Grammatical category. Categories Meanings of words of different grammatical categories

GRAMMAR CATEGORY, a system of opposing series of grammatical forms with homogeneous meanings. In this system, the defining feature is the categorizing feature (see Language category), for example, the generalized meaning of tense, person, voice, etc., which unites the system of meanings of individual tenses, persons, voices, etc. into the system of appropriate forms. A necessary sign grammatical category is the unity of its meaning and the expression of this meaning in the system of grammatical forms.

Grammatical categories are divided into morphological and syntactic. Among the morphological grammatical categories, there are, for example, the grammatical categories of aspect, voice, tense, mood, person, gender, number, case; The consistent expression of these categories characterizes entire grammatical classes of words (parts of speech). The number of opposed members within such categories can be different: for example, in the Russian language, the grammatical category of gender is represented by a system of three rows of forms expressing the grammatical meanings of masculine, feminine and neuter, and the grammatical category of number is represented by a system of two rows of forms - singular and plural . In languages ​​with developed inflection, grammatical categories are inflectional, that is, those whose members can be represented by forms of the same word within its paradigm (for example, in Russian - tense, mood, person of the verb, number, case, gender, degrees comparisons of adjectives) and non-inflectional (classifying, classification), that is, those whose members cannot be represented by forms of the same word (for example, in Russian - gender and animate-inanimate nouns). The belonging of some grammatical categories (for example, in Russian - aspect and voice) to an inflectional or non-inflectional type is the subject of debate.

There are also grammatical categories that are syntactically identified, that is, indicating, first of all, the compatibility of forms as part of a phrase or sentence (for example, in Russian - gender, case), and non-syntactically identified, that is, expressing, first of all, various semantic abstractions, abstract from the properties, connections and relations of extra-linguistic reality (for example, in Russian - type, time); grammatical categories such as number or person combine features of both of these types.

The languages ​​of the world differ:

1) by the number and composition of grammatical categories; compare, for example, the category of verb aspect specific to some languages ​​- Slavic and others; the category of the so-called grammatical class - person or thing - in a number of Caucasian languages; the category of definiteness-indeterminacy, inherent primarily in languages ​​with articles; the category of politeness, or respectfulness, characteristic of a number of Asian languages ​​(in particular, Japanese and Korean) and associated with the grammatical expression of the speaker’s attitude towards the interlocutor and the persons in question;

2) by the number of opposed members within the same category; compare the traditionally identified 6 cases in the Russian language and up to 40 in some Dagestan ones;

3) by which parts of speech contain one or another category (for example, in the Nenets language, nouns have the categories of person and tense). These characteristics may change during the process historical development one language; compare three forms of number in Old Russian, including dual, and two in modern Russian.

Lit.: Shcherba L.V. About parts of speech in the Russian language // Shcherba L.V. Selected works on the Russian language. M., 1957; Gukhman M. M. Grammatical category and structure of paradigms // Research on the general theory of grammar. M., 1968; Katsnelson S. D. Typology of language and speech thinking. L., 1972; Lomtev T. P. Sentence and its grammatical categories. M., 1972; Typology of grammatical categories. Meshchaninov readings. M., 1973; Bondarko A. V. Theory of morphological categories. L., 1976; Panfilov V. 3. Philosophical problems of linguistics. M., 1977; Lyons J. Introduction to theoretical linguistics. M., 1978; Kholodovich A. A. Problems of grammatical theory. L., 1979; Russian grammar. M., 1980. T. 1. P. 453-459; Typology of grammatical categories. L., 1991; Melchuk I. A. Course of general morphology. M., 1998. T. 2. Part 2; Gak V. G. Theoretical grammar of the French language. M., 2004.

2.1. Morphological GCs

2.2. Lexico-grammatical categories

2.3. Syntactic Civil Codes

Historical variability of grammatical categories

Literature

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General understanding of grammatical categories

Definition grammatical category (GC) is constructed either based on form or based on grammatical meaning (GZ).

1. Grammatical category(Greek katē goria‘judgment, definition’) – a system of rows opposed to each other grammatical forms with homogeneous values ​​[LES, p. 115; Kodukhov, s. 227; Alefirenko, s. 317].

At the same time, it is generally accepted that the basis of civil codes are civil laws. GK is a generic concept, and GZ is a specific concept.

Members (components) of the Civil Code, i.e. grammatical meanings are called grammes(grammemes singular and plural within the category of number; grammemes 1st, 2nd, 3rd person) [LES, 117].

Necessary signs of GC.

Materialseverity grammatical meaning (GS). Wed. GZ definition: Grammatical meaning- this is the abstract content of a linguistic unit, which has in the language regular and standard expression. If in a given language some GC is not expressed formally (by grammatical means), there is no reason to talk about GC.

