CATEGORIAL STRUCTURE OF THE WORD

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Grammatical meaning and the means of its expression. Paradigmatic correlation

of individual grammatical forms. Grammatical category as a system of expressing a
generalized grammatical meaning. Oppositional analysis of grammatical category. The
theory of oppositions. The types of oppositions: binary and supra-binary (ternary,
quaternary, etc.) oppositions; privative, gradual, and equipollent oppositions.
Oppositions in grammar. Privative binary opposition as the most important type of
categorial opposition in grammar. The strong (marked, positive) and the weak
(unmarked, negative) members of the opposition, their formal and functional features.
Grammatical category in communication: contextual oppositional reduction
(oppositional substitution). The two types of oppositional reduction: neutralization and
transposition. Synthetical and analytical grammatical forms. The types of synthetical
grammatical forms: outer inflection, inner inflection, and suppletivity. The principle of
identifying an analytical form; grammatical idiomatism of analytical forms. The types of
grammatical categories: immanent and reflective categories, closed and transgressive
categories, constant feature categories and variable feature categories.

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 (e)s: cats,
books, clashes.
:
(cat cats),
(cat cats),
(a cat the cat) ..

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(, cat) (cats).

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Grammatical meanings of notional words are rendered by their grammatical forms. For
example, the meaning of the plural in English is regularly rendered by the grammatical
suffix (e)s: cats, books, clashes. Grammatical meanings of individual grammatical
forms are established as such in paradigmatic correlations: the plural correlates with the
singular (cat cats), the genitive case of the noun correlates with the common case (cat
cats), the definite article determination correlates with the indefinite article
determination (a cat the cat), etc.

The generalized meaning rendered by paradigmatically correlated grammatical forms is

called categorial. Category is a logical notion denoting the reflection of the most
general properties of phenomena. Categorial meanings in grammar are expressed by
grammatical paradigms. For example, within the system of the English noun the
generalized, categorial meaning of number is expressed grammatically through the
paradigmatic correlation (or, opposition in a paradigm) of two members, of two
grammatical forms, each with its own grammatical meaning: the singular (e.g., cat) and
the plural (cats).

Thus, the definition of grammatical category is as follows: grammatical category is a

system of expressing a generalized categorial meaning by means of paradigmatic
correlation of grammatical forms. In other words, it is a unity of a generalized
grammatical meaning and the forms of its expression.

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children .); ,
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: The rose is my favourite flower = (All)
Roses are my favourite flowers.

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, .: big bigger - biggest.
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be: am are is (was were).
Paradigmatic correlations, as shown above, are exposed by oppositions of
grammatical forms - the members of a paradigm. Oppositions are analyzed linguistically
with the help of a special method known as oppositional analysis. N. S. Trubetzkoy, a
member of the Prague Linguistic Circle, developed it at the turn of the 20th century for
the purposes of phonological research; later it became widely employed in the analysis
of grammatical categories. Opposition members are characterized by two types of
features: common features and differential features. Common features serve as the
basis for uniting the grammatical forms within the same paradigm; in the example
above, the two forms, cat and cats, are paradigmatically united as forms of one and the
same word, sharing the categorical grammatical meaning of number. Differential
features serve to differentiate the members of an opposition; for example, the
grammatical form of the plural, cats, has an inflection, or a grammatical suffix, which
the form of the singular, cat, has not.

On the basis of various combinations of common and differential features, several types
of oppositions are distinguished. The prevalent type in English grammar is a binary
privative opposition. The term binary means, that the opposition consists of two
members, or forms; besides binary oppositions, there are oppositions, that may include
more than two members (ternary, quaternary, etc.). The term privative means that
the members of the opposition are characterized by the presence/absence of a certain
differential feature, which serves as the formal mark of one of its members; in the
example above, cat cats, the ending of the plural is its formal mark. The member of

the opposition characterized by the presence of the differential mark is called marked,
strong, or positive (commonly designated by the symbol +). The other member of
the opposition, characterized by the absence of the differential feature, is called
unmarked, weak, or negative (commonly designated by the symbol -). In the
category of number the strong, marked member is the plural form, because it possesses
a special formal mark (either the productive suffix -(e)s, or other formal means, such as
-en in children, etc.), the weak, unmarked member of the opposition is the singular
form, which possesses no special mark. To stress the negative marking of the weak
member it is also defined in oppositional theory with non-terms: e.g., the singular is
referred to as non-plural.

Besides the differences in the form, there are also regular semantic differences between
the members of the privative oppositions: the meaning of the weak member is always
more general and more abstract, while the meaning of the strong member is always
more particular and concrete. Due to this difference in meaning, the weak member of
the opposition is used in a wider range of contexts than the strong member and it can
even regularly substitute the strong member in certain contexts. For example, the
singular form of the noun can be used generically to denote all the objects belonging to
a certain class: The rose is my favourite flower = (All) Roses are my favourite flowers.

Besides privative oppositions, there are gradual and equipollent oppositions, which are
minor types in morphology. Gradual oppositions are formed by a series of members
which are distinguished not by the presence or absence of a differential feature, but by
the degree of it. A gradual morphological opposition in English can be identified only in
the plane of content in the category of comparison, cf.: big bigger - biggest.
Equipollent oppositions are formed by members, which are distinguished by a number of
their own features. An equipollent morphological opposition in English can be identified
in the plane of expression in the paradigms of suppletive forms, for example, in the
correlation of the person and number forms of the verb be: am are is (was were).

