Article.

Oksana Putilina

УДК 81371+81367.625=811.112.2=811.161.2(075.8)

STAGES AND CAUSES OF FORMING A GRAMMATICAL STRUCTURE OF PRESENT-DAY ENGLISH LANGUAGE

(IN COMPARISON WITH THE UKRAINIAN ONE)

Стаття присвячена характеристиці етапів і причин формування граматичних змін як підґрунтя інноваційних процесів у сучасній англійській мові (у зіставленні з українською), встановленню природи і першооснови змін у граматичному складі (власне-морфологічного, морфолого-синтаксичного і власне-синтаксичного характеру), а також на лексико-семантичному рівні англійської мови протягом її історичного розвитку (порівняно з українською), розмежуванню форм функціонування англійської мови в британському та американському варіантах (у зіставленні з українською), кваліфікуванню інтралінгвістичних / екстралінгвістичних причин граматичних змін інноваційного типу в обох зіставлюваних мовах.

Ключові слова: варіант, власне-неологізм, евфемістична заміна, інноваційний процес, кельтські мови, конкурування, давньоанглійська, латина, рання сучасна англійська, пізня сучасна англійська мова, середньоанглійська мова, субдіалект, франко-нормандська мова.

Under the global integration that results in strengthening intercultural relations, development of wold "live" languages, including English and Ukrainian, is a rapid process, particularly not only on the lexical but on grammatical (morphological and syntactic) level, which is not always predictable. Analysis of examples adjusted by many authors, particularly A. Paunder, L. Bauer, R. Lieber et al., who are concerned about this fact, revealed new structural types of lexical items, such as fragmented elements (splinters), a significant number of highly unstable compound nouns with a separate writing, but common unifying accent (block compounds) and a creation on their basis of compound words / pseudo-compound words (other parts of speech), whose self-morphological identity usually defined only within a specific context for the fulfillment of their syntactic role, that is, their appearance has a strengthening influence of analogy in the formation of composites / quasi-composites that can lead to structural changes of lexical units, including the conversion of compound words in derivatives for potentially unlimited number of new words with unstable and unpredictable grammatically-categorical indicators [Putilina 2012].

This process is one of the differential features of Present-day English, especially British (BE) and American (AmE) variants as competitors that stand out against other variants of English (such as the Australian or Canadian ones) with multiplicity of media, geographical area due to extralinguistic factors of their spread – as the classic, 'original ', 'true' English (as claimed by some supporters of BE) in the status of one of the languages ​​of international communication and as less conservative language with signs of language-cosmopolitan, that absorbed into itself the elements of other languages​​, which directly contacted, and in the role of the language of the powerful state in the world (AmE), respectively. Lack of substantial research in this area makes the relevance of proposed research.

However, a comprehensive analysis of innovative processes that currently take place in the English language (as opposed to Ukrainian), primarily on the grammatical level, not be possible without the differentiation of specific and borrowed items, events, processes, etc. in modern English in comparison with the Ukrainian that is the purpose of our study. It is quite obvious there is a determination of the main tasks, namely: a characterization of grammatical, lexical and phonetical processes in Present-day English (in comparison with Ukrainian) and their historical interpreting, an establishing of the nature and causes of historical changes in the vocabulary of English (compared with the Ukrainian), a separation of literary / colloquial functioning form of English (in comparison with Ukrainian), a classifying types of neologisms in both languages.

Popularity of English in the world, as evidenced by the number of native speakers (according to various sources – from 300 to 400 million) and those who at least knows it and can use it if necessary as a second language (from 180 to 1800 million) and its status of one of the languages ​​of international communication is the root cause of the dynamic development of the English, who have long moved beyond the UK. The fact of its distribution in 54 countries, the inhabitants of which it is official, and in more than 30 non-sovereign entities could not impact on the diversity of its expression, the number of variants, dialects, subdialects, and hence the appearance of a large number of major changes that affect not only vocabulary but also grammatical level, which is usually quite resistant to any changes.