The second necessary sign of GC, closely related to the first, is the presence of at least twoopposing forms, united by some value:

among the Russians there are nouns GC kind, but the English ones do not;

Russian nouns have case category, but the French do not; in English nouns is doubtful (possessive forms are either considered case or not), despite the fact that English personal pronouns have a case category: I – me, he – him (direct and indirect case are contrasted);

in African language wai No GK time, because there are no contrasting grammatical forms with the meaning of time.

There is not a single civil code that would be characteristic of all languages ​​of the world [Shaikevich, p. 104].

It is important to distinguish:

grammatical forms.

Grammatical formsconnected with a certain way of expression, this is the unity of the civil concept and the way of its expression [Reformatsky, p. 317].

Let us compare examples in which the same GP is expressed different ways:

In language uss(one of the languages ​​of Colombia) the plural is formed 4 ways:

most names (and verbs) are plural. doubles(incomplete root reduplication):

gyat'Human' - gyi gyat 'People';

consumption of some prefixes:

an’ on 'hand' - ka - an’ on 'hands';

wai‘oar’ – lu - wai‘oars’;

suffix:

waky 'Brother' - waky- kw ‘brothers’;

internal inflection:

gwu la 'cloak' - gwi la ‘cloaks’ [ Sapir E. Language, 1934, p. 47 (New ed. – 1993). Quote from: Reformatsky, p. 263].

write -on -write,

decideA -th – decide-And -th,

personalAnd army - gather,

incisioná th - cuté shut up,

speak -say .

Types of grammatical categories

There are several classifications of HA.

1. Depending on the number of opposing members the same Civil Code in different languages can be organized in different ways.

Binomial GK:

cat. numbers in Russian language,

cat. sort of in Romance (masculine ↔ feminine) and Iranian languages ​​(according to animate / inanimate) [LES, p. 418];

cat. time in Khanty: past ↔ present-future.

Trinomial:

cat faces;

cat. numbers in the Slovenian, Lusatian, Arabic, Nenets, Khanty languages, where the singular and dv forms are contrasted. and many others. For example, Khant.:

hot'house', hot- ng  n 'two houses', hot-  T ‘at home (more than two)’

yuh'tree', yuh-ng  n 'two trees', yuh- T ‘trees (more than two)’.

Polynomial:

in Papuan languages ​​there is also triple number;

2. Civil codes are divided into

morphological,

syntactic.

The concept of GC was developed primarily on the basis of morphological categories. The question of syntactic categories is less developed [LES, p. 116].

2.1. Morphological GCs characteristic of lexico-grammatical classes of words - significant parts of speech (nouns, adjectives, numerals, verbs, adverbs, pronouns):

2.1.1. Among the morphological categories there are

inflectional- those whose members are represented forms of the same word within its paradigms(cf. Russian forms case nouns; sort of,numbers And case adjectives; forms faces at the verb);

classification- those whose members represented by different words, because these are categories that are internal to a word and do not depend on its use in a sentence (cf. Russian categories sort of nouns, animate / inanimate nouns, kind verb) [LES, p. 115].

2.1.2. Morphological categories are divided into

Nominal type civil code: GK gender, case, animate-inanimate;

Verb type GC: Civil code of tense, type, voice, mood.

GK language are in close cooperation and show a tendency towards interpenetration:

cat. time closely related to cat. moods, and kind: temporary forms are usually contrasted within indicative mood representing real events; if a language has a lot of “tenses”, then this types temporary forms: perfect= finished / imperfect= unfinished action in the past, aorist= point action in the vulgar, present continious etc.

cat. faces connects verbs and pronouns;

cat. numbers connects noun and verb.

The central and fundamental concept of grammar is the concept of grammatical category.

Grammatical category- these are meanings of a generalized nature inherent to words, meanings abstracted from the specific lexical meanings of these words. Categorical meanings can be indicators, for example, of the relationship of a given word to other words in a phrase and sentence (case category), relationship to the person speaking (person category), the relationship of the message to reality (mood category), the relationship of the message to time (category of time) and etc.

Grammatical categories have varying degrees of abstraction. For example, the grammatical category of case, in comparison with the grammatical category of gender, is a more abstract category. Thus, any noun is included in the system of case relations, but not each of them is included in the system of oppositions by gender: teacher - teacher, actor - actress, But teacher, linguist, director.

b) within the framework of morphological categories, the grammatical meanings of a word (as well as grammatical formal means) are studied not in isolation, but in opposition to all other homogeneous grammatical meanings and all formal means of expressing these meanings. For example, the category of the verbal aspect is made up of homogeneous meanings of the perfect and imperfect forms, the category of the person is made up of homogeneous meanings of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd person.

