Introduction

Grammar may be practical and theoretical. Practical grammar studies and describes grammar
rules. The aim of Theoretical grammar is to offer explanations for these rules. Theoretical
grammar presents the systemic study of the grammatical structure of Modern English. It studies
the grammatical structure of the English language in the light of general principles of linguistics,
the analytical and synthetic forms of the English language, discusses different views and theories
to grammatical phenomena.

Grammar studies the parts of speech, their grammatical categories, their grammatical forms
(inflections, morphological properties), their functions and relations in the sentence.

Traditionally grammar is divided into morphology and syntax.

Morphology includes the parts of speech and their grammatical categories. It studies the
grammatical forms of words, i.e., their paradigms. The system of grammatical forms of the word
is called a paradigm.

The grammatical forms plays, played, playing make up the paradigm of the word to play.

In a paradigm we distinguish the lexical meaning and the grammatical meaning.

Lexical meaning – the meaning of the base (play) in the paradigm (as plays, played, playing).

Grammatical meaning – the part of the meaning that varies from one inflectional form to
another

(as from plays to played, to playing).

Syntax includes the sentence and the parts of the sentence. It studies sentence-building, i.e.,
ways of connecting words and word-groups in the sentences, it also studies phrases and types of
sentences.

Though morphology and syntax have their own objects of study, they are closely connected,
because the morphological characteristics of a word are realized through its syntactical relations
with other words.

Terminology. Morphology.

Essentials of Morphology.

Morpheme (ձևույթ)
Morphemes are the smallest meaningful units into which a word form may be divided. It is a
meaningful linguistic unit whether a free form (as cat) or a bound form (as the –s of cats).

The form writers can be divided into 3 morphemes: 1) writ(root) – expressing the basic lexical
meaning of the word. 2) –er (derivational morpheme)- expressing the idea of agent performing
the action indicated by the root of the verb. 3) _s (inflectional morpheme) – indicating number
(plurality).

We should distinguish between derivational morphemes (affixes) and inflectional morphemes

(endings).

Derivational morphemes (affixes) are used to derive new words (affixes – prefixes, infixes
(statesman), suffixes). With affixes we derive new parts of speech (new classes of words).

write- writer, play-player.

Derivational morphemes have both grammatical and lexical meaning. E.g., If we take this pair of
words: write and writer, the derivational morpheme er has a grammatical significance, as it
serves to distinguish a noun from a verb. It also has a lexical meaning – the lexical meaning of
the word writer (the agent, the doer of the action) is different from that of the verb write (action,
process).

Inflectional morphemes (endings) have only grammatical meaning. E.g., in plays –s shows
singular number, third person, present simple.

a) There are homonym morphemes: they have the same form, but have different lexical and
grammatical meanings.
er – in writer – derivational morpheme showing the doer of the action.

er – in cleverer _ inflectional morpheme showing the comparative degree of the adjective.

b) Allomorphs have different forms but the same grammatical meaning.

E.g., books – s shows plurality

Oxen – en – has the same meaning as –s in books.

Thus, en and s are termed allomorphs of the morpheme showing plurality (Ilyish p. 22).

c) There can also be a zero morpheme: e.g., book, writer – there is no morpheme which
shows that it is a singular form.

1) writer – from grammatical viewpoint here we deal with a zero morpheme, “cos there is
no morpheme to show that it is a singular form. From lexical viewpoint it consists of 2
morphemes – writ (root morpheme) and er (derivational morpheme).
2) book- from grammatical viewpoint we deal with a zero morpheme. From lexical
viewpoint we deal with a root morpheme.
Systemic Nature of Language (p. 18)

Saussure laid the foundations of structuralism as a methodology, introducing the theory of

the systemic nature of language, conceptualizing it as a system of signs with hierarchical
units in syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations (Mkhitaryan, Chubaryan, 2008, p.18). Signs
acquire meaning within a system through linear and vertical relationships.

Language is viewed as a system of signs (meaningful units) which are interconnected. These
signs or units are of no value by themselves. No unit can be used independently; it serves as
an element in the system of other units. There are 2 types of relations between lingual units:
syntagmatic and paradigmatic.

Syntagmatic relations are immediate linear relations between units in a segmental sequence.
Eg., He paints wonderful pictures. The words (lexemes) he, paints, wonderful, pictures are
syntagmatically connected to each other in the sentence (grammatical forms are connected
syntagmatically).

The morphemes within the words are also connected syntagmatically: wonder-ful, picture-s.

Within the words the phonemes are also connected syntagmatically: p-ei-n-t.

Paradigmatic relations exist between the elements of the system outside the strings
(segmental sequences), where they co-occur: e.g., toy – toys. This paradigm expresses the
category of number of nouns.

The following paradigm small – smaller – smallest expresses the grammatical category of the
degrees of comparison of adjectives.

So, paradigm is a set of grammemes (grammatical forms) represented by all the grammatical
forms of a word (lexeme), i.e., all the grammatical forms of the given word make up the
paradigm of the word. E.g,. work, works, is working, will work etc. form the paradigm of
the verb work.

Units of Language

Units of language are divided into two types: segmental and supra- segmental. In the system
of language there are different hierarchical levels - phonological, morphological, syntactical
and supra segmental or super-syntactical.

Segmental units comprise phonemes which form phonemic strings of various status
(syllables, morphemes, words, phrases, sentences and texts).
Supra- segmental units do not exist by themselves: they are intonation, accent, pause,
rhythm, etc.

