Issues to discuss:
Object of Morphology and Syntax study, their principal concepts.
Notions of the grammar category and opposition. Grammar categories identifying in morphology and syntax.
Classification of morphemes.
Terminology:
Isomorphism, allomorphism, morpheme, stem, root, inflexion, derivation, suffix, prefix, diminutive and augmentative suffixes, stative, suppletive forms, agglutination.
1. Object of Morphology and Syntax study, their principal concepts
The language grammar is a unity of a few systems including grammatical means similar on character of their formal arrangement, on their functions in the language, as well as on the type of their relations with each other and to the units of the other grammar subsystems. These subsystems are word-building, morphology and syntax.
Peculiarities of a word structure, ability of a word to form new lexical units and construction of the motivated words according to the certain patterns are in the focus of the word-building system.
A word as a bearer of morphological categories and system of forms, regulations of the parts of speech changing pertain to morphology (the study of forms).
Syntax also deals with the word links and includes the rules of simple and complex sentences construction, as well as their functioning within a context.
The morphological system of the English and Ukrainian languages is characterized by considerable number of isomorphic (similar) as well as of several allomorphic (different) features. The isomorphic features are due to the common Indo-European origin of the two languages, while allomorphism has been acquired by both languages in the course of their historical development and functioning as independent national languages.
The main typological constants that make the object of contrasting at the morphological level of English and Ukrainian (and other languages) are three:
The morpheme;
The parts of speech;
Their morphological categories.
2. Notions of the grammar category and opposition. Grammar categories identifying in morphology and syntax
The grammar studies:
grammatical categories which are always a unity of form and meaning (for instance, categories of number, case, tense, aspect, voice, mood, person, degrees of comparison, etc.),
parts of speech.
What does a term part of speech actually mean?
The English language has hundreds of thousands of words (about 2 mln.). Fortunately, though,
these words can all be grouped into a few different categories. “It is impossible to speak about the life of language without knowing anything about the parts of speech, i.e., certain groups of words arranged according to the law of their changes” (Propp). Once you group them, you can more easily learn their characteristics. You can learn what makes the words in one group different from the words in another group. You can learn which group or subgroup gives you trouble when you write or speak or translate. You can learn how the words in one group can connect with words in another group. Some of the groups (such as nouns) are themselves huge and can grow. Other groups (such as conjunctions) are much smaller and, generally speaking, do not grow.
Different parts of speech have different lexical meanings. For example, verbs are words denoting processes (to work, to live) and activity (to play, to study), etc; nouns are mostly names of objects (a table, a boy); adjectives are words expressing properties (good, bad).
Some parts of speech have different grammatical categories.
The paradigmatic correlation of two or more grammatical forms makes up a grammatical category.
Verbs have the category of mood, tense, aspect, voice, person and number;
Nouns have the category of number and case;
Adjectives and adverbs have degrees of comparison, etc.
There is an underlying structure made of fundamental units beneath all phenomena of variation. The underlying structure of speech (parole) is a systematic set of oppositions, differences and rules or codes language (langue). The fundamental unit of language is the sign. The fundamental structure of language is the binary opposition (including that between signifier and signified). Meaning is what emerges out of differential and arbitrary (i.e. social and cultural) relations between different signs.
The opposition of grammatical forms always represents the opposition of grammatical meanings. "A grammatical category is a unity of a generalized grammatical meaning with a set of paradigmatically correlated grammatical forms " (Prof. Smirnitsky). For example, category of case in English is represented by the opposition of two forms (Common - Possessive), Ukrainian – of 7 forms.
Apart from the points already mentioned the categories of aspect (not always easy to separate from the tense system) and gender are noteworthy. Under the category of aspect linguists basically understand the distinction between perfective actions (activity finished, has led to a result; single event) and imperfective actions (activity not yet finished, w/out information on termination; long duration, repetitive). The Slavic languages have a fine and rigid aspect system; in English there is the distinction between progressive and non-progressive (simple) and a distinction between present perfect and past.
