FOREWORD. The book is designed for the students of the senior courses of the University faculties of foreign languages and Teachers' Training Colleges

The book is designed for the students of the senior courses of the University faculties of foreign languages and Teachers' Training Colleges. The aim of the book is therefore to lead the students to a scientific understanding of new assumptions and views of language as system, keeping abreast of the latest findings set forth in the progressive development of grammatical theory by Soviet and foreign scholars in recent times.

The central interest in functional semantic correlation of grammatical units has given shape to the whole book. In a description of language structure we have to account for the form, the substance and the relationship between the form and the situation. Linguistic activity participates in situations alongside with man's other activities.

Grammatical categories are viewed as a complicated unity of form and grammatical content. Due attention has been drawn to contextual level of analysis, to denotative and connotative meanings of grammatical forms, their transpositions and functional re-evaluation in different contexts, linguistic or situational.

Linguistic studies of recent years contain a vast amount of important observations based on acute observations valid for further progressive development of different aspects of the science of language. The conception of the general form of grammars has steadily developed. What becomes increasingly useful for insight into the structure and functioning of language is orientation towards involving lexis in studying grammar.

In a language description we generally deal with three essential parts known as phonology, vocabulary, and grammar. These various ranges, or levels, are the subject matter of the various branches of linguistics. We may think of vocabulary as the word-stock, and grammar as the set of devices for handling this word-stock. It is due precisely to these devices that language is able to give material linguistic form to human thought.

Practically speaking, the facts of any language are too complex to be handled without arranging them into such divisions. We do not mean to say, however, that these three levels of study should be thought of as isolated from each other. The affinities between all levels of linguistic organisation make themselves quite evident. Conceived in isolation, each of them will always become artificial and will hardly justify itself in practice. It is not always easy to draw precise boundaries between

grammar and vocabulary. Sometimes the subject matter becomes ambiguous just at the borderline. The study of this organic relationship in language reality seems to be primary in importance.

For a complete description of language we have to account for the form, the substance and the relationship between the form and the situation. The study of this relationship may be referred to as contextual level of analysis.

Grammar, whose subject matter is the observable organisation of words into various combinations, takes that which is common and basic in linguistic forms and gives in an orderly way accurate descriptions of the practice to which users of the language conform. And with this comes the realisation that this underlying structure of the language (as system) is highly organised. Whatever are the other interests of modern linguistic science, its centre is surely an interest in the grammatical system of language.

To-day we have well-established techniques for the study of language from a number of different points of view. Each of these techniques supplements all the others in contributing to theoretical knowledge and the practical problems of the day.

Language is a functional whole and all its parts are fully describable only in terms of their relationship to the whole. This level of linguistic analysis is most obviously relevant to the problems of "overt" and "covert" grammar and the problem of "field structure" in grammar that has long attracted the attention of linguists.

There is a discussion of the problems that arise in the presentation of the material in this light but the scope of the material presented is dictated by its factual usefulness.

Analysing the language from the viewpoint of the information it carries we cannot restrict the notion of information to the cognitive aspect of language. Connotative aspects and emotional overtones are also important semantic components of linguistic units.

The components of grammatical meaning that do not belong to the denotation of the grammatical form are covered by the general term of connotation most obviously relevant to grammatical aspects of style.

Grammatical forms play a vital role in our ability to lend variety to speech, to give "colour" to the subject or evaluate it and to convey the information more emotionally.

The given quotations from different sources serve to show how the structural elements of English grammar have been variously treated by different writers and which of the linguistic approaches seems most convincing.

Extracts for study and discussion have been selected from the works of the best writers which aid in the formation of the student's literary taste and help him to see how the best writers make the deepest resources of grammar serve their pen.

Only some of the quotations used are the gatherings of the author's note-books through many years of teaching, and it has not seemed possible in every instance to trace the quotation to its original source. Most

of them, however, have been freshly selected as the direct result of the extensive reading required by the preparation of the book.

The discussion of the linguistic facts has been made concrete by the use of illustrative examples and comparison with Russian and Ukrainian, French and German.

Suggested assignments for study and discussion have been selected with a view to extend the practical knowledge of the language. "Revision Material" after each chapter has been arranged so that the student should acquire as much experience in independent work as possible.

Methods of scientific research used in linguistic studies have always been connected with the general trends in the science of language. We therefore find it necessary to begin our grammatical description with a brief survey of linguistic schools in the theory of English grammar so that the students could understand various theoretical approaches to the study of language structure. This will facilitate the study of grammar where we find now divergent views of scholars on some of the most important or controversial problems of the English grammatical theory, and on some special questions of morphology and syntax.