What is grammatical meaning

Grammatical meaning

Types of word-meaning

Functional approach to meaning

The functional approach maintains that the meaning of a linguistic unit may be studied through the relation of this unit to other linguistic units within a context. For example, the meanings of the words move, movable and movement are different because their functions and distribution in the sentence are different.

The same is true of the different meanings of one and the same word in different contexts. For example, we can observe the difference of the meanings of the word move as it fulfills different functions in different linguistic contexts: move a chair, move quickly, move into town, move smb to tears.

It follows that in the functional approach meaning is understood as the function of the use of a linguistic unit in a linguistic context.

The referential and functional approaches to the study of meaning supplement each other; each handles its own side of the problem and neither is complete without the other.

Meaning, in general, may be defined as a certain reflection in our mind of objects, phenomena or relations, that make part of a linguistic sign. It is a component of the word through which a concept is communicated, in this way endowing the word with the ability of denoting real objects, qualities, actions and abstract notions.

Within the word we distinguish grammatical, lexical, part-of-speech, significative, denotative, connotative, pragmatic and word-formation meanings.

Let us compare, for example, a set of the following word-forms: boy’s, girl’s, day’s, night’s. All these words, though denoting different objects, have a common feature. This common semantic element is their grammatical meaning of the possessive case, which is regularly represented by the formal element ‘the apostrophe & s’.

In the same way we can distinguish the grammatical meaning of plurality if we compare the following set of word-forms: boys, girls, days, nights. The grammatical meaning of plurality is regularly represented by the formal element – ‘the ending –s’.

The grammatical meaning of the Past Indefinite Tense is evident in the set of word-forms asked, wanted, thought, taught, though here it is expressed by different morphological means.

So grammatical meaning may be defined as the component of word-meaning recurrent in identical sets of individual forms of different words. By grammatical meaningwe designate the meaning proper to sets of word-forms common to all words of a certain class.

In modern linguistics it is commonly held that some elements of grammatical meaning can be identified by the position of the linguistic unit in relation to other linguistic units in speech, that is by its distribution.

For example, the word-forms reads, speaks, writes have one and the same grammatical meaning of the Present Indefinite Tense, third person, singular not only because they possess the common inflexion ‘–s’ but also because they can be found in identical distribution – only after the pronouns he, she, it.

It follows that a certain component of the meaning of a word is distinguished when this word is identified as a part of speech, since different parts of speech have different distribution.

So grammatical meaning can also be defined as an expression in speech of relationship between words based on contrastive features of arrangements in which they occur.

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Grammatical meaning and grammatical form. Means of form-building. Synthetic and analytical forms

Morphology and syntax as part of grammar. Units of grammar, their functions and types of relations between them in language and speech.

Main units of Grammar are a word and a sentence. A word may be divided into morphemes, a sentence may be divided into phrases (word-groups). A morpheme, a word, a phrase and a sentence are units of different levels of language structure. A unit of a higher level consists of one or more units of a lower level.

— in the language system (paradigmatic relations)

— in speech (syntagmatic relations).

In the language system each unit is included into a set of connections based on different properties. F. ex., word forms child, children, child’s, children’s have the same lexical meaning and have different grammatical meanings. They constitute a lexeme.

Word-forms children, boys, men, books. have the same grammatical meaning and have different lexical meanings. They constitute a grammeme (a categorial form, a form class). The system of all grammemes (grammatical forms) of all lexemes (words) of a given class constitutes a paradigm.

Syntagmatic relations are the relations in an utterance.

Main grammatical units, a word and a sentence, are studied by different sections of Grammar: Morphology (Accidence) and Syntax. Morphology studies the structure, forms and the classification of words. Syntax studies the structure, forms and the classification of sentences. Morphology studies paradigmatic relations of words, Syntax studies syntagmatic relations of words and paradigmatic relations of sentences.

There is also a new approach to the division of Grammar into Morphology and Syntax. According to this approach Morphology should study both paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations of words. Syntax should study both paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations of sentences. Syntactic syntagmatics is a relatively new field of study, reflecting the discourse.

The grammatical meaning and grammatical form are the basic notions of Grammar.

The grammatical meaning must have a grammatical form of expression (inflexions, analytical forms, word-order, etc.). The term form may be used in a wide sense to denote all means of expressing grammatical meanings. It may be also used in a narrow sense to denote means of expressing a particular grammatical meaning (plural, number, present tense, etc.).

Grammatical elements are unities of meaning and form, content and expression. In the language system there is no direct correspondence of meaning and form. Two or more units of the plane of content may correspond to one unit of the plane of expression (polysemy; homonymy). Two or more units of the plane of expression may correspond to one unit of the plane of content (synonymy).

