Grammatical Categories and Markers Lecture 3

Which are the structural levels of language?

Here we are interested in the grammatical level. Mincoff: every linguistic item is part of the grammatical structure of a language

How do we express possession in English? my aunts book the marker of the Genitive case the book of my aunt a prepositional phrase introduced by of

How do we express possession in Bulgarian?

The same fact of possession has an entirely different expression in Bulgarian It is a question of the structure of Bulgarian language and not of the extralinguistic fact as such

The word has to be grammatically shaped in order to function in the language Which are the grammatical categories of the noun in English and Bulgarian?

Englishnoun Bulgariannoun

number casegender

English verbBulgarian verb tense aspect voice

In English grammatical markers are considerably less than in Bulgarian.In both languages they are less than the other types of morphemes

Name some grammatical markers noun -s -sgirl-girlsgirls-girlsverb-ing -edplay-playing-played adjective -er -estsmart-smarter-smartest

J.Molhova: a grammatical morpheme has several grammatical meanings The simplest grammatical marker has at least two grammatical meanings: that of the class of words that of the specific category within it

The adjectival suffix -er has the following two meanings adjective; comparative degree.

The suffix -s in He worksverb; Present Simple Tense; 3rd person; singular.

The suffix a in ea noun;feminine; singular.

Can you find some examples of homonymy with the grammatical suffixes? the substantival suffix -s marking the plural of some noun game-gamesis homonymous with the verbal suffix -s, marking the 3rd p. sg. of the Present Simple Tense of the verbwork-works

Some other examples of homonymy with the grammatical suffixes?the verbal suffix -ed marking the past participle of the verb work-workedis an homonym with the verbal suffix -ed marking the Past Simple Tense work-worked

Some more examples of homonymy with the grammatical suffixes?the substantival suffix -en marking the plural form of some nouns child-childrenis an homonym with the verbal suffix -en marking the past participle of some verbswrite-written

And more examples of homonymy with the grammatical suffixes?the gerundial suffix -ing readingis an homonym with the suffix -ing marking the present participlereading

Can you find some examples of synonymy with the grammatical suffixes? the substantival suffix -s marking the plural of some nouns cow-cowsis synonymous with the suffix -en also marking the plural of some nouns ox-oxen

Are there other examples of synonymy with the grammatical suffixes? the suffix -ed marking the past participle of some verbs play-playedis synonymous with the suffix -en with the same meaning write-written

Can you find some antonyms among the grammatical markers? Due to the nature of the meanings of a grammatical morpheme one can hardly speak of antonyms unless the various cases of forms in binary opposition are considered to be antonyms, since they exclude each other

Can you find some antonyms among the grammatical markers? the presence of the -s morpheme marking the plural form of the noun could be considered to be an antonym to the zero morpheme pointing to the form of the singular table0-tables

Can you find other antonyms among the grammatical markers?the presence of the -s morpheme in a verbal form marks the 3rd p. sg. of the Present Simple Tensethe zero morpheme, points to a form which is not the 3rd p. sg. of the Present Simple Tense, etc. work-works

There are several instances of fluctuation with grammatical morphemes A grammatical morpheme can preserve its grammatical meaning and at the same time it can acquire a lexical one

Example: the substantival suffix -s marking the plural of some nouns in English

-s can at the same time have the meaning of 'two similar parts'.

-s can mark the plural and at the same time acquire a word formative function customs colours

The same suffix can be traced in words like linguistics logics science of mathematics

A different case is the wordthe former suffix -s has lost its nature of a morpheme entirely and has merged with the preceding morpheme, thus becoming part of it

J.Molhova calls this process degrammatization (or lexicalization) of grammatical markers.