Grammatical meaning and grammatical categories.
A word is a basic unit both in Lexicology and in Grammar. From the point of view of Lexicology a word is a name attached to a notion. From the point of view of Grammar a word is that unit to which all the rules and laws of the language are applied. From the point of view of Lexicology a word may have one or more lexical meanings. From the point of view of Grammar a word has no more than one grammatical meaning.
Grammatical meanings are never named in words, they are expressed in grammatical forms. The unity of grammatical meaning and grammatical form constitutes a grammatical category.
Grammatical meaning plays a great role in the language.
1. With the help of grammatical meaning we take precise the understanding of words in connected speech;
2. We can distinguish the function of words in the sentence;
3. We express the relation between the words in a sentence;
4. We express our attitude towards reality.
Word-form derivation.
Synthetic Types
They may be enumerated in a very short space.There is the ending -s (-es), with three variants of pronunciation, used to form the plural of almost all nouns, and the endings -en and -ren, used for the same purpose in one or two words each, viz. oxen, brethren (poet.), children.
There is the ending -'s, with the same three variants of pronunciation as for the plural ending, used to form what is generally termed the genitive case of nouns.1
For adjectives, there are the endings -er and -est for the degrees of comparison.
For verbs, the number of morphemes used to derive their forms is only slightly greater. There is the ending -s (-es) for the third person singular present indicative, with the same three variants of pronunciation noted above for nouns, the ending -d (-ed) for the past tense of certain verbs (with three variants of pronunciation, again), the ending -d (ed) for the second participle of certain verbs, the ending -n (-en) for the second participle of certain other verbs, and the ending -ing for the first participle and also for the gerund
Sound Alternations
By sound alternations we mean a way of expressing grammatical categories which consists in changing a sound inside the root.
This method is much more extensively used in verbs, such as write — wrote — written, sing — sang — sung, meet — met — met, etc.
Analytical Types
These consist in using a word (devoid of any lexical meaning of its own) to express some grammatical category of another word.
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There can be no doubt in Modern English about the analytical character of such formations as, e. g., has invited or is invited, or is inviting, or does not invite. The verbs have, be, and do have no lexical meaning of their own in these cases. The lexical meaning of the formation resides in the participle or infinitive following the verb have, be or do. Some doubt has been expressed about the formations shall invite and will invite. There is a view that shall and will have a lexical meaning.1 We will not go into this question now and we will consider shall and will as verbs serving to form the future tense of other verbs. Thus, have, be, do, shall, and will are what we call auxiliary verbs, and as such they constitute a typical feature of the analytical structure of Modern English.
The notion of language and speech.
The term "parts of speech" though firmly established, is not a very happy one. What is meant by a "part of speech" is a type of word differing from other types in some grammatical point or points.
The principles on which the classification is based are three in number, viz. (1) meaning, (2) form, (3) function. Each of these requires some additional explanations.
(1) By meaning we do not mean the individual meaning of each separate word (its lexical meaning) but the meaning common to all the words of the given class and constituting its. essence. Thus, the meaning of the substantive (noun) is "thingness". This applies equally to all and every noun and constitutes the structural meaning of the noun as a type of word. Similarly, the meaning of the verb as a type of word is that of "process", whatever the individual meaning of a separate verb may happen to be. We shall have to dwell on this later in considering every part of speech in detail.
(2) By form we mean the morphological characteristics of a type of word. Thus, the noun is characterised by the category of number (singular and plural), the verb by tense, mood, etc. Several types of words (prepositions, conjunctions, and others) are characterised by invariability
By function we mean the syntactical properties of a typo of word. These are subdivided into two, viz. (a) its method of combining with other words, (b) its function in the sentence; (a) has to deal with phrases, (b) with sentence structure. Taking, as we did previously, the verb as a specimen, we can state that, for example, a verb combines with a following noun (write letters) and also with a following adverb (write quickly). As to (b), i. e. the syntactical function of a verb in a sentence, it is that of a predicate.1
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