What is the grammatical category of word

1. The
   notion of ‘grammatical meaning’.

The word
combines in its semantic structure two meanings – lexical and
grammatical. Lexical meaning
is the individual meaning of the word (e.g. table).
Grammatical meaning
is the meaning of the whole class or a subclass. For example, the
class of nouns has the grammatical meaning of thingness.
If we take a noun (table)
we may say that it possesses its individual lexical meaning (it
corresponds to a definite piece of furniture) and the grammatical
meaning of thingness
(this is the meaning of the whole class). Besides, the noun ‘table’
has the grammatical meaning of a subclass – countableness.
Any verb combines its individual lexical meaning with the grammatical
meaning of verbiality – the ability to denote actions or states. An
adjective combines its individual lexical meaning with the
grammatical meaning of the whole class of adjectives –
qualitativeness – the ability to denote qualities. Adverbs possess
the grammatical meaning of adverbiality – the ability to denote
quality of qualities.

There are some classes of
words that are devoid of any lexical meaning and possess the
grammatical meaning only. This can be explained by the fact that they
have no referents in the objective reality. All function words belong
to this group – articles, particles, prepositions, etc.

1. Types
   of grammatical meaning.

The
grammatical meaning may be explicit and implicit. The implicit
grammatical meaning is not expressed
formally (e.g. the word table does
not contain any hints in its form as to it being inanimate). The
explicit grammatical
meaning is always marked morphologically – it has its marker. In
the word cats the
grammatical meaning of plurality is shown in the form of the noun;
cat’s –
here the grammatical meaning of possessiveness is shown by the form
‘s; is
asked – shows the explicit
grammatical meaning of passiveness.

The
implicit grammatical meaning may be of two types – general and
dependent. The general
grammatical meaning is the meaning of the whole word-class, of a part
of speech (e.g. nouns – the general grammatical meaning of
thingness). The dependent
grammatical meaning is the meaning of a subclass within the same part
of speech. For instance, any verb possesses the dependent grammatical
meaning of transitivity/intransitivity,
terminativeness/non-terminativeness, stativeness/non-stativeness;
nouns have the dependent grammatical meaning of
contableness/uncountableness and animateness/inanimateness. The most
important thing about the dependent grammatical meaning is that it
influences the realization of grammatical categories restricting them
to a subclass. Thus the dependent grammatical meaning of
countableness/uncountableness influences the realization of the
grammatical category of number as the number category is realized
only within the subclass of countable nouns, the grammatical meaning
of animateness/inanimateness influences the realization of the
grammatical category of case, teminativeness/non-terminativeness —
the category of tense, transitivity/intransitivity – the category
of voice.

GRAMMATICAL
MEANING

EXPLICIT
IMPLICIT

GENERAL
DEPENDENT

1. Grammatical
   categories.

Grammatical categories are
made up by the unity of identical grammatical meanings that have the
same form (e.g. singular::plural). Due to dialectal unity of language
and thought, grammatical categories correlate, on the one hand, with
the conceptual categories and, on the other hand, with the objective
reality. It may be shown with the help of a triangle model:

Conceptual
reality Conceptual category

Objective
reality Lingual reality Objective category Grammatical
category

It
follows that we may define grammatical categories as references of
the corresponding objective categories. For example, the objective
category of time
finds its representation in the grammatical category of tense,
the objective category of quantity finds
its representation in the grammatical category of number.
Those grammatical categories that have references in the objective
reality are called referential
grammatical categories. However, not
all of the grammatical categories have references in the objective
reality, just a few of them do not correspond to anything in the
objective reality. Such categories correlate only with conceptual
matters:

Conceptual
correlate

Lingual
correlate

They
are called significational categories.
To this type belong the categories of mood
and degree.
Speaking about the grammatical category of mood we can say that it
has modality
as its conceptual correlate. It can be explained by the fact that it
does not refer to anything in the objective reality – it expresses
the speaker’s attitude to what he says.

1. The
   notion of opposition.

Any
grammatical category must be represented by at least two grammatical
forms (e.g. the grammatical category of number – singular and
plural forms). The relation between two grammatical forms differing
in meaning and external signs is called opposition
– book::books
(unmarked member/marked member). All grammatical categories find
their realization through oppositions, e.g. the grammatical category
of number is realized through the opposition singular::plural.

