Theoretical Grammar

Lectures in Theoretical Grammar

by ass. prof. L.M.Volkova,

National Linguistic University of Kiev


List of books:
1. B.Ilyish. The Structure of Modern English.
2. M.Blokh. A Course in Theoretical Grammar.
3. E.Morokhovskaya. Fundamentals of Theoretical Grammar.
4. И.П.Иванова, В.В.Бурлакова, Г.Г.Почепцов. Теоретическая грамматика современного англ. яз..
5. Methods Guides.

The aim of the course.

Why do I like Grammar?

Grammatician or grammarian?

LECTURE 1(2): THE SCOPE OF THEORETICAL GRAMMAR.
BASIC LINGUISTIC NOTIONS.


1.Theoretical grammar and its subject.
Man is not well defined as “Homo sapiens” (“man with wisdom”). For what do we mean by wisdom? It has not been proved so far that animals do not possess it. Those of you who have pets can easily prove the contrary. Most recently anthropologists have started defining human beings as “man the toolmaker”. However, apes can also make primitive tools. What sets man apart from the rest of animal kingdom is his ability to speak: he is “can easily object by saying that animals can also speak Homo loquens” – “man the speaking animal”. And again, you, naturally, in their own way. But their sounds are meaningless, and there is no link between sound and meaning (or if there is, it is of a very primitive kind) and the link for man is grammar. Only with the help of grammar we can combine words to form sentences and texts. Man is not merely Homo loquens, he is Homo Grammaticus.
The term “grammar” goes back to a Greek word that may be translated as the “art of writing”. But later this word acquired a much wider sense and came to embrace the whole study of language. Now it is often used as the synonym of linguistics. A question comes immediately to mind: what does this study involve?
Grammar may be practical and theoretical. The aim of practical grammar is the description of grammar rules that are necessary to understand and formulate sentences. The aim of theoretical grammar is to offer explanation for these rules. Generally speaking, theoretical grammar deals with the language as a functional system.


2. General principles of grammatical analysis.

According to the Bible: ‘In the beginning was the Word’. In fact, the word is considered to be the central (but not the only) linguistic unit (одиниця) of language. Linguistic units (or in other words – signs) can go into three types of relations:

1. 
   The relation between a unit and an object in the world around us (objective reality). E.g. the word ‘table’ refers to a definite piece of furniture. It may be not only an object but a process, state, quality, etc.
   

This type of meaning is called referential meaning of a unit. It is semantics that studies the referential meaning of units.

2. 
   The relation between a unit and other units (inner relations between units). No unit can be used independently; it serves as an element in the system of other units. This kind of meaning is called syntactic. Formal relation of units to one another is studied by syntactics (or syntax).
   
3. 
   The relation between a unit and a person who uses it. As we know too well, when we are saying something, we usually have some purpose in mind. We use the language as an instrument for our purpose (e.g.). One and the same word or sentence may acquire different meanings in communication. This type of meaning is called pragmatic. The study of the relationship between linguistic units and the users of those units is done by pragmatics.
   

Thus there are three models of linguistic description: semantic, syntactic and pragmatic. To illustrate the difference between these different ways of linguistic analysis, let us consider the following sentence: Students are students.
The first part of the XXth century can be characterized by a formal approach to the language study. Only inner (syntactic) relations between linguistic units served the basis for linguistic analysis while the reference of words to the objective reality and language users were actually not considered. Later, semantic language analysis came into use. However, it was surely not enough for a detailed language study. Language certainly figures centrally in our lives. We discover our identity as individuals and social beings when we acquire it during childhood. It serves as a means of cognition and communication: it enables us to think for ourselves and to cooperate with other people in our community. Therefore, the pragmatic side of the language should not be ignored either. Functional approach in language analysis deals with the language ‘in action’. Naturally, in order to get a broad description of the language, all the three approaches must be combined.


3. General characteristics of language as a functional system.

Any human language has two main functions: the communicative function and the expressive or representative function – human language is the living form of thought. These two functions are closely interrelated as the expressive function of language is realized in the process of speech communication.

The expressive function of language is performed by means of linguistic signs and that is why we say that language is a semiotic system. It means that linguistic signs are of semiotic nature: they are informative and meaningful. There are other examples of semiotic systems but all of them are no doubt much simpler. For instance, traffic lights use a system of colours to instruct drivers and people to go or to stop. Some more examples: Code Morse, Brighton Alphabet, computer languages, etc. What is the difference between language as a semiotic system and other semiotic systems? Language is universal, natural, it is used by all members of society while any other sign systems are artificial and depend on the sphere of usage.


