1.        Typology as a branch of linguistics. Contrastive grammar, its aims.

Typology is a branch of linguistics aimed at classifying main significant characteristics of the language features and formulating general regularities that can be observed in different languages. It can also be defined as a science of language types and the structure of language types

Typology studies languages comparing them with the purpose of establishing both common regularities of their historical development    universal regularities of positioning the elements of inner structure within the systems of different languages. Typological studies should be called comparative-typological, because comparing structures of different languages is an integral part of such linguistic studies. As any other linguistic investigation, typological studies can be both synchronic and diachronic. The term "grammar" has two meanings: 1) a branch of linguistics that studies language structure; 2) grammatical structure inherent in every language, i.d. laws according to which language units function.

The objectives of major contrastive typological investigations in grammar are as follows:

1.             To identify and classify the main isomorphic and allomorphic grammatical features characteristic of the languages under analysis.

2.             To draw from these common or divergent features respectively the isomorphic regularities and the allomorphic singularities in the grammar systems of the contrasted languages.

3.             To establish on the basis of the obtained isomorphic features the typical language structures and the types of languages.

4.             To establish on this basis the universal features/phenomena, which pertain to the languages under consideration.

2.        Distinctions between language and speech. Analytical and synthetic features of the language.

The distinction between language and speech, which was first introduced by Ferdinand de Saussure, a Swiss linguist, in his book in general linguistics, has since become one of the cornerstones of modern linguistics. Though differences of opinion still persist as for the boundaries between the two spheres, its general idea has been accepted by most scholars.

Speech is a manifestation of a language, or its use by various speakers and writers of the given language. This notion includes not only oral speech, but also written speech. In the broad meaning the notion of ‘speech’ also includes ‘inner speaking’, i.e. thinking by means of language tools (words and others), performed without pronouncing it.

Language is a system, phonological, lexical and grammatical, which lies at the base of all speaking. It is the source which every speaker and writer has to use to be understood by other users of the language.

Language differs from Speech as grammar rules differ from the statement they are used in, or as words in the dictionary differ from their numerous uses in various texts

Analytical features of the languages are as follows:

1)            morphologically indeclinable words and analytical (compound) forms and constructions;

2)            comparatively few grammatical inflections (case inflections in nouns, adjectives and pronouns, and personal inflections in verbs);

3)            a sparing use of sound alterations to denote grammatical forms;

4)            a wide use of prepositions to denote relations between objects and to connect words in the sentence;

5)            a prominent use of word order to denote grammatical relations: a more or less fixed word order.

Syntactic analytical constructions form one and the same part of the sentence. For example, a compound predicate: He started singing; an attribute: чоловік великої волі.

In the course of a language history some synthetic constructions are substituted by analytical ones, e.g. declension forms are replaced by prepositional-declensional and later on, by prepositional (if declension system is destroyed). On the other hand, on the basis of some analytical constructions, synthetic forms can appear: Synthetic and analytical forms can co-exist within one and the same paradigm. Synthesis in language is a typological property of a language system which consists in combination of several morphemes within one word. Beside morphological synthesis there exists syntactical and word-forming synthesis.

3.        Two branches of grammar in the contrasted languages.

The field of grammar is often divided into two domains: morphology and syntax.

1.    Morphology is a branch of grammar dealing with regularities of functioning and development of the language system that provides structuring and understanding of word-forms.

Morphology studies the grammatical classes and groups of words, their grammatical categories and systems of forms (paradigms) in which these categories actually exist. Units of language in general, and of grammar in particular, form a hierarchy of interconnected elements, a rank scale. The lowest grammatical unit on that scale is the morpheme. Every lower unit forms part of a higher one.

The contrastive morphology deals with:

1) the specific traits of morphemes in languages under contrastive research;

2) the classes of paradigms (both synthetic and analytical) pertaining to a notional parts of speech and reflecting its paradigmatic variety;

3) the morphological categories and their manifestation in the contrasted languages;

4) the parts of speech and their typological features.

The main unit of the morphological level is a morpheme.

Morpheme is the smallest unit of grammar that has semantic meaning, the smallest unit in word-formation and morphology, the smallest meaningful part the word can be broken down.

