Categorical Structure of the Word

The most general notions reflecting the most general properties of phenomena are referred to in logic as ‘categorical notions’, or ‘categories’.

As for the grammatical category itself, it presents a unity of form (i.e. material factor), and meaning (i.e. ideal factor). In other terms it presents a unity of content and expression. The plane of content (plurality) comprises the purely semantic elements contained in the language while the plane of expression (boys) comprises the material (formal) units of the language. The two planes are inseparably connected, so that no meaning can be realized without some material means of expression.

The ordered set of grammatical forms expressing a category constitutes a paradigm. Paradigmatic relations cannot be directly observed in utterances.

Paradigms may be small and large, depending on the number of grammatical categories they express; e.g. the paradigm of the word ‘man’ consists of 4 forms:

a man – men (number)

man’s – men’s (case)

Parts of speech represent larger paradigms possessing particular paradigms of case, number (noun), degrees of comparison (adjective, adverb), tense, voice, mood, person (verb), etc. Bigger paradigms after parts of speech are morphology and syntax. The biggest paradigm of a language is its grammatical structure.

Number(common):

Common features serve as the basis of contrast, while differential features immediately express the function in question. The opposition along the line of one grammatical category is called an opposeme, e.g. number opposeme: a table – tables.

The oppositional theory was originally formulated as a phonological theory. The main qualitative types of opposition were established in phonology: privative (b-d-g, p-t-k); gradual (постепенный) - (i:-i-e-a) and equipollent (равноценный) (bilabial) – (m-b). By the number of members contrasted, oppositions were divided into binary (two members) and more than binary (ternary – триада, тройной, quaternary – четвертной, состоящий из четырех частей, etc). The most important type of opposition is the binary privative opposition; the other types of opposition are reducible (допускающие уменьшения) to the binary privative opposition

The binary privative opposition is formed by a contrastive pair of members in which one member is characterized by the presence of a certain differential feature (mark) while the other member is characterized by the absence of this feature. The member in which the feature is present is called the ‘marked’ or ‘strong’, or ‘positive’ member, and is commonly designated (обозначать, называть) by the symbol ‘+’ (plus); the member in which the feature is absent is called the ‘unmarked’ or ‘weak’, or ‘negative’ member, and is commonly designated by the symbol ‘-’ (minus).

The gradual opposition is formed by a contrastive group of members, which are distinguished not by the presence or absence of a feature, but by the degree of it.

The equipollent opposition is formed by a contrastive pair or group in which the members are distinguished by different positive features.

The most important type of opposition in morphology, the same as in phonology, is the binary privative opposition. The privative morphological opposition is based on a morphological differential feature, which is present in its strong (marked) member and absent in its weak (unmarked) member. E.g. the expression of the verbal present and past tenses is based on a privative opposition the differential feature of which is the suffix (e)d. This suffix, rendering the meaning of the past tense, marks the past form of the verb positively (we worked), and the present form negatively (we work).

The meanings differentiated by the oppositions are sometimes called 'seme' [si:m] сема. For instance, the nounal form 'cats' expresses the seme of plurality, as opposed to the form 'cat' which express, by contrast, the seme of singularity. The two forms constitute a privative opposition in which the plural is the marked member. In order to stress the negative marking of the singular, it can be referred to as 'non-plural'.

The meaning of the weak member of privative opposition is more general and abstract as compared with the meaning of the strong member, which is more particular and concrete.

Due to this difference in meaning the weak member is used in a wider range of contexts than the strong member.

Equipollent oppositions in the system of English morphology constitute a minor type. An example of such an opposition can be seen in the correlation of the person forms of the verb 'be' - am - are - is.

Gradual oppositions in morphology are not generally recognized. An example of the gradual morphological opposition can be seen in the category of comparison: strong - stronger - strongest.

A grammatical category must be expressed by at least one opposition of forms. Both equipollent and gradual oppositions in morphology, the same as in phonology, can be reduced to privative oppositions.

In various contextual conditions, one member of an opposition can be used in the position of the other, counter-member. This phenomenon should be treated as 'oppositional reduction' or 'oppositional substitution'. E.g. Tonight we start for London. The verb in this sentence takes the form of the present, while its meaning in the context is the future. It means that the opposition present - future has been reduced, the weak member (present) replacing the strong one (future).

This kind of oppositional reduction is referred to as 'neutralization' of opposition. There exists another kind of reduction, by which one of the members of the opposition is placed in contextual conditions uncommon for it. This use is stylistically marked. E.g. This man is constantly complaining of something.

