What is the grammatical category of the Russian language. The concept of grammatical category and grammatical form

A grammatical category is a system of forms opposed to each other with a homogeneous meaning, or an opposition. A grammatical category is a unity of grammatical meaning and means of its formal expression. Typology grammatical categories: 1) by the number of members of the category (eg, unit h and mn h); 2) Categories are divided into inflectional and classification. Inflectional - their members are forms of one word (eg, time: read, read ...) 3) Categories are divided into lexical-grammatical and proper-grammatical. (For example, the number of nouns is lexical-grammatical.) Languages ​​differ in the set and characteristics of grammatical categories. The grammatical categories are extremely varied. So, there are binomial categories, for example, in modern Russian number(singular: plural), verb form (perfect: imperfect); tripartite, for example, person (first: second: third); polynomials, for example, in Russian and many other languages ​​\u200b\u200b- case. Grammar science is traditionally divided into two large departments - morphology, or the grammar of a word, and syntax, or grammar of connected speech. The division into morphology and syntax is to a certain extent arbitrary, since the grammatical meanings behind the change in word forms are fully revealed only when taking into account the syntactic functions of these forms, that is, their functions within the phrase and sentence. As part of the “grammar of the word”, the area associated with the formation of words as lexical units of the language, and the area associated with the formation of grammatical forms of the word are distinguished . The first area is called the science of word formation, the second - actually morphology. Modality is a category in which the speaker's attitude to the content of the message is expressed. The category of predicativity correlates the content of the sentence with reality.

Question #40

Parts of speech

Speaking of parts of speech, they mean the grammatical grouping of lexical units of the language, i.e., the allocation in the vocabulary of the language of certain groups or categories characterized by certain grammatical features. The grammatical categories that characterize the words of one or another part of speech do not coincide or do not completely coincide in different languages, but they are in any case determined by the general grammatical meaning of this class of words. In some cases, the main formal feature of a certain part of speech is one or another combination of the corresponding words with others. The noun expresses the grammatical meaning of objectivity. Primary syntactic functions noun - functions of the subject and complement. The typical grammatical categories of a noun are case and number. Of the other grammatical categories of a noun, the category of certainty / indefiniteness is widespread. subject: not whiteness, but something white, white. The primary functions of the adjective are the function of the definition and the predicate. The signs denoted by adjectives, in many cases, can vary in degree of intensity. The verb in most languages ​​consists of two series of formations: from the verb itself, for example, read, read, read, would read, and the so-called verboids, for example, read, read, read, read, combining the features of the verb with the features of some other parts of speech. Actually the verb expresses the grammatical meaning of the action, i.e., a sign of a dynamic, flowing in time. The most typical grammatical categories of the verb-predicate are tense, mood and voice. different types flow and distribution of action in time. An adverb by its grammatical meaning is defined as a “sign of a sign”. The adverb is characterized by the absence of any grammatical categories, except for the category of degrees of comparison. The name is numeral. grammatical meaning numeral - the value of a quantity represented as a quantity of something (five tables, five senses) or as an abstract number (five five - twenty five). Ordinal numbers (fifth, etc.) are a kind of adjectives: they do not name the number of objects , a place of an object in a row, i.e. one of the signs given in the subject, as all other adjectives do. A specific category of personal pronouns, reflected in some other groups, is the category of person. Functional words form a separate subsystem of service parts of speech, which greatly changes from language to language. "Morphological" and "syntactic" service words can be distinguished. The former are involved in the formation of analytical forms. These are prepositions (or postpositions), articles, auxiliary verbs, words of degree, particles like Russian. would, etc. Syntactic service words serve phrases and sentences.

A category in the broadest sense is any group of linguistic elements distinguished on the basis of some common property; in a broad sense - a certain feature (parameter) that underlies the division of a vast set of homogeneous language units into a limited number of non-overlapping classes, the members of which are characterized by the same value of this feature (for example, the category of case, the category of soul / non-spirit, the category of species) . Often, however, the term "category" refers to one of the values ​​of the mentioned feature (category accusative). The concept of a category goes back to Aristotle, who singled out 10 categories: essence, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, state, action and suffering. The allocation of these categories largely influenced the further separation of parts of speech and members of the sentence.

