Теоретическая грамматика английского языка (Theoretical Grammar of the English language)

The connection is shown in the fact that words don’t change when taken separately. They change only when they are connected in sentences.

The systemic nature of grammar. Language and speech. Synchrony and diachrony. Paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations. Plane of content and plane of expression. Levels of language units.

Human language is a verbal means of communication; its function consists in forming, storing and exchanging ideas as re?ections of reality. Being inseparably connected with the people who create and use it, language is social and psychological by nature (Blokh, 2000).

Language incorporates three constituent parts. They are the phonological system, the lexical system, and the grammatical system. The phonological system determines the material (phonetic) form of its signi?cative units; the lexical system comprises the whole set of nominative means of language (words and stable word-groups); the grammatical system presents the whole set of regularities determining the combination of nominative units in the formation of utterances (Blokh, 2000).

Modern linguistics is essentially based on the systemic conception of language. System in general is de?ned as a structured set of elements related to one another by a common function.

The interpretation of language as a system develops a number of notions, namely: the notions of language levels and language units, paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations, the notions of form and meaning (function), of synchrony and diachrony, of analysis and synthesis, and some others.

The discrimination of language and speech is the fundamental principle of linguistics. This principle has sustained throughout the whole history of the study of language. With a special demonstrative force it was con?rmed by I.A. Beaudoin de Courtenay (end of the XIX c.) and F. de Saussure (beginning of the XX c.) who analyzed the language-speech dichotomy in connection with the problem of identifying the subject of linguistics. The two great scholars emphatically pointed out the difference between synchrony and diachrony stressing the fact that at any stage of its historical evolution language is a synchronic system of meaningful elements, i.

Language vs Speech (verbal behaviour)

Saussure made what became a famous distinction between langue (language) and parole (speech, or verbal behaviour). Language, for Saussure, is the symbolic system through which we communicate.