Grammatical meaning
Form,meaning,category
The grammatical meaning is considered the meaning of parts of the word that are added to the essential part of the word, that is, the lexical or root (radical) part. For example, in houses the element -s is additional to the root and contains the idea of plurality, expressing the grammatical meaning of the plural number. The elements -o, -a that are added to the lexical part in the word good , -a contain the grammatical meaning of the masculine / feminine gender of the adjective. The push-ups , -ba, -ba, -aba, -babais -aban have the grammatical meaning of the imperfect indicative of the 1, 2, 3 people in the singular or plural.
Sometimes whole words can contain grammatical meaning. For example, in the phrase The teacher is praised by his students the auxiliary verb be acquires the meaning of the passive voice. The auxiliary verb to have in the compound tenses corresponds to the grammatical meaning of the past perfect, plus perfect, indicative or subjunctive, of the perfect future, compound potential, etc.
Auxiliary verbs in verbal constructions with infinitive go, finish, again, get to, have to, etc . They have lost their lexical meaning and have become mere grammatical instruments.
The word order, that is, the order of the ligation of some independent words that have different syntactic relationships with each other can also have grammatical meaning. For example, in the sentence Water wets the earth the word order determines the grammatical meanings of subject and direct complement.
Characteristics of the grammatical meaning.
1. The grammatical meaning exists only next to the lexical meaning in the word or next to the meaning of the whole sentence. That is, the grammatical meaning does not exist separately from the lexical meaning and is additional to it.
2. The grammatical meaning is more abstract, more general than the lexical meaning and is applied to a series of homogeneous phenomena. For example, the meaning of the plural is demonstrated in the series chairs-faces-boxes … , the meaning of the female gender, in the girl-student-teacher series …. The lexical meaning, unlike the grammatical meaning, is more individual and concrete. Thus, the chair or house nouns do not form analogous series based on their lexical meaning.
3. The grammatical meanings are systematic and compose systems of counterpositions: good – good, high – high, black – black, etc. (male Female); table – tables, bed – beds, feather – pens, etc. (singular plural); enter – enter – enter; buy-buy-buy, etc. (1–2–3 people). We cannot build a system of analogous lexical oppositions.
4. The grammatical meaning is considered mandatory. That means that if in the language, for example, there is a grammatical category of a part of the sentence, no word, representative of that part of the sentence can be used outside that category. Thus, in the Spanish language the meaning of the gender of the noun is grammatical, so all the nouns are obligatory or of the male or female gender.
The grammatical form . It is well known that in the current language a certain way is usually understood by linguistic form as we are offered by different linguistic units from a phonic point of view. Thus, comparing two words such as house and book , they are said to have a different form. Here it is treated externally or phonically, that is, linguistically in general. But we have the most characteristic forms, such as grammatical ones.
The grammatical form is the materialization of the grammatical meaning. Are those elements (parts of the word, auxiliary words) that have the grammatical meaning: -o, -a, -s, -es, -∅, -amos, -áis, -an; he, has, has, have, have, have, etc.
The grammatical form and the grammatical meaning are inseparable as two sides of a sheet of paper. But the relations between grammatical form and meaning are asymmetric: one form can correspond to several meanings or vice versa, one meaning can be expressed in several ways. For example, the grammatical form -é ( I entered bought, sent ) expresses the meanings of the one-to – person, singular number, past indefinite; in turn, the meaning of the noun plural is presented by the forms -s, -es, -∅: houses, trees, Mondays.
Some values can be classified as grammatical or lexical in each given language. For example, the meaning of plurality in the Spanish language is revealed with grammatical means (push-ups or disengagements) and the grammatical meaning is considered: tiger s , house s , shoot aba , return to + inf. … But at the same time the idea of plurality can be revealed through lexical means, that is, through the lexical meaning (crowd, peasantry, frequent) or special words (much, much, more than once, many times, customary … ). Thus, plurality in Spanish is one of the signs of the existence of lexical-grammatical fields. The relationships between lexical and grammatical meaning are even more evident if we compare several languages.
The grammatical category represents the unity of form and meaning. The concept of grammatical category is reflected in the oppositions of two or more grammatical meanings and their corresponding forms. For example, the category of the number is represented in the bilateral opposition of the singular and plural; the category of gender – in the opposition of male and female; the category of tense – in opposition to past, present and future tenses. The system of grammatical forms that serve to express a category represents its paradigm. For example, the verb ver paradigm includes all forms of this verb: I see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, etc.
