Курсовая работа: Structural-semantic and functional features of the category of voice in languages of different system

The said traditional view of the purpose of grammar has lately been re-stated by some modern tends in linguistics. In particular scholars belonging to these trends pay much attention to artificially contructing and analyzing incorrect utterances with the aim of a better formulation of the rules for "the construction" of correct ones. But their examples and deductions, too, are often at variance with real facts of lingual usage.

Worthy of note are the following two artificial utterances suggested as far back as 1956. Colourless green ideas sleep furiously. Furiously sleep ideas green colourless .

According to the idea of their creation, the American scholar N.Chomsky, the first of the utterances, although nonsensical logically, was to be classed as grammatically correct; while the second one, consisting of the same words placed in the reverse order, had to be analyzed as a disconnected, enumeration a "non-sentence". Thus, the examples, by way of contrast, were intensely demonstrative of the fact that grammar as a whole amounted to a set of non-semantic rules of sentence formation.

However, a couple of years later this assessment of the lingual value of the given utterances was disputed in an experimental investigation with informants natural speakers of English, who could not come to a unanimous conclusion about the correctness or incorrectness of both of them. In particular, some of the informants classed the second utterance as "sounding like poetry".

To understand the contradictions between the bluntly formulated "rules" are reality, as well as to evaluate properly the results of informant tents like the mentioned above, we must bear in mind that the true grammatical rules or regularities cannot be separated from the expression of meanings; on the contrary they are themselves meaningful. Namely they are connected with the most general and abstract parts of content inherent in the elementsof language. These parts of content, together with the formal meanings thorough which they are expressed are treated by grammarians interms of "grammatical categories" such are, for instance, the categories of number or mood in morphology, the categories of meaningful, it becomes clear that the rules of grammar must be stated semantically, or more specifically, they must be worded functionally. For example, it would be fallacious to state without any further comment that the inverted word order in the English declarative sentence is grammatically incorrect. Word order as an element of grammatical form is laden with its own meaningful functions. It can express, in particular, the difference between the control idea of the utterance and the marginal idea between emotive and un emotive modes of speech, between different types of style. Thus, if the inverted word order in a given sentence does express these functions, then its use should be considered as quite correct. E.g. In the centre of room, under the chandelier, as become a host, stood the head of the family, old Jolyon himself (J.Galsworthy)

The word agreement in the utterance expresses a narrative description, with the central informative element placed in the strongest semantic position in narration, i.e. at the end. Compare the same sort of arrangement accompanying a plainer presentation of subject matter: Inside on a wooden bunk laid a young Indian woman (E.Hemingway).

Compare, further the following:

And even did his soul; tempt him with evil, and whisper of terrible things. Yet did it not prevail against him, so great was the power of his love (O.Wilde). Here the inventor word order is employed to render intense emphasis in a legend – stylized narration. One thing and one thing only could she do for him (R.Kipling). Inversion in this course case is used to express emotional intensification on the central idea.

Examples of this and similar kinds will be found in plenty in Modern English literary texts of good style repute.

The nature of grammar as a constituent part of language is better understood in the light of explicity discriminating the two places of language, namely, the plane of context and the plane of expression.

The pane of context comprises the purely semantic elements contained in language while the plane of expression comprises the material units of language taken by themselves, apart from the meanings rendered by them. The two planes are inseparably connected, so that no meaning can be realized without some material means of expression. Grammatical elements of language present a unity of content and expression (or in some what more familiar terms, a unity of form and meaning). In this the grammatical elements, though the quality of grammatical meanings as we have stated above, is different in principle from the quality of lexical meanings.

On the other hand, the correspondence between the planes of context and expression is very complex, and it is peculiar to each language. This complexity is clearly illustrated by the phenomena of polysemy, homonymy and synonymy.

