Introduction into theoretical grammar

Preface

Training interpreters in the 21^st century, who are well educated, well informed linguists with a narrow specialization, poses many practical problems both for teaching institutions and future interpreters themselves. For the teaching institution it is a matter of designing programs and finding an adequate balance between theoretical knowledge and the practical skills to be offered to the students. For any student it is a matter of developing all the necessary skills.

One of the fundamental aspects of any language learning is grammar in any of its applied aspects: either Morphology or Syntax.

Any linguistic description may have practical or theoretical purpose. A practical description is aimed at providing the student with a manual of practical mastery of the corresponding part of language (within the limits determined by various factors of educational destination and scientific possibilities). Since the practice of lingual intercourse, however, can only be realized by employing language as a unity of all its constituent parts, practical linguistic manuals more often than not comprise the three types of description presented in a complex. As for theoretical linguistic descriptions, they pursue analytical aims and therefore present the studied parts of language in relative isolation, so as to gain insights into their inner structure and expose the intrinsic mechanisms of their functioning. Hence, 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 out of words in the process of speech making.

The course of theoretical grammar develops students’ skills to analyze the grammatical categories and provides them with the skills needed for translation, employing the main structures of English morfology and syntax.

Unit 1

Introduction into theoretical grammar

Learning objectives:

Define morphology, syntax, noun, adjective, pronoun, numeral, verb, adverb, preposition, conjunction, interjection, substantivization of adjectives.

Explain relative/qualitative adjectives; analytical/synthetical/suppletivte forms of degrees of comparison; wholly substantivized/partially substantivized adjectives.

Analyze typical feature of adjectives, grammatical characteristics of relative adjectives, grammatical characteristics of qualitative adjectives.

Key point:

Adjective, it’s definition, types and parsing.

In English there are two parts of grammar: morphology and syntax.

Morphologytreats the different sorts of words, their various modifications and their derivation.

Syntaxshows the agreement and right disposition of words in a sentence.

As regard their function in the sentence, words fall under certain classes called parts of speech, all the members of each of these classes having certain formal characteristics in common which distinguish them from the members of the other classes.

In English there are nine kinds of words or parts of speech, (i.e.) noun, adjective, pronoun, verb, numeral, adverb, conjunction, preposition and interjection.

A noun, or substantive, is the name of any person, place or thing: John, London, Honor.

An adjective is a word that signifies the quality of any person, place or thing: a good man, a great city.

A pronoun is a word used instead of a noun, to avoid the too frequent repetition of the same word.

A numeral such as ten, forty, fifty and some others seem to have a genitive case regularly formed by adding “s” to the nominative: ten, -tens.

A verb is a word that signifies the acting or being of a person, place or thing: the man calls, the city stands.

An adverb is a part of speech joined to a verb, an adjective, a participle and sometimes to another adverb to express the quality or circumstance of it: he reads well, a truly good man.

A preposition is a word set before nouns and pronouns to express the relations of persons, places or things to each other.

A conjunction is a part of speech that joins words or sentences together.

An interjection is a word that expresses any sudden motion of the mind, transported with the sensation of pleasure or pain.

In modern linguistics, parts of speech are discriminated on the basis of the three criteria: “semantic”, “formal”, “functional”. The semantic criterion presupposes the evaluation of the generalized meaning, which is characteristic of all the subsets of words constituting a given part of speech. This meaning is understood as the “categorical meaning of the part of speech”. The formal criterion provides for the exposition of the specific inflexional and derivational (word-building) features of all the lexemic subsets of a part of speech. The functional criterion concerns the syntactic role of words in the sentence typical of a part of speech. The said three factors of categorical characterization of words are conventionally referred to as, respectively, “meaning”, “form”, and “function”.

In accordance with the described criteria, words on the upper level of classification are divided into notional and functional, which reflects their division in the earlier grammatical tradition into changeable and unchangeable.

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

The features of the noun within the identificational triad “meaning-form-function” are, correspondingly, the following: 1) the categorical meaning of substance (“thingness”); 2) the changeable forms of number and case; the specific suffixal forms of derivation (prefixes in English do not discriminate parts of speech as such); 3) the substantive functions in the sentence (subject, object, substantival predicative); prepositional connections; modification by an adjective.

The features of the adjective: 1) the categorical meaning of property (qualitative and relative); 2) the forms of the degrees of comparison (for qualitative adjectives); the specific suffixal forms of derivation; 3) adjectival functions in the sentence (attribute to a noun, adjectival predicative).

The features of the numeral: 1) the categorical meaning of number (cardinal and ordinal); 2) the narrow set of simple numerals; the specific forms of composition for compound numerals; the specific suffixal forms of derivation for ordinal numerals; 3) the functions of numerical attribute and numerical substantive.

The features of the pronoun: 1) the categorical meaning of indication (deixis); 2) the narrow set of various status with the corresponding formal properties of categorical changeability and word-building; 3) the substantival and adjectival functions for different sets.

The features of the verb: 1) the categorical meaning of process (presented in the two upper series of forms, respectively, as finite process and non-finite process); 2) the forms of the verbals categories of person, number, tense, aspect, voice, mood; the opposition of the finite and non-finite forms; 3) the function of the finite predicate for the finite verb; the mixed verbal – other then verbal functions for the non-finite verb.

The features of the adverb: 1) the categorical meaning of the secondary property, i.e. the property of process or another property; 2) the forms of the degrees of comparison for qualitative adverbs; the specific suffixal forms of derivation; 3) the functions of various adverbial modifiers.

Contrasted against the notional parts of speech are words of incomplete nominative meaning and non-self-depended, mediatory functions in the sentence. These are functional parts of speech.

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

The article expresses the specific limitation of the substantive functions.

The preposition expresses the dependencies and interdependencies of substantive referents.

The conjunction expresses connections of phenomena.

The particle unites the functional words of specifying and limiting meaning. To this series, alongside other specifying words, should be referred verbal postpositions as functional modifiers of verbs, etc.

The modal word, occupying in the sentence a more pronounced or less pronounced detached position, expresses the attitude of the speaker to the reflected situation and its parts. Here belong the functional words of probability (probably, perhaps, etc.), of qualitative evaluation (fortunately, unfortunately, luckily, etc.), and also of affirmation and negation.

The interjection, occupying a detached position in the sentence, is a signal of emotions.

Further we shall work over the adjective, the verb and non-finite forms of the verb.

As we have already mentioned,Syntaxshows the agreement and right disposition of words in a sentence. In Unit 3 we shall consider parts of the sentence and their use.

Test questions:

1. What do Morphology and Syntax study?

2. Name the parts of speech and define them.

3. According to what features do we parse the national parts of speech?

4. What are functional parts of speech?

The Adjective

According to Chervyakova L.D. “An adjective is a word that signifies the quality of any person, place or thing: a good man, a great city”.

According to Khaimovich B.S. “Adjectives are a part of speech characterized by the following typical features:

1. The lexico-grammatical meaning of “attributes (of substances)”. It should be understood that by “attributes” we mean different properties of substances, such as their size, colour, position in space (upper, inner), material (wooden, woolen), psychic state of a person, etc

2. The morphological category of the degrees of comparison

3. The characteristic combinability with nouns, link-verbs (…is clever), adverbs, most those of degree (a very clever man), the so-called “prop-word” one (the grey one)

4. The stem-building affixes -ful, -less, -ish, -ous, -ive, -ic, un-, pre-, in-,

er-, il-, etc

5. Its functions of an attribute and a predicative complement ”.

An adjective can be of two types: relative and qualitative.

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