Taking
all the above mentioned into consideration, we may define the
grammatical category as the opposition between two mutually exclusive
form-classes (a form-class is a set of words with the same explicit
grammatical meaning).

Means
of realization of grammatical
categories may be synthetic (near –
nearer) and analytic (beautiful
– more beautiful).

1. Transposition
   and neutralization of morphological forms.

In the process of
communication grammatical categories may undergo the processes of
transposition and neutralization.

Transposition
is the use of a linguistic unit in an
unusual environment or in the function that is not characteristic of
it (He is a lion).
In the sentence He is coming tomorrow
the paradigmatic meaning of the
continuous form is reduced and a new meaning appears – that of a
future action. Transposition always results in the neutralization of
a paradigmatic meaning. Neutralization
is the reduction of the opposition to one of its members : custom ::
customs – x :: customs; x :: spectacles.

LECTURE 4: THE PARTS OF
SPEECH PROBLEM. WORD CLASSES

The parts of speech are
classes of words, all the members of these classes having certain
characteristics in common which distinguish them from the members of
other classes. The problem of word classification into parts of
speech still remains one of the most controversial problems in modern
linguistics. The attitude of grammarians with regard to parts of
speech and the basis of their classification varied a good deal at
different times. Only in English grammarians have been vacillating
between 3 and 13 parts of speech. There are four approaches to the
problem:

1. Classical
   (logical-inflectional)

2. Functional

3. Distributional

4. Complex

The
classical
parts of speech theory goes back to ancient times. It is based on
Latin grammar. According to the Latin classification of the parts of
speech all words were divided dichotomically into declinable
and indeclinable
parts of speech. This system was
reproduced in the earliest English grammars. The first of these
groups, declinable words, included nouns, pronouns, verbs and
participles, the second – indeclinable words – adverbs,
prepositions, conjunctions and interjections. The
logical-inflectional classification is quite successful for Latin or
other languages with developed morphology and synthetic paradigms but
it cannot be applied to the English language because the principle of
declinability/indeclinability is not relevant for analytical
languages.

A
new approach to the problem was introduced in the XIX century by
Henry Sweet. He took into account the peculiarities of the English
language. This approach may be defined as functional.
He resorted to the functional features of words and singled out
nominative units and particles. To nominative
parts of speech belonged noun-words
(noun, noun-pronoun, noun-numeral, infinitive, gerund),
adjective-words
(adjective, adjective-pronoun, adjective-numeral, participles), verb
(finite verb, verbals – gerund, infinitive, participles), while
adverb, preposition,
conjunction
and interjection
belonged to the group of particles.
However, though the criterion for classification was functional,
Henry Sweet failed to break the tradition and classified words into
those having morphological forms and lacking morphological forms, in
other words, declinable and indeclinable.

A
distributional approach
to the parts to the parts of speech
classification can be illustrated by the classification introduced by
Charles Fries. He wanted to avoid the traditional terminology and
establish a classification of words based on distributive analysis,
that is, the ability of words to combine with other words of
different types. At the same time, the lexical meaning of words was
not taken into account. According to Charles Fries, the words in
such sentences as 1. Woggles ugged diggles; 2. Uggs woggled diggs;
and 3. Woggs diggled uggles are quite evident structural signals,
their position and combinability are enough to classify them into
three word-classes. In this way, he introduced four major classes
of words and 15 form-classes.
Let us see how it worked. Three test frames
formed the basis for his analysis:

Frame
A — The concert was good (always);

Frame
B — The clerk remembered the tax (suddenly);

Frame
C – The team went there.

It
turned out that his four classes of words were practically the same
as traditional nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. What is really
valuable in Charles Fries’ classification is his investigation of
15 groups of function words (form-classes) because he was the first
linguist to pay attention to some of their peculiarities.

All
the classifications mentioned above appear to be one-sided because
parts of speech are discriminated on the basis of only one aspect of
the word: either its meaning or its form, or its function.

