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3.What is the difference between theoretical grammar and practical grammar?

4.What does morphology study? What does syntax study?

5.Provide a definition of the grammatical meaning of the word.

6.What is the general grammatical meaning of the class of nouns?

7.Are there any classes of words that possess grammatical meaning only?

8.What word classes are devoid of any lexical meaning?

9.What does the notion ―implicit‖ mean?

10.What is the difference between the explicit and implicit grammatical meaning?

11.What does the dependent grammatical meaning indicate?

12.Provide various examples of the implicit dependent grammatical meaning you can think of.

13.Provide a definition of the grammatical category.

14.Provide a linguistic definition of the opposition.

15.What is the difference between ―language‖ and ―speech‖?

16.How many levels are there in the structure of language? What are the basic level units?

SEMINAR 2

Grammatical Classes of Words

Theory of Parts of Speech

Discussion:

1.The notion of a part of speech. Criteria for differentiating classes of words: semantic, formal and functional.

2.Traditional classification.

3.Syntactico-distributional classification into parts of speech by Ch. Fries.

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4. Notional and functional parts of speech.

Practice:

1.What parts of speech do the following words belong to? Prove your answer with an appropriate context for each case (there may be homonyms): well, exactly, since, up, waste, green, game, in, west, one.

2.Define the parts of speech of the given words according to different classifications: travel, bride, for, quickly, greedy, of, advice, strange, soon, enter, sheepish.

3.What part of speech do the underlined words belong to?

1.He paused a little before replying slowly.

2.Ten years after his famous experiment was performed.

3.His work began at eight and he went on working till midnight.

4.Too tired to work he went to bed.

5.I have just had dinner.

6.Don’t trouble troubles until troubles trouble you.

7.I am sorry to bother you, but there is no one else I can turn to.

8.Perhaps – and this is a big perhaps – these two notions can be identified with each other.

4.State to what part of speech the underlined units belong. Prove your point by providing semantic, formal and syntactic (functional) criteria.

Harry woke up early next morning. Although he could tell it was day-

light, he kept his eyes shut tight.

"It was a dream," he told himself firmly. "I dreamed of a giant called Hagrid came to tell me I was going to a school for wizards. When I open my eyes I'll be at home in my cupboard."

There was suddenly a loud tapping noise.

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"And there's Aunt Petunia knocking on the door," Harry thought, his Inart sinking. But he still didn't open his eyes. It had been such a good dream.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

"All right," Harry mumbled, "I'm getting up."

He sat up and Hagrid's heavy coat fell off him. The hut was full of sunlight, the storm was over, Hagrid himself was asleep on the collapsed sofa and there was an owl rapping its claw on the window, a newspaper held in her beak.

(J.K. Rowling. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone)

5.State whether the underlined units belong to notional or functional parts of speech. Prove it by using semantic, formal and functional criteria.

1.―Talking of flats,‖ she said, ―have you heard of our piece of luck, Mr.Parker? We’ve got a flat – at last!‖ (A.Christie).

2.She must be very charming for Mr. Ashley to take notice of her,‖ remarked Louise. ―I have never heard him admire a woman yet.‖ (M. Mitchell).

3.The bonds seem literally to have vanished into the air. (A.Christie).

4.That isn’t too far from this crumby place, and he comes over and visits me practically every week end. (J.D. Salineger).

5.To be perfectly frank, my dear, I simply can’t see you doing it.‖ (D. du

Maurier).

6.Read the sentences given below. Define each word as a part of speech and name its function in the sentence.

1.Roy was very modest about his first novel.

2.On the way home Crane no longer drove like a nervous old maid.

3.He was surprised to see a little boy pick up a big fish.

Terminology:

Functional part a part of speech having a partial nominative value.

Test questions:

1.Why are parts of speech defined as lexico-gramrmatical word classes?

2.Why are the parts of speech interdependent?

3.What approaches to the parts of speech classification can be singled out?

4.Who was the first scholar to develop the theory of word classes?

5.What was Aristotle's criterion for discriminating between parts of speech?

6.What are the main principles of Henry Sweet's classification?

7.On what principle is the theory of ―The Three Ranks‖ based?

8.How does Ch.Fries define notion of "the structural meaning of the sentence"?

9.What does the complex approach to the parts of speech classification presuppose?

10.What does the semantic aspect of the word class grouping mean? 11.What does the formal criterion reveal?

12.What two basic groups of words do you know? What are the notional parts of speech? What are the functional parts of speech?

13.Why is the parts of speech classification far from being perfect?

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SEMINAR 3

Noun and Its Categories

Discussion:

1.The Noun. Its grammatical meaning, structure and functional properties.

2.The noun category of number.

3.Noun categories: gender, case.

4.Article determination of a noun. The problem of an article. Classification and functional properties.

Practice:

1.Characterize each of the nouns according to their lexico-grammatical status: John, house, cattle, rice, idea.

e.g.: doctor – common, animate, human, countable, concrete.

2.Comment on the syntactic functions of the nouns.

1.The girl is extremely beautiful in her sharkskin dress. 2. This thought dogs me. 3. The governor’s secretary posted the letter too late. 4. They were strangers in this town. 5. She is a teacher of English.

