Download граматика англійської та української мов

МІНІСТЕРСТВО ОСВІТИ І НАУКИ УКРАЇНИ
Національний авіаційний університет
А. Г. Гудманян, Т. В. Крилова
ГРАМАТИКА АНГЛІЙСЬКОЇ
ТА УКРАЇНСЬКОЇ МОВ
Конспект лекцій
Київ 2009
МІНІСТЕРСТВО ОСВІТИ І НАУКИ УКРАЇНИ
Національний авіаційний університет
А. Г. Гудманян, Т. В. Крилова
ГРАМАТИКА АНГЛІЙСЬКОЇ
ТА УКРАЇНСЬКОЇ МОВ
Конспект лекцій
Київ
Видавництво Національного авіаційного університету
«НАУ-друк»
2009
1
УДК 81’36:811.111;.161(042.4)
ББК Ш 141.21-2я7+Ш141.14-2я7
Г 935
Рецензенти : Г. А. Лисенко – канд. філол. наук, доц. (Національний
технічний університет України «КПІ»);
Г. В. Чеснокова – канд. філол. наук, доц., (Київський
національний лінгвістичний університет);
С. І. Сидоренко – канд. філол. наук, доц. (Національний авіаційний університет)
Затверджено методично-редакційною радою Національного
авіаційного університету (протокол № 6/09 від 12.06.2009 р.).
Гудманян А. Г.
Г 935
Граматика англійської та української мов : конспект лекцій /
А. Г. Гудманян, Т. В. Крилова. – К. : Вид-во Нац. авіац. ун-ту «НАУдрук», 2009. – 64 с. (Англ. мовою).
У конспекті викладено основні терміни і теоретичні засади дисципліни.
Конспект містить лекційні матеріали з відповідними завданнями для
аудиторної та самостійної роботи згідно з навчальною програмою курсу
«Граматика англійської та української мов».
Для студентів Інституту заочного та дистанційного навчання спеціальності 6.030500 «Переклад», а також для тих, хто бажає поглибити знання з
порівняльної граматики англійської та української мов.
УДК 81’36:811.111;.161(042.4)
ББК Ш 141.21-2я7+Ш141.14-2я7
© Гудманян А. Г., Крилова Т. В., 2009
2
Contents
INTRODUCTION .........................................................................................4
1. LANGUAGES OF THE WORLD AND LINGUISTIC
TYPOLOGY ..............................................................................................6
1.1. Linguistic typology as a branch of linguistics ................................6
1.2. Language classifications ..............................................................8
1.2.1. Genetic classifications of languages ....................................9
1.2.2. Typological classifications of languages ..............................11
2. CONTRASTIVE MORPHOLOGY OF ENGLISH AND UKRAINIAN......21
2.1. Morphemic structure of words ......................................................21
2.2. Parts of speech ............................................................................24
2.3. Grammatical categories ................................................................28
2.4. Noun and its categories ................................................................30
2.5. Verb and its categories .................................................................39
2.5.1. Classes of verbs ..................................................................39
2.5.2. Grammatical categories of the verb .....................................42
3. CONTRASTIVE SYNTAX OF ENGLISH AND UKRAINIAN .................50
3.1. Phrase ..........................................................................................50
3.2. Sentence ......................................................................................53
3.2.1. Simple sentence ..................................................................54
3.2.2. Composite sentence ............................................................57
PRACTICAL TASKS .................................................................................60
RECOMMENDED LITERATURE .............................................................63
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INTRODUCTION
T
he curriculum of any linguistic university includes the course
of contrastive study of the native and target languages.
Language comparison is of great interest in a theoretical as well
as an applied perspective. It reveals what is general and what is
language specific and is therefore important both for the
understanding of language in general and for the study of the
individual languages compared. Undoubtedly,
the
most
important aim of teaching and learning linguistic typology is to
give the student the experience of encountering a language that is
unfamiliar and often radically different from their native
language. This experience will expose the students to real data,
make them aware of variation. This subject will also contribute to
the development of critical thinking, global outlook and cultural
appreciation.
The results obtained in any branch of typological investigation
can be usefully employed in theoretical linguistics as well as in
translation and in teaching practice. A contrastive typological
treatment of the main grammatical features/phenomena, available
or unavailable in the corresponding systems of the foreign
language/languages and in the native tongue, will provide the
students not only with the linguistic results necessary for their
successful teaching practice at school, but also with
understanding of systemic organisation of languages. Using a
contrastive approach to grammar, this course deals with basic and
advanced grammar concepts and targets the particular problems
Ukrainian students commonly have with English grammar. This
course builds on the knowledge of grammar gained at the
practical grammar classes, but whereas practical classes often
concentrate on communicative skills, this course will focus on
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accuracy. Although students have encountered and practiced most
aspects of English grammar, many do not control them well. The
course will involve close working with a good grammar reference
book, analyzing texts, sentences, and grammatical structures,
doing sentence translations from Ukrainian into English.
It is well known that Ukrainian and English are very much
different. However, when Ukrainian students who are lacking a
“real” English environment learn English, they easily tend to
ignore the differences between the two languages. This is
particularly the case with writing. The Ukrainian students tend to
put their habit of writing in Ukrainian into practice of English
writing. The result is an awkward mixture in which ideas
conceived in Ukrainian are ungrammatically or unidiomatically
expressed in English writing. The main cause of it is, apparently,
linguistic interference (L1 interference accounts for some 30% of
error), and to get rid of the negative influence of the mother
tongue remains of paramount importance for students of English.
It is assumed that the learning of second language is
faicilitated whenever there are similarities between that language
and mother tongue. Learning may be interfered with when there
are marked contrasts between mother tongue and second
language. The contrastive analysis emphasises the influence of
the mother tongue in learning a second language on phonological,
morphological and syntactic levels. Examination of the
differences between the first and second languages help to predict
the possible errors that can be made by L2 learners.
The reader is not intended to replace textbooks. On the
contrary, many of the questions it contains are likely to require
further reading before they can be answered satisfactorily.
5
I. LANGUAGES OF THE WORLD
AND LINGUISTIC TYPOLOGY
1.1. Linguistic typology as a branch of linguistics
About 6000 languages are spoken in the world today, of which about
1000 are spoken only by very small populations. It is estimated that
nearly half of these 6000 languages are threatened because they are
spoken only by adults who no longer teach them to their children. The
death of languages is not a new phenomenon. Linguists estimate that
over the past 5000 years, at least 30 000 languages have been born and
died, generally without leaving a trace. But today, the number of
languages spoken in the world is declining at an unprecedented rate, so
that over the coming century, 90% of the languages that exist now will
likely disappear. There would then be only about 600 languages left that
would have proven relatively durable. One of these, of course, will be
English, which is spreading more and more widely on its way to
becoming the common language of the world.
Linguistic research has shown that languages differ considerably
from each other in phonological, morphological, semantic and syntactic
properties. One of the most important discoveries of modern linguistics
is that morphosyntactic variation is both highly constrained and highly
principled. In other words, there are limitations on the kinds of
structural features that languages can have, i.e. languages do not vary in
structure in random ways, but according to identifiable patterns. We can
express these patterns as language universals. It is due to these
limitations that languages may be meaningfully classified into types on
the basis of shared combinations of features. Such a classification is
called a typology. The study of typologies and their implications for
theories of grammar is called Linguistic Typology. Linguistic typology
is a subfield of linguistics that studies and classifies languages according
to their structural features. Its aim is to describe and explain the
structural diversity of the world’s languages. It refers to the
categorization of languages on linguistic ground considering the
variation in their phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic
properties. The aims of major typological investigations are the
following:
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• to identify and classify accordingly the main isomorphic and
allomorphic features characteristic of languages under investigation;
• to draw from these common or divergent features respectively
the isomorphic regularities (закономірності) and the allomorphic
singularities (відмінності) in the languages contrasted;
• to establish on the basis of the obtained isomorphic features
the typical language structures and the types of languages;
• to perform on the basis of the obtained practical data a truly
scientific classification of the existing languages of the world;
• to establish on this basis the universal features/phenomena,
which pertain to each single language of the world.
The object of investigation may involve an extensive language
area/material or it may involve a restricted object/ material of
investigation. Due to this there are distinguished several branches of
typological investigation often referred to as separate typologies.
Universal typology which investigates all languages of the world and
aims at singling out such features/phenomena which are common in all
languages. These features are referred to as absolute universals. Their
identification is carried out not only on the basis of the existing (living)
languages but also on the basis of dead languages like Sanskrit, ancient
Greek or Latin. Also the hypothetic abstract etalon language created by
typologists for the sake of investigation is widely made use of by
universal typology. This “language” plays a very important role in
foreseeing the quantitative representation of various features/phenomena
in different languages. Universal typology on its part provides the etalon
language with all necessary data concerning the quantitative
representation of various phonetical, lexical and grammatical features or
means of expression.
Special or charactereological typology, in contrast to universal
typology, usually investigates concrete languages, one of which is, as a
rule, the native tongue.
General typology has for its object of investigation the most general
phonetic, morphological, lexical, syntactic or stylistic features. This
typological approach to the morphological structure of words in
different languages enabled the German scholar W. Humboldt to
suggest the first ever typological classification of languages (on the
morphological basis).
Areal typology investigates common and divergent features in
languages of a particular geographical area with respect to their mutual
7
influence of one language upon the other, and a scientific generalisation
of such long-term influences in the phonetic/ phonological, lexical or
even grammatical aspects of different languages of multinational areas
like Dagestan, the Balkans, Transcarpathia/ Transcaucasia and others.
Quantitative typology was singled out and identified by the
American linguist J.Greenberg. It deals with the distribution of
structural patterns in the world’s languages. The aim of this typology is
to investigate the quantitative correlation of some features and
phenomena and their identifying (dominant) role in different languages.
Thus, taking into account the small quantity of inflexions and the great
role of analytical means as prepositional connection and placement of
components in English word-groups and sentences, this language can be
identified by its syntactic structure as predominantly analytical.
Partial typology investigates a restricted number of language
features/phenomena - the systems of vowels/consonants, means of
word-formation or the syntactic level units. As a result, several level
typologies are distinguished: a) typology of the phonetic/ phonological
level units; b) typology of the morphological level units; c) typology of
the lexical level units; d) typology of the syntactic level units.
Contrastive linguistics is thus not a unified field of study. The focus
may be on general or on language specific features: the all-embracing
final results of universal and general typologies could help to
successfully perform a scientifically substantiated general classification
of languages.The study may be theoretical, without any immediate
application, or it may be applied, i.e. carried out for a specific purpose.
The Publication of Robert Lados Book ‘Linguistics across cultures’ in
1957 marks the real beginning of modern applied contrastive linguistics.
In later studies, as an alternative for contrastive linguistics, the term
‘Contrastive analysis’ is used. Contrastive Analysis is the method of
analyzing the structure of any two languages with a view to estimate the
differential aspects of their systems.
1.2. Language Classifications
There are two main ways of classifying languages of the world: (1)
grouping languages into families all of whose members derive from a
common ancestor, which is the basis for genetic (genealogical)
classifications, and (2) classifying languages by reference to their
sharing certain predominant features without regard to their origins typological classifications.
8
1.2.1. Genetic classifications of languages
Genetic classifications are established by historical linguists, who
trace the evolution of languages through the methods of historical
comparative analysis. These linguists compare words in different
languages for similarities in sound (phonetics), meaning (semantics),
form and grammar (morphology), and vocabulary (lexicology), and then
use various criteria to group the languages into families that have a
common origin. This is the approach used by linguists who believe in
monogenism. Its adherents believe that there was once one protolanguage from which all current human languages subsequently derived.
The monogenists include researchers such as the American linguist
Meritt Ruhlen who has attempted to trace the etymological roots of
today’s languages back to their one common ancestor. Although many
modern languages do derive from a single ancestor, it is also possible
that human language arose simultaneously at many different places on
earth and that today’s languages do not have a single common ancestor.
The theory that present language families derive from many original
languages is called polygenism.
The record of written languages does make it possible to use this
method to trace the evolution of today’s languages back a few thousand
years with a fair degree of certainty. In this way, scholars have
constructed an actual family tree that shows how these languages are
related to one another: Latin was the mother of French; Polish is a sister
language of Ukrainian; Scottish and Irish are sister languages whose
common mother is Celtic; the Indian languages are cousins of the
Iranian languages; and so on. Members of a language family have a
historical connection with one another and descend from a single
ancestor. Language family trees show the relationships among
languages; the oldest traceable ancestor language is usually shown at the
top of the tree, and the bottom branches show the distance of
relationship among current living members of the family. Related
languages are alike in that their grammatical elements and vocabulary
show regular correspondences in both sound and meaning. For example,
the English word fish corresponds to Latin piscis, and English father to
Latin pater. The English and Latin words are cognates, that is,
genetically the same. Where English has f, Latin has p; English th
corresponds to Latin t; and so forth. Comparative linguistics is the field
9
in which sound and meaning core spondences (that is, cognates) among
languages are analyzed; genetic groups of languages are established;
and by comparing modern languages, the hypothetical ancestor
languages of such groups are tentatively reconstructed. (Such
reconstructed precursor languages are indicated by the term proto-, as in
Proto-Indo-European.)
The best-known language family is the Indo-European family,
which represents about 1.6 billion people and includes most of the
languages of Europe and northern India and several languages of the
region in between. Indo-European has the following subfamilies: Italic,
Germanic, Celtic, Greek, Baltic, Slavic, Armenian, Albanian, IndoIranian, and the extinct Hittite and Tocharian. Further subclassifications
exist within subfamilies. English, for example, belongs to the AngloFrisian group of the West Germanic branch of the Germanic subfamily.
The closest relative of English is Frisian, which is spoken today only in
parts of Germany and the Netherlands. The relationship of English to
other Indo-European languages, such as Swedish (North Germanic),
Latin (Italic), and Sanskrit (Indo-Iranian) is progressively more distant.
