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Brief contents of the course:
“T h e o r e t I c a l
Grammar
of
E n g l I s h”
I. Grammar as a linguistic study
The subject of theoretical grammar is a systematic study of the grammatical
structure of Modern English. The difference between practical and theoretical
grammar is that grammar theory makes it possible to understand the laws according
to which any language functions. Practical grammar gives the rules of using the
laws of the language in speech.
- An early XX century Swiss scholar Ferdinand de Saussure commented on the
correlation between those two phenomena: language is a system of means of
communication; speech is the activity using language in the practical process.
The structure of language is systematic, speech is linear; language is static,
speech is dynamic, language is general, speech is concrete, language is social,
speech is individual; language is reproductive, speech is productive; language is
a means, speech is the purpose. We need the means of the language to make our
speech understandable, but speech is necessary as the source of the language.
Three aspects of the language – phonetics, vocabulary and grammar – are
studied by three corresponding branches of linguistic science – phonology,
lexicology and theoretical grammar.
- History and methods of study of T.G.:
1. Early descriptive (описательная) grammar – William Bullocar, 1585 “Brief
Grammar of English” – the method of describing formal elements of the
structure by applying the method of distribution ( distribution of language
elements(phonemes, morphemes, lexems) according to the laws of the
language.)
2. The middle of the XIII century – prescriptive grammar: setting up a certain
standard of correctness (school grammar, formal grammar).
3. By the end of the XIX century – traditional system of grammar, descriptive and
explanatory.
4. Young grammarians – late XIX – early XX century made an important
contribution into the study of all the aspects of English, but their study was
diachronical (диахронический, исторический), they didn't give the modern
state of the language careful consideration, they spread phonological laws to the
rest of the language, ignoring phycological and sociological factors.
The new method is the Modern Structural Linguistics, which claims of
describing the structure of English on an entirely new, really scientific bases.
Structural linguistics studied the language syncronically, namely described its
modern state, tried to avoid subjective, but used only objective methods of study.
Structural linguistics is represented by several different schools: Prague school
(functional linguistics) Matezius, Trubetckoi studied the language as a functional
system, connected with spheres of human activity, they take into consideration the
meanings of the language phenomena(semantic approach), studied the language
both synchronically and diachronically (the evolution of the language factors),
study extra-linguistic factors, historical and cultural. American school is
represented by descriptive linguistics (Blumfild, Glison), generative
grammar,(порождающая грамматика), describing grammar as a mechanism,
generating the correct speech according to the rules of a particular language. Inner
structure can be studied and then applied for creation of artificial word
combinations, phrases, sentences. The generative pattern is then tested from the
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point of veiw of its appropiacy. Transformational analysis (трансформационная
грамматика) (Chomski, Liz) holds that some rules are transformational, i.e. they
change one structure into another according to such prescribed conventions as
moving (перемещение), inserting (включение), deleting (исключение), and
replacing (замена). Eg.: Sharpness of animals’ sight; animals’ sight is sharp;
animals see sharply. This method reveals two levels of syntactic structure: deep
structure (an abstract underlying structure interpreting the information) and surface
structure (syntactic features required to convert the sentence into a spoken or
written version). They introduced a method of immediate constituents (метод
непосредственных составляющих): every unit consists of two elements (root and
affix in words, two words in a word combination). Copenhagen school (Brendal,
Elmslev) introduced a new method – glossemantics, which studies the language as
a system of signs, using the methods of math, this system of signs is not related
with the contectual meaning. London school uses the method of discourse analysis
(ситуационный контекст, социальные аспекты языка).
One of the modern methods of study is the comparative method
(сравнительный), when similar language phenomena are compared with those of
relative languages, as well as with facts that hipothetically existed in the previous
historical stages of development of the language. It helps to study ways of
development and changes of the language, the nature of borrowings, the degree of
assimilation.
Two branches of grammar – morphology, syntax
There are two branches of grammar: morphology and syntax. Morphology treats of
the forms of words; syntax treats of phrases and sentences. The problem of
distinguishing between a word and a phrase: word is a nominative unit of
language, it enters the lexicon of language as its elementary component (indivisible
into smaller segments as regards its nominative function, the function to name
things, properties, actions, etc). Phrases consist of separate words, though analytical
forms of words (has been found), which historically were phrases, lost syntactical
connections between their parts. There can also be a word between these parts (has
often been found), which is one of the cases of overlapping syntax and morphology.