A grammatical category is a system of opposed rows of grammatical forms with homogeneous meanings. A grammatical form is a language sign in which a grammatical meaning finds its regular expression. Within grammatical forms, the means of expressing grammatical meanings are affixes, phonemic alternations (internal inflection), the nature of stress, reduplication, auxiliary words, word order and intonation. In the system of grammatical categories, the defining feature is the categorizing feature, for example, the generalized meaning of time, person, voice, etc., which combines the system of meanings of individual tenses, persons and voices and the system of corresponding forms.

Grammatical categories are divided into morphological and syntactic. Among the morphological ones, for example, the categories of species, pledge, gender, number, case are distinguished; the consistent expression of these categories characterizes entire grammatical classes of words (parts of speech). The number of opposing members within such categories may be different: for example, in Russian the grammatical category of gender is represented by a system of three series of forms expressing the grammatical meanings of masculine, feminine. and cf. gender, and the grammatical category of number - by a system of two rows of forms - units. and plural. numbers. In languages ​​with a developed inflection, the gram categories of the inflectional category are distinguished, i.e. those whose members can be represented by forms of the same word within its paradigm (for example, in Russian - tense, mood, verb person, number, case, adjective gender, degree of comparison) and non-inflective (classifying), i.e. . those whose members cannot be represented by forms of the same word (in Russian - gender and animateness, inanimateness of nouns).

The languages ​​of the world are different:

1. by the number and composition of grammatical categories - for some Slavic languages specific category of the species; the category of definite indefiniteness for languages ​​with articles; the category of respectability (politeness) in Japanese and Korean;

2. by the number of opposed members within the same category (6 cases in Russian and up to 40 in Dagestan)

3. by what parts of speech contain a particular category (in Nenets nouns have categories of person and tense)

The combination of broader and narrower categories in different languages ​​may be different. In Russian, names and participles are declined, and Finno-Ugric names can change according to faces ("my mother", "your mother", etc. "eke-m", "eke-n", etc.)

Grammar categories are the best studied, to their characteristic features includes the modifying type of the categorizing attribute, its involvement in syntax, the obligation to choose one of its meanings for word forms from the categorizable set, and the presence of a regular way of expressing it. The presence of the totality of these properties is usually the basis for the unconditional recognition of the grammatical nature of the category, although each of them taken separately is neither a necessary nor a sufficient sign of a grammatical category.

There is not a single grammatical category that would be characteristic of all the languages ​​of the world. The discrepancy between grammatical categories in different languages ​​is the best evidence of the specificity of the selection of grammatical categories in each language.

Thus, the category of certainty-indeterminacy, which is very essential for the Romano-Germanic languages ​​and clearly expressed in these languages ​​with the help of articles, is absent in the Russian language, but this does not mean that Russians cannot have these meanings in their minds. They only express them lexically (by pronouns). If in a language one gramme is expressed by special techniques, then the second one can be expressed negatively - by the absence of a special indicator. For example, in Hebrew: bajio "house", habbajio "certain house", in Tajik, on the contrary, there is only an indefinite article. Therefore, the first property of a grammatical category is the regularity of distinguishing grammatical meanings.

An example of repetition in African and Indonesian languages; dual. The division of animate-inanimate (V. p.) is unusual for ancient European languages; also the distinction of the category of aspect, does not even know the gender of nouns English language and all Turkic languages.

The second property is obligatory (in the Romano-Germanic languages, it is impossible to do without the definiteness of indefiniteness).

The number of homogeneous categories is different in different languages; so in languages ​​with declension, the number of cases can vary from 3 (in Arabic), 4 in German, 6 in Russian, 15 in Estonian and more (Dagest languages).

Even sometimes, when there is a correspondence between languages ​​in relation to cases, the same thing can be expressed in different cases: “I went for firewood” (Tv.p.), and in Kazakh it is also expressed in the dative case.

It is customary to distinguish lexico-grammatical categories of words from grammatical categories in morphology - such subclasses within certain parts of speech that have a common semantic feature that affects the ability of words to express certain categorical morphological meanings. The meaning of plurality in forms plural- grammatical, in collective names - the fact of lexical meaning, expressed by the basis, and the grammatical method shows the singular (fist-fist-fist), they also distinguish concrete, abstract, real nouns; adjectives qualitative and relative, etc.