The form of the present continuous in this sentence stands in sharp contradiction with its regular grammatical meaning 'action in progress of the present time'. This contradiction intensifies the implied disapproval of the man's behaviour.

The grammatical forms are classed into synthetical and analytical.

Synthatical grammatical forms are realized by the inner morphemic composition of the word, while analytical grammatical forms are built up by a combination of at least two words, one of which is a grammatical auxiliary (word-morpheme) and the other of 'substantial' meaning.

Synthatical grammatical forms are based on inner inflexion, outer inflexion, and suppelivity. Hence, the forms are referred to as inner-inflexional, outer-inflexional and suppletive.

Inner inflexion (infixation) is used in English in irregular verbs for the formation of the Past Indefinite and Past Participle, besides it is used in a few nouns for the formation of the plural; e.g. begin - began - begun; man - men.

Suppletivity like inner inflexion is not productive. It is based on the correlation of different roots, (or it consists in the grammatical interchange of word roots).

Suppletivity is used in the forms of the verbs 'be' and 'go' in the irregular forms of the degrees of comparison, in some forms of personal pronouns.

E.g. be - am - are - is - was - were

go - went, much - more

good - better, little - less

bad - worse, I - me, we - us, she - her.

The grammatical categories can either be innate (врожденный, природный) for a given class of words (part of speech), or only serve as a sign of correlation (взаимосвязь, соотношение) with some other class. For instance, the category of number directly exposes the number of the substance - one ship - several ships (innate). The category of number in the verb, however, does not give a natural characteristic to the denoted process.

Thus, grammatical categories should be divided into 'immanent' categories (присущий, постоянный), i.e. categories innate for a given class, and 'reflective' categories, i.e. categories of a secondary, derivative semantic value. E.g. the verbal person, the verbal number are reflective, while the substantive - pronominal person, the substantive number, the tense of the verb, the comparison of adjectives and adverbs are immanent.

Questions:

1) What unity does a grammatical category present?

2) What is the plane of content? What is the plane of expression?

3) What is a paradigm?

4) What types of oppositions do you know?

5) What is a privative morphological opposition based on?

6) What is oppositional reduction?

7) What are synthetical, analytical and suppletive forms?

8) What are immanent and reflective grammatical categories?

Lecture 3

Parts of Speech

(Grammatical Classes of Words)

The words of language, depending on various formal and semantic features, are divided into classes. The traditional grammatical classes of words are called “parts of speech”, since the word is distinguished not only by grammatical, but also by semantico-lexemic properties, some scholars also refer to parts of speech as lexico-grammatical categories (Смирницкий).

It should be noted that the term “parts of speech” is purely traditional and conventional. This name was introduced in the grammatical teaching of Ancient Greece, where no strict differenciation was drawn between the word as a vocabulary unit and the word as a functional element of the sentence.

In modern linguistics, parts of speech are discriminated on the basis of the three criteria: “semantic, formal and functional” (Щерба).

The semantic criterion presupposes (предполагать, заключать в себя) the generalized meaning, which is characteristic of all the words constituting (составлять) a given part of speech. This meaning is understood as the categorical meaning of the part of speech.

The formal criterion exposes (выставлять на показ) the specific inflexional and derivational (word-building) features of part a part of speech.

The functional criterion concerns the syntactic role of words in the sentence, typical of a part of speech.

These three factors of categorical characterization of words are referred to as 'meaning', form and function.

The three-criteria characterization of parts of speech was developed and applied to practice in Soviet linguistics. Three names are especially notable for the elaboration of these criteria: V.V. Vinogradov in connection with the study of Russian Grammar, A.I. Smirnitskyand B.A. Ilyish in connection with their study of English Grammar.

Alongside of the three-criteria principle of dividing the words into grammatical classes modern linguistics has developed another, narrower principle based on syntactic featuring of words only.

On the material of Russian, the principle of syntactic approach to the classification of word-stock were outlined in the works of A.M. Peshkovsky. The principles of syntactic classification of English words were worked out by L. Bloomfield and his followers L. Harris and especially Ch. Fries.

Here is how Ch. Fries presents his scheme of English word-classes.

For his materials he chooses tape-recorded spontaneous conversations which last 50 hours.

The three typical sentences are:

Frames:

A. The concert was good (always).

B. The clerk remembered the tax (suddenly).

C. The team went there.

As a result he divides the words into 4 classes: class I, II, III, IV, which correspond to the traditional nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs.