Another case is analytical word – take off, put on . Thus, the polar approach to the
definition of a word is “minimal unit of a language possessing the positional
independence in the sentence. It is the smallest discrete unit, the smallest unit
capable of syntactic functioning and the largest unit of morphology”.
Glossary of Linguistic Terms
1. means of communication – средство общения
2. descriptive grammar – описательная грамматика, рассматривает строй слова,
словосочетания и предложения в синхронном плане
3. prescriptive grammar – школьная грамматика, дающая инструкции употребления
4. functional linguistics – функциональная лингвистика, которая изучает язык в связи
с рельной деятельностью человека
5. semantic approach – подход к изучению грамматики в связи со значением морфем
и словосочетаний
6. synchronical/diachronical – синхронный, как система на определеннном этапе
исторического развития/свойственный языку как системе в исторической
последовательности развития отдельных языковых явлений
7. generative grammar – порождающая грамматика, определяющая грамматику как
механизм, порождающий правильный с точки зрения норм данного языка текст.
На синтаксическом уровне такое порождение предложений совершается из
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эелментарных ядерных конструкций, моделей, построить которые и описать
возможно, познав внутренние закономерности языковой структуры. Языковая
структура поддается не только наблюдению в процессе естественного
функционирования языка, но и приведению в действие искусственным путём для
научного изучения. Тексты предъявляются носителю языка для проверки, по
степени приемлемости этих текстов можно судить о пригодности порождающей
молели.
8. transformational analysis - трансформационно-порождающая грамматика,
создающая правила преобразования грамматических структур при помощи
перемещения, включения, исключения и замещения, например, повествовательные
предложения трансформируются в отрицательные или вопросительные.
9. method of immediate constituents – метод непосредственно составляющих,
которыми являются два элемента, из которых непосредственно образована
единица более высокого порядка и большей линейной протяженности (основа и
окончание в слове, два слова в словосочетании).
10. Glossemantics – глоссематика – теория, которая рассматривает язык как систему
отношений знаков, не зависящих от реальных значений и реальных звучаний.
Стремится к строгой формальной теории, отвлеченной от материальной
субстанции.
11. discourse analysis – анализ речи
12. comparative method – сравнительный метод, изучающий языки в
сопоставительном плане и прошлые незафиксированные языковые факты в
сравнении с соответсвующими более поздними фактами, известными по
письменным памятникам.
13. nominative – называющий, именной
14. indivisible - неделимый
15. analytical form – аналитическая форма, образованная служебными словами при
знаменательных словах
16. syntactical – синтаксический, относящийся к связи слов в словосочетаниях и
предложениях.
17. analytical word – аналитическое слово, сложное слово, состоящее из главного
слова и постпозитивной частицы
18. polar structure – полярная структура грамматической категории, распределение
членов категории, отвечающих полному набору признаков, в центре, и
причисление остальных слов к данной категории при неполном соответствии
признакам и включение их в поле данной категории (intermediary position)
19. positional independence – положение слова отдельно от других слов
20. discrete unit – единица, стоящая отдельно от других, отделенная пробелом
21. syntactic functioning – выполнение функции в предложении.
Additional reading
1. Б. А. Ильиш «Строй современного английского языка» (на англ. яз), стр.511.
2. И.П. Иванова, В.В. Бурлакова, Г.Г. Почепцов «Теоретическая грамматика
современного английского языка» (на рус.яз.), стр. 3
3.
М.Я. Блох «Теоретические основы грамматики» (на рус.яз), стр. 7-42
4. М.Я.Блох «Теоретическая грамматика английского языка», (на англ.яз.) стр.7-13
5. М.Я. Блох «Практикум по теоретической грамматике английского языка»(на
англ.яз),
стр. 7-44.
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II. Grammar form, meaning, category
1. Theoretical grammar has to study the elements presenting a unity of content and
expression (structure and meaning), and they sometimes contradict each other. For
these occasions, we will use the notions of polar and intermediary elements of the
set. Within a complex system of interrelated elements, polar phenomena are the
most clearly identifiable, they stand to one another in an utterly unambiguous
opposition. Intermediary phenomena are located in the system in between the polar
phenomena, making up a gradation of transitions. By some of the properties
intermediary phenomena are similar or near to one of the corresponding poles,
while by other properties they are similar to the other, opposing pole. The example
is the definition of a word as the smallest unit of the language, possessing
positional independence and capable of syntactic functioning, and a morpheme
as the smallest meaningful unit not possessing the positional independence.