The grammatical categories changed over time: there was no definite article in Latin yet, and in vernacular Latin the pronoun "ilia" was used so often that in the Romance languages ​​it became a definite article. Later, the indefinite article arose from the pronoun "one"

Grammema(English) grammeme) - grammatical meaning, understood as one of the elements of the grammatical category; different grammes of the same category are mutually exclusive and cannot be expressed together. So, in Russian, the singular and plural are grammemes of the category of number; one or the other value must be expressed, but not both at the same time. It can also be called a gramme grammatical indicator- a plan for expressing grammatical meaning (in the same meaning, the term proposed by J. Bybee is used gram, English gram), as well as the unity of meaning (content plan) and ways of expressing it.

The grammeme in the language is represented by a number of forms, united by the meaning of the component of this grammatical category, but differing in the meanings of other categories inherent in this part of speech: for example, the grammeme of the second person of the verb in Russian is represented by a number of forms, united by this value, but differing in the values ​​of mood, tense, form , pledge, numbers. Grammemes, expressed by a number of morphological forms, constitute a morphological category. There are also grammes expressed by syntactic forms - classes of syntactic constructions (for example, active and passive constructions) - and constituting syntactic categories.

A gramme, understood as a unit of the content plan, is correlated with a morpheme as a unit of the expression plan. The unit of the expression plan, correlated with the grammes of several grammatical categories at the same time, is called an inflectional morpheme, or inflection.

GRAMME - a component of a grammatical category, which in its meaning is a specific concept in relation to the meaning of a grammatical. category as a generic concept. Such are, for example, G. units. and many others. number, 1st, 2nd and 3rd person, G. owls. and nesov. kind. Like grammar. category as a whole, G. is a unity of meaning and ways of expressing it. In the structure of grammar category G. is one of the grammatical rows opposed to each other. forms constituting grammatical. category as a system. For example, rows of forms opposed to each other present, past. and bud. time form the structure of grammar. time categories. G., considered as elements of the structure of grammatical. categories are close to the “formal categories” of A. M. Peshkovsky and the “categorial forms” of A. I. Smirnitsky. axes. structural type G. - a number of morpho-logical. forms, united by the meaning of one of the members of the grammar. categories. Grammemes of this type are formed morphological. categories. At the same time, G. can be represented syntactically. forms - syntactic classes. structures (cf. active and passive structures). Such G. are syntactical components. categories. A number of grammar forms, which make up the structure of G., includes forms, to-rye are combined by the value of the component of this grammatical. categories, io differ from t. sp. other categories inherent in this part of speech. For example, G. 2nd l. verb in Russian lang. It is represented by a number of forms, united by the meaning of the 2nd letter, but differing in mood, tense, type, voice, number. In some languages ​​(synthetic-agglutinating type, etc.), a generic concept fixed grammatically. category, it can also be the meaning of one of the G. (for example, such is, according to V. Z. Panfilov’s mieiyu, the ratio of singular and plural forms in the Nivkh language). The specified bilateral (content-formal) understanding of G. reveals one of the meanings of this term. Its other meaning appears in those cases when it is used only in relation to the content plan and is interpreted as an elementary unit of grammar. values. The second meaning of the term hG. does not contradict the first, since it is always assumed that G. has one or another formal expression.

There are also grammatical categories that are syntactically identifiable (relational), i.e., indicating primarily the compatibility of forms in a phrase or sentence (in Russian - gender, case) and non-syntactically identifiable (nominative), i.e. expressing, first of all, semantic abstractions, abstracted from the properties, connections and relations of extralinguistic reality (in Russian, form, time); such grammatical categories as, for example, number or person combine features of both these types.

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GRAMMATICAL CATEGORY, a system of opposing rows of grammatical forms with homogeneous meanings. In this system, the categorizing attribute is decisive (see Linguistic category), for example, the generalized meaning of time, person, voice, etc., which unites the system of values ​​of individual tenses, persons, voices, etc. into the corresponding forms. A necessary feature of a grammatical category is the unity of its meaning and the expression of this meaning in the system of grammatical forms.

