Conjunction: structural and semantic classifications – Part 1 One cannot but notice that the use of coordinating conjunctions is not unlimited, i.e. there are some grammatically similar structures that may not be joined by coordinating conjunctions. The analysis of these limitations brings up the concept of presupposition. By presupposition we mean extralinguistic conditions that make […]

As to their morphological structure, prepositions fall under the follow­ing groups: 1) simple (in, on, at, for, with, etc.); 2) derivative (behind, below, across, along, etc.); 3) compound (inside, outside, within, without, notwithstanding, etc.); 4) composite (because of in front of, in accordance with, etc.). Linguists who recognize that prepositions have lexical meanings di­vide this […]

Conjunctions are functional words that connect separate words, word combinations, clauses or sentences and in doing so mark the relations of coordination and subordinatioh.jConsequently, the grammatical meaning of conjunctions is similar to that of prepositions: conjunctions mark grammati­cal relations but these relations are even more abstract than those indicated by prepositions. Conjunctions form a part […]

The most controversial opinions are expressed in connection with the syntactic status of prepositions. This issue has caused clashes between the opposing interpretations. Some linguists argue that the preposition is func­tionally equal to the morpheme rather than to a word, since it stands to mark case relations. Other scholars believe that the preposition may not […]

Defining the preposition, linguists usually point out three main proper­ties: 1) the preposition is a functional part of speech, i.e. a preposition cannot perform an independent syntactic function; 2) the preposition is a word ex­pressing subordinate relations between lexical parts of speech; 3) the preposition is a word with an obligatory pre-nounal position: it may […]

Semantic functions of the definite and the indefinite articles – Part 1 After all, most of his happiness was in his home, and it was a very con­siderable happiness. (Cary) As for the various uses of nouns without an article, from the semantic point of view they all should be divided into two types. In […]

The main semantic function of the article is that of correlation of a no­tion with the world described in a text (or with the situation of communica­tion). Obviously the speaker’s choice of the article is situation-dependent. Specifically, the definite article the and the indefinite article a(n) have three meaningful characterizations of the nounal referent: one […]

Article: Grammatical meaning – Part 1 Thus, the article should obviously be regarded as a phenomenon that can­not be fully referred either to morphology or to syntax. On the one hand, it is a part-of-speech marker of the noun, which makes it close to the morpheme. On the other hand, the article is a function-word […]

The article presents many difficulties to linguists. The problem of its grammatical meaning and its place in the language system is one of the most complicated in English grammar. Firstly, it is not quite clear whether the article should be treated as a separate word and what exactly its relation to the noun is. Secondly, […]

The interjection is a grammatically unchangeable part of speech that ex­presses human emotions, states of mood and volition without naming them. The latter property makes it possible for some scholars to contrast interjec­tions with so-called “intellectual words”. Interjections differ from all other parts of speech in their origin, specific nomination, phonetic structure as well as […]