Grammatical Categories and Markers

Lecture 3

Which are the structural levels of language?

phonologicalphonological

morphologicalmorphological

syntacticalsyntactical

lexico-semanticallexico-semantical

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 aunt’s 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?

• лелината книга • книгата на леля

• 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?

• English noun Bulgarian noun

number числоcaseродgender

• English verb Bulgarian verb tense лице

aspect число

voice време

наклонение

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 • -’s girl-girls girl’s-girls’• verb• -ing • -ed play-playing-played • adjective • -er • -est smart-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

1. adjective;

2. comparative degree.

• The suffix -s in ‘He works’1. verb; 2. Present Simple Tense; 3. 3rd person; 4. singular.

• The suffix –a in жeнa 1. noun;2. feminine; 3. singular.

Can you find some examples of homonymy

with the grammatical suffixes?

• the substantival suffix -s marking the plural of some noun

game-games

is homonymous with

• the verbal suffix -s, marking the 3rd p. sg. of the Present Simple Tense of the verb

work-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

reading

is an homonym with

• the suffix -ing marking the present participle

reading

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-played

is 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

table0º-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 Tense

• the 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 word

• the 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.