Grammatical categories are divided into morphological and syntactic. Among the morphological grammatical categories, there are, for example, grammatical categories of aspect, voice, tense, mood, person, gender, number, case; the consistent expression of these categories characterizes entire grammatical classes of words (parts of speech). The number of opposed members within such categories may be different: for example, in Russian the grammatical category of gender is represented by the system three rows forms expressing the grammatical meanings of masculine, feminine and neuter, and the grammatical category of number - by a system of two series of forms - singular and plural. In languages ​​with developed inflection, grammatical inflectional categories are distinguished, that is, those whose members can be represented by forms of the same word within its paradigm (for example, in Russian - tense, mood, person of the verb, number, case, gender, degrees comparisons of adjectives) and non-inflective (classifying, classifying), that is, those whose members cannot be represented by forms of the same word (for example, in Russian - gender and animateness-inanimateness of nouns). The belonging of some grammatical categories (for example, in the Russian language - aspect and voice) to inflectional or non-inflectional type is the subject of discussion.

There are also grammatical categories that are syntactically identifiable, that is, indicating, first of all, the compatibility of forms in the composition of a phrase or sentence (for example, in Russian - gender, case), and non-syntactically identifiable, that is, expressing, first of all, various semantic abstractions, abstract from the properties, connections and relations of extralinguistic reality (for example, in Russian - type, time); such grammatical categories as, for example, number or person, combine features of both these types.

The languages ​​of the world are different:

1) by the number and composition of grammatical categories; compare, for example, the category of the verb form, which is specific to some languages ​​- Slavic, etc.; the category of the so-called grammatical class - a person or a thing - in a number of Caucasian languages; the category of certainty-uncertainty, inherent mainly in languages ​​with an article; the category of politeness, or respectability, characteristic of a number of Asian languages ​​(in particular, Japanese and Korean) and associated with the grammatical expression of the speaker's attitude towards the interlocutor and the persons in question;

2) by the number of opposed members within the same category; compare the traditionally distinguished 6 cases in Russian and up to 40 in some Dagestan;

3) according to what parts of speech contain this or that category (for example, in the Nenets language nouns have the categories of person and tense). These characteristics may change in the course of the historical development of one language; compare three forms of number in Old Russian, including the dual, and two in modern Russian.

Lit .: Shcherba L. V. On the parts of speech in the Russian language // Shcherba L. V. Selected works in the Russian language. M., 1957; Gukhman M. M. Grammatical category and structure of paradigms // Studies in the general theory of grammar. M., 1968; Katsnelson SD Typology of language and speech thinking. L., 1972; Lomtev T.P. Proposition and its grammatical categories. M., 1972; Typology of grammatical categories. Meshchaninov readings. M., 1973; Bondarko A. V. Theory of morphological categories. L., 1976; Panfilov V. 3. Philosophical problems of linguistics. M., 1977; Lyons J. Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics. M., 1978; Kholodovich A. A. Problems of grammatical theory. L., 1979; Russian grammar. M., 1980. T. 1. S. 453-459; Typology of grammatical categories. L., 1991; Melchuk I. A. Course of general morphology. M., 1998. T. 2. Part 2; Gak V. G. Theoretical grammar French. M., 2004.

Grammar category- this is a system of opposed rows of grammatical forms with homogeneous meanings. In this system, the categorizing attribute is decisive, for example. the generalized meaning of time, person, voice, etc., which combines the system of meanings of individual tenses, persons, voices, etc., and the system of corresponding forms.

Necessary sign of gram. category is the unity of meaning and its expression in the system of grammatical forms as bilateral linguistic units. Gram. categories are subdivided into morphological and syntactic. Among the morphological categories, for example, the categories of aspect, voice, tense, mood, person, gender, number, and case are distinguished. The number of opposed members within such categories may be different: for example, the category of gender is represented in Russian. language by a system of three rows of forms expressing the grammatical meanings of masculine, feminine. and cf. kind, but category. numbers - a system of two rows of forms - units. and many others. h.

Case category. In Russian, the category of case is represented by 6 cases - nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental and prepositional. Considering the meaning of each individual case as a special grammatical category, we see that it has a complex character and consists of a number of smaller meanings. For example, objectivity can be named as one of such meanings, since the category of case is characteristic of nouns denoting objects and phenomena. Another connotation can be called the belonging of a noun to a certain grammatical gender, etc. Professor E. I. Shendels calls these connotations semes. The concept of seme is understood as a minimal, further indivisible element of grammatical meaning. In Russian, the category of case is characterized by the presence of the following semes: objectivity, gender, number, animation/inanimateness.