When analyzing morphological categories, it is especially important to take into account the unity of semantic and formal plans: if any plan is missing, then this phenomenon cannot be considered as a category. For example, there is no reason to consider the opposition of proper names to common nouns as a morphological category, since this opposition does not find consistent formal expression. The opposition of verbal conjugations is also not a category, but for a different reason: clear formal indicators (endings) of conjugations I and II do not serve to express semantic differences between verbs of different conjugations.

1. Based on the number of forms that a morphological category can be represented, they distinguish binary And non-binary categories.

Binary categories are represented by the opposition of two (series) forms. For example, the number category of a noun is represented by singular and plural, category of voice - forms of active and passive voice. One form is not a system, and due to the lack of contrast of meanings (opposition), it cannot represent categories. Let's consider an analogy: a street traffic light represents a system of color signals: red - stop, yellow - attention, green - go, which, in fact, constitutes a lexical paradigm (red / yellow / green = stop / attention / go).

Let's say this system is simplified, reduced to one color, then the color meaning system remains binary (becomes similar to grammatical):

Yellow color - flashing - be careful (especially careful), because traffic lights are installed in especially important places for pedestrian movement;

Red - stop, especially dangerous, the absence of color allows movement;

Green - go, the absence of color in principle prohibits movement (it’s dangerous to walk) - a system of signs and in the presence of one exponent, as in grammar, appears to be the opposition of its zero significance, and you can choose the most optimal system of signs.

(In practice, blinking is selected yellow color). However, with any number of forms and in non-binary categories (represented, for example, by three forms, as in the category of verb mood, or six forms, as in the category of noun case), binary as a phenomenon of opposition (contrast of meanings) is of fundamental importance for the realization of the semantic potential of the category .

2. Based on the nature of the opposition of components, categories are distinguished that are formed on the basis of:

1) privative (unequal), 2) equipollent (equivalent), 3) gradual (step) relations.

The privative opposition by gender is formed by nouns like teacher - teacher, tractor driver - tractor driver, cashier - cashier: A masculine noun in such pairs can name both a man and a woman, and a feminine noun can only name a woman. The privative category is the aspect in the verb. Perfective verbs answer only semantic questions What to do, and verbs of the imperfect form, except for the question What to do, in some speech situations they also answer the question What to do? - What did the boy do wrong? What did he do? — He was picking apples in someone else’s orchard.

Some masculine and feminine personal nouns form an equivalent opposition: mother - father, brother - sister, girl - boy. Masculine nouns denote men, feminine nouns denote women.

Gradual relations are presented in degrees of comparison.

Case as a grammatical category to a certain extent is structured according to the principle of additional distribution: the same lexical meaning is placed in different syntactic positions using case: to lose someone something, to envy someone something, to hate someone something, to admire someone something, to grieve about someone something.

In the same grammatical category, different principles of semantic organization can be found.

3. Depending on whether the components of a grammatical category are one word or represent different lexemes, they distinguish inflectional And classifying (lexico-grammatical) categories. Inflectional categories find their expression in the opposition of different word forms of the same word. For example, the category of person of a verb is inflectional, since to detect it it is enough to compare different shapes one verb (I'm going, I'm going, I'm going).

Non-inflectional(classification, or lexico-grammatical) categories find their expression in the contrast of words according to their grammatical properties. Taking into account the meanings expressed by non-inflectional categories, the vocabulary of a language can be divided into grammatical classes (that is why morphological categories of this type are called classification categories). For example, the categories of gender and animate/inanimate nouns are non-inflectional.

A. V. Bondarko called inflectional categories correlative, and classifying categories non-correlative. At the same time, he identified sequentially correlative, sequentially non-correlative and inconsistently correlative grammatical categories.

E.V. Klobukov proposed to distinguish interpretative morphological categories as a special type, “ intended to express the degree of relative importance of two or more homogeneous semantic elements"statements. " Thanks to these categories, one of the homogeneous meanings is highlighted by the speaker as the main one, and the other meaning as an additional, accompanying, comitative information part." E. V. Klobukov calls the grammatical meaning expressed by such categories comitative. On the basis of comitativity, in his opinion, a contrast is organized between full and short forms of the adjective, conjugated and attributive forms of the verb, forms of the active and passive voice, as well as nominative and vocative cases with indirect cases

4. According to the nature of the content, morphological categories differ from formal dominant And semantic dominant.

In categories with formal dominance, forms perform to a greater extent the function of constructing a sentence, its structural units - combinations of words, rather than distinguishing grammatical semantics based on conceptual content. These are the categories of gender, number and case of adjectives. Adjective forms agree in gender, number and case with the noun. These three different categories in the adjective denote the same formal feature - dependence on the noun: material differences between these forms white (scarf) - white (dress) - white (scarf) - white (scarves, dresses, scarves, trousers) - white (trousers)- etc. - do not introduce any meanings into the semantics of forms other than the general meaning of the adjective - depending on the noun.