Syntactic units, in contradiction to morphological units do not represent such linguistic elements that could be studied and differentiated by specific material structure of their own. Here belong word-groups (phrases), parts of the sentence, clause (sentence).

4.        Typology of the morphemic structure of the word in the contrasted languages.

Morphemes split into two main types: free and bound morphemes.

Free (root) morphemes are morphemes bearing the lexical meaning of the words, their use does not depend on other morphemes. free morphemes may be regular words or they may constitute the lexical core of a word. In other words, root morphemes in English, Ukrainian and other languages are not dependent on other morphemes in a word. Bound morphemes can not function independently: they are bound to the root or to the stem consisting of the root morpheme and of one or more affixal morphemes. Affixal morphemes in the contrasted languages split into a) Derivational affixes and b) inflexions.

Inflexional morphemes in the contrasted languages express different morphological categories; inflexions of the comparative and the superlative degrees of qualitative adjectives, inflexions of degrees of qualitative adverbs, the verbal inflexions, the inflexions of absolute possessive pronouns. The number of inflexions in Ukrainian by far exceeds their number in English since every notional part of speech has a variety of endings. The latter express number, case and gender of nominal parts of speech and tense, aspect, person, number, voice and mood forms of verbs.

5.        The criteria of choosing the unit of typological comparison on morphological level.

Thus, in English there is a complex system of verb tense forms, while in Ukrainian this system is much simpler. In Ukrainian there are aspect pairs of verbs, which cannot be found in English.
Taking into account the fact that typological comparison is carried out not on the basis of the similarity of form or etymology, but on the basis of functional similarity of definite phenomena of the contrasted languages, the first criterion to characterize the unit of typological comparison should be the criterion of functional similarity of the contrasted phenomena. Thus, for instance, morphemes expressing degrees of comparison in Ukrainian -іше and English –er, number morphemes in Ukrainian -і, -и, -а and in English –(e)s.
But suffixes of the feminine gender in Ukrainian (вихователька, учениця) cannot be contrasted to the corresponding English suffixes (-ess, -me, -rix, -ine, -ette) which identify the masculine and feminine sex, not grammatical gender.
The second criterion for the typological unit to be contrasted is its ability to combine general and particular features. It allows to make generalized conclusions as of the particular phenomena of the contrasted languages (different cases have their own features, their own semes), while they all have a common feature, they express the relation of the subject to other subjects, phenomena, processes, etc.
The third criterion: the unit of typological comparison should include not individual words but a class of words.

6.        Different approaches to the part of speech problem in the contrasted languages.

Now part of speech is accepted by grammarians as conventional, traditional and is used to denote the lexical-grammatical classes of words correlating with each other on the basis of their common their syntactic, morphological and semantic properties. Classification of words into parts of speech must naturally proceed from a set of criteria that can be consistently applied to all lexical units of a given language. As soon as every word in a language has a lexical meaning, form and performs certain functions in the sentence it would be only natural to group the words into parts of speech proceeding from: 1) a common meaning of a given class of words abstracted from the lexical meaning of all the words belonging to this class; 2) a common paradigm, i.e. set of grammatical forms; 3) identity of syntactic functions.

Notional parts of speech are those that are independent both semantically and syntactically, i.e. can function on their own. Every part of speech is characterized by a particular system of grammatical categories. Being expressed morphologically, the sets of grammatical categories belong to all the words of this or that part of speech, or most of them. Parts of speech are lexical-grammatical word-classes which are characterized by a general abstract grammatical meaning expressed in certain grammatical markers. The problem of parts of speech is one that causes great controversies both in general linguistic theory and in the analysis of separate languages.

The term “parts of speech”, though firmly established is not a very happy one. A general definition of the principles on which the classification of parts of speech is based becomes absolutely necessary.

We cannot here go into the controversy over these principles that has lasted for a considerable time now, and we will limit ourselves to stating the principles of our classification and pointing out some difficulties inherent in it.

The principles on which the classification is based are three in number: 1) meaning; 2) from; 3) function

7.        Morphemic structure of the noun in the contrasted languages.

The definition of a noun as a word used for naming some person or thing, is thought to be inappropriate, because it excludes many nouns, which could not easily be described as ‘persons, things, places’, such as abstract qualities and actions.”