Thus, class I includes all words which can be used in the position of the words 'concert' (frame A), clerk and tax (frame B), team (frame C), i.e. in the position of subject and object.

Class II includes the words which have the position of the words 'was', 'remembered', 'went' in the given frames, i.e. in the position of the predicate or part of the predicate.

Class III includes the words having the position of 'good', and 'new', i.e. in the position of the predicative or attribute.

And the words of class IV are used in the position of 'there' in Frame C, i.e. of an adverbial modifier.

These classes are subdivided into subtypes.

Ch. Fries sticks to the positional approach. Thus such words as man, he, the others, another belong to class I as they can take the position before the words of class II, i.e. before the finite verb.

Besides the 4 classes, Fries finds 15 groups of function words. Following the positional approach, he includes into one and the same group the words of quite different types.

Thus, group A includes all words, which can take the position of the definite article 'the', such as: no, your, their, both, few, much, John's, our, four, twenty.

But Fries admits, that some of these words may take the position of class I in other sentences.

Thus, this division is very complicated, one and the same word may be found in different classes due to its position in the sentence. So Fries' idea, though interesting, doesn't reach its aim to create a new classification of classes of words, but his material gives interesting data concerning the distribution of words and their syntactic valency.

Today many scholars believe that it is difficult to classify English parts of speech using one criterion.

Some Soviet linguists class the English parts of speech according to a number of features.

1. Lexico-grammatical meaning: (noun - substance, adjective - property, verb - action, numeral - number, etc).

2. Lexico - grammatical morphemes: (-er, -ist, -hood - noun; -fy, -ize - verb; -ful, -less - adjective, etc).

3. Grammatical categories and paradigms.

4. Syntactic functions

5. Combinability (power to combine with other words).

In accord with the described criteria, words are divided into notional and functional, which reflects their division in the earlier grammatical tradition into changeable and unchangeable.

To the notional parts of speech of the English language belong the noun, the adjective, the numeral, the pronoun, the verb, the adverb.

To the basic functional series of words in English belong the article, the preposition, the conjunction, the particle, the modal word, the interjection.

The difference between them may be summed up as follows:

1) Notional parts of speech express notions and function as sentence parts (subject, object, attribute, adverbial modifier).

2) Notional parts of speech have a naming function and make a sentence by themselves: Go!

***

1) Functional words (or form-words) cannot be used as parts of the sentence and cannot make a sentence by themselves.

2) Functional words have no naming function but express relations.

3) Functional words have a negative combinability but a linking or specifying function. E.g. prepositions and conjunctions are used to connect words, while particles and articles - to specify them.

Each part of speech is further subseries in accord with various particular semantico-functional and formal features of the words.

Thus, nouns are subdivided into proper and common, animate and unanimate, countable and uncountable, conctrete and abstract.

E.g. Mary-girl, man-earth, can-water, stone-honesty.

This proves that the majority of English parts of speech has a field-like structure.

The theory of grammatical fields was worked out by V.G. Admoni on the material of the German language.

The essence of this theory is as follows. Every part of speech has words, which obtain all the features of this part of speech. They are its nucleus. But there are such words which don't have all the features of this part of speech, though they belong to it.

Consequently, the field includes central and peripheral elements.

Because of the rigid word-order in the English sentence and scantiness of inflected forms, English parts of speech have developed a number of grammatical meanings and an ability to be converted.

E.g. It's better to be a has-been than a never-was.

He grows old. He grows roses.

The conversation may be written one part of speech.

She took off her glasses.

Give me a glass of water.

The person in the glass was making faces.

Don't break the glass when cleaning the window.

They are called variants of one part of speech. Because of homonymy and polysemy many notional words may have the same form as functional words.

E.g. He grows roses - He grows old.

Professor Ilyish objects to the division of words into notional and functional (formal) parts of speech. He says that prepositions and conjunctions are no less notional than nouns and verbs, as they also express some relations and connections existing independently.

Lecture 4

The Noun

The noun is the main nominative part of speech, having the categorial meaning of “substance” and “thingness”.

The noun is characterized by a set of formal features. It has its word-building distinctions, including typical suffixes, compound stem models, conversion patterns.

It has the grammatical categories of gender, number, case, article determination.

The most characteristic function of the noun is that of the subject in the sentence. The function of the object in the sentence is also typical of the noun. Other syntactic functions, i.e. attribute, adverbial and even predicative are not immediately characteristic of its substantive quality.

