The plane of language

1. The plane of language.

2. The plane of speech.

Language planes are structured paradigmatically, speech ones - syntagmatically. It's generally known, that every linguistic unit ends in 2 types of systemic relations at a time. If certain units, equal in rank are correlated by means of an opposition (E.g.: long--longer--longest), we say they have paradigmatic relations, that are usually vertical & imply the choice when they're realized in actual speech (E.g.: I'm not going to stay here any longer.), the element that stands in paradigmatic relations. But they're substitutable. E.g.: 1). The way to the station is very long.

2). Which is the longest river in the world? Opposition relations are called associative. Associative groups exist in the vertical way. If linguistic elements appear in a contrast linear pattern, we say they have syntagmatic relations. They form a syntagneme, which may comprise:

phonemes, morphemes, words, phrases, clauses. Syntagmatic relations can be observed not only at syntax level, they're not associative, but constructive, for they're based on the linear confrontation of the language units. Paradigmatic relations, which are typical of language, may be of different kinds: 1. They may be based on the similarity of the semantic features (synonymous & antonymous groups). E.g.: nice, pretty... 2. They may be based on the similarity of the formal characteristics of linguistic elements. Such relations exist between the members of a paradigm, which consists not of the units, but of those paradigmatic markers, which distinguish one form of the unit from its other forms. E.g.: go, goes, will go, has gone.

3. At the level major syntax we may also observe sentence paradigms, which are called transforms. They are united by a common meaning. E.g.: The work has been done, we went home. The work done, we went home. After the work was done, we went home. Syntagmatic relations exist between the elements linearly ordered. That is between phonemes, words etc. Linearity is the main factor for syntagmatic relations. Standing together in linear order, linguistic elements can make up a unity. But linearity is not the only ground, on which all syntagmatic relations are established. According to the logical approach, the differentiation is made between the 3 types of syntagmatic relations:

1. Independence. 2. Dependence. 3. Interdependence.

There are: combinational syntagmatic relations, which reveal relatedness of elements & non-combinational ones.

Combinational syntagmatic relations can be subdivided into:

1. Collocational (lexico-semantic).

2. Colligational (grammatical).

Collocational relations are not of a grammatical character, they're of lexicosemantic character; the collocated elements are located together in the same linear arrangement (,,to speak fluently).

Colligational relations are based on the morphological & syntactical peculiarities of the word (,,to tell him"; ,,to say nothing").Non-combinational relations are cohesive. They may be anaphoric & cataphoric.

Non-combinational relations are typical of the syntax of the text, which mean that neither phrases, nor sentences can be formed on the basis of such relations.

They're specifically textual & cohesive. They appear between sentences & supra phrasal unities. Linearity is not essential for such occasion. The cohesive relations appear between the elements which are usually in distant positions. The anaphoric relations show that an element refers to its antecedent in the left-hand side (retrospective relations). The cataphoric relations indicate that antecedent is located in the right text contest (prospective relations).

E.g.: ,, He hated interference especially in his work & beyond everything he hated interfering women. The more he thought of it, the angrier he became."

LECTURE 3.

THEME: Morphology.

PLAN.

1. Aspects of Morphology.

2. The definition of the morpheme.

3. The allo-emic principle.

4. The types of morphemes.

5. Types of word-form derivation.

1. Grammar has two constituent parts: Morphology & Syntax.

Morphology deals with morphological units (the morpheme & the word); word-forms, which signify some general conceptual notions (grammar. meanings, grammatical forms, grammatical categories). It also studies the parts of speech. Morphology has certain branches: one of them is morpho-phonemics, which describes the phonological representation of meaningful morphemes.

E.g.: morphophonemic vowel interchange in "ring - rang - rung" plays a definite part in the system of form-building. The vowel interchange in the words "food -feed is a means of word-building.

Another branch of Morphology - morphemics deals with the description of the morphological models of the language. In other words, it describes the morpheme structure, the ways of their location in the units of high level. E.g.: 2. Even casual comparison of such word form as dogs, boys, with the

corresponding dog, boy, will show that the 1st set may be split into 2 grammatically significant elements (<dog>+<s>), which, on the one hand, convey the meaning, and on the other, cause the certain agreement between the words in a sentence. Thus, we say: "The dog sleeps in a kennel", but "The dogs sleep in a kennel. The form "dog" can't be divided into future grammatically significant elements. Further division may be only phonologically. The described minimal grammatical units are called morphemes. They are delimited by comparing word form with one another and by singling out the recurrent pieces that compose them. A word may consist of 1 or more morphemes, each morpheme them conveys a particular lexical or grammatical meaning.

The morpheme - is the smallest meaningful, further indivisible recurrent component of a word or a word form.

3. If the approach from the point of view of speech, we can observe the following phenomenon: the morphemes like words may exhibit different forms in the process of speaking. It depends on their position within the word. E.g.: the regular formative of the plural number morpheme "s" may be represented in speech in different ways.

In languageIn speech

 [s] - book

 - (e)s[z] - boys

 [iz] - boxes

Allomorphs are speech variants of morphemes.

At the basis of allo-emic elements lies the division into language and speech. The term morphemes stands for the whole grammatically relevant class of forms. They belong to language. It is an abstract entity which expresses particular grammatical meaning. Em-terms denote generalized invariants of language, characterized by a certain functional status ( Allo-morphes denote the concrete manifestation of invariants, of the generalized units, dependent on the regular colligation with other elements of the language.Invariants are abstract. The allo-morphs (or variant morphemes ) like [s], [z], [iz] are phonologically predictable, but we have many examples of allo-morphs , which can't be explained by usage of speech criteria. Thus, the English plural form of the word "ox" - "oxen" is grammatically parallel to "dogs". "En" is an

irregular form of the plural number. There are other irregular forms: "children", "geese". Professor Robins considered them to be allo-morphs of the plural number morphemes. According to the tradition, which goes back to Panini Grammar, such specific forms as......... are considered by linguists as having any form (0 form ) of plural number.

There is another group of words which have a specific morphemic structure: E.g.:"man - men", "tooth - teeth". The plural forming morpheme is represented not by any recurrent formative like [s], but a process of root vowel interchange. E.g.: [ж] - [e] etc. We are dealing here with infix morphemes. Such word forms are rarely survivals of the specific morphemic structure of Old English. To simplify the complicated

system of analysis, professor Ilysh V.A. and others refer all the speech exhibits of the plural number morphemes to the allo-morphs of the plural number morphemes, which graphically may be depicted as following: Language Speech plural number morphemes [s], [z], [iz], [ш], [ж]--[e], [f]--[vz],[u]--[i]. The analysis and classification of different phonological forms in which morphemes appear, both in individual languages and in languages in general is called Morphonology, which is the same as morphophonemics. When discussing the different forms of the English plural number morphemes we applied the morphophonological analysis.

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" &THORN; contains &THORN; 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 &eth; 8 grammatical categories.

 Tense

 Person

 Number

 Mood

 Voice

 Aspect

 Taxes

English noun has 2 categories ( number, case ). Adjective &eth; degree of comparison.

 

LECTURE N6.