- •The Subject Matter of Grammar
- •The Evolution of English Grammars
- •The XX th Century Linguistic Schools
- •Prague Linguistic School (Functional Linguistics)
- •American Descriptive Linguistics
- •Transformational and Transformational Generative Grammar
- •Semantic Syntax
- •Methods of Linguistic Analysis
- •Parsing (Traditional Syntactic Analysis)
- •The Oppositional Method
- •The Distributional method
- •The ic Method (method of immediate constituents)
- •The Transformational Method
- •The Method of Deep and Surface Structures
- •The Functional Sentence Perspective Method (fsp)
- •The Componential Method
- •The Contextual Method
- •The Levels of Language
- •The Morphological Structure of me
- •The Classifications of Morphemes
- •Paradigmatics and Syntagmatics
- •The Asymmetry of a Linguistic Sign
- •Parts of Speech Classifications of Parts of Speech.
- •Notionals and Functionals
- •Heterogeneity
- •Field and Periphery
- •Subcategorization
- •Onomaseological approach
- •The Noun The General Properties of a Noun
- •The Category of Gender.
- •The Category of Number
- •The Category of Case
- •Debated Problems within the Category of Case
- •Genitive Constructions (n’s n)
- •The Article Debated Problems
- •The Functions of Articles in a Sentence
- •The Verb The General Properties of a Verb
- •The Category of Tense
- •Classifications of Tenses
- •The Future Tense
- •The Present Tense
- •The Past Tense
- •The Future-in-the-Past Tense
- •The Category of Aspect
- •The Category of Time Relation (or Correlation)
- •The Category of Voice
- •The Category of Mood
- •The Indicative Mood
- •The Imperative Mood
- •The Subjunctive Mood
- •Points of Similarities with the Finites
- •Points of Differences with the Finites
- •Debated Problems within The Verbals
- •The Functions of Non-Finites
- •Types of Syntax
- •The theory of the phrase
- •Devices of Connecting Words in a Phrase
- •Debated Problems within the Theory of the Phrase
- •Classifications of Phrases
- •The theory of the simple sentence
- •The Definition of a Sentence
- •Syntactic Modelling of the Sentence
- •Semantic Modelling of the Sentence
- •The Notion of a Syntactic Paradigm
- •Structural Classification of Simple Sentences
- •Predicative Constructions Within a simple sentence we distinguish primary and secondary (independent/ dependent) elements, the structural nucleus and its adjuncts.
- •Syntactic Processes
- •The Principal Parts of a Simple Sentence
- •The Secondary Parts of a Simple Sentence
- •An Object
- •An Adverbial Modifier
- •An Attribute
- •Debated Problems within a Simple Sentence
- •A composite sentence
- •A Compound Sentence
- •I. The General Notion of a Complex Sentence.
- •2. The Status of the Subordinate Clause.
- •3.1. Classifications of Subordinate Clauses.
- •3.2. Types of Subordinate Clauses.
- •4. Connections between the Principal and the Subordinate Clause.
- •5. Neutralization between Subordination and Coordination.
- •6. The Character of the Subordinating Conjunction
- •7. Levels of Subordination
- •Syntactic Processes in the Complex Sentence.
- •9. Communicative Dynamism within a Composite Sentence( Compound and Complex) and a Supra-phrasal Unit.
Notionals and Functionals
Both traditionalists and descriptivists divide parts of speech into notionals (major , autosemantic words, variables, semantically full words) and functionals (synsemantic words, invariables, semantically empty words).
Notionals are open classes, indefinitely extendable. It’s impossible to inventory all the nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. It is transposition (conversion) which makes nouns and verbs limitlessly open (I’m wifed, aunted and cousined. There’s no one manning or womaning the camera. I’ve been anniversaried several times). Nouns can be limitlessly verbalized, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, forms of verbs, whole phrases, prefixes and suffixes can be nominalized ( His life was all blacks and whites. There was smth on it…two somethings actually: a white something and a dark something. What time is it now? – It’s half past now). Lexically full words have a paradigm. They are communicatively important, serve as members of a sentence.
Functionals are closed classes, we cannot invent new prepositions and conjunctions. They can be easily listed. But in reality the situation is not that rigid. There appear new functionals. Such is the conjunction like, derived from the adjective like(Never do like he has done). Such is the intensifiers bloody, that (Why bloody not? It was not that good).The form given of the verb to give is often used as a preposition, meaning considering, provided, on account of (Given the circumstances, we could not ask for better treatment). Functionals have no paradigm. They are communicatively unimportant, they are never members of a sentence. Their meaning is generalized, contextually dependent.
Heterogeneity
Parts of speech in traditional interpretation are heterogeneous. Nouns can be distinguished into those with a developed paradigm (the plural, the genitive case, articles, any function in a sentence), but still there are nouns used only in the singular or only in the plural, nouns singular in form but plural in combinability( Police are; The New York police is one of the best polices in the world). We find notionals with a developed paradigm, auxiliaries and modals with a defective paradigm, substitutes (do), link verbs, verbs with a double syntactic capacity ( Flying can be dangerous; The chicken eats well). Pronouns are heterogeneous: there are pronouns with nounal and adjectival properties, etc. Pronouns do not name anything, they only represent. Some pronouns are declinable, but some of them are indeclinable. They possess properties of both notional and functional words. According to N. Chomsky, adverbs are most heterogeneous.
Though a greater homogeneity was achieved by Ch. Fries’s classification as compared with traditional classifications, his classes of words are still very heterogeneous. Nouns and pronouns are analysed together as they often function in the same way. Substitution is a mechanistic procedure, it can’t be relied upon. There’s much illogical and paradoxical in each class, but each class is communicatively unique and specific. It’s quite natural as a natural language is not a rigid inflexible system. There should be hybrid formations, syncretical phenomena, transitions from class to class.