TAGMEMIC GRAMMAR

Tagmeme is the smallest meaningful unit of grammatical form.

Tagmemic Grammar is a theory of grammar involving concept of a tagmeme to convey formal and functional information developed by American Grammarian Kenneth L. Pike.

Reporter: ROSALIE ANN I. UNTALAN

TAGMEMIC

GRAMMAR

Tagmeme is the smallest meaningful unit of grammatical form and their meanings are called episememes.

Example:Run!

This contains two grammatical features (taxemes) namely; the modulation of exclamatory final pitch, and the selective feature which consists in the use of an infinitive verb.

Each of these two taxemes happens to be, in English, a tactic form, since each is currently used as a unit of signaling.

Taking each of them with it’s meaning we describe them as units of grammatical form (tagmemes).

The tagmeme of exclamatory final-pitch occurs with any lexical form & gives it a grammatical meaning (an episememe) which we may call a class-meaning and roughly define as ‘action’.

A tagmeme may consist of more than one taxeme.Examples:John ranpoor John ran away In these examples

the boys are here we find several taxemes

I knowJohn, poor John, the boys, I

Belong to the form-class of Nominative Expression

ran, ran away, are here, know

Belong to the form-class of infinitive expressions.

TAGMEMIC

GRAMMAR

Types of Taxeme (by Bloomfield)1. Taxeme of Selection- assigns certain finite

verb expression to certain nominative expression.

2. Taxeme of Order places the nominative expression before finite verb expression.

3. Taxeme of Modulation which made use of secondary phonemes

4. Taxeme of Phonetic Modification – a change in the primary phonemes of a form.

TAGMEMIC

GRAMMAR

1. Taxeme of Selection- assigns certain finite verb expression to certain nominative expression.

Selection of forms contributes factor of meaning because different form in what is otherwise the same grammatical arrangement, will result in different meanings.

Examples:John!Boy!Run!Jump!Mr. Smith!Run Away!

Taxeme of Order places the nominative expression before finite verb expression.

Examples:Bill hit John.*Bill John hit.

playing*ing-play

duchess*ess-duke

Taxeme of Modulation which made use of secondary phonemesSecondary morphemes, we recall, are morphemes which do not appear in any morphemes, but only in grammatical arrangement of morphemes. A morpheme like John or run is really an abstraction because any actual utterance the morpheme is accompanied by some secondary phoneme which conveys a grammatical meaning. In English, if the morpheme is spoken alone, it is accompanied by some secondary phoneme of pitch.

Examples:John!John?John.

Some of the constituents are always accompanied by secondary phonemes of stress.

Examples:Noun convictVerb convict

Taxeme of Phonetic Modification – a change in the primary phonemes of a form.

Examples:do [duw] and not [nat]don’t [downt]

duke [djuwk]duchess [dočes]

If we say John ran! with exclamatory pitch, we have a complex grammatical form, with three tagmemes. - ‘strong stimulus’-’(object) performs (action)’- the episememes of ‘complete and novel’ utterance and consists formally in the selective feature using an actor-action phrase as a sentence.

TAGMEMIC

GRAMMAR

If we say John ran! with exclamatory pitch, we have a complex grammatical form, with three tagmemes. - ‘strong stimulus’-’(object) performs (action)’- the episememes of ‘complete and novel’ utterance and consists formally in the selective feature using an actor-action phrase as a sentence.

TAGMEMIC

GRAMMAR