The Indo-European family is only one of several dozen families and
proposed larger groupings. The Uralic family
includes various
languages of the Ural Mountains region and Siberia and also such
Europian languages as Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian (the western
members of the Finno-Ugric branch), the Altaic family, the main
branches of which are Turkic, Mongolian, and Manchu-Tungus. Among
other language families are such as Caucasian family, MalayoPolynesian family, Afro-Asiatic family, Eskimo-Aleut family, etc.
Languages may resemble each other in one way or another for
reasons other than a genetic relationship. The main non-genetic source
of similarity is language contact; when the speech communities for two
language are in close cultural contact, their languages often influence
one another. So modern Japanese vocabulary includes thousands of
words borrowed from Chinese and uses the Chinese writing system (as
well as writing systems specific to Japanese). But, except in the sense
that all human languages may be ultimately related to one another, there
is no evidence that Japanese is genetically related to Chinese. A more
complicated situation occurred in Western Asia with the complicated
cultural influences among people speaking Arabic, Persian, and Turkish.
These three languages belong to separate language families (Afro10
Asiatic, Indo-European, and Altaic, respectively), which are either
unrelated to one another or only very distantly related, but Turkish and
Persian have borrowed many words from Arabic, Turkish has also
borrowed many words from Persian, and Persian borrowed its writing
system from Arabic.
1.2.2. Typological classifications of languages
In contrast with genealogical classifications, typological
classifications do not address relationships among languages; they are
based on the resemblances between the languages to be classified
without regard to their origins. Such classifications give rise to what are
called typological classes. Typological classifications may be
established on the basis of different language levels: morphological,
syntactic, phonological.
Morphological classifications emerged in the 19th century, when
linguists attempted to group the world’s languages according to their
common morphological structures. First developed by brothers F.
Schlegel and A. Schlegel, morphological typology organizes languages
on the basis of how those languages form words by combining
morphemes. Two primary categories exist to distinguish all languages:
analytic (isolating) languages and synthetic languages where each term
refers to the opposite end of a continuous scale including all the world’s
languages.
Grammatical expression of meaning may happen in a number of
different ways, as exemplified by the various methods of expressing the
distinction between singular and plural in the nouns of different
languages:
1. No expression: Japanese hito ‘person’, pl. hito
2. Function word: Tagalog bato ‘stone’, pl. mga bato
3. Affixation: Turkish ev ‘house’, pl. ev-ler; Swahili m-toto
‘child’, pl. wa-toto
4. Sound change: English man, pl. men; Arabic rajulun ‘man’,
pl. rija1lun
5. Reduplication: Malay anak ‘child’, pl. anak-anak
The most important typological distinction is between the types 1-2,
where each word consists of only one morpheme, and types 3-5, where a
word often consists of more than one morpheme.
11
Languages in which a word tends to consist of only one morpheme
are called analytic (or isolating). These languages have no inflection,
and the most extreme ones make limited use of processes of word
formation. Analytic languages typically have words of one syllable with
no affixes, or added parts; words in sentences are on their own, isolated,
English is a mildly synthetic language, while older Indo-European
languages, like Latin, Greek and Sanskrit, are highly synthetic. All of
them have plenty of inflection, derivation and compounding. The entire
Indo-European language system is marked by more or less elaborate
systems of inflections, one of the most complex of which appears to
have been exhibited by Proto-Indo-European. Most modern IndoEuropean languages display both internal inflectional change and
external affixes, often simultaneously in a single word (as German
Männer from Mann or English sold from sell).
Extremely synthetic languages, where words are very complex and
sometimes constitute entire clauses, with extensive use of inflection,
derivation and compounding, are called polysynthetic (or incorporating).
This category for classifying languages was proposed in 1836 by William
Humbotdt. A polysynthetic language is one in which objects, indirect objects,
and other sentence elements are incorporated into the verb as one word.
Swahili does this, as in hatukuviwanunulia, which means “We did not buy
them (= things) for them (= people).” The components of this word are ha
(negative), tu (“we”), ku (indicator of past), vi (“them,” meaning “objects”),
wa (“them,” meaning “people”), and nunulia (“buy for”). Polysynthetic
languages are primarily found among Eskimo and American Indian
languages, as well as a few languages in Siberia, Northern Caucasus and
Australia.
Theoretically speaking, languages may locate themselves at any
point on the scale from analytic to polysynthetic:
Analytic
Synthetic
Polysynthetic
(word = orpheme)
(word > morpheme)
(word = clause)
There are two subtypes of synthesis, according to whether
morphemes are clearly differentiable or not. These subtypes are
agglutinative and fusional (or inflectional or flectional in older
terminology).Thus, synthetic and polysynthetic languages may be
further subdivided into agglutinative and flectional languages.
12
In the ideal case, an agglutinative language (from the Latin for “to
glue to”) is a synthetic or a polysynthetic language in which words are
composed of roots, and one or more affixes (prefixes at the beginning,
infixes in the middle, and suffixes at the end of words) with distinct
meanings. The essential feature of agglutinative languages is that affixes
are characterised by a one-to-one correspondence between meaning and
form and have distinst boundaries. An example is Turkish, which has äv
(“house”), ä-vdä (“in the house”), äv-lär (“houses”), and äv-lär-da (“in
the houses”).
In an almost ideal case like Turkish, agglutinative languages exhibit
all of the following two properties, while flectional languages exhibit
the opposite properties:
1. Each morpheme expresses only one meaning element. This is the
opposite of cumulation, typical of flectional languages, where each
morpheme expresses more than one meaning element, such as in
modern Greek raf-ete ‘was being written’, where the suffix -ete
expresses five different meaning elements: 3rd person, singular, passive
voice, durative and past tense (the same is observed in Ukrainian).
2. There is a clear-cut boundary between each morpheme. The
opposite is known as fusion. In fusional (flectional) languages, the basic
and added parts have merged, as a result of phonological processes.
Characteristic of inflection are internal word changes, such as English
ring, rang, rung, and the use of affixes that are fused to their roots,
having no independent existence or meaning, such as ід-е, ід-уть). On
the contrary, the affixes of agglutinative languages tend to be more
independent than the affixes of flective languages. For instance, the
Turkish plural suffix -lar (or -ler) sometimes applies not only to single
words, but to whole phrases: bayan ve bay-lar (‘ladies and gentlemen’).
The distinction between such affixes and separate function words is not
always easy to draw.
Historically, flective morphology is usually derrived from
agglutinative morphology, which in turn is derrived from the analytic
use of function words:
analytic
agglutinative
flectional
This does not mean, however, that analytic languages are more
“primitive” than flectional languages. In fact, many Indo-European
13
languages, including English, have long been in the process of
becoming more analytic, discarding most of the complex flective
morphology of earlier historical stages.
Thus the existing morphological types of languages can be briefly
described in the following way:
1. Analytic languages show a low ratio of words to morphemes; in
fact, the correspondence is nearly one-to-one. Sentences in analytic
languages are composed of independent root morphemes. Grammatical
relations between words are expressed by separate words where they
might otherwise be expressed by affixes, which are present to a minimal
degree in such languages. There is little to no morphological change in
words: they tend to be uninflected. Grammatical categories are indicated
by word order (for example, inversion of verb and subject for
interrogative sentences) or by bringing in additional words (for example,
a word for “some” or “many” instead of a plural inflection like English s). Individual words carry a general meaning (root concept); nuances are
expressed by other words. Finally, in analytic languages context and
syntax are more important than morphology. Highly analytic languages
are primarily found in East and Southeast Asia (e.g. Chinese,
Vietnamese), as well as West Africa and South Africa. English is
moderately analytic (probably one of the most analytic of IndoEuropean languages).
2. Agglutinative languages have words containing several
morphemes that are always clearly differentiable from one other in that
each morpheme represents only one grammatical meaning and the
boundaries between those morphemes are easily demarcated; that is, the
bound morphemes are affixes, and they may be individually identified.
Agglutinative languages tend to have a high number of morphemes per
word, and their morphology is highly regular. Agglutinative languages
include Korean, Turkish and Japanese.
Morphemes in fusional languages are not readily distinguishable
from the root or among themselves. Several grammatical bits of
meaning may be fused into one affix. Morphemes may also be
expressed by internal phonological changes in the root
(i.e.morphophonology), such as consonant gradation and vowel
gradation, or by suprasegmental features such as stress or tone, which
are of course inseparable from the root. Most Indo-European languages
are fusional to a varying degree.
14
3. Synthetic languages form words by affixing a given number of
dependent morphemes to a root morpheme. The morphemes may be
distinguishable from the root, or they may not. They may be fused with
it or among themselves (in that multiple pieces of grammatical
information may potentially be packed into one morpheme). Word order
is less important for these languages than it is for analytic languages,
since individual words express the grammatical relations that would
otherwise be indicated by syntax. In addition, there tends to be a high
degree of concordance (agreement, or cross-reference between different
parts of the sentence). Therefore, morphology in synthetic languages is
more important than syntax. Most Indo-European languages are
moderately synthetic.
4. Polysynthetic languages have a high morpheme-to-word ratio, a
highly regular morphology, and a tendency for verb forms to include
morphemes that refer to several arguments besides the subject
(polypersonalism). Another feature of polysynthetic languages is
commonly expressed as “the ability to form words that are equivalent to
whole sentences in other languages”. Many Amerindian languages are
polysynthetic. Inuktitut is one example, and one specific example is the
phrase: tavvakiqutiqarpiit which roughly translates to “Do you have any
tobacco for sale?”. No clear division exists between synthetic languages
and polysynthetic languages; the place of one language largely depends
on its relation to other languages displaying similar characteristics on
the same scale.
Each of the types above are idealizations; they do not exist in a pure state
in reality. Although they generally fit best into one category, all languages are
mixed types. English is less analytic than Chinese, but it is more analytic than
Spanish, and much more analytic than Latin. Chinese is the usual model of
analytic languages, but it does have some bound morphemes. Japanese is
highly synthetic (agglutinative) in its verbs, but clearly analytic in its nouns.
For these reasons, the scale above is continuous and relative, not absolute. It
is difficult to classify a language as absolutely analytic or synthetic, as a
language could be described as more synthetic than Chinese, but less
synthetic than Korean.
That is why recent morphological typology is based on the
traditional typology, but instead of distinguishing four distinct language
types it operates with two independent variables, index of synthesis and
index of fusion (B.Comrie, L.J. Whaley). Index of synthesis (IS) refers
15
to the amount of affixation in a language, i.e., it shows the average
number of morphemes per word in a language. It can be illustrated by
means of a scale, the end points of which are an isolating language and a
(poly)synthetic languages:
Isolating
______________________________________Synthetic
Each language falls on a given point on the scale. The languages in
which synthesis dominates are on the right side and those with weak
morphology on the left side on the scale.
Index of fusion (IF) refers to the ease with which morphemes can be
separated from other morphemes in a word. Agglutinative languages
have a low index of fusion, while in fusional languages it is high. In
agglutinative words segmentation can be performed readily due to clear
morpheme boundaries. In fusional words segmentation is difficult or
impossible. Index of fusion also can be illustrated by means of a scale.
The extremes are now agglutinative and fusional languages.
Agglutinative
Fusional
All languages except for isolating languages fall between the two
extremes. In isolating languages, by definition, there are no
agglutinative or fusional morphological processes. Table 1 presents the
index of synthesis for eight languages. For each case, the figures are
calculated on the basis of 100 words of an unrestricted text sample.
Vietnamese is close to an ideal isolating language and its index of
synthesis is close to 1.0. Eskimo is a highly polysynthetic language, its
index of synthesis being high. The other sample languages fall between
Vietnamese and Eskimo.
Table 1
Language
Vietnamese
English
Old English
Swahili
Turkish
Russian
Eskimo
Index of synthesis
1.06
1.09
1.68
2.55
2.86
3.33
3.72
16
In the world’s languages, the most usual inflectional categories of
nouns are number, grammatical case, and grammatical gender. These
are the main morphological phenomena that affect the indices of
inflectional synthesis and fusion.
Table 2 shows the number of morphosyntactic features in the
category of case for 8 languages: Hungarian has 21 features. In English
there are only 2 features (nominative and genitive; genitive is marked).
Finnish represents a language with a high index of synthesis. This is
due, in particular, to the high number of morphosyntactic features in the
category of case (14 features). Because different affix types can be
combined with one another in a single word, the number of word forms
that a given Finnish lexeme may take is very high. The concept of
grammatical case is not relevant to all languages, it is alien to isolating
languages.
Table 2
Language
Number of features in case
English
2
Finnish
14
German
4
Hungarian
21
Lithuanian
7
Russian
6
Sanskrit
8
Serbo-Croation
7
Thus, according to the existing morphological classifications, the
English language may be defined as a slightly synthetic fusional
language developing towards the highly isolating (analytic) type like
Chinese while the Ukrainian language may be characterised as a
predominantly synthetic fusional language.
Modern English shares the following typical features of analytic
languages:
1. Predominantly monosyllabic morphemes (and sometimes words).
2. Conversion (a word may shift part of speech with no change of
form).
17
2. Extensive use of tonemes (the functional load carried by word
length in many synthetic languages tends to be carried by tonemes in
analytic languages).
3. Extensive use of function words.
4. Relatively fixed word order. (In a language without inflection,
function words and fixed word order carry some of the information that
is taken care of by inflection in synthetic languages).
5. Less rigid grammatical rules. As an example of a language with
less rigid grammatical rules, consider the following facts about Chinese:
• It has no inflection.
• Subject and object are often optional.
• Function words are often optional.
• Word boundaries and sentence boundaries are fuzzy.
• Apart from the noun-verb distinction, word class distinctions are
fuzzy.
A mildly synthetic language like English is much more rigid than
Chinese: a speaker of English is constantly forced to decide whether he
wants to talk about objects in the singular or the plural, and whether he
wants to talk about events in the present or the past. The same type of
rigidity lies behind the obligatory presence in many modern European
languages of a subject. Even in sentences with no logical subject, a
formal subject is required, such as in the English sentence It rains. This
is different from Chinese, which has neither obligatory subject nor verb
inflection.
