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Grammatical meaning, form, categories

The notion of ‘grammatical meaning’.

The word combines in its semantic structure two meanings – lexical and grammatical.

Lexical meaning is the individual meaning of the word (e.g. table).

Grammatical meaning is the meaning of the whole class or a subclass.

There are some classes of words that are devoid of any lexical meaning and possess the grammatical meaning only. This can be explained by the fact that they have no referents in the objective reality. All function words belong to this group – articles, particles, prepositions, etc.

2. Types of grammatical meaning.

The grammatical meaning may be explicit and implicit.

The implicit grammatical meaning is not expressed formally (e.g. the word table does not contain any hints in its form as to it being inanimate).

The explicit grammatical meaning is always marked morphologically – it has its marker. In the word cats the grammatical meaning of plurality is shown in the form of the noun; cat’s – here the grammatical meaning of possessiveness is shown by the form ‘s; is asked – shows the explicit grammatical meaning of passiveness.

The implicit grammatical meaning may be of two types – general and dependent. The general grammatical meaning is the meaning of the whole word-class, of a part of speech (e.g. nouns – the general grammatical meaning of thingness).

The most important thing about the dependent grammatical meaning is that it influences the realization of grammatical categories restricting them to a subclass.

There are 3 fundamental notions: grammatical form, grammatical meaning, and grammatical category.

Grammatical form is very abstractive generalized meaning, which is linguistically expressed. ex:

Peter’s head -the grammatical meaning of the category of case showing the relations between part and a whole.

Grammatical meaning is a system of expressing the grammatical meaning through the paradigmatic correlation of grammatical forms-expressed by grammatical opposition, which can be of different types:

Private

Gradual -large-larger-largest

Equipollent -am is are

How we express grammatical meaning:

Inflexions-pen-pens,

Sound alternation- replacive morpheme-man-men,

Analitycal means with the help of analytical forms (discontinuous morphemes)

Suppletivity-different roots for grammatical forms. I-me/go-went

2.Morphemic structure of English words.

The morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of form.

Morphemes occur in speech only as constituent parts of words, not independently, although a word may consist of single morpheme.

Words reveals that they are composed of morphemes of different types: root-morphemes and affixational morphemes.

The root-morpheme is the lexical nucleus of a ward, it has an individual lexical meaning shared by no other morpheme of the language.

Affixational morphemes modify the meaning of the root morpheme. They are lexically always dependent on the root which they modify. There Are classified into affixes building different parts of speech: nouns, verbs, adjectives or adverbs.

Free morphemes coincide with word-forms of independently functioning words. It is obvious that free morphemes can be found only among roots, so the morpheme boy- in the word boy is a free morpheme; in the word undesirable there is only one free morpheme desire-; the word pen-holder has two free morphemes pen- and hold-.

Bound morphemes are those that do not coincide with separate word-forms, consequently all derivational morphemes, such as -ness, -able, -er are bound. Root-morphemes may be both free and bound. The morphemes theor- in the words theory, theoretical, or horr- in the words horror, horrible, horrify are bound roots as there are no identical word-forms.

Semi-bound morphemes are those that can function both as an affix and a free-morpheme. E.g. well: sleep well, well-known; half: half an hour, half-done

A morpheme is a segment of a word regularly recurrent in other words and having the same meaning in all of its recurrences.

The word has both lexical and grammatical meaning while the morpheme — only lexical. In some morphemes (like suffixes) the connotational (emotive charge) component can prevail (deminutive).

Some morphemes have the part-of-speech meaning.

Also morphemes have differential and distributional meanings.

Differential meaning serves to distinguish one word from all other words containing the same morphemes (precook, overcook).

Distributional meaning — is the meaning of the order and arrangement of morpheme making up words.

`The morphemic structure of the word is being established by the method of immediate and ultimate constituents (непосредственных и конечных составляющих).

This method is based on a binary principle which means that at each stage the word is broken into the components. When the components can't be further divided and the analysis is completed we have arrived at the ultimate constituents — the morphemic structure of the word.

Friend-ly-ness

Morphemes can be

Monomorphic (with one root) and

Polymorphic (more than one root) — eyeball

4.Traditional classification of words

The parts of speech are classes of words, all the members of these classes having certain characteristics in common which distinguish them fr om the members of other classes.

The problem of word classification into parts of speech still remains one of the most controversial problems in modern linguistics

There are four approaches to the problem:

• Classical (logical-inflectional)

• Functional

• Distributional

• Complex

In modern linguistics, parts of speech are discriminated according to three criteria: semantic, formal and functional.

This approach may be defined as complex. The semantic criterion presupposes the grammatical meaning of the whole class of words (general grammatical meaning). The formal criterion reveals paradigmatic properties: relevant grammatical categories, the form of the words, their specific inflectional and derivational features. The functional criterion concerns the syntactic function of words in the sentence and their combinability. Thus, when characterizing any part of speech we are to describe: a) its semantics; b) its morphological features; c) its syntactic peculiarities.

The division of language units into notion and function words reveals the interrelation of lexical and grammatical types of meaning. In notional words the lexical meaning is predominant. In function words the grammatical meaning dominates over the lexical one.

Objections:

The definitions are largely notional and often extremely quite vague; e.g. A pronoun is a word used instead of a noun (John came this morning – a man, someone, you-know-who, the aforementioned).

The number of parts of speech in the traditional grammars seems to be arbitrary. Why 8? Prof. Ilyish – 12 (+ numerals, statives, modal words and particles), prof. Khaimovich and Rogovskaya – 14 (+ articles and response words).

Main drawbacks:

morphological characteristics are ignored completely;

syntactical characteristics are not always taken into consideration (e.g. modal verbs are isolated from Class 2);

the classes are heterogeneous (one and the same word may happen to be in different classes and groups).

