martes, 29 de noviembre de 2011

Grammatical Forms

            Descriptive Structuralism is frequently referred to as Binarist. This orientation is its strength and weakness. The strength resides in elementary calculability, an impersonal, objective, exhausting of possibilities: given any A, B pair, however defined, the presence or absence of a value for each, however defined, can be calculated. With values of + or -  :

                        A:        +          -           +          -
                        B:        +          +          -           -

            Its weakness is identical with that of Plato’s technique of the Division: in the conceptual world, we rarely know enough about any pair to establish exclusive values beyond the most generic; in the empirical world, factual relations are just as complex.

Stable States

            Synchronic linguistic description proceeds on the counter-factual assumption of constant and stable forms paired with meanings within an unchanging speech-community, some forms are never observable in isolated utterance. This justifies the distinction of free and bound forms, when both are established as linguistic forms. Constructed linguistic forms have at least two, so A’ linguistic form which bears a partial phonetic-semantic resemblance to some other linguistic form is a complex form and the common parts are constituents or components, while A’ linguistic form which bears no partial phonetic-semantic resemblance to any other form is a simple form or morpheme.

Basic and Modified Meaning

The meaning of a morpheme is a sememe  ( the meaning of a morpheme) constant,  definite, discrete from all other sememes:  the linguist can only analyze the signals,  not the signalled, so that is why linguistics  must start from the phonetics, not the  semantics, of a language. The total stocks  of morphemes is a language’s lexicon.

Sentence Types

            Order can imply (but is not exhausted by) position, which can be functional; a form alone is in absolute position, with another, in included position. Sentences relate through order, position, and, within a sentence, are distinguished by modulation, paratactic arrangement, and features of selection.

Words

            Since the word is a free form, freedom of occurrence largely determines our attitude towards parts of a language. But even with our typographic conventions, we are inconsistent in distinguishing words and  phrases, and in other languages, it is  difficult to keep them apart.

Syntax

            Grammar deals with constructions under morphology and syntax, syntax takes as its construction those in which no one of the immediate constituents is a bound form. The free forms (words and phrases) of a language appear in larger free forms (phrases), arranged by taxemes of modulation, phonetic modification, selection and order.

Forms resultant from Free Forms

            Free forms combining can be said to produce a resultant phrase, of which the form-class of one member may be determinative of the phrase’s grammatical behavior: in such a case, the construction is called endocentric, otherwise, it is exocentric when the phrase or construction does not follow the grammatical behavior of either constituent.

Parts of Speech

            Most languages show a smaller number, and in such languages, syntactic form classes tend to appear in phrases rather  than words.


 
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