Synthetic means of form-building in modern English.

The grammatical meaning finds its expression in a grammatical form.There are several types of form-building in English. The main subdivision of form-building types is into synthetic and analytical. In a synthetic type a grammatical meaning is expressed within a word, in an analytical type a grammatical meaning is expressed with the help of auxiliary words (plus suffixes). The synthetic types of form-building in English include affixation: suffixes- -s, -ed, - ing, -er, -en, -m, -ne (reads, shown, oxen ,mine, taken etc.), sound interchange/morphophonemic alteration: a meaningful change of vowels or consonants within a morpheme (take - took, shine - shone) and suppletivity: the extreme case of morphophonemic alteration, there happens a complete phon.change of the root (go - went, be -was, good - better – best, I-me, we-us, she-her). .The only productive type in the present-day English is affixation, but the other two types are no less important, if only because they occur in words which are most frequently used. The analytical type of form-building occupies a very important place in the grammatical structure of English as the language has evolutionized from being mainly synthetical to becoming more and more analytical, and analytical tendencies in the present day English are very strong. There exist the so-called half-analytical structures and the analytical tendencies find their reflection in many spheres of the language.

Analytical form-building in modern English.

It’s more productive in Modern Eng. Traditionally an analytical form is defined this way: it consists of an auxiliary word and the basic element, which is a notional word. This definition is am’biguous (двусмыслен, неоднозначн.). And for that reason some strange forms are treated as analytical: Combinations of prepositions with nouns were treated as different analytical forms: to the child was treated as the Dative case of a noun. by the child was treated as the Instrumental case of a noun. Many linguists criticized this approach to defining analytical forms and certain theories have been worked out to differentiate analytical forms and free word-combinations.

 1. The theory of the splitting of functions. According to this theory in a true analytical form the auxiliary element should be the bearer of the grammatical meaning only. It is devoid of lexical meaning. It is the notional word that is the bearer of lexical meaning. According to this approach there exist 2 types of analytical forms: complete and incomplete. In a complete analytical form the splitting process has completed and the aux.element is completely devoid of lex.meaning. e.g. In the form of the Perfect the verb to have has no meaning of possession. In an incomplete analyt.form the aux.element retains traces of its lex.meaning. e.g. The form of the Continuous where the auxiliary be retains traces (признаки) of it's meaning of the state.

2.Acc. to the second approach a true analyt.form is idiomatic in characteràthe overall meaning of the form is not immediately dependent on the individual meaning of its constituents. It’s not a sum of meanings of its components. Besides an analyt.form also functions as a grammatical form of a single word. If we proceed (исходить из) from this approach we should conclude that such phrases as most interesting are not an analytical form, because it is not idiomatic enough.

3. Acc. to Бархударов a true analyt.form should posses a discontinuous morpheme (расчлененная морфема) which is a main distinguishing feature of an analyt.form (Блох doesn’t share this view). A discontinuous mrph. сonsists of 2 elements – an auxiliary word and the f.-b. sign of a notional word. The root-mrph of the notional word. is not included (не включ.). According to Бархударов there are only 3 analytical forms (Perfect, Passive, Continuous): Have+en (insymbolic denotation-обозначение) in form of the Perfect. Ex. have arrived Be+en in form of the Passive Be+ing in form of the Continuous. And from this point of view such phrases as shall take, most interesting, by the child are not analytical forms. They are free word-combinations.

Principles of parts of speech classification

The problem of parts of speech classification is rather ancient because the 1 attempts to divide words were made in ancient Rome and Greese. Aristotel singled out 4 groups of words:

1the name

2. the verb,

3the particle

4 the link

In Alexandria there were 8 classes and this tradition was borrowed from the latin language and from it this division was included in many modern European languages

1. Noun,2 the verb 3. The pronoun 4. Particle 5. Adverb 6 preposition 7. Conjunction 8. Interjection(Междометие)

The term part of speech is rather conventional and it doesn't express the linguistic phenomenon correctly (partes oratonis)

Classification of words is based on 3 criteria

1. Semantic is connected with the general categorical meaning of a whole part of speech substantivity for nouns,prosess for actions,quality for adjactives .

The formal criterion is connected with the ways of form building and with grammar categories of this part of speech.

The functional is based on syntactic rules of the word in the sentence. It means that different parts of speech have a definite number of functions e.g the noun-subject,object

The distributional criterion describes each part of speech from the view point of its environment.

Infact non of these criteria is absolute because each of them works not for all parts of speech. E.g among nouns we find words whose categorical meaning is a quality(e.g whiteness,mind,reading)but still such words are also refered to nouns on the basis of the rest criteria.

