The Grammatical Structure of the English Language

Grammar is the most interesting subject matter of any language. In order to master any foreign language one should learn not only the word stock of the language, but also the rules by which different words are combined with one another, forming various types of sentences. The rules according to which miscellaneous words turn into speech is the subject matter of grammar. The peculiar feature of the English Grammar in comparison with Russian is different systems of both languages.

The English language belongs to the same family of languages that the Russian language does that is to the Indo-European family. Both languages have a lot in common: the same parts of speech such as the noun, the adjective, the pronoun, the verb, the adverb, and the numeral; nouns can be countable (E.g. a book, a flat) and uncountable (E.g. milk, foliage) that is expressed in their possibility of being used in plural (E.g. ink, money, news); verbs are divided into transitive (such verbs can take a direct object, i.e. they express an action which passes on to a person or thing directly (E.g. to give, to take) and intransitive (such verbs cannot take a direct object (E.g. to sleep, to go, to fall, to live, to work, to sit, to consist); qualitative adjectives have the degrees of comparison - positive, comparative and superlative (E.g. nice-nicer-the nicest, good-better- the best) and relative adjectives do not have the degrees of comparison, they denote qualities of a substance through their relation to materials (E.g. silken, woolen), to place (E.g. Italian, Asian), to time (E.g. monthly, weekly), to some action (E.g. preparatory, rotatory). There exist the same types of sentences in both languages (simple, compound and complex).

At the same time, there are a lot of differences between the two languages. As a matter of fact, the Russian language is very rich in flexions which express different grammatical meanings. The English language on the contrary is very poor in flexions (endings: -s in the third person singular in the Present Indefinite: speaks; -s in the plural of nouns: tables; -s in the genitive case: my brother’s book; -ed in the Past Indefinite of regular verbs: smoked; inner flexions: man- men; speak- spoke).

The word order in Russian is relatively free; an English sentence has a very strict and fixed word order (E.g. The teacher punished the pupil) if we change the places of subject with the object the meaning of the sentence will be changed. The relations between the words in the sentence, which in Russian are expressed by flexions in English, are expressed by word order and prepositions.

The majority of the verb forms are formed with a help of auxiliary verbs and are called complicated or analytical (have been done, is doing). The English language is mostly characterized as analytical possessing at the same time some synthetic forms while the Russian language is practically purely synthetic possessing a scarce system of analytical forms. The following difference between the languages is the existence in the English language such functional part of speech as the article which clarifies the meaning of the noun. The adjectives in English do not confirm with the nouns and English verbs have a very complicated system of tenses.

There are a lot of homonyms of special type in English which do not differ in pronunciation and writing but which refer to different parts of speech (E.g. iron- the noun, iron- the adjective, to iron- the verb). To determine the part of speech to which the word can be referred is possible through the determining the place of the word in the sentence (E.g. Iron is a metal. (The Noun); There was an iron stove. (The Adjective); You must iron your dress. (The Verb).

The number of grammatical forms is very extensive in English (E.g. the word speak out of the context can display the form of the infinitive- to speak of the Imperative Mood (E.g. Speak!) or of the Present Indefinite Indicative (E.g. I speak).

One of the marked features of the English language is the extensive use of substitutes. A word substitute saves the repetition of a word in certain conditions. Here belong such substitutes as one, that, do. One replaces class nouns in the singular and in the plural (E.g. Thanks for the compliment, if it is one). That generally substitutes nouns, mostly introduced by the preposition of (E.g. Almost every day thereafter Mrs. Skelton would go for a ride in her own car or that of Castleman). Do substitutes verbs (E.g. You know it better than I do).

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