The tradition of forming the concept of parts of speech in different languages of the world has a long history. The principles of singling out parts of speech is one of the most debatable problems in general and Russian linguistics.
Starting from the first known grammars and even earlier, long before linguistics emerged as a special scientific discipline, word classifications were more logical-semantic and philosophical than grammatical. In connection with the rapid development of philosophy and rhetoric in Ancient Greece, scientists became interested in various aspects of the language, in particular, in the question of the nature of the relationship between the word and the object it denotes. Initially, two classes of words began to be distinguished. So, Plato V-IV centuries BC. singled out in his philosophical dialogues such components as the subject and the predicate associated with the name and the verb.
A little later, ancient scientists (and Indian scientists almost simultaneously with Plato) began to distinguish four categories specific in their semantics. Indian linguistics developed along a very special path, far from always similar to European ones, in many respects anticipating the linguistic ideas that began to be developed in European linguistics only in our time. But even among the ancient Indians, classes, categories of words stood out. Yes, in V-IV centuries BC. Ancient Indian grammarians Yaska (as applied to reading and interpreting sacred texts) and Panini (as applied to Sanskrit norms) singled out four classes of words: 1) name, 2) verb, 3) prefix-preposition, 4) conjunctions and particles. Panini's grammar consists of many short verse rules (sutras) and is very different from European grammars with their paradigm tables. The concept of “part of speech” was also used in the Arabic grammar that developed later, at the end of the first millennium AD, and was influenced by the Greek and Indian grammatical systems.
Aristotle in IV century BC distinguished between such “parts of verbal presentation” as a name, verb, member, conjunction (or copula), however, including individual sounds, syllable and “case” on an equal footing, i.e. form of the name and verb, different from the original. Aristotle divided all categories of words into “meaningful” (name and verb) - and “insignificant” (everything else).
The doctrine of parts of speech in Ancient Greece was continued by the Stoics ( III-I centuries BC), who identified five parts of speech: 1) a proper name, 2) a common noun, 3) a verb, 4) a union (properly a union and a preposition), 5) a member (a pronoun and an article). The achievement of the Stoics, lost after the termination of their tradition, should be considered the distinction in the name of the “name” in the proper sense, the name of the individual, and the common, or common noun, which is quite consistent with modern logical ideas [Stepanov 1985].
Further observations on vocabulary made it possible later to differentiate eight classes of words. This was first done by representatives of the Alexandrian school of philologists Aristarchus of Samothrace and his student Dionysius of Thrace ( II-I centuries BC), who, based on the morphological and syntactic features of words, singled out in the "Grammar" such " partes orationis ": 1) name, 2) verb, 3) participle, 4) member (article), 5) pronoun, 6) preposition, 7) adverb and 8) union. Apollonius Discolus ( II in. BC) established a hierarchy of parts of speech and determined their properties and functions. Thus, among the Alexandrian scientists, the grammatical properties of words took their rightful place in the classification of parts of speech.
Dionysius of Thrace, arguing with the Stoics, refuses a sharp division of names into proper and common (common) and considers both of them, using the term of Aristotle, as entities; its own name is the designation of "special entity", and the common name is the designation of "general entity". This is a break with the traditions of the Stoics and the design of the philosophy of the name as a "philosophy of essence" [Stepanov 1985].
In I century BC The Roman grammar of Varro used a formal criterion for dividing words into classes - the presence or absence of case forms or tense in words. Thus, a name (noun, adjective, numeral, pronoun) is a word that has a case and no tense, a verb is a word that has a tense and no case, a participle has both, and an adverb has neither. , no other.
In the middle of I century AD in the “Grammar Guide” of Palemon, for the first time, the interjection was singled out as an independent part of speech and the article missing in the Latin language was excluded.
In medieval Europe, the grammatical model of late antiquity was preserved, presented in the works of Probus and Donatus ( IV century AD) and in Priscian's Grammar Course ( VI century), to which Peter of Gelia in the middle XII century gave a commentary that became a significant contribution to grammatical theory. It is possible that it was Peter of Geliysky who first distinguished names into nouns and adjectives.