Some nouns are not changeable and they behave like functional words,but they function as nouns(метро,какаду) functions and distribution can't be regarded is absolute criteria either because the same part of speech have several functions which at the same time can be fullfield by words of other speech.

The list of possible neighbours is also rather wide and very often it's the same for different part of speech

Conclusion:

This situation demands that we should rely on all the criteria if necessary and only in this case the status of the word can be identified correctly.

Division of notional and functional words.

This opposition exists in all languages because in each of them some words name objects,action of processes and other words don't name,they just establish relations or links between nominative words.

The meaning of notional words is denotational but the meaning of functional words is relative.

Notional words are called autosemantic because they are refered to some motion by themselves.

Functional words are called synsemantic that means that they can't be used without notional words

Autosemantic(notional part of speech)- noun,verb,adjective,adverb,pronoun,memeral)

Synsemantic(functional)- preposition,conjunction,particle,article,axilaury verb,copula(=link)interjection.

Functional words.

The interpretation of functional words in linguistic is ambigues.some linguists don't call them "words as such" they consider them to be equil with morpheme because they don't have surelly lexical meaning joe mostly meaning асе change grammatical one.

E.g. Tom's = of Tom(of-has no lexical meaning)

The same idea is sheared by structuralists .they also emphisize the lack of lexical meaning and they use a term empty words.

E.g the earth is round (the,is-empty words and earth,round-full words.

We can say that functional words absolutely empty.

The second traditional interpretation consists in recognition of lexical meaning in such words. More than that it's even possible to single out several levels of this meaning. The lowest,the most general level is relative meaning that unites all functional words irrespective of parts of speech. It means that such words name relations.

The second level of meaning is spesific for one part of speech асе distinguishes it from other part of speech. The third is the individual meaning for each functional word that distinguishes it from other words from the same part of speech.

Functional words are classifyed into 3 types according to their functions,some of them fullfill syntectic functions,some morphological асе some communicative.

1. Syntectic functions(connections)-preposition,conjunction,copula

2. Morphological (determiners)-articles,auxiliary verb.

3. Communicative (specifiers)-particle,interjenction.

 13.General characteristics of nouns

The noun is the central lexical unit of language. It is the main nominative unit of speech. As any other part of speech, the noun can be characterised by three criteria: semantic (the meaning), morphological (the form and grammatical catrgories) and syntactical (functions, distribution).

Semantic features of the noun. The noun possesses the grammatical meaning of thingness, substantiality. According to different principles of classification nouns fall into several subclasses:

1. According to the type of nomination they may be proper and common;

2. According to the form of existence they may be animateand inanimate. Animate nouns in their turn fall into human and non-human.

3. According to their quantitative structure nouns can be countableand uncountable.

This set of subclasses cannot be put together into one table because of the different principles of classification.

Morphologicalfeatures of the noun. In accordance with the morphological structure of the stems all nouns can be classified into: simple,derived ( stem + affix, affix + stem – thingness); compound ( stem+ stem – armchair ) and composite ( the Hague ). The noun has morphological categories of number and case. Some scholars admit the existence of the category of gender.

Syntacticfeatures of the noun. The noun can be used un the sentence in all syntacticfunctions but predicate. Speaking about noun combinability, we can say that it can go into right-hand and left-hand connections with practically all parts of speech. That is why practically all parts of speech but the verb can act as noun determiners. However, the most common noun determiners are considered to be articles, pronouns, numerals, adjectives and nouns themselves in the common and genitive case.

14. The category of number

The grammatical category of number is the linguistic representation of the objective category of quantity. The number category is realized through the opposition of two form-classes: the plural form :: the singular form. The category of number in English is restricted in its realization because of the dependent implicit grammatical meaning of countableness/uncountableness. The number category is realized only within subclass of countable nouns.

The grammatical meaning of number may not coincide with the notional quantity: the noun in the singular does not necessarily denote one object while the plural form may be used to denote one object consisting of several parts. The singular form may denote:

a) oneness (individual separate object – a cat);

b) generalization (the meaning of the whole class – The cat is a domestic animal);

c) indiscreteness (нерасчлененность or uncountableness - money, milk).

The plural form may denote:

a) the existence of several objects (cats);

b) the inner discreteness (внутренняя расчлененность, pluralia tantum, jeans).

To sum it up, all nouns may be subdivided into three groups:

1. The nouns in which the opposition of explicit discreteness/indiscreteness is expressed : cat::cats;

2. The nouns in which this opposition is not expressed explicitly but is revealed by syntactical and lexical correlation in the context. There are two groups here:

A. Singularia tantum. It covers different groups of nouns: proper names, abstract nouns, material nouns, collective nouns;

B. Pluralia tantum. It covers the names of objects consisting of several parts (jeans), names of sciences (mathematics), names of diseases, games, etc.