In
modern linguistics, parts of speech are discriminated according to
three criteria: semantic, formal and functional. This approach may be
defined as complex.
The semantic
criterion presupposes the grammatical meaning of the whole class of
words (general grammatical meaning). The formal
criterion reveals paradigmatic
properties: relevant grammatical categories, the form of the words,
their specific inflectional and derivational features. The functional
criterion concerns the syntactic
function of words in the sentence and their combinability. Thus, when
characterizing any part of speech we are to describe: a) its
semantics; b) its morphological features; c) its syntactic
peculiarities.

The
linguistic evidence drawn from our grammatical study makes it
possible to divide all the words of the language into:

1. those
   denoting things, objects, notions, qualities, etc. – words with
   the corresponding references in the objective reality – notional
   words;

2. those
   having no references of their own in the objective reality; most of
   them are used only as grammatical means to form up and frame
   utterances – function words,
   or grammatical words.

It is
commonly recognized that the notional parts of speech are nouns,
pronouns, numerals, verbs, adjectives, adverbs; the functional parts
of speech are articles, particles, prepositions, conjunctions and
modal words.

The
division of language units into notion and function words reveals the
interrelation of lexical and grammatical types of meaning. In
notional words the lexical meaning is predominant. In function words
the grammatical meaning dominates over the lexical one. However, in
actual speech the border line between notional and function words is
not always clear cut. Some notional words develop the meanings
peculiar to function words — e.g. seminotional words – to
turn, to get, etc.

Notional
words constitute the bulk of the existing word stock while function
words constitute a smaller group of words. Although the number of
function words is limited (there are only about 50 of them in Modern
English), they are the most frequently used units.

Generally
speaking, the problem of words’ classification into parts of speech
is far from being solved. Some words cannot find their proper place.
The most striking example here is the class of adverbs. Some language
analysts call it a ragbag, a dustbin
(Frank Palmer), Russian academician V.V.Vinogradov defined the class
of adverbs in the Russian language as мусорная
куча. It can be explained by the
fact that to the class of adverbs belong those words that cannot find
their place anywhere else. At the same time, there are no grounds for
grouping them together either. Compare: perfectly
(She speaks English perfectly)
and again
(He is here again).
Examples are numerous (all temporals). There are some words that do
not belong anywhere — e.g. after all.
Speaking about after all
it should be mentioned that this unit is quite often used by native
speakers, and practically never by our students. Some more striking
examples: anyway, actually, in fact.
The problem is that if these words belong nowhere, there is no place
for them in the system of words, then how can we use them correctly?
What makes things worse is the fact that these words are devoid of
nominative power, and they have no direct equivalents in the
Ukrainian or Russian languages. Meanwhile, native speakers use these
words subconsciously, without realizing how they work.

LECTURE
5: THE NOUN

1.General
characteristics.

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 animate
   and inanimate.
   Animate nouns in their turn fall into human
   and non-human.

3. According
   to their quantitative structure nouns can be countable
   and uncountable.

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

Morphological
features 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.

Syntactic
features of the noun. The noun can be
used un the sentence in all syntactic
functions
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.

2.
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:

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

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

3. indiscreteness
   (нерасчлененность or
   uncountableness — money, milk).

The plural
form may denote:

1. the
   existence of several objects (cats);

2. 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:

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

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

1. 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.

3. 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 :

1. Possessive
   Genitive : Mary’s father – Mary has a father,

2. Subjective
   Genitive: The doctor’s arrival – The doctor has arrived,

3. Objective
   Genitive : The man’s release – The man was released,

4. Adverbial
   Genitive : Two hour’s work – X worked for two hours,

5. Equation
   Genitive : a mile’s distance – the distance is a mile,

6. Genitive
   of destination: children’s books – books for children,

7. 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.

4. 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.

LECTURE
6: THE VERB.
1.General characteristics

Grammatically
the verb is the most complex part of speech. First of all it performs
the central role in realizing predication —
connection between situation in the utterance and reality. That is
why the verb is of primary informative significance in an utterance.
Besides, the verb possesses quite a lot of grammatical categories.
Furthermore, within the class of verb various subclass divisions
based on different principles of classification can befound.

