THE MAIN BRANCHES OF GRAMMAR

THE MAIN BRANCHES
OF GRAMMAR. UNITS OF
GRAMMAR
Morphology
 Morphology (Greek: morphé –form, logos –learning) is a
branch of grammar dealing with regularities of functioning
and development of the language system that provides
structuring and understanding of word-forms.
 Morphology studies the grammatical classes and groups of
words, their grammatical categories and systems of forms
(paradigms) in which these categories actually exist.
 The main unit of the morphological level is a morpheme,
the smallest structural unit, which has two-side nature
(morpheme represents the unity of the form and meaning ).
The contrastive morphology deals
with:
1) the specific traits of morphemes in languages under
contrastive research;
2) the classes of paradigms (both synthetic and
analytical) pertaining to a notional parts of speech
and reflecting its paradigmatic variety;
3) the morphological categories and their manifestation
in the contrasted languages;
4) the parts of speech and their typological features.
Syntax
 Syntax (from Latin syntaxis, and earlier from Greek
syn+tassein “together + arrange”).
 Syntactic units, in contradiction to morphological units do
not represent such linguistic elements that could be studied
and differentiated by specific material structure of their own.
Here belong word-groups (phrases), parts of the sentence,
clause (sentence).
 Sentence is a communicative unit, built according to the
definite grammatical (syntactic) pattern, which exists in the
language in different forms and modifications, performing its
communicative functions and having intonation of its own.
MORPHEME
 Morpheme is the smallest unit of grammar that has
semantic meaning, the smallest unit in word-
formation and morphology, the smallest meaningful
part the word can be broken down.
 Thus both roots and affixes are seen as morphemes.
According to this definition looked and fallen each
consists of a Free morpheme + a Bound morpheme
(look+ed, fall+en).
Morphemes split into two main types:
free and bound morphemes.
 Free (root) morphemes
are morphemes bearing the
lexical meaning of the
words, their use does not
depend on other
morphemes. A morpheme
is free if it can stand alone,
or bound if it is used
exclusively alongside a
free morpheme.
Free and bound morphemes
Free and bound morphemes
 Free morphemes may be regular words (e.g.: boy, day, he, four, день, кінь,
річ, він, три) or they may constitute the lexical core of a word. Ex.:
boyhood, daily, fourth, денна, нічний, тричі, etc. In other words, root
morphemes in English, Ukrainian and other languages are not dependent
on other morphemes in a word.
 Bound morphemes can not function independently: they are bound to the
root or to the stem consisting of the root morpheme and of one or more
affixal morphemes. E.g.: days, spoken, fourteen, overcome, government,
дивно, розумом, дні, нашим), etc. Bound morphemes like -s, -en, - teen,
over-, -ment, -о, -ом, -і, ~им in either of the two languages can not exist
independently, i.e. they are not free but always dependent on roots or
stems of their words.
Grammatical category
 Grammatical category is a system of opposed sets
of grammatical forms with homogeneous meanings.
 Such categorical features as generalized notion of
time, person, voice and corresponding forms
constitute the essence of grammatical category.
 All grammatical categories are characteristic of one
or more part of speech.
 One of the principle features of grammatical
category is the unity of form and meaning within the
system of grammatical forms.
Grammatical meaning
 Grammatical meaning is a generalized meaning
characteristic of a set of words, word-forms, syntactic
constructions which has its own regular expression in the
language.
 In morphology here belong general meanings of parts of
speech (thingness for nouns, process or state for verbs), as
well as particular meanings of word-forms and words as a
whole opposed within one and the same grammatical
category.
 In syntax grammatical meanings express different relations
between elements of a phrase, clauses: meanings of syntactic
subject, object, local and temporal indicators, theme-rheme
relations.
Grammatical form
 Grammatical form is a language sign which represents a
regular expression of a grammatical meaning. Within a
grammatical form there are the following means of
expression: affixes, phonemic alterations, stress, functional
words, word order, intonation.
 In morphology of the languages characterized by word-
changing morphological forms represent a set of declining
words of a particular part of speech, bearing a complex of
grammatical meanings or one and the same grammatical
meaning.
 All forms of the word constitute its paradigm.
 There are synthetic and analytical morphological forms.
An individual word found in one of its possible grammatical
forms is called a word-form.
Morphological paradigm
 Morphological paradigm is a set of forms of one
and the same word, it is characterized by
1) an invariable root morpheme, containing a lexical
meaning of the work-form and being the same for
all the forms;
2) fixed set of positions expressing different
grammatical meanings;
3) unambiguous correlation between each position and
special inflexion to express it;
4) strict order of the constituent parts.
Issues for discussion
 Give definitions of the two branches of grammar. Explain,
how are the two branches of grammar connected with each
other.
 Give characteristics to the main units of morphology.
 The morpheme as a minimal unit of morphology.
 Explain the differences between root and bound morphemes.
Characterize the root morphemes.
 Characterize the bound morphemes you know.
 Give characteristics to the affixal morphemes in English and
Ukrainian, comment on the common and divergent features.
 Inflexional morphemes in English and Ukrainian as the
expression of different morphological categories.
 Explain the notions of grammatical category, meaning, form
and paradigm.

THE MAIN BRANCHES OF GRAMMAR

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