PART II. ENGLISH MORPHOLOGY

CHAPTER 1. THE PROBLEM OF PARTS OF SPEECH AND THEIR

INTERACTION

"Parts of speech are metaphors because the whole nature is a metaphor of a human mind"

R. W.Emerson

1. The position of parts of speech in the system of the language.

2. The criteria of classifying the lexicon into parts of speech.

3. The cognitive-discursive approach to parts of speech.

4. The system of parts of speech in English. Notional and functional words. The borderline between notional and functional words.

5. The field (prototypical) structure of parts of speech. Interaction between parts of speech. Syntactic transposition as a means of parts-of-speech interaction in English. The functions of transposition.

1. Earlier we stated that considered from the aspect of its internal systemic properties language presents a structured system of signs. It is a huge system and it consists of many subsystems. One of the most important subsystems in any language is the system of parts of speech which reflects the categorization of words into classes. The necessity for such a categorization was understood from the early days of linguistics. The first classification of vocabulary into groups, or classes was made by ancient Greeks and this system of classification has come to be known as "parts of speech" ("parts orationis"). The term "parts of speech" came to stay, though theoretically it is not very precise because in fact we deal with the classification of words on the level of language and not speech, but the term has survived, partially through tradition and largely due to the great respect for ancient scholars and their contribution to linguistics. We shall use the terms "parts of speech" and "classes of words" as synonyms.

The ancient Greeks believed that there exists a basic correlation between the way the world is organized and the way language is organized. Thus, they supposed that the world consists of two basic parts: entities or things and processes which relate these entities to one another, i.e. things and what these things do. This relationship was reflected in the two main parts of speech first pointed out by Aristotle: the Name and the Verb ( to which he later added the Adjective and the Adverb). The present day linguistics however is more focused not on the world outside us, i.e. the physical environment but rather on the world inside us, i.e. the reflection of this world in the human mind (the picture of the world), the conceptualization and categorization of the world by the human mind. This new focus has important consequences for the further development of parts-of-speech theory, consequences which we shall discuss later in this chapter.

Parts of speech occupy the central position in the language system as they present the meeting point of the two main domains of the language: its lexicon and grammar. Therefore they are indispensable for both the theory of the language and the language acquisition. It is impossible to present a word in a dictionary without placing it into a certain part of speech. Nor is it possible to explain the meaning of a word in the process of teaching a language, especially a foreign language without identifying its part-of-speech belonging. As for a native language such an explanation is not always necessary just because the parts-of-speech classification is actually a part of language competence which is partially innate (many scholars believe in the existence of the so-called language instinct in human beings [Pinker 1994]). This language instinct prompts native speakers, at least in the case of prototypical representatives of parts of speech), that "a doll" is a noun and "to play" is a verb. This supposition was made by L.V.Scherba who said that children have intuitive knowledge of the grammatical categories of their native language and it is just enough "to put labels", i.e. to give names to these categories thus turning this language intuition into conscious knowledge [ITJ,ep6a 1957, 83]. Experiments conducted with deaf-and-dumb children also give evidence to the fact that these children differentiate between generalized meanings of thingness, action and property [cited from: JleoHTbes 1969, 171]. However, in case of less prototypical representatives of parts of speech ( e.g. such nouns as generosity or refusal which name not objects but qualities and actions) language intuition alone may turn out to be insufficient and we need more reliable principles of classification.

2. How is the classification of the vocabulary into parts of speech carried out? It is possible to classify words either on the basis of one criterion (the so-called monodifferential approach) or on the basis of several criteria (polydifferential approach) [Bjiox 2000, 66]. Grammatical theory has known both the approaches. Let us analyze some examples of the first approach. Taking the morphological (formal) principle for the basis of his classification of the Russian vocabulary F.F. Fortunatov divided all the words into changeable and unchangeable, and changeable words were subdivided into words with declension (i.e. nouns, adjectives) and words with conjugation (i.e.verbs) [OopTynaTOB 1900, 88, 238]. This principle is rather vulnerable because such Russian words as najibmo, Kaume etc. are not declinable, and yet they are nouns because they name things. A similar classification was made by H.Sweet on the material of the English language, but probably realizing the inadequacy of the morphological criterion alone, Sweet' completed his classification by adding the syntactic criterion to it [Sweet 1955].