The noun is characterized by some special types of combinability. It is the prepositional combinability with another noun, a verb, an adjective, an adverb.

E.g. an entrance to the house;

to turn round the corner;

red in the face;

far from its destination.

The casal combinability characterizes the noun alongside of its prepositional combinability with another noun.

E.g. the speech of the President - the president's speech.

English nouns can also easily combine with one another by sheer contact. In the contact group the noun in pre-position plays the role of a semantic qualifier to the noun in post-position. E.g. film festivals, a cannon ball.

The lexico-grammatical status of such combinations has been a big problem for many scholars, who were uncertain as to how to treat this combination: either as one separate compound word or a word-group.

In the history of linguistics it is called “The cannon ball problem” (or the stone wall problem).

Category of number

The category of number is expressed by the opposition of the plural form of the noun and to the singular form of the noun. The strong member of this binary opposition is the plural, its productive formal mark is the suffix -(e)s [z,s,iz].

The non-productive ways of expressing the number opposition are vowel interchange in several relict forms, the archaic suffix -(e)n supported by phonemic interchange (child - children), the correlation of individual singular and plural suffixes in a limited number of borrowed nouns (datum - data).

In spoken English the productive allomorphs es,s are often used instead of the borrowed ones in formulas, sanatoriums, memorandums.

In some cases the plural form of the noun is homonymous with the singular form (sheep). Semantically, the meaning of the singular is “one”, as opposed to the meaning of the plural 'many', or “more than one”. It shows whether the noun stands for one object or more than one.

However language facts are not always so simple as that. Sometimes the singular form does not express singularity, i.e. one object, e.g. a fleet, a family, a crew, etc, or the plural form does not mean many objects (scissors, brains, etc).

A peculiar view of the category of number was put forward by A. Isachenko. According to this view, the essential meaning of the category of number of the noun is not that of quantity, but of discreteness (расчлененность).

Thus in “scissors” the category of plural number expresses discreteness and combines with the lexical meaning of the noun, which denotes an object consisting of two halves.

Thus, the grammatical category of number is closely connected with the lexical meaning of the noun. The real meaning of the noun becomes clear only syntagmatically, e.g. My family is large. My family are all early risers.

Some plural forms of English nouns undergo lexicalization. E.g. colours - знамя (flag), pains - effort, quarters - abode.

Some plural forms are used for stylistic purposes (sands, waters, snows), which do not mean plurality, but great expanses.

The nounal vocabulary is divided into countable nouns and uncountable nouns. Countable nouns generally comprise class nouns (конкретные), collective nouns (army), abstract concrete nouns (ideas, thoughts, joys) and nouns having one form for the singular and plural (sheep, deer).

The two subclasses of uncountable nouns are usually referred to as singularia tantum (only singular) and pluralia tantum (only plural). Singularia tantum is characteristic of the names of abstract notions (peace, love, joy, news, weather, courage, progress, friendship, etc), the names of the branches of professional activity (chemistry, architecture, mathematics, linguistics, etc), the names of mass materials (water, snow, steel, hair, etc), the names of collective inanimate objects (foliage, fruit, furniture, machinery, etc).

Some of these words can be used in the form of the common singular with the common plural counterpart (противная сторона, двойник), but in this case they mean either different sorts of materials, or separate concrete manifestations of the qualities denoted by abstract nouns, or concrete objects showing the respective qualities.

E.g. steel- steels; a joy - joys; a fish – fishes

He studeis freshwater fishes (sorts).

She eats much fish (material).

I caught many fish.

a hair - hairs (волы);

a youth - youths (юноша).

So a variant of a class noun may belong to the singularia tantum. Singularia tantum may be combined with words showing discreteness, such as bit, piece, item, sort.

The pluralia tantum is characteristic of the uncountable nouns which denote objects consisting of two halves (trousers, scissors, tongs, spectacles, etc); the nouns expressing some sort of collective meaning (clothes, goods, earnings, wages, ourskirts, politics, contents, police, cattle, poultry); the nouns denoting some diseases and some abnormal states of the body and mind (measles - корь, rickets - рахит, mumps - свинка, creeps - мурашки, hysterics).

The pluralia tantum may be combined with such words as pair, set, group, bunch. So a variant of a class noun may belong to the pluralia tantum: e.g. a custom - customs; customs – таможня; a colour - colours; colours – знамя. Such variants may be considered as different nouns.