According to S. Müller, dynamics of spreading any language necessarily led to the changes of its lexical and grammatical forms, but if the process of changes in vocabulary occurs naturally (due to word-formation and borrowing), the grammatical changes are more noticeable for a native speaker and especially for those who use a language as a second one [Müller 2008, p. 9]. A set of grammatical changes caused "shifts" in all grammatical system of language, resulting may be particular difficulties that often arise in the modern media of English (especially in order to whom English is not native) in the process of reading art texts of 18^th-19^th centuries, because not only vocabulary but grammar and then, quite different from today.

In the period of active formation of the modern English language has become extremely important so-called competing ("struggle") organic (actually English) synonyms and synonyms-borrowing when foreign words which fell to the English vocabulary, displaced specific English or those that come in English language much earlier and are adapted so that native speakers were perceived as proper English, to other areas, particularly at the periphery of active usage, mostly labeled "obsolete" or "out-of-date" (to mid. 20^th century) / "nonprestigious" (2^d half of 20^th century). Because this process changes in the semantic structure of words occurred within new-formed oppositional pairs or in their stylistic characteristics. The most active in such changes were observed in Middle English period because at this stage of English language accounts for a significant number of stylistic changes in the specific words of English origin under the influence of token-borrowing. So, actually the English noun foe after the appearance of the noun enemi (modern version – enemy) has gained the status of poeticisms and disappeared from active use that can trace its operation today. The same can be noticed to other nouns, eg. Old English folk and dale were pushed by counterparts people and valley with the movement of much narrower scope and limits of semantic structure and compatibility properties [Stockwell, Minkova 2001].

Overall, this process does not cease now, and can lead to serious changes in the semantics of words, cf.: verb starve in the Old English period meant 'dead', but under pressure of synonym die with the same value meaning of starve initially narrowed to 'die of hunger', and then lost a seme 'death', and in the modern English it is used to denote the process of starvation, but not with the obligatory tragic ending. A similar case of interference in the semantic structure of words, only to have entanglement of principles of separation into meaningful parts of words in the English language and the source language, which in the English linguistics marked as pseudo-etymologization (or wrong / false etymologization), demonstrates by the noun reindeer, in which the second significant component marked an animal in the Old English period: under the influence of French animal primary meaning narrowed to naming not just any animal in general, but only one kind of animals – namely deer [Onysko, Michel 2010]. It is noteworthy that the objects of these changes were most frequently used components of sentence structure, ie, subject / object and predicate, which for English (as a whole, and for Ukrainian) are required for making sentence and that at the morphological level is usually expressed by nouns (wider – names) and verbs.

By extralinguistic reasons of changes in the value of existing and emergence of new words in Ukrainian and English languages ​​should be attributed primarily euphemistic replacement – usually more sensitive indication of subjects and events, from unwanted to mention moral and ethical reasons (and for both contrasted languages the presence of a significant number of euphemisms, created to avoid the use of words with clearly determinate seme "death, ruin" type pass away, perish, join the better, kick the bucket, go to green pastures, вирушити / перейти в інший (кращий) світ, вирушити на небеса, зіграти в ящик, etc.) is characteristic, cf.: fatal ‘смертельний’ → inoperable ‘неоперабельний’. Note that euphemisation affects all levels of speech style and not a mere synonym replacement – in the selected words for this purpose there is a new component value, eg., pass away – not only fly in space, but also change the physical condition, and the better is not only an assessment of quality, but also to indicate the completeness, the end.

