- •Grammar as a part of language. Padadigmatic and syntagmatic units
- •2) Grammar as a linguistic discipline. Variants of grammar. Types of Grammatical analysis.
- •3) Division of Grammar. Morphology and syntax
- •4) Grammatical meaning, Grammatical form
- •5) Grammatical category. The notion of opposition as the basis of gram.Categories.
- •6) The word as the smallest naming unit and the main unit of morphology
- •7) Parts of speech. Different approaches to the classification of parts of speech.
- •8) Criteria for establishing parts of speech:semantic,formal.Notinal and functional p. Of s.
- •9) General characteristics of the noun. Morphological, semantic and syntactic properties of the noun. Gramatically relevant classes of nouns
- •10. Morphological categories of Noun (number, case)
- •11. Article in English. Number and meaning of articles. The problem
- •12. Adjective. Classes. Statives
- •13. The adverb. Classes. Degrees of comparison
- •§ 3. In accord with their word-building structure adverbs may be simple and derived.
- •§ 4. Adverbs are commonly divided into qualitative, quantitative and circumstantial.
- •14. Verb. Classification
- •15. The Category of Tense. Problem of future. Future in the past
- •16. The place of continuous forms in the system of the English verb. The category of aspect
- •17. The place of perfect forms in the system of the English verb. The category of order (phase, correlation)
- •18)The category of voice in English. General ch-tics. The problem of the number of voices.
- •19. The category of mood in English. General characteristics. The problems of Subjunctive.
- •20) Finite and non-finite forms of the verb. Category of representation
- •21) General ch-ics of syntax as a part of grammar
- •22)The problem of the definition of the phrase. Phrases and forms of word connection
- •23) General characteristics of the sentence. Predicativity. Predication.
- •24) Classification of sentences. Structural and communicative types of sentence.
- •25)The formal structure of sentences. The model of parts of the sentence
- •26)The Problems of the Object, the Attribute, the adverbial modifier
- •27) The distributional model of the sentence. The model of immediate constituents
- •28). The transformational model of the sentence
- •29. Functional sentence perspective. The theme and rheme
- •30. The Semantic structure of the sentence. General Overview of Semantic Syntax
- •Valency theory
- •Deep case theory
- •33. Compositional Syntax
- •34. Pragmatic approach to the study of language units. Basic notions of pragmatic linguistics.
- •35) The grammatical features of dialogues and communicative parts.
- •37.Utterances and Texts. Speech Act theory
- •38. Text linguistics. Grammatical aspects of the Text.
- •39. General characteristics of the composite sentence. The compound sentence
- •40. The Comlex Sentence. Principles of classification
33. Compositional Syntax
The concept named “Compositional Syntax” was first formulated and further developed in Minsk State Linguistic University, and more exactly, at the Department of Grammar and History of English.
This theoretical framework is an attempt to develop a united theory of Syntax. The presentation of the semantics of the sentence is based on several assumptions following from the general properties of the semantic aspect of the sign. These assumptions are:
The semantic sphere of any sign is divided into the significational and denotational aspects. The significational aspect of the sign meaning is determined by the system of signs and shows the way in which the Speaker presents the phenomenon she/he speaks about. The denotational aspect of the sign meaning is determined by our knowledge of the Universe and our complex idea of the phenomenon we speak about and depends on our experience.
Because a sentence is a model of some fragment of the outer world, its semantics is necessarily a construction, which means that both the significational and the denotational aspects of the sentence meaning must be structures, relations of special elements.
The structures of the significational and the denotational aspects of the meaning of a sentence must be INDEPENDENT of each other. (The structure of the denotational aspect, usually termed “situation” or “the state of affairs/things”, is thought to be the first step of generalisation; and the significational aspect, usually termed as “proposition” is believed to be the final step. It is believed that while creating a sentence, the Speaker has in mind the structure of the situation and generalises it up to the class of similar situations. four types of proposition.
Dynamic and directed. These propositions do not permit the transformation of permutation and can be answers to the What happens? question. E.g. John gave Jane an apple.
Dynamic and non-directed. These propositions permit the transformation of permutation and can be answers to the What happens? question. E.g. John met Dave.
Static and directed. These propositions do not permit the transformation of permutation and cannot be answers to the What happens? question. E.g. Jane has a car.
Static and non-directed. These propositions permit the transformation of permutation and cannot be answers to the What happens? question. E.g. Mike looks like Nick.
The meaning of the sentence is the result of co-ordination of these two structures.
These assumptions allow to unite the most important ideas of the four theories of sentence meaning.The general meaning of a sentence is the result of composing the significational and the denotational semantic structures, so the meanings of sentences and their components should be described in two sets of terms and are actually combinations of significational and denotational meanings
34. Pragmatic approach to the study of language units. Basic notions of pragmatic linguistics.
The term ‘pragmatics’ was first introduced by Charles Morris, a philosopher. He contrasts pragmatics with semantics and syntax. He claims that syntax is the study of the grammatical relations of linguistic units to one another and the grammatical structures of phrases and sentences that result from these grammatical relation, semantics is the study of the relation of linguistic units to the objects they denote, and pragmatics is the study of the relation of linguistic units to people who communicate.
In our everyday life we as a rule perform or play quite a lot of different roles – a student, a friend, a daughter, a son, a client, etc. When playing different roles our language means are not the same – we choose different words and expressions suitable and appropriate for the situation. We use the language as an instrument for our purposes. For instance,
(a) What are you doing here? We’re talking (b) What the hell are you doing here? We’re chewing the rag
have the same referential meaning but their pragmatic meaning is different, they are used in different contexts. Similarly, each utterance combines a propositional base (objective part) with the pragmatic component (subjective part). It follows that an utterance with the same propositional content may have different pragmatic components. To put it in other words, they are different speech acts. That is, speech acts are simply things people do through language – for example, apologizing, instructing, menacing, explaining something, etc. On any occasion the action performed by producing an utterance will consist of three related acts (a three-fold distinction):
locutionary act – producing a meaningful linguistic expression, uttering a sentence. If you have difficulty with actually forming the sounds and words to create a meaningful utterance (because you are a foreigner or tongue-tied) then you might fail to produce a locutionary act: it often happens when we learn a foreign language.
illocutionary act – we form an utterance with some kind of function on mind, with a definite communicative intention or illocutionary force. The notion of illocutionary force is basic for pragmatics.
perlocutionary act – the effect the utterance has on the hearer. Perlocutionary effect may be verbal or non-verbal. E.g. I’ve bought a car – Great! It’s cold here – and you close the window.