Grammar in the systemic conception of language.

The items:

1. Theoretical grammar and its object

2. Development of Grammar theory

3. Language as a semiotic system

4. Basic notions of structuralism

a) language and speech

b) syntagmatics and paradygmatics

c) synchrony and diachrony

1. The term grammar is of Greek origin and it literally means the art of writing. But later the word acquired the wide essence and now it embraces the study of language in general. Grammar can be practical and theoretical. The aim of practical grammar is to formulate grammar rules that help us use language. Theoretical grammar has a different aim. In fact, it is to explain these rules. Theoretical grammar deals with language as a functional system. Grammar includes morphology and syntax. Morphology studies the inner structure of words, their grammatical categories and parts of speech division. Syntax deals with rules of combining words into longer units.

Linguistic units can go into three types of relations:

Type of relation	Approach to language study	Linguistic discipline
Between a language unit and an object in the world	Semantics
semantic
Between a unit and other units	syntactic	Syntax
Between a unit and a person who uses it	pragmatic	pragmatics

2. Evolution of grammar theory

1. Classical grammar (ancient time – 1840-1850)

2. Historical-comparative grammar (1850 –beg.of the 20^th c.)

3. Structural linguistics (beg. Of the 20^th c. – up to now)

4. Generative-transformational grammar (since the 50th)

5. Semantic trends in grammar (since the 60s-70s)

6. Text (textual) grammar (since the 60th)

7. Functional grammar (pragmatics) (since the 70s-80s)

1) Grammar theory goes back to ancient times and Aristotle is usually believed to be the first linguist (grammarian). He was the first to introduce the notions of subject and predicate and he initiated the division to the parts of speech. The classical period was characterized by accumulation of facts about language and for sure these were first disconnected attempts to describe it. It was useful. This approach was not devoid of limitations and the basic conception of it was wrong. They believed that grammar is direct reflection of logic and thinking, but it was a mistake. These notions are connected but not directly. The laws of thinking are universal, but grammar systems are different. Classical grammar treated Latin and Greek and as model languages (эталоны). Their structure was considered to be perfect and the closer some language was to Latin or Greek, the more perfect it was considered to be.

2) In the second half of the 19^th century a new trend appeared. It was called so, because linguists compared genetically related languages and studied historical changes within them. It was the time of many interesting discoveries that now belong to the history of languages. Now this approach is criticized for being atomistic. They studied interesting, but disconnected facts.

3) At the beg.of 20^th century a new modern period started. Within this approach, the language was treated as a holistic system with its own laws and functions. The structure of language was at the centre of attention. That’s why this period was called that way. Фортунатов, Бодуэн-де-Куртенэ, Соссюр.

3. Semiotic system. Language is regarded as a system of elements that are called signs or units of language. These units have no value without each other and they are codependent. They exist only in the system, not in isolation. Language is a structural system. Structure means hierarchy. We exclude lexicology and phonetics. The system of language is of semiotic character and its units of different levels are signs. Phoneme is not a sign. Any sign has two sides: the plane of content and the plane of expression. The theory of linguistic signs belongs to Sossur, who described basic features of the sign. He also compared the system of language with other systems and he proved that the former is far more complicated than other systems. In natural language there is no one-to-one correspondence between two sides of the sign. This phenomenon makes any language not only complicated, but at the same time economical and expressive. Language signs are characterized by the following specific features. First, 1)replacement of the language sign – language sign doesn’t lose its value in time, it can be replaced in time continuum. 2)Reflexivity of a language sign (возвратность, направленность на самого себя) it is the ability of a sign to investigate the system of language – metalinguistic function. 3)Open-endedness of the sign:

a) any sign is open to changes

b) it leads to open-endedness of the whole system of language

4)Linguistic sign are arbitrary by nature. It means there are no direct relations between two sides (the planes).

5)Predetermination of the sign by the system. Tom’s – combination of two morphemes.

Before Sassur these notions were nor differentiated, there are specific qualities.

Language is a system of means of expression. It includes units of different levels. So L is hierarchical in structure. L is the source that all speakers use in order to express what they need. So it is one for all, it’s social. L exists in our mind as knowledge, so it is ideal (abstract).

Speech on the contrary is individual. It’s created by some definite speaker. S is material cos we can hear it. And structurally S is organized like a chain, so we call it linear.

Syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations

This antinomy is obviously related to the previous one cos the sphere of application of these relations is different. P relations are relations within L system, whereas S ones are use in speech. Both types of links can be found on all levels.

P relations are abstract associative relations that can serve as a basis for all kinds of classification. Relations between neighboring elements in speech are called S. On the phonological L we can mention the process of assimilation. On the morphemic level – bound morpheme.

These are two approaches to language Style. Before Sassur historical development in G mainly investigated the development of language units. But the newly introduced notion of L system made the Synchronic approach more important, urgent cos it gives the opportunity to reveal the whole complexity of relations that exist within language at each step of its development.

2010

A B

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _B

Nowadays Linguistics equally uses both approaches and the choice of them depends on the object of investigation.