The American scholar Ch. Fries built his system of word classes on the basis of syntactic criterion. He started from the assumption that words could be classified adequately only on the basis of their syntactic position in the sentence. To carry out such a classification he used the following three sentences with most typical syntactic structures:

1. The concert was good (always).

2. The team -went there.

3. The clerk remembered the tax (suddenly).

These sentences were used by him as diagnostic frames. For his field material he used fifty hours of recorded conversations. With the help of substitution test he divided all the notional words into four classes. All the words that can occupy the position of concert, clerk and team in sentences 1, 2, and 3 and the position of tax in sentence 3 were referred to class 1; the words that can occupy the position of remembered and went were referred to class 2; the words that can occupy the position of good in sentence 1 and can be put in between the and words of class 1 were referred to class 3 and, finally, the words that fitted the position of there, always, suddenly were put in class 4. Ch.Fries did not use the traditional terms for these classes, he just numbered them, but in fact his classes correspond to the traditional nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. The remaining 154 words of his field material that did not fit in the positions of the four classes were referred to function words with further subdivision, on the basis of the same substitution test, into 15 subclasses for which he did not use the traditional terms either, but just named them alphabetically ( class A, B, C, ...O) [Fries 1961]. His classification appears to be very simple, workable, convenient for practical purposes but it ignores one very important aspect of the parts-of-speech phenomenon - the dynamic character of the parts-of-speech system, i.e. the ability of parts of speech for interaction, for an exchange of their syntactic functions in the process of speech production. Besides their primary syntactic functions, typical of their part of speech, words may also be used in their secondary syntactic functions and yet remain within their class. E.g. The concert was a treat. According to Fries's classification the word treat must be referred to class 3, yet we know it is a noun used in the position typical of adjectives.

The word, like any unit of language, possesses three main aspects: meaning, form and function. None of these three aspects taken isolatedly from the other two appear to be sufficient. The most adequate classification should be based on the combination of these three aspects of a word, therefore most of the classifications presented by grammarians are polydifferential.

Words belonging to one part of speech possess a common categorial meaning. Categorial meanings are such generalized abstract meanings as

substance, or thingness for nouns, action for verbs, property for adjectives and property of property for adverbs.

These generalized grammatical meanings present lingual representations of the most important concepts (units of the mental world). The human mind has an ability to conceptualize reality in a variety of ways. It can construe as substance not only objects of reality but also other phenomena (actions, properties and relations), thus imparting to them the categorial meaning of thingness. Therefore linguists differentiate between the so-called ontological objects (which correspond to real objects of the physical world) and gnoseological objects (other phenomena of reality conceptualized as objects, these are "objects in the mind", i.e. in the conceptual picture of the world).

There is certainly a correlation between the real world and parts of speech (which was pointed out by the ancient Greeks), but this correlation is not always one to one because one and the same phenomenon of the world can be construed differently by the human mind and thus find a different representation in the system of parts of speech. This ability of the human mind to construe reality in different ways was first pointed out by A. I. Smirnitsky [CMHpHHijKHH 1959, 102]. Nouns are typically used to name things and verbs -to name actions, but just because the human mind can construe reality in a variety of ways, nouns and verbs are not limited to those cases only. A noun can name a thing (a book), an action (a ride), a property (kindness), a relation (friendship) etc.; a verb can name an action (do), a state (sleep), a property (widen), a display of emotion (admire). This absence of one-to-one correlation between reality, its conceptualization by the human mind and its representation in the system of parts of speech actually determines the structure of parts of speech (the existence of central and peripheral units, or, in other terminology, prototypical and less prototypical units) and the interaction between parts of speech which will be discussed later in this chapter.

General grammatical meanings find their manifestation in the formal (morphological) properties; Therefore morphological properties of words (both derivational and inflectional) are also important markers of their parts-of-speech belonging. Words belonging to one part of speech possess common derivational affixes and common grammatical categories. Sometimes these formal morphological markers help us to identify the word's class even if we do not know its meaning, e.g. the word deforestation is a noun because it has a noun-building suffix -tion, and upped (The government upped the customs tax) is definitely a verb, because it has a tense marker.

The semantic properties of words are projected into their functional (syntactic) properties. Words denoting substance are best suited for the syntactic positions of subject and object, words denoting actions are used in the position of the predicate etc. Thus words belonging to one part of speech are characterized by the common syntactic functions in the sentence. Here we

mean primary syntactic functions only. These primary syntactic functions are: subject, object and predicative for nouns, predicate for verbs, attribute and predicative for adjectives and adverbial modifier for adverbs. Realizing their secondary syntactic functions words actually leave the territory of their own class (from the point of view of their syntactic behaviour) and function on the syntactic territory of other parts of speech thus making the borderlines between different parts of speech not closed but rather penetratable.