3. The nouns with homogenous number forms. The number opposition here is not expressed formally but is revealed only lexically and syntactically in the context: e.g. Look! A sheep is eating grass. Look! The sheep are eating grass.

The category of case.

Case expresses the relation of a word to another word in the word-group or sentence (my sister’s coat). The category of case correlates with the objective category of possession. The case category in English is realized through the opposition: The Common Case :: The Possessive Case (sister :: sister’s). However, in modern linguistics the term “genitive case” is used instead of the “possessive case” because the meanings rendered by the “`s” sign are not only those of possession. The scope of meanings rendered by the Genitive Case is the following :

a) Possessive Genitive : Mary’s father – Mary has a father,

b) Subjective Genitive: The doctor’s arrival – The doctor has arrived,

c) Objective Genitive : The man’s release – The man was released,

d) Adverbial Genitive : Two hour’s work – X worked for two hours,

e) Equation Genitive : a mile’s distance – the distance is a mile,

f) Genitive of destination: children’s books – books for children,

g) Mixed Group: yesterday’s paper

                              Nick’s school     cannot be reduced to one nucleus

                              John’s word   

To avoid confusion with the plural, the marker of the genitive case is represented in written form with an apostrophe. This fact makes possible disengagement of –`s form from the noun to which it properly belongs. E.g.: The man I saw yesterday’s son, where -`s is appended to the whole group (the so-called group genitive). It may even follow a word which normally does not possess such a formant, as in somebody else’s book.

There is no universal point of view as to the case system in English. Different scholars stick to a different number of cases.

1. There are two cases. The Common one and The Genitive;

2. There are no cases at all, the form `s is optional because the same relations may be expressed by the ‘of-phrase’: the doctor’s arrival – the arrival of the doctor;

3. There are three cases: the Nominative, the Genitive, the Objective due to the existence of objective pronouns me, him, whom;

4. Case Grammar. Ch.Fillmore introduced syntactic-semantic classification of cases. They show relations in the so-called deep structure of the sentence. According to him, verbs may stand to different relations to nouns. There are 6 cases:

1) Agentive Case (A) John opened the door;

2) Instrumental case (I) The key opened the door; John used the key to open the door;

3) Dative Case (D) John believed that he would win (the case of the animate being affected by the state of action identified by the verb);

4) Factitive Case (F) The key was damaged ( the result of the action or state identified by the verb);

5) Locative Case (L) Chicago is windy;

6) Objective case (O) John stole the book.

16. The Problem of Gender in English

Gender plays a relatively minor part in the grammar of English by comparison with its role in many other languages. There is no gender concord, and the reference of the pronouns he, she, it is very largely determined by what is sometimes referred to as ‘natural’ gender for English, it depends upon the classification of persons and objects as male, female or inanimate. Thus, the recognition of gender as a grammatical category is logically independent of any particular semantic association.

According to some language analysts (B.Ilyish, F.Palmer, and E.Morokhovskaya), nouns have no category of gender in Modern English. Prof.Ilyish states that not a single word in Modern English shows any peculiarities in its morphology due to its denoting male or female being. Thus, the words husband and wife do not show any difference in their forms due to peculiarities of their lexical meaning. The difference between such nouns as actor and actress is a purely lexical one. In other words, the category of sex should not be confused with the category of sex, because sex is an objective biological category. It correlates with gender only when sex differences of living beings are manifested in the language grammatically (e.g. tiger – tigress). Still, other scholars (M.Blokh, John Lyons) admit the existence of the category of gender. Prof.Blokh states that the existence of the category of gender in Modern English can be proved by the correlation of nouns with personal pronouns of the third person (he, she, it). Accordingly, there are three genders in English: the neuter (non-person) gender, the masculine gender, the feminine gender.

Types of adjectives.

The gr.meaning of adjectives is that of quality but some of them denote more abstract relations,e.g.material,time or place and on this basis all adj.are divided into 2 types:qualitative (big,red,clever) and relative

Qualitative have degree of comparison

Relative can have time relation(a summer dress),it can be relations of purpose of material. (wooden.modern,golden)

Such adj.have spesific suffixes :-ly,weekly, -en wooden,-ern southern, -al mechanical ,-ry contemporary.

But some adj.don't haun suffixes and this fact shows that they have been converted from this part of speech.

Adj.fullfill twon functions in the sentence,the primary is attribute-both can be used e.g. This is k long text(qualitative) асе this is a summer dress(relative),second is predicatite-only qualitative is used e.g this text is long.

Combinability-adj are combines with nouns,with adverbs(a happily radiant smile- улыбка сияющая счастьем. And with intensifyes "like word very,"

Besides 2 types of adj some linguists singled out the third type-stative adj.