In the middle of the XVII century in the famous school of the Abbey of Port-Royal, the French philosopher and philologist A. Arno prepared, together with P. Nicol, a textbook of logic (later known as the “Logic of Port-Royal”), and together with C. Lanslo “Grammaire Générale et Raisonne e ”, which is commonly called the “Grammar of Port-Royal”. The concepts of both books proceeded from the principles of rationalism (the direction in epistemology, opposite to empiricism). The philosophical views of Arno, Lanslo and Nicolas were close to the teachings of R. Cartesia-Descartes. This doctrine recognized as the only criterion of truth only the logical correctness of speculative constructions leading to this truth, and not its verification by observation and experience. Scholastically described Latin categories (number, case, person, etc.) were perceived as “natural”, “logical”, corresponding to the unshakable and unified (universal) laws of reason. Ars grammatica was understood by Arno and Lanslo as the art of correctly "expressing one's thoughts by means of signs that people invented for this purpose" (here a direct continuation of ancient concepts and the medieval teachings of nominalists was found). In the "Grammar of Port-Royal", which in its settings and methods was actually a philosophical introduction to the study of the logic of languages, for the first time the doctrine of the members of a sentence was expounded separately from the doctrine of parts of speech. But the sentence itself was understood as an expression with the help of words of a logical judgment (the laws of which are the same for all languages). This a priori approach seemed convenient for teaching. School teaching adapted to grammars of this kind, and it can be said that in many countries these rationalistic traditions still dominate in school practice [Shirokov 2003].
In general, the system of parts of speech, isolated on the basis of the ancient Greek and Latin languages, was later adopted in Slavic grammars. Eight parts of speech (up to XIX century, the term “part of a word” was used) are also preserved in the grammars of Lawrence Zizanius (1596) and Meletius Smotrytsky (1619), however, Lavrenty Zizanius, following the Greek samples, retained the article (“difference”), and Meletius Smotrytsky, who followed Roman predecessors, excluded the article, but introduced an interjection.
Thus, the doctrine of parts of speech arose in completely different grammatical schools. One can think that the appearance of this doctrine, its adoption in Russian grammarians was due not only to the use of the ancient grammatical tradition, but also to some objective factors contained in many, if not all, languages of the world, and in particular in Russian.
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, and the lexico-grammatical categories (classes) of words into which the words of the language are divided based on features: semantic (a noun has a generalized meaning - an object, an adjective - a quality, property, etc.), grammatical, which is divided into morphological and syntactic (a way of communicating with other words, what function this word performs in a sentence).
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 in any case they are determined by the general grammatical meaning of this class of words.
You need to start by highlighting larger classes of words than individual parts of speech. First of all, these are the classes of significant and functional words that we have encountered more than once, each covering several parts of speech of the traditional scheme.
Within the class of significant words, first of all, words-names and demonstrative-substitutive words are distinguished. A special place among significant words is occupied by interjections - words that serve as exponents of emotions (ay, oh, ba, pah, cheer, pipes) or signals of strong-willed impulses (hey, hello, tsyts, scat, stop). Interjections are characterized by syntactic isolation, the absence of formal connections with the preceding and following in the flow of speech.
A separate group, intermediate between significant and functional words, is made up of “evaluative” or modal words expressing an assessment of the reliability of a fact (undoubtedly likely, apparently, it seems, as if, perhaps, hardly, etc., also say, hear, allegedly, etc.) or an assessment of its desirability or undesirability from the point of view of the speaker (fortunately, unfortunately, unfortunately, etc.). Modal words are used in a sentence as introductory elements.
The noun expresses the grammatical meaning of objectivity. The primary syntactic functions of a noun are the functions of the subject and object. Nouns are also used as a predicate (in a number of languages they act in this case in a special predicative form), as an attribute to another noun, sometimes circumstances. Typical grammatical categories of a noun are case and number.
The category of the case is expressed with the help of affixes or with the help of analytical means - prepositions (or postpositions) and word order. In principle, it is polynomial, although the case affix system may consist of only two members (for example, in English nouns: the common case with zero inflection - the possessive case with inflection -s), or it may be completely absent. The content of the category of case is made up of various relations between the noun and other words in the sentence, reflecting in a peculiar way the relations between real objects, the object and the action, etc.
The category of number is expressed by affixation, reduplication, and other means. The content of the category of number is made up of quantitative relations reflected by human consciousness and forms of language. In the languages of the world, in addition to the singular and plural, there is a dual, sometimes a triple, a plural of a small amount, a collective plural, etc. On the other hand, in some languages, the expression of a number in a noun is not necessary at all.
Of the other grammatical categories of the noun, the category of definiteness/indefiniteness is widespread (usually expressed by the article, which can be a function word, as in English, French, German, ancient and modern Greek, Arabic, or by an affix - like the definite article of the Scandinavian languages, Romanian , Bulgarian, Albanian). Indefiniteness can be expressed by the absence of an article (for example, in Bulgarian) or by a special indefinite article. In languages that do not have certainty / indefiniteness as a developed grammatical category, the expression resp. the categories express various types of relations between the time of action and the moment of speech, and sometimes between the time of action and some other moment besides the moment of speech. In the latter case, we are dealing with special "relative tenses" (such as plus kvamperfect - past, preceding another past, future preliminary, "future in the past", etc.) or with the relative use of "basic" tenses (To Him it seemed that someone was walking in the house, where the form of the present tense expressing the simultaneity of the action of the main sentence seemed). The figurative use of tenses is especially distinguished, for example, the “real historical” common in many languages in a story about the past (I was walking down the street yesterday ...).
