Grammar in the system of languages.

1. Grammar in the system of languages.

Language is a means of forming and storing ideas as reflec­tions of reality and exchanging them in the process of human in­tercourse. It is social by nature. Language is a system of signs - meaningful units. ( Соссюр). It is a system of means.of expressions.

a) material units (sounds, morphemes, words, word-groups);

b) regularities (rules) of the use of these units.Language gives expression to human thoughts. Speech is the mani­festation of the.system of language in the process of comnunication, the use of signs, the act of producing utterances and the utterances themselves. In Speech the potential meaning is made situationally significant as part of the grammatically organized text. Linguistic levels

1. Phonological (determined the material appearance of its sig­nificative units)

2. Lexical (the whole set of naming means of languages: words, , word-groups);

3. Grammatical (the whole set of regularities, determining the combination of naming means in the formation of utterances).

Only the unity of the 3 levels form a language. Lingual hierarchy of levels.

I. Morphological

1. phonemic

2. morphemic

3. lexemic

II. Syntaotic

 4 phrasemic

5. proposemic

6. supra-proposemic

The basic units of the lingual levels.

1. Phoneme - the smallest distinctive unit, has no meaning, is not a aign (pig-big )

2. Morpheme - a minimal meaningful unit (fault-s);

3. Word - the smallest naming unit, a sign;

4. Phrase - a combination of 2 or more syntactically connected words;

5. Sentence - a predicative unit, a sign of a situational event;

6. Textual unity - a combination of separate sentences.

Practical grammar provides with a manual of practical mas­tery of the grammatical rules.

Theoretical grammar - description of the grammatical system, it   scientifically analyses and defines the grammatical catego­ries, the ways the words are combined.

In theoretical grammar we state some facts, analyse them from different angles, and try to explain them. We deal with many theories, many approaches to one and the same phenomenon.

There are 2 planes of languages content (comprises the purely semantic elements); expression (comprises the material, formed units). Each formal unit has a meaning. No meaning can be realized without some ma­terial means of expression. Each grammatical element presents a unity of content and expression. Grammatical meaning is typical of grammatical form. Grammatical form is typical of grammatical meaning. One and the same form may express different grammati­cal meanings.  Grammatical category - common features of a linguistic phenomenon of a certain class, having their grammatical form and grammatical meaning, a complicated unity of grammatical form and grammatical content (the category of number, mood, eto).

Grammatical category la a system of expressing a general!* ed meaning by means of paradigmatic correlation of. grammatical forms ( marked s : unmarked). Every grammatical oategory is characterised by the opposition, the categorial meaning and the function. For example, the category of number: plurality :: singularity,  plurality : : non-plurality

Grammatical forms may be synthetical and analytical. Synthetical:

1. inflection (morphemic changes without changing their lexical meaning: sentence, sentences, sentenced);

2. suppletivity (combining different roots: be, am, is/are, was/were ).

English inflection has been gradually simplified. It has developed analytical tendencies. The features of an analytical language:

I. few grammatical inflections (case, degrees of comparison, 3rd person, singular, Present Tense, etc.)

2.  a sparing use of sound alternations {foot-feet, get-got);

3. a wide use of prepositions to connect words, to denote rela­tions between objects ( a man of wealth);

4. a prominent use of word order (rather fixed i S+Pr+DO+IO+Adv. Mod. "The woman accused the hoy of stealing books from the library").

An analytical form consists of two (or more) words but con­stitutes one sense unit. One element has lexical eaning, the other - grammatical meaning ( I shall exchange it: shall – lst person, futurity, exchange – обменять)