The role of these three criteria varies for different parts of speech within one language. For adverbs in English the morphological criterion is not so important (only adverbs of manner have the grammatical category of degrees of comparison) and adverbs form a class of words on the basis of their categorial meaning (property of property) and their syntactic functioning (adverbial modifiers' of various types). The role of these criteria also differs considerably across languages. For highly inflectional languages like Russian and German the morphological criterion plays a more important role than for isolating languages like Chinese and Vietnamese where parts of speech are differentiated mostly on the basis of their syntactic positions in the language [^xohtob 1968, 73]. Thus parts of speech are large lexico-grammatical classes of words differentiated on the basis of their semantic, morphological and syntactic properties.

In English some words have clear morphological part-of-speech markers and their status can be identified on the basis of these markers (e.g. a runner, beautiful, to identify etc.). But a lot of words have a simple morphological structure (and English certainly likes short words!), besides there are a lot of homonymous suffixes (e.g. the suffix - s), many words are easily converted from one' part of speech into another (a mother -to mother; to say - a say etc.) and therefore the part-of-speech status of such words can be identified only on the basis of their syntactic position in the sentence. E.g., what part of speech is the form "eyes'? The usual answer of students is: "It is a noun in the plural form". But it can also be a verb as in the following sentence: "She always eyes strangers suspiciously". So very often the functional criterion in English plays a decisive role in the part-of-speech identification of a word.

3. The development of cognitive linguistics which regards lingual phenomena as representations of cognitive structures and which states that language as the totality of all its elements reflects the conceptual picture of the world brought about the necessity to analyze the parts of speech from the cognitive point of view. Viewed from this aspect, parts of speech are considered to be the main vectors through which the humans perceive, cognize and verbalize the world and their place in it. The cognitive approach to the analysis of linguistic fact is closely related to the communicative approach, as the cognitive function of language is correlated with its communicative function- language is a means of forming, storing and transmitting information (knowledge) in the process of communication.

The cognitive approach to parts of speech, at least in this country, came as the further development of the onomasiological approach which focused on the correlation between parts of speech and the phenomena of the world (words were treated as entities reflecting the objective world) [Ky6paKOBa 1978]. The object of analysis in cognitive linguistics is 'the world in our minds', i. e. the conceptual picture of the world. Analyzed from the cognitive point of view, parts of speech are treated as linguistic units, which are correlated with certain structures of knowledge and which reflect this knowledge in their categorial semantics. On the other hand parts of speech are created for their further participation in the process of communication. Cognitive linguistics treats parts of speech as special cognitive-discursive units which represent the two main aspects of language - cognitive and discursive (communicative) which are closely correlated and which have a deep conceptual basis. The attribute 'cognitive' implies that parts of speech are related to psychic, mental and cognitive processes and primarily to certain structures of knowledge and present the projection of the conceptual picture of the world into the system of language. The term 'discursive' implies the other main aspect of parts of speech: they are created to participate in the process of communication and therefore are projected into certain positions in the structure of the sentence as the main unit of communication (for a more detailed analysis see [ Ky6pflKOBa 2004, 189-252]).

As you can see from the previous analysis made mostly along the traditional lines the cognitive approach to parts of speech does not reject the traditional approach but adds to it considerably. The traditional approach built the parts-of-speech classification on the basis of the inner properties of language; the onomasiological approach had at its basis the correlation between the real -world and its representation in the system of parts of speech; the cognitive approach is focused on the way the conceptual picture of the world is reflected in the language and parts of speech appear to be the main tools of representing this picture.

The cognitive approach to parts of speech with its emphasis on the mental processes participating in the classification of vocabulary is concerned with the analysis of relations between concepts as components of the mental world and their representation in the system of parts of speech. This analysis shows that the relations between concepts and their linguistic representation are not always one-to-one, but very often it is more intricate and complicated. There is a basic parallelism between concepts and their representation in the parts of speech: when we construe reality in the system of parts of speech the concept of an object is often presented in the form of a noun, the concept of an action finds a verbal representation and the concept of a property is presented by an adjective. Yet this fundamental parallelism is often broken as our mind has an ability to present as nouns not only objects but other phenomena of the world: actions (a race), qualities (kindness, forgetfulness) and states (delirium), or to present not only actions but both actions and their participants in the form of the verb (to kidnap), or actions and their characteristics (to shuffle). Thus one and the same part of speech may unite words representing various concepts and on the other hand one and the same concept may be represented by different parts of speech. This fact accounts for the complexity of the parts-of-speech structure.

