The principles of the part-of-speech classification suggested by Russian grammarians



It will also be seen that the theory of parts of speech, though considered by most scholars to be a part of morphology,2 cannot do without touching on some syntactical problems, namely on phrases and on syntactical functions of words (point 3 in our list of criteria). We shall regard the theory of parts of speech as essentially a part of morphology, involving, however, some syntactical points.

2 Some scholars took a different view of the problem. Thus, Academician A. Shakhmatov held that parts of speech should be treated in Syntax. (See A. A. Шахматов, Синтаксис русского языка , 1941.)

 

The principles of p/of/sp classification suggested by Russian grammarians

Vinogradov –> Russian grammar

Smirnitsky, Ilyish –> English grammar

There are three principles on which the classification is based:

Meaning

the meaning common to all the words of a given class and constituting its essence.

e.g. thingness of nouns

process of verbs

Form

the morphological characteristics of a type of word

e.g. noun is characterized by the category of number

prepositions, conjunctions and others are characterized by invariability

Function

the syntactical properties of a type of word

a) the method of combining with other words (deals with phrases)

b) its function in the sentence (deals with sentences

Charles Fries’ classification of words

Ch. F worked out the principles of syntactico-distributional (s-d) classification of English words. He was the follower of the famous linguist L. Bloomfield.

The s-d classification of words is based on the study of their combinability by means of substitution testing. The testing results in developing the standard model of four main “positions” of notional words in the English sentence:

  • noun (N)verb (V)adjective (A)adverb (D)

For his materials he chose tape recorded spontaneous conversation (250,000 word entries or 50 hours of talk). The words isolated from the records were tested on the three typical sentences (also taken from the tapes), which are used as substitution test-frames.

Frame A. The concert was good (always). [The thing and its quality at a given time]

Frame B. The clerk remembered the tax (suddenly). [“Actor-action-thing acted upon” –characteristic of the action]

Frame C.  The team went there. [“Actor-action-direction of the action”]

As a result of those tests the following lists of words were established:

Class 1. (A) concert, coffee, taste, container, difference, etc. (B) clerk, husband, supervisor, etc.; tax, food, coffee, etc. (C) team, husband, woman, etc.

Class 2. (A) was, seemed, became, etc. (B) remembered, wanted, saw, suggested etc. (C) went, came, ran, lived, worked, etc.

Class 3. (A) good, large, necessary, foreign, new empty, etc.

Class 4. (A) there, here, always, then, sometimes, etc. (B) clearly, sufficiently, especially, repeatedly, soon, etc. (C) there, back, out, etc.; rapidly, eagerly, confidently, etc.

All these words can fill in the positions of the frames without affection their general structural meaning. Repeated interchanges in the substitutions of the primarily identified positional (notional) words in diff. collocations determine their morphological characteristics.

Functional words are exposed in the cited process as being unable to fill in the positions of the frames without destroying their structural meaning. These words form limited groups totaling 154 units. They can be distributed among the three main sets:

1) specifiers of notional words (determiners of nouns, modal verbs, functional modifiers and intensifiers of adjectives and adverbs)

2) interpositional elements, determining the relation of notional words to one another (prepositions and conjunctions)

3) refer to the sentence as a whole (question words, attention-getting words, words of affirmation and negation, sentence introducers (it, there))

 