Number category. Both in English and in Russian there is a grammatical category of number. This category expresses quantitative relations that exist in reality, reflected in the minds of native speakers of a given language and having a morphological expression in the corresponding forms of the language.

Genus category. In Russian, the category of grammatical gender has wide use. Each noun, whether animate or inanimate, as part of its semes that determine its grammatical essence, necessarily has a seme gender - masculine, feminine or neuter. The gender category of nouns in the Russian language is formal, except for nouns denoting people and animals.

The category of grammatical gender - masculine, feminine, neuter - was once inherent in the nouns of the Old English period. However, the historical development of the morphological structure of the English language has led to the fact that the category of grammatical gender, devoid of morphological means of expression, has ceased to exist. But at the same time, as a consequence of the Old English language system, in modern English, ships, yachts and other vessels are feminine. Moreover, in colloquial English, an informal style, animals also acquire the category of gender. Discrepancies in grammatical gender lead to the need for translation transformations.

Category of Certainty – Uncertainty. The content of the category of certainty - uncertainty indicates whether the object designated by the noun is thought of as belonging to a given class of objects (the indefinite article), or as a well-known object, distinguished from the class of objects homogeneous with it (the definite article).

In contrast to English, in Russian the category of certainty-uncertainty does not have a morphological expression and is expressed lexically. To express certainty, the following are used: particle - that, demonstrative pronouns this, this, this, these or that, that, those, that. According to their function, they correspond to the definite article. To express uncertainty, the pronouns are used some, some, some, some; numeral one. When translated into English, they are replaced by the indefinite article a or an. But it must be kept in mind that substitutions of this kind are not regular, but depend on the context.

Category of quality degree. The main means of expressing the category of quality degree are adjectives. In terms of their typological features, adjectives in both languages ​​differ significantly from each other. According to their composition, adjectives in Russian are divided into 3 categories:

1) adjectives of quality, denoting the attribute of an object directly: large - small, thick - thin, cold - warm, etc.;

2) relative adjectives denoting the attribute of an object through its relation to another object or action. Relative adjectives in Russian are derived from the bases of nouns: stone - stone, truth - truthful, winter - winter;

3) possessive adjectives denoting that an object belongs to a person or animal: paternal, sister, etc.

Category of type and time. These two grammatical categories in different languages ​​have far from the same development and the most diverse morphological composition. The aspect category is usually defined as such a lexical and grammatical category that conveys a characteristic of the course of an action or a process indicated by a verb - repetition, duration, repetition, instantaneous action, or effectiveness, completeness, or limit, i.e., the relation of an action to its internal limit . The listed characteristics of the course of an action or process receive the most diverse morphological or morphological-syntactic expression in various languages. Thus, when translating, the translator resorts to various kinds of grammatical transformations. In Russian, two types are distinguished: imperfect (to write, speak, etc.), expressing an action in its course, and perfect (to do, write, etc.), expressing an action limited by the limit of performance in any the moment of its implementation or reporting the result of this action or process. The system of species in the Russian language, according to V. D. Arakin, has its own hallmark- the presence of correlative pairs of verbs that form a correlative series of forms that permeate the entire system of verb forms with the identity of their lexical meaning.

The central and fundamental concept of grammar is the concept of a grammatical category.

Grammar category- these are the meanings of a generalized nature inherent in words, meanings abstracted from the specific lexical meanings of these words. Categorical values ​​can be measures, such as ratios given word to other words in a phrase and sentence (the category of case), the relationship to the speaker (the category of person), the relationship of the reported to reality (the mood category), the relationship of the reported to the time (the category of time), etc.

Grammar categories have varying degrees abstraction. For example, the grammatical category of case, in comparison with the grammatical category of gender, is a more abstract category. So, any noun is included in the system of case relations, but not every one of them is included in the system of oppositions by gender: teacher - teacher, actor - actress, but teacher, linguist, director.

b) within the framework of morphological categories, the grammatical meanings of a word (as well as grammatical formal means) are studied not in isolation, but in opposition to all other homogeneous grammatical meanings and all formal means of expressing these meanings. For example, the category of the verb aspect is made up of homogeneous meanings of the perfect and imperfect aspect, the category of person is the homogeneous meanings of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd person.