The mood category expresses the relation of the action denoted by the verb to reality, and in some cases to the will and desire, sometimes to the personal experience of the speaker. Accordingly, there is a distinction between the inclination of reality - the indicative (indicative) and those or other grammes opposed to it, representing the verbal action as completely unreal or as possible, before. supposed, permissible, conditioned in its implementation by another action; as desirable and even directly required from the addressee of the speech, or as forbidden, etc. A direct call to action in many languages is expressed in the form of an imperative (imperative mood). The composition, functions and nomenclature of other "inclinations of incomplete reality" are more diverse.
Moods include special interrogative and negative forms of the verb, for example, in English - analytical interrogative and negative forms with the auxiliary verb to do (Do you speak English? "Do you speak English?").
The category of voice is closely related to the structure of the sentence. In a number of languages, there is a system of two opposed voices - an asset and a liability. An active, or active voice, is a form of the verb in which the subject corresponds to the actor (“The workers are building a house”), and a passive, or passive voice, is one in which the subject, on the contrary, corresponds to the object of the action (“The house is being built by bochimi”, “The house is being built”, “The house has been built”, etc.) or - in some languages - also to the addressee (eng. “Not is given a book” “He was given a book”).
A special place among the verbal categories is occupied by the grammatical category of aspect, which opposes to each other different types of flow and distribution of action in time. So, in Russian and in other Slavic languages, the perfect aspect (decided, climbed), expressing the action as an indivisible whole (usually the action reaching its limit), and the imperfect aspect (decided, climbed), expressing the action without emphasizing its integrity, are opposed, in particular, directed to the limit, but not reaching it, the action in the process of flowing or repeating, non-limiting (had), the general concept of action, etc. In English, the specific process type (Progressive) is contrasted, for example writes at the moment", and the general view is he writes 'he writes at all'.
Being a predicate, the verb always, as noted, is related to the "actor", and in certain cases - to other "persons" in the sentence. If the relation to different persons is expressed in the verb itself by one or another formal difference, we say that the verb has the category of a person (in the broad sense, including number, as well as gender and grammatical class). The presence of the verbal category of the person sometimes makes the subject unnecessary (so, I'll go, you'll go and it's so clear who performs this action). When using the subject, the verb having the category of person agrees with the subject in person and number.
The participle combines the properties of a verb and an adjective, they represent an action as a property of an object or person. The participle combines the properties of a verb and an adverb. The participle names an action as a sign that characterizes another action (“said laughing”, “sat hunched over”).
An adverb by its grammatical meaning is defined as a “sign of a sign”.
one of the greatest mysteries of human existence. Why are only people, unlike all other species of living beings living on Earth, able to communicate through language? How did the language come about? Scientists have been trying to answer these questions for many years, but so far have not found acceptable answers, although they have put forward countless theories; some of these theories will be discussed in this article.
Human language: arose whether it evolved from simple sounds made by animals, or was given to humans
God? Everyone agrees that language is the main feature that distinguishes humans from other biological species. Our children master the skills of oral speech, barely reaching the age of four; if a child at the age of four cannot speak, then this is a consequence of a congenital or acquired pathology. In general, the gift of speech is inherent in all people - and none of the other living beings that inhabit the Earth. Why is it that only humanity has the ability to communicate verbally, and how did we acquire this ability?
First experiments and scientific hypotheses.
Even in ancient Egypt, people thought about which language is the most ancient, that is, they posed the problem language origin.
The foundations of modern theories of the origin of the language were laid by ancient Greek philosophers.
By looking at they were divided into two scientific schools - supporters of the "fuses" and adherents of the "theses".
Theory "fusei"(fusei - Greek. " by nature") defended the natural, "natural" nature of the language and, consequently, the natural, biological conditionality of its occurrence and structure. Supporters of the natural origin of the names of objects, in particular, Heraclitus of Ephesus(535-475 BC), believed that the names were given by nature, since the first sounds reflected the things that the names correspond to. Names are shadows or reflections of things. The one who names things must discover the correct name created by nature, but if this fails, then he only makes noise.
Supporters t theories of "Tesey"(thesei - Greek. " by establishment") among which were Democritus of Abder(470/460 - the first half of the 4th century BC) and Aristotle from Stagira (384-322 BC), argued the conditional nature of the language, not related to the essence of things, and, therefore, artificiality, in extreme terms - the conscious nature of its occurrence in society. Names come from the establishment, according to custom, of an agreement between people. They pointed to many inconsistencies between a thing and its name: words have several meanings, the same concepts are denoted by several words. If the names were given by nature, it would be impossible to rename people, but, for example, Aristocles with the nickname Plato (“broad-shouldered”) went down in history.