Syntactic classifications. In addition to morphological properties,
languages differ from each other in syntactic features. In the syntactic
typology of Greenberg languages are divided into different types
according to so called basic word order, often understood as the order of
subject (S), object (O) and verb (V) in a typical declarative sentence
with a transitive verb. This is one of the most commonly discussed
typological distinctions in modern linguistics. The vast majority of the
languages of the world fall into one of three groups:
SOV (Japanese, Turkish etc.)
SVO ( Chinese, English etc.)
VSO (Arabic, Welsh etc.)
18
Logically speaking, there should be nothing wrong with the three other
possibilities: VOS, OVS and OSV. However, they are exceedingly rare
and typically occur in areas that have been relatively isolated. Less than five
percent of the world’s languages belong to one of the three remaining
possible types: VOS, OVS and OSV. In other words, the subject precedes
the object in more than 95 percent of all languages. In fact, the subject tends
very strongly to precede both the verb and the object, and according to one
study, SOV and SVO together are found in more than 85 percent of all
languages, while VSO is only found in around 9 percent. Other studies give
different figures, but the tendency is the same. So the most common types
are SVO and SOV languages. In addition to sentence structure, the structure
of syntactic phrases may vary between languages. In English NPs (noun
phrases) are of the type AN (adjective, noun) while in French NPs are
predominantly of the type NA.
Other languages, such as Latin and Finnish, have no fixed word
order; rather, the sentence structure is flexible. Nonetheless, there is
often a preferred word order; in Latin, SOV is the most frequent outside
of poetry, and in Finnish SVO is the most frequent. In languages with
this kind of flexible word order, the order of words in given sentence
does not reliably indicate a noun’s grammatical role, so nouns typically
change their form to indicate their role (which is known as case
declension).
It is not understood why word orders with the subject before the
object are much more common than word orders with the object before
the subject. It must be noted that in most languages there is the tendency
to identify the subject with the topic (who or what is being talked
about), and to place the topic at the beginning of the sentence so as to
establish the context quickly.
Some languages can be said to have more than one basic word order.
French is SVO (Je vois Cécile “I see Cécile”), but it incorporates
objective pronouns before the verb (Je la vois literally “I her see”). This
makes French SOV order possible in some sentences. However,
speaking of a language having a given word order is generally
understood as a reference to the basic, unmarked, non-emphatic word
order for sentences with constituents expressed by full nouns or noun
phrases. Ukrainian and Russian, for example, have SVO transitive (with
objects) clauses but free order (SV or VS) in intransitive (without
objects) clauses.
19
In many languages, changes in word order occur due to
topicalization or in questions. However, most languages are generally
assumed to have a basic word order, called the unmarked word order;
other, marked word orders can then be used to emphasize a sentence
element, to indicate modality (such as an interrogative modality), or for
other purposes. For example, English is SVO (subject-verb-object), but
OSV is also possible but seldom: A fearful voyage I had with such a
monster in the vessel. (Ch. Brontë). In English, OSV is a marked word
order because it emphasises the object. OSV word order is also found in
poetry in English.
Phonological classifications. Phonological typology suggests such
types of languages as tone languages (languages with tonemes) and stress
languages (languages in which stress and/or accent play a vital role).
Answer the questions
1. What is the difference between genetic and typological classifications of
languages?
2. What languages are treated as related to English and Ukrainian?
3. What morphological types of languages are distinguished?
4. Looking at the Turkish words given below state the difference between
agglutinative and fusional languages?
ev
ev-ler
ev-ler-de
ev-ler-den
‘house’
‘house-s’
‘in the house-s’
‘from the house-s’
ev-jik
ev-e
el-im-in
el-im
‘ little house’
‘to a house’
‘of my hand’
‘my hand’
Translate intoTurkish: in my house, my houses, my little hands, in my little
hand
5. Prove that there are no pure types of languages. Try to find examples in
English and Ukrainian to illustrate the point.
6. What types do the languages compared belong to? What differences do
they posess?
7. Why is intonation more important for the English utterance if compared
to Ukrainian?
20
2. CONTRASTIVE MORPHOLOGY
OF ENGLISH AND UKRAINIAN
2.1. Morphemic structure of words
The morpheme is the smallest unit of a language that has a binary
nature (that can combine form and meaning). Morphemes are classified
into (1) free morphemes and (2) bound morphemes. Free morphemes
appear as independent words (e.g. cat). Bound morphemes do not
constitute independent words, but are attached to other morphemes or
words (e.g. re-connect-ing).
Free morhemes are further subdivided into lexical, lexicogrammatical and grammatical.The distinction between the two
categories of lexical (content) and grammatical (function) morphemes
is conceptually distinct from the free-bound distinction but partially
overlaps with it in practice. The idea behind the distinction is that some
morphemes express some general sort of referential or informational
content, while other morphemes are heavily tied to a grammatical
function, expressing syntactic relationships between units in a sentence,
or obligatorily-marked categories such as number or tense. Thus (the
roots of) nouns, verbs, adjectives are typically free (content)
morphemes: “throw,” “green, and “sand” are all English content
morphemes. Content morphemes are also often called open-class
morphemes, because they belong to categories that are open to the
invention of arbitrary new items, borrowing new morphemes in these
categories.: “smurf,” “nuke,” “byte,” “grok.”
By contrast, prepositions (to, by), articles (the, a), pronouns (she, his), and
conjunctions are typically grammatical (function) morphemes, since they
either serve to tie elements together grammatically (“hit by a truck,” “Kim
and Leslie,” “Lee saw his dog”), or express obligatory (in a given language)
morphological features like definiteness (“she found a table” or “she found
the table” but not “*she found table”). Function (grammatical) morphemes
are also called “closed-class” morphemes, because they belong to categories
that are essentially closed to invention or borrowing - it is very difficult to add
a new preposition, article or pronoun. For years, some people have tried to
introduce non-gendered pronouns into English, for instance “sie” (meaning
either “he” or “she”, but not “it”). This is much harder to do than to get a new
noun or verb adopted.
21
Lexico-grammatical free morphemes (modal verbs, link verbs)
preserve some lexical meaning while grammatical morphemes
(auxiliary verbs, articles) are deprived of any lexical meaning signaling
only grammatical meaning.
Bound morphemes, also called affixes, are either prefixes (attached
to the beginnings of words, e.g. re-build), or suffixes (attached to the
ends of words, e.g. look-ed). From the functional point of view affixes
are classified into derivational and inflectional. Derivational (lexical)
affixes make new words from old ones while inflectional (grammatical)
affixes build up new forms of the same word. Thus creation is formed
from create by adding a morpheme that makes nouns out of (some)
verbs. And Boy and boys, for example, are two different forms of the
“same” word.
The morphological system of language reveals its properties through
the morphemic structure of words. Being a language of predominantly
synthetic structural type Ukrainian possesses a well developed system
of affixes (derivational and inflectional). Lexical affixes are used in
numerous derivational models and inflectional affixes are used as
primary means of indicating grammatical functions of words in the
sentence.
English as an analytic type of language, on the contrary, mostly
makes use of free morphemes (lexical, lexico-grammatical and
grammatical) having a poor system of affixes, in contrast to Old English
with its rather rich inflectional system. OE inflection has gradually
simplified in the course of time, reducing to about 14 native AngloSaxon grammatical suffixes and a group of borrowed inflectional plural
morphemes found in Modern English (there are no grammatical prefixes
in English). So, the lack of grammatical affixes in English is
compensated by a considerably more extensive use of free morphemes
(lexical and grammatical). Free lexical morphemes are productive in
such word-building processes as conversion, compounding, postposition
formation, and phrasing. Free grammatical morphemes (form words) are
used to express grammatical meanings.
English derrivational affixes are more numerous, and among them
are international (those having common meaning and form in the two
languages, e.g., extra-, inter-, post-); semantically common (those
having the same meaning in English and Ukrainian, like agent suffixes
reader, читач; abstract noun suffixes, kindness, доброта) and
22
specific national types ( mis-understand, щонайкращий). Affixation
(both derrivational and inflectional) is mostly of agglutinating nature in
English while Ukrainian has more affixes fused to the root. Another
allomorphism is that while in English suffixes can be either derivational
or inflectional (teacher, slowly vs. apples, kicked), prefixes are always
derivational (untie, recover, defrost).
Rather than add material, a grammatical morpheme can change some part
of the root, and this is called mutation (or sound alternation). Mutation as a
kind of morphological combination is typical of synthetic languages, thus it is
well presented in Ukrainian (несу – ніс, несу – носив, лугу - лузі). English
examples include past forms of some verbs (sing- sang,) comparative
adjectives (older-elder), plural nouns (foot-feet).
There are also suppletive forms (i.e. forms built of different roots)
in both languages though in English their number is rather scarce. The
examples are some irregular verbs, e.g. be – was, were; some
comparative adjectives, e.g. good – better - best), and some forms of
personal pronouns, e.g. I – me). In a broader morphological
interpretation suppletivity can be recognised also in such paradigmatic
correlations as: can – be able, must – have to, may – be allowed to, man
– people, news – items of news etc.
English affixes are mainly agglutinated to the root without causing
any changes of the latter (farm-er, dull-ness, taste-ful). Though there are
still cases of fusion - those are non-productive affixal models with root
inner changes: deep → depth, long → length, young → youth. In
Ukrainian the leading tendency is fusion: день – дня, бігу – біжить.
However some affixes (usually prefixes) may be agglutinted: казати сказати, під-казати, на-казати.
An important allomorphic feature is that in the English sentence
there are usually many words that coincide with root morphemes and it
concerns not only the unchangeable words but also notionals that have
grammatical forms. For example, in the following sentence functional
(unchangeble) words are in bold, and notional words that correspond in
form with their root are in italics: The sitting-room of our client opened
by a long, low window on to the old court of the college. The
corresponding Ukrainian sentence has only one unchangeble functional
word “на” (the notional word ”двір” is used in this sentence with a
zero morheme, i.e. grammatically meaningful absence of morpheme)) :
Гостинна кімната нашого клієнта відкривалася довгим, низьким
вікном, що виходило на старий двір колледжу. Ukrainian words are
23
more distiguishable from root morphemes than English words, full
coincidence in form with root morphemes is typical in Ukrainian only of
functional words (prepositions, conjunctions, particles), and borrowed
words (жалюзі, ківі, суахілі, адажіо, кенгуру, інтерв’ю). Similarly,
words in Ukrainian differ markedly from word-phrases (пароплав),
while in English it is often a problem to discriminate between a
compound word and a phrase. Therefore English compound words are
sometimes differentiated from word phrases with the help of a word
stress (Cf.: ‘English teacher, a compound word with the stress on the
first element and ‫י‬English ‫י‬teacher, a word phrase with the both
elements stressed). These allomorphic features are accounted for by
higher degree of synthesism of the Ukrainian language. They show
analytic character of the English language revealed in more independent
functioning of root morphemes in the sentence.
Both free and bound grammatical morphemes in English are
characterised by homonymy: e.g. the affix -er functions as a lexical and
a grammatical morheme; be I s used as a modal verb (free lexicogrammatical morpheme) and as an auxiliary for Continuous and Passive
forms (free grammatical morpheme), which creates paradigmatic
ambiguity, a problem usually solved on a syntagmatic level.
2.2. Parts of speech
In every language, almost all of the lexical items fall naturally into a
small number of classes, and the words in each class behave
grammatically in much the same way. Linguists often call these word
classes or lexical categories, but the traditional term is parts of speech.
The ancient Greek grammarians recognized eight parts of speech for
their language. The Roman grammarians who followed them recognized
a slightly different list of eight classes for their own language, Latin.
Over the centuries, European grammarians proposed several different
lists for English and other languages. Different schools of grammar
present different classifications for the parts of speech (H.Sweet,
O.Jespersen, Ch.Fries, H.Glisson, L.Shcherba, I.Meshchaninov,
V.Vinogradov, V.Admony, E.Kubryakova), but none of them is
considered perfect.
The “traditional” classification of words is based on the three
criteria which have proved to be valuable in defining parts of speech:
semantic, formal and functional. The semantic criterion presupposes
24
evaluation of the general implicit lexico-grammatical meaning,
characteristic of all the words constituting a given part of speech (e.g.
thingness - for nons, quality – for adjectives etc). The formal criterion
provides for the exposition of all formal features (specific derrivational
and inflectional) of all the lexemic subsets of of a particular part of
speech. The functional criterion concerns the typical syntactic functions
of a part of speech and its combinability.
According to their values, parts of speech are usually subdivided into
two classes: notional (open class) and functional (closed class).
Notionals are words that possess denotative ability, i. e. they have
nominative value (lexical meaning). Their nominative character enables
them to function as a separate part in the sentence. New notional words
are constantly added to lexical stocks of languages, old notional words
constantly leave a language as they become obsolete. Therefore notional
words are usually referred to as an “open” word class. Function words
(words like prepositions, conjunctions, determiners) have little meaning
on their own, but this meaning is different from that of notional words –
they do not name separate concepts. They only possess significative
value, i.e. they represent general conceptual notions (categories) not in
the way of nominating but by signifying or marking them. Thus,
function words are words that exist to explain or create grammatical or
structural relationships into which the notional words may fit. They are
much fewer in number and generally do not change as a language adds
and omits notional words. Therefore, function words are referred to as a
“closed” class.
In very heavily inflected languages with rich derivational
possibilities, such as Latin and Ukrainian, the form of the word is
usually a valuable criterion for distinguishing parts of speech. However,
in isolating languages with no inflection at all, such as Vietnamese and
classical Chinese, every single word is invariable in form, and inflection
is useless as a criterion for identifying word-classes. Even in the most
heavily inflected languages, however, it appears that there always exist a
few classes of grammatical words which exhibit no inflection at all.
English and Ukrainian, in accord with the traditional criteria of
meaning, form and function, have the parts of speech that almost
coinside. The languages have similar notionals (the noun, the adjective,
the numeral, the pronoun, the verb, the adverb, the stative) and similar
functional parts of speech with the exception of the article not found in
25
Ukrainian (the preposition, the conjunction, the particle, the modal
word, the interjection). On the lines of the traditional classification the
English adjective, fo example, is described in the following way:
The adjective has:
(1) the categorial meaning of property;
(2) forms of degrees of comparison for qualitative adjectives;
specific derivative suffixes;
(3) syntactic functions of the atribute.
