Types of grammatical descriptions:
In British grammar
The normative or prescriptive grammar ( which forms one should use, which not, what is correct, what
not. School grammar is based on the normative grammar.
English as a language of science
descriptive or classical scientific grammar
Appeared in the 19th century. To describe the actual usage. It's task was to teach people and explain everything.It deals with form building - how grammatical forms of words are created.
There are two types how a language creates grammatical forms:
1.synthetic type ( Latvian, Russian)
2.analytical type ( English) -English is so called analytical language. It has few grammatical inflexions.
Synthetic languages – they have very many inflections ( cases)
Analytical languages – very few inflections, grammatical forms are created analytically.
Each language has synthetic and analytical features but one dominates. The point is which kind of forms dominate.
Languages can be related but belong to different forms of language.
1.Affixation ( to create grammatical forms): the root remains, but by affixes we
create other grammatical category.
e.g. work – worked (a new grammatical form),
to live, lived ( a new grammatical form), lively ( another part of speech)
Form building – refers to grammar
Word building – lexicology. New words are derived ( derivation)
Suffixation: - a productive means of creating words.
2.Sound alternation – change of sound ( to change the root phonetically – vowels,
consonants) - irregular words.
It is unproductive way of building of words ( it's no longer used for building of new words).
e.g. noun – foot, - feet, , adjective – better- best, pronoun - he – him
Sound alteration can be combined with suffixation: e.g. knife – knives, also sound change:
this, these [i – i:], [s – z], long, longer [n ng]Suppletive forms: ( another root) – the whole root changes. The form changes
grammatical meaning) but the lexical meaning not. e.g go - went
e.g. I - me. go – went I- we
we I+I+I ( suppletive form), we = I + somebody else ( two different words – lexical meaning is different )
cats = cat + cat + cat
Suppletive form seem to be the oldest (archaic). The number of suppletive forms is very small now.
English – analytical forms ( combinations of words)
e.g. have done . We have recently done it ( recently modifies have +done together)
have done – functional unity ( a phrase). Combination of elements where 1st has no lexical meaning ( it indicates grammar form), has gramm. function, but the 2nd – has lexical meaning. ( has lexical function) There are no syntactical relations between them. There is the , so called '' division of labour'': have – has no lexical meaning , done – has the lexical meaning.…