Means of form-building and grammatical forms are divided into synthetic and analytical.

Synthetic forms are built with the help of bound morphemes, analytical forms are built with the help of semi-bound morphemes (word-morphemes).

Synthetic means of form-building are affixation, sound-interchange (inner-inflexion), suppletivity. Typical features of English affixation are scarcity and homonymy of affixes. Another characteristic feature is a great number of zero-morphemes.

Though English grammatical affixes are few in number, affixation is a productive means of form-building.

Sound interchange is not productive in Modem English. It is used to build the forms of irregular verbs.

1) they have the same lexical meaning;

2) there are no parallel non-suppletive forms;

3) other words of the same class build their forms without suppletivity.

Suppletivity, like inner inflexion, is hot productive in Modem English, but it occurs in words with a very high frequency.

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What Is Grammatical Meaning

Glossary of Grammatical and Rhetorical Terms

Grammatical meaning is the meaning conveyed in a sentence by word order and other grammatical signals. Also called structural meaning. Linguists distinguish grammatical meaning from lexical meaning (or denotation)—that is, the dictionary meaning of an individual word. Walter Hirtle notes that «a word expressing the same idea can fulfill different syntactic functions. The grammatical difference between the throw in to throw a ball and that in a good throw has long been attributed to a difference of meaning not of the lexical type described in dictionaries, but of the more abstract, formal type described in grammars» (Making Sense out of Meaning, 2013).

Grammatical Meaning and Structure

Number and Tense

Word Class and Grammatical Meaning

He brushed his muddy shoes. [verb]
He gave his muddy shoes a brush. [noun]

Changing from the construction with a verb to one with a noun involves more than just a change of word class in these sentences. There is also a modification of meaning. The verb emphasizes the activity and there is a greater implication that the shoes will end up clean, but the noun suggests that the activity was much shorter, more cursory and performed with little interest, so the shoes were not cleaned properly.

Next summer I am going to Spain for my holidays. [adverb]
Next summer will be wonderful. [noun]

According to traditional grammar, next summer in the first sentence is an adverbial phrase, while in the second it is a noun phrase. Once again, the change of grammatical category also entails some change of meaning. The adverbial phrase is an adjunct, a component bolted on to the rest of the sentence, and merely provides the temporal context for the whole utterance. On the other hand, use of the phrase as a noun in subject position renders it less circumstantial and less abstract; it is now the theme of the utterance and a more sharply delimited period in time.» (Brian Mott, Introductory Semantics and Pragmatics for Spanish Learners of English. Edicions Universitat Barcelona, 2009)

GRAMMATICAL MEANING. GRAMMATICAL CATEGORIES.

1. The notion of ‘grammatical meaning’.

The word combines in its semantic structure two meanings – lexical and grammatical. Lexicalmeaning is the individual meaning of the word (e.g. table). Grammaticalmeaning is the meaning of the whole class or a subclass. For example, 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. This can be explained by the fact that they have no referents in the objective reality. All function words belong to this group – articles, particles, prepositions, etc.

2. Types of grammatical meaning.

The grammatical meaning may be explicit and implicit. The implicitgrammatical meaning is not expressed formally (e.g. the word table does not contain any hints in its form as to it being inanimate). The explicitgrammatical meaning is always marked morphologically – it has its marker. In the word 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.

3. Grammatical categories.

Grammatical categories are made up by the unity of identical grammatical meanings that have the same form (e.g. singular::plural). Due to dialectal unity of language and thought, grammatical categories correlate, on the one hand, with the conceptual categories and, on the other hand, with the objective reality. It may be shown with the help of a triangle model:

It follows that 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 quantityfinds its representation in the grammatical category of number. Those grammatical categories that have references in the objective reality are called referentialgrammatical 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. Such categories correlate only with conceptual matters:

They are called significationalcategories. To this type belong the categories of mood and degree. Speaking about the grammatical category of mood we can say that it has modality as its conceptual correlate. It can be explained by the fact that it does not refer to anything in the objective reality – it expresses the speaker’s attitude to what he says.

4. The notion of opposition.

Any grammatical category must be represented by at least two grammatical forms (e.g. the grammatical category of number – singular and plural forms). The relation between two grammatical forms differing in meaning and external signs is called opposition –book::books (unmarked member/marked member). All grammatical categories find their realization through oppositions, e.g. the grammatical category of number is realized through the opposition singular::plural.

Taking all the above mentioned into consideration, we may define the grammatical category as the opposition between two mutually exclusive form-classes (a form-class is a set of words with the same explicit grammatical meaning).

Meansof realization of grammatical categories may be synthetic (near – nearer) and analytic (beautiful – more beautiful).

5. Transposition and neutralization of morphological forms.

In the process of communication grammatical categories may undergo the processes of transposition and neutralization.