Scientists have put forward dozens of hypotheses about how people overcame obstacles to appearance of language; most of these hypotheses are very speculative and differ significantly from each other.
The theory of the emergence of language from sounds.
Many biologists and linguists who support the idea of evolution from protozoa to humans believe that language gradually developed from the sounds and noises made by animals. With the development of human intelligence, people managed to make more and more sounds; Gradually, these sounds turned into words, which were assigned meanings.
One way or another, sounds designed to express emotions are very different from those used to convey concepts. Therefore, the probability origin of human language from the sounds made by animals is extremely small.
The theory of creating language by the power of the human mind
Some scholars have suggested that humans somehow created language through their minds. According to their theory, as man evolved, the intellectual abilities of people grew continuously and eventually allowed people to begin to communicate with each other. This assumption also seems very logical, but most scientists and linguists deny this possibility. In particular, Dwight Bolinger, a scientist and linguist who has studied the language abilities of chimpanzees, says:
“It's worth asking why all the life forms that inhabit the Earth had to wait millions of years before Homo did it [created language]. Is it really because a certain level of intelligence had to appear first? But how could this happen if intelligence is entirely dependent on language? Language could not possibly be a precondition for emergence of language».
The level of intelligence cannot be measured without the help of language. So the hypothesis about the appearance of language as a result of the development of the human mind is unfounded and unprovable.
Among other things, scientists cannot prove that a developed intellect is necessary for a language. Thus, we can conclude that we owe our ability to communicate in language not to our highly developed intellect.
The theory of the sudden emergence of language
Some scientists believe that the language appeared in people suddenly, without visible prerequisites for its origin. They believe that the language was originally laid down in a person, and people at a certain stage of evolution simply discovered this feature in themselves and began to use words and gestures to communicate and transmit information, gradually expanding their vocabulary. Adherents of the theory of the sudden appearance of language argue that people acquired the gift of speech as a result of a random rearrangement of DNA sections in the process of evolution.
According to this theory, language and everything necessary for communication existed before man discovered them. But this means that the language as such arose quite by accident and was not conceived as an integral system. Meanwhile, the language is a complex logical system, the highest level of organization of which simply does not allow one to believe in its random occurrence. And even if this theory can be considered as a model for the emergence of language, it cannot by any means be considered an acceptable explanation for the origin of such, since such a complex structure as language could not have arisen by itself, without a creator.
Sign language theory
This theory was put forward Etienne Condillac, Jean Jacques Rousseau and German psychologist and philosopher Wilhelm Wundt(1832-1920), who believed that language is formed arbitrarily and unconsciously.
According to this theory, as humans have evolved, they have gradually developed sign systems because they have discovered that the use of signs can be beneficial. At first, they did not seek to convey any ideas to others; the person simply performed some action, the other saw it and then repeated this action. For example, one person tries to move some object, but he himself is unable to do it; the other sees these efforts and comes to his aid. As a result, the person realized to himself: in order for him to be helped to move something, a gesture depicting a push is enough.
The most serious shortcoming of this theory is that, despite countless attempts, none of its adherents has ever been able to offer an acceptable scenario for adding sounds to gestures.
Gestures as an auxiliary means of communication continue to be used by modern man. Non-verbal (non-verbal) means of communication, including gestures, studies paralinguistics as a separate discipline of linguistics.
Theory of onomatopoeia
This hypothesis was put forward in 1880 Max Miiller(Miiller), but even he himself considered it not very plausible. According to one hypothesis, initially the words had a sound similarity with the concepts they expressed (onomatopoeia). For example, the concept of "dog" was initially expressed by the interjection "bow-wow" or "yaw-yaw", and sounds resembling bird chirping or croaking were associated with the birds that made them. Actions were indicated by the sounds that people made when performing these actions; for example, eating was conveyed by champing, and lifting a heavy stone by strained hooting.
Miiller's theory would seem quite logical, but in all the languages of our time, the sound of words has nothing to do with the "sound image" of the concepts they express; and in the ancient languages studied by modern linguists, there was nothing of the kind.
Obstacles to the emergence of language in an evolutionary way
It seems reasonable to many to think that people could have invented signs and words for simple things and actions, but how did people invent syntax? There is no way a man can say, "Give me food," if all the words he has are "food" and "I." Syntax is such a complex system that people wouldn't be able to "discover" it by accident. For the emergence of syntax, an intelligent creator was required, but a person could not be this creator, since he would not be able to convey his discovery to others. We do not think of our speech without a metalanguage - a set of auxiliary words that do not have a lexical meaning, but determine the meanings of other words. There is no way people could, by sheer chance, begin to use and understand these words.
A person cannot communicate his thoughts to another without resorting to syntactic constructions; speech without syntax is reduced to exclamations and orders.
