Theme 2. Grammatical Meaning. Grammatical Categories Plan

6.
010102 Початкова освіта (заочна форма навчання, НП-2013)
ПП 3.5 Теоретичний курс іноземної мови (англійська)

Theme 2. Grammatical meaning. Grammatical categories
Plan
The notion of 'grammatical meaning’
Types of grammatical meaning
The notion of opposition
Transposition and neutralization of morphological forms
Література
1. B.Ilyish. The Structure of Modern English.
2. M.Blokh. A Course in Theoretical Grammar.
3. E.Morokhovskaya. Fundamentals of Theoretical Grammar.
4. И.П.Иванова, В.В.Бурлакова, Г.Г.Почепцов. Теоретическая
грамматика современного англ. яз..
5. Уманець А.В. Theoretical Grammar.
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 verbialily - the ability to denote actions or states. An
adjective combines its individual lexical meaning with the grammatical
meaning of the whole class of adjectives - qualitative ness -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.
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6.010102 Початкова освіта (заочна форма навчання, НП-2013)

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 subclasswithin 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 conlableness/uncountableness and
animateness/inammateness. 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, terminativeness/non-
terminativeness - the category of tense, transitivity/intransitivity - the
category of voice.
GRAMMATICAL MEANING
EXPLICIT IMPLICIT
GENERAL DEPENDENT
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:
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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.
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.
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).
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Means of realization of grammatical categories may be synthetic

(near - nearer)and analytic (beautiful - more beautiful).
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.
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6.

010102 Початкова освіта (заочна форма навчання, НП-2013)

ПП 3.5 Теоретичний курс іноземної мови (англійська)