Semantic
features of the verb. The verb possesses the grammatical meaning of
verbiality — the
ability to denote a process developing in time. This meaning is
inherent not only in the verbs denoting processes, but also in those
denoting states, forms of existence, evaluations, etc.

Morphological
features of the verb. The verb possesses the following grammatical
categories: tense, aspect, voice, mood, person, number, finitude and
phase. The common categories for finite and non-finite forms are
voice, aspect, phase and finitude. The grammatical categories of the
English verb find their expression in synthetical and analytical
forms. The formative elements expressing these categories are
grammatical affixes, inner inflexion and
function words.
Some categories have only synthetical forms (person,
number), others
— only analytical (voice).
There are also categories expressed by both synthetical and
analytical forms (mood, tense, aspect).

Syntactic features. The
most universal syntactic feature of verbs is their ability to be
modified by adverbs. The second important syntactic criterion is the
ability of the verb to perform the syntactic function of the
predicate. However, this criterion is not absolute because only
finite forms can perform this function while non-finite forms can be
used in any function but predicate. And finally, any verb in the form
of the infinitive can be combined with a modal verb.

2.
Classifications of English verbs

According to different
principles of classification, classifications can be morphological,
lexical-morphological, syntactical and functional.

A.
Morphological classifications..

I.
According to their stem-types all verbs fall into: simple (to
go), sound-replacive
(food —
to feed, blood —
to bleed), stress-replacive
(import
— to im port,
transport —
to transport, expanded
(with the help of suffixes and prefixes): cultivate,
justify, overcome, composite
(correspond to composite nouns): to
blackmail), phrasal:
to have a smoke, to give a smile
(they always have an ordinary verb as
an equivalent). 2.According
to the way of forming past tenses and Participle
II verbs can be regular
and irregular.

B.
Lexical-morphological classification is
based on the implicit grammatical meanings of the verb. According to
the implicit grammatical meaning of transitivity/intransitivity verbs
fall into transitive
and intransitive.
According to the implicit grammatical meaning of
stativeness/non-stativeness verbs fall into stative
and dynamic.
According to the implicit grammatical meaning of
terminativeness/non-terminativeness verbs fall into terminative
and durative.
This classification is closely connected with the categories of
Aspect and Phase.

C.
Syntactic
classifications. According to the nature of predication (primary and
secondary) all verbs fall into finite
and non-finite.
According to syntagmatic properties (valency) verbs can be of
obligatory
and optional valency,
and thus they may have some directionality or be devoid of any
directionality. In this way, verbs fall into the verbs of directed
(to see, to take, etc.)
and non-directed
action (to arrive, to drizzle, etc.):

Syntagmatic
classification of English verbs

(according
to prof.G.Pocheptsov)

V
Vobj. She shook her head

Vaddr. He phoned me

V2
– V10 Vobj.-addr. She gave me

her pen

V11
– V15 Vadv. She behaved well

V1
V2 – V24 V16 – V24 Vobj.-adv. He put his hat

on the table

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The term «grammatical category» refers to specific properties of a word that can cause that word and/or a related word to change in form for grammatical reasons (ensuring agreement between words).

English has over twenty grammatical categories. Below we list the most common ones for English learners and summarise their main features.

Number

Number is a property of nouns and pronouns, and indicates quantity. Number has two values:

• singular: indicates one only
• plural: indicates two or more

word type	number
singular	plural
noun	boy	boys
pronoun	I	we

Case

Case is a property of pronouns and nouns, and expresses their relationship to the rest of the sentence. Case has three values (two of which do not apply to nouns):

• subjective (pronouns only): when the word is the subject
• objective (pronouns only): when the word is the object
• possessive (pronouns and nouns): when the word indicates possession (ownership)

Gender

Natural gender is a property of pronouns, and differentiates the sexes. Natural gender has three values:

• masculine: indicates male
• feminine: indicates female
• neuter: indicates everything else

Note that Old English had «grammatical gender» where words themselves had gender. Remnants of this are found in «natural gender», which is based on the sex of people rather than the gender of words.

