Transcript document

COMPARATIVE GRAMMAR OF ENGLISH
AND RUSSIAN: a general survey
Dr., Prof., Andrei Levitsky,
Kiev Taras Shevchenko National University
NUMBER OF SPEAKERS
(estimated statistics in the early 1980-s)
Indo-European
 Sino-Tibetan
 Niger-Congo
 Afro-Asiatic
 Ausronesian
 Dravidian
 Japanese
 Altaic
 Austro-Asiatic
 Korean
 Tai
 Nilo-Saharan
 Amerindian
 Uralic

2,000,000,000
1,040,000,000
260,000,000
230,000,000
200,000,000
140,000,000
120,000,000
90,000,000
60,000,000
50,000,000
50,000,000
30,000,000
25,000,000
23,000,000
THE INDO-EUROPEAN FAMILY
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
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


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The Indo-Iranian Group
The Baltic Group
The Slavic Group
The Hellenic group
The Romance Group
The Germanic Group
The Celtic Group
The Albanian Language
The Armenian Language
THE SLAVIC LANGUAGES
GROUPS
Western
Polish, Czech,
Slovak, Sorbian,
and Kashubian
Southern
Eastern
Bulgarian, Serbian,
Croatian,
Macedonian, and
Slovene
Russian, Ukrainian,
and Byelorussian
THE GERMANIC LANGUAGES
GROUPS
Western
Northern
Eastern
English, German,
Dutch, Flemish,
Afrikaans, Yiddish,
and Frisian
Swedish, Danish,
Norwegian,
Icelandic, and
Faeroese
Gothic
(dead)
Inflecting (fusion) Languages
The form of a word is changed to show a
shift in meaning or grammatical function.
Often there is no clear distinction between
the basic part of the word and the part
which shows a grammatical function such
as number or tense. For e.g.: mice (= mouse
+ plural); came (= come + past tense).
ANALYTICAL & SYNTHETICAL LANGUAGES
SYNTHETIC
LANGUAGES
Greek, Latin, Russian and
Ukrainian (with more
inflections
and
less
auxiliaries).
ANALYTIC
LANGUAGES
English
SYNTHETIC LANGUAGES
Grammatical meaning is synthesized
with the lexical one within the word
form. Grammatical meaning is realized
by means of inflections and wordforming affixes, sound interchange
(ablaut), and suppletivity.
ANALYTIC LANGUAGES
Lexical meaning is realized by notional words, while
grammatical – by auxiliaries, word order, and intonation.
Analytization is extremely intensive and is manifested in
the synonymy of case-inflections, reduction of the nounparadigm, word-order fixation, predominance of
adjoinment in word-phrase relations, abundance of
paradigmatic forms (Continuous, Perfect, Perfect
Continuous), predominance of conversion, postposition
formation and phrasing among word-building patterns,
abundance of function-words.
SYNTACTIC CLASSIFICATION OF LANGUAUGES
(I. I. Meshchaninov’s classification)
1) passive;
2) nominative;
3) ergative .
PHONETIC CLASSIFICATION OF LANGUAGES
(O. Isachenko’s Classification)
 Vocalic Languages;
 Consonantal Languages.
COMPARATIVE
MORPHOLOGY
OF
ENGLISH AND RUSSIAN: a general
survey
PARTS OF SPEECH
 NOTIONAL:
nouns,
 adjectives,
 numerals,
 pronouns,
 verbs,
 adverbs,
 statives.

 FUNCTIONAL:
prepositions,
 conjunctions,
 particles,
 articles (not in
Russian),
 modal words,
 interjections.

NOUNS:
semantic classification
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Common:
concrete (hat, heart, dom,
shlyapa),
abstract
(joy,
news,
informatsyia, znaniye),
collective (family, cattle,
ekipazh, politsyia),
names of materials (air,
sugar, muka, coal),
class
nouns
(bird,
furniture,
tsvetok,
zhyvotnoye).

Proper:

names
of

family
names

geographical

names of companies,
newspapers,
journals
(American,
nemets, Ivan),
Petrov),
(London, Kiev),
(Hoover,
The
“Izvestiya”).
people
Michael,
(Smith,
names
Times,
The category of number
They distinguish the plural and the singular number in the
languages compared. Though only nouns and some
pronouns have this category in English. In Russian this
category is characteristic of nouns, adjectives, ordinal
numerals,
all
pronouns
except
reflexive.
The main way of plural forming is inner flexion.
Sometimes there is an alternation in the stern: wife –
wives,
drug
–
druz’ya.
Completely allomorphic is also the formation of plural
number by root vowel interchange in English: tooth –
teeth,
foot
–
feet.
Some English nouns have zero plural: deer, salmon. There
are borrowed noun inflexions: medium - media, criterion –
criteria.
SINGULARIA
TANTUM
milk - moloko
air - vozdukh
mankind chelovechstvo
PLURALIA
TANTUM
trousers - shtany
preserves konservy
pomoi - slops
chess
money
shakhmaty
den’gi
musor
zelen’
slops
greens
The category of case
It unites all nouns (except foreign words),
pronouns, adjectives, numerals in Russian. While
in English only animate Nouns have the category
of case. The number of cases also proves the
difference: 2 in English, 6 in Russian.
In English ‘s can be joined not only to one
morpheme, but also to the whole wordcombination or sentence: This is a girl I met
yesterday’s mother.
The category of gender
English lacks grammatical category of gender, though
there exists a conceptual category of gender. Most often
biological sex is not differentiated: teacher, friend. If you
want to emphasize the biological sex you should use
lexical means, sometimes the differences are shown with
the help of lexical means: bull – cows, boy friend – girl
friend, he-wolf – she-wolf, Tom-cat, Sally-cat or by means
of word forming suffixes: -ess (for feminine) lioness,
tigress; -er (for masculine) – widow – widower.
All Russian nouns, except pluralia tantum, belong to one of
three genders (masculine, feminine, neutral).
CLASSES OF PRONOUNS (I)
personal (e. g., I, she, ya, ty, possess the
categories of gender, case, number);
 possessive (e.g., my, moi – have gender,
number, case);
 reflexive (e.g., myself – has number, sebya);
 demonstrative (e.g., this – has number,
such, etot – have gender, number);
 interrogative (e.g., what, kotoryi – may have
gender, number and case);

