1.2. Basic Notions and Methodology of TGrammar

1.   Issues for Discussion: 1.   What do you understand by “grammatical structure of a language”? What is the difference between synthetic and analytical languages? 2.   What is the difference between lexical and grammatical meanings? How are grammatical meanings realized in language units? 3.   What is a grammatical category? Why is it difficult to define it? Name the three key features of categories and try to give a reasonable definition of the category. What categories in English morphology and syntax do you know? 4.   Describe main types of relations of lingual units. 5.   How is language structured? What is the difference between primary and secondary levels? Give reasons to support this or that stratification of language? What's the difference between language levels and speech levels? Describe units of each level. 6.   Enumerate and characterize structural methods of grammatical studies. What’s the difference between structural and functional approach in linguistics? Between semasiological and onomaseological research? 2. Activities and discussion 1.   Think of jokes that are funny due to the special interpretation of either paradigmatic or syntagmatic relations (bring as many jokes to class as possible and we’ll explain what makes them funny). 2.   Provide examples of faulty translations based on misunderstanding the difference between language and speech units (failure to recognize the contextual meaning, translator’s false friends, paronyms).

Self-study issues (you are welcome to share your findings with the class!): 1)   Do you like challenges? Try and explain to the class what onomasiological and semasiological approaches in linguistics are about. 2)    Speak on corpus linguistics as a data-driven approach to describe the system. 3)   What sort of data can be gained through appying various research methods of structuralism.