2. By form we mean the morphological characteristics of a type of word. Thus, the noun is characterized by the category of number (singular and plural), the verb by tense, mood and others.

3. By function we mean the syntactic properties of a type of word. These are subdivided into two: a) its method of combining with other words; b) function of the words in the sentence.

8.        Grammatical categories of the noun in the contrasted languages. The category of case.

The case is a grammatical category of a nominative part of speech (nouns, adjectives, pronouns, numerals), reflecting its syntactic relation to other words in the sentence. The category of case is characteristic of inflectional languages. The nominative case is the principle case all other cases are formed from. It expresses the agent of the action, usually the case of the subject of the sentence.

The genitive case (also called possessive case, second case) is the case that marks a noun as modifying another noun. It often marks the noun as being the possessor of another noun.

The accusative case is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb.

The dative case is a grammatical case generally used to indicate the noun to whom something is given.

The instrumental case is a grammatical case used to indicate that a noun is the instrument or means by or with which the subject achieves or accomplishes an action. The noun may be either a physical object or an abstract concept.

The prepositional case is a grammatical case that marks the object of a preposition

The vocative case is used for a noun identifying the person (animal, object, etc.) being addressed and/or occasionally the determiners of that noun. A vocative expression is an expression of direct address, wherein the identity of the party being spoken to is set forth expressly within a sentence.

9.        Grammatical categories of the noun in the contrasted languages. The category of gender.

The nouns are grouped into types, based on the kind of endings they have or on the way they pattern with other words. They have an ability to assimilate the words dependent on it (adjectives, pronouns) in form. These types are known as morphological (grammatical) gender classes. In Russian and Ukrainian every noun has a seme of gender: masculine, feminine or neuter. This category in Ukrainian is formal, except the nouns denoting people or animals. The semes of gender, as well as the semes of case and number are inherent in the meaning of the noun inflections

The category of gender in Ukrainian and Russian is characterized the noun correlating in form with adjectives, ordinal numerals, possessive and demonstrative pronouns and form free word-combinations. Many nouns are given variable gender, depending on whether they are thought of in an intimate way. The names of vessels and vehicles are usually associated with feminine gender. So are the names of hotels and inns.

10.    Grammatical categories of the noun in the contrasted languages. The category of definiteness and indefiniteness.

noun category is that of definiteness/indefiniteness, which is usually expressed by articles that can be either a function word. From one point of view, the group “article + noun” contains two word-forms, it is a peculiar type of word-combination, then no “zero” article can exist, and the meaning of the definite and indefinite articles is the meaning of two separate words. . Another viewpoint regards the group “article + noun” as an analytical form of the noun.This view states that the use of the definite, indefinite and zero articles mark a grammatical category. This category is called determination (definiteness-indefiniteness). The question is whether the group “article + noun” can be a form of the noun in the same way as, for example, the group will speak.

11.    Grammatical categories of the noun in the contrasted languages. The category of number.

The category of number expresses the quantitative relations, existing in the real life and reflected in the conscience of native speakers, which have morphological expression in corresponding morphological forms. Modern English like most other languages singles out two numbers: singular and plural. The meaning of singular and plural seems to be self-explanatory, that is the opposition: one –more than one.

Both in Ukrainian and English the category of number is realized synthetically: the use of zero and marked inflections.

Singular in English is expressed only by the zero inflection. Singular in Ukrainian is expressed by the system of inflections characteristic of the nouns of different declensions (four declensions in Ukrainian), which includes both zero inflection and marked inflections. 

Plural is expressed in Ukrainian by morphemes depending on the declension the noun belongs to. In English plural can be formed by sound interchange, which cannot be found in Ukrainian but this way of forming plural form is not productive and cannot be treated as typological characteristics of the English noun.

12.    Typological characteristics of the verb in English and Ukrainian.

13.    Grammatical categories of the verb in the contrasted languages. The category of mood.

Morphological categories of the verbs in the contrasted languages are tense, aspect, taxis, mood, person and number.

The category of mood is a morphological word-changing verb category, which denotes the relation of the action to reality from the point of view of the speaker. The relations of the action to reality can be different: if the action is thought to be real, we deal with the indicative mood, if it is considered to be unreal, possible or impossible, desirable or probable, we talk about the subjunctive mood. The imperative mood serves to express orders or requests.