Another thing is the form of the number of nouns in words denoting counted objects: house - houses, notebook - notebooks. However, in other nouns, number forms lose this quantitative semantics, and their formal aspect becomes stronger: the number form is in some cases only an indicator of the formal independence of the noun, independence in number from other words (compare: ate soup - ate cabbage soup; bought perfume, cologne - bought perfume, cologne; put on glasses, bru ki).

The case forms of nouns distinguish the subject/object of an action: The student asks the teacher. — The teacher asks the student. Sentences differ not in form, but in the meaning of the subject/object of the same lexical units. The category of case is a category with semantic significance, but also has formal (structural) significance.

The situation is even more complicated with the category of gender of a noun. Therefore, in different grammars one can find different interpretations of the content of this category: sometimes it falls into the lexico-grammatical category, sometimes into the grammatical category. The content of the category of gender is genetically based on the distinction between masculine and feminine principles, everything that is connected with it in one way or another, but in a synchronic sense, only in some cases does the form of gender reveal the semantics of gender. In the Russian language, in accordance with the gender of the noun, words are distributed according to types of declension, so that we can already talk about the type of declension as a morphological expression of gender.

Thus, the category of gender of a noun in modern Russian is a category with a formal dominant that interacts with the lexical component of the word form. Semantically, the gender form is not motivated in words denoting realities that do not have gender characteristics: house - wall - window. The gender of these nouns is a purely formal attribute of the noun; invariability of gender is an indicator of the form of a noun, in contrast to an adjective, and an indicator of the type of declension (as are the number forms of nouns that are invariable in number; in particular, nouns such as glasses, gates, scissors are sometimes called nouns of natural pair gender for this feature). Many nouns denoting persons and living beings also have an unmotivated gender form (not directly related to the gender of the denoted). painter, well done, soldier; pike, dog etc.).

A significant part of nouns, however, has a gender-motivated gender form: father - mother, cow - bull, lion - lioness. For some nouns, the morphological expression of gender - the type of declension - does not coincide with the syntactic expression - the main indicator of gender: like[oh] men[a](which gives rise to a child’s natural question: “Dad, are you a man?”). The semantic field of masculine and feminine is, naturally, wider than the semantics of gender itself. The meaning of masculine, for example, is associated with the semantics of strong, important, big, etc., the meaning of feminine is associated with the semantics of tender, soft, beautiful and everything opposite to masculine.

« In tongues weighed down,- as I.A. wrote Baudouin de Courtenay, - birth nightmare", in historical terms, one can observe how the mentality of the people developed in the field of problems fundamental to human culture by analyzing the design of nouns by gender. But this must be done with great caution, understanding a certain conventionality of form and the inevitability of folk etymologization in this paralinguistic field of research, the creative potential of which can be seen in the artist’s work with words.

As a category with a formal dominant, the category of gender of a noun was formed to perform a structural function - to connect, on the one hand, adjectives with a noun, on the other hand, a noun with verbs and other nouns. This category is represented by forms of agreement between the adjective and the noun and the type of declension formed in accordance with the gender of the noun.

Mood forms express an assessment of an action from the point of view of the reality of the action ( read - would read - read), in tense forms - the relation of action to the moment of speech ( read - read - reads - will read, will read), in the form of a face - the attitude towards the speaker as a performer of an action ( reading - reading - reading), in forms of the form - the nature of the action in time ( write down - write down), in forms of voice - the location of the action relative to its subject and object ( lost—was lost: The children lost the telegram in the snow. — The telegram was lost by children in the snow).

The term “grammatical category” is also used in another, broader meaning - in the meaning of a class of words united by common grammatical features. In this sense, we are talking about the category of a noun, etc. However, a clarifying adjective lexical is added, i.e. We are talking about lexico-grammatical categories of words, or parts of speech.

GRAMMAR CATEGORIES, specially organized and expressed sets of linguistic meanings (“grammemes”) that have a privileged status in the language system; Each language has its own grammatical categories, but many meanings essential to human experience are included in the grammatical categories very large number languages ​​(such as, for example, the values ​​of the number of objects, duration of action, time of action relative to the moment of speech, subject and object of action, desirability, etc.).

To be considered a grammatical category, a set of meanings must have at least two properties, namely categoricality and commitment. The first property (also known under the names of mutual exclusivity, paradigmaticity, homogeneity, functionality, etc.) allows us to select from the entire set of linguistic meanings those that are combined into categories; the second identifies among linguistic categories those that are grammatical for a given language. A category can only be a set of values ​​whose elements exclude each other, i.e. cannot simultaneously characterize the same object (this property can be formulated in another way: each object at a certain moment can be assigned only one value from this set). Thus, the property of categoricality, or mutual exclusivity in the normal case, is possessed by the values physical age(a person cannot be an old man and a child at the same time), gender, size and many others. In contrast, meanings such as color are not categories: the same object may well be colored in different colors at the same time.

