Grammatical category and its characteristic features.
Means of form-building in modern English.
The grammatical meaning finds its expression in a grammatical form which is a means of expressing a grammatical meaning. 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, -est, -en, -ren, -ne, -m (reads, shown, books, oxen, taken, mine ,them etc.), sound interchange/ morpho-phonemic alteration – a meaningful change of vowels or consonants within a morpheme (take - took, shine - shone) and suppletivity – the extreme case of morphophon. alteration, there happens a complete phon. change of the root, is not productive (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 structure and the analytical tendencies find their reflection in many spheres of the language.
2. Grammatical meaning and the grammatical form
The grammatical meaning, the gram form, the gram paradigm.
(Blokh) Grammatical meanings are very abstract, very general. Therefore the grammatical form is not confined to an individual word, but unites a whole class of words, so that each word of the class expresses the corresponding grammatical meaning together with its individual, concrete semantics.
For instance, the meaning of the substantive plural is rendered by the regular plural suffix -(e)s, and in some cases by other, more specific means, such as phonemic interchange and a few lexeme-bound suffixes. Due to the generalised character of the plural, we say that different groups of nouns "take" this form with strictly defined variations in the mode of expression, the variations being of more systemic (phonological conditioning) and less systemic (etymological conditioning) nature. Cf.: faces, branches, matches, judges; books, rockets, boats, chiefs, proofs; dogs, beads, films, stones, hens; lives, wives, thieves, leaves; girls, stars, toys, heroes, pianos, cantos; oxen, children, brethren, kine; swine, sheep, deer; cod, trout, salmon; men, women, feet, teeth, geese, mice, lice; formulae, antennae; data, errata, strata, addenda, memoranda; radii, genii, nuclei, alumni; crises, bases, analyses, axes; phenomena, criteria.
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As we see, the grammatical form presents a division of the word on the principle of expressing a certain grammatical meaning.
Gram meaning (GM) is a general abstract meaning which unites classes of forms or words and finds its expression through formal markers thus placing a linguistic unit in a grammatical category or a grammatical class of words (a part of speech). Grammatical meanings are more general and abstract whereas lexical meanings are usually more concrete and specific. The typological analysis of grammatical meanings reveals that they reflect not the fragments of reality but rather the structure of such fragments. Being limited in their number grammatical meanings have a regular and an obligatory character in the language. We cannot use a notional word without expressing its grammatical meaning/meanings. For example, when we say: It has been raining for hours, the verb rain expresses one lexical meaning and seven grammatical meanings (person, number, tense, aspect, time correlation, voice, and mood).
The grammatical meaning finds its expression in a grammatical form which is a means of expressing a grammatical meaning. Difference between w-form and the word: w-form may be equal to the word but at any rate it presents an isolated unit. It’s never part of a wd. W-forms- we abstract ourselves from lex.mean-g of the corresp. wd. We concentrate on the gram. mean-g it caries. Ex. speaks (it shows the 3d person singular- never interested in the fact that it’s the verb of saying). Unlike a wd, the w-form is not independent , it’s always bound as a member of a corresponding set of forms, such as set of f. usually form a paradigm. There are several types of form-building in English. The main subdivision of form-building types is into synthetical and analytical. In a synthetical 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 synthetical types of form-building in English include affixation (reads, shown, books, theirs etc.), sound interchange (take - took, shine - shone) and suppletivity (go - went, be -was, good - better - best}. .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.
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Grammatical category and its characteristic features.
M.Y. Blokh defines the grammatical category as "a system of expressing a generalized grammatical meaning by means of paradigmatic correlation of grammatical forms".
It’s a unity of form & meaning. 1)The general notion on which a gram. category grounds is gram. mean-g. 2)The forms united into a grammatical category possess a common general meaning that gives a name to the category and each form possesses its own specific meaning that presents a specification of the general meaning and differentiates the form from the other form/forms within the category. The forms lives - lived - will live are united on the basis of the common general grammatical meaning of tense and constitute the grammatical category of tense. Within this category each form has its own specific meaning of tense: present, past and future. 3) gram. categories don’t nominate objects or units of lang., instead they express relations between lang. units. The grammatical category of tense presents a specific lingual expression of objective time, the grammatical category of case presents various relations between the action and its participants, the grammatical category of number in nouns reflects the quantitative relations between homogeneous objects of reality, the grammatical category of mood presents the relations between the action and reality as they are presented by the speaker etc. Such grammatical categories may also be called inherent (неотъемлемый, присущий). 4) Conceptual (понятийные) grammatical categories are universal, they exist in most of the languages though their volume and their scope may vary considerably in various languages. Gram. cat-s represent lang. realization of universal cat-s of human thinking. That’s why gram. cat-s typical of a particular lang. are unique. The grammatical category of number is the most universal grammatical category, all speech communities have linguistic means of encoding number, though these means differ greatly in different languages. 5) A grammatical category is constituted on the basis of contrastive grammatical forms which share a certain grammatical meaning correlated to some general concept (time, number) and differ in more concrete meanings within the scope of the same concept. Such contrastive grammatical forms are called oppositions and all grammatical categories are based on oppositions. The method of oppositional analysis was introduced by Trubetskoy . Now the method of oppositional analysis is widely used in lexicology and grammar
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(blokh) More specifically, the grammatical category is a system of expressing a generalised grammatical meaning by means of paradigmatic correlation of grammatical forms.
The ordered set of grammatical forms expressing a categorial function constitutes a paradigm.
The paradigmatic correlations of grammatical forms in a category are exposed by the so-called "grammatical oppositions".
The opposition (in the linguistic sense) may be defined as a generalised correlation of lingual forms by means of which a certain function is expressed. The correlated elements (members) of the opposition must possess two types of features: common features and differential features. Common features serve as the basis of contrast, while differential features immediately express the function in question.
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The most important type of opposition is the binary privative opposition; the other types of oppositions are reducible to the binary privative opposition.
The binary privative opposition is formed by a contrastive pair of members in which one member is characterised by the presence of a certain differential feature ("mark"), while the other member is characterised 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 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).
For instance, the voiced and devoiced consonants form a privative opposition [b, d, g —p, t, k]. The differential feature of the opposition is "voice". This feature is present in the voiced consonants, so their set forms the marked member of the opposition. The devoiced consonants, lacking the feature, form the unmarked member of the opposition. To stress the marking quality of "voice" for the opposition in
question, the devoiced consonants may be referred to as «nоn-voiced".
The equipollent opposition is formed by a contrastive pair or group in which the members are distinguished by different positive features.
For instance, the phonemes [m] and [b], both bilabial consonants, form an equipollent opposition, [m] being sonorous nazalised, [b ] being plosive.
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