4. The first stage of classifying the vocabulary into parts of speech is the division of words into notional and functional. The two subsystems are differentiated on the basis of the same criteria. The semantic difference between the notional and functional words is that the former have a full nominative value, i.e. they name objects, actions of the real world and their properties as they are conceptualized by the human mind and the latter are not correlated directly to objects or actions. They express relations between objects and actions (they are also called relationship words) and also attitudes and thus have a partial nominative value: Their specialization in expressing relations brings them very close to grammatical affixes, which becomes very obvious in the cross-linguistic analysis: most meanings of Russian case forms of nouns correspond to prepositions in English (nanucano EauponoM - -written by Byron). Notional words present an open class - the more we learn about reality the more words appear in the language to name new phenomena, therefore the number of notional words is theoretically limitless. The number of function words in any language is limited, they are basically a closed class (though few function words were added to English in the course of its development and occasionally notional words may function in the positions of functional ones).

The two classes also differ morphologically: notional words have grammatical categories and functional words have none. The functional difference between the two classes is also very distinct: each class of notional words is primarily designed for a certain syntactic position in the sentence which becomes its primary syntactic function. Functional words have no syntactic functions of their own. They either accompany notional words and are used in the syntactic positions together with them (articles and prepositions), or accentuate certain parts of the sentence (particles), or connect parts of the sentence and/or sentences (conjunctions), or stand outside the sentence structure and form a kind of projection on the information presented in the sentence expressing the speaker's emotional or judgmental attitude to this information (interjections, particles and modal words).

Both the notional and the functional words are indispensable for the language structure, but they fulfil different roles in it. Metaphorically speaking, notional words present the bricks of the language and functional words are the cement that keeps the bricks together in the process of constructing a building

(the sentence). Functional words exist in all languages but their number and their significance vary across languages. As S. Pinker points out, functional words "capture the grammatical look and feel of the language" [Pinker 1994, 118]. E.g., the number and the frequency of particles is considered to be one of the characteristic typological features of a language. According to some scholars [Coseriu 1980; Heinrichs 1981], Russian, German and Greek are the so-called "particle" languages. Most particles present language-specific words and have no parallels in other languages. Therefore they are most difficult for translation and some linguists suppose that generally particles are "untranslatable" ( e.g. try to translate into English "IJpuexamb-mo r epxd-nu npuedy, a yjtc Hanucamb-mo nanuiuy").

In highly inflectional languages where syntactic roles of words in the sentence are expressed by the grammatical form of words functional words appear to have a less significant value. In analytical languages like English the role of functional words, 'especially prepositions, is very significant because they often manifest the syntactic and the semantic role of a word in the sentence.

In spite of the clear-cut difference between the notional and functional words the borderline between them is not absolutely rigid but rather gradual. Some functional words were derived from the forms of notional words ( e.g. the conjunction provided was derived from Participle II, the preposition notwithstanding goes back to the form of Participle I); adverbs may be occasionally used in the function of conjunctions (Once you said it you are committed) and modal words (Luckily, he escaped), function words are occasionally converted into notional ( But me no butsl There is a bigjfto if), or serve as the basis for deriving new notional words (The question is very iffy}

The group of notional words in English comprises nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, numerals, and pronouns. The class of functional words includes articles, prepositions, conjunctions, particles, modal words, and interjections. Here we present the traditional, most widely recognized parts-of-speech classification. However there is no unanimous opinion about the number and the belonging of some parts of speech. B.A.Ilyish considers the so called statives (words like asleep, awake, ablaze etc.) as a separate class of notional words [Ilyish 1971, 74-76]; M.Y.Blokh points out the synsemantic character of pronouns and refers them to functional words [Bjiox 2000, 74-75].