Notional word (noun, verb) and the morpheme (root, affix) should be described as
the opposing polar phenomena among the meaningful segments of the language. As
for functional words (particle, auxiliary verb, preposition) in “to speak”, have
spoken, “of the room”, they occupy intermediary positions between the poles, and
their very intermediary status is gradational. Sometimes it is more convenient to
describe them as words, sometimes – as morphemes.
Morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit. Though it is formed by phonemes, as a
meaningful component of the word it is elementary, indivisible into smaller
segments that could have a significative function. A phoneme is a mono-sided unit,
while morpheme is a double-sided unit, characterized by unity of form and
meaning. The notion of morpheme was first intorduced by a Russian linguist Ivan
Boduen de Curtene as a general name for two main components of the word: root
and affixes. Scholars of Copenhagen school call every grammar meaning of a form
a separate morpheme: «runs» has three morphemes –root, that of singular number
and that of the third person. American descriptivists suggest finding morphemes
while dividing wordforms into separate parts. They also include stress and
intonation into the list of morphemes.
Affixes – prefixes and suffixes. All the prefixes in English are used for wordbuilding, forming new words from the roots. So are some of the suffixes (-able, izm, -tion, -ly, etc). Prefixes and word-building suffixes (derivation morphemes)
are studied by lexicology, as they belong to the vocabulary. We are only interested
in them in so far as they are grammatically relevant, if they show that the word
belongs to a certain part of speech, they serve to distinguish one part of speech form
another, which is a grammatical matter, not lexical. The meanings of the root
morphems also belong to lexicology and are not the subject of TG. Wordchanging morphemes, represented in Russian by suffixes and inflections (бежать
– бежал – бежала), in English are represented only by suffixes, which make
another form of the same word, without any change in its lexical meaning.
There is not the slightest difference in lexical meaning between “live” and “lived”
or between “house” and “houses”. However, in some special cases it can add
lexical meaning to the word, for instance, if the plural form of a noun develops a
meaning which the singular form has not: “colours” means “flag”.
2. In identification of morphemes the distributional method plays an important
role. The distribution of a unit may be defined as the total of all its
environments. It was first used in phonology where it remains the leading
method of identification of phonemes. Three main types of distribution are
discriminated in the distributional analysis, i.e. contrastive distribution, noncontrastive distribution, and complementary distribution. Different morphs
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(forms of morphemes) can be either in contrastive, or in non-contrastive
distribution. For example, the suffixes –ed or –ing are seen only in completely
different environments and they have in these different environments
completely different meanings (contrastive distribution): “The book is
translated. He is translating the book. He has translated the book.” This drives
us to conclusion that these two morphs are different morphemes. The suffixes –
t/-d in learned/learnt are seen in the same environment and have the same
meaning (non-contrastive distribution): “He has learned/learnt. The poem is
learned/learnt.” These are free variants of the same morpheme. Complementary
distribution concerns morphs with the same function, but different in form. If
their environments are always different, that means that the difference in form
is explained by the different environments. These morphs are in complementary
distribution and are the allomorphs (variants) of the same morpheme. For
example, are –t, -d and –id different morphemes or allomorphs of the same
morpheme? Since they are never seen in the same environment and have the
same function, they are allomorphs of the same morpheme in complementary
distribution. This type of distribution is the most important for analytical
purposes, because it helps establish the identity of the elements of the language
that look different. (suppletive forms).
The morphemes are in complementary distribution if they always change together
with change of the environment (a banana – an apple, a banana – the banana –
contrastive). Grammar forms in contrastive distribution are different morphemes, as
they are necessary to convey different grammar meaning, there is nothing more to
make the forms different. In case of complementary distribution it is the
environment that makes the forms different, not the meaning. They are allomorphs
of the same morpheme, their difference is irrelevant for the grammatical meaning.