Overall, euphemisation often used by the media to mitigate the predicted effect on the audience of readers (viewers, listeners) of certain events of political, commercial or social nature (this trend is especially distinct in the English, particularly in American, mass media (in comparison with Ukrainian)): starvation ‘голод’→ undernourishment ‘недоїдання, недостатнє / неналежне харчування’, second hand ‘старий (одяг)’→ pre-owned ‘той, який був у вжитку, неновий’, unemployed ‘безробітний’ → redundant ‘звільнений (унаслідок скоречення штату)’, crisis ‘криза’ → depression ‘депресія’, salary cuts ‘зниження заробітної платні’ → adjustment ‘регулювання, коригування, вирівнювання (зарплатні)’ etc. A typical manifestation of this is the principle of political correctness ‘політичної коректності’: that phrase comes from correct thinking ‘правильна, загальноприйнята думка’, first used in the speech of Chinese leader Mao Dzedun in the beginning of 80^th years and applied in cases when it comes to issues of race / ethnicity, gender or social relationships. However, misuse of euphemisms frequently causes serious criticism from English-speaking readership, mostly – American periodicals (cf. the quote listed V. Yelisejeva to appeal to English rubrics in German «Tune»: «Government spokesmen talk about REDEPLOYMENT of American troops; they mean WITHDRAWAL. When sociologists refer to BLACKS LIVING IN SLUMS they are likely to mumble something about NON-WHITES IN A CULTURALLY DEPRIVED ENVIRONMENT» [Елисеева 2003, c. 85]).

In general, the formation of English grammar can distinguish several periods: Old English (7^th c. BC – 1100), Middle English (1100 – 1450/1500) and Modern English (1500 – till now) (Early Modern English (1500 – 1700) and Late Modern English (1700 – until today)) [Shay 2008], the gradual change of which greatly affected the formation of grammatical structure of present-day English in the manifestation, which we know out.

An important factor which usually referenced by majority of Anglicists [Algeo, Pyles 2009; Barber 2000; Millward, Hayes 2011; Shay 2008] is the absolute dominance of extralinguistic factors that determine the formation of the whole array of English – from phonetics to stylistics [Путіліна 2011, с. 7-14]. Thus, during the Roman Empire along the Northern coast of Europe (between the rivers Elbe and the Rhine and Jutlandsky Peninsula) settled peoples who spoke Germanic languages ​​(Angles, Saxons and Jutes, who often called Anglo-Saxons) and who have began to move to Britain in the middle of the 5^th century. The influence of Latin, which used by the Roman merchants, who traveled among the tribes, had already become noticeable (cf. kettle ‘чайник’, wine ‘вино’, cheese ‘сир’, butter ‘масло’, etc., or the formation of an extensive system of forms of tenses inherent of Latin, which can be compared with the development and establishment of tenses forms in Ukrainian grammar under the influence of Old Church Slavonic).

However, not only Latin, which always mentioned by historians of English, speaking of this period, influenced the formation of English grammar, as in 4^th century in areas where the Anglo-Saxons were settled, the status of native was so called Celtic, more precisely – the Celtic languages (Brythonic (Welsh, Cornish, and partially – Breton), Goidelic, in particular Irish, and to a lesser extent – continental languages, for example, Gallic) [Algeo, Pyles 2009; Millward, Hayes 2011]. Due to the fact that in 4^th cent. the Rome gradually lost its strength because of attacks from the East Goths and Anglo-Saxons from the North, the Celts, who inhabited the territory of modern Scotland and Wales, begin to expand their borders, while in 410 AD the last Roman emperor left the group of the British Isles the Celts and Anglo-Saxons, among whom had already started the war, which lasted nearly a century and ended with almost the final extermination of the Celts with the introduction of 550 AD state of Anglo-Saxons – England. The population of this country has continued to speak so-called Celtic language up to 7^th century.

In terms of modern English grammar, the emergence of verbal Continuous forms, which characterized the Celtic languages ​​[Millward, Hayes 2011, p. 41], the formation and gradual reduction of case paradigm of nouns, as in the Irish language or in a group of Brythonic languages, using phrases with the participle to implement of aspect-temporal values ​​and typical for Old Irish and Welsh languages in ​​Early and Middle Welsh periods VSO-model of sentence (verb (predicate)-subject-object), that partly (except interposition of the subject) preserved in the imperative and some types of incomplete sentences, and SVO-model, typical for clauses of composite sentences, are important [MacAulay 1992, p. 89-92; Sproat 1985, p. 173-216].