4. Notions of ‘system’ and ‘structure’. General characteristics of linguistic units.

Language is regarded as a system of elements (or: signs, units) such as sounds, words, etc. These elements have no value without each other, they depend on each other, they exist only in a system, and they are nothing without a system. System implies the characterization of a complex object as made up of separate parts (e.g. the system of sounds). Language is a structural system. Structure means hierarchical layering of parts in `constituting the whole. In the structure of language there are four main structural levels: phonological, morphological, syntactical and supersyntatical. The levels are represented by the corresponding level units:

The phonological level is the lowest level. The phonological level unit is the`phoneme. It is a distinctive unit (bag – back).

The morphological level has two level units:

1. 
   the `morpheme – the lowest meaningful unit (teach – teacher);
   
2. 
   the word - the main naming (`nominative) unit of language.
   

The syntactical level has two level units as well:

1. 
   the word-group – the dependent syntactic unit;
   
2. 
   the sentence – the main communicative unit.
   

The supersyntactical level has the text as its level unit.
All structural levels are subject matters of different levels of linguistic analysis. At different levels of analysis we focus attention on different features of language. Generally speaking, the larger the units we deal with, the closer we get to the actuality of people’s experience of language.
To sum it up, each level has its own system. Therefore, language is regarded as a system of systems. The level units are built up in the same way and that is why the units of a lower level serve the building material for the units of a higher level. This similarity and likeness of organization of linguistic units is called isomorphism. This is how language works – a small number of elements at one level can enter into thousands of different combinations to form units at the other level.
We have arrived at the conclusion that the notions of system and structure are not synonyms – any system has its own structure (compare: the system of Ukrainian education vs. the structure of Ukrainian education; army organization).
Any linguistic unit is a double entity. It unites a concept and a sound image. The two elements are intimately united and each recalls the other. Accordingly, we distinguish the content side and the expression side. The forms of linguistic units bear no natural resemblance to their meaning. The link between them is a matter of convention, and conventions differ radically across languages. Thus, the English word ‘dog’ happens to denote a particular four-footed domesticated creature, the same creature that is denoted in Ukrainian by the completely different form. Neither form looks like a dog, or sounds like one.

5. Various theories related to Grammatic.

4.1. Aristotle. In his work “Ritorics and poetics” he made a description of all speech units like nouns_ adjectives and other. He also speculated on the difference of written and aural speech. Aristotle was the first to describe the syntactic structure of a sentence. This work of his laid the basics for what is now linguistic analysis.

4.2. Works on grammar were being written long before modern syntax came about; the Aṣṭādhyāyī of Pāṇini is often cited as an example of a pre-modern work that approaches the sophistication of a modern syntactic theory.[1] In the West, the school of thought that came to be known as "traditional grammar" began with the work of Dionysius Thrax.

4.2 For centuries, work in syntax was dominated by a framework known as grammaire générale, first expounded in 1660 by Antoine Arnauld in a book of the same title. This system took as its basic premise the assumption that language is a direct reflection of thought processes and therefore there is a single, most natural way to express a thought. That way, coincidentally, was exactly the way it was expressed in French.
Port Royal grammarians
The following ideas of the Port Royal grammarians are reflected in the XX-century generative/universal grammar as initiated by Chomsky (1957, 1965).
The fundamental feature of the Port-Royal view of language is the concept of operations in our minds in terms of ”conception”, ”judgement” and ”reasoning”.
(Graffi, 2001).
• The basic linguistic form is a sentence, called ”proposition”
Attempt to reveal the unity of grammar underlying the separate grammars
of different languages (Robins, 1997); to identify the unversal principles
underlying the art of speaking (Harris and Taylor, 1989).
• The universalist foundation was human reason and thought (Robins, 1997)
• Language provides fininte means but infinite possibilities of expession con-
strained only by rules of concept formation and sentence formation (Chom-
sky, 1966).
• A sentence has an inner mental aspect and an outer physical aspect as a
sound sequence (Chomsky, 1966)
• Chomsky (1966) finds examples, like the treatment of explicative and re-
stricted relative clauses by the Port Royal grammarians, to support the
idea of deep structure and principles that relate it to surface organization
of the sentence.
• Deep structure consists of a system of propositions, organized in various
ways, where an elementary proposition in deep structure is of the subject-
predicate form (Chomsky, 1966).
• Adverbs are analysed as elliptical forms of preposition-noun constructions;
verbs are analysed as implicitly containing an underlying copula that ex-
presses affirmation.

Moscow Linguistic Circle,

founded in 1915. The members of the Moscow Linguistics Circle were interested in and also dealt
with problems regarding language and linguistics. The sources on which its members` studies were
based were Ferdinand de Saussure`s and Baudouin de Courtenay`s works. Due to historical
background and events which occurred there (The October Revolution from Russia) the members of
the Moscow Linguistic Circle were forced to leave Russia and to continue their activity elsewhere.
Roman Jakobson and Nicholay Serghey Trubetzkoy fled to Czechoslovakia, where they joined The
Prague Linguistic Circle.

