Morphology

• 3 Constituent part of language: the phonological, the lexical and the grammatical systems. 3 main branches of linguistics.

A Lang. as a very complex phenomenon includes 3 different constituent parts:

• The phonological system

• The lexical

• The grammatical

Lang. as a whole is an object of study of Ling. Different constituent parts are studied by different branches of Ling (phonology, lexicology and grammar).

By the grammatical system we understand the whole set of regularities determining the combination of naming means words and phraseological combinations for the formation utterances in speech.

From this point of view we can subdivide grammar into 2 sub-branches:

• Morphology (Blokh) that studies the word in its abstract sense.

• Syntax is a gram.study of the sentence. It deals with the structure of the sentence on the whole and with the different constituent parts of the sentence in particular.

As for theoretical and practical grammar, they are both considered to be ling. disciplines that go hand in hand and deal with Grammar as a branch of Ling. But the aims and approaches are vary.

The aim of th.Gr. is to acquire a scientific conception of the Gram. system in accordance with the principles of both traditional and modern ling.

The aim of pr.Gr. is to get an ability to use certain knowledge about the gr.system of the lang. in order to speak and understand all right according to the established rules of the lang. in questions.

Different aims mean different methods of study!

• Multilevel organization of language.

The classification of the ling.disciplines in connection with the concept of multilevel organization of lang.structure was originated in the XX c. According to it the lang.structure is a complex consisting of some levels or layers. They are established according to the properties of the ling.units operating in speech.

Some scholars pointed out following units:

• the phoneme (the smallest distinctive unit)

• the morpheme (the smallest meaningful unit)

• the word (the smallest naming unit)

• the sentence (the smallest communication unit).

Thus, these scholars speak about 4 levels:

• the level of phoneme – the phonological level

• the level of morpheme – the morphemic level

• the level of the word – the morphological level

• the level of the sentence – the syntactic level.

In Blokh’s opinion there are 6 levels of the ls.:

1) the phonological

2) The morphemic

3) The morphological

4) the syntactic

5) the phrasemic

6) The level of the paragraph (the supra-syntactic level).

Nowadays +2 more levels:

7) the level of the text

8) the level of discourse.

• Morphology and Syntax.

The system of the word forms in the sphere of morphology, ‘cause different word-forms don’t exist for their own sake. They are produced in speech in the process of making sentences. A word should take a certain position in the sentence according to its grammatical form. Forms and positions are the sphere of syntax.

At the same time the member of sentence (the sphere of syntax) is constituted by a certain part of speech (the level of morphology).

The structure classification and the combinability of words is the object of morphology.

The syntax deals with the structure classification and combinability which are built up of words and their equivalents.

• The syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations.

Grammar deals not with words and sentences as such but the relations between them.

The units of each level can be analyzed from the point of view of their inner structure:

• The classes they belong to in LS (paradigmatic)

• The combinations they form in speech (syntagmatic).

The structure of various units and the classes they form (paradigmatic relations) are the sphere of Lang.

The same units formed in the process of communication are the sphere of speech (syntagmatic relation).

Nowadays there is also a view that synt. and paradig. relations exist also between sentences.

• The content of the word. Lexical, lexical-grammatical and grammatical meanings.

The word is a basic linguistic unit of the morphological level of LS. It is a very complex phenomenon. It can be spoken from the point of view of its content and of its form.

The content also a very complex phenomenon. Each word may have a variety of meanings.

And the meanings can be classified according to its function in speech:

• The Lexical meaning of the word is its individual meaning or a set of such meanings, which are found either in our memory or the dictionary. It characterize the word as a unit of the vocabulary, thus, it is an object of lexicology.

• The Lexical-grammatical meaning of the word is not individual. Quite a great number of words can have the same LGM (beautiful, bad, high – quality; drink, die, smell – action; chair, flower, book – substance). Here can be found such things as: class seme (doctor, student – human-being), differential seme (set of features), potential seme or connotation seme (stylistic component). LGM in Grammar is mostly studied by morphology. In the number of cases LGM make different words (strength – to strengthen), patterns of combinability (art.+adj.+noun) and syntactic function in the sentence (this book is good – the beauty is remarkable).

• The Grammatical meanings of words are not individual. They can be attached to a number of words that may differ greatly. (the GM of possessivity, tense).

One word can have different GM.

• The form of the word. Types of morphemes.

The smallest unit of morphology is a morpheme. The definition of it have been changed depending on the flew of thoughts in theoretical studies and on this or that trend.

But the 1^st who introduced this notion was Б. де Куртене. Then it was understood as a general term for linear word components – the root and affixes.

Acc.to prof. Почепцов a morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit in the lang. system that isn’t positionally independent, it depends on other elements (unlike the word).

Acc. to prof. Смирницкий a morpheme is the smallest ling.unit that has both its utter (sound, graphic) and inner components.

Acc. to prof. Вандриес the class of morphemes include both auxiliary words and parts of speech and word order (sun-ny weather: 2+1=3 morphemes).

Morphemes can be classified according to their meanings:

• Lexical. It is regarded as a root of the word.

• All the other bound morphemes (prefixes, affixes, infixes) – Grammatical that can form new forms of words

• LG that can form new words.

The combination of the root of the word with LG morpheme is called stem.