Indeed, semantically the class of pronouns differs considerably from the other notional classes because they do not name objects or properties but just point to something already named. A.A.Reformatsky aptly compares them to paper money which functions, for the sake of convenience, thanks to the existence of gold fund. This "gold fund" of pronouns is the notional words without which the pronouns are devalued [Pe<f>opMaTCKHH 1967, 70], Indeed, in their categorial semantics pronouns are closer to functional- words. Yet their

morphological properties, (the categories of person, number and case in personal pronouns, the number in demonstrative and reflexive pronouns) and their syntactic features (the ability to function as parts of the sentence, e.g. The pleasure is mine) prevent us from referring them to functional words unreservedly. A similar argumentation may be used about the class of numerals which do not name objects but just add a quantitative characteristic to the class of nouns. The class of numerals is comparatively closed, which is not characteristic of notional classes,, they have no grammatical categories of their own, neither do they have syntactic positions of their own (except cases like Two and two makes four) and functionally they are characterized as pro-adjectives. This specific character of numerals in the class of notional words was pointed out by V.G.Admoni who said that numerals should be placed at the periphery of notional words [AflMOHH 1968, 98 -106]. The marginal position of numerals finds reflection in their presentation in dictionaries. Some dictionaries present them as a separate part of speech, others - refer them to the class of adjectives.

5. The parts of speech are characterized by a field, or a prototypical structure. The term field structure'" is not new. It appeared within the functional analysis of language and was first introduced by the Czech linguists. The term "prototypical is relatively new. It was borrowed into linguistics from cognitive psychology [Rosch 1973, 1975] and became very popular almost ousting the term "field structure". However, these two terms are very closely related. Both accentuate the fact that categories as not closed but open and have .fuzzy boundaries with a continuum space between them. Both presuppose the existence of the centre and a periphery within a category. The centre is represented by units which possess the maximum number of categorial features. These units are called prototypes, or prototypical members of the category. The peripheral units may lack some features of the given category and have, at the same time, some features of other, intersecting categories. The prototypical approach to the analysis of linguistic categories appears to be more elaborated because it has been supported by the psychological and linguophilosophical studies [Wittgenstein 1953].

The field structure of parts of speech has a double manifestation. First, analyzing the notional parts of speech we can speak about the central, or cardinal and peripheral classes . The cardinal parts of speech are the noun, the verb, the adjective and the adverb [Bjiox 2000, 74]. Their central position in the system of parts of speech is determined by the fact that they present a projection of the real world and its properties conceptualized by the human mind and presented by the language. They may be considered as linguistic correlates of the objective world i.e. matter and its properties reflected by the human mind. They may be presented as a three-level hierarchic structure. The upper level is taken up by the noun as the language analogue of matter itself in all its forms; the second level is occupied by the verb and the adjective that present the properties of matter, dynamic (the verb) and static (the adjective). The lowest level in this structure is taken up by the adverb which expresses secondary properties (properties of properties) of matter discovered, or established by the - - - human mind on the basis of the primary properties. These secondary properties qualitative, temporal, locative, causative, conditional and other

- characteristics of the action which have linguistic correlates in adverbs of time, place, manner etc., and gradation of quality which is correlated with adverbs of degree. Graphically it may be presented in the following diagram:

Thus we may conclude that the most important components of the conceptual picture of reality are projected into the four parts of speech, which explains their central position in the system of parts of speech.

Their central position is also supported syntactically: these four parts of speech "cover" the positions of all parts of the sentence (the subject, predicate, object, attribute and adverbial modifier). The notion of the lexical paradigm of nomination [Bjiox 2000, 75-78] which presents a four-member paradigmatic set of nominal, verbal, adjectival and adverbial representation of the same stem ( e.g. silence - to silence - silent - silently) also proves the "privileged" position of these four parts of speech. The notion of the lexical paradigm of nomination is also very important in the cross-linguistic aspect. One and the same concept may be 'packed' into different parts of speech in different languages which results in numerous cases of cross-linguistic asymmetry in parts of speech and which may lead to mistakes caused by the interference of the mother tongue, e.g. English: / agree - Russian: % cozjiacen\ English: She was late - Russian: Ona onosdajia.

The other two classes: numerals and pronouns as we have already pointed out form the transitional zone between the notional and functional classes.

Secondly, within each notional part of speech there exist central and peripheral units. The central units are characterized by the presence of all the features of their class and thus by a certain symmetry of semantic, morphological, and syntactic properties. E.g. the noun man presents an example of a prototypical noun: it denotes a human being ( i.e. "living thing"), has the grammatical categories of number and person and is primarily used in the syntactic positions of subject, object and predicative (in its classifying function). Thus it occupies the central position in the class of nouns.