In addition, evolutionists fail to explain the patterns of changes that have occurred in languages since the advent of writing, which has preserved these changes for modern linguists. The most ancient languages - Latin, Ancient Greek, Hebrew, Sanskrit, Phoenician, Ancient Syriac - are much more difficult than any of the modern languages. Everyone who comes across these languages these days will admit without hesitation that they are definitely more complicated and harder to learn than the current ones. Languages never got more complicated than they were; on the contrary, over time they only became simpler. However, this is in no way consistent with the theory of biological evolution, according to which everything that exists has become more complicated over time.
Language Creation Theory
Traditions similar to the story of the Tower of Babel have been noted among the most isolated peoples of all continents. They can be divided into three types: the first speaks of a large construction, without mentioning the division of languages (the peoples of Africa, India, Mexico, Spain, Burma); Oral chronicles of the second type set out their versions of the origin of languages without mentioning construction (the peoples of Ancient Greece, Africa, India, Australia, the USA, Central America), and stories of the third type, like the Bible, combine these two events.
It is clear from the biblical account of Creation that language existed even before God began to create this world. Language was one of the ways of communication of the Most Holy Trinity - the hypostases of the Triune God.
The history of mankind allows Christians to claim that language exists as long as God exists, and according to the Bible, God exists forever.
"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. The earth was formless and empty, and the Spirit of God hovered over the waters. And God said: let there be light. And there was light” (Genesis 1:1-3).
But why, of all the living beings He created, did God endow only humans with language? We find the answer to this question in the very first chapter of Holy Scripture:
“And God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27).
God created people in his own image, and since God is inherent in language and communication, people also got this gift. Thus, language is one of the facets of the Personality of Godhead that He has given to people. This is a perfectly sound conclusion, since language gives us a partial idea of the nature of God. Like God, language is unthinkably complex. It can take a lifetime to study it; but at the same time, children, having barely learned to walk, begin to understand and use the language.
Religious theories
According to the Bible, God punished the descendants of Adam for their attempt to build a tower to heaven with a variety of languages:
The whole earth had one language and one dialect... And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the sons of men were building. And the Lord said, Behold, there is one people, and all have one language; and this is what they began to do, and they will not lag behind what they have planned to do. Let us go down and confuse their language there, so that one does not understand the speech of the other. And the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth; and they stopped building the city. Therefore a name was given to her: Babylon; for there the Lord confounded the language of all the earth, and from there the Lord scattered them over all the earth (Genesis 11:5-9).
The Gospel of John begins with the following words, where the Logos (word, thought, mind) is equated with the Divine:
“In the beginning was the Word [Logos], and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. It was in the beginning with God."
The Acts of the Apostles (part of the New Testament) describes an event that happened to the apostles, from which the connection of language with the Divine follows:
“When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together with one accord. And suddenly there was a noise from heaven, as if from a rushing strong wind, and filled the whole house where they were. And divided tongues appeared to them, as if of fire, and rested one on each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. In Jerusalem there were Jews, devout people, from every nation under heaven. When this noise was made, the people gathered and were confused, for everyone heard them speaking in his own language. And they were all amazed and wondering, saying among themselves, Are not these who speak all Galileans? How do we hear each of his own dialect in which he was born. Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and parts of Libya adjacent to Cyrene, and those who came from Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians, we hear them in our languages talking about the great things of God? And they were all amazed and, perplexed, said to each other: what does this mean? And others, mocking, said: they drank sweet wine. But Peter, standing up with the eleven, lifted up his voice and cried out to them: Men of the Jews, and all who dwell in Jerusalem! let this be known to you, and give heed to my words…” (Acts of the Apostles, 2:1-14).
The Day of Pentecost, or Trinity Day, deserves to be, in addition to its religious significance, the Day of the Linguist or Translator.
The existence of a proto-language
Researchers most often judge the origin of peoples by their languages. Linguists subdivide many Asian and African languages into Semitic, named Shema or Shema, and Hamitic, named Ham, the sons of Noah. To the Semitic group of languages; reference to language families; include Hebrew, Old Babylonian, Assyrian, Aramaic, various Arabic dialects, the Amharic language in Ethiopia, and some others. Hamitic are ancient Egyptian, Coptic, Berber, and many other African languages and dialects.
At present, however, there is a tendency in science to combine the Hamitic and Semitic languages into one Semitic-Hamitic group. The peoples descended from Japhet speak, as a rule, Indo-European languages. This group includes the vast majority of European languages, as well as many of the languages of the peoples of Asia: Iranian, Indian, Turkic.
What was it "single language" which was spoken by all the people of the world?
Many linguists understood the Hebrew language as the universal language, in view of the fact that many proper names of the primitive world, preserved in the languages of all the peoples of the exile, are built from the roots of the Hebrew language.