When analyzing morphological categories, it is especially important to take into account the unity of semantic and formal plans: if any plan is missing, then it is impossible to consider this phenomenon as a category. For example, there is no reason to consider the opposition of proper names to common nouns as a morphological category, since this opposition does not find a consistent formal expression. The opposition of verbal conjugations is not a category either, but for a different reason: clear formal indicators (endings) of I and II conjugations do not serve to express semantic differences between verbs of different conjugations.

1. By the number of forms that a morphological category can be represented, they distinguish binary and non-binary categories.

Binary categories are represented by the opposition of two (series) forms. For example, the category of the number of a noun is represented by the singular and plural forms, the category of voice by the active and passive forms. One form is not a system, and due to the absence of a contrast of meanings (opposition) cannot represent categories. Consider an analogy: a street light represents a system of color signals: red - stop, yellow - attention, green - go, which, in fact, constitutes a lexical paradigm (red / yellow / green = stop / attention / go).


Suppose this system is simplified, reduced to one color, then the color value system remains binary (becomes similar to the grammatical one):

Yellow color - blinking - be careful (especially attentive), because the traffic light is installed in especially important places for pedestrian traffic;

Red - stop, especially dangerous, the absence of color allows movement;

Green - go, the absence of color in principle prohibits movement (it is dangerous to go) - the system of pointers, and in the presence of one expresser, as in grammar, it seems to be the opposition of its zero significance, and you can choose the most optimal system signs.

(In practice, flashing is selected yellow color). However, with any number of forms and in non-binary categories (represented, for example, by three forms, as in the category of the mood of the verb, or six forms, as in the category of the case of the noun), binary as a phenomenon of opposition (contrast of meanings) is of fundamental importance for the realization of the semantic potential of the category .

2. By the nature of the opposition of the components, categories are distinguished that are formed on the basis of:

1) privative (unequal), 2) equivalent (equivalent), 3) gradual (gradual) relations.

A privative opposition according to gender is formed by nouns of the type teacher - teacher, tractor driver - tractor driver, cashier - cashier: a masculine noun in such pairs can name both a man and a woman, and a feminine noun can only name a woman. The privative category is the aspect in the verb. Perfective verbs answer only the semantic question What to do, and imperfective verbs, except for the question What to do, in some speech situations they also answer the question What to do? What was wrong with the boy? What did he do? He was picking apples in someone else's garden.

Equivalent opposition is formed by some masculine and feminine personal nouns: mother - father, brother - sister, girl - boy. Masculine nouns denote men, feminine nouns denote women.

Gradual relations are presented in degrees of comparison.

The case as a grammatical category in a certain volume is arranged according to the principle of additional distribution: the same lexical meaning with the help of a case is placed in different syntactic positions: to lose someone, to envy someone, to hate someone, to admire someone, to grieve about someone - about something.

In the same grammatical category, there may be different principles semantic organization.

3. Depending on whether the components of the grammatical category are one word or represent different lexemes, they distinguish inflectional and classifying (lexico-grammatical) categories. Inflectional categories find their expression in the opposition of different word forms of the same word. For example, the category of the person of the verb is inflectional, since to find it it is enough to compare different forms one verb (go, go, go)

Non-inflecting(classification, or lexico-grammatical) categories find their expression in the opposition of words according to their grammatical properties. Taking into account the meanings expressed by non-inflective categories, the vocabulary of the language can be divided into grammatical classes (therefore, morphological categories of this type are called classification categories). Non-inflective are, for example, the categories of gender and animate/inanimate nouns.

A. V. Bondarko called inflectional categories correlative, and classifying - non-correlative. At the same time, he singled out consistently correlative, consistently non-correlative and inconsistently correlative grammatical categories.

E.V. Klobukov proposed to single out interpretative morphological categories as a special type, " intended to express the degree of relative importance of two or more homogeneous semantic elements» statements. " Thanks to these categories, one of the homogeneous meanings is singled out by the speaker as the main one, and the other meaning as an additional, accompanying, comitative informational part.". The grammatical meaning expressed by such categories, E.V. Klobukov calls comitative. On the basis of comitativity, in his opinion, opposition of full and short forms adjective, conjugated and attributive forms of the verb, active and passive forms, as well as nominative and vocative cases oblique cases

4. By the nature of the content, morphological categories are distinguished with formal dominant and semantic dominant.

In categories with a formal dominant, forms perform to a greater extent the function of constructing a sentence, its structural units - combinations of words, rather than distinguishing grammatical semantics based on conceptual content. These are the categories of gender, number and case of adjectives. Adjective forms agree in gender, number and case with the noun. These three different categories in the adjective denote the same formal feature - dependence on the noun: the material differences between these forms white (shawl) - white (dress) - white (kerchief) - white (shawls, dresses, scarves, trousers) - white (trousers)— etc. - do not introduce any meanings into the semantics of forms, except general meaning adjective - dependent on the noun.