If you say ‘changs’ instead of ‘changes’, the first word simply will not have any
meaning in English. Or ‘stopz’. But if you say ‘changed’ instead of ‘changes’ it will
have a different grammar meaning, as ‘es’ and ‘ed’ are in contrastive distribution.
3. Morphemes build grammatical form of the word. GF is language means which
expresses grammatical meaning. GM which the word acquires by adding affix to
the root is the meaning that expresses relations of this word to other words in the
word combination. Grammatical meanings are abstract and general. Therefore the
grammatical form unites a whole class of words, so that each word of the class
expresses the corresponding grammatical meaning together with its individual,
concrete semantics. The most general grammatical meanings expressed by systemic
correlations of word-forms are categorial grammatical meanings. GC is intergration
of two and more grammatical forms opposed or coordinated according to their
grammatical meaning. The categorial meaning (number of nouns) unites the
individual meanings of the correlated paradigmatic forms (singular-plural). The
ordered set of grammatical forms expressing a categorial function constitutes a
paradigm. Face-faces, branch-branches, book-books, film-films, life-lives, toothteeth, mouse-mice, phenomenon-phenomena, nucleus-nuclei. The paradigmatic
correlations of grammatical forms in a category are exposed by grammatical
oppositions. Members of the opposition must have two types of features: common
features and differential features. Common features (stem) serve as basis of
contrast, while differential features (0-suffix) express the function (singular-plural).
Three main types of oppositions were established in phonology: privative
(presensce-absense of formal feature), gradual (distinguished by the degree of the
feature – degrees of comparison) and equipollent (distinguished by different
positive features – person forms of the verb ‘to be’). By the number of members
contrasted, oppositions were divided into binary and more than binary (tenses,
degrees of comparison). A grammatical category must be expressed by at least one
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opposition of forms, ordered in a paradigm. In all the few grammatical suffixes in
English the initial paradigmatic form of each opposition is distinguished by the zero
suffix.
4.Grammatical categories can be constant, which reflect the static classification of
words (transitivity-intransitivity of verbs) and variable (tense, voice, person). Some
marginal categorial forms may acquire intermediary status, being located inbetween the corresponding categorial poles. For instance, the nouns singularia
tantum and pluralia tantum present a case of hybrid variable-constant formations,
since their variable feature of number has become ‘rigid’ or ‘lexicalized’: news,
advice, people, scissors, jeans.
Грамматическая категория. Грамматическое значение. Основными
понятиями грамматики являются грамматическая категория, грамматическое
значение и грамматическая форма.
Г р а м м а т и ч е с к а я к а т е г о р и я — объединение двух или более
грамматических форм, противопоставленных или соотнесенных по грамматическому
значению. Данное грамматическое значение закреплено за данным набором форм
(парадигмой). Вне постоянных формальных показателей грамматической категории
не существует. Грамматическая категория включает не менее двух
противопоставленных форм, но возможно и большее их количество. Так, существует
три формы времени — настоящее, прошедшее и будущее, четыре глагольных
разряда — основной, длительный, перфектный и перфектно-длительный, но две
формы числа существительных, два залога и т. д. Не существует категорий,
имеющих только одну форму: не может быть одного артикля, одного падежа,
одного залога и т. д. Противопоставление (opposition) внутри категории необходимо,
хотя не обязательно бинарно.
Грамматическое
значение
—
обобщенное,
весьма
абстрагированное значение, объединяющее крупные разряды слов и
выраженное через свойственные ему формальные показатели или — в
противопоставлении — через отсутствие показателей. Очень важным его
свойством является то, что грамматическое значение не названо в слове.
Формальные показатели специфичны для каждого языка и передают
грамматическое значение только в соединении с основами определённых разрядов
— частей речи. Так, показатель -s в английском, будучи присоединен к основе
существительного, передает значение множественности: tables, boys; в немецком
данное значение передается другими показателями: Tisch-e, Knabe-n; в русском мы
находим показатели -ы, -и: столы, мальчики.
Грамматическая категория, как правило, является своеобразным отражением
явлений объективно существующего мира: так, категория числа отражает
количественные отношения, категория времени — отношение действия к моменту
речи и т. д. Но существуют и категории, не основанные на явлениях объективного
мира. Такова, например, категория рода в тех языках, где она имеется; она несет
в них чисто синтаксическую функцию организации атрибутивного словосочетания
путем согласования. Никаких реальных логических оснований она не имеет
(вероятно, именно этим объясняется общеизвестная трудность запоминания
родовой принадлежности существительного): ср. русск. письмо — ср. р.; нем. der
Brief — м. р.; фр. la lettre — ж. р.; русск. дом — м. р.; нем. das Haus — ср. р.;
фр. la maison — ж. р.