In cases of polysemy and homonymy two or more units of the plane of content correspond to one unit of the plane of expression. For instance, the vertically renders the grammatical meanings of habitual action, notion at the present moment action taken as a general truth homonymically renders the grammatical meanings of the third person singular of the verbal present tense, the plural form of the noun, the possessive form of the noun i.e. several units of plane of content.

In cases of synonymy; conversely, two or more units of the plane of expression correspond units of the plane of expression correspond to one unit of the plane of content. For instance, the forms of the verbal future indefinite, future continuous and present continuous can in certain contexts synonymically render the meaning of a future action.

Taking into consideration the discrimination between the two planes, we may say that the purpose of grammar as a linguistic discipline is, in the long run, to disclose and formulate the regularities of the correspondence between the plane of content and the plane expression in the formation of utterances out of the stocks of words as part of the process of speech production.

Modern linguistics lay on a special stress on the systematic character of language and all its constituent parts. In accentuates the idea that language is a system of signs which are closely interconnected and independent. Units of immediate interdepencies within the framework of all the lingual signs are to give expression of human thoughts. The systematic nature of grammar is probably more evident than that of any other sphere of language, since grammar is responsible for the very organization of the informative content of utterances. Due to the fact, even the earliest grammatical treatises, within the cognitive limits of their times disclosed some systematic features of the described material. But the scientifically sustained and consistent principles of systematic approach to language and its grammar were essentially developed in the linguistics of the twentieth century, namely, after the publicationb of the works by the Russian scholar Beaudion de Courtenay and the Swiss scholar Ferdinand de Saussure. These two great men demonstrated the difference between lingual synchrony and diachrony and defined language as a synchronic system of meaningful elements at any stage of its historical evolution.

On the basis of discriminating synchrony and diachrony, the difference between language proper and speech proper can be strictly defined, which is of crucial importance for the identification of the object of linguistic science.

Language in the narrow sense of the word is a system of means of expression, while speech in the same narrow sense should be understood as the manifestation of the system of language in the process of intercourse.

The system of language includes, on the one hand, the body of material units sounds, morphemes, words, word-groups; on the other hand, the regularities or "rules" of the use of these units. Speech comprises both the act of producing utterances, and the utterances and the utterances themselves, i.e. the text. Language and speech are inseparable; they form together an organization unity. As for grammar, being an integpart of the lingual marcosystem it dymamically connects language with speech, because it categorically determines the lingual process of utterance production.

Thus, we have the broad philophical concept of language which is analyzed by linguistics into two different aspects into two different aspects – the system of signs and the use of signs. The generalizing term "language" is also preserved in linguistics, showing the unity of these two aspects.

The signs in the system of language have only a potential meaning. In speech, the potential meaning of the lingual sign is "actualized", i.e. made situationally significant as part of the grammatically organized text.

Lingual units stand to one another in two fundamental types of relations: syntagmatic and paradigmatic.

Syntagmatic relations are immediate linear relations between units in a segmental sequence. E.g.: the spaceship was launched without the help of a booster rocket.

In this sentence syntagmatically connected are the words and word-groups "the spaceship", "was launched", "the spaceship was launched", "was launched without the help", "the help of a rocket", "a booster rocket ".

Morphemes within the words are also connected syntagmatically. E.g.: spaceship, launched, without, booster

Phonemes are connected syntagmatically within morphemes and words, s well as at various juncture points.

The combination of two words or word-groups one of which is modified by the other forms a unit which is referred to as a syntactic "syntagma". There are four main types of national syntagmas: predicate (the combination of a subject and a predicate), objective (the combination of a verb and its object), attributive (the combination of a noun and its attribute), adverbial (the combination of a modified notional word, such as a verb, adjective, or adverb, with its adverbial modifier).

Since syntagmatic relations are actually observed in utterances, they are described by the Latin formula as relations "in praesentia".

The other type of relations, opposed to syntagmatic and called "paradigmatic", are such as exist between elements of the system outside the strings where they co-occur. These intra-systematic relations and dependencies find their expression in the fact that each lingual unit is included in a set or series of connections based on different formal and functional properties.