- •1. Morphology and syntax as part of grammar. Units of grammar, their functions and types of relations between them in language and speech.
- •2. Grammatical meaning and grammatical form. Means of form-building. Synthetic and analytical forms.
- •3. Structure of words. Grammatically relevant types of morphemes.
- •4. Grammatical categories. Method of opposition (a.I. Smirnitsky).
- •5. Parts of speech as lexico-grammatical classes of words. 3 principles of classifying words into parts of speech.
- •6. Morphological and syntactico-distributional classifications of words into parts of speech (h.Sweet, o.Jespersen, Ch. Fries.)
- •7. Notional and functional classes of words.
- •8. The category of number of the Engliss noun.
- •9. The category of case of the English noun.
- •10. The category of article determination.
- •11. Adjective. The category of degrees of comparison.
- •12. The category of tense.
- •13. The category of order.
- •14. The category of aspect.
- •15. The category of voice.
- •16. The category of mood.
- •17. The dual nature of non-finite forms of the verb. Morphological categories of verbals.
- •18. Finite and non-finite forms of the verb. The category of representation.
- •19. Phrase. Principles of classification (h.Sweet, o.Jespersen, l.Bloomfield)
- •20. Classification of phrases according to the types of syntactic relations between the constituents.
- •21. Predicativity. Predication. Constructions with secondary predication.
- •22. Syntactic structure of the claus (simple sentence). The model of the members of the sentence.
- •23. Structural models of sentence analysis. Distributional model and types of distribution. Ic-model.
- •24. Transformational model of sentence analysis. Types of transformation.
- •26. Communicative structure of the sentence.
- •27. Functions of word order in English and types of inversion.
- •28. Principles of classification of simple sentences.
- •29. Compound sentence. Logico-semantic relations between clauses.
- •30. Complex sentence. Structural and functional classification.
12. The category of tense.
3 basic categories of the verb: aspect, correlation and voice. They are constituted by 2 forms of the verb – analytical and non-analytical. The categories of mood, tense and person are basically different. They are characteristic of only finite forms of the verb. The category of tense, being a predicative category, differs from other categories in its structure, grammatical meaning and its syntactic function because it is connected with the essence of the speech act, with interpersonal relations.
The opposition of past and present is not the opposition of just 2 verbal forms but the opposition of 2 systems of forms:
Present: |
Past: |
works |
worked |
is working |
was working |
has worked |
had worked |
has been working |
had been working |
is going to work |
was going to work |
is to work |
was to work |
Functionally all the forms, entering these two systems, are the same. They’re used in the syntactic function of the predicate in the sentence. But in speech in the plane of communication the present forms reveal their specific character: they reflect facts and evens as actual, immediately related to the participants of the speech act. On the contrary, the forms of the past reflect something that is already the past, history, not immediately related to the participants of the speech act. What is represented by the past forms is of some cognitive interest to the addressee.
If we admit that the tense forms of the present express reality and make the information actual for the participants of the speech act, it is possible then to account for the rule ‘in clauses of time and condition forms of the present are used instead of the future’ (though the verb expresses a future action). The same is relevant for the use of the forms of the present in object clauses after the verbs with the meaning know, learn, find, imagine, see (that), look, take care, mind, etc.:
The problem of the future tense: will+Infinitive.
- An instant or spontaneous decision to do something.
- Predictions of a general character
- Requests, promises, threats, offering help, etc.
Other ways to express a future action: Present Continuous, going to.
13. The category of order.
In Modern English there are also special forms for expressing relative priority - perfect forms. Perfect forms express both the time (actions preceding a certain moment) and the way the action is shown to proceed (the connection of the action with the. indicated moment in its results or consequences). So the meaning of the perfect forms is constituted by.two semantic components: temporal (priority) and aspeetive (result, current relevance). That is why perfect forms have been treated as tense-forms or aspect-forms (come - has come; is coming - has been coming).
Members of these oppositions are not opposed either as tenses or as aspects (members of each opposition express the same tense and aspect). These oppositions reveal the category of order (correlation, retrospect, taxis).
Tense and order are closely connected, but they are different categories, revealed through different oppositions: comes – came; comes - has come. The fact that the verbals have the category of order (to come - to have come, coming - having come) and have no category of tense also shows the difference of these categories.
The meaning of perfect forms may be influenced by the lexical meaning of the verb (limtive/unlimitive), tense-form, context and other factors.