Несомненно, при своем возникновении категория рода отражала некую
классификацию
предметов
объективной
действительности,
отвечавшую
миропониманию носителей языка данной эпохи. В дальнейшем она утратила свое
понятийное содержание и превратилась в чисто формальный прием
согласования.
Словарный состав языка может реагировать определённым образом на ту или
иную категорию, в зависимости от грамматического значения категории и
обобщенного лексико-грамматического разряда, к которому относятся данные
лексические единицы: лексика может «сопротивляться» той или иной форме или
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же модифицировать её значение. Так, многие существительные, обозначающие
предметы, не поддающиеся счету (существительные вещественные и абстрактные),
не имеют формы множественного числа (gold, silver, oxygen, gratitude). С другой
стороны, возможно, что при употреблении в данной форме лексической единицы,
по своему обобщенному значению противоречащей значению формы, происходит
модификация грамматического значения формы. Так, глаголы мгновенного
действия, неспособные обозначать процесс, в форме длительного разряда
получают значение повторного действия (was jumping, was shooting, was winking).
Хотя «сопротивление» лексической единицы грамматической форме
непосредственно связано с её лексическим значением, дело не в частном
лексическом содержании. Лексические значения таких существительных, как
gold, silver, hydrogen, gratitude, весьма далеки друг от друга, однако они в равной
степени не могут иметь форму множественного числа. Они все объединены
обобщенным понятием неисчисляемости, которое, правда, вытекает из их
лексического содержания, но охватывает самые различные по лексическому
значению единицы. Это значение не является для них родовым (родовым для
понятий «золото, серебро» явилось бы понятие «металл»); обозначаемые ими
предметы относятся к самым разнообразным, не связанным между собой в
экстралингвистической реальности областям. С другой стороны, понятие
неисчисляемости отражается в грамматической форме не через собственную,
эксплицитную форму, а через неприятие или модификацию значения
грамматической формы. Таким образом, значения неисчисляемости, мгновенности
действия и т. п., не имея своей эксплицитной грамматической формы,
взаимодействуют с грамматическими формами.
Морфологические средства передачи грамматического значения.
Морфологические средства передачи грамматического значения заключены в форме
слова, иначе говоря, в комплексе его словоформ. Для языков флективных это
следующие средства:
1) суффикс, несущий грамматическую нагрузку: street-s, approach-ed;
чередование гласных: foot — feet; find — found
2) Словоформы грамматического ряда могут быть супплетивными; в
современных языках, в частности в английском, это — пережиточные формы,
однако весьма стойкие: to be — am — was; good — letter — the best.
3) Аналитические формы. Аналитические формы возникли позднее, чем
флексия. Они включают не менее одного служебного слова и одного
лексически наполненного, но возможно и большее количество служебных
компонентов: is coming, has been asked, is being built.
Аналитические формы внешне похожи на словосочетания, и поэтому важно
указать на некоторые критерии их распознавания:
1) Общее грамматическое значение складывается из сочетания всех
компонентов, составляющих данную форму; вспомогательный глагол передает
более частные внутрипарадигматические значения лица и числа (если эти
значения отражены в форме), но общее видовременное, залоговое и модальное
значение складывается только из всех компонентов вместе. Вместе с тем,
каждый компонент, взятый в отдельности, не несет информации об общем
значении формы. Так, has и given не информируют о значении перфекта, так
же как и had, been, sent.
2) Аналитические формы исторически сложились из синтаксических
сочетаний, в основном из определённых типов составного сказуемого. Они
превратились в аналитические формы только тогда, когда их грамматическое
объединение стало настолько тесным, что синтаксические отношения между
ними исчезли. Отсюда следует весьма важный вывод: между компонентами
аналитической формы не может быть синтаксических отношений.
3) Синтаксические отношения с окружением в тексте возможны только для
всей формы в целом; компоненты форм в отдельности не могут иметь
синтаксических отношений порознь. Так, в сочетании was driving the car элемент
the car является дополнением ко всей глагольной форме; в had often remembered
8
элемент often является обстоятельством
аналитической формой в целом.