8. The Category of Number in English nouns. In modern English there are 2 numbers: sg and pl. This category of the noun is based on the opposition of 2 form-classes: the sg form of the noun and the pl form of the noun. The difference in meaning. The pl. form has a mean of plurality, the sg form has a mean of singularity. Grammatical mean. The pl form always conveys the idea of quantitative mean of oneness and it can be outside the sphere of number in the case of uncountable nouns. The difference in form. The pl form is the marked member. The ending –s or –es is the productive marker which has allomorphs: [s], [z] and [iz]. The sg form is the unmarked member of the opposition. Some grammarians speak of the zero-suffix of the sg form. There are also non-productive markers of the pl form: 1. Vowel interchange in some relict forms. 2. The archaic suffix –en, -n. E.g. child-children (+sound interchange). 3. In the words of Latin origin: nucleus-nuclei, focus-foci, stratum-strata. In most of these cases suffixes –s, -es can be used. 4. In some nouns the pl form is homonymous with the sg form: sheep-sheep, fish-fish. With regard of the category of number nouns fall into countable and uncountable. Countable nouns name objects that can be counted. Uncountable nouns name objects that exist as a kind of unity. The later class comprises 2 subclasses: nouns, denoting material substances (air, water) and names of abstract notions (peace, wisdom). The 2 subclasses are outside the sphere of number from the point of view of their semantics. They have no quantitative characteristics. But from gram point of view they cannot be outside the sphere of number because they agree with the verb in the sg. These 2 subclasses sometimes referred to as Singularia tantum. The direct opposite of this group is the group called Pluralia tantum. These nouns have only the pl form (trousers, scissors, tongs, outskirts). There are nouns denoting objects that consist of 2 halves and nouns of indefinite plurality. These nouns should not be confused with the names of sciences (mathematics, phonetics, politics) which can agree with the verb in the sg and they should not be confused with the names of diseases either (measles, mumps) which agree with the verb in the sg. The group of collective nouns that denote a group of objects as a whole. We can distinguish 3 subgroups: 1. nouns like crowd and army which agree with the verb in the sg. They are collective nouns proper (сущ-ые с объединительной собирательностью). 2. words like the police and the gentry. They agree with the verb in the pl. They are called nouns of multitude (сущ-ые с разделительной собирательностью). 3. nouns like family, herd, flock which agree with the verb either in the sg or in the pl. They can denote a group of objects as a whole and discreetly.

 

9. The Problem of the Category of Case in Modern Eng Case can be defined in the following way: it is a category of the noun that expresses relations between the thing denoted by the noun and other objects and phenomena and that is manifested by some formal sign in the noun itself. This category is based on the opposition of 2 cases: the Common case (H.Sweet) – the Possessive case (Genitive – preferable because not all mean-s of this case are possessive). The general mean of possession has other modifications. It can denote the subject of a quality, state of action: the child's intelligence (quality), the child's sleep (state), the child's answer (action). Occasionally it can denote the object of an action: Clyde Griffiths' trial and execution. The opposition in form. The Genitive case is a marked member, the nominative is unmarked. The marker of the GC is the 's-sign which also has 3 allomorphs which are [s], [z] and [iz]. Various views on the category of case. The number of cases and the recognition of the category as such depends on whether case is treated as a morphological form or as a grammatical mean that can be rendered by various means (by an inflection, preposition and word order). Different theories. 1. The 3-case theory or the substitutional theory. Was prompted by the fact that in Old English there existed one common case system for both nouns and personal pronouns. Some grammarians try to introduce a uniform case system in Modern English. Accordingly there are 3 cases recognized in the noun: Nominative, Objective and Genitive. The GC is inflected by the 's-sign. As to the NC and OC they are identified by substituting a personal pronoun for the noun. E.g.: The boy's playing in the garden. – The noun boy is in the NC because it can be replaced by the personal pronoun he. Look at the boy. – The noun boy is in the OC because it can be replaced by him. This theory was criticized and rejected by many grammarians because you cannot attribute the properties of one part of speech to another. 2. The theory of positional cases. It is connected with the old grammatical tradition and we find it in the works of German scholars (Дойчбайн, Несфилд, Брайант). According to that view the case of the noun is determined by its position in the sent by analogy with classical Latin grammar. The English noun will distinguish the following cases of the noun: Nominative, Vocative, Dative, Accusative. They are not inflectional. They exist along with the inflectional genitive. The noun in the function of the position of the subject is in the NC. The noun in the position of a direct address is believed to be in the VC. The noun in the position of an indirect object to a verb is believed to be in the DC. The noun in the position of a direct object is in the AC. The theory was bitterly criticized. The main weakness of it is that it substitutes the functional characteristics of parts of the sent for the morphological characteristics of the part of speech, that is the noun. 3. The theory of prepositional cases (Curmy, also connected with the old school grammar teaching). Acc. to this theory, combinations of nouns and pronouns should be considered as case form: 1. the combination to + noun (to the child) is treated as the DC. 2. the combination of + noun is treated as the GC which exists along with the Inflectional Genitive. 3. the combination by + N is treated as the Instrumental Case. Curmy treats prepositions in these combinations as inflexional prepositions. They are gram elements that are equivalent to case inflexions. Other grammarians treat these combinations as analytical cases. This approach is unconvincing and cannot be accepted for the following reasons: 1. Prep-s are not devoid of their lexical mean and they cannot be treated as gram auxiliaries of an analytical form. 2. The number of prepositional phrases is too numerous to be regarded members of the opposition of the category of case. 3. There are no discontinous morphemes. They cannot be treated as analytical forms.