Strong points:

special accent is laid on distribution of words and their syntactic valency (another name for the classification is syntactico-distributional);

his materials comprise 250 000 word entries which provide information on frequency of occurrence.

By meaning we do not understand the individual meaning of a word (its lexical meaning) but the meaning common to all the words of a given class.

By form we mean the morphological characteristics of a type of word. Verbs are characterized by the categories of tense, mood, aspect, voice, etc. The form is not just stem-building elements.

By function we mean the syntactical properties of a type of words, i.e. its distribution (combinability and arrangement in a sentence) and its function in a sentence.

Problem classes of words:

response words

1. meaning – response statement

2. negative combinability

3. functioning as sentence-words (Are you coming? – Yes.)

modal words

1. meaning – modality: certainty, probability, i.e. speaker’s evaluation

2. form – invariable

3. function – do not enter any phrases, stay outside Happily they arrived. They arrived happily.

statives

1. meaning – state

2. form – prefix a-, no degrees of comparison

3. function of a predicative (He is afraid of difficulties)

postpositions (to bring up :: to bring)

particles (He is simply mad. He speaks simply.)

word-substitutes (Prof.Vorontsova: He speaks English better than I do).

Sentence

There are many definitions of the sentence and these definitions differ from each other because that the scientists approach from different view points to this question. Some of them consider the sentence from the point view of phonetics, others - from the point of view of semantics (the meaning of the sentence) and so on. According to the opinion of many grammarians

the definition of the sentence must contain all the peculiar features of the smallest communicative unit.

One traditional scheme for classifying English sentences is by the number and types of finite clauses:

A simple sentence consists of a single independent clause with no dependent clauses.

A compound sentence consists of multiple independent clauses with no dependent clauses. These clauses are joined together using conjunctions, punctuation, or both.

A complex sentence consists of at least one independent clause and one dependent clause.

A complex-compound sentence (or compound-complex sentence) consists of multiple independent clauses, at least one of which has at least one dependent clause.By purpose

Sentences can also be classified based on their purpose:

A declarative sentence or declaration, the most common type, commonly makes a statement: "I have to go to work."

An interrogative sentence or question is commonly used to request information — "Do I have to go to work?" — but sometimes not; see rhetorical question.

An exclamatory sentence or exclamation is generally a more emphatic form of statement expressing emotion: "I have to go to work!"

An imperative sentence or command tells someone to do something (and if done strongly may be considered both imperative and exclamatory): "Go to work." or "Go to work!"

SIMPLE SENTENCE

A simple sentence, also called an independent clause, contains a subject and a verb, and it expresses a complete thought. In the following simple sentences, subjects are in yellow, and verbs are in green.

A. Some students like to study in the mornings.

B. Juan and Arturo play football every afternoon.

C. Alicia goes to the library and studies every day.

The three examples above are all simple sentences. Note that sentence B contains a compound subject, and sentence C contains a compound verb. Simple sentences, therefore, contain a subject and verb and express a complete thought, but they can also contain a compound subjects or verbs.

COMPOUND SENTENCE

A compound sentence contains two independent clauses joined by a coordinator. The coordinators are as follows: for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so. (Helpful hint: The first letter of each of the coordinators spells FANBOYS.) Except for very short sentences, coordinators are always preceded by a comma. In the following compound sentences, subjects are in yellow, verbs are in green, and the coordinators and the commas that precede them are in red.

A. I tried to speak Spanish, and my friend tried to speak English.

B. Alejandro played football, so Maria went shopping.

C. Alejandro played football, for Maria went shopping.

The above three sentences are compound sentences.

Each sentence contains two independent clauses, and they are joined by a coordinator with a comma preceding it.

COMPLEX SENTENCE

A complex sentence has an independent clause joined by one or more dependent clauses. A complex sentence always has a subordinator such as because, since, after, although, or when or a relative pronoun such as that, who, or which. In the following complex sentences, subjects are in yellow, verbs are in green, and the subordinators and their commas (when required) are in red.

A. When he handed in his homework, he forgot to give the teacher the last page.

B. The teacher returned the homework after she noticed the error.

C. The students are studying because they have a test tomorrow.

D. After they finished studying, Juan and Maria went to the movies.

E. Juan and Maria went to the movies after they finished studying.

COMPLEX SENTENCES / ADJECTIVE CLAUSES

Finally, sentences containing adjective clauses (or dependent clauses) are also complex because they contain an independent clause and a dependent clause. The subjects, verbs, and subordinators are marked the same as in the previous sentences, and in these sentences, the independent clauses are also underlined.

A. The woman who(m) my mom talked to sells cosmetics.

B. The book that Jonathan read is on the shelf.

C. The house which AbrahAM Lincoln was born in is still standing.

D. The town where I grew up is in the United States.

Adjective Clauses are studied in this site separately, but for now it is important to know that sentences containing adjective clauses are complex.

The Problems of Sentence

Definition

Approaches:

Logical definition: sentence is a group of words expressing a

complete thought (English Descriptive or nominative grammar,

18th c.).

Psychological: sentence is not only a linguistic unit but also the

structure of human feeling or thought. (Шахматов –

Предложение – это комбинация представлений в процессе

мышления). S.Curme (an Eng. scholar): a sentence is an expression

of thought or feeling by means of a word or words used in such forms

and manner as to convey the meaning intended.

Structural: (classical Scientific Gr-r), R.Zandvoort: a sentence is an

oral or written communication made up of one or more units, each of

which contains a complete utterance formed according to a

definite pattern.

Formal: (American Descriptive Gr-r) Ch. Fries: a sentence is a word or

group of words standing between the initial capital letter and a