1. Grammatical Categories and Markers
Lecture 3

2. Which are the structural levels of language?

3. 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 aunt’s book the marker of the Genitive case
the book of my aunt a prepositional phrase introduced by of

4. How do we express possession in Bulgarian?
лелината книга
книгата на леля
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

5. English noun Bulgarian noun
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 число
case род
gender

6. English verb Bulgarian verb
tense лице
aspect число
voice време
наклонение
In English grammatical markers are considerably less than in Bulgarian.
In both languages they are less than the other types of morphemes

7. Name some grammatical markers
noun -s
-’s girl-girls girl’s-girls’
verb
-ing
-ed play-playing-played
adjective
-er
-est smart-smarter-smartest

8. 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
adjective;
comparative degree.

9. The suffix -s in ‘He works’
verb;
Present Simple Tense;
3rd person;
singular.
The suffix –a in жeнa
noun;
feminine;

10. 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

11. 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

12. 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

13. 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

14. 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

15. 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

16. 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

17. 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
table0º-tables

18. 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

19. 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

20. -s can at the same time have the meaning of 'two similar parts'.

21. -s can mark the plural and at the same time acquire a word formative function
customs colours

22. The same suffix can be traced in words like
linguistics
logics ‘science of ’
mathematics

23. 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

24. J.Molhova calls this process degrammatization (or lexicalization) of grammatical markers.