Not all linguistic categories, however, can be considered grammatical. To do this, it is necessary that the category satisfies the second property, i.e. the property of obligatory nature (in modern linguistics this statement has received wide recognition, mainly after the works of R. Jacobson, but similar ideas have been expressed before). A category is obligatory (for a certain class of words) if every word from this class expresses any meaning of this category. Thus, in the Russian language, for example, the category of verb tense is obligatory: every personal form of the verb in the text expresses one of the meanings of this category (either past, present, or future tense), and there is no such personal form of the verb about which it was possible would say that she has “no time”, i.e. not characterized by tense grammatically.

The existence of obligatory categories in a language means that a speaker, intending to use a word in speech, is forced to express with this word one of the meanings of a certain category (i.e., characterize given word for this category). Thus, when choosing the personal form of a verb, a Russian speaker is obliged to characterize it by aspect, tense, mood, voice, person/number (or, in the past tense, gender) of the subject, since all these are grammatical categories of the Russian verb. The speaker is obliged to indicate the appropriate meanings of grammatical categories, even if this is not part of his own communicative intention - for example, he may not have specifically intended to indicate the time of action. Of course, the speaker can still avoid indicating time - but then he will no longer have to use a verb, but, for example, a noun, which in Russian does not have a mandatory tense category. Wed. a couple of types You came ~ your arrival, where grammatical tense is expressed only in the first case; If desired, this can be done in the second case (cf. your past/future arrival etc.), but it is important that if the speaker wants to evade expressing time with a noun, he can freely do this without violating the grammatical requirements of the language, whereas in the case of the verb form this is impossible.

The grammatical categories of each language can be likened to a kind of questionnaire for the description of objects and situations in a given language: the speaker cannot successfully complete this description without answering (whether he wants to or not) the questions of such a “grammatical questionnaire”. As R. Jacobson aptly notes, “the main difference between languages ​​is not what can or cannot be expressed, but what should or should not be communicated by speakers.” This implies the importance of the role that grammar plays in creating the so-called “naive picture of the world”, i.e. that way of reflecting reality, which constitutes the specificity of each language (and the culture behind it), since it is in the system of grammatical categories that the collective experience of the speakers of a given language is primarily reflected.

The number of grammatical categories varies in different languages; There are languages ​​with a very developed “grammatical profile”; in other languages ​​the set of grammatical categories is very limited (languages ​​completely devoid of grammatical meanings are still not attested, although their existence, generally speaking, does not contradict linguistic theory).

Along with the two main properties indicated above, grammatical categories, as a rule, are characterized by a number of additional properties. The area of ​​applicability of a grammatical category (i.e. the set of those words for which the category is obligatory) must be large enough and have natural boundaries (as a rule, these are large semantic-grammatical classes of words such as nouns or verbs or their subclasses such as transitive verbs, animate nouns and so on.). On the other hand, the number of meanings of a grammatical category (grammes) is usually small, and they are expressed using a small number of regular indicators. These three additional properties make it possible, in particular, to distinguish between grammatical and so-called lexical obligatoriness (the latter is always tied to a small group of words, and the corresponding meanings do not have regular indicators). Thus, in Russian, the choice of the meaning “child of the same parents” is necessarily accompanied by an indication of the child’s gender (accordingly, Brother or sister), however, we cannot talk about the grammatical category “gender of a relative” for the reasons listed above: the obligatory indication of gender in the Russian language is characteristic of only a small group of nouns (terms of kinship), and at the same time there are no special indicators of male or female gender as part of these I have no words. Lexical obligatoryness is a very common phenomenon, but it characterizes individual groups of vocabulary of a given language and is not systemic in nature.

The meaning of grammemes of grammatical categories is a very complex object; entities called grammatical meanings (e.g. "plural", " dative", "past tense", etc.), as a rule, are structured much more complex than lexical meanings. One should not identify the name of a gramme with its meaning (as authors of grammatical descriptions often do - wittingly or unwittingly): behind a name like "plural "in reality there is a certain set of contextual values ​​expressed by a set of formal indicators, while any indicator can have any of these values, and any meaning can be assigned to any of these indicators. Thus, in Russian, a number is expressed differently depending on the type noun declination and other factors (cf. fingers,Houses,apples,stu-ya etc.), and plural forms - regardless of what indicator is present in them - can express not only a simple set of objects, but also a class of objects as a whole ( ostriches are dying out), different varieties or varieties of objects ( precious metals ,cheeses), a large number of ( sands), uncertainty ( are there any free places? ""at least one place"), etc. This situation is typical for most grammes, which, therefore, in the general case, are only a kind of labels denoting a rather complex correspondence between the formal and substantive elements of the language.