Peripheral units include words of the so-called mixed categorial semantics, i.e. words whose lexical semantics is not isomorphic to their categorial semantics and this asymmetry finds manifestation in their morphological and syntactic properties. (We share the opinion of scholars who suppose that the syntactic behavior of a word is determined to a large extent by the peculiarities of its lexical semantics than by its part-of-speech belonging). E.g. the noun simplicity presents an example of a word with a mixed categorial semantics; it denotes a quality represented in the form of a substantive, its lexical meaning is asymmetrical with its categorial meaning. This asymmetry is manifested in its morphological and syntactic characteristics: it has no plural, it is generally not used in the Possessive case and it is regularly used in the position of the predicative in its qualifying function thus becoming a functional synonym of adjectives e.g. Her one evening dress, reluctantly packed at Annette's half scornful insistence, was simplicity itself (Ch. Lamb). For this reason the noun simplicity like other names of qualities must be placed in the periphery of their class which intersects with the class of adjectives.

Another example of peripheral nouns is the so-called adverbial nouns. Such nouns as fashion, manner, way, style denote not things, but manner of action, the concept which constitutes the categorial meaning of adverbs of manner. As a consequence these nouns are characterized by a regular use in the adverbial positions and thus become functional equivalents of adverbs of manner. E.g.: Being in no haste, Indian fashion, he hunted his dinner in the course of the day's travel (J. London).

Adverbial nouns constitute another peripheral zone in the class of nouns which intersects with adverbs.

One more peripheral zone is constituted by verbal nouns, i.e. nouns denoting actions. They may sometimes replace verbs in discourse, taking upon themselves the nomination of events and thus carrying out the function of progression in the text usually performed by verbs. E.g.: Then, a short, quick run forward, a fault, a check, a try back, and then a slow, steady, confident advance (K. Grahame).

Such peripheral zones exist within each of the cardinal parts of speech and with the help of these peripheries parts of speech interact with one another.

The most common way of functional interaction between parts of speech is the syntactic, or functional transposition. (There may be other ways of interaction between parts of speech. Thus derivation of one part of speech from another may also be treated as a kind of interaction which embraces not only peripheral but central zones as well). Functional, or syntactic transposition is a syntagmatic process which consists in the use of a word belonging to one part of speech in the syntactic function characteristic of another part of speech.

In the process of syntactic transposition words expose the secondary syntactic .functions of their part of speech and thus extend the syntactic "territory" of parts of speech. Let's have examples of syntactic transpositions:

1) She sings it very Dixieland (J.Salinger) - N^Adv'

2) "You look very tired.- A hard day? " - "A nothing day, Herr Ritter " (J.Carrol) - Prn^Adj

3) At last he turned and started walking slowly down the now deserted corridor (E. Segal)- Adv^Adj' 4) There is a round table... and various other pieces of furniture including

a grandfather clock (D Smith)- N°^dj-

5)... both children and adults stretch the language a bit to express causation; adults are just a tiny bit more fastidious in which verb to stretch (S.Pinker).-^'

Syntactic transposition carries out two important functions in the language. First, transposition often makes up for certain constraints in the sphere of word building. Thus nouns are often used attributively to make up for the absence of an adjective, e.g. a shadow cabinet, a platinum chain, vacation time etc. The adverbial nouns way and manner are often transposed into adverbial sphere to make up for the absence of a corresponding adverb, cf. After a week we all served ourselves Chinese style, standing and stretching across the table one after another (L.Hobbs);

This function of transposition may be called compensatory.

However syntactic transpositions often occur even if there is a word within this or that part speech to render the necessary meaning. Yet speakers of the language often resort to transposition to find a different, more unconventional way of expressing the meaning. E.g. He has a lot of deep, ij practiced, sadness. And as I meet this brown-eyed spaniel expression I realize that Alejandro Stern, one of this town's finest defense lawyers has heard these ardent proclamations of innocence too many times before (S.Turow). Indeed, a spaniel expression appears to be more expressive than a sad expression, because it invokes the image of a spaniel in the speaker's and the listener's mind. This second function of transposition may be called expressive. Exploiting this kind of transposition the speakers of the language reveal their ability to. use the language creatively and this is what grammar has always been concerned with -how to exploit the resources of the language to express their thoughts in a fresh and unconventional way.

So we may conclude that syntactic transposition reveals the dynamic and creative potential of the language, its ability to satisfy the communicative and expressive needs of the speakers. The processes of interaction between parts of speech are essential for understanding their nature and their functioning in the language. A description of parts of speech without the processes of their interaction would be incomplete.

Date: 2015-01-12; view: 7706