Реферат: Теоретическая грамматика

The difficulty in defining the word compel some linguists to exclude the word from the basic unit of the language. L. Bloomfield school in US. That school linguists consider the morpheme and the phoneme to be the basic units of linguistic description, for the phoneme can be easily isolated from the context thanks to its minimal elementary segmental character. They consider the phoneme to be the minimal formal segment of language and the morpheme to be the ultimate

meaningful segment. The main drawback of descriptive linguistics is that they approach the definition of the linguistic units on a formal basis. The other linguists came to the conclusion, that such units must be defined by taking into consideration their formal and functional (semantic) features.

2. In actual speech people experience no difficulty in separating one word from another. Traditionally, linguists point out isolatebility as the most characteristic features of the word. One word can form a sentence ("Fire!", "Thanks!",...). Another characteristic feature of the word is its

uninterruptibility or indivisibility. Even if you take compound words, such as "blackberry", "blue-eyed", you won't be able to insert another word in the middle of this compound word. Third feature is a certain looseness in the sentence, i.e. that you may place the word in different parts of the sentence. E.g.: "The bat flew down."="Down flew the bat."But still, don't forget, that the English word-order is rigid unlike the Russian word order. Russian language is a highly developed morphological system. The set looseness is marked in writing by the graphic form of the word with certain spaces between the words.

In oral speech, every word is separated from its neighbours by one unit pause. Some difficulty is paused by the application of the term "word". Some linguists regard such group of words as work, worked, is working as one word. The whole group can't be used as a unit of speech, for the unit must belong both to language & speech. Of all the group, only the element "work" can be regarded as an objective unit of the language. All the grammeme are called lexeme. "A lexeme is a group of word forms, united by the common lexical meaning, but having different grammatical meaning."

If we take a group of words, united by the common grammatical meaning, we shall get a grammeme.

E.g.: sleeps, reads, tries, fucks - Grammeme.

A number of elements of the lexeme may vary from 1 ("must") to many.

E.g.: The lexeme, represented by the word "wright" Þ contains Þ 94 elements, expressed by 64 forms.

The number of words in a grammeme is practically limitless. But the gammeme having the meaning only Past tense, indicative mood, plural number, not perfect, not continuos aspects, contains only 1 word : were .The word is a nominative ( naming ) unit of language .It enters the vocabulary as its elementary component indivisible into smaller segments.The word is used for the formation of the sentence. The word is the basic unit of the language , which occupies the key position in the language. It's universal in its character. It is capable of performing any function in the language : nominative, significant, communicative & pragmatic. The functional sphere of the word is very wide. It may represent a morpheme ( free place ), a nominative sign ( desk ), A part of a word group ( a big fire ) & a sentence ( Fire! ).

3. A word is a linguistic sing. A linguistic sign is a bilateral entity, having it a content & formal side, which correlates with the concept & may indirectly reflect the objects & phenomena of objective reality ( extralinguistic reality ). Not all the linguistic signs have reference to the outer world. Being a bilateral linguistic sign, the word is characterized by 2 planes :

The plane of content

The plane of expression.

bombthe plan of expression

the plane of content

The first & the second are the dialectical unity of form and content. In the plane of expression, the word has its material representation. In oral speech it is represented acoustically by a group of sounds, in written speech - graphically. The plane of content includes the lexical meaning of word. The word exists in two dimensions, namely as a virtual polysemantic sign of the vocabulary, and as an actual sign, used in speech.

The virtual side of the language sign exists in the sphere of language. It is an unrealized word, while the actual side of the word belongs to the syntagmatic sphere of speech.

LECTURE N 5.

Theme : Grammatical categories.

Grammar abstracts itself from particular meanings of words and deals with the most generalized meanings, that may be proper to big groups of words with different lexical meanings.

In logic, the most general notions reflecting the most general properties of some phenomena are called categorial notions ( or categories ). The most general meanings in Linguistics are regularly expressed through the system of the paradigmatically organized word forms and are interpreted as categorial meanings.

According to the general methodological law, every content must have a certain material form of expression. If we take a generalized meaning of plurality we can find its material implementation in many word forms such as : streets, cars, houses, girls, students which make up a grammeme. The grammatical phenomena, like the word in lexicology are also characterized by the 2 planes : the plane of content ( meaning ) & the plane of form ( expression ).

Since the meaning of plurality is represented in many word forms, we may interpret it as a grammatical meaning & the word forms, representing it materially are called grammatical forms.

- Sthe plane of grammatical expression

- pluralitythe plane of grammatical meaning

The unity of the grammatical meaning with a grammatical form may testify to the existence of the grammatical category, but to establish grammatical category, we must find a system of paradigmatically correlated grammatical forms.

E.g.: boys can be correlated with boy's Since Within the noun we may come across the following paradigm, expressing the generalized notion of number.

E.g.: street - streets; ox - oxen ; foot - feet.

If we analyze the opposed forms street - streets, we may observe, that they are grammatically opposed, for 1 expresses singularity, the other - plurality. The 2 opposed meanings are united by a more abstract meaning of noun. This highly abstract meaning of noun represented by the paradigmatic correlation of 2 grammatical forms makes up a grammatical category. Likewise, we may establish the existence of the category of tense of the verb, but it will be represented by the grammatical opposition of 3 grammatical forms & grammatical meanings.