Sythetical means of form building.

Grammatical oppositions

One and the same form units several grammatical meaning at once. It is typical of all flective languages and this phenomena is called-synchreticism

(He) runs 1) run _ (3^d person)

2) (they) run_ (sing)

3) (he) ran (non-past)

 

The form "runs" is syntactic because it has meanings of third person; singular; present; indefinite at once. Each couple of forms makes an opposition where all grammatical meanings coincide with the exception of only one. And this distinctive meaning gives the name to this opposition. The form here are called-opposeme. Such oppositions constitute grammatical categories. First the motion of opposition was introduced by Trubetckoy in reference to phonology but later R.Jacobson extended the theory of oppositions to grammar.

Oppositions can be 3 types:

1) Private (privative) (always binary in strucrure): sing(-) pl(+); active(-) passive(+)

2) Gradual (al the member are marked) clever-cleverer –the cleverest

3) Equipollent(равнозначный, равноценный) (each member is marked by its own specific feature) present –s; past- ed; future- will

Grammatical oppositions served as a basic for grammatical categories.

 

Syntactical forms always consist of one component and both types of meaning are expressed in it. Syntactic forms are classified into 3 types:inflectional, suppletive, alternating.

1) The inflection is a grammatical morpheme added to the stam to change its form. Inflections are most typical of syntactical languages like Russian and German. In English them are also used but the number of inflections is very limited here and as a consequence there are many homonyms among them.

-s (number) ‘s (case) –s (person)

-ed (past),-ed (participle2)

-en(number) –en (perfect)

 

2) suppletivismis not so popular as inflections and it is used in some historically predetermined words. Neologisms never use this way of form changing.

 

Go-went; i-me; to be: am, is are\ was, were\ been

 

The origin of suppletivism is connected with old english synonism that fused in one word,

Suppletive forms should correspond to two criteria:1)they should have absolutely identical lex.meaning.2)they should not be any other way to express this grammatical meaning in the system of language.

3) Sound alternation is very popular in Germanic languages- it is used mostly in nouns and

There are 3 types of it:vowel (tooth- teeth);conson (build-built);mixed types (bring- brought).