The morphemic structure of the word.

Theory of Grammar

The main purpose of the theoretical course in English grammar is to introduce the student to the linguistic problems connected with grammatical structures and to the modern methods applied (связанные) in dealing with them.

Grammar is a branch of linguistics which is concerned (связана) with the study of the grammatical structure of a language.

Grammar may be normative (prescriptive, school), which prescribes the definite rules for correct grammatical usage.

It shows the way one must speak or read, while theoretical grammar analyses language facts without giving any prescription (предписание).

Hence (отсюда), the aim of theoretical grammar of a language is to present a theoretical description of its grammatical system, i.e. to scientifically analyze and define its grammatical categories and study the mechanisms of grammatical formation of utterances (высказывания) out of words in the process of speech making.

Unlike school grammar, theoretical grammar doesn’t always give a ready answer.

In the language there are a number of grammatical phenomena which are interpreted differently by different linguists.

This difference is explained by the fact that in linguistics there are various directions, each having its own method of analysis and approach to the material. But sometimes some language facts are difficult to analyze and scholars (ученые) suggest only a possible, but not final, way out.

That’s why there are various theories of one and the same language phenomenon.

The theoretical grammar of a modern language takes these theories into consideration and analyzes them.

Thus, the student is introduced to the linguistic problems connected with grammatical structures, and to the methods applied in studying them.

As a result of his studies the student is meant to acquire (приобретать) an understanding of the structure of the language and an ability to form his own ideas on this or that question.

Questions.

1) What is the difference between normative and theoretical grammars?

2) What is the students’ aim in studying theoretical grammar?

Grammar consists of two parts-morphology and syntax.

Traditionally morphology is concerned with the study of forms of words (Gr. ‘morpha’ – form, ‘logos’ - knowledge). Syntax is the part of grammar which treats (иметь дело) of phrases and sentences.

But in M.E. the difference between a word and a phrase is sometimes very difficult to differenciate, e.g. ‘highly’ is a word, but ‘has come’ consisting of 2 words is a phrase and belongs to syntax, but morphologically it is an analytical form of the word ‘to come’ and belongs to morphology.

The basic units of morphology are the morpheme and the word, and those of syntax are the phrase (word-group) and the sentence.

The morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit (love-ly, writ-er).

The word is the smallest naming unit – (father, talk, gold, quick).

The sentence is the smallest communication unit (containing communication).

Questions.

1) What is morphology?

2) What is syntax?

3) What are the basic units of morphology?

4) What are the basic units of syntax?

5) What are the smallest units of the language?

The morphemic structure of the word.

1. The word.

The word is the main unit of morphology. Linguistics has no definition of the word, suitable for this unit in typologically different languages.

But there are some definitions for inflected languages (флективные), of which the best one is as follows: “The word is the smallest unit of the language having positional independence”.

This is a rather exact definition which stresses on the one hand the ability of one word to take different positions in different sentences, and on the other hand, it stresses the fact, that the word is the smallest discrete (существующий раздельно) unit of the language. The word is the largest unit of morphology. Some linguists consider this term (the word) to be polysemantic. That’s why it is necessary to point out that the word is the generalized (обобщенно) representative of all word–forms, which it has. Thus, speaking about the word ‘река’ we mean all possible word-forms: реки, рекой, реку, etc.

Consequently (следовательно), a word-form is a particular form of a word, and the word represents all possible word-forms.

The morpheme.

While the word is the largest unit of morphology, the morpheme is its smallest unit, having both form (sound) and substance (сущность) (meaning).

The notion of morpheme was introduced by Beaudouin de Courtenay as a generalized expression of the components of the word – the stem and the affixes.

Different linguists understand it differently. Some include in the notion of morpheme form-words, parts of speech, e.g. prepositions, and order of words.

The linguists of the Copenhagen school find several morphemes in one and the same element, e.g. in the word-form лесом the ending -ом contains three morphemes, expressing case, number and gender.

Morpheme is represented in the language by its variants: allomorphs, having special form, and sounding differently. E.g. Dreamed-[d], walked-[t], loaded-[id], sometimes allomorphs sound alike (одинаково). e.g. speaker, actor [ ].

In traditional grammar the study of the morphemic structure of the word was conducted in the light of the two basic criteria: positional and semantic or functional.

a) Morphemes are divided into root-morphemes (roots) and affixal morphemes (affixes). The roots of notional (смысловая) works are classical lexical morphemes.

The affixal morphemes include prefixes, suffixes and inflexions. Of these, prefixes and lexical suffixes have word-building functions, together with the root they form the stem of the word; inflexions (окончания) (grammatical suffixes) express different morphological categories.

The root is obligatory (обязательный) for any word, while affixes are not obligatory.

The abstract complete morphemic model of the common English word is the following: prefix + root + lexical suffix + grammatical suffix.

On the basis of the degree of self-dependence free morphemes and bound (связанных) morphemes are distinguished (различают). Bound morphemes cannot form words by themselves, they are identified only as parts of words. Free morphemes can build up words by themselves, i.e. can be used freely.

E.g. in the word ‘handful’ the root ‘hand’ is a free morpheme, while the suffix -ful is a bound morpheme.

There are very few productive bound morphemes in the morphological system of English:

1) –(e)s – the plural of nouns, the possessive case of nouns, the 3^rd person singular present of verbs.

2) –(e)d – the past and past participle of verbs.

3) –ing – the gerund and present participle.

4) –er, est – the comparative and superlative degrees of adjectives and adverbs.

The auxiliary (вспомогательное) word – morphemes should be interpreted as ‘semi-bound’ morphemes as they form categorial unities with their notional stem-words. E.g. has come . It should be remembered that the phonetic interchange (взаимообмен, чередование) is utterly (весьма) unproductive in English as in all the Indo-European languages.

This type of grammatical means can be understood as a kind of suppletivity (partial suppletivity). E.g. give - gave.

On the basis of linear characteristics, “continuous” and “discontinuous” morphemes are distinguished. By the discontinuous (прерывающаяся) morpheme a two-element grammatical unit is meant which is found in the analytical grammatical form comprising (включает в себя) an auxiliary word and a grammatical suffix.

Be…ing – for the continuous verb forms

Have…en – for the perfect verb forms.

Be…en – for the passive verb forms.

In Modern linguistics there is the notion of a zero morpheme. It is found in the word-forms having no ending. E.g. the noun ‘стол’in the nominative case has a zero morpheme, and in oblique cases it has real morphemes.

The meaning of the zero morpheme becomes evident (очевидный) only in opposition. И.П. Иванова strongly object to this term, because the ‘zero morpheme’ has no form, it doesn’t sound. Another term is suggested instead. It is – ‘zero exponent’, which indicates that the absence of an ending expresses some grammatical meaning (нулевой показатель).

Questions:

1) Speak about the problem of the definition of the word.

2) Speak about the notion of the morpheme.

3) How do different linguists understand the morpheme?

4) What types of morphemes do you know?

5) What are the productive bound morphemes in English?

6) Speak about the problem of the zero morpheme.

Lecture 2