The segmental units of language form a hierarchy of levels.

The lowest level is the phonemic level. The phoneme has no meaning, its function is
differential. As it has no meaning, it is not considered a sign. Phonemes form syllables
which cannot be called signs either, because they have no semantic meaning.

The second level is the morphemic level. The morpheme is the smallest meaningful part of
the word. The shortest morpheme may include only one phoneme: e.g. -s in works.

The third level is the lexemic level, the level of words. The shortest lexemic unit (lexeme)
consists of one morpheme only (I, she, boy).

The next level is the level of phrases, i.e., the phrasemic level (next year, by Monday).

The grammatical description of phrases is referred to as Minor Syntax.

The fifth level is the proposemic level, the level of sentences, which refers to the sphere of
Major Syntax.

The next level is the level of sentence-groups which form a textual unit. It is the supra-
proposemic level.

Of the six levels the following three are more self-sufficient: the phonemic, lexemic and
proposemic levels, which is predetermined by their function: differential (phonemes),
nominating (naming words) and predicative (sentences).

Grammatical Meaning (p.19)

Grammatical Category

Grammatical meaning is the part of the meaning that varies from one inflectional form to
another (as from plays to played, to playing).

Notional words (nouns, verbs adjectives, adverbs, pronouns) have grammatical forms which
have certain grammatical meanings. Grammatical meanings are very abstract, very general.
They unite a whole class of words. E.g., the grammatical meaning of the inflection -s in the
verbs walks or talks indicates the following gram. categories – 1) present tense 2) indicative
mood 3) third person 4) singular number 5) non-continuous aspect and 6) active voice.

All the grammatical meanings inherent in the morpheme -s unite this word (walks) with other
words like stops, plays, gets, etc. into one group called a grammeme (gram. form).
 The most general meaning is the categorial grammatical meaning.

The general meaning of two or more grammatical forms opposed to each other makes up a
grammatical category.

Grammatical category is based on the opposition of paradigmatic forms – work, worked,

where work is the unmarked member and worked is the marked member.

The theory of opposition was created by N.S. Trubetskoy. There are 3 main types of
oppositions.

1. privative 2. gradual 3. equipollent.

By the number of members contrasted to each other oppositions are divided into

1. binary (having 2 members)

2. ternary (having 3 members)
3. quaternary (4 members)
4. quinary (5) etc.
The binary privative opposition is the most important one. It is formed by a pair of members in
which one member is marked and has certain differential features, while the other member is
characterized by the absence of this feature, i.e., it is unmarked.

The marked (strong or positive) member of the opposition has the symbol + (plus). The other
member is unmarked (weak or negative) and is designated by the symbol – (minus).

E.g., book – books form a privative binary opposition, in which the plural form is the marked
member.

In equipollent oppositions the members have different positive features; e.g., to be- am, is, are,
was, were; go-went. Here all the members are marked.

Gradual oppositions are characteristic of adjectives and adverbs of manner: small- smaller –
smallest.

Synthetic and Analytical Forms

Grammatical Structure of the English Language

Languages can be synthetic and analytical according to their grammatical structure, i.e., in
ways of expressing grammatical relations between words in word-groups and sentences (in ways
of changing grammatical forms of words in English).
In synthetic languages, such as Russian, the gram. relations between words are expressed by
means of inflection (declension and conjugation) {страницы книги}.

In analytical languages, such as English, the gram. relations between words are expressed by
word order and structural words (prepositions) {the pages of the book}.

Analytical forms in the English lang. are mostly proper to verbs. They are made up of 2 or
more components (auxiliary and notional). Analytical forms are used in forming the tense, voice
and the mood of the verb. An auxiliary expresses no lexical meaning of its own, but changes
grammatically. It expresses the gram. categories of person, number, tense, aspect, voice and
mood. E.g., has gone, is working. A notional word is used as an unchanged element and carries a
lexical meaning.

More beautiful, most beautiful are also analytical forms of morphology.

Though modern English is an analytical language there are some survivals of synthetic structure.

They are

a) the use of endings (inflectional morphemes) – outer inflection

b) the use of sound change (sound alteration)- inner inflection
c) the use of suppletive forms

a) the number of endings deriving grammatical forms in Modern English is very

small.
They are

1. the ending -s (es) to form the plural form of almost all nouns – books, maps, benches,
boxes;
en (ren) – oxen, brethren, children

2. the ending -‘s to form the genitive(possessive) case of nouns - the boy’s toys

3. –er, -est (for adjectives) to form the degrees of comparison.

4. For verbs the number of morphemes used to derive their forms are the following:

–s third person, singular, present simple, indicative mood - plays, writes

-ed for the past simple and past participle of regular verbs

-ing for participle I and the gerund

-en (n) for participle II of certain verbs: beaten, broken, chosen, shown, driven.

Thus, the total number of morphemes used to derive grammatical forms is 11 or 12.
Some of these endings are monosemantic, they denote only one gram. category, e.g., the
plural -s (es) denotes only the category of plural number and has nothing to do with any other
gram. category such as case. But -s (es) of the third person singular denotes the gram.
categories of person (III), number(singular), mood (indicative), tense (present simple).

b) Inner inflection is a way of expressing gram. category which consists in changing a

sound inside the root.

Man –men, mouse – mice, write-wrote- written

d) Suppletive forms – gram. forms have different roots.

Be – am – is – was – were – are, go – went, I – me, good – better, bad – worse