Grammatical Categories and

Markers
Lecture 3
Which are the structural levels of
language?
phonological
morphological
syntactical
lexico-semantical
Here we are interested in the grammatical level.
Mincoff: every linguistic item is part of the
grammatical structure of a language

How do we express possession in English?
my aunts book the marker of the Genitive case
the book of my aunt a prepositional phrase introduced by of


How do we express possession in Bulgarian?



The same fact of possession has an entirely
different expression in Bulgarian

It is a question of the structure of Bulgarian
language and not of the extralinguistic fact as
such
The word has to be grammatically shaped in
order to function in the language
Which are the grammatical categories of
the noun in English and Bulgarian?

English noun Bulgarian noun

number
case
gender

English verb Bulgarian verb
tense
aspect
voice


In English grammatical markers are
considerably less than in Bulgarian.
In both languages they are less than the other
types of morphemes
Name some grammatical markers
noun
-s
-s girl-girls girls-girls
verb
-ing
-ed play-playing-played
adjective
-er
-est smart-smarter-smartest
J.Molhova: a grammatical morpheme
has several grammatical meanings
The simplest grammatical marker has at
least two grammatical meanings:
that of the class of words
that of the specific category within it

The adjectival suffix -er has the following two
meanings
1. adjective;
2. comparative degree.
The suffix -s in He works
1. verb;
2. Present Simple Tense;
3. 3rd person;
4. singular.

The suffix a in ea
1. noun;
2. feminine;
3. singular.
Can you find some examples of homonymy
with the grammatical suffixes?
the substantival suffix -s marking the plural
of some noun
game-games
is homonymous with
the verbal suffix -s, marking the 3rd p. sg.
of the Present Simple Tense of the verb
work-works
Some other examples of homonymy with the
grammatical suffixes?
the verbal suffix -ed marking the past
participle of the verb
work-worked
is an homonym with
the verbal suffix -ed marking the Past
Simple Tense
work-worked
Some more examples of homonymy with the
grammatical suffixes?
the substantival suffix -en marking the
plural form of some nouns
child-children
is an homonym with
the verbal suffix -en marking the past
participle of some verbs
write-written
And more examples of homonymy with the
grammatical suffixes?
the gerundial suffix -ing
reading
is an homonym with
the suffix -ing marking the present participle
reading
Can you find some examples of synonymy
with the grammatical suffixes?
the substantival suffix -s marking the plural
of some nouns
cow-cows
is synonymous with
the suffix -en also marking the plural of
some nouns
ox-oxen
Are there other examples of synonymy with
the grammatical suffixes?
the suffix -ed marking the past participle of
some verbs
play-played
is synonymous with
the suffix -en with the same meaning
write-written
Can you find some antonyms among the
grammatical markers?
Due to the nature of the meanings of a
grammatical morpheme one can hardly
speak of antonyms
unless the various cases of forms in binary
opposition are considered to be antonyms,
since they exclude each other
Can you find some antonyms among the
grammatical markers?
the presence of the -s morpheme marking
the plural form of the noun
could be considered to be an antonym to
the zero morpheme pointing to the form of
the singular
table0-tables
Can you find other antonyms among the
grammatical markers?
the presence of the -s morpheme in a
verbal form marks the 3rd p. sg. of the
Present Simple Tense
the zero morpheme, points to a form which
is not the 3rd p. sg. of the Present Simple
Tense, etc.
work-works
There are several instances of fluctuation
with grammatical morphemes
A grammatical morpheme can preserve its
grammatical meaning and at the same
time it can acquire a lexical one

Example: the substantival suffix -s marking
the plural of some nouns in English
-s can at the same time have the meaning of
'two similar parts'.
-s can mark the plural and at the same time
acquire a word formative function
customs colours
The same suffix can be traced in
words like
linguistics
logics science of
mathematics
A different case is the word
the former suffix -s has lost its nature of a
morpheme entirely and has merged with the
preceding morpheme, thus becoming part of it
J.Molhova calls this process
degrammatization (or
lexicalization) of grammatical
markers.