Transpositionis the use of a linguistic unit in an unusual environment or in the function that is not characteristic of it (He is a lion). In the sentence He is coming tomorrow the paradigmatic meaning of the continuous form is reduced and a new meaning appears – that of a future action. Transposition always results in the neutralization of a paradigmatic meaning. Neutralization is the reduction of the opposition to one of its members : custom :: customs – x :: customs; x :: spectacles.

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THEME 5. Grammatical Means

Plan

I. A few remarks on terminology: ‘suffix’ and ‘inflexion’ (ending).

II. Types of word-form derivation:

1. synthetic types: a) inflexion;

b) sound alternation;

2. analytical types;

The preceding lectures made it clear how important is the form in grammar. Without some formal manifestation, no grammatical category can be established in the linguistic structure of a language.

Note: The most common grammatical form in Russian is the inflexion (ending) e.g. вода, воды, воде; бегаю, бегаешь, синий, синего и т.д.

The inflexion is a grammatical suffix. But as early as in the 1920s the academician L.V. Shcherba warned his contemporaries against restricting the form to affixes only.

Let us enumerate the most essential English grammatical means.

I. Inflexion (ending).

The principal endings of Modern English can be easily enumerated, since they are not very numerous:

1) –(e)s /s, z, iz/ of the plural of nouns (N(e)s): dogs, cats, dresses;

2) –’s /s, z, is/ of the possessive case (N’s): the girl’s hat, the aunt’s hat, the lass’s hat;

3) –er /ə/ of the comparative degree of adjectives (Adjer): greener;

4) – est /ist/ of the Superlative degree of adjectives (Adjest): greenest;

5) –(e)s /s, z, iz/ of the 3 d person sing. in the present indefinite form indicative mood (V(e)s): he runs;

6) –(e)d /t, d, id/ of the past tense (Ved): called, worked, wanted;

7) –ing /iŋ/ of participle I (Ving): calling;

8) –(e)d /t, d, id/ of participle II: called;

9) –(e)n /n/ of of participle (Ven): taken (nearly 100 verbs)

10)–ing /iŋ/ of the gerund: calling.

Besides these usual endings, one can single out rarer ones:

2) various foreign plurals, borrowed together with the nouns from other languages:

e) –is / es analysis / analyses, oases / oases.

3) L. Bloomfield, E. Nida and other American linguists consider the final -m in the pronouns him, them, whom to be the ending of the objective case. This seems to be a very questionable ending, because the relation between the roots of the objective and native cases are different.

Russian grammarians (with the only exception of Prof. N. F. Irtenyeva) do not treat -m as an ending.

As seen from the list above, many English endings are homonymous, which fact impairs their efficiency in the text, since there are many homonyms belonging to different parts of speech. For instance, the telegram Ship sails tomorrow may be interpreted as a request to send sails to some place or a piece of information about the departure of a ship. In the first variant sails is a noun in the plural, in the second variant it is a verb in the present indefinite in the 3 d person singular.

Many modern grammarians favour the notion of the zero-inflexion (Ø). This means an absence of any ending which is pregnant with a grammatical meaning as a part of a system, as a member in an opposition.

E.g. рукá, руки, руке…

The absence of an inflexion “рук” in this paradigm is a means of expressing the genitive case pl.

In English there are very many zero-forms, as the weak members of oppositions are usually unmarked. Thus in the plural form of the word books the lexical morpheme is book- and the grammatical one is -s. In the singular the lexical morpheme is the same, but the grammatical one is Ø.

Variations of the same morpheme are called allomorphs.

Allomorphs are recognized by 2 features:

1) they have identical meanings;

2) they are in complementary distribution to each other, i.e. each stem is followed by only one of the allomorphs.

II. Sound alternation(interchange).

Sound alternation may be combined with endings: wife – wives, write – written, far – further.

Some scholars regard sound alternation as an affix which is not added before or after the stem (the way prefixes and suffixes are), but inserted inside the word. Then it is termed internal inflexion.

To divide the word-forms with sound alternation into lexical and grammatical morphemes, L. Bloomfield offered two methods of analysis:

a) goose – geese: the lexical morpheme is interrupted: / g-s /. The lexical morpheme is the same in the sing. and the pl. The grammatical morpheme of the sing. is /u:/, and of the pl. it is /i:/. This can be summed up in the following scheme:

b) goose – goose: the lexical morpheme both in the sing. and pl. is goose, the grammatical morphemes being Ø (zero) in the sing., and the change from /u:/ to /i:/ in the Pl.

III. Suppletion (suppletivism)

This grammatical means is found in a few words, but they are very frequent and essential to the language. They are the verbs to be (am, is, was; be), to go (go, went); personal pronouns: I – me, we – us, she – her; adjectives: good – better, bad – worse.