The contextual meanings of grammes may include an appeal to both the properties of the surrounding world and the syntactic properties of other words. Meanings of the first type are called semantic (or semantically filled, nominative, etc.); meanings of the second type are called syntactic (or relational), which reflects their main property - to serve the expression of syntactic connections between words in the text, and not a direct description of reality (cf., for example, gender grammes in Russian nouns like sofa And ottoman, reflecting only the difference in their matching models: a big sofa And large ottoman). Syntactic meanings are present to one degree or another in almost every grammatical category (for example, in Russian, the syntactic uses of number include the appearance of the singular in constructions with numerals like three Houses , twenty one house or in distributive constructions like advisers put on nose glasses). There are also grammatical categories in which syntactic meanings predominate or are even the only ones. Such categories are called syntactic; The most important of them include the gender and case of nouns, and in some cases also the voice and mood of verbs. Languages ​​that lack syntactic grammatical categories are called insulating(These are primarily the Austroasiatic, Thai and Sino-Tibetan languages ​​of Southeast Asia, the Mande and Kwa languages ​​of West Africa, etc.).

Most often, grammemes are expressed using morphological means - affixes (which include prefixes, suffixes, infixes, circumfixes and transfixes), as well as alternations and reduplications. The morphological expression of grammes is characteristic of agglutinative and fusional languages ​​(in the latter, non-affixal morphological technique also plays a significant role). The most striking examples of fusion languages ​​are Sanskrit, ancient Greek, Lithuanian, and many Indian languages North America and etc.; There are widespread languages ​​that have equal features of agglutinativity and fusion (such as, for example, many Uralic, Mongolian, Semitic languages, Bantu languages, etc.). At the same time, there is also a non-morphological way of expressing grammatical meanings, in which these latter are conveyed by independent word forms (“function words”) or syntactic constructions. Languages ​​with a predominance of non-morphological techniques for expressing grammatical meanings are called analytical (such, in particular, are the Polynesian languages).

If a grammatical category is structured in such a way that all its grammes are capable of being alternately attached to the stem of the same word, then such a category is called inflectional, and combinations of its grammes with the stem of a word are grammatical forms of this word. The totality of all grammatical forms of one word forms its paradigm, and a word, understood as the totality of all its forms, is called a lexeme. Typical examples of inflectional categories are the case of a noun, tense and mood of a verb, etc.: thus, in the normal case, the stem of each noun is combined with indicators of all cases of a given language, the stem of each verb - with indicators of all moods, etc. (non-systematic violations of this principle lead to the emergence of so-called defective paradigms, cf. the absence of a genitive plural form in the word cod or 1st person unit forms. verb numbers win In russian language).

Not all grammatical categories, however, form paradigms of grammatical forms: a situation is also possible when only one gramme can be expressed at the base of a word. Such grammatical categories contrast not different forms of the same word, but different words(i.e. different lexemes) and are called word-classifying. A typical example of a word-classifying category is the gender of nouns: for example, in the Russian language, each noun belongs to one of three genders, but Russian nouns do not have the ability to form “gender paradigms” (i.e., freely change the meaning of gender). On the contrary, in Russian adjectives the category of gender, as is easy to see, is inflectional (cf. paradigms like white ~ white ~ white etc.).

The main syntactic grammatical categories are gender and case (for a name) and voice (for a verb): gender is associated with the morphological expression of agreement, and case is associated with the morphological expression of control. In addition, both case and voice provide a distinction between the semantic and syntactic arguments of the verb, i.e. syntactic entities such as subject and objects, and semantic entities such as agent, patient, instrument, place, reason, and many others. etc. Syntactic (concordant) categories also include person/number and gender of the verb.

Most of the grammatical categories found in the languages ​​of the world belong to semantic categories. The specific semantic categories of nouns are number and determination (or, in the “European” version, definiteness/indeterminacy). The categories of number, determination and case closely interact and are often expressed by a single grammatical indicator (inflection); inflectional case-numeral paradigms are also characteristic of the Russian language. The category of number is usually represented by two grammemes (singular and plural), but in a number of languages ​​there is also a dual number, initially associated, apparently, with the designation of paired objects (such as lips, eyes, shores and so on.); the dual number was in ancient Greek, Sanskrit, ancient Russian, classical Arabic; it is also attested in modern languages: Slovenian, Koryak, Selkup, Khanty, etc. Even more rare is a special grammatical expression for a set of three objects (triple number) or a small number of objects (paucal number): such grammes are found, for example, in the languages ​​of New Guinea.

