TOPIC 1: General Account of the Grammatical Structure of the English Language under Theoretical Analysis

1.1.Levels of the grammatical description. English Grammatical Theory was historically developed within originally three linguistic schools, dependent on linguistic approaches and methodology of the grammatical analysis, namely: Classical Scientific Grammar (H.Sweet, G.Curme, E.Kruisinga, H.Poustna, O.Jespersen, F.Zandvoort, C.Onions); American Descriptive Grammar (started with E.Sapir and L.Bloomfield, continued by Ch.Fries, Z.Harris, W.Francis, K.Pike, R.Wells, E.Nida); Transformational Grammar (Z.Harris, N.Chomsky, P.Roberts, E.Bach, O.Thomas). Whatever linguistic science might be, its interest is centered on the insight into systemic character of language, with the grammatical system as its constituent part. It follows that Grammar, focused on the grammatical description of language, is aimed to present an outline of the grammatical system, i.e. to define grammatical categories and analyse the mechanisms of grammatical formation of utterances out of words in speech making. In the other way, grammar incorporates suchnotion as grammatical structure of language, defined in terms of a coherent dynamic system, with constituents related to one another (a morpheme, a word, a phrase, a sentence), reflecting the body of grammatical units and the regularities of their use in the process of sentence production. In this respect, Grammar is mainly concerned with principles of sentence formation that include the ways in which word forms with definite morphological categorical distinctions are arranged to create a phrase and a sentence, originating finally a text as the highest communicative unit. The t ext is made up of sentences, which are termed as meaningful communicative units, integrating phrases; phrases are defined as meaningful non-communicative structural units, integrating words, as nominative units, being built up by meaningful segmental components, morphemes, formed by phonemes and indivisible as to their function. Hence, the aspects of the grammatical description can be drawn up as the following: text-level, sentence-level, phrase-level, word-level, morpheme-level. As regards these features, Grammar is divided into Morphology and Syntax.The subject matter of Morphology is the grammatical classes and groups of words, their grammatical categories and systems of forms (paradigms), in which these categories actually exist. Syntax studies sentence-building, i.e. ways of connecting words and word phrases into sentences giving a rise to the text.

The type of grammatical structure of a language, synthetical or analytical, is dependent on the ways of expressing grammatical relations between words in word-groups and sentences. Take an example of synthetical Russian with the grammatical function of a word being expressed by inflection or affixation, and suppletivity. (For details see page 5-6).The extent to which Modern English makes use of inflection and suppletivity is scarce, if compared with Russian (e.g. works, worked, go/went, am/is/are, I/me, good/better). Being an analytical language, English has gradually developed other devices to perform the same function (говорю – am talking; пришел – has arrived; прочитаны – had been read). The distinctive features characterizing English as a mainly analytical language are the following: comparatively few grammatical inflections (ed; s/es; er/est; ing); scarcity of suppletive grammatical forms (be, were, me, worst, went); a wide use of functional words (auxiliaries, articles, prepositions) to create grammatical forms and to connect words in a sentence (will be taking, have been writing, much more interesting, the country, a chair, the title of the book, arrive at the airport, is keen on music);a more or less fixed word order to denote grammatical relations.

The distinguished number of analytically built grammatical forms makes the specific peculiarity of English as an analytical language: e.g. is translated, has been studying, will be running, more interesting, less expensive, could have bought, ought to arrive, etc.

1.2. Basic notions of the grammatical description (Grammatical form, grammatical meaning, paradigm, category). The word as a grammatical unit has its form (grammatical form) and meaning (lexical and grammatical). Grammatical forms of words are typically constructed by morphemes, added synthetically, or structurals, added analytically. Number: book – books, family – families, leaf – leaves. Case: my sister’s children, the title of the book, the students’ papers. Aspect: was drawing – drew, repaired – have repaired – have been repairing. Degree of comparison: cold – colder – the coldest, difficult – more difficult – the most difficult, less interesting – the least interesting.

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