- •The reflexive voice. Non-traditional voices.
- •Clause-sentence-utterance-logical proposition
- •Informative type of sentence
- •Communicative & structural types of sentences
- •The article.
- •Category of modality in the sentence
- •Modal words
- •Statives
- •The category of mood. Indicative. Imperative.
- •Terminative/non-terminative, transitive/intransitive verbs Grammatical categories of the verb
- •The verb – meaning, form, function. Principles of classification.
- •The Theory of parts of speech in prenormative &classical gr-s.
- •The theory of parts of speech in American Descriptive Grammar.
- •The Theory of Progress, the Functional Theory.
- •Origin of the structure of Modern e-sh: Phonetic Approach, the Theory of Substratum.
- •Phonetic approach
- •The Theory of Substratum
- •Basic features of English syntax
- •Analytical features ofword-building
- •Prenormative eg
- •Prescriptive eg
- •Classical scientific grammar of e-sh
- •American descriptive grammar of eng
- •Transformational grammar
- •Noun. Number.
- •Noun. Case.
- •Scientific Principles for the Classification of Parts of Speech in Native Grammars of English. The Notion of Grammatical Category.
- •The adjective
- •Tense & Aspect of the verb
- •Numeral
- •Notional and formal words
- •Predicativity of the s-ce.
- •The verb: person and number. Other morphological categories
- •Syntax of classical scientific grammar
- •Quotation groups
- •Grammatical trends in word-changing noun adj PrN
- •Trends in Modern English word-changing verb
- •Generative semantix/syntax
- •The category of Voice
- •The Reflective Voice (rv)
- •Pronoun
- •Phrases (Ps)
- •Sentence definitions
- •Principles of clause-classification
- •Complex sent. As a syntactic unity
- •The subjunctive mood
Prescriptive eg
Summary: Prenormative & prescriptive G made the 1st type of E-sh G-s which is known as prescientific G-s. They were of a purely descriptive character, they were accumulating linguistic facts & quite often suffered from influence of Latin G. Their main contribution in the theory of E-sh G. It can be trusted in syntax, where they reduce the number of principle parts of the sentence from 3 to 2. They developed the trichotomic sentence division, introduced the concept of the clause & introduced the idea of the phrase. Thus they were preparing the grounds for the rise of scientific G-s of E.
There were main ideas of pre-nominative G which lasted until the mid 18th c. They are sprang up the 2nd type of G— prescriptive or normative (pre-scientific) too but it proclaimed its aims explicitly.
Robert Lowth (1762) published the G “Short introduction to E-sh G”. There he wrote that the task of G to teach people to speak correctly & make them able to avoid false or wrong forms. Thus they said the 1st task to prescribe correct forms & proscribe the wrong forms.
Prescriptivists refused to take the language of writers for an authority & instead they tried to solve all the disputable problems by applying to the laws of human reason. They believed that it is possible to work out the universal G which would be based on the laws of reason & logic. & these laws should be common to all languages. Those E forms which had no correspondence with Latin were abused & proscribed. E.g. Double negations were abused by R. Lowth. Like in mathematics 2 minuses refer a positive result, in the same way 2 negatives produce an affirmative sentences. Double comparatives like: lesser, worser. They succeeded in expelling these forms from usage. The construction: “it’s me” - also abused & recommended form was: “it’s I”, “it’s he” etc.
In prescriptive G the aim is dictating. The use of the prepositions: among, between was interchangeable until the beginning of the 18th c. But R. Lowth analysed the ethimology of the word ‘b/w’ and found the root two. The preposition can be used referred to 2 objects. “Among” should be used in all other cases.
In the history of prescriptive G there can be traced 2 unequal periods: 1) mid 18-mid19c. (most prominent works by R. Lowth “Short Introduction to EG” (London 1762); Lindly Murray “EG adopted to different classes of learners”.2) mid 19-nowdays (famous scholars: Walter Mason “EG including grammatical analysis”; R. Fowler “EG”; Arthur Bain “A higher EG”; R. Close “A reference G for the students of E” (1979).
Achievements of prescriptive G in treating problems of theoretical G.
In morphology: there are no innovations because they practically borrowed the ideas of pre-nominative G.
In syntax: in prenominative G there were 3 principle parts of speech: subject, predicate, object. In prescriptive G the object was lead out of this number & began to be treated as the secondary part of the sentence because the object subordinated to the verb. Objects were classified: direct, indirect, prepositional. This classification though not very logical turned out to be popular & is in common use till nowdays.
Prescriptive G made a considerable contribution into the theory of the complex sentence. Until the mid 19th c E-sh grammarians use dichotomic sentence division: simple, composite.
In the mid 19th c grammarians turned to the trichotomic sentence division: simple, complex & compound (or composite). Also in the mid 19th the term clause was to denote the structural part of complex sentences. And it was defined as a combination of the subject & predicate which however doesn’t produce a simple sentence. (clause—предикативная единица). Clauses were subdivided into: object, attributive, adverbial.
For the 1st time in prescriptive G there appeared the notion of the phrase (словосочетание). R. Lowth defined it as a combination of any 2 words. The definition sounds ambiguous because a combination may be equal to a phrase.