The system of semantic grammatical categories of the verb is very diverse and varies greatly in different languages. With some degree of convention, verbal categories can be divided into three large semantic zones: aspectual, temporal and modal. Aspectual (or aspectual) meanings include all those that describe the features of the unfolding of a situation in time (duration, limitation, repetition) or highlight certain time phases of the situation (for example, initial stage or result); in this sense, the well-known characteristic of aspect as the “internal tense” of the verb is correct. On the contrary, the grammatical category, traditionally called “time” in linguistics, only indicates the relative chronology of a given situation, i.e. whether it takes place before, simultaneously or after some other situation (“reference point”). The starting point can be arbitrary (and in this case we have the category of relative time, or taxis), but it can also be fixed; a fixed point of reference, coinciding with the moment of utterance of the utterance (“the moment of speech”), gives the category of absolute time with three main grammes: past, present and future tense. An additional indication of the degree of remoteness of the situation from the moment of speech (indication of “temporal distance”) can increase the number of grammes in the category of time; developed systems for marking temporal distance are especially characteristic of the Bantu languages ​​(Tropical Africa). Aspect and tense are often expressed jointly in verbal word forms (hence the traditional grammatical nomenclature, in which any aspectual verb form could be called “tense”). The most typical combinations are the continuous aspect and the past tense (commonly called “imperfect”), as well as the limited aspect and past tense (commonly called “aorist”).

The verbal system can be characterized by a large number of aspectual grammes: thus, to the basic opposition of long (durative, imperfect) and limited (perfective, point) aspects, at least habitual (and/or multiple) aspects are often added (as, for example, in many Turkic languages). aspect and effective aspect (cf. window open , Russian dial He having drunk ). A difference similar to the habitual aspect in Russian can be expressed lexically, cf. boy coming to school And boy walks to school. A special type of the resultative aspect is the perfect, which is very widespread in the languages ​​of the world (for example, the perfect is found in English, Spanish, Greek, Finnish, Bulgarian, Persian and many other languages). On the contrary, “poor” aspectual systems (such as East or West Slavic) are characterized by the opposition of only two aspectual grammes (called perfect vs. imperfect, perfect vs. imperfect, complete vs. incomplete, etc.), but each These grammes have a very wide range of contextual meanings. Thus, in the Russian language, an imperfective grammeme can express duration, repetition, habituality, and even the perfect (cf. Maksim read « War and Peace"); the choice of one interpretation or another depends on the context, the lexical semantics of the verb and other factors. In languages ​​with “rich” aspectual systems (such as Turkic, Polynesian or Bantu), all these meanings can differ morphologically.

The zone of verbal modality (giving the grammatical category of mood) has the most complex and branched structure. Modal meanings include, firstly, those that indicate the degree of reality of the situation (unreal situations do not take place in reality, but are possible, probable, desired, conditional, etc.), and secondly, those that express the speaker’s assessment of the situation being described (for example, the degree of reliability of the situation, the degree of desirability of the situation for the speaker, etc.). It is easy to see that evaluative and unreal meanings are often closely related to each other: thus, desired situations always have a positive assessment by the speaker, unreal situations often have a lower degree of reliability, etc. It is therefore no coincidence that the use, for example, of the conditional mood to express doubt or incomplete certainty, which is characteristic of many languages ​​of the world.

A special place among mood grammes is occupied by the imperative, which combines the expression of the speaker’s desire with the expression of an impulse directed at the addressee. The imperative is one of the most common grammes in natural languages ​​(perhaps this meaning is universal). Mood grammes also have a large share of syntactic uses (for example, in many languages, the predicate of a subordinate clause must take the form of one of the unreal moods; the same applies to the expression of questions or negations).

Adjacent to the mood is the grammatical category of evidentiality, which expresses the source of information about the situation being described. In many languages ​​of the world, such an indication is mandatory: this means that the speaker must indicate whether he observed a given event with his own eyes, heard about it from someone, judges it on the basis of indirect signs or logical reasoning, etc.; the most complex evidential systems are characteristic of Tibetan languages ​​and a number of American Indian languages; somewhat simpler evidential systems are found in the languages ​​of the Balkan area (Bulgarian, Albanian, Turkish), as well as in many languages ​​of the Caucasus, Siberia and the Far East.

The basic unit of grammar is the grammatical category. The word category denotes a generic (general) concept in relation to specific (particular) concepts. For example, the name dog will be a category in relation to the names of specific breeds - shepherd, terrier, dachshund.

A grammatical category unites grammatical forms with a homogeneous grammatical meaning. A set of homogeneous and opposed grammatical forms of a particular language is called a paradigm. For example, the grammatical category (paradigm) of case in modern Russian consists of six forms with grammatical meanings: nominative, genitive, etc. cases; grammatical category of case in English language includes two forms - nominative and possessive (genitive with the meaning of belonging) cases.

Grammatical meaning is a generalized meaning inherent in a number of words or syntactic structures and expressed by regular (standard) means. Grammatical meanings, according to grammatical categories, are morphological and syntactic.

