous form: Now I'm knowing you. Generally speaking the Continuous form has at least two semantic features - duration (the action is always in progress) and definiteness (the action is always limited to a definite point or period of time). In other words, the purpose of the Continuous form is to serve as a frame which makes the process of the action more concrete and isolated.

LECTURE 7: SYNTAX. BASIC SYNTACTIC NOTIONS.

1.General characteristics of syntax.

The grammatical structure of language comprises two major parts – morphology and syntax. The two areas are obviously interdependent and together they constitute the study of grammar.

Morphology deals with paradigmatic and syntagmatic properties of morphological units – morphemes and words. It is concerned with the internal structure of words and their relationship to other words and word forms within the paradigm. It studies morphological categories and their realization.

Syntax, on the other hand, deals with the way words are combined. It is concerned with the external functions of words and their relationship to other words within the linearly ordered units – word-groups, sentences and texts. Syntax studies the way in which the units and their meanings are combined. It also deals with peculiarities of syntactic units, their behavior in different contexts.

Syntactic units may be analyzed from different points of view, and accordingly, different syntactic theories exist.

2. Kinds of syntactic theories.

Transformational-Generative Grammar. The Transformational grammar was first suggested by American scholar Zelling Harris as a method of analyzing sentences and was later elaborated by another American scholar Noam Chomsky as a synthetic method of ‘generating’ (constructing) sentences. The main point of the Transformational-Generative Grammar is that the endless variety of sentences in a language can be reduced to a finite number of kernels by means of transformations. These kernels serve the basis for generating sentences by means of syntactic processes. Different language analysts recognize the existence of different number of kernels (from 3 to 39). The following 6 kernels are commonly associated with the English language:

(1) NV – John sings.

(2) NVAdj. – John is happy.

(3) NVN – John is a man.

(4) NVN – John hit the man.

(5) NVNN – John gave the man a book.

(6) NVPrep.N – The book is on the table.

It should be noted that (3) differs from (4) because the former admits no passive transformation.

Transformational method proves useful for analysing sentences from the point of their deep structure:

Flying planes can be dangerous.

This sentence is ambiguous, two senses can be distinguished: a) the action of flying planes can be dangerous, b) the planes that fly can be dangerous. Therefore it can be reduced to the following kernels:

a) Planes can be dangerous b) Planes can be dangerous

X (people) fly planes Planes fly

Constructional Syntax. Constructional analysis of syntactic units was initiated by Prof. G.Pocheptsov in his book published in Kyiv in 1971. This analysis deals with the constructional significance/insignificance of a part of the sentence for the whole syntactic unit. The theory is based on the obligatory or optional environment of syntactic elements. For example, the element him in the sentence I saw him there yesterday is constructionally significant because it is impossible to omit it. At the same time the elements there and yesterday are constructionally insignificant – they can be omitted without destroying the whole structure.

Communicative Syntax. It is primarily concerned with the analysis of utterances from the point of their communicative value and informative structure. It deals with the actual division of the utterance – the theme and rheme analysis. Both the theme and the rheme constitute the informative structure of utterances. The theme is something that is known already while the rheme represents some new information. Depending on the contextual informative value any sentence element can act as the theme or the rheme:

Who is at home? - John is at home. Where is John? – John is at home.

Pragmatic approach to the study of syntactic units can briefly be described as the study of the way language is used in particular contexts to achieve particular goals. Speech Act Theory was first introduced by John Austin. The notion of a speech act presupposes that an utterance can be said with different intentions or purposes and therefore can influence the speaker and situation in different ways:

I just state the fact;

I want you to do something about it (close the window);

It’s cold here I’m threatening you;

I’m seeking for an excuse for not doing something;

I want you to feel guilty of it;

Etc.

Accordingly, we can distinguish different speech acts.

Of special interest here is the problem of indirect speech acts: Are you leaving already? In our everyday activities we use indirect speech acts rather willingly because it is the best way to influence people, to get what we want and to be polite at the same time.

Textlinguistics studies the text as a syntactic unit, its main features and peculiarities, different ways of its analysis.

Discourse analysis focuses on the study of language use with reference to the social and psychological factors that influence communication.

3. Basic syntactic notions.

The syntactic language level can be described with the help of special linguistic terms and notions: syntactic unit, syntactic form, syntactic meaning, syntactic function, syntactic position, and syntactic relations.

Syntactic unit is always a combination that has at least two constituents. The basic syntactic units are a word-group, a clause, a sentence, and a text. Their main features are:

a) they are hierarchical units – the units of a lower level serve the building material for the units of a higher level;

b) as all language units the syntactic units are of two-fold nature:

content side syntactic meaning

Syntactic unit = =

expression side syntactic form

c) they are of communicative and non-communicative nature – word-groups

and clauses are of non-communicative nature while sentences and texts

are of communicative nature.

Syntactic meaning is the way in which separate word meanings are combined to produce meaningful word-groups and sentences.

Green ideas sleep furiously. This sentence is quite correct grammatically. However it makes no sense as it lacks syntactic meaning.

