Lecture 3. Categorial Structure of the Word.
3.1. Grammatical Form. Categorial 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.
Grammatical meanings are very abstract, very general. Therefore the grammatical form unites a whole class of words, so that each word of the class expresses the corresponding grammatical meaning together with its individual, concrete semantics.
Examples:
1) The meaning of the plural of nouns is rendered by the regular plural suffix –(e)s, (in some cases by other means, such as phonemic interchange). Different groups of nouns ‘take’ this form with strictly defined variations (phonological or etymological conditioning): faces, books, dogs, oxen, sheep, men, formulae, radii, crises, phenomena.
2) tables
morphological form: it is a word consisting of two morphemes the root and the inflection.
grammatical form: the plural from of the noun denoting ‘more than one’.
The grammatical form presents a division of the word on the principle of expressing a certain grammatical meaning.
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 verbiality – the ability to denote actions or states. An adjective combines its individual lexical meaning with the grammatical meaning of the whole class of adjectives – qualitativeness – 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 (function words belong to this group – articles, particles, prepositions, etc).
Types of the grammatical meaning
explicit
The explicit grammatical meaning is always marked morphologically – it has its marker (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).
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 implicit grammatical meaning may be of two types
2.1 general
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).
2.2 dependent.
The dependent grammatical meaning is the meaning of a subclass within 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 contableness/uncountableness and animateness/inanimateness. 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, teminativeness/non-terminativeness - the category of tense, transitivity/intransitivity – the category of voice.
Categorial grammatical meanings are the most general meanings rendered by language and expressed by systemic correlations of word-forms. These forms are identified within definite paradigmatic series.
The categorial meaning (e.g. the grammatical number) unites the individual meanings of the correlated paradigmatic forms (e.g. singular — plural) and is exposed through them.
The grammatical category is a system of expressing a generalised grammatical meaning by means of paradigmatic correlation of grammatical forms. The grammatical category presents a unity of form and meaning.
Grammatical categories are made up by the unity of identical grammatical meanings that have the same form (e.g. singular-plural). Grammatical categories correlate, on the one hand, with the conceptual categories and, on the other hand, with the objective reality. Thus 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. Significational categories correlate only with conceptual matters. To this type belong the categories of mood (its conceptual correlate is modality) and degree.
The grammatical categories can be
1) immanent – innate for a given class of words (the category of number is organically connected with the functional nature of the noun)
2) reflective – categories of a secondary, derivative semantic value (the category of number in the verb; the verbal number is not a quantitative characterisation of the process, but a numerical featuring of the subject-referent).
Grammatical categories can also be divided into;
constant (unchangeable, derivational) – the category of gender, which divides the class of English nouns into non-human names, human male names, human female names, and human common gender names.
variable (changeable, demutative) – substantive number (singular – plural) or the degrees of comparison (positive – comparative – superlative).
Some marginal categorial forms may acquire intermediary status, being located in-between the corresponding categorial poles. For instance, the nouns singularia tantum and pluralia tantum present a case of hybrid variable-constant formations, since their variable feature of number has become ‘rigid’, or ‘lexicalised’ (news, advice, progress; people, police; bellows, tongs; colours, letters; etc.).
The gender word-building pairs should be considered as a clear example of hybrid constant-variable formations, since their constant feature of gender has acquired some changeability properties, i.e. has become to a certain extent ‘grammaticalised’ (actor — actress, author — authoress, lion — lioness, etc.).