The most current gender systems in European languages are twofold (masculine vs. feminine); but there are also languages that are three-fold (e.g. Russian, Ukrainian, German) or lack grammatical gender at all (e.g. English, Hungarian, Finnish). The problem of gender also concerns the system of personal pronouns. We normally distinguish between 3 persons singular and 3 persons plural. In Ukrainian the third person singular we often have a distinction according to grammatical gender; in English, though, the choice is determined by natural gender;
In modern linguistics it is generally accepted that a grammatical category is represented by an opposeme of at least two forms. It is because of any language is binary in nature and each language is constructed on the base of a small set of distinctive features. Initially, the theory of distinctive features based on the principle of binary oppositions developed in the domain of phonology by the Prague school linguists Roman Jacobson and Nikolas Trubetzkoy. A binary opposition is a pair of terms defined in relation to something which is present (marked) in the first, and absent (unmarked) in the second. For instance, voiced – voiceless (sound), singular – plural, active voice – passive voice.
In the meanwhile, other parts of speech are invariable – they have one form (prepositions - on, with, for, from; conjunctions – and, but, although, as if; articles – a/an, the; particles – not, to).
The parts of speech also differ from each other in their syntactic functions.
Verbs perform function of the predicate in a sentence,
Nouns are often used as the subject or object of a sentence,
Adjectives serve as attributes or predicative,
Adverbs are generally adverbial modifiers, etc.
Besides, all words may be divided into 3 main groups: notional parts of speech, functional parts of speech, and independent elements.
Notional parts of speech have distinct lexical meanings and perform independent syntactic functions in a sentence – they serve as primary or secondary parts of the sentence. To this group belong the following parts of speech: verbs, nouns, adjectives, numbers, pronouns, and adverbs.
Functional words differ from notionals semantically – their lexical meaning is of a more general meaning than that of notionals (in, and, even). Moreover, they are sometimes devoid of it (the articles a and the, the conjunction that, the preposition of, etc). Functionals do not perform any syntactic function, but serve either to express various relations between the words in a sentence (The trees in the garden; Tom and Jerry) or to specify the meaning of a word (the book/ a book; even dull, only tomorrow). The following parts of speech are to be treated as structural words: articles, particles, prepositions, conjunctions.
Independent elements are words which are characterized by peculiar meanings of various kinds (yes, no, certainly, oh, alas, etc.). They have no grammatical connection with the sentence in which they occur, i.e. they do not perform any syntactic function in the sentence (He certainly knows all about it). Independent elements can even serve as a sentence themselves (Yes. No. Alas!). Here belong the following parts of speech: modal verbs, interjections, words of affirmation and negation.
3. Morpheme is a minimal meaningful unit. As to its structure, the morpheme may be
simple (one morpheme): a-, -s, -t (alike, apart, says, burnt, learnt) in English and –a, -u, -y, c-, etc. in Ukrainian (весна, хати, беру, сховати) or
compound (-ment, -hoоd,-ward, -ion,-ity, -ство, -ський, -цький) as in management, brotherhood, seaward, demonstration, humanity, cуспільство, сільський, ткацький.
The complexity of its nature, structure and meaning makes the morpheme one of the main objects of contrastive study at the morphological level.
Morpheme can be in the contrasted languages either free or bound.
Free or root morphemes are lexically and functionally not dependent of other morphemes, i.e. grammatical elements as separate words (boy, day, four, he, день, кінь, річ, він, три) or they may constitute the lexical core of a word. E.g.: boyhood, daily, fourth, денна, нічний, тричі, etc.)
Bound morphemes, on the other hand, 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 with bound grammatical morphemes, i.e. grammatical elements attached to or included in a word. Cf.: days, spoken, fourteen, overcome, government, дивно, розумом, нашим, etc. They can not exist independently.