 

10. The theory denying the existence of the category of case in Modern Eng. The theory was advanced by Prof. Воронцова and is shared by Мухин, Ильиш, Маслова. Acc to this view the Eng noun has lost the category of case in the historic development. All cases, including genitive, are considered extinct. The following arguments are given to substantiate this theory: 1. the use of the s-sign is optional because it can be replaced by an of-phrase. 2. it is used with a limited group of nouns (animate nouns and some other nouns, denoting distance, time and money). 3. it occurs with very few plurals, only with such plurals as men (men's). As to the other it is impossible to distinguish the sg genitive from the pl genitive by ear. 4. The s-signs is only loosely connected with the noun. It can be used not only with sg nouns but also with whole phrases, e.g.: John and Tom's room. The Chancellor of the Exchequer's speech. The man I saw yesterday's son. (the s-signs belongs to the whole phrase, not to a single word). So Воронцова makes the following conclusion: the s-signs is not a case inflexion, it is a syntactical element, resembling a preposition. She calls it a postposition or a format. This is why Блох calls this theory the Possessive Postposition Theory. The strong points of this theory is that it is based on careful observation of linguistic data. Yet, it can hardly be accepted, because it disregards the fact that the genitive form of the noun is systematically contrasted to the unmarked form of the noun. The oppositional nature of this correlation cannot be denied. So, if there is an opposition, there is a category. For that reason most linguists stick to the theory which is called the Limited Case Theory. Блох gives other arguments in favor of the LCT. 1. He emphasizes the fact that the phrasal uses of s-sign are stylistically colored. For that reason these cases can hardly be used as arguments against the existence of the category of case. 2. The s-sign differs from ordinary functional words, like prepositions, because it is morpheme-like in its phonetic properties and also because it is strictly postpositional unlike prepositions and it is far more bound element than a preposition. So Блох suggests that the s-sign has a particle nature and he compares it with the Russian particle бы . Блох believes that the solution of the problem of the category of case is to be sought by combining the LCT with the Possessive Postposition Theory. His conclusion is that a peculiar case system has developed instead of the former inflectional case of nouns. It is based on the particle expression of the Genitive and falls into 2 subtypes, which are the word-genitive and the phrase-genitive.

 

11. The problem of the number of articles in Modern Eng. There are 2 major theories on the status of article. The 1st considers the combination of the article with the noun to be an analytical form of the noun, the article being an auxiliary element; the second theory treats the article as a separate word, a functional part of speech, namely a noun-determiner, and the combination of the article with the noun is considered to be a phrase, not an analytical form.There is no unanimity of views on this problem. There are only 2 material articles: the definite and the indefinite articles. Yet, the distinction between, for instance, "a speech" and "the speech" is incomplete. It must be complimented by one more member: "speech" without any article: The divine gift of speech. The 3rd member of this opposition is treated differently. In traditional grammars the absence of the article was sometimes described as the omission of the article. It is wrong to use the word "omission" because the article is omitted only in certain styles (in telegrams, announcements and newspaper headlines). Sometimes the phenomenon is described as the meaningful absence of the article. Acc to another point of view, there exist a special kind of article called the zero article. This notion can be traced to the notion of the zero morpheme. The idea of the zero article is not shared by all. Иванова, Почепцова find this idea shaky on the following grounds. They say that existence of a zero article can be recognized only if we interpret the article as a morpheme. Yet we cannot do so because the article can be separated from the noun (a question, an urgent question) and because articles can be replaced by pronouns. They go on to say that if we admit that the article is a word then a notion of a zero word should be considered. This notion, however, is unacceptable. So acc. to Иванова, Почепцова, there is no such thing as a zero article. This statement is not very convincing because there are various kinds of words. In Russian there is a zero copula: Он здоров and it is contrasted Он был здоров , будет здоров. The copula быть has 3 forms: был , будет, zero form for the Present. So there is every reason to believe that the zero-form of the copula and the zero article are similar phenomena. Ильиш is also very cautious. He does not recognize the zero article, he recognizes the zero form of the article. As to Блох, he does not recognize the existence of the zero article and defines it as a special kind of gram auxiliary. He treats the combination of an article with a noun as an analytical form and, remaining true to himself, he sets up a separate gram category, the category of determination of the noun. It is based on a 3-member opposition, where the definite article is opposed to the indefinite article and to the zero article. The noun, then, has 3 gram categories: number, case, determination.

 


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