In a word, grammatical meanings are a mandatory addition to the lexical ones. The differences between them are as follows:

a) lexical meaning is inherent in a specific word, grammatical meaning is inherent in a number of words.

b) lexical meaning is associated with realities - objects, signs, processes, states, etc. The grammatical meaning indicates 1) the relationship between objects and phenomena (gender, number, case); 2) on the relationship of the content of the statement to reality (mood, tense, person); 3) on the speaker’s attitude to the statement (narration, question, motivation, as well as subjective assessments - confidence / uncertainty, categoricalness / conjecture).

c) lexical meaning is always meaningful. In a sense, the exception is words with empty lexical meaning. They are called desemantized. The word girl defines female representatives of the age of approximately 15-25 years, and as an address it is used in relation to much more mature saleswomen, conductors, cashiers, etc. In this case, the word girl does not denote age, but indicates the professional status of the addressee.

The grammatical meaning is purely formal, i.e. having no prototype in reality itself. For example, the gender of inanimate nouns is stream – river – lake; Spanish el mundo ‘peace’, fr. le choux ‘cabbage’ (m.r.); neuter gender of animate nouns – Russian.

Child, child; Bulgarian momche ‘boy’, momiche ‘girl’, kuche ‘dog’; German das Mädchen ‘girl’. An analogue of formal grammatical meanings are words with empty denotations (goblin, Atlantis, etc.).

Grammatical form is the external (formal) side of a linguistic sign, in which a certain grammatical meaning is expressed. Grammatical form is a representative of a grammatical paradigm. If a language has a certain grammatical category, then the name will always have one or another grammatical form. When describing linguistic facts, they usually say this: a noun in the genitive case, a verb in the indicative mood, etc. Grammatical form is the unity of grammatical meaning and the material means of its expression.

Grammatical meaning can be expressed in two ways: synthetically (within the word) and analytically (outside the word). Within each method, there are different means of expressing grammatical meanings.

Synthetic means of expressing grammatical meanings.

1. Affixation (inflection, suffix, prefix of a species pair): mother (ip.) – mothers (r.p.); run (infinitive) – ran (past tense); did (non-sov. kind) – did (owl. look).

2. Emphasis – hands (ip.p., plural) – handsu (p.p., singular).

3. Alternation at the root (internal inflection): collect (non-sov. view) - collect (owl. view); German lesen ‘read’ – las ‘read’.

4. Reduplication – doubling of the root. In Russian, it is not used as a grammatical device (in words like blue-blue, reduplication is a semantic device). In Malay, orang ‘person’ – oran-orang ‘people’ (complete reduplication); partial reduplication – Tagalog. mabuting ‘good’ mabuting-buting ‘very good’.

5. suppletivism - the formation of word forms from another base: I - to me; good - better; German gut ‘good’ – besser ‘better’ – beste ‘best’.

Grammatical meanings can be expressed in several ways. In the formation of the perfect form in ancient Greek. τέτροφα ‘fed’ from τρέφο ‘I feed’ four means are involved at once: incomplete repetition of the stem τέ-, inflection -α, stress and alternation in the root - τρέφ / τροφ.

Analytical means of expressing grammatical meanings.

1. Actually analytical means - special grammatical means for the formation of analytical forms: teach - I will read (weekend tense); fast (positive degree) – faster ( comparative) – the fastest (superlative).

2. Means of syntactic connections - the grammatical meanings of a word are determined by the grammatical meanings of another word. For indeclinable words of the Russian language, this is the only means of expressing their grammatical gender. Indeclinable animate nouns usually belong to the masculine gender: funny kangaroo, green cockatoo, cheerful chimpanzee. Kind of inanimate indeclinable nouns usually defined by a generic word: harmful tsetse (fly), deep-sea Ontario (lake), sunny Sochi (city), unripe kiwi (fruit).

3. Function words - grammatical meanings are expressed through prepositions, particles or their significant absence: the highway shines (ip.) - stand by the highway (r.p.) - approach the highway (d.p.) - go onto the highway ( v.p.) – turn around on the highway (p.p.); found out (indicative mood) - would know (subjunctive mood).

4. Word order – grammatical meanings are determined by the position of a word in a sentence. In a construction with homonymous nominative and accusative cases, the first place of the word is recognized as its active role (subject), and the second - as its passive role (object): A horse sees a mouse (horse - sp., subject; mouse - v.p., object ) – The mouse sees a horse (mouse – i.p., subject horse – v.p., addition).

5. Intonation – expression of grammatical meanings with a certain intonation pattern. ↓Money went to the phone: 1) with logical emphasis on the word money and a pause after it; the verb went is used in the indicative mood; the meaning of the phrase “The money was spent on purchasing a telephone”; 2) with an unaccented intonation pattern, the verb went is used in the imperative mood; the meaning of the phrase “You need to put money on the phone.”

Questions and tasks for self-control:

1. What is grammar?

2. What is the difference between lexical and grammatical meaning?

3. What features does the reflection of reality in grammar have?

4. What means of expressing grammatical meanings do you know?