Syntactic form may be described as the distributional formula of the unit (pattern). John hits the ball – N1 + V + N2.

Syntactic function is the function of a unit on the basis of which it is included to a larger unit: in the word-group a smart student the word ‘smart’ is in subordinate attributive relations to the head element. In traditional terms it is used to denote syntactic function of a unit within the sentence (subject, predicate, etc.).

Syntactic position is the position of an element. The order of constituents in syntactic units is of principal importance in analytical languages. The syntactic position of an element may determine its relationship with the other elements of the same unit: his broad back, a back district, to go back, to back sm.

Syntactic relations are syntagmatic relations observed between syntactic units. They can be of three types – coordination, subordination and predication.

1. Syntactic relations.

The syntactic units can go into three types of syntactic relations.

1. Coordination (SR1) – syntagmatic relations of independence. SR1 can be observed on the phrase, sentence and text levels. Coordination may be symmetric and asymmetric. Symmetric coordination is characterized by complete interchangeability of its elements – pens and pencils. Asymmetric coordination occurs when the position of elements is fixed: ladies and gentlemen. Forms of connection within SR1 may be copulative (you and me), disjunctive (you or me), adversative (strict but just) and causative-consecutive (sentence and text level only).

2. Subordination (SR2) – syntagmatic relations of dependence. SR2 are established between the constituents of different linguistic rank. They are observed on the phrase and sentence level. Subordination may be of three different kinds – adverbial (to speak slowly), objective (to see a house) and attributive (a beautiful flower). Forms of subordination may also be different – agreement (this book – these books), government (help us), adjournment (the use of modifying particles just, only, even, etc.) and enclosure (the use of modal words and their equivalents really, after all, etc.).

3. Predication (SR3) – syntagmatic relations of interdependence. Predication may be of two kinds – primary (sentence level) and secondary (phrase level). Primary predication is observed between the subject and the predicate of the sentence while secondary predication is observed between non-finite forms of the verb and nominal elements within the sentence. Secondary predication serves the basis for gerundial, infinitive and participial word-groups (predicative complexes).

LECTURE 8: THE WORD-GROUP THEORY

1. Definition and general characteristics of the word-group.

There are a lot of definitions concerning the word-group. The most

adequate one seems to be the following: the word-group is a combination of at least two notional words which do not constitute the sentence but are syntactically connected. According to some other scholars (the majority of Western scholars and professors B.Ilyish and V.Burlakova – in Russia), a combination of a notional word with a function word (on the table) may be treated as a word-group as well. The problem is disputable as the role of function words is to show some abstract relations and they are devoid of nominative power. On the other hand, such combinations are syntactically bound and they should belong somewhere.

General characteristics of the word-group are:

1) As a naming unit it differs from a compound word because the number of constituents in a word-group corresponds to the number of different denotates: a black bird – чорний птах (2), a blackbird – дрізд (1);

a loud speaker (2), a loudspeaker (1).

2) Each component of the word-group can undergo grammatical changes without destroying the identity of the whole unit: to see a house - to see houses.

3) A word-group is a dependent syntactic unit, it is not a communicative unit and has no intonation of its own.

2. Classification of word-groups.

Word-groups can be classified on the basis of several principles:

a) According to the type of syntagmatic relations: coordinate (you and me), subordinate (to see a house, a nice dress), predicative (him coming, for him to come),

b) According to the structure: simple (all elements are obligatory), expanded (to read and translate the text – expanded elements are equal in rank), extended (a word takes a dependent element and this dependent element becomes the head for another word: a beautiful flower – a very beautiful flower).

3. Subordinate word-groups.

Subordinate word-groups are based on the relations of dependence between the constituents. This presupposes the existence of a governing

Element which is called the head and the dependent element which is called the adjunct (in noun-phrases) or the complement (in verb-phrases).

According to the nature of their heads, subordinate word-groups fall into noun-phrases (NP) – a cup of tea, verb-phrases (VP) – to run fast, to see a house, adjective phrases (AP) – good for you, adverbial phrases (DP) – so quickly, pronoun phrases (IP) – something strange, nothing to do.

The formation of the subordinate word-group depends on the valency of its constituents. Valency is a potential ability of words to combine. Actual realization of valency in speech is called combinability.

4. The noun-phrase (NP).

Noun word-groups are widely spread in English. This may be explained

by a potential ability of the noun to go into combinations with practically all parts of speech. The NP consists of a noun-head and an adjunct or adjuncts with relations of modification between them. Three types of modification are distinguished here:

a) Premodification that comprises all the units placed before the head: two smart hard-working students. Adjuncts used in pre-head position are called pre-posed adjuncts.

b) Postmodification that comprises all the units all the units placed after the head: students from Boston. Adjuncts used in post-head position are called post-posed adjuncts.

c) Mixed modification that comprises all the units in both pre-head and post-head position: two smart hard-working students from Boston.

Pre-posed adjuncts Post-posed adjuncts

Pronoun Adj.