In most languages there are words that denote a state of an object. In English there are more than 100 words which ha e the prefix a- aware,afire,afloat.

The origin of this words is the same ,it was expressed by the preposition + the noun in the Davit case. They have the same distribution,they function as predicative.

Such words have some peculiarity in meaning,in comparison with adj. Their meaning is not perminant quality but a temporary state. Secondly statives can't be used in degree of comparison ,these differences don't allow other linguists to include them in the class of adj and they insist that statives should be called as a separate part of speech.

Degree of comparison.

This category is the only one for adjectives. Traditional viewpoint of it is that it consists of 3 forms that make 2 gradual opposition:

1.positive degree-that shows naming of the quality without comparison (a good book)

2. Comparative degree-that means that two objects of 2 groups of objects are compared(this film is longer than that one)

3. Superlative-that means comparison of one object to the whole class of them (this is the longest film i've ever seen)Markers can be both synthetical (-er,_est) and analytical (auxiliary elements-more the most) the choice depends of the morphemic structure of the word.

Sometimes we find cases where the indefinite article is used with the superlative degree (he is a most experienced person in this sphere) it means that comparison expressed here joe the form is used as a means of intensification.

The category of state

Besides 2 types of adj some linguists singled out the third type-stative adj.

In most languages there are words that denote a state of an object. In English there are more than 100 words which ha e the prefix a- aware,afire,afloat.

The origin of this words is the same ,it was expressed by the preposition + the noun in the Davit case. They have the same distribution,they function as predicative.

Such words have some peculiarity in meaning,in comparison with adj. Their meaning is not perminant quality but a temporary state. Secondly statives can't be used in degree of comparison ,these differences don't allow other linguists to include them in the class of adj and they insist that statives should be called as a separate part of speech.

The pronoun.

It,s a very heterogineous part of speech because different types of pronouns have quite different features and functions.

Types of pronouns.

1.personal (n.)i you he they.(number,case,no absolute use.)

2. possessive(a) my his their (number,no case ,absolute use (mine,theirs)

3. Reflexive (n,particle) myself (number,no case,no ab.u.)

4.reciprocal (n) each other,one another (no number,no case.no ab.u.

5. Demonstrative (art.) this that (number,no case no ab.u.

6. Indefinite (n) something anything (no number,case no ab.u.

7. Interrogative (n) who which.what (no number,no case,exception whom,no ab.u.

8. Negative (n) nothing,nobody. (no number,case.no ab.u.

9. Relative (adj.con.) who which,what. (no number,no case exception whom,no ab.u.

10. Quantative (n.adj.)some much few. (no number,no case no ab.u.

At the same time traditional grammar still traits all this types as one part of speech on the basis of 2 qualities;

1.meaning

2.function

All pronouns have relative type of meaning as all functional words but the spesifisity of pronouns is that the meaning is deictic.

Deictic words always depend on the situation and their real meaning depends on it.

Pronouns fullfill not only syntectic functions as other parts of speech but also one common function-substitutional . They can substitute other parts of speech.

Pronouns can't be refered either to notional or functional words absolutely because of their heterogineous nature.

They are called an intermediate class of word.

Types of verbs

Grammatically the verb is the most complex part of speech because it has more categories than other parts of speech and it exists both in finite and non finite forms.

The verb fulfills the central position in the sentence because all other sentence parts are grouped around the predicate and the verb expresses predicativity and modelity of the sentence.

Verbs can be classyfied according to many criteria,fists of all we divide than according to the type of meaning:national and functional verbs.

Functional are divided into auxiliary and link verbs.

Auxiliary verbs are used in analytical forms and for making questions асе negation (be,have,do, из is reading,do you know it.

Link are used only within a compound nominal predicate(he got tired,из become tired,he grew old,he is a teacher)

Is -not a part of analytical form.

In English there are verbs that can be called homonims because we find them indifferent groups of verbs,e.g. Be,have and do,can be in one situation auxiliary and in other notional)

Such verbs are called semi-notional. Another principle of verb classification is connected with combinability.verbs that can't be used without any type of object,only with a subject,are called subjective. (i stand,i think-subject)

If some kind of object is obligatory,the word is called objective.

If the verb is used with k direct object it's called transitive.(to read a book)

As for lexical semantic verbs are divided into durative(stative)(to think,to have,to rest,to suspect),terminative (to brake.vn create,to put)

Modal verbs constitute a piculiar verbal class that is different both from notional and functional verbs.the meaning they have is neither denotative nor relative. Syntectically these verbs are similar to both types as notional verbs,they can be predicate (he can,they must)but for functional ,they can be used as functional elements in compound verbal predicate (he can read)