Holistic and systematic influence of Latin is fixed after 597, ie after the adoption of Christianity by Anglo-Saxons and the emergence of the church books. This period – the period of Old English – is usually associated with two state entities: Northumbria (Old English: Norƥanhymbra / Norƥhymbre), which is associated epic poem "Beowulf", and the Kingdom of Wessex (Kingdom of the West Saxons) (Old English: Westseaxna rīce) (which becomes the center of power after the weakening power of Northumbria), which King Alfred the Great (reign – 871-900) founded schools and instructed to translate books from Latin in English (cf. with the activity of Yaroslav the Wise in Kyiv Rus).

Today, English grammar like Latin, has two voices (active and passive), three moods (indicative, conditional and imperative), an extended system of verbal forms of time, including simple forms (Present), perfectly forms (Perfect), distinction of action and prior action (the Future in the Past Tense). In the syntactic aspect should be emphasized fixing under the influence of Latin syntax such features as free word order (sometimes), but in most cases each sentence followed by a traditional indicator – the subject in primary form (or nominative case, for example, in Slavic languages, particularly in Ukrainian), and the appearance of a compound nominal predicate (Predicative) [Shay 2008].

In the Middle English period, in addition to Latin, the formation of English also is influenced by Norman-French language, which is brought with the Norman conquerors, and it served the function of official in England in the 11^th-14^th centuries. However, the influence of Norman-French largely had affected the phonetic and the lexical levels than grammar [Путіліна 2011], as among the grammatical consequences of interaction between the two languages ​​most linguists say domineering tendency to observance of the fact that today consider direct word order (the subject-predicate object) with the transfer of predicate / part of predicate in the preposition on the subject in interrogative sentences, the principles of the use of definite and indefinite articles as determinants of nouns, and a modern variant of the personal pronoun in 3 person, plural they ‘вони’ with variations in the object case them ‘їм, їх’ and possessive pronoun their ‘їхній, їхня, їхнє, їхні’ [Lipka 2002]. Thanks to these features the texts written by Middle English language is understandable for Modern English media, as both grammatical structure and lexical content are more similar to modern version.

If in this context to analyze Early Modern English, a period of which coincides with the period of the English Renaissance (remember that the works of William Shakespeare is present this period of English language), then we should mention the changes back touched not grammar, but this time – phonetics as between 1400-1600 in English there were two phonetic processes that influenced the language in general and distinction of Middle English and Modern English (except language Yola, enjoyed by the residents of two Irish baronies Forth and Bargy in County Wexford to the middle of 19^th century): decline an unstressed vowel at the end of word and Great Vowel Shift, ie a systematic change of the long vowels in accented syllables, to which a pronunciation of vowels was similar to pronunciation in Latin, and phonetics is similar to the Netherlands or Low German (Low Saxon) [Jespersen 1922] (there is interesting that in Modern English spelling usually remained identical to the Middle English one). At the same time and in the grammar changes have occurred caused by the introduction of the principle of normalization of the regional dialects of English by the first English publisher W. Caxton (70-80^s years of the 15th century), resulting in a unification of the case paradigm, sentence structure and syntactic relations between its components, which increased the break between spoken and written English variants.