Person

Person is a property of pronouns, and differentiates participants in a conversation. Person has three values:

• first person: refers to the speaker
• second person: refers to the hearer
• third person: refers to all other people or things

Tense

Tense is a property of verbs, and most closely corresponds with location in time. Tense has two values:

• past: indicates before now
• present: indicates now (and sometimes before and after now)

word type	tense
past	present
verb	was did had worked ran	am do have work run

Note that «future tense» is not shown here because strictly-speaking it is not a tense but a structure to talk about the future (after now).

Aspect

Aspect is a property of verbs, and expresses our view of the time structure of an activity or state. Aspect has three values:

• simple: the time has no structure
• continuous: expresses ongoing action
• perfect: expresses completed action

Mood

Mood is a property of verbs, and relates to the speaker’s feelings about the reality of what he is saying. Mood has three values:

• indicative: expresses simple statement of fact
• imperative: expresses command
• subjunctive: expresses something desired or imagined

Voice

Voice is a property of transitive verbs*, and expresses the relationship of the subject to the action. Voice has two values:

• active: the subject does the action
• passive: the subject receives the action

*A transitive verb can take a direct object. (An intransitive verb does not take a direct object.)

Degree

Degree is a property of gradable adjectives and adverbs, and indicates amount. Degree has three values:

• positive: indicates a basic quality
• comparative: indicates a greater quality
• superlative: indicates the maximum quality

Contributor: Josef Essberger

In linguistics, a grammatical category or grammatical feature is a property of items within the grammar of a language. Within each category there are two or more possible values (sometimes called grammemes), which are normally mutually exclusive. Frequently encountered grammatical categories include:

• Tense, the placing of a verb in a time frame, which can take values such as present and past
• Number, with values such as singular, plural, and sometimes dual, trial, paucal, uncountable or partitive, inclusive or exclusive
• Gender, with values such as masculine, feminine and neuter
• Noun classes, which are more general than just gender, and include additional classes like: animated, humane, plants, animals, things, and immaterial for concepts and verbal nouns/actions, sometimes as well shapes
• Locative relations, which some languages would represent using grammatical cases or tenses, or by adding a possibly agglutinated lexeme such as a preposition, adjective, or particle.

Although the use of terms varies from author to author, a distinction should be made between grammatical categories and lexical categories. Lexical categories (considered syntactic categories) largely correspond to the parts of speech of traditional grammar, and refer to nouns, adjectives, etc.

A phonological manifestation of a category value (for example, a word ending that marks «number» on a noun) is sometimes called an exponent.

Grammatical relations define relationships between words and phrases with certain parts of speech, depending on their position in the syntactic tree. Traditional relations include subject, object, and indirect object.

Assignment and meaningEdit

A given constituent of an expression can normally take only one value in each category. For example, a noun or noun phrase cannot be both singular and plural, since these are both values of the «number» category. It can, however, be both plural and feminine, since these represent different categories (number and gender).

Categories may be described and named with regard to the type of meanings that they are used to express. For example, the category of tense usually expresses the time of occurrence (e.g. past, present or future). However, purely grammatical features do not always correspond simply or consistently to elements of meaning, and different authors may take significantly different approaches in their terminology and analysis. For example, the meanings associated with the categories of tense, aspect and mood are often bound up in verb conjugation patterns that do not have separate grammatical elements corresponding to each of the three categories; see Tense–aspect–mood.

Manifestation of categoriesEdit

Categories may be marked on words by means of inflection. In English, for example, the number of a noun is usually marked by leaving the noun uninflected if it is singular, and by adding the suffix -s if it is plural (although some nouns have irregular plural forms). On other occasions, a category may not be marked overtly on the item to which it pertains, being manifested only through other grammatical features of the sentence, often by way of grammatical agreement.

For example:

The bird can sing.
The birds can sing.

In the above sentences, the number of the noun is marked by the absence or presence of the ending -s.

The sheep is running.
The sheep are running.

In the above, the number of the noun is not marked on the noun itself (sheep does not inflect according to the regular pattern), but it is reflected in agreement between the noun and verb: singular number triggers is, and plural number are.

The bird is singing.
The birds are singing.

In this case the number is marked overtly on the noun, and is also reflected by verb agreement.

However:

The sheep can run.