The indicative mood in the contrasted languages denotes a real action, taking place in the present or past, or which is to be performed in the future. However means of expressing indicative mood differ in the languages under analysis (see the categories of tense, aspect, taxis, voice). Much greater differences can be found in the system of the subjunctive mood forms in English as compared to Ukrainian. In Ukrainian there is just one mood, expressing unreality, called either subjunctive, or conditional or suppositional. It is used to denote an action, thought to be unreal, desirable or possible. As distinct from Ukrainian, in English there are 4 oblique moods: subjunctive I, subjunctive II, suppositional and conditional expressed both synthetically and analytically. Imperative mood is used to express will, request, order, command, and encouragement. The main seme of the imperative mood is “incentive” or “prohibition”. In Ukrainian the paradigm of the imperative mood contains analytical and synthetic forms, derived from the present tense verb stem (for imperfective aspect verbs) and from the present and future tense forms (for perfective aspect verbs).

14.    Grammatical categories of the verb in the contrasted languages. The category of aspect.

Morphological categories of the verbs in the contrasted languages are tense, aspect, taxis, mood, person and number. The category of aspect  is  a lexical-grammatical category, characterizing the process or action, expressed by the verb (if the action is repeated, continuous,  frequent, immediate, complete, incomplete, terminative, non-terminative). These characteristics are expressed in different languages in various morphological (morpho-syntactic) forms, therefore we can speak about different sub-classes of aspect category. NB! As distinct from Ukrainian aspect category, where all the verbs form correspondent pairs of perfective and imperfective verbs with their own morphological characteristics, presenting two correspondent sets of forms, in English verbs of common and continuous aspect do not form such pairs, almost any verb can appear in both common and continuous form.

15.    Grammatical categories of the verb in the contrasted languages. The category of tense.

Morphological categories of the verbs in the contrasted languages are tense, aspect, taxis, mood, person and number.

The category of tense is a grammatical category of the verb reflecting temporal localization of the action or state expressed by the verb. The localization is correlated with real or imaginative "here and now". It is expressed by opposition of tense forms of the verb, indicating if the action is simultaneous, preceding or following the moment of speaking.

The category of tense serves to localize the action expressed by the verb in time; grammemes of this category express different types of relation between time of the action and moment of speaking, and sometimes between the time of the action and some other moment, except the moment of speaking. In Modern Ukrainian verb tense forms, if used directly, indicate that the action coincides with the moment of speaking (“the Present Tense”), precedes the moment of speaking (“the Past Tense”) or follows the moment of speaking (“the Future Tense”). Tense forms can be absolute, i.e. those which do not depend on the other tense forms and determined by the moment of speaking: the present tense form, denoting the action, taking place at the moment of speaking; the past tense form, denoting the action, which took place before the moment of speaking; and the future tense form, denoting the action after the moment of speaking. Relative tense forms denote actions, regarded not in connection with the moment of speaking but depend on other tense forms or time indicators.

16.    Grammatical categories of the verb in the contrasted languages. The category of voice.

Morphological categories of the verbs in the contrasted languages are tense, aspect, taxis, mood, person and number. The category of voice  is a morphological category of the verb, expressing the subject-object relations. On the basis of morphological means of expressing the voice, we can say that the number of voices differs in various languages. In the Ukrainian language the correlative pairs of active and passive verb forms are characteristic of transitive verbs only. The category of transitivity is based on the peculiarities of valency and meaning of the verb, so it should be treated as a lexical-grammatical, not morphological category. Thus, transitive verbs have correlative active and passive voice  forms, the voice category being expressed morphologically; while intransitive verbs have no correlative passive forms and function as one-voice active verbs. In English only active and passive voice are morphologically expressed.

17.    Typological characteristics of the non-finites in English and Ukrainian.

The non-finite forms of the verb, also called verbals are special forms of the verb that have a double nature, they combine the features of the verb with those of the noun or adjective and adverb. As soon as the verbals differ a lot from the verbs, they are sometimes singled out into an individual class of words, still they do not have specific characteristics of their own (their categories coincide with those of the verb, while the functions in the sentence are the same as those of nouns and adjectives), which proves that they cannot form an individual class of words.