According to the tradition of Judaism, the "Single language", which people spoke before the division into nations, was the "Sacred Language". sacred language– “loshn koidesh” is the language in which the Creator spoke with Adam, and people spoke it right up to the Babylonian pandemonium. Later, the prophets spoke this language, and the Holy Scriptures were written in it.
The fact of the use, according to the Torah, of the Hebrew language by the first people is also indicated by Scripture, where a play on words is found that cannot be translated into other languages. So, the wife is called in Hebrew isha from ish (husband), which indicates the unity and holiness of the marriage union. The name Adam (man) is from Adam (earth), Chava (in Russian Eve) is from Hai (living), “for she was the mother of all living things”, Cain is from Kaniti (I acquired) and so on. This language was called Hebrew by the name of Ever, a descendant of Shem, for Ever preserved this language by passing it on to Abraham. Abraham used the sacred language only for holy purposes.
The everyday language of Abraham was Aramaic, very close to the sacred language, but - as a result of general use - it lost the purity, rigor and grammatical harmony of Hebrew.
Approximately the same can be said about another Semitic language - Arabic. Arabic as a living language surpasses the Hebrew of written monuments by the abundance of synonyms and the presence of precise designations of objects and expressions. These virtues, of course, had Hebrew in the era of the prophets. Therefore, when reading poetic passages of Scripture, we encounter completely different vocabulary, often with words that occur only once in Scripture. As a result of the long stay of the Jews in exile, the original wealth of the Holy Language was lost, and the language of the Bible that has come down to us is only a surviving remnant of ancient Hebrew. This is the tradition and point of view of Judaism, set forth in the book of Kuzari by Rabbi Yehuda a-Levi.
Scientists have long known intuitively origin of languages the world from a single source. Thus, the German philosopher of the 17th century Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who spoke numerous languages of various families, dealt with questions of family relations of languages \u200b\u200band a general theory of language. Leibniz, although he rejected the "Jewish theory" of the origin of languages, that is, the biblical theory of the origin of all of them from the Holy language - Hebrew, was inclined to recognize a single original language. He preferred to call him "Adamic", that is, descending from Adam.
Linguists have come to the conclusion that if not all languages of the world, then at least the vast majority have a related - common - origin.
We speak Russian is; in Latin est; in English is, in German ist. These are all Indo-European languages. Let us, however, turn to the Semitic languages: in Hebrew esh, in Aramaic it or is. Six in Hebrew is shesh, in Aramaic is shit or shis, in Ukrainian is shist, in English is six, in German is sechs. The word seven in English is seven, in German sieben, in Hebrew sheva. Numeral " three» in a number of Indo-European languages: Persian: tree, Greek: treis, Latin: tres, Gothic: threis.
Or take a more complex example. The word idea, borrowed from ancient Greek, has a parallel root in Hebrew. De'a in Hebrew means "vision", "opinion". In Hebrew, as well as in other Semitic languages, the root of this word, consisting of the three letters yod, dalet and 'ayin, has a fairly wide use: Yode'a - "he knows", yada - "knew", yivada' - will known. Let us note that in the Russian language there is a verb to know, that is, “to know”, and in ancient Indian Vedas also means “knowledge”. In German, wissen is “to know”, and in English this root appears in the words wise – “wise”, wisdom – “wisdom”.
The method of comparative analysis of languages also makes it possible to penetrate deeply into the essence of the processes under study, to reveal a system of certain correspondences where superficial observation does not notice anything similar.
Nostratic language
The intuitive desire of scientists to at least partially reproduce the "single language" of mankind, which, according to the Torah, existed on earth before the division of mankind into nations, is, in our opinion, quite remarkable. Followers of the so-called "Nostratic school".
even compiled a small dictionary of the "Nostratic" language. "Nostratic" these scientists call a certain primitive proto-language, from which the Semitic-Hamitic, Indo-European, Ural-Altaic and other languages \u200b\u200bare descended.
Of course, science has the right to deal with working theories and hypotheses, which, sooner or later, can be proved or refuted.
5. Conclusion
Evolutionists have put forward a great many theories of the origin and development of human language. However, all these concepts are broken by their own shortcomings. Proponents of the theory of evolution have not yet found an acceptable answer to the question of the emergence of language communication. But none of these theories provides an acceptable explanation for the extraordinary diversity and complexity of languages. So there is nothing left but faith in God the Creator, who not only created man, but also endowed him with the gift of speech. The Bible tells about the Creation of all things by God; its text is devoid of contradictions and contains answers to all questions. Unlike the theory of evolution, which lacks credibility in explaining the origin of language, the creation theory set out in the Bible (the theory of the divine creation of language) is able to withstand any objections. This theory retains its position to this day, despite the fact that all this time its opponents have been desperately searching for counterarguments against it.