In this case the number of the noun (or of the verb) is not manifested at all in the surface form of the sentence, and thus ambiguity is introduced (at least, when the sentence is viewed in isolation).

Exponents of grammatical categories often appear in the same position or «slot» in the word (such as prefix, suffix or enclitic). An example of this is the Latin cases, which are all suffixal: rosa, rosae, rosae, rosam, rosā («rose», in the nominative, genitive, dative, accusative and ablative).

Categories can also pertain to sentence constituents that are larger than a single word (phrases, or sometimes clauses). A phrase often inherits category values from its head word; for example, in the above sentences, the noun phrase the birds inherits plural number from the noun birds. In other cases such values are associated with the way in which the phrase is constructed; for example, in the coordinated noun phrase Tom and Mary, the phrase has plural number (it would take a plural verb), even though both the nouns from which it is built up are singular.

Grammatical category of nounEdit

In traditional structural grammar, grammatical categories are semantic distinctions; this is reflected in a morphological or syntactic paradigm. But in generative grammar, which sees meaning as separate from grammar, they are categories that define the distribution of syntactic elements.^[1] For structuralists such as Roman Jakobson grammatical categories were lexemes that were based on binary oppositions of «a single feature of meaning that is equally present in all contexts of use». Another way to define a grammatical category is as a category that expresses meanings from a single conceptual domain, contrasts with other such categories, and is expressed through formally similar expressions.^[2] Another definition distinguishes grammatical categories from lexical categories, such that the elements in a grammatical category have a common grammatical meaning – that is, they are part of the language’s grammatical structure.^[3]

See alsoEdit

• Grammatical relation
• Grammeme
• Syntax

ReferencesEdit

Categorial Structure of the Word

1. Definition of the Word

There are many definitions of the term ‘word’ and none of them is generally accepted. But usually people experience no difficulty in separating one word from another in their native tongue. The analysis of numerous definitions of this term is the domain of lexicology. For the purposes of theoretical grammar we’ll accept the following one:

“A word is a free lingual unit (свободная языковая единица) that cannot be divided wholly into smaller free units that can be used to build a sentence.”

There are often restrictions on the phonetic make-up of the word, e.g. English words cannot begin with the sounds [ŋ] and [Ʒ]. The position of a stress is often fixed, that is, it is determined by the boundaries of words or their syllabic structure. Elements within words show greater cohesion ([ko’hi:Ʒn] – связь]) than within larger units. Thus, stems and affixes cannot be separated except by other affixes. Nor does the order of their elements tend to vary.

Distinctions are often drawn:

1. Between a phonological word or word as seen from the viewpoint of phonology, and a grammatical word, established by grammatical criteria only;

2. Between words distinguished in the lexicon (e.g. sing) and the individual word-forms that they can possess (e.g. sang, sung, singing).

2. The Hierarchy of Levels

(1) The lowest level of lingual segments is pho’nemic. It is formed by ‘phonemes. The phoneme has no meaning, its function is purely differential. It differentiates morphemes and words: pit – bit, bit – beat, etc.

(2) The next level is the mor’phemic one. The ‘morpheme is the elementary meaningful part of the word.

(3) The third level is the level of words, or le’xemic level. The word is different from the morpheme. The morphemes express abstract, ‘significative’ meanings which are used as constituents for the formation of more concrete, ‘nominative’ meanings of words. The word is a directly naming , nominative unit of language; it names things and their relations.

(4) The next higher level is the level of phrases (word-groups).

(5) Above the level of phrases lies the level of sentences.

(6) The 6^th level comprises topical grouping which are defined as ‘dictemes, or elementary topical segmental units of the continual text. In the printed text, these grouping coincide with paragraphs.

3. The Lexeme. The ‘Grammeme

While a word may have only one phonological form (sheep, sg. – sheep, pl.), this is not always the case. Let’s, for example, take GO and WENT. Native speakers of English know that these are different forms of the same word. That’s why it is necessary to distinguish between the abstract vocabulary word GO and the phonological and orthographical forms it can take: goes, gone, went, going. We can think of these forms as the realizations (in sound and print) of the abstract vocabulary word. Linguists call such an abstract vocabulary word a lexeme. It means that a single lexeme can have a variety of word-form realizations. The number of these realizations in an English lexeme may vary from one (e.g. always, sheep) to several dozens.