A major difficulty in English is that the same word can often belong
to different parts of spech (round N,V – round off the figures -,A, Prep –
come round the corner, Adv – come round with some fresh air. Some of
the forms are accounted by functional shift or conversion, but some of
them are homonyms. Recategorisation can occur within a class (from
one subcategory to another) or between classes. For example, the
subcategory of a noun can be shifted in the following ways: from
abstract to concrete (a youth meaning ‘a boy’), from uncountable to
countable (wines ), from proper to commomn (an Einstein meaning ‘a
genius’, a Benedict Arnold meaning ‘a traitor’).
Therefore the traditional criteria of meaning, form and function are
not equally important in the contrasted languages. In English, due to its
analytic nature and poor system of affixes, the part-of-speech
identification is mostly based not on formal characteristics (as in
Ukrainian, which is rich in synthetic forms) but rather on syntactic
properties of words. The different approaches to singling out parts of
speech in English and Ukrainian are accounted for by different
grammatical structures of the contrasted languages. The scarce number
of inflections in English resulted in the development of conversion
(shifting of words from one part of speech into another without change
in form). Due to conversion most English words display their lexicogrammatical nature only on a syntagmatic level, i.e, in most cases it is
impossible to define what part of speech a word belongs to unless it is
used in a syntagmeme, i.e. a sentence or a phrase (Cf.: animals and
plats, plant trees, plant and animal life). The same is true for functional
parts of speech: the word before may function as preposition (before the
war) and conjunction (Before he came back…). Such polifunctional
nature of English words may cause what linguists call this structural
ambiguity. In a well-known sentence “Time flies like an arrow, fruit
flies like a banana” the ambiguity is caused by the fact that the words
26
flies and like both have several meanings and can take on different roles.
In the first part of the sentence time flies like an arrow (meaning
minutes, hours and days go by as fast as an arrow can fly) whereas in
the second part fruit flies like bananas (little buzzing insects prefer to
snack on a yellow, curved fruit). The fact that the reader is likely to
misread the sentence at first and think the wrong parts belong together
makes it funny, because bananas flying in the same way that fruit does
is simply not plausible.
The ambiguity of form and meaning of many English words brought
some grammarians to a purely functional approach to the classification
of English words (based on syntactic featuring of words only). In
English the syntactico-distributional classification of words was worked
out by L.Bloomfield, Z.Harris, and Ch.Fries. The classification suggests
four classes (the term”parts of speech” being avoided) of notional words
according to the four main syntactic positions: those of the noun, verb,
adjective, and adverb. Pronouns are included into the corresponding
positional classes as their substitutes. Words incapable to occupy the
said main syntactic positions are treated as functional words. In
principle, the syntactic classification supplements the three-criterion
classification specifying the syntactic features of parts of speech.
The words assigned to a single part of speech are so assigned because
they have important grammatical properties in common. But it is practically
never the case that all the words in a given part of speech exhibit identical
properties inevery respect. Usually, the words in a given class show some
differences in their behaviour. It is therefore necessary to recognize some
subclasses, or subcategories, within each part of speech, and the existence
of such subclasses is called subcategorization. For example, among the
adjectives, some compare by inflection (small/smaller/smallest), some
compare with extra words (interesting/more interesting/most interesting),
and some don’t compare at all (first). The class of adjectives is therefore
subcategorized in this respect into gradable and non-gradable.In a word-class
with a large number of members, we often find that there exist very many
subcategories, and that these subcategories intersect and overlap
incomplicated ways. In English, the class of verbs is a good example of this.
Languages differ greatly in their parts of speech. In European
languages, the class of adjectives is open. In many other languages, it is
closed, and there exist only 6–12 adjectives. In still other languages,
there is no class of adjectives at all. In such languages, adjectival
27
meanings are variously expressed by nouns or by verbs. So, instead of
an adjective big, a language may have a noun (with the meaning‘bigthing’) or a verb(with the meaning ‘be big’). On the other hand, linguists
report that in Yidiny and in many other Australian languages the
functions of the English adverbs are divided among three parts of
speech: locational qualifiers, time qualifiers and true adverbs, all
distinguished by morphology and syntax.
In fact, the only parts of speech for which any linguists claim
universal status are nouns and verbs, since it is now clear that no
other parts of speech are universally present.
2.3. Grammatical categories
The grammatical category is a fundamental notion of theoretical
grammar. Such categories are usually a reflection of the objectively
existing things, their properties and interrelations. There is one
prerequisite for existence of a grammatical category in a certain
language: there should be an opposition of at least two word-forms in a
language expressing a certain grammatical meaning.
Grammatical category can be defined as an aggregate of grammatical
meanings opposed to each other and expressed by some formal criteria.
More specifically, the grammatical category is a system expressing a
generalized grammatical meaning by means of paradigmatic correlation
of grammatical forms. Grammatical meanings are most general
meanings rendered by language. Therefore the grammatical form is not
confined to an individual word, but to a whole class of words, so that
each word of the class expresses the corresponding grammatical
meaning. For instance, the category of case in Modern English is based
on a two-member opposition of the Common case against the Genetive
case, the category of case in Ukrainian is based on the so called multiple
opposition (the seven-member opposition). The opposition may be
defined as a generalized correlation of two or more lingual forms by
means of which a certain grammatical meaning is expressed. The
member of the binary opposition that bears a certain differential feature
is called the “marked” member (or strong), the member in which the
feature is absent is called “unmarked” (or weak). The set of
grammatical forms in a category constitute the paradigm of the
category.
28
Paradigms of notional words in English contain fewer flectional
forms than those in Ukrainian, e.g.: English nouns have 2 flectional
forms (cars, car’s), English verbs have 4 flectional forms (write –
wrote – written – writing). The paradigm of a notional word may also
have suppletive forms (the longest one is that of the verb be: am, is,
are, was, were, been, be, being). The morphological paradigm of the
word also includes analytical forms, and these make paradigms of
English words rather complicated. On the contrary, Ukrainian
paradigms of notinals have considerable number of flectional forms and
few analytical forms (e.g. analytical future form, comparative and
superlative degree forms).
Besides the above described explicit (formal) morphological categories
there are also so called implicit lexico-grammatical categories. Here belong
general implicit lexico-grammatical meanings of parts of speech (for
example, the meaning of “thingness” in nouns, the meaning of “property”
in adjectives etc.); here also belongs the implicit lexico-grammatical
meaning of transitivity/non-transitivity of verbs, etc. Implicit lexicogrammatical categories have no formal expression but they influence (limit)
the realization of some explicit grammatical categories. For instance, the
implicit lexico-grammatical category of transitivity restricts the sphere of
application of the formal category of voice: intransitive verbs are
commonly not used in the passive.
Grammatical meanings have different morpho-syntactic implementations
in the languages of the world. One language has grammaticalised a
distinction that another language represents only optionally in the lexicon. A
concept can be expressed by a grammatical category in one language, but be
expressed only lexically in another. Crosslinguistic or comparative research
into the realization of semantic categories in related and non-related
languages is an interesting and expanding field of research. Research on
referential categories (definiteness, specificity, genericity) has shown that
such categories are differently encoded in particular languages, and that
although languages differ in grammatical structure they can nevertheless
express the same concepts.
All languages possess the same set of about 25 categories each of
which have several functions (roughly 100). Languages differ in how
they express these categories in speech: some use lexemes (Chinese,
Vietnamese), some use free-standing grammatical morphemes
(pronouns, prepositions, etc.), while others use affixes. When one begins
learning a new language, one does not have to learn a new set of
grammatical categories since all languages have the same categories;
29
one only has to learn how these categories are expressed in the new
language. According to a popular linguistic approach children learning
their first language have a similar advantage - they are born with these
categories built into their brains.
Thus languages differ quite strikingly in terms of which grammatical
categories are built into their morphology. Second, grammatical
categories are in a sense forced on the speakers of a language. In
English, we need the -s for pencils in the phrase three pencils; three
pencil is ungrammatical even though it is perfectly understandable. For
example, English nouns are inflected for number, and number inflection
is obligatory. Therefore grammatical categories is an important
typological constant of the morphological level.
When comparing the grammatical categories and forms of the English
and Ukrainian languages we identify the following differences: a) the absence
of the morphological categories in one of the compared languages, b) partial
correspondence and c) complete correspondence.
A given grammatical category may have more than one meaning: a basic
meaning and and peripheral meanings. For example, Past Tense has:
• basic meaning: location of a situation prior to the moment of
speaking
• peripheral use: politeness (I just wanted to ask you…).
2.4. Noun and its categories
In the world’s languages, the most usual inflectional categories
of nouns are grammatical number, grammatical case, and
grammatical gender.
Category of Number
In some languages nouns reflect the number of objects to which they
refer. In most of languages the category of number is realised through
the binary opposition Singular vs. Plural. Some languages (sanscrit, Old
Slavonic, Arabic, Hebrew etc.) distinguish objects occurring in pairs by
assigning dual number to the noun, a special grammatical form
denoting two objects. The paradigm of such languages include three
forms: Singular vs. Dual vs. Plural.
Not all languages have number as a grammatical category. In those
that do not, quantity must be expressed either directly, with numerals, or
indirectly, through optional quantifiers. However, many of these
30
languages compensate for the lack of grammatical number with an
extensive system of measure words. There is a hierarchy among number
categories: no language distinguishes a trial unless having a dual, and no
language has dual without a plural.
A language has grammatical number when its nouns are subdivided into
morphological classes according to the quantity they express, such as:
1. Every noun belongs to a single number class.
2. Noun modifiers (such as adjectives) and verbs have different
forms for each number class, and must be inflected to match the number
of the nouns they refer to.
This is the case in English: every noun is either singular or plural (a
few, such as “fish”, can be either, according to context), and at least
some modifiers of nouns – namely the demonstratives, personal
pronouns articles and verbs are inflected to agree with the number of the
nouns they refer to: “this car” and “these cars” are correct, while “*this
cars” or “*these car” are ungrammatical.
English distinguishes two numbers, singular and plural. The former
is used to indicate singular objects or referents that can be neither
singular nor plural (mass nouns like contemplation). Plural sometimes
refers to singular objects, too, e.g. glasses, so the category is clearly
grammatical and not semantic.
Ukrainian (Russian and Byelorussian) has three numbers singular,
plural, and dual number (двоїна), which is often mixed up with the
plural or replaced by it by many Ukrainians. The nouns express dual
number only in connection with the numeral adjuncts two, three and
four. This number is mostly indicated by stress which differs, as a rule,
from that of the plural form, eg:
Sg.
Dual
Pl.
берег – (два) ‘береги – бере‘ги
Many modern Indo-European languages show residual traces of the
dual, as in the English language distinctions both vs. all, either vs. any,
twice vs. <number> times (an archaic thrice also exists, meaning “three
times”), and so on.
The declension (declension is an inflectional paradigm of inflection
nouns and adjectives) of noun phrases containing numeral expressions
in Ukrainian, as in other Slavic languages, is subject to complex rules
while English system of number inflections is rather simple. The
productive formal mark for the strong member of the binary opposition
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of number in English (the plural form), is the suffix (-e)s [-z -s,-iz] as
presented in the forms dog :: dogs, clock::clocks, box :: boxes. But there
are also nouns which form their plurals by the archaic suffix -(e)n
(ox/oxen, child/children). Completely allomorphic, i.e. pertaining only
to the English language are some non-productive ways of forming plural
number. One is by way of root vowel interchange (umlaut) as in the
following seven English nouns: foot – feet, tooth – teeth. A few nouns
have in English identical (homonymous) singular and plural forms (e.g.
deer, salmon, means, species, etc.). Standard English presents a large
number of further irregular plurals taken from other languages.
Examples are radius/radii, index/indices, formula/formulae, alga/algae,
and others.
Typologically isomorphic is subcategorization in the class of nouns
into countables and uncountables. The singularia and pluralia nouns
include common in the contrasted languages semantic groups :
Singularia tantum
1. Names of materials (iron, milk, snow; срібло, бруд, пісок, etc.)
2. Collective nouns (brushwood, foliage, leafage, furnitur; білизна,
птаство, etc.)
3. Abstract notions (courage, knowledge, recognitio; відвага,
знання, буття, etc.)
Pluralia tantum
1. Summation plurals (scissors, tongs, trousers; терези, шорти,
окуляри etc.)
2. Nouns denoting remnants after some processes (scraps, leavings, ,
sweepings; висівки, недопитки, помиї, etc.)
3. Geographic names (Athens, the Netherlands, the Andes; Афіни,
Нідерланди, Анди, Бровари, Лубни, Суми, etc.)
4. Nouns having the meaning ”finance and property”(savings,
valuables; заощадження, цінності, etc.)
However there are a lot of nouns not coinciding in the two
languages. Consequently, a number of nouns may have plural meaning
in English and singular meaning in Ukrainian (barracks, goods, police,
arms – казарма, товар/майно, поліція, зброя, etc. and some
Ukrainian plurals (меблі, вершки, дріжджі, дрова, гроші) have
32
singularia tantum equivalents in English (furniture, cream, yeast,
firewood, money, etc.). Also, countables in one language may
correspond to uncountables in the other (e.g. the nouns onion, potato are
countable in English while their Ukrainain counterparts are used as
singularia tantum nouns: цибуля - onions, картопля - potatoes). There
are also cases when English countable nouns correspond to pluralia
tantum nouns in Ukrainian (sledge – сані, election - вибори, rake –
граблі). Another important allomorphism is lexicalised plural forms,
which are more frequent in English and almost unknown in Ukrainian,
Cf: custom (C) – звичай, customs (UC Pl) – таможня, мито.
Category of Case
Case is the immanent morphological category of the noun
manifested in the forms of noun declension and showing the relations of
the nounal referent to other objects and phenomena.