The final fixing of spelling, orthoepic and grammar rules held in late period of Early Modern English – at the beginning of the formation of Late Modern English, the fixation of its is a series of lexicographical works that do not lose their value up today, including dictionaries: Robert Cawdrey`s "A Table Alphabeticall", 1604 (‘Перелік алфавітний’) (the first English explanatory dictionary), John Bullokar`s "An English Expositor", 1616 (‘Англійський тлумачник’), Henry Cockeram`s "The English Dictionarie or a New Interpreter of Hard English Words", 1623 (‘Англійський словник або Новий інтерпретатор складних слів англійської мови’) (its name was first used the word Dictionarie ‘словник’), Thomas Blount`s "Glossographia", 1656 (‘Глосографія’), John Kersey`s "A New English Dictionary", 1702 (‘Новий англійський словник’) and "Dictionarium Anglo-Britannicum", 1708 (‘Словник англо-британський’), Nathaniel Bailey`s "An Universal Etymological English Dictionary", 1721 (‘Універсальний етимологічний англійський словник’) and "Dictionarium Britannicum", 1736 (‘Британський словник’), Samuel Johnson`s "A Dictionary of English Language", 1755 (‘Словник англійської мови’) and, finally, establishing by the London Philological Society in 1859 publication "New English Dictionary on Historical Principles, NED" in 10 volumes (‘Новий англійський словник на історичних принципах’), 1884-1928, with the republishing in 1933 in 12 volumes "Oxford English Dictionary" (‘Оксфордський англійський словник’) and 4 additional volumes, published from 1972 to 1986.

Currently in the process of learning English grammar should be considered two groups of factors at least: historical background and tendencies that have the force so far and provoke the appearance of changes including – grammatical, on the one hand, and interpolarity and cosmopolitism of English because of its regional distribution and ensure the functioning of socio-political and economic spheres of human activity, on the other. This leads to consider evolutionary changes of English from the "average" option, known in Britain 300 years ago, to a variety of variants and forms of existence in the lands where the British were offered this language: America, Australia, New Zealand, Africa, India and others. And the English returned in modified form to the British Isles with immigrants, goods, technology, etc.

However, there is the internal stratification of BE, because inside it there are three types of language: Conservative English – the language of Royal Family and Parliament, Received Pronunciation (RP), or BBC English – accepted standard, language of educated part of London and southeast of England, "proper English", literary English, language of the best private schools (Eton, Winchester, Harrow, Rugby) and universities (Oxford, Cambridge), and Advanced English – language of youth – the most active and most sensitive type of BE, which actively incorporates a new from variants of other English, first of all – from AmE. And this is excluding dialects: Northern, Central, Southwestern, Southeastern, Scottish, Welsh and Irish.

From widely used variants of English Irish (Irish English, IE), Australian (Australian English, AuE) and New Zealand variants (New Zealand English, NZE) in character are closer to the BE, while the American variant (American English, AmE) formed, in fact, own vision of not only vocabulary and phonetics of English, and, above all, grammar, and there is a 3 AmE dialects (Northern, Central and Southen), each of which is divided into several subdialects, most colorful and best known of which, due to the movie and music, is Californian subdialect (interesting that the pronunciation which is characteristic for it, commonly called "real American pronunciation", and the Northern dialect, language of East Coast – New England, where once came the first settlers from Britain – linguists feel rather close to the BE [Kastovsky 1991; Labov 2010; Lass 1994]).

Thus, all this leads the ambiguity of correctly interpreting changes and their causes that have occurred (and still going) over the past decades in the grammar and vocabulary of English ie if we consider historic changes that took place in the grammar of English, the vast majority of those innovations about which today Anglicist debate, there is not a random phenomenon, caused only extralinguistic factors, but well-motivated in terms of internal organization of the language process, characterized by signs of consistency and continuity.

Perspective of this study is to analyze the processes that deepen the internal stratification of modern English and Ukrainian vocabularies as a whole system within each of the languages the whole and its individual variants in English (AM) (British, American, Australian, etc.), the latter more deeper trends in the breeding options for English as a relatively independent entities and strengthening of the sociolinguistic factors that determine the formation of vocabulary as well as language forms exist mainly in the Ukrainian language (UM) (literary and spoken forms (UM) and literary / common, colloquial (AM)) taking into account the relationships between regional, social and situational parameters that lead to the selection of specific lexical items by carriers of both compared languages based on communicative situation. 

References.