Edward Laper once remarked that each language has a special cut or design. This special cut finds its manifestation on all the levels of the language, but primarily on its grammatical structure. Why do we need to know about the peculiarities of a grammatical structure? –a) the knowledge of the general tendencies in the language helps to understand the relations for the speakers choice of a grammatical form, b) this knowledge is necessary for a foreign language acquisition. It helps to overcome the interference of the native language. According to specialists, about 70% of all mistakes in our performance in English are caused by interference. PECULARITIES: a) English is a very flexible language, which is the result of a loss of many grammatical inflexions in the course of its historical development. Many words in English have a simple morphological structure and no special part of speech markers. And therefor can be used in many positions within the sentence (Ex. ROUND- Let’s round a conversation. They have another round of talk. His face was round. He suddenly turned round. They live just round the corner). Due to morphological simplicity many words in English are easily converted from one pat of speech to another (Ex. –Darling! –Don’t darling me). b) English is a fixed word order language and it is SVO language (Subject-Verb-Object). In Russian the grammatical relations between words are expressed by morphological markers and therefor word order is relatively free. Because of these differences Russian learners of English are expected to fumble with word order in English. c) English is a subject prominent language, which means that all sentences must have a subject, even if it is dumming subject (Ex. It’s cold in here. The house felt cold and empty). d) English has a predominantly-analytical character and a limited number if inflexions and the Russian language is mostly inflexional. e) Speaking in terms of preferences, scholars point out that English appears to have a strong tendency towards nominalization, English often prefer a nominal form of expression where Russian employs a verb (Ex. Я решила- I made up my mind. Угадай.-Make a guess). f) English has a more abundant use of the non-finite form verbs, than Russian, therefor sentences in English are characterized by a greater degree of compression (Ex. I’ve never seen him smiling like this). g) A specific feature of English, which is absolutely unthinkable for Russian is the ability of the preposition to placed at the end of the sentence (Ex. He liked to be taken care of). Some grammarians still ague against this rule claiming that it’s pure English, but this use persists in everybody’s speech. h) The two most specific features that penetrate all levels of the English and that are directly related to the simplicity of morphological-logical structure and the scarcity of form-building means are polysemy and homonymy. The borderline is often hard to draw (Ex. Boys will be boys). Polycemy and homonymy make English a very good tool for creating various paradoxes and puns (play of words) (Ex. She took the ruler into her bed to see how long she slept.