Historically, the Indo-European languages had eight morphological
cases, though modern languages typically have fewer, using
prepositions and word order to convey information that had previously
been conveyed using distinct noun forms.
Ukrainian, as a predominently synthetic language, has 7
morphological cases (Nominative, Genetive, Dative, Accusative,
Instrumental, Locative, Vocative).
Modern English has 2 cases – Common and Genetive (compared to 4
cases in Old English). The apostrophised -s serves to distinguish in
writing the singular noun in the genitive case from the plural noun in the
common case (e.g.: the man’s duty). The genitive of the bulk of plural
nouns remains phonetically unexpressed: the few exceptions concern
only some of the irregular plurals. Thereby the apostrophe as the graphic
sign of the genitive acquires the force of a sort of grammatical
hieroglyph. Cf.: the carpenters’ tools.
The case meanings in English relate to one another in a peculiar,
unknown in other languages way: the common case is quite indiferent
from the semantic point of view, while the genitive case functions as a
subsidiary element in the morphological system of English because its
semantics is also rendered by the Common Case noun in prepositional
collocations and in contact.
33
The category of case has become one of the vexed problems of
theoretical discussion. Four special views advanced at various times by
different scholars should be considered as successive stages in the
analysis of this problem:
(1) according to the “theory of positional cases” the English noun
distinguishes the inflectional genetive case and four non-inflectional,
puraly positional, cases – Nominative, Vocative, Dative, Accusative
(2) “the theory of prepositional cases” regards nounal combinations
with prepositions as morphological case forms: Dative case (to + N, for
+ N), Genetive (of + N), Instrumental (with+ N, by + N)
(3) “the limited case theory” recognises the existence in English of a
limited case systemof two members – Genetive Case ( a strong form)
and Common Case (a weak form)
(4) “the postpositional theory” claims that the English noun in the
course of its historic development has completely lost the morphological
category of case, and ‘s is not a flection but a postpositional particle
since it can be attached not only to words but word-combinations as
well (somebody else’s bag).
As the case opposition does not work with all nouns, from the
functional point of view the Genetive Case is regarded as subsidiary to
the syntactic system of prepositional cases.
In terms of functionality, the English noun in genitive is used to
express few types of possessive relations. Accordingly, the genitive of
nouns can be further sub-categorized as being one of the following:
1) possessive genitive
2) subjective genitive
3) genitive of the author
4) objectie genitive
5) descriptive genitive
6) appositive genitive
7) partitive genitive
8) genitive of gradation
In terms of structure English has genetive forms unknown in
Ukrainian: double genetive, absolute genetive. The double genetive is
sometimes called the “post-genitive”. The double genetive has been
around since the fifteenth century, and is widely accepted. It’s extremely
helpful, for instance, in distinguishing between “a picture of my father”
34
(in which we see the old man) and “a picture of my father’s” (which he
owns). What precedes the element “of” is usually indefinite article
(a friend, not the best friend but “one of many”), unless it is preceded by
the demonstratives this or that, as in “this friend of my father’s”.
Absolute genetive is used to avoid repetition of the noun (Tom’s is a
nice car.) or it can be used in the meanings of “dwelling place” (He
spent the week-end at his uncle’s.) and “establishment” (dentist’s).
Category of Determination
Most languages also have a way of distinguishing definite and
indefinite objects. A definite object is one that the speaker expects the
listener to already know about either from previous discussion or from
experience. If you don’t expect the listener to know what you are talking
about, you would say, for example, I’ve bought a car today. If the
listener can see the car or if you have already mentioned it to the
listener, you would normally say I’ve bought the car today. The
category with the meaning of definiteness/indefiniteness of the object
named called the category of article determination is found in most
Europian languages (English, French, German, Dutch, Bulgarian, etc).
The system of articles in English is described as the one consisting
of three articles – the definite article, the indefinite article and the zero
article, which, correspondingly, express the categorial functions
(meanings) of identification, relative generalisation, and and absolute
generalisation.
The definite article expresses the identification or individualisation
of the referent of the noun: the use of this article shows that the object
denoted is taken in its concrete, individual quality. The definite article
may also identify the whole class of objects (The tiger lives in the
Jungle.).
The indefinite article, as different from the definite article, is
commonly interpreted as referring the object denoted by the noun to a
certain class of similar objects; in other words, the indefinite article
expresses a classifying generalisation of the nounal referent, or takes it
in a relatively general sense and metonimically denotes the whole class.
The meaning of the zero article (the meaningful absence of the
article before the noun) depends on the context:
35
1) Zero article before the countable noun in the singular signifies that the
noun is taken in an abstract sense, expressing the most general idea of the
object denoted. This meaning, which may be called the meaning of “absolute
generalisation”, can be demonstrated by inserting in the tested construction a
chosen generalising modifier (such as in general, in the abstract, in the
broadest sense). Cf.: Law (in general) begins with the beginning of human
society. Steam-engine (in general) introduced for locomotion a couple of
centuries ago has now become obsolete.
2) The absence of the article before the uncountable noun
corresponds to the two kinds of generalisation: both relative and
absolute. To decide which of the two meanings is realised in any
particular case, the described tests should be carried out alternately. Cf.:
John laughed with great bitterness (that sort of bitterness: relative
generalisation). The subject of health (in general: absolute
generalisation) was carefully avoided by everybody. Coffee (a kind of
beverage served at the table: relative generalisation) or tea, please?
Coffee (in general: absolute generalisation) stimulates the function of
the heart.
3) The absence of the article before the countable noun in the plural,
likewise, corresponds to both kinds of generalisation, and the exposition
of the meaning in each case can be achieved by the same semantic tests.
Cf.: Stars, planets and comets (these kinds of objects: relative
generalisation) are different celestial bodies (not terrestrial bodies:
relative generalisation). Wars (in general: absolute generalisation)
should be eliminated as means of deciding international disputes.
The article paradigm is generalised for the whole system of the
common nouns in English and is outstretched into the subsystem of
proper nouns (the Tames, a Brown, the Browns).
The status of the combination of the article with the noun is defined
by some linguists as basically analytical, the article itself being regarded
as a special type of grammatical auxiliary. Other linguists consider it to
be neither part of an analytical form nor part of a word-phrase.
In Ukranian the category is expressed by other language means:
1) syntactically, by word order
2) lexically ( by words один, якийсь, який-небудь)
3) by case forms ( Cf.: Дай мені чаю. – relative generalisation Дай
мені чай. – identification).
36
Category of Gender
Some languages discriminate two types of gender. There is natural
gender, which relates to the gender of the referent and distinguishes
nouns referring to males from those referring to females. There is also
grammatical gender, which has nothing to do with natural gender, but is
only a system of noun classes . The Indo-European languages generally
combine the two, i.e. do not distinguish one from the other so that in
French, for example, la table ‘the table’ reflects feminine gender (purely
grammatical) as does la femme ‘the woman’ (combined natural and
grammatical).
Languages which distinguish either type of gender usually also have
an agreement system whereby adjectives modifying gendered nouns
must have an ending which reflects the gender of the noun they modify.
Verbs also often reflect the gender of their subject nouns and,
sometimes, their object nouns as well. The most common genders are
Masculine and Feminine but some languages have Neuter.
Grammatical gender, like many other grammatical concepts such as
singular-plural, definite-indefinite, or past-present, is not a logical
necessity in a language, and billions of people easily survive and
communicate without it. Most Western languages have some form of
distinction between masculine and feminine nouns, with some of them
adding neuter for good measure. Interestingly, the two non-IndoEuropean language groups of Europe–Finno-Ugric (Hungarian, Finnish,
and Estonian) and Basque–have no grammatical genders. English has
almost lost them when referring to inanimate objects, with the exception
of the feminine sometimes used for vessels and other means of
transportation. However, it has preserved the three pronouns for the
three genders (he, she, it), which the Finno-Ugric languages and Basque
lack.
Ukrainian gender has purely formal features that may even “run
contrary” to semantics. The Ukrainian category of gender essentially
divides the noun into the inanimate set having no meaningful gender
(книжка, стіл, ліжко), and the animate set having a meaningful
gender reflecting objective sex distinctions.
The grammatical gender in English had disappeared by the end of
the Middle English period. The expression of objective sex distinctions
37
is provided only by lexical means. English nouns can show the sex of
their referents lexically.
English has one masculine derivational suffix –er(or) and a small
number of feminine derivational suffixes: -ess, -ette, -a, -oine and -ester.
All but one of these feminizing suffixes (-ster) are of foreign origin.
Nouns may also express gender by means of being combined with
certain notional words used as sex indicators, or by suppletion: Cf.: shebear, landlord, landlady; lion/lioness, sultan/ sultana; bull/cow, cock/
hen.
Thus English category of gender has a semantic character. But it
relates to grammar because of the obligatory correlation of nouns with
the personal pronouns of the third person. The oppositional structure of
the category of gender can be shown schematically on the following
diagram:
GENDER
+
–
Person Nouns
+
Feminine Nouns
Non-person Nous
–
Masculine Nouns
Thus the English gender differs much from the Ukrainian gender: the
English gender has a semantic character, while the gender in Ukrainian
is partially semantic (Ukrainian animate nouns have semantic gender
distinctions), and partially formal.
Traditionally some English nouns are associated with feminine gender
(nouns denoting boates and vehicles) when used in connotative meaning
(Fill her (car) up!). This, however, is considered a stylistically marked,
optional figure of speech (a figure of speech, sometimes termed a
rhetorical , or elocution, is a word or phrase that departs from
straightforward, literal language). This usage is furthermore in decline and
advised against by most journalistic style guides. Gender in English is
also used in poetic language as means of personification (e.g. Sun is
usually associated with the pronoun he, while Moon is referred to as she).
38
2.5. Verb and its categories
2.5.1. Classes of verbs
Grammatically the verb is the most complex part of speech in both
languages. This is due to the central role it performs in the expression of
the predicative functions of the sentence. The complexity of the verb is
inherent not only in the intricate structure of its grammatical categories,
but also in its various subclass divisions, as well as in its falling into two
sets of forms profoundly different from each other: the finite set and the
non-finite set. Finite verbs perform the function of the predicate,
expressing the processual categorial features of predication, i.e. time,
aspect, voice, and mood (He rejected the proposal). Non-finite verbs
perform different nominal functions (those of the syntactic subject,
object, adverbial modifier, attribute) or secondary predicates (His
rejecting the proposal surprised us).
The main classes of verbs as to their functional significance are
common in the contrasted languages. These are a) notional verbs (go,
ask, write; іти, запитувати, писати) and b) auxiliary verbs. The latter
split into auxiliary proper (be, do, have; бути, мати), modal (can, may,
must, could, should, need; могти, мусити, сміти, мати, etc.) and
linking verbs (appear, look, become turn grow; ставати, здаватися).
English notional verbs split into two subclasses not known in
Ukrainian. These are 1) regular verbs with their past stem and the past
participle ending in –ed(-d) (dressed/worked, paid/said); 2) irregular
verbs with their past stems and the past participle formed by way of
alteration of their base vowel (bind - bound - bound, take - took - taken,
begin – began – begun) or invariables (cast – cast – cast).Vice versa,
unknown in English is Ukrainian subdivision of verbs into classes
based on the correlation between the infinitival stem of the verb on the
one hand and its present or simple future stem on the other. On this
morphological basis thirteen classes of verbs are distinguished in
Ukrainian.
Notional verbs also split into some common subclassess in the
contrasted languages, singled out on the basis of their valency or
implicit dependent grammatical meaning. On the basis of their
valency such verbs are destinguished:
39
1.1. Subjective verbs (always intransitive): to act, to go, to sleep, to
glisten (діяти, йти, спати, блищати and others)
1.2. Objective verbs (always transitive): to give, to take, to envy
(брати, давати, заздрити and others)
1.3. Impersonal (implying no agent) (rain, snow, freeze, сіріти,
розвиднятися, примерзати).
According to implicit dependent grammatical meaning verbs
split into:
2.1. Actional (denoting action): to close, to open, to come, to find;
зачиняти, приходити, заходити)
2.2. Statal (denoting state): to like, to love, to hate, to hope,
(подобатись, любити, ненавидіти)
2.3. Limitive (arrive, stop, conclude, sit down, get out, сісти,
прочитати)
2.4. Unlimitive (gaze, live, sleep, work, спати, працювати)
Some of these subclasses (objective, actional, statal) have an
unquestionable grammatical relevance in English, which is expressed, in
their peculiar correlation with the categorial aspective forms of the
verbs. In English there are also so called mixed- type verbs, which can
have both limitive and unlimitive meaning: to sit, to stand, to know, to
remember. Impersonal verbs are more numerous in Ukrainian than in
English. They may be in Ukrainian of several types: 1) verbs denoting
natural phenomena (морозити), 2) verbs denoting physical states
(трясти, пекти), 3) verbs denoting mental states (гнітити), 4) verbs
denoting actions connected with fortune (щастити). English has
impersonal verbs denoting only natural phenomena.
In Ukrainian there are reflexive verbs, which have some peculiar
allomorphic features. Some of them (called “reflexive verbs proper” вмиватися, голитися, etc.) have equivalents in English, which are used
with reflexive pronouns: to wash oneself, to shave oneselfself, etc. Other
groups of Ukrainian reflexive verbs have no equivalents in English: 1)
reciprocally reflexive/взаємно-зворотні: зустрічатися, змагатися,
вітатися, листуватись, цілуватись, 2) indirectly re-flexive/непрямозворотні: радитися, збиратися (в похід), лаштуватися (в дорогу),
3) generally reflexive/загально-зворотні: милуватися, дивуватися,
злитися, журитися, мучитися and others, 4) active-objectless/reflexive
40
verbs (активно-безоб’єктні): кусатися, дряпатися, жалитися,
колотися, 5) passive-qualitative/reflexive (пасивно-якісні): гнутися,
битися, ламатися, м’ятися, кривитися (залізо гнеться, скло
б’ється, дитина кривиться), 6) impersonal-reflexive verbs
(безособово-зворотні): не спиться, не їсться, погано/гарно
живеться, не лежиться.