Now let’s take the form ‘goes’. The suffix –(e)s has such meaning as 1) present tense, 2) 3^rd person, 3) singular number, 4) active voice, 5) indicative mood.

This form is a grammeme. When we speak of a word as a grammeme we don’t think of its lexical meaning. We concentrate on the kind of grammatical information it carries. The lexical meaning is irrelevant for the detection of the type of grammeme. So, ‘goes’, ‘runs’, ‘stands’, ‘sits’, etc. is one grammeme.

For practical purposes of grammatical description the term ‘word-form’ is usually used.

A grammeme may be analytical by structure, which means that it may consist of more than one element: will go, have gone. An analytical grammeme is equivalent to one word-form.

Morphemes and grammemes are directly observable units by nature, lexemes are not.

4. The Categorial Grammatical Meaning. The Paradigm.

Notional words, first of all verbs and nouns, possess some morphemic features expressing grammatical (morphological) meanings. These features determine the grammatical form of the word, that is, the type of grammeme.

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: plural of nouns – boys, girls, dogs, buildings, trees, etc.; 3^rd person, sg. of verbs – runs, takes, gives, etc.

The most general meanings rendered by language and expressed by systemic correlations of word-forms are called categorical grammatical meanings. Thus, the categorical grammatical meaning unites the individual meanings of the correlated word-forms and is exposed through them. The correlated word-forms carry specific grammatical information. They form a paradigm. A grammatical paradigm formed by the ordered set of grammatical word-forms expresses a categorical grammatical meaning.

For example, the verb forms ‘am speaking, is speaking, are speaking, was speaking, were speaking, etc.’ are units with a common meaning that brings them together into one paradigm. This common meaning is the grammatical meaning of duration or development.

Grammatical paradigms express various grammatical categories. The minimal paradigm consists of two word-forms. This kind of paradigm we see, for example, in the category of noun number: boy – boys.

A more complex paradigm can be divided into two, three and more subparadigms.

The Paradigm of Personal Pronouns

Singular

The nom. form  The obj. form The poss. form The poss. form (absolute)

       I               me                     my                        mine

       he            him                    his                         his

       she           her                     her                         hers

       it               it                       its                          its

Plural

       we            us                       our                        ours

       you          you                     your                      yours

       they         them                   their                       theirs

5. The Grammatical Opposition

The paradigmatic correlations of grammatical forms in a category are exposed by the so-called grammatical oppositions. The opposition is a correlation of lingual forms by means of which a certain function is expressed.

The correlated members of the opposition possess two types of features: common features and differential ones. Common features serve as the basis of contrast, while differential ones express the function in question.

There are 3 main qualitative types of opposition: privative [‘prIvqtIv], gradual [‘grxdjVql], equipollent [IkwI’pOlqnt].

By the number of members, oppositions are divided into binary (two members) and more than binary – ternary [‘tWnqrI] (three members), quaternary [kwq’tWnqrI] (four members), etc.

The binary privative opposition is formed by a pair of members in which one member is characterized by the presence of a certain differential feature (“mark”), while the other member is characterized by the absence of this feature.

The member in which the feature is present is called the marked, or strong, or positive member; the member in which the feature is absent is called the unmarked, or weak, or negative member: boy – boys; strong – stronger; democratic – antidemocratic.

The gradual opposition is formed by a group of members which are distinguished not by the presence or absence of a feature, but by the degree of it: strong(ø) – stronger – strongest.

The equipollent opposition is formed by a pair or group in which the members are distinguished by different positive features: phenomenon – phenomena.

It is difficult to find the examples of this kind of opposition in English morphology (am – is – are), but in lexicology the best known examples are antonyms, that is, the pairs of antonyms having different roots: alive – dead, progressive – reactionary, etc.

The most important type of opposition is the binary privative opposition. The other types are reducible to it: strong – stronger – strongest > strong – stronger, strong – strongest; productive – wasteful > productive – unproductive.