3.Comment on the attributive word-groupings. Translate them into Russian.

Trade talks. Consumer goods. Food sales. Exchange rate. Long-term credits. Power station equipment. Cane sugar price. Coal supply situation. Profit and loss account

4.Give the feminine counterparts for the following masculine gender nouns and comment on the lexical means of expressing the gender: boyfriend, landlord, lion, bridegroom, horse, actor, master, wizard, bachelor, cock, he-bear, businessman, beau, Tom-cat, marquis.

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7.Group the following nouns into: a) regular countables; b) uncountables;

c)Pluralia tantum; d) Singularia tantum nouns:

army, cavalry, crowd, joy, wish, peace, advice, family, money, hair, sugar,

shorts, breakfast, air, illness, jury.

8.Comment on the functions of the definite article (identifying, definitizing, individualzing) and of the meaningful absence of the article used as a generalizer in the following text.

HOW TO PASS A FEDERAL LAW IN THE US

A Senator or representative must introduce a bill by sending it to the clerk of his house, who gives it a number and title. This is the first reading. The bill is then referred to a committee.

If the committee decides the bill is unwise or unnecessary they table it — which kills it at once (tabling a bill means something quite different in Britain). If they decide the bill is worthwhile, they have hearings and invite experts and interested persons. They then debate the bill, perhaps offer amendments, then take a vote; if that is favorable, the bill goes back to the floor of its house, is read sentence by sentence by the clerk (the second reading) and then debated. (In the House of Representatives there is a cloture rule to limit the time for the debate. This is not so in the Senate except by 2/3 vote for cloture, hence the possibility of a filibuster in which one or more opponents hold the floor endlessly to defeat the bill.) The third reading is by title alone; the bill is then voted on. If it is passed it goes to the other house of Congress where it may be defeated and die. If it is passed with amendments, a joint Congressional committee must be appointed by both houses to iron out the differences.

If the bill is passed by both houses, it is sent to the President. If he vetoes the bill goes back to the house of origin for further debate and vote. The bill must now get a 2/3 majority or it dies. If it is passed again, it goes to the other house for a vote. If that house also passes it, the President's veto is overruled and

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it becomes law. If the President has no objections when he gets the bill the first time, he signs it and it becomes law. If the President gets a bill he wishes neither to sign nor to veto, he may retain it for 10 days (Sundays excluded) and it becomes law automatically. If Congress has adjourned in those 10 days, however, the bill is lulled. (The Diagram Group, How to Hold a Crocodile)

9.Use the appropriate articles, define their meaning and prove it with the help of substitution test.

1.… dog is an animal.

2.That evening after dinner he had … return of … dizziness, as yesterday.

3.They went to hunt … wolf.

4.It was … clear evening, with … bright moon.

5.Let us sit down for … moment.

6.… children continued to gallop about the room and didn’t pay attention to their mother.

Terminology:

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tum nouns (Absolute singular nouns)

Test questions:

1.By what criteria can the noun be characterized?

2.What groups of nouns can be singled out?

3.What is the main syntactic feature of the noun as a part of speech?

4.What does the term ―singularia tantum‖ mean?

5.What does the term ―pluralia tantum‖ mean?

6.Provide an example where the number opposition is not expressed formally.

7.How is the grammatical category of number realized?

8.What restricts the realization of the case category?

9.Why is the article defined as a function word?

10.Provide an example of the indefinite article used as a generalizer.

11.What article is used with concrete nouns in generic sense?

12.In what way is the concretizing function of the article carried out?

13.What are the functions of the meaningful absence of the article?

SEMINAR 4

Verb and Its Categories

Discussion:

1.Semantical, morphological and syntactical characteristics of English verbs. Classifications of verbs.

2.The category of person and number.

3.The category of time and aspect.

4.The category of voice.

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5.The category of mood.

6.The non-finite forms of the verbs.

Practice:

1.In the text fragment below point out all units that can be defined as verbs and comment on their semantic, morphological and syntactic characteristics.

The class everyone had really been looking forward to was Defence

Against the Dark Arts, but Quirrell's lessons turned out to be a bit of joke. His classroom smelled strongly of garlic, which everyone said was to ward off a vampire he'd met in Romania and was afraid would be coming back to get him once of these days. His turban, he told them, had been given to him by an African prince as a thank-you for getting rid of a troublesome zombie, but they weren't sure they believed this story. For one thing, when Seamus Finnigan asked eagerly to hear how Quirrell had fought the zombie, Quirrell went pink and started talking about the weather; for another, they had noticed that a funny smell hung around the turban and the Weasley twins insisted that it was stuffed full of garlic as well, so that Quirrell was protected wherever he went.

(J.K.Rowling. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone)

2.State what subclasses the following verbs belong to. Provide examples to illustrate each case.

E.g.: to be –1) a notional verb (To be or not to be.);

2)an auxiliary verb (to be going, to be frightened);

3)a modal verb (You are to stay here.);

4)a pure link verb (He is a poet.).

to have, can, to turn, shall, should, to spend, will, would, to grow, to expect,

to get, may, to feel, to remain.