Almost all modern grammatical concepts of parts of speech originate from ancient (ancient Greek). Parts of speech - tracing paper from the ancient Greek mere tu logu or directly Latin partes orationis, where partes are "parts", and oratio is "speech, utterance, sentence" Parts of speech were first called those grammatical phenomena that are now called members of a sentence *. Only later did this expression acquire a modern torminological meaning, although for a long time parts of speech were identified with members of a sentence and with members of a speech.
For the first time the parts of speech were distinguished by an ancient Indian grammarian. Yaska and. Panini (V in do. Not), who distinguished in Sanskrit such parts of speech as the name, verb, preposition, conjunction and share. However, the Indian theory has not been known for a long time. Europe. The European theory of parts of speech comes from. Aristotle (IV in BC), who singled out four parts of speech: name, verb, member (article) and union. Finally, the study of parts of speech was formed in the Alexandrian school (II century BC). Aristarch. Samothrace and his disciple. Dionysius. Thracian was the first to distinguish eight parts of speech: name, verb, adverb,. Article ь, pronoun, preposition, participle, union. The adjective was combined with the noun in one part of speech, because in ancient Greek they had a common declension system. The classification of sli in parts of speech was based on two principles: morphological ("The name is a declension part of the language") and semantic ("which means a body or thing"). This system of parts of speech was borrowed by Roman scholars and, however, they made minor changes to it: the article, which is not in Latin, was eliminated from the parts of speech, and vigunema was added in Latin language, and viguk was added.
Later, this classification spread to all European, and then to other languages. This is how the classification of parts of speech was formed, which is usually called school and, in fact, has become universal. The grammatical classes of words of different languages are trying to be squeezed into a pre-selected ancient scheme, without taking into account the differences that exist in different speeches.
According to the school classification, ten parts of speech are distinguished, which are divided into independent (those that can be members of a sentence) and service (those that express the relationship between words in a sentence). The independent parts of speech include the noun, adjective, numeral, pronoun, verb and adverb. For official - pretext, union, share, etc. Article.
Separately, exclamations are singled out, which cannot be members of a sentence, but can themselves form sentences.
The classification of parts of speech is widely known. VV. Vinogradov. According to this scientist, parts of speech are only significant words. In his classification, four categories of words are distinguished: parts of speech, modal words, parts of the language and exclamations. To the parts of speech, he refers names (noun, adjective, numeral), pronoun, verb, adverb and category of state. To private language, beyond. Vinogradov, own their share and connections, prepositions and alliances. Graphically, this classification looks like:
Parts of speech in different languages
Linguists have come to the conclusion that it is impossible to build a system of parts of speech that is the same for all languages, because each language has a lot of peculiarities in dividing words into parts of speech. Firstly, not all languages have the same parts of speech, and secondly, in different languages there are significant differences in the characteristic features of the same part of speech. The usual scheme of parts of speech for European languages is not suitable for many languages. Asia,. Africa and. Americans.
So, the differences in the parts of speech of different languages relate to both the composition itself and the volume of individual parts of speech. If the main parts of speech - the name and the verb - are distinguished in all languages of the world, it is a reflection of the universality of the functional-semantic categories of substantiality and procedurality (i.e., the subject and action), then there are significant differences in other parts of speech. Yes, in some languages. North. America and I. Africa does not distinguish between adverbs and adjectives. In Chinese, such parts of speech are distinguished as the name, which includes the noun and numeral, the predicative, which includes verbs and adjectives, and the same adverb. Adjectives are combined with verbs into one part of speech based on the ability to be a predicate without an auxiliary connection. This is also the case in Burmese. In some languages, only k and the verb are singled out, as, for example, in the Indian language yumi yuma.
In English, the opposition between adjective and noun is reduced to a minimum. In the Turkic languages there is a problem of interpretation of the so-called "figurative words", that is, those that imitate sound or are "figurative" as a separate part of the language to the other part of the language.
The classification of words by parts of speech and the phenomena of the transition of words from one part of speech to another make it difficult, which indicates the existence of more or less stable intermediate links between parts of speech. In the Turkic, Mongolian and Tungus-Manchu languages, the transition of nouns into adjectives and adverbs and vice versa has a massive character.
The modern doctrine of the parts of speech has been formed for a long time and has traditions, the knowledge of which is necessary for a correct understanding of the system of parts of speech, the tendencies of its development. Russian linguists made a great contribution to the development of a general theory of parts of speech, creating a grammatical doctrine that correctly reflects the system of morphological classes of words in the Russian language.
In Russian linguistics, the doctrine of parts of speech arose under the influence of ancient grammars. However, already in the first Russian grammars, ways to improve this teaching, the desire for a more accurate reflection of the features of the Russian language, are outlined. For the first time, on the vast material of the Russian language, parts of speech were subjected to a deep analysis in the Russian Grammar (1755) by M. V. Lomonosov. Lomonosov distinguished 8 parts of speech: name, pronoun, verb, participle, adverb, preposition, conjunction and interjection. In his grammar, the most important morphological features of the words of all the named parts of speech are considered in detail.