Suppletion means using different roots as forms of the same word. In Indo-European languages (among them Russian, Latin, English, and German) suppletive forms come down from the depths of history, when there were no grammatical categories of tense, case or degrees of comparison. At that time, going at the moment of speech and before were regarded as different processes and denoted by different roots. Later on the abstract thinking of man developed the grammatical means which modified the same root. But the words enumerated above retained their suppletive forms because they were too frequently used to be easily replaced by analogy.

Suppletive forms carry the same grammatical meanings as other forms, e.g. inflexions. In the language system they are included into the ratio:

=

Once Prof. B.A. Ilyish suggested including among English suppletive forms such pairs as person – people, must – shall have(to), can – will be able (to). They have identical or similar meanings and different roots.

IV.Analytical means

All the three grammatical means enumerated above (inflexion, sound alternation, suppletion) are synthetical because both the lexical and grammatical meanings are united, or synthesized in one and the same word. They are opposed to the fourth group of grammatical means, which are named analytical because the lexical meaning in them is expressed in one word (in the nominal word) and the grammatical meaning is rendered by a combination of the notional word with a structural one. For instance, in the continuous aspect is reading the lexical meaning is expressed in reading, but the grammatical, aspect meaning is in the combination of is with reading.

Here is a list of English analytical forms:

1) passive (it) is written (be Ven);

2) continuous (he) is writing (be Ving);

3) perfect (he) has written (have Ven);

4) future (he) will write

(I) shall write (‘ll V);

5) negative form (he) does not write (do not V);

6) interrogative form does (he) write? (do not V);

7) emphatic form do write! (do V!);

8) the comparative degree more important (more Adj.);

9) the superlative degree the most important (most Adj.);

10) the suppositional mood (he) should write (should V);

11) the conditional mood (I) should write

(he) would write (’d V);

12) the imperative mood Let (us) come! (let N V).

(The last structure seems to be on the way of turning into an analytical form, see the lecture on moods).

The verb is a part of speech having the greatest number of analytical forms. The adjective and adverb also have some. But the noun in English has no analytical forms. Some scholars suppose articles and such prepositions as of, to, by, with to have lost their individual meaning and turned into structural words building the analytical forms of nouns: of a boy – the indefinite genitive case, of the boy – the definite genitive case, to a boy – the indefinite dative case, with the boy – the definite instrumental case, etc. In this country nobody seems to uphold such a viewpoint, because both articles and prepositions, though semi-structural parts of speech, still retain their own meanings and do not fuse together with the noun into one analytical word. (See the lecture on the Noun).

In a grammatical form consisting of three or four words, each grammatical category is expressed by only two neighbouring words, e.g.:

(I) shall have been reading

Continuous Passive

(it) is being written

The verbal grammatical categories are expressed in the analytical form in a strict order: Future – Perfect Continuous – Passive. If we change this order, we shall get a wrong form: I shall be having written, It will be had written.

Practically the length of an analytical form is restricted by four words. Longer, such as (it) will have been being read are so rare that most grammars do not mention them. Prof. I.B. Khlebnikova explains it by the limited volume of human memory.

The analytical forms of the verb are mostly the only forms to express their grammatical category. Only the suppositional mood has a very close synonym subjunctive I. The degrees of comparison can be expressed both synthetically and analytically (big – bigger – biggest, enormous – more enormous – most enormous).

Analytical means are very important in the English grammar. That and the great role of prepositions, articles conjunctions as well as that the word-order, account for the fact that Modern English is considered to be an analytical language. That characteristic is true in comparison with Old English, Latin or Modern German and Russian. But if we compare Modern English with more analytical languages, such as Chinese or Vietnamese, it should be regarded as a synthetical language.

References:

1. Бархударов, Л.С. Очерки по морфологии современного английского языка / Л.С. Бархударов. – М.: Высшая школа, 1975. – С. 27-41; 67-70.

2. Блох, М.Я. Теоретическая грамматика английского языка: учеб. / М.Я. Блох. – 4-е изд., испр. – М.: Высшая школа, 2003. – C. 36-49.

3. Блох, М.Я. Теоретические основы грамматики: учеб. / М.Я. Блох. – 3-е изд., испр. – М.: Высш. шк., 2002. – С. 85-91.

4. Иванова, И.П., Теоретическая грамматика современного английского языка: учеб. / И.П. Иванова, В.В. Бурлакова, Г.Г. Почепцов. – М.: Высшая школа, 1981. – С. 13-14.

5. Хаймович, Б.С. Теоретическая грамматика английского языка: учебное пособие / Б.С. Хаймович, Б.И. Роговская. – М.: Высшая школа, 1967. – С. 12-18, 24-25.