Verbs of incomplete predication fall into:
1. Auxiliary proper (to be, to do, to have, shall/will), which are used in
English in the corresponding person and tense form to express the
following categorial meanings of the verb: a) the continuous aspect, i. e. the
present, the past and future continuous/progressive tenses (/ am/ was, shall
be reading); the interrogative and negative or future tense forms of the
Indefinite group of tenses (Does he speak English? He did not know me.
Will he come soon?); the imperative mood (Do come, please!); the perfect
forms of the verb (I have done it. He had had his dinner by then already.
We shall have translated the text by then.); subjunctive mood forms (His
aunt would not give the photograph. I suggest we should meet here.).
Auxiliary verbs in Ukrainian are restricted only to one verb бути, which is
polyfunctional and is used to form some categorial meanings: a) the passive
voice (Tекст був перекладений); b) the analytical future tense form
(Tекст буде перекладений); с) some subjunctive mood forms (Якби я був
знав, я був би прийшов); d) the pluperfect tense form, which fully
corresponds to the English past perfect. (Cf. Ніби й задрімав був зразу,
але щось приверзлося, то й проснувся.).
2. Modal verbs. Their number is larger in English (can, may, must, shall,
will, should, would, ought (to), have to/be to, dare, need) than in Ukrainian
(вміти, могти, мусити, слід/треба, мати сміти, потребувати).
3. Linking verbs in both contrasted languages form a verbal,
nominal or mixed-type compound predicate. They fall into different
semantic groups:
a) Linking verbs of being, which do not always have direct
equivalents in both languages. Cf. to be, to feel, to look, to seem, to
taste, to smell – бути, виявлятися, зватися, вважатися, доводитися.
b) Linking verbs of becoming (not all of which have equivalents in
Ukrainian): to become, to get, to grow, to turn – ставати, робитися
(They grew stronger. – Вони стали міцнішими. But: He turned gray.
– Він посивів. She grew older. – Вона постаріла.
41
c) Linking verbs of remaining (to remain, to keep, to stay, to
continue): He remained satisfied. Він зостався задоволений. The
winter continued damp and wet. The weather kept obstinately hot and
dry. Погода вперто стояла сухою.
An important allomorphism is that in English, the same verb lexeme
may enter more than one of the outlined classification subsets. For example:
The railings felt cold. (feel – link-verb). We felt fine after the swim.
(feel – subjective verb). You shouldn’t feel your own pulse like that. (feel
– objective verb).
2.5.2. Grammatical categories of the verb
The finite forms of the verb express the processual relations of
substances and phenomena making up the situation reflected in the
sentence. These forms are associated with one another in an extremely
complex and intricate system in both languages. In English, the verb has
the most developed paradigm of all parts of speech. It has lost almost all
its flectional forms since Old English period, but instead, acquired new
analytical forms. The English verb expresses grammatical categories of
person and number, tense, aspect, retrospective coordination, voice
and mood. The same grammatical categories except the category of
coordination are expressed by Ukrainian verbs, which also inflect to
match the gender of the noun (bear grammatical gender distinctions).
Thus the contrasted languages have almost the same set of
morphological categories expressed by the verb (with the grammatical
category of gender, absent in English, and the grammatical category of
coordination, absent in Ukrainian). But there is no correspondence in
the way these categories are expressed in the two languages.
Thus the paradigm of the English verb includes 58 forms (47 finite
forms and 11 non-finite forms). 50 forms are analytical and 8 are
synthetic.
Categories of Person and Number
Person and number, treated by scholars as closely related categories,
have almost no expression in the morphology of the English verb (there
exists only one person-number mark – the morpheme of the third person
singular (e)s). Such deficient system cannot exist by itself. The personnumber system in English only backs up the person-number system of
42
the subject-referent. So in the categorial sence one should speak of the
personal pronouns set consisting of three in the singular and three in the
plural. Due to it the combination and strict correlation of the English
finite verb with the subject is obligatory not only syntactically but also
categorially. Some linguists treat pronouns as a kind of affixes
expressing person in English because the verb is always preceded by the
subject.
In Ukrainian, on the contrary, all finite forms of the verb (except past
forms) are marked grammatically for person and number (пишу,
пишеш, пише, пишемо, пишете, пишуть). Consequently, Ukrainian
finite verb is more independent syntactically and are often used in onemember sentences, definite-personal (За всіх скажу.) and indefinitepersonal (На Донетчині вже сіють. Ніколи не знаєш, де знайдеш, де
загубиш.). Impersonal verbs are used in one-member impersonal
sentences in Ukrainian (Вечоріє.). English indefinite-personal sentences
are always two-member. To refer to an unspecified person they employ
pronouns that take on additional roles of indefinite or generic referents
(you, they, we, one) used as formal subjects (One should be careful in
experimenting.). English impersonal sentences usually take formal
subject it.
Category of Tense
Time is a basic concept that exists independently of human language.
Temporal information is encoded in human languages by the linguistic
category of tense. Tense is deictic in that it indicates the temporal
location of a situation, i.e., its occurrence in relation to the moment of
speaking, which serves as the demarkation line between the past and
the future. While English has only absolutive use of tenses, i.e. the tense
system is based on the reference to the moment of speaking, Ukrainian
has also relative use of tenses widely spread (immediate orientation of
tenses not towards the moment of speech, but towards the relation to
another event, described in the sentence). In particular, it refers to the
presentation of reported speech in the plane of the past: (1) Він сказав,
що вивчає німецьку. (2) Він сказав, що вивчав німецьку. (3) Він
сказав, що вивчатиме німецьку. In English, the primary tenses in
similar conditions retain their absolutative nature and keeping with their
direct, unchangeable meanings: (1) He said that he was learning
German. (2) He said that he had learned German. (3) He said that he
would learn German. Thus, it should be stressed that the tense-shift
43
involved in the translation of the present-plane direct information into
the past-plane reported information is not a formal, but essentially a
meaningful procedure.
In both languages, the category of tense is based on the threemember opposition: Past vs. Present vs. Future (сказав vs. каже vs.
скаже said vs. says vs. shall/will say). However, there are objections on
the part of some linguists (O. Jespersen, L. Barhudarov) against
inclusion of the construction shall/will+ infinitive in the tense system of
the verb on the grounds that they preserve their modal meaning and
must be treated as modal verbs rather than auxiliaries.Thus, the future of
the English verb is highly specific in so far as its auxiliaries in their very
immediate etymology are words of obligation and volition, and the
survival of the respective connotations in them should be thoroughly
taken in consideration (in the clear-cut modal uses of the verbs shall and
will the meaning of the future is not expressed at all: He who does not
work, neither shall he eat. None are so deaf as those who will not hear).
Besides, there are some other grammatical and lexico-grammatical
ways for explicit expression of the future in English (the forms Present
simple, Present Continuous, Future continuous in their secondary
meanings, the constructions be going, be about), each of them
combining in its semantic structure the meaning of a future action and
some other modal connotation. For example, the construction be going +
infinitive may denote a sheer intention or assurance, annoyance based
on the meaning of prediction. Cf.: I’m going to ask you a question. You
are going to like the performance. The rain is never going to stop.). The
grammar of English provides several ways of referring to events which
are to take place later than the speech moment (i.e. in future time). Each
of these verbal expressions are related to particular shades of meaning.
Below are listed the most important of these expressions and the typical
meanings expressed by them.
Category of Aspect
The category of aspect is a morphological category of the verb denoting
the mode (aspect) in which the action of the predicate is realised. In
Ukrainian it characterizes all forms of the verb, including infinitives,
imperatives, and participles. This means that Ukrainian speakers are
required to mark verb aspect, regardless of whether the marking contributes
to the meaning of the sentence. All Ukrainian verbs, with the exception of
бути), belong to one of two aspectual categories: imperfective
44
(незавершений вид) that refers to the process or state (e.g., іти) and
perfective (завершений вид) that refers to achievement or accomplishment
(e.g., піти). Imperfective aspect marks repeated actions and actions that
have not been completed (e.g., ходила, сиділа, дивилась). Perfective aspect
marks actions that have been successfully completed (e.g., пішла,
посиділа, подивилась). A lot of verbs constitute aspectual oppositional
pairs,: читати – прочитати, укрити – укривати, збирати – зібрати,
говорити – сказати. The given examples show the diversity of the
existing morphological ways to express aspect: prefixation, suffixation,
inner flection, suppletion.There are a lot of aspectual pairs with one
imperfective member and several perfective ones created by means of
adding prefixes with spatial meanings to unidirectional verbs: їхати –
під’їхати, поїхати, доїхати. Meanings expressed by aspect forms in
Ukrainian are not homogenious the general meaning of completeness may
be realised as resultive action (побудувати),
inchoative action The
inchoative aspect indicates the beginning of a state (as opposed to a
process or activity) (полюбити), cessative (which indicates that a situation
is ending (відщуміти) excessive action (зголодніти), momentaneous
action (уколоти) та ін.
In English, the grammatical category of aspect is realized through
the binary opposition Non-Continuous vs. Continuous, the strong
member expressed analytically: did vs. was doing. The English category
of aspect
has different semantic basis from that of Ukrainian:
Ukrainian aspect is based upon the meaning of “completeness of an
action”, while English aspect is based on the categorial meaning of
“development of an action at a definite time moment”. The continuous
form has at least two semantic features - - duration (the action is
always in progress) and definiteness (the action is always limited to a
definite point or period of time). In other words, the purpose of the
Continuous form is to serve as a frame which makes the process of the
action more concrete and isolated. The meaning of development may be
regarded as a special type of imperfectivity which emphasizes that an
action is in progress; often this is mentioned to provide a background or
frame of reference for some other situation. One of the secondary
meanings of the Continuous is to indicate a more temporary situation
than is indicated by the basic form of the verb, e.g. the Sphinx stands by
the Nile versus Mr. Smith is standing by the Nile, or I live at 123 Main
Street (semi-permanently) versus I’m living at 123 Main Street
(temporarily). English generally does not use continuous forms of verbs
denoting state; the phrase *you aren’t hearing seems odd in English.
45
When explicit inflections are not available to indicate aspect,
languages will use less elegant methods, often involving idiomatic set
phrases or phrasal verbs, and this can be said about English. Therefore,
it can be said that apart from morphological aspect English has also
lexico-grammatical aspects: iterative (would+ inf, used to + inf),
durative ( kept + gerund), inchoative (burst + Ger.; come to + inf, get
to +N, Ger; take to+Ger), completive (eat it all up).
The category of aspect is expressed also by non-finite forms of the
verb, infinitives, in English (to read vs. to be reading) and in Ukrainian
(робити vs. зробити).
Category of Retrospective Coordination
In theoretical grammar the interpretation of perfect/non-perfect verb
forms refers to disputable questions. Some linguists interpret the
opposition of perfect/non-perfect forms as aspective (O. Jespersen,
I. P. Ivanova,G.N.Vorontsova), others – as the opposition of tense forms
(H. Swwet, G. Curme, A. Korsakov). A.I. Smirnitsky was the first to
prove that perfect and non- perfect forms make up a special, selfsufficient category, and called it the “category of time correlation”
(«часова віднесеність»); this viewpoint is shared now by a vast
majority of of linguists. After Prof. M.Y.Blokh we call this category
“the category of retrospective coordination”. The functional content of
the “category of retrospective coordination” was defined as priority
expressed by the perfect forms in the present, past or future contrasted
against the non-expression of priority by the non-perfect forms. The
time moment, to which Perfect forms express priority, depends on the
nature of the perfect form. The action expressed by Present Perfect
usually correlates with the moment of speaking, while with the past
perfect forms the time moment is expressed by the context.
In Ukrainian the meaning of priority of an action to some definite
time moment is expressed lexically, not grammatically. Cf.: He’d
always been so spruce and smart; he was shabby and unwashed and
wild-eyed. (S.Maugham) – Раніше він був таким чепуристим і
елегантним. А тепер блукав по місту брудний, в лохмітті, з
дикими очима.
Perfect-continuous forms are treated as forms having marks in both
aspect category and category of coordination: “What have you been
doing down there?” Miss Peel asked him. “I’ve been looking for you all
over the play-ground” (M. Dickens).
46
Category of Voice
The verbal category of voice shows the direction of the process as
regards the participants of the situation reflected in the syntactic
construction. The voice of the English verb is expressed by the binary
opposition of the passive form of the verb to the active form of the verb.
The strong member (passive voice) is marked analytically by the
combination of the auxiliary be with the past participle of the
conjugated verb. In colloquial speech the role of the passive auxiliary
can occasionally be performed by the verb get: Cf.: John was hurt in the
accident (neutr) and John got hurt in the accident (colloq.); We got
caught in a heavy shower (colloq.) and We were caught... (archaic).
The category of voice has a much broader representation in the
system of the English verb than in the system of the Ukrainian verb,
since in English not only transitive, but also intransitive objective verbs
including prepositional ones can be used in the passive (the preposition
being retained). Besides, verbs taking not one, but two objects, as a rule,
can feature both of them in the position of the passive subject.
Depending on the type of the verb and the type of the object they take,
English has four types of passive constructions: (1) Direct, e.g., The
frown on his face disturbed her → She was disturbed by the frown on
his face, (2) Indirect, e.g., They offered him another post → I was
offered another post , (3) Prepositional, e.g.: They won’t talk to me like
this → I won’t be talked to like this, (4) Adverbial (with a few verbs –
live, sit, step, walk, sleep etc), e.g.: Nobody lives in this house in winter
→ This house is not lived in in winter.
The situation reflected by the passive construction does not differ in
the least from the situation reflected by the active construction – the
nature of the process is preserved intact, the situational participants
remain in their places in their unchanged quality. What is changed, then,
with the transition from the active voice to the passive voice, is the
subjective appraisal of the situation by the speaker, the plane of his
presentation of it. It is clearly seen when comparing any pair of
constructions one of which is the passive counterpart of the other. In
particular, we find the object-experience-featuring achieved by the
passive in its typical uses in cases when the subject is unknown or is not
to be mentioned for certain reasons, or when the attention of the speaker
is centred on the action as such.