OH. Vostokov, developing the teachings of M.V. Lomonosov, singled out adjectives in the Russian Grammar (1831) as an independent part of speech (in Lomonosov's grammar they constituted a single class of names with nouns). OH. Vostokov removed participles from the parts of speech, which he considered as a special category of adjectives. In adjectives A.Kh. Vostokov distinguished 5 groups: qualitative, possessive, relative, numerals (quantitative and ordinal) and active adjectives, that is, participles.
In the work of G.P. Pavsky "Philological observations on the composition of the Russian language" (1841-1842) contains valuable considerations about the grammatical nature of the verb, pronouns and other parts of speech. G. P. Pavsky substantiated the grammatical independence of numerals.
In the formation of the doctrine of parts of speech, an important place is occupied by the “Experience of the Historical Grammar of the Russian Language” (1858) by F. I. Buslaev, “From Notes on Russian Grammar” (vol. II, 1888) by A. A. Potebni. Fairly criticizing F. I. Buslaev, who attributed pronouns and numerals to functional words, A. A. Potebnya deeply reveals the grammatical essence of these parts of speech.
A significant contribution to the doctrine of parts of speech was made by F.F. Fortunatov, A.A. Shakhmatov, A.M. Peshkovsky, L.V. Shcherba, V.V. Vinogradov and others.
Based mainly on formal indicators, F.F. Fortunatov singled out full words (verbs, nouns, adjectives, infinitives, participles, adverbs, gerunds) as part of parts of speech, which he divided into conjugated, inflected and indeclinable, partial words (prepositions, conjunctions, connectives, particles, modal words), interjections.
All classes of words are described in detail in the Syntax of the Russian Language (1941) by A. A. Shakhmatov, who believed that parts of speech manifest themselves only in syntax. He distinguished between significant words (nouns, adjectives, verb, adverb), non-significant (pronouns, numerals, pronominal adverbs), auxiliary words (prepositions, conjunctions, particles, copulas, prefixes), interjections. In the system of parts of speech of A. A. Shakhmatov, the boundaries of adverbs are very broadly outlined. This part of speech includes modal words, words of the state category, and even individual interjections.
In clarifying the composition of parts of speech and developing the principles of their classification, great merit belongs to L. V. Shcherba. He outlined his views on the parts of speech in the article "On Parts of Speech" (1928). When characterizing parts of speech, L. V. Shcherba took into account both lexical meanings and grammatical properties of words. Based on a combination of lexical and grammatical indicators, he proposed to single out words of the category of state into a special part of speech. Here he included words like it is impossible, it is cold, it is necessary, ashamed, which, in his opinion, are incorrectly included in adverbs. Unlike adverbs, they do not adjoin the verb, they are the predicate of an impersonal sentence, they are combined into a special class of words and by meaning: they denote a state. According to L. V. Shcherba, the link is also an independent part of speech (be).
An exceptionally important role in the formation of modern ideas about parts of speech, the definition of their boundaries, was played by the studies of V. V. Vinogradov, especially his book "Russian Language" (1947). Through the efforts of V. V. Vinogradov, modern linguistics has established an integrated approach to the distribution of words by parts of speech, to the characteristics of parts of speech. “The classification of words,” writes V.V. Vinogradov, “should be constructive. It cannot ignore any side of the structure of the word. But, of course, lexical and grammatical criteria... should play a decisive role. In the grammatical structure of words, morphological features are combined with syntactic ones into an organic unity. Morphological forms are settled syntactic forms. There is nothing in morphology that is not or was not previously in syntax and vocabulary.
V. V. Vinogradov distinguishes 4 main “grammatical-semantic categories of words”: 1) words-names (noun, adjective, numeral, verb, adverb, 1st category of state). Pronouns are attached to them. The words of this group are "the main lexical and grammatical foundation of speech." They act as members of the proposal and may constitute the proposal; 2) connective, i.e. service, words (particle-bundles, prepositions, unions). They are devoid of a nominative function, "their lexical meanings are identical to grammatical ones"; 3) modal words. They are also devoid of a nominative function, “do not express connections and relationships between the members of the sentence”, but denote “the modality of reporting reality”; 4) interjections.
In V. V. Vinogradov's book, for the first time, the category of state and modal words are included in the system of parts of speech and are thoroughly characterized as independent lexical and grammatical categories of words.
The theory of parts of speech by V. V. Vinogradov is widely used in scientific grammars, university courses of the Russian language. Proponents of this theory are gradually improving and developing it, attracting new data and making the necessary adjustments.
