2015-06-30
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Контроль усвоения учебного материала осуществляется в ходе учебного процесса как самостоятельно студентами, так и преподавателями:
- ответами на вопросы, предлагаемые для самопроверки;
- устными вопросами по пройденным разделам;
- контрольными работами по темам, выделенным для самостоятельного изучения;
- проверкой конспектов по самостоятельно изучаемым темам;
- зачетом в конце УП семестра;
- экзаменом в конце УШ семестра.
Теоретический материал курса
Темы лекций:
Theme 1. The Aim of Theoretical Grammar.
Theme 2. Units of Linguistic Analysis.
Theme 3. Morphology and Syntax.
Theme 4. Grammatical Oppositions and Grammatical Categories.
Theme 5. Grammatical Means.
Theme 6. Parts of Speech. Part I.
Parts of Speech. Part II.
Theme 7. The Noun: General. The Category of Number.
Theme 8. The Noun: The Category of Case.
Theme 9. The Verb: General.
Theme 10. The Verb: The Finite Forms of the Verb. The Categories of Person, Number, Tense.
Part I.
The Verb: The Finite Forms of the Verb. The Categories of Person, Number, Tense.
Part II.
Theme 11. The Verb: The Non-Finite Forms of the Verb (The Verbids).
Theme 12. The Verb: Aspect.
Theme 13. The Verb: Time Correlation.
Theme 14. The Verb: The Category of Voice.
Theme 15. The Verb: The Category of Mood.
Theme 16. The Problem of the Subjunctive Mood in English.
Theme 17. The Adjective.
Theme 18. The Adverb.
Theme 19. The Main Principles of Syntactic Modeling the Sentence.
Theme 20. The Functional Sentence Perspective.
Theme 21. The Case Grammar.
Theme 22. Pragmatics of the Sentence.
Theme 23. Text and Discourse.
THEME 1. THE AIM OF THEORETICAL GRAMMAR
Plan
1. The definition of grammar. Prescriptive and descriptive grammar.
2. The approaches towards language treatment.
3. The systematic conception of the language.
4. The notion of system.
This theoretical subject is taught that the student a) should get acquainted with adescriptive grammar; b) should understand that the same grammatical phenomenon can be treated differently; c) should get an idea of the scientific method in grammar.
The practical grammar you have learnt up to now is prescriptive. It sets down rules and exceptions to these rules, which are relatively true and useful on the given level of studying English.
Theoretical grammar is not prescriptive, but descriptive. It describes what can be deduced from the English text (written or oral). Its laws are not at all simple and acquire a relative value. They are true only to a certain degree. This subject will teach the student to observe the facts drawn from the text, thus expanding our knowledge, going deeper into details. One can continue perfecting our mastery of grammar long after graduation. One is no longer dependent on the lecturer and grammar books, and can go far beyond the programme. Here are some examples: 1) one is to use the auxiliary shall with the first person of verbs; 2) in the English sentence, as compared with the Russian one, there is only one negation; 3) the possessive case may be used only with animate nouns. Let us examine the statements one by one:
1) It turns out that shall may be used with the second person when we ask a question where the same shall is expected: Shall you do it in time? As to will, it may now be regularly associated with the first person: I will do it immediately.
2) The negation rule formulated above, is very useful for Russians who can pile up a number of negations in their Mother tongue. Compare:
e.g. I have never seen anything of the kind. But in one sentence we can find two, three and more negations in English, too: e.g. Not being able to come, he did not promise to attend the party.
On the force of such examples we modify our rule, which now reads that there is only one negation referring to an English verb. If there are several clauses, complexes or constructions built each around its verb, every one of these clauses may have its own negation. This is a more realistic, if more complicated rule. But even it does not always prove true and requires further modification.
e.g. Not only did he not come, but he did not warn them about it.
He did not do it for nothing.
To explain such sentences we must take into consideration the fact that not only … but and for nothing are not negations. After some further attentive work with the text, we shall come across further complications.
As we see, real structure of the English language is very complicated, and the deeper we go into it, the more involved we get in its intricacies. Grammar may describe the real structure from various standpoints, in different units, depending on the aim and the level of teaching.
At school you were taught that the English verb has several tenses: present indefinite, past continuous, future perfect, etc. While studying the verb from the practical grammars by V.G. Kaushanskaya and others, M.A. Ganshina, N.M.Vasilevskaya, or E.M.Gordon, I.P. Krylova you found out that continuous is not a tense, but an aspect. Thus past perfect continuous is not only a tense, but the past perfect tense of the continuous aspect. In the present course of lectures it will be attempted to prove that perfect is neither tense nor aspect, but a new grammatical category of order. Thus what we name past perfect continuous (He had been running) is past tense, continuous aspect, and perfect order.