Another thing is the form of the number of nouns in words denoting counted objects: house - at home, notebook - notebooks. However, in other nouns, the number forms lose this quantitative semantics, their formal side is strengthened: the form of the number is in some cases only an indicator of the formal independence of the noun, independence in number from other words (compare: ate soup - ate cabbage soup; bought perfume, cologne - bought perfume, cologne; put on glasses bruh ki).

The case forms of nouns distinguish the subject/object of the action: The student asks the teacher. — The teacher asks the student. The sentences differ not in form, but in the meaning of the subject/object of the same lexical units. The category of case is a category with semantic significance, but it also has a formal (structural) significance.

The situation is even more complicated with the category of the gender of a noun. Therefore, in different grammars, one can find a different interpretation of the content of this category: either it falls into the lexico-grammatical category, or into the grammatical category. The content of the gender category is genetically based on the distinction between male and female. feminine, everything that is connected with it in one way or another, but in a synchronous plan, only in some cases, the form of the genus reveals the semantics of gender. In Russian, in accordance with the gender of the noun, the words were distributed according to the types of declension, so that we can already speak of the type of declension as a morphological expression of the gender.

Thus, the category of the gender of a noun in the modern Russian language is a category with a formal dominant that interacts with the lexical component of the word form. Semantically, the form of the gender is not motivated in words denoting realities that do not have gender characteristics: house - wall - window. The gender of these nouns is a purely formal feature of the noun; the immutability of the gender is an indicator of the form of a noun, in contrast to an adjective, and an indicator of the type of declension (as well as the number forms of nouns that are invariable in number; in particular, nouns like glasses, gates, scissors are sometimes called nouns of a natural pair gender for this feature). Many nouns denoting persons and living beings also have an unmotivated gender form (not directly related to the gender of the signified) ( painter, well done, soldier; pike, dog etc.).

A notable proportion of nouns, however, have a gender-motivated gender form: father - mother, cow - bull, lion - lioness. For some nouns, the morphological expression of the gender - the type of declension - does not coincide with the syntactic expression - the main indicator of the gender: like[oh] men[a](which gives rise to the natural question of the child: "Dad, are you a man?"). The semantic field of male and female is wider, of course, than the semantics of gender itself. The meaning of the masculine, for example, is associated with the semantics of the strong, important, large, etc., the meaning of the feminine is associated with the semantics of the gentle, soft, beautiful and everything opposite to the masculine.

« In languages ​​weighed down- as I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay, genitourinary nightmare”, in historical terms, one can observe how the mentality of the people developed in the field of fundamental human culture problems, analyzing the design of nouns by gender. But this must be done with great care, understanding a certain convention of the form and the inevitability of folk etymologization in this paralinguistic field of research, creative potential which can be seen in the work of the artist with the word.

As a category with a formal dominant, the category of the gender of a noun has developed to perform a structural function - to connect, on the one hand, adjectives with a noun, on the other hand, a noun with verbs and other nouns. This category is represented by the forms of agreement between the adjective and the noun and the type of declension that has developed in accordance with the gender of the noun.

In the forms of inclination, an assessment of the action is expressed from the point of view of the reality of the action ( read - would read - read), in the forms of time - the ratio of the action to the moment of speech ( read - read - reads - will read, will read), in the form of a face - the attitude to the speaker as to the performer of the action ( reading - reading - reading), in forms of the form - the nature of the course of the action in time ( write down - write down), in forms of voice - the location of the action relative to its subject and object ( lost - was lost: Children lost a telegram in the snow. — The telegram was lost by the children in the snow).

The term "grammatical category" is also used in another, broader sense - in the sense of a class of words united by common grammatical features. In this sense, we are talking about the category of a noun, and so on. However, at the same time, the qualifying adjective lexical is added, i.e. we are talking about lexico-grammatical categories of words, or parts of speech.