In English and Ukrainian passive constructions are used with
different frequency and have different stylistic coloring. While in
47
Ukrainian the use of passive is restricted by formal and scientific
registers, English passive is stylistically neutral, though more frequently
used in written style. E.g., At that moment the door was opened by the
maid. (S. Maugham, Before the Party) - Двері відчинились і заглянула
покоївка. The attempt to retain the passive construction in the Ukrainian
translation would have lead to stylistically unacceptable phrase. The
less frequent use of the Ukrainian passive can be accounted for by the
free word order in the Ukrainian sentence: the appraisal of the situation
by the speaker, the plane of his presentation of it is shown by changing
word order of the sentence, or by dropping the subject. On the contrary,
in English the subject of the sentence can never be dropped and the rigid
word order considerably restricts the possibilities of the logical
accentuating of different parts of the sentence. Therefore, passive
constructions perform important communicative functions in English,
the are used to: (1) ommit the doer of the action (if it is not important),
e.g., The pyramids are considered the last of the seven wonders of the
world still in existence.
A big problem in connection with the voice identification in English
is the problem of “medial” voices usually considered as special
grammatical voices, called, respectively, “reflexive” and “reciprocal”,
“middle” voices. The reflexive and reciprocal pronouns within the
framework of the hypothetical voice identification of the uses in
question should be looked upon as the voice auxiliaries.
Answer the questions
1. Explain what is meant by the binary nature of the morpheme.
2. What types of morphemes exist according to their functions?
3. Say in what type of languages inflectional morphemes are capable of
expressing several grammatical meanings.
4. Compare the typical structure of the word in English and Ukrainian.
5. What are different criteria for part-of-speech classification in English
and Ukrainian accounted for?
6. Enumerate all notional parts of speech and describe them according to
the three criteria.
7. Enumerate and compare functional parts of speech in English and
Ukrainian.
8. What is a grammatical category? What is a grammatical opposition?
Write down several examples.
9. Name some of the explicit (grammatical) and implicit (lexicogrammatical) categories.
48
10. Which language is characterised by the interparadigmatic homonymy?
Provide examples.
11. Explain how the difference in the category and meaning of different
occurances of can are exploited in the following sentence.
Can he can me for kicking the can?
12. Calculate and compare the ratios of synthesism (S) in Ukrainian and
English by the following formula:
S=
Number of morphemes
Number of words
Виходили на іскрясте шосе, в перламутр полудня. Утомно дрижали
наливні поля, і перелітав димний легіт. Небо брякло; нечутно й зів'яло
скрадалися полинялі соняшні дороги до незнайомих горизонтів, до
туманово-бузкової маси.
Mr. Carey had no great ease in expressing himself. When the news came
that his sister-in-law was dying, he set off at once for London, but on the way
thought of nothing but the disturbance in his life that would be caused if her
death forced him to undertake the care of her son.
13. Compare the criteria for identifying a word as a noun in the contrasted
languages.
14. Compare Singularia Tantum and Pluralia Tantum nouns in English and
Ukrainian, do they coincide? Collect examples.
15. What is meant by lexicalised plural forms? Provide examples.
16. State the difference in the realisation of the category of case in the
contrasted languages.
17. Is gender a grammatical category in English and Ukrainian?
18. How is the category of determination expressed in the contrasted
languages?
19. Comment upon classification of verbs in the contrasted languages.
20. State the allomorphic features in the realisation of the categories of
person and number in English and Ukrainian.
21. What is the semantic basis of the category of tense in English?
22. Is the meaning of the category of aspect the same in the contrasted
languages?
23. Comment upon the category of coordination and its realisation in the
contrasted languages.
24. State the divergencies in the expression of the category of mood in
English and Ukrainian.
25. Compare voice forms in the contrasted languages.
49
3. CONTRASTIVE SYNTAX OF ENGLISH
AND UKRAINIAN
Syntax deals with the syntagmatic connections of
words, the rules of building correct phrases (wordcombinations) and sentences, so the objects for
typological investigation on the syntactic level are
types of phrases and sentences, their structure,
types of syntactic relations between their
components as well as kinds of their syntactic
connection in English and in Ukraininan.
3.1. Phrase
In both contrasted languages, phrases fall into three types according
to the type of syntactic realations between the components: (1)
coordinate, (2) subordinate and (3) predicative. In coordinate phrases
the components are equal in rank and may be connected syndetically
(young but clever, школи та бібліотеки)) or assyndetically (young,
non-chalant, charming; гармати, вози, машини). Such word-groups in
both contrasted languages perform the function of homogeneous parts of
the sentence, eg: Не was clean, handsome, well-dressed, and
sympathetic. Це було зроблено досконало, гарно й швидко.
In subordinate phrases the syntactic ranks of the constituents are
not equal as they refer to one another as the modifyer and the modified
(the head/nucleus and the adjunct/complement). Subordinate phrases
fall into two main groups: objective (ask a question, заспівати пісню)
and qualifying. Objective subordinate phrases eflect the relation of the
object to the process. Qualifying subordinate phrases are divide into
attributive, expressing quality of an object (a flowery dress, настольна
гра) and adverbial, expressing quality of an action or another quality
(laughed a little, extremely difficult, рано піти ,надто повільно).
Subordinate phrases are also classified in accordance with with the
name of the part of speech representing the head (nucleus) of the
subordinate phrase. Thus, we can distinguish between noun phrases,
verb phrases, adjectival phrases, adverbial phrases etc.
Predicative phrases may be primary and secondary. Primary
predicative phrases (those that comprise the subject and the predicate)
50
are of isomorphic nature, therefore translated without any
transformations e.g.: The student works hard. Студент багато
працює. Secondary predicative phrases are not found in Ukrainian and
are represented in English in the following structural types or syntactic
constructions which are often referred to as complexes: Complex object
with the infinitive (I heard him roll in blankets, Complex subject with
the infinitive (He is reported to have been taken into custody.), Forcomplex (The boy stood aside for me to go by.), Complex object with
the participle (I saw her coming.), Complex subject with the participle
(The rain was heard clattering.), Absolute participle construction (This
being so, I should like to go out.), Gerundial complex (Excuse my being
late.). Being of alomorphic nature secondary predicative phrases require
transformations in translation; in Ukrainian translation they are
frequently transformed into primary predicative phrases: The boy stood
aside for me to go by. – Хлопчик відійшов, щоб я міг пройти.
In both languages phrases may be elemental, with one type of
syntactic relations, e.g.: happy but sad, and complicated (expanded or
extended), having two or several different types of syntactic relations,
e.g.: an event for us to expect (subordinate – sec. predicative), search
the room carefully and slowly (subordinate[objective-adverbial] –
coordinate).
Means of syntactic connection in English
and Ukrainian subordinate phrases
There is a considerable difference in the way the components of
subordinate phrases are connected in the contrasted languages. Being a
flectional language, Ukrainian predominantly employs synthetic means
of syntactic connection, which are of two types: agreement and
government.
Agreement is a method of syntactic connection, which consists in
making the subordinate word take a form similar to that of the word to
which it is subordinate, e.g.: добра порада. On the contrary the sphere
of agreement in Modern English is extremely small: it is restricted to
several pronouns – this, that, such a, many a, which agree with their
head word in number when they are used in front of it as the first
components of a phrase of which the noun is the centre, e.g.: this case,
these cases.
51
Government is the use of a certain form of the subordinate word
required by its head word, but not coinciding with the form of the head
word itself, e.g.: читати книжку. The role of government in Modern
English is almost as insignificant as that of agreement. We do not find in
English any verbs, or nouns, or adjectives, requiring the subordinate
noun to be in one case rather than in another, so the notion of
government does not apply to forms of nouns in English. The only thing
that may be termed government in Modern English is the use of the
objective case of personal pronouns and of the pronoun who when they
are subordinate to a verb or follow a preposition. Thus, for instance, the
forms me, him, her, us, them, are required if the pronoun follows a verb
(e. g. find or invite) or any preposition whatever. Even this type of
government is, however, made somewhat doubtful by the rising
tendency to use the forms me, him, etc., outside their original sphere as
forms of the objective case. The notion of government has also become
doubtful as applied to the form whom, which is rather often superseded
by the form who in such sentences as Who(m) did yon see?
In English, dominant in practically all subordinate phrases is the
analytic way of connection, syndetic, with a linking element (usually
preposition), e.g.: speak about the news, the capital of the country or
asyndetic (also called adjoinment), without a linking element (next
morning, cigarette smoke, tell the news). Adjoinment (described as
absence both of agreement and government) is gaining more
productivity in Modern English marking the tendency of the language
approaching the isolating type with rigid word order. In Ukrainian
syndetic analytic way of syntactic connection is only observed in
combination with synthetic government, e.g.: питання до доповідача,
except for cases when nouns are indeclinable, as in sentences like
Вони оформили фойє, ми взяли таксі, їй подобається кімоно/сарі,
Adjoinment is observed in Ukrainian in adverbial phrases: встати
рано, but the difference is that in Ukrainian the position of the
elements may be changed without any change in meaning, while in
English position change may lead to ugrammaticality of the phrase or
to the change in its meaning, Cf.: встати рано ─> рано встати:
tell the news ─> *the news tell, a bird cage ─> a cage bird.
There is another means of expressing syntactic connection based on
the positional principle which plays a significant part in Modern
52
English, but is completely allien to Ukrainian syntax. It is called
enclosure. Some element of a phrase is placed (enclosed) between two
parts of another element. The most widely known case of enclosure is
putting of a word between an article and a noun to which the article
belongs. Any word or phrase thus enclosed is shown to be an attribute to
the noun. Many other words than adjectives and nouns can be found in
that position, and many phrases, too, e.g.: the then government, a don’ttouch-me look.
3.2. Sentence
While word-groups are subject of investigation in Minor syntax, the
sentence is investigated in the so-called Major syntax. The sentence is
the only language unit, capable of expressing communication
containing some kind of information about the objective reality.
The sentence as the central syntactic unit is characterised by the
structural, semantic and pragmatic aspects. This aspective
trichotomy directly correlates with the meaning, form and functioning of
the sentence in speech where it realises its explicit form of an utterance
corresponding to a logically complete proposition. These theree
aspects are of universal nature.
The structural types of sentences are common in the contrasted
languages:
sentence
simple
extended
composite
unextended
one-member
one-member
compound
complex
two-member
two-member
complete
elliptical
However, different types of sentences display a lot of allomorphic
features in English and Ukrainian.
53
3.2.1. Simple sentence
Binary (S-P) sentence structures are more characteristic of English,
i.e. they are represented by a larger variety of paradigmatic subtypes
than in Ukrainian. This quantitative correlation of two-member
sentences in English and Ukrainian constitutes the main typological
difference in the system of simple sentences of the two languages.
As a result, English two-member sentences are represented by a
larger variety of extended and expanded models, than Ukrainian twomember sentences. Consequently, English two-member sentences are
represented by a larger variety of paradigmatic subtypes than in
Ukrainian. The two-member sentences non-existent in Ukrainian are
the following:
1. Impersonal sentences which are introduced by the personal
pronoun it ( It snowed).
2. Indefinite personal sentences in which the subject is expressed by
the indefinite personal pronouns one, they, you, eg: (One should know
such things. They say. You never know).
3. Sentences with the introductory "it" or "there" ( It is time to start.
There is nothing to say.)
4. Sentences with the implicit agent and passive predicate verb
followed by a preposition (He was sent for. The project is objected to
everywhere.)
5. Sentences with secondary predication constructions (He is said to
be a sportsman.).
Unlike two-member sentences, which have a larger quantitative
representation of paradigmatic/structural types in English, one-member
sentences, on the contrary, have a larger number of paradigmatic classes
in Ukrainian. This is due to the morphological nature of Ukrainian as a
mainly synthetic structure language. Common in English and Ukrainian
are the following paradigmatic types of one-member sentences:
1. Nominal sentences: Nice time for a rector to come down for
breakfast. (B. Shaw) Ще один вибух аплодисментів.
2. Imperative (or inducive) sentences: Open the door. Відчиніть двері
3. Exclamatory sentences may structurally often coincide in English
and Ukrainian with nominal and infinitival sentences, eg: Thieves! Fire!
How funny! To think of it! Damn your money! Злодії! Вогонь! Як
гарно! Подумати тільки! К бісу твої гроші!
54
4. Infinitival sentences in both contrasted languages have practically
identical structural forms: To be or not to be. Бути чи не бути. Why not
go there. Чому б не піти туди?
Allomorphic in English and Ukrainian are the following
paradigmatic types of one-member sentences:
1. Definite personal sentences, which are widely used in literary and
colloquial Ukrainian speech. The doer of the action in these sentences is
indicated by the finite verb and its personal ending correlating with the
main part of the sentence. Eg: Люблю (я) пісні мойого краю.
(Рильський)
2. Indefinite personal sentences: Дзвонять в усі дзвони.
3. Generalised personal sentences: Давніх друзів не забувають.
4. Impersonal sentences
• Impersonal proper (власне безособові) one-member sentences
with the principal part expressed by the finite (predicate) verb, e.g:
Світає.
• Impersonal sentences with the main part/finite verb expressing the
state of the agent denoted by the noun in the dative case, e.g.: Дітям
спочатку було дуже нудно.
• Impersonal sentences with the principal part expressed by verbs
ending in, E.G.: -то,- но: Роботу покинуто.
• Impersonal sentences with modal predicative phrases functioning
as part of the modal verbal predicate, e.g.: Йому не слід було
дивитись, Неможливо знищити того, кому симпатизує народ.
• Infinitive sentences, e.g.: Що мені робити? Від долі не втікти.
Another difference of paramount importance between the two
languages is that of word order. Ukrainian, conveying grammatical
information mostly through inflection, allows relative flexibility which
can be used to encode pragmatic information such as topicalisation or
focus. Word order in English is of much greater importance than in
Ukrainian. The word order in the English sentence is fixed, for English
as an analytic language relies much on the order of sentence constituents
to convey important grammatical information. The meaning of a
sentence in English, often depends entirely on the order in which the
elements are placed (cf.: The man ate the fish and The fish ate the man).
