2017-12-14
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Notional words possess some morphemic features expressing grammatical (morphological) meanings. These features determine the grammatical form of the word.
The grammatical form units a whole class of words. Each word of the class expresses the corresponding grammatical meaning together with its individual, concrete meaning.
The most general meanings are interpreted in linguistics as categorical grammatical meanings. The categorical meaning (e.g. grammatical number) unites the individual meaning of the correlated paradigmatic forms (e.g. singular – plural).
The grammatical category is a system of expressing a generalized grammatical meaning by means of paradigmatic correlation of grammatical form.
The ordered set of grammatical forms expressing a categorical function constitutes a paradigm.
The paradigmatic correlation of grammatical forms in a category is exposed by “grammatical opposition”. Grammatical opposition is a generalized correlation of lingual forms by means of which a certain function is expressed. The correlated elements (members) of the opposition must possess two types of features: common features and differential features. Common features serve as the basis of contrast, while differential features immediately express the function in question.
The most important type of opposition is the binary privative opposition. The binary privative opposition is formed by a contrastive pair of members in which one member is characterized by the presence of a certain differential feature (mark), while the other member is characterized be the absence of this feature. The member in which the feature is present is called “mark”, “strong” or “positive” and is designated by the symbol + (plus). The member in which the feature is absent is called the “ unmarked”, “weak” or “negative” member, and is designated by the symbol – (minus). (past –present: We worked (strong member) – We work (weak member).
