GRAMMATICAL CATEGORY

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 919.

Grammatical category is a unity of a grammatical form and grammatical meaning.

In the system of a language there is no direct correspondence of meaning and form. When two or more units of the plane of content correspond to one unit of the plane of expression there appear the phenomena of polysemy and homonymy. Synonymy is based on cases when two or more units of the plane of expression correspond to one unit of the plane of content.

According to A.I. Smirnitsky any grammatical form presents some grammatical category. One and the same word can contain different grammatical categories at a time.

e. g. (he) takes – 3d person, Singular, the Present tense, the active voice, the indicative mood.

But one and the same word cannot have more than one formal expression of one category.

The basic method to reveal the existence of grammatical categories is the method of binary oppositions.

To establish a category one must find at least two forms of the same language unit. One part of this opposition is weak, unmarked, because it has no special characteristics in meaning and form. The second part is strong, or marked, as it is characterized by a special grammatical meaning and special grammatical form of expression. Being opposed to each other they reveal a certain grammatical category.

e. g. – pen – pens +

In this opposition the item on the left is weak (–). It has no special form of expression, its meaning is general. The right item is marked, or strong (+). It is marked formally with the help of the grammatical ending, and it is strong in meaning because its meaning is specific – to show the plurality of things. Being contrasted in an opposition they reveal the grammatical category of number.

The correlated elements of the opposition must have both: common and differential features. Common features serve as the basis of contrast. Fifferential features help to expose the function of the category under study.

There are three main types of grammatical oppositions:

1) privative – those one member of which has a certain distinctive feature

e. g. – work – works +

2) equipollent– those in which both members are marked

e. g. + asked – was asked +

3) gradual – those members of which differ in the degree of a certain property

e. g. – good – better – best

Grammatical categories are generalized notions. Sometimes they differentiate between general and partial grammatical categories.

e. g. Case is a general grammatical category, but concrete cases, such as Nominative, Genitive, Dative, etc. are considered partial grammatical categories.

There is another approach according to which the subdivision takes place into grammatical categories and category forms. Thus, we can treat case as a grammatical category and its basic forms as category forms.

A grammatical category cannot exist without constant formal markers. As it was mentioned above, it includes not less than two opposed forms, but the number of forms can be more than that. There are no categories having only one form (one article, one case, etc.). The opposition within the category is obligatory, though it is not always binary.