4.3. Generative Grammar

The use of the term ‘Generative Grammar’ has become quite vague in recent
years and nowadays comprises any Chomsky-derived linguistic approach to nat-
ural language. Initially, ‘generative’ meant that the description of the language
is rigorous and explict in the sense that ”... it is sufficiently explicit to deter-
mine how sentences of the language are in fact characterized by the grammar”
(Chomsky, 1980).
1 One of the underlying characteristics of Generative Grammar is the view
that human beings possess an innate ”language faculty”. The faculty of language
allows children to acquire the mother tongue relatively quickly and easily. In this
view of grammar, there exist also universal principles common to all languages
and specific parameters which differ across languages. By Chomsky, when a child is born he is already aware of a certain language. His mind is set for a inner logic i.e- grammatical structure. Another argument by N. Chomsky is that it is difficult for the people of an old age to study a language because biological faculty weakens through age.

2. The notions of Deep (or D-) and Surface (or S-) structures are also central

to transformational generative grammar. The central idea is the generation of
D-structure of a sentence by phrase-structure rules and subsequently changing
it to an S-structure by some transformations. However, in the current works of
Chomsky, e.g. Chomsky (1995), the D- and S-structures do no longer exist.
Chomsky (1966) ‘translates’/formalizes the ideas of the Port-Royal gram-
marians in terms of his Transformational Generative Grammar view. ”The base
system consists of rules that generate the underlying grammatical relations with
abstract order (the rewrite rules of a phrase-structure grammar); the transfor-
mational system consists of rules of deletion, rearrangement, adjunction, and
so on.” (p. 42). Chomsky also states that the Port Royal grammarians are the
first to develop the notion of phrase structures and to discuss the inadequacy
of phrase-structure description of language, and to propose transformations.
Phrase-structure rules and Context-Free Grammars are now widely used in
parsing natural languages. Transformations, however, have not been adopted
for dealing with natural language syntax in computational linguistics. It is still
worth mentioning the work of Stabler (1997) inter alia for syntactic recognition
and parsing in the Minimalist Program framework (Chomsky, 1995).

4.4. Prague Linguistic Circle

The most important and valuable contribution of the Prague Linguistic Circle after the war was

brought by Vilém Mathésius in the field of syntax namely the distinction, which he made between
theme and rheme. He tried to surpass phonology and to study grammar, especially syntax. Vilém
Mathésius approached and analysed the sentence from a functional perspective, he stated that the
sentence has two parts: the theme and the rheme. By the theme of a sentence is meant the part that
refers to what is already known or given in the context while the rheme is the part that conveys new
information. Although this contribution represents the school`s last efforts to tackle and conquer
another area of linguistics, syntax, Mathésius` work and terminology remained unknown and
without echo in the world of linguistics. 1948 represents the year when Prague scholars went public
for the last time. This is the year when the last lecture of the circle took place. It is also in 1948
when the school`s last representative works, Vodicka`s monograph “The Beginnings of Czech
Artistic Prose” and the three-volume edition of Mukarovsky`s selected works “Chapters from Czech
Poetics” were published.
The Prague Linguistic Circle greatly contributed to the way linguistics developed, by coining
new concepts and theories by providing rich material for the following generations of linguists.
Their works and papers are widely consulted nowadays, Trubetzkoy`s “Principles of Phonology”,
Roman Jakobson`s “Comments on Phonological Change in Russian Compared with that in Other
Slavic Languages” (1929), “Characteristics of the Eurasian Language Affinity” (1931). The Prague
School`s linguistics, theory and activity influenced and changed the character of the European
linguistics. Trubetzkoy`s contributions were inherited and further elaborated by André Martinet
who founds the functionalist school and develops functionalist linguistics. The new concepts and
theories, launched by The Prague Linguistic Circle became key concepts in linguistics so happened
with the concept of neutralization and the theory of markedness, which were inherited by generative
grammar. It anticipated and supported the emergence of new movements in linguistics. Prague
scholars provided the first systematic formulation of semiotic structuralism. Semiotics emerged
from Prague Linguistic Circle structuralism. The Prague Linguistic Circle members were the first
to claim that literary history has to be based on literary theory and the first to develop a
comprehensive theory of literary history. Without the Prague School the image of the twentieth
century structuralism and linguistics is incomplete both historically and theoretically. They brought
innovations and contributions not only to the development of linguistics, but also to the
development of phonetics, phonology and syntax.