CLASSES OF PRONOUNS (II)
 relative
(coincide
in
form
with
interrogative);
 reciprocal (e.g., each other, drug druga –
have gender forms);
 negative (e.g., nobody, nothing, nichei – has
number, gender, case);
 indefinite (e.g., each, something, kto-to,
chto-to, kakoi-to).
THE NUMERAL
In Russian all Numerals are declinable,
possessing the categories of number, case
and gender distinctions: desyati, drugogo,
dvym tselym і chetyriom desyatym тощо.
Only cardinal numerals odin, dva have 3
gender distinctions. Russian numerals also
denote a group of objects (e.g., pyatero). In
English the Numerals are invariable.
CLASSES OF NUMERALS
 cardinal (e.g., three, odin, dvadtsat’ tri);
 ordinal (e.g., the second, vos’moi);
 fractional (e.g., one-forth, dve tretikh).
THE ADJECTIVE
The adjective expresses the attributes of
substances (an interesting book, vesiolyi
vecher) and can serve as a predicative (the
child was small, rebyonok byl malen’kim).
The
Russian
adjective
possesses
grammatical categories of Gender, Number,
Case and Degrees of comparison, whereas
the latter is the only category registered in
English.
CLASSES OF ADJECTIVES

Qualitative (gradable)
in both languages
possess the category
of
degrees
of
comparison.

Relative - express
relations to qualities.
They
characterize
objects
and
phenomena through
their relation to other
objects
and
phenomena
(economic progress,
gorodskoi zhytel’).
The category of comparison
It determines the difference in the degree to which
a certain quality is realized.
The forms of comparison are divided into
analytical, synthetical and suppletive. Russian
doesn’t show any restrictions as to the analytical
or synthetical formation of degrees of
comparison. But English adjectives and adverbs
form their degrees of comparison synthetically if
only they are mono- or disyllabic. Hence,
analytical forms of degrees of comparison are
widespread in English.
THE ADVERB
It is an indeclinable notional part of
speech expressing the quality or the
state of an action, the circumstances
in which the action proceeds, or a
degree of some other quality.
CLASSES OF ADVERBS
Adverbs denote certain circumstances
(time – now, yesterday, rano, seychas;
place or direction – here, somewhere,
doma, tam; cause and purpose – why, na zlo;
frequency and repetition – usually, twice,
vsyegda, chasto; degree – extremely, fairly,
ochen, pochti; manner of action – likewise,
suddenly,
upside-down,
nekhotya,
sluchayno; consequence and cause –
therefore, hence, potomu chto, iz-za).
QUALITATIVE ADVERBS
Qualitative adverbs (e.g., distinctly,
slowly, bystro, krasivo) in both
languages possess degrees of
comparison. It is the only grammatical
category, which this part of speech
has in both languages. The rules of
building such forms are the same as
for the Adjectives.
THE STATIVE
They are invariable notional words denoting
the physical state of persons, things or
phenomena, the psychological state of
persons, state in motion. English statives
possess a characteristic prefix a- (alike,
afloat, awake). Russian statives are built by
means of the suffix –o (bol’no). They may be
graded (e.g., He is more dead than alive. Yei
stalo holodnyeye).
THE VERB
Conveys verbality, i.e. different types of
activity (make, sing, write, risovat’), various
processes (grow, appear, rasti), the inner
state of a person (worry, feel, bolet’,
priznavatsa), possession (have, possess,
imet’). Due to these lexico-grammatical
properties the verb generally functions in
the sentence as predicate.
Verbal categories.
The category of aspect.
It is lexico-grammatical in Russian and comprises
two aspects: perfect – non-perfect.
English verb has two aspects as well: common and
continuous.
English common aspect can correspond to either
perfect or non-perfect aspect in Russian. But not
all English verbs have continuous aspect: to hear,
to see, to know, etc.
Sometimes English link-verbs can be used in the
continuous aspect, when combined with an
adjective: He is being tired (sad). It’s not typical of
The category of voice.
There are three voices in Russian:
active, passive and reflexive.
There are only two voices in English –
active and passive (to be + Past
Participle in Passive). Only transitive
verbs can be used in the Passive Voice
in English. Passive constructions are
more frequent in English than in
Russian.
The category of tense.
There exist 3 tense forms in the
languages compared. Tense is
determined from a certain
starting point. But there’s a
relative tense in English –
Future-in-the-Past.
The category of mood.
It reflects the relation of an
action to reality as real, possible
or necessary. In both languages
this category is realized through
mood
forms:
indicative,
conditional and imperative.
The category of person
It is realized both in English and
Russian (three persons). The
paradigm of person in English is
realized in the Present. There’s no
category person in the Past. It is
represented partially in the
Future tense (shall/will –
opposition 1, 2 :: 3 persons).