Basic Schools of modern Linguistics

1. Traditional approach to grammar analysis and its limitations.

2. Descriptive linguistics (Descriptivism)

a) the distributional method

b) The IC method (НС – непосредственно составляющих)

3. Generative transformational method

4. Semantic trends in G

a) Case G – грамматика падежей, теория семантического падежа

c) Contensive G

5. Text G

1. Traditional grammatical Analysis focuses on functional aspect mainly, because first of all we distinguish sentence parts to a principle subject and predicate, and object, attribute and adverbial modifier. After that the morphological nature of each word is described. Traditional analysis can hardly be called perfect, it is just satisfactory for teaching purposes, but it isn’t scientific enough. The reason for it lies in rather vague indefinite definitions of terminology. Sentence part – sometimes it is difficult to see the border between two members (he likes books – he likes to go). The different between principle and secondary parts is not determined either and many hybrid terms are introduced. The construction of the bridge.

2. Limitations of traditional G were to some extend eliminated by descriptivism and later G trends. ВLinguistics appeared in America at the beg of 20 century and it was called so cos it wanted to describe American Indian languages using structural methods. That is why later it developed into American structuralism. The Ls of American Indians belong to incorporating type where sentence formally looks like indivisible unit and there were some regularities of word order. So traditional methods of analysis were not helpful at all. It was more convenient to describe linguistic forms in the aspect of their distribution. This notion was introduced in the book Leo Bloomfield “Language” and his pupils Harriz and Freeze. The basic notions are distribution and environment. Environment is the set of neighboring elements of some unit.

A dress. The notion of distribution is wider. It is a total number of all potential environments where this element can occur. D can be of three types:

- contrastive D – difference between two language units that occur in the same environment and it creates difference in meaning (pen 0 -pen s)

- non-contrastive D – difference between two language units, that occur in the same environment without difference in meaning (to wake – woken\waked). We can choose either this or that variant.

- complimentary D – two units are considered to be in complimentive D, if only one of them occurs in some environment, and the other one should be used only in some other type of distribution. They are never overlapping. (s can be pronounced in 3 ways – s, z, iz)

The theory itself was worked out by Charles Fries and consists in the following: the whole word stock was divided into classes only on the basis of distribution. According to Fries, if two L elements occur in the same distribution without change in meaning, they belong to the same class. Practically, the analysis was carried out on the basis of two thousand real telephone conversations. Fries divided all grammar structures used by the speakers into minimal sentences (clauses). He found out that all structures whatever different they seemed were actually reduced to several elementary patterns. These patterns correspond to universal logical structures that can be found in any language (with some slight modification).

N V – John came.

N V prep N – John looked at Mary.

N V N – John saw Mary.

N is N – John is a teacher.

N is prep N – John is in bed.

N is D – John is out.

N is A – John is angry.

Fries analysed environment of all elements in these 7 patterns. As a result, he singled out four classes of notional words and 15 groups of functional ones.

Notional words	Functional words
Noun-like words	F-prep, conjunctions
Verb-like W
Adj-like W	t-determiners (articles, demonstrative pronouns)
Adv-like W

Class 1 words include not only nouns but also personal, indefinite, negative, numerals.

Class 3 words includes not only adjectives, participles, ordinal numerals.

The 4^th class includes adverbs and prepositions that are used post-positively.

T 3a 1a\he 2-d± t 3b 1b\it 4

1. the old man saw a black dog there

The distributional model shows the sentence objectively because it represents objective distributional and some formal features and it isn’t influenced by the subjectivity of meaning interpretation.

At the same time a holistic neglect of meaning can sometimes be misleading, because real semantic relations between words are not seen in this pattern, which is linear.

3 +1 f 1b the same

English verbs and adverbs and Old men and children

In real speech there are a lot of grammatical structures that correspond to the same distributional patterns and essential semantic differences between them are beyond this model.

b)IC method

To some extent, the above mentioned limitations were overcome by another method also introduced by another descriptivists (Fries and Bloomfield). A constituent is a linguistic element which is a part of a longer unit. An immediate constituent is one the two constituents which build up some language unit.

This method consists in division of a grammatical structure into two parts and each part should be meaningful.

“Cutting” – beauti || ful | ly

IC 1 IC 2

IC 1 IC 2

Эта модель изображает предложение не как линейную последовательность слов, а как иерархию уровней членения. Предполагается, что членение предложения производятся таким образом, что на каждом этапе членения выделяются отрезки максимальной длины, имеющих значение, то есть такие, которые в свою очередь допускают максимальное число дальнейших членений. Так как длина НС должна быть максимальной, то их число на каждом этапе должно быть минимальным, и как правило деление осуществляется на бинарном принципе.

The next step is to represent relations between words in a grammatical structure. The scheme of sentence-tree was introduced.

English | verbs || and

Adverbs. IC 1   IC 2   Old | men || and children           IC 1 IC 2   S   A (adj) NP (noun phrase)             N1 fN2   f N2   A N1 f N2   S   NP fN                 A N f N             A N f N2     This method focuses on structure but at the same time it takes meaning into consideration. It is more detailed than distributional model, because it hierarchical structure reflects the real order of uniting elements in a sentence.   Not all sentences can be analyzed like that. One member-sentences and extremely complicated structures theoretically can be analyzed, but the schemes become too complicated. Sometimes sentences can be syntactically ambiguous and this method is of no use here either.   John is easy to please.   John is eager to please.     This method is helpful because it shows the way how some long sentence is structured in our mind and it represents semantic closeness of words in the sentence.   At the same time in every L there are syntactically ambiguous sentences. Their formal structure coincides, but meaning is quite different. IC method fails to show this difference.   3a 3b 1a(he, she) 2-s+ 1b f t 1c (it) 3c 1d (it) My || best

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