Therefore inversion in English is a powerfull stylistic device. In
Ukrainian, with its non-fixed, flexible order of words, inversion is less
conspicuous. Hence, inversion as it is, often doesn’t adequately convey
55
the expressiveness of the English sentence: Now was the moment to act.
“Зараз” placed at the beginning in the Ukrainian translation is not
enough. As an adequate translation, one may perhaps use “саме зараз”.
So inversion in English is a much more expressive means of the
language than that in Ukrainian.
Another important typological difference between English and
Ukrainian concerns ellipsis (omitting some elements of the sentence to
avoid repetion). Ellipsis is the most vivid manifestation of “word
economy”. Elliptical sentences are typical of both English and
Ukrainian, but Ukrainian as a synthetic language has far more
possibilities for missing out informatively redundant elements of the
sentence. English binary sentence structure and fixed word order makes
it a problem to miss out obligatory parts of the sentence. The omission
of an obligatory element may lead to the sentence becoming
ungrammatical. One can not omit a word without supplying another
one instead. Therefore English makes extensive use of words called
substitutes (or pro-words). Modern English has a large number of word
substitutes. Here belong all the auxiliary and modal verbs, various
classes of pronouns (he, she, it, hers, his, that, those, one, some), some
adverbs (there, so), and particle to. the pro-words do not have
denotative meaning, they are absolutely contextual. Cf.:
She never gets confused over her
dates, and I always do.
Вона при цьому
не бентежиться так, як я.
He speaks French well, doesn’t he?
Він добре говорить
по-французьки, правда?
Of allomorphic nature are also English sentences containing the
secondary predication constructions (or complexes), e.g.: He felt fear
mounting in him again. Sentences containing secondary predication are
treated as semi-complex sentences. They mostly correspond to
Ukrainian complex sentences. Cf. Ukrainian translation of the given
sentence: Він відчув, що ним опановує страх, the construction fear
mounting in him becomes an object clause.
Absence of secondary predication constructions in Ukrainian makes
it impossible to obtain direct correlative transforms of some simple
sentences.
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3.2.2. Composite sentence
A composite sentence in English and Ukrainian, like in all other
languages, contains two or more primary predication centres mostly
repre sented by as many corresponding clauses. There is much common
in the nature and structure of the composite sentence in English and
Ukrainian. Isomorphism is also observed in the inventory of the Major
Syntax units represented by the compound and complex sentences. But
still there are some divergent features.
1. In English causative-resultative relations may be expressed not
only by subordination, but by coordination as well: It was not yet
daylight, for the candle was burning. She hasn’t much stress in her, so I
easily kept her quiet. In Ukrainian this meaning is expressed only by
subordinate clauses.
2. Compound coordinate sentences are more spread in Ukrainian.
Ukrainian compound sentences with connectives аж, коли, як
expressing the meaning of a sudden, unexpected event in English are
transformed into subordinate sentences with the meaning of
unexpectedness expressed lexically: Іду лісом, аж біжить дисиця. – I
was going through the forest when suddenly a fox came running.
3. Complex sentences may be two-member (subordinate clause is
not part of the main clause) and one-member (subordinate clause is part
of the main clause) in both contrasted languages, but English has more
one-member complex sentences than Ukrainian, Cf.: It was where they
used to meet before – Це було там, де вони зустрічались раніше. The
example shows it is more usual in Ukrainian to use two-member
complex sentences with the antecedent (in this example it is the word
там) in the main clause.
4. Attributive sentences are of two types in both contrasted
languages – restrictive and non-restrictive. Restrictive attributive
clauses are more tightly connected with the main clause, their
elimination leads to the ambiguity of the sentence, e.g.: Where is the
book that I gave you yesterday? Де книжка, яку я тобі вчора дав?
Non-restrictive attributive clauses can be easily removed without
making the main clause semantically incomplete: This was a hit at
George, who was notoriously hard up – Це був випад проти
Джорджа, який сидів без грошей. The divergence is that in English
restrictive attributive clauses are more tightly connected with the main
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clause than in Ukrainian and are not separated by a coma. Besides, this
type of clause easily turns into a contact clause, i.e. joined to the main
clause without a conjunction (unless its conjunction is the subject the
attributive clause): Where is the book that I gave you yesterday? =>
Where is the book I gave you yesterday?
Another divergence is that English attributive clauses distinguish the
category of person and non-person. If the antecedent is expressed by a
person noun they have relative pronoun who, in the other case the
ralative pronoun which, the relative pronoun that is used in both cases.
All the three may be used in restrictive clauses, but only who and which
are used in non-restrictive clauses.
English attributive clauses may refer to the antecedent expressed by
the whole main clause, in which case the linking element is the relative
pronoun which: He knew psychology, which was probably the reason of
his popularity.
English attributive sentences must be put in contact with the
antecedent in the main clause while in Ukrainian they may be distanced:
Дивилася любовно очима на сина, що в них і радість і жура
/А.Головко/.
5. English object clauses are characterised by the rule of sequence of
tences.
English object clauses are more tightly connected with the main clause
and are never separated by comas.
6. English has conditional clauses joined without the help of
cojunctions (with inversion), e,g.: Should he come, ask him to wait.
English has conditional sentences with negation expressed by
conjunctions (unless, lest): He is sure to come unless he is told otherwise.
Answer the questions
1. What are the main allomorphic features in English and Ukrainian
phrase (word-group) representation?
2. Compare the main kinds of syntactic connection of words in English
and Ukrainian.
3. Compare structural types of sentences in English and Ukrainian.
4. What are the pecularities of two-member and one-member sentences in
English and Ukrainian?
5. What are the functions of word order in the contrasted languages?
Provide examples.
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6. In which language is inversion a powerful stylystic device? Translate
the following sentences with inverted word order into Ukrainian.
(a) Out went Mr. Pickwick’s head again. (Ch. Dickens)
(b) Bright eyes they were. (Ch. Dickens)
(c) Passage after passage did he explore, room after room did he peep
into! (Ch. Dickens)
(d) Then came the dreaded night! (J. Galsworthy)
(e) Not a second before ten o’clock came the Jameses. (J. Galsworthy)
(f) Lying on the floor was a dead man, in evening dress, with a knife in
his heart. (O. Wilde)
7. Which language has semi-complex sentences? Give examples of
different sentence parts (subject, predicate, object, adverbial) expressed by
secondary predicative constructions.
8. In which languages is ellipsis more widely spread? What are prowords? Give examples.
9. What is the difference between the sentences? Translate them into
Ukrainian.
The chidren, who were eager to bathe, ran to the river.
The children who were eager to bathe ran to the river.
10. Which language has one-member subordinate clauses more widely
spread? Give examples.
11. Why are English object clauses not separated by a coma?
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PRACTICAL TASKS
1. Analyse the grammatical structure of the following text highlighting
the typologically relavant features (fusion, analytisism, agglutination,
isolation).
2. Comment on allomorphic features (paying attention to ways used to
express different grammatical categories, types and means of syntactic
connection in word phrases, word order, structural sentence types, etc).
Suggest translation of the text fragments containing allomorphic features.
The rules of the New Haven Youth League required that each kid play
at least ten minutes in each game. Exceptions were allowed for players who
had upset their coaches by skipping practice or violating other rules. In
such cases, a coach could file a report before the game and inform the
scorekeeper that so-and-so wouldn’t play much, if at all, because of some
infraction. This was frowned on by the league; it was, after all, much more
recreational than competitive.
With four minutes left in the game, Coach Kyle looked down the
bench, nodded at a somber and pouting little boy named Marquis, and said,
“Do you want to play?” Without responding, Marquis walked to the
scorers’ table and waited for a whistle. His violations were numerous–
skipping practice, skipping school, bad grades, losing his uniform, foul
language. In fact, after ten weeks and fifteen games, Marquis had broken
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every one of the few rules his coach tried to enforce. Coach Kyle had long
since realized that any new rule would be immediately violated by his star,
and for that reason he trimmed his list and fought the temptation to add
new regulations. It wasn’t working. Trying to control ten inner- city kids
with a soft touch had put the Red Knights in last place in the 12 and Under
division of the winter league.
Marquis was only eleven, but clearly the best player on the court. He
preferred shooting and scoring over passing and defending, and within two
minutes he’d slashed through the lane, around and through and over much
larger players, and scored six points. His average was fourteen, and if
allowed to play more than half a game, he could probably score thirty. In
his own young opinion, he really didn’t need to practice.
In spite of the one-man show, the game was out of reach. Kyle
McAvoy sat quietly on the bench, watching the game and waiting for the
clock to wind down. One game to go and the season would be over, his last
as a basketball coach. In two years he’d won a dozen, lost two dozen, and
asked himself how any person in his right mind would willingly coach at
any level. He was doing it for the kids; he’d said to himself a thousand
times, kids with no fathers, kids from bad homes, kids in need of a positive
male influence. And he still believed it, but after two years of babysitting,
and arguing with parents when they bothered to show up, and hassling with
other coaches who were not above cheating, and trying to ignore teenage
referees who didn’t know a block from a charge, he was fed up. He’d done
his community service, in this town anyway.
He watched the game and waited, yelling occasionally because that’s
what coaches are supposed to do. He looked around the empty gym, an old
brick building in downtown New Haven, home to the youth league for fifty
years. A handful of parents were scattered through the bleachers, all
waiting for the final horn. Marquis scored again. No one applauded. The
Red Knights were down by twelve with two minutes to go.
At the far end of the court, just under the ancient scoreboard, a man in a
dark suit walked through the door and leaned against the retractable
bleachers. He was noticeable because he was white. There were no white
players on either team. He stood out because he wore a suit that was either
black or navy, with a white shirt and a burgundy tie, all under a trench coat
that announced the presence of an agent or a cop of some variety.
Coach Kyle happened to see the man when he entered the gym, and he
thought to himself that the guy was out of place. Probably, a detective of
some sort, maybe a narc looking for a dealer. It would not be the first arrest
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in or around the gym. After the agent/cop leaned against the bleachers, he
cast a long suspicious look at the Red Knights’ bench, and his eyes seemed
to settle on Coach Kyle, who returned the stare for a second before it
became uncomfortable. Marquis let one fly from near mid- court, air ball,
and Coach Kyle jumped to his feet, spread his hands wide, shook his head
as if to ask, “Why?” Marquis ignored him as he loafed back on defense. A
dumb foul stopped the clock and prolonged the misery. While looking at
the free-throw shooter, Kyle glanced beyond him, and in the background
was the agent/cop, still staring, not at the action but at the coach.
For a twenty-five-year-old law student with no criminal record and no
illegal habits or proclivities, the presence and the attention of a man who
gave all indications of being employed by some branch of law enforcement
should have caused no concern whatsoever. But it never worked that way
with Kyle McAvoy. Street cops and state troopers didn’t particularly bother
him. They were paid to simply react. But the guys in dark suits, the
investigators and agents, the ones trained to dig deep and discover secrets–
those types still unnerved him. (J. Grisham)
II. Choose any Ukrainian-English parallel texts and contrast them
highlighting allomorphic features of the grammatical systems of the two
languages .
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RECOMMENDED
LITERATURE
1. Аракин В. Д. Сравнительная типология английского и
русского языков: учеб. пособие / В. Д. Аракин. – 3-е изд. – М. :
Физматлит, 2000. – 256 с.
2. Блох М. Я. Теоретическая грамматика английского языка (на
англ. яз.) / М. Я. Блох . – 3-е изд., испр. – М. : Высш. шк., 2000. –
381 с.
3. Гуревич В. В. Теоретическая грамматика английского языка.
Сравнительная типология английского и русского языков: учеб.
пособие / В. В. Гуревич. – М. : Флинта, Наука, 2003. – 168 с.
4. Ильиш Б. А. Строй современного английского языка: учеб. по
курсу теор. грамматики для студ. пед. ин-тов (на англ. языке) /
Б. А. Ильиш. – 2-е изд. – М. : Просвещение,1971. – 365 с.
5. Жлуктенко Ю. О. Порівняльна граматика української та
англійської мов / Ю. О. Жлуктенко . – К. : 1998.
6. Жовтобрюх М.А. Українська літературна мова / М. А. Жовтобрюх. – К. : 2003.
7. Левицький А. Е. Порівняльна граматика англійської та
української мов : навч. посіб. / А. Е. Левицький .– К. : «Освіта
України», 2007. – 138 с.
8. Crystal D. The Cambridge encyclopedia of the English language /
D. Crystal. – Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1996. – 1030 p.
9. A grammar of contemporary English / S. Quirk, Greenbaum,
G. Leech, J. Svartvik. – New York; London : Seminar press, 1972. –
1120 p.
10. Korunets J. V. Contrastive Typology of the English and Ukrainian
Languages / J. V. Korunets . – K., 1999. – 459 c.
11. Silzer Peter J. Working with Language / J. Peter Silzer. – Biola
University, 2005. – 239 p.
12. Song J. J. Linguistic typology: morphology and syntax / J .J. Song, –
Harlow and London: Pearson Education, 2001. – 406 p.
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Навчальне видання
ГУДМАНЯН Артур Грантович
КРИЛОВА Тетяна Василівна
ГРАМАТИКА АНГЛІЙСЬКОЇ
ТА УКРАЇНСЬКОЇ МОВ
Конспект лекцій
(Англійською мовою)
В авторській редакції
Технічний редактор А. І. Лавринович
Комп’ютерна верстка Л. А. Шевченко
Підп. до друку 14.12.09. Формат 60х84/16. Папір офс.
Офс. друк. Ум. друк арк. 3,72. Обл.-вид. арк. 4,0.
Тираж 100 пр. Замовлення № 300-1
Видавництво Національного авіаційного університету «НАУ-друк»
03680, Київ–58, просп. Космонавта Комарова 1.
Свідоцтво про внесення до Державного реєстру ДК № 977 від 05.07. 2002
64