6. Oppositional Substitution (Reduction)

In various contextual conditions, one member of an opposition can be used in the position of the other member. This is called ‘oppositional substitution’, or ‘oppositional reduction’, e.g.

 The train leaves tomorrow.

The verb in this sentence has the form of the present indefinite while its meaning in the context is the future. So, the weak member (the present tense form) has replaced the strong member (the future tense form). The oppositional substitution shown in the above given sentence is stylistically indifferent. This kind of oppositional substitution is referred to as neutralization. The position of neutralization is filled in by the weak member of the opposition due to its more general semantics.

Alongside the neutralizing substitution (or reduction) there exists another kind of reduction when the use of the form is stylistically coloured. E.g. He is constantly grumbling.

The form of the present continuous here stands in sharp contradiction with its regular grammatical meaning “action in progress at the present moment”. The contradiction is purposeful: exaggeration.

This kind of oppositional substitution belongs to the domain of transposition. Transposition may be defined as a contrastive use of the counter-member of the opposition. As a rule, the strong member (or the counter-member) of the opposition is transpositionally employed. The stylistic colouring is explained by the comparatively limited regular functions of the strong member (limited semantics).

7. Synthetic(al) and Analytical Grammatical Forms

The grammatical forms fall under two main groups: synthetic and analytical.

Synthetic grammatical forms are realized by the inner morphemic composition of the word, while analytical grammatical forms are built up by a combination of at least two words: a grammatical auxiliary and a word of “substantial” meaning.

Synthetic grammatical forms are based on (1) inner inflexion, (2) outer inflexion and (3) suppletivity.

Inner inflexion, or phonemic vowel interchange, is not productive now: take – took, man – men, etc.

Suppletivity is not productive too. It is based on the correlation of different roots in one paradigm: go – went, good – better.

Outer inflexion is more productive. It is represented by grammatical suffixation: table – tables, take – takes, large – larger, etc. Grammatical prefixation can only be found in Old English.

The synthetic grammatical forms in English are used to build up (1) the number and case forms of the noun (boy – boys, boy – boy’s); (2) the person-number and tense of the verb (take – takes; work – worked), (3) participial and gerundial forms of the verb (take – taken, work – worked, take – taking), (4) the comparison forms of the adjective and adverb.

In the oppositional correlations of all these forms, the initial paradigmatic form of each opposition is distinguished by a zero suffix: boy + Ø – boy + s.

The forms consisting of two or more words are not always recognized as the analytical ones. Many linguists call them peri’phrastic constructions, or structures. The problems connected with the analytical form were investigated mostly by Russian grammarians. They have developed the criteria for the identification of analytical forms.

For example, the main features of a verbal analytical form are the following:

(1) It is a collocation of a constant element which is manifested by an auxiliary finite verb in one of the tense forms, and a variable element – notional verb. The notional verb stands in one of the non-finite forms – infinitive, participle I, participle II.

(2) This collocation is indivisible in grammatical sense, though its components are separate words.

(3) The auxiliaries are limited in number and fixed.

(4) The analytical form has an unlimited range of occurrence [q`kArqns] as a grammatical unit. It covers the whole of the verbal lexicon.

Grammatical categories

The grammatical categories are realized by the types of forms organized in paradigmatic oppositions, e.g. girl — girls (the ca­tegory of number), large — larger (the category of comparison), etc. They can be divided into immanent categories, that is, categories innate for a given class of words, and reflective categories, that is, categories serving as a sign of correlation with some other class. Reflective categories are categories of a secondary, derivative semantic value.

For instance, the categories of number and person for nouns and pronouns are immanent, while the verbal person and the verbal number are reflective because the forms of these categories are based on grammatical agreement (The boy is smiling. The boys are smiling). For verbs the immanent categories are those of tense, aspect, voice and mood.

These is another important division of grammatical categories. The feature expressed by the category can be either constant (unchangeable) or variable (changeable).

Variable feature categories can be seen in the nominal number (singular — plural), the degrees of comparison (positive — compara­tive — superlative), the verbal tense, etc.

An example of a constant feature category can be seen in the category of gender.

Constant feature categories reflect the static classifications of phenomena, while variable feature categories expose various connections between phenomena.