The verbals in English are represented by the infinitive, the gerund, the participle and in Ukrainian there is the infinitive, the participle and the adverbial participle. Lexically non-finites do not differ from finite forms. Grammatically the difference between the two types of forms lies in the fact that non-finites may denote a secondary action or a process related to that expressed by the finite verb. Non-finites possess the verb categories of voice, perfect, and aspect. They lack the categories of person, number, mood, and tense. None of the forms have morphological features of non-verbal parts of speech, neither nominal, adjectival or adverbial. In the sphere of syntax, however, non-finites possess both verbal and non-verbal features. Their non-verbal character reveals itself in their syntactical functions.

Syntactically the verbal character of non-finites is manifested mainly in their combinability. Similarly to finite forms they may combine with nouns functioning as direct, indirect, or prepositional objects, with adverbs and prepositional phrases used as adverbial modifiers, and with subordinate clauses.

18.    Typological characteristics of the infinitive in the contrasted languages.

19.    Typological characteristics of the gerund in the contrasted languages.

20.    Typological characteristics of the participle in English and Ukrainian.

21.    Non-finites in the contrasted languages.

22.    Types of word-groups in English and Ukrainian.

23.    Secondary predication word-groups in English (predicative constructions)

All non-finite verb forms may participate in the so-called predicative constructions, that is, two-component syntactical units where a noun or a pronoun and a non-finite verb form are in predicative relations similar to those of the subiect and the predicate. So, verbals make up a part of the verb system, and have some features in common with the finite forms, and in so far as they are singled out amid the forms of the verb, they must have some peculiarities of their own.

24.    Types of sentences in English and Ukrainian.

The sentence is one of the main syntactic units opposed in this system to the word (or word-form) and phrase by the form, meaning and function. In the broad sense of the word, the sentence is an utterance (an extended syntactic structure or even a single word), which can be considered to be an informative massage to be perceived by ear or eye.

Sentence is a communicative unit, built according to the definite grammatical (syntactic) pattern, which exists in the language in different forms and modifications, performing its communicative functions and having intonation of its own. It is probably the most familiar of all grammatical terms. We are introduced to it in our early school years, if not before, and it quickly becomes part of our linguistic awareness. We imagine we speak in sentences, and we teach children to write in them, making sure that they put in all the periods. It might therefore be thought that sentences are easy things to identify and define.

Sentences are the largest structural constructions to which the grammar rules apply. This means that before we can satisfactorily carry out the task of identifying sentences, we need to know something about grammatical analysis. Once we have worked our way through a good English grammar, we know what the possible sentences are, because the grammar has told us.

From the viewpoint of their role in the process of communication sentences are divided into four types, grammatically marked: declarative, interrogative, imperative, exclamatory sentences. These types differ in the aim of communication and express statements, questions, commands and exclamations respectively. These types are usually applied to simple sentences. In a complex sentence the communicative type depends upon that of the main clause.

A declarative sentence contains a statement which gives the reader or the listener some information about various events, activities or attitudes, thoughts and feelings. Statements form the bulk of monological speech, and the greater part of conversation. A statement may be positive (affirmative) or negative.

declarative sentences are communicatively polyfunctional

25.    Types of complex sentences in the contrasted languages.

The notions of declarative, interrogative, and imperative sentence, and also that of exclamatory sentence appear to be applicable to some types of complex sentences as well. For instance, if the main clause of a complex sentence is interrogative or imperative, this implies that the complex sentence as a whole is also interrogative or imperative respectively. A few examples will suffice to illustrate our point. Why couldn't she sense now that he was outside and come out? (Dreiser) The main clause Why couldn't she sense now . .. and come out? is clearly interrogative, and this is enough to make the whole complex sentence interrogative, though the subordinate clause that he was outside (an object clause) is certainly not interrogative, and should, if anything, be termed declarative. This, it may be noted in passing, is an additional proof that the clause that he was outside is a subordinate clause: its type of communication is irrelevant for the type of communication to which the sentence as a whole belongs, while the type of the clause Why couldn't she sense .. . and come out? is decisive for it.

Now let us take a complex sentence with an imperative main clause: Never you mind how old she is. The main clause never you mind is imperative and that is enough to make the whole sentence imperative as well.