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: cat - cats; ,
: goose - geese; ,
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went.
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: beautiful - more beautiful most beautiful.

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- a bit of joy,
the last two items of news, thousands and thousands .

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There are two basic types of means with the help of which grammatical forms are built:
synthetical and analytical. Synthetical (synthetic) grammatical forms are built by means
of the morphemic composition of the word. This includes the morphemic means, which
were described in the previous unit: outer inflexion with the help of adding grammatical
suffixes to the stems of the words, e.g.: cat - cats; inner inflexion, or vowel interchange
inside the root, e.g.: goose - geese; and suppletivity, when different roots are combined
within the same paradigm, e.g.: go went. Analytical grammatical forms are built by the
combination of the notional word with auxiliary words, e.g.: come - have come.
Analytical forms consist of two words which together express one grammatical meaning;
in other words, they are grammatically idiomatic: the meaning of the grammatical form
is not immediately dependent on the meanings of its parts. Analytical grammatical
forms are intermediary between words and word-combinations. Some analytical forms
are closer to a word, because the two parts are inseparable in their grammatical
idiomatism; for example, the forms of the perfect aspect: come - have come. The
components of some other analytical forms are more independent semantically, and
they are less idiomatic grammatically; for example, the degrees of comparison:
beautiful - more beautiful most beautiful. Such combinations of an auxiliary
component and a basic component are treated by some linguists as free wordcombinations, but as they are correlative members of grammatical paradigms and
express some specific grammatical meaning, they should be recognized as analytical
grammatical forms too. Some lexical means regularly involved in the expression of
common grammatical meanings can also be regarded as marginal cases of suppletivity
or specific analytical forms, e.g.: the use of quantifiers with uncountable nouns or
repetition groups a bit of joy, the last two items of news, thousands and thousands,
etc.

Analytical grammatical forms are prevalent in English; modern English is an analytical

type of language.


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: The rose is my favourite flower (=Roses are my favourite flowers) , ,
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ocean, the sands of the desert - ,
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Grammatical oppositions can be reduced in some contextual circumstances, when one
member of the opposition is used with the meaning of the other member, or, in other
words, substitutes its counter-member. This phenomenon in the theory of oppositions is
treated as oppositional reduction or oppositional substitution.

Two types of oppositional reduction can be distinguished in grammar: neutralization and

transposition. Neutralization takes place when the grammatical form, which is used,
loses its own functional meaning and acquires the meaning of its counter-member; in
other words, it becomes functionally equivalent with its oppositional counter-member.
This type of oppositional reduction is stylistically indifferent (neutral); in most cases it
happens when the weak member of the opposition is used in the meaning of the strong
one, e.g.: The rose is my favourite flower (=Roses are my favourite flowers) - the
singular, the weak member of the number category opposition, is used instead of the

plural, the strong member. Transposition takes place in cases where one member of the
opposition preserves to a certain extent its original functional meaning alongside the
meaning of its counterpart; the two functional meanings are actually combined. This
type of oppositional reduction is stylistically marked. Because of the combination of
meanings and the additional stylistic colouring created, transposition can be treated as
a grammatical mechanism of figurativeness, or a grammatical metaphor. In most cases
it happens when the strong member of the opposition is used with the meaning of the
weak one. E.g.: the waters of the ocean, the sands of the desert the plural, the strong
member of the number category opposition, is used instead of the singular, the weak
member.

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: woman
,
she, man - ,
he, tree ,
, it.

Grammatical categories are subdivided into several types. Immanentcategories

render the meaning innate (or, natural) for the words of a particular lexical class; for
example, the category of number is innate for nouns since the referents denoted by
nouns can potentially be counted. Reflective categories serve as a sign of formal

correlation or agreement between the words in an utterance: in English the verbal

number formally reflects the number characteristics of the noun or of the pronoun with
which the verb corresponds in the utterance; in other words, the verbs agree with the
nouns or pronouns in the category of number, e.g.: The man goes - The men go. For
verbs the category of number is not immanent; it is reflective. Immanent categories can
be either transgressive like the category of number, which transgresses the borders of
the noun, or they can be closed, confined within the word-class; for example, the
category of gender of nouns is not reflected by any other word-class in English, so it is a
closed category. Another distinction is based on the changeability of the categorial
feature. Variable feature categories are categories realized in changeable
grammatical forms of words, e.g.: the category of number is a variable feature category,
because most nouns have two forms, the singular and the plural, cat cats. Constant
feature categories reflect the classification of the words according to certain
unchangeable categorial features, e.g.: the category of gender in English is a constant
feature category - the noun woman is of feminine gender, substituted only by the
feminine pronoun she, man is of masculine gender, invariably substituted by he, and
tree - of neuter gender, substituted only by it.

Key terms: category, grammatical category, individual grammatical form (meaning),

categorial grammatical meaning, paradigmatic opposition, common features, differential
features, binary and supra-binary oppositions, privative (equipollent, gradual)
oppositions, formal mark (marker), strong (marked, positive) member of the opposition,
weak (unmarked, negative) member of the opposition, reduction of the opposition
(transposition, neutralization), synthetical forms, outer inflection, inner inflection,
suppletive forms (suppletivity), analytical forms, grammatical idiomatism, immanent
category, reflective category, transgressive category, closed category, constant feature
category, variable feature category