The question arises: which of the three treatments of the same fact is correct? That will depend on the aim and other circumstances of teaching. At school, where the pupils get superficially acquainted with the structure of English, quite different categories are represented as one, as tense. More thorough knowledge of the language makes such an approach insufficient.
Note: the real state of the things is so complicated that no definition, theory or classification can exhaustively cover all the details and particulars. As J.W. Goethe put it, reality cannot be divided by reason without a remnant (Cyщee нe дeлится нa paзум без oстаткa.).
There will always be some facts which do not fit into any kind of classification. Reflecting upon the philosophical helplessness of linguistics, American linguists take two opposite assumptions in their grammatical investigations:
a) "The God’s truth" assumption proceeds from the fact that there is only one law, one rule, one dependence or relation, and it is the linguists task to bring it to light.
b) "The hocus-pocus" assumption presupposes no objective laws, rules, systems, or order of things in the language itself. It is the grammarian who creates the laws from his own logical interpretation of facts (his phantasy and, maybe, mood).
The solution of this controversy can be found in the Marxist theory of dialectical materialism, namely, in the treatment of objective absolute and relative truth. The laws are objective, they existed, before the linguist was born, they exist, and will exist after he dies. But they are complicated and the more one studies them the greater are the intricacies one discovers. They cannot be exhaustively revealed. But the more we study them, the closer we approach the reality. Our theory will be better if it is adequate to a greater variety of real constructions, if it is less contradictory and if it is simpler. And how are we to estimate which is better and which is worse? The revolutionary Marxists rely here upon practice. If the grammar satisfies our practical demands in reading, speaking correctly, writing and understanding the English spoken, the grammar is relatively true.
CONCLUSION. Since several grammatical theories may be relatively true, there may be several different grammars, each of them more suitable and preferable in its own field of application, for its own purpose. For example, how many articles are there in English? Some grammars acknowledge two: definite and indefinite. Other grammars also speak of the zero-article. The former theory is simpler by far, and is usually preferred. But the latter has its advantages, especially in teaching Russian learners: it proceeds from the fact that any English noun must have some kind of an article (or other determiner), so the absence of any of them demands an explanation, a rule.
Theoretical grammar must be scientific: it must choose one or several theories and explain why it has been preferred to others. More than that, we must see the advantages of other theories, though their platforms and conclusions may in some respects go contrary to the one followed by the lecturer.
According to the viewpoint accepted in this country the noun has two cases: the common case (the teacher, the boy) and the possessive case (the teacher's, the boy's). The personal pronoun, which regularly replaces the noun in the text, has two cases corresponding to the common case of nouns: the nominative case (I, he, they) and the objective case (me, him, them). Compare: The teacher helps the boy (I help him) - The boy helps the teacher (He helps me).
Two cases of the pronoun correspond to one case of the noun, because only the pronoun has two different forms (I - me, he – him, they - them) to perform the function of the subject and the object in the sentence. There is a special form to replace the possessive case of nouns: the boy's teacher - his teacher; the teacher's boy - my boy. But only few grammarians who consider my, his, their, etc. to be the possessive case of personal pronouns (John Nesfield). We regard my, his, their not to be case forms of I, he, they, but independent words, constituting quite a different class of pronouns: possessive pronouns. There are several reasons for such a kind of treatment, among them, the existence of two forms of possessive pronouns (my – mine, their – theirs), corresponding to only one form of the possessive case of nouns.
The term “possessive case” is used in some grammars because one of the most frequent meanings of this case is “possession, belonging”. But many grammarians prefer the term “genitive case”, which has a justification: historically this form has developed from the Old English genitive case and this term makes it easy to compare the category of case in English with its Russian, German or Latin equivalents.
Thus theoretical grammar sets as its task one of the major aims in higher education: to teach a student how he or she should approach and treat any problem independently. It encourages independent thinking. The university trains the student for working on the existing programs and books. But in some years both the programs and textbooks are sure to change. Then the graduate who has acquired independence, will be able to digest the new ideas and adapt himself or herself for new ways of teaching.
From this point of view, theoretical grammar, just like other theoretical subjects, is one of the most important subjects in the curriculum.
References:
1. Биренбаум, Я.Г. Philosophy of Grammar / Я.Г. Биренбаум. – Киров: изд-во КГПИ, 1994. – С. 4-11.
2. Блох, М.Я. Практикум по теоретической грамматике английского языка: учебное пособие / М.Я. Блох, Т.Н. Семенова, С.В. Тимофеева. – М.: Высш. шк., 2004. – С. 3-5.
3. Ильиш, Б.А. Строй современного английского языка (теоретический курс): учебное пособие / Б.А. Ильиш. – M.-Л.: Просвещение, 1965. – С. 7-14.