к
сказуемому,
выраженному
Glossary of Linguistic Terms
1. notional word – знаменятельное слово, слово с полным лексическим
значением
2. functional word – служебное слово, слово с неполным, частичным
лексическим значением
3. morpheme - морфема
4. significative function – функция обозначения
5. root - корень
6. affix – аффикс, общее название всех морфем, за исключением корня
7. prefix - приставка
8. suffix - суффикс
9. stem - основа
10. word-building morpheme – словообразовательная морфема
11. word-changing morpheme – формообразовательная морфема
12. distribution (contrastive, non-contrastive, complementary) – дистрибуция,
распределение языковых элементов по присущим данному языку законам
– контрастная, неконтрастная, дополнительная
13. morph – морф, вариант морфемы, встречающийся в разных словоформах
14. allomorph – алломорф, вариант морфемы
15. grammatical form – грамматическая форма
16. grammatical meaning – грамматическое значение
17. grammatical category (constant, variable, lexicalized) – грамматическая
категория (постоянная, переменная, лексикализованная(получившая
собственное значение)
18. paradigm – парадигма, совокупность грамматических форм одной части
речи.
19. binary opposition – бинарная оппозиция, грамматическая категория,
образованная пртивопоставлением двух грамматических форм, например,
единственное и множественное число
Additional reading
1. стр. 12-24
2. стр. 4-13
3. стр. 43-59, 74-84, 120-142
4. стр. 20-27
5. стр. 45-64
Practical tasks:
1. Pair off the words which stand to one another in complementary distribution:
calm, stops, tactful, shorter, runs, red, more memorable, cleened, character, liked.
2. Define the type of morphemic distribution according to which the following
words are grouped:
Pupils' – people's
Cactuses – cacti
Hard - harder
9
III. Wordbuilding and wordchanging
Морфемы, как указано выше, включают корень и аффиксы —
префиксы и суффиксы.
Аффиксы имеют двоякое назначение в языке: одни используются в
словообразовании, т. е. при образовании новых слов от производящих
основ той или другой части речи; другие служат для образования
различных форм одного и того же слова, т. е. словоизменения.
Словообразование и словоизменение имеют каждое свой собственный
набор аффиксов: совпадение их может быть только случайной омонимией
(ср. -еr в агентивных существительных — writer и -еr в форме
сравнительной степени прилагательных — longer).
Префиксы в английском имеют только словообразовательные функции
и здесь рассматриваться не будут. Суффиксы же подразделяются на
словообразовательные и словоизменительные; последние имеют прямое
отношение к грамматическому строю.
Корневая морфема — это то, что едино в словах, принадлежащих к
различным лексико-грамматическим разрядам (black, blackish, blacken). В этом
ряду выделима корневая морфема black-.
Морфема реально представлена в языке своими вариантами, называемыми
а л л о м о р ф а м и , имеющими определённую звуковую и смысловую
общность. Алломорфы той или иной морфемы могут абсолютно совпадать по
звуковому оформлению, как, например, корневая морфема в словах fresh,
refreshment, freshen, суффиксы в словах speaker, actor (/э/), суффикс наречия —
great-ly, quick-ly, nice-ly. Но часто алломорфы не абсолютно идентичны:
сравните, например, корневую морфему в словах physic — physician /'fizik —
fi'ziSn/, come — came; суффиксальную морфему в словах quiet-ude, serv-itude,
dream-ed /d/, walk-ed /t/, load-ed /id/.
Таким образом, термин «морфема» обозначает обобщенное понятие, сумму
всех алломорфов данной морфемы, объединенных частичной звуковой и
смысловой общностью. Необходимость именно звуковой и смысловой
общности логически вытекает из приведённого выше определения морфемы.
Наряду с корнем, важной единицей является основа. Это то, что едино в
формах слова, входящего в определённый лексико-грамматический разряд.
В современной лингвистике существует понятие нулевой морфемы. Нулевая
морфема усматривается в словоформах, не имеющих окончания, но способных
в других формах той же категории принимать окончания.
Тем самым нулевой экспонент оказывается функционально в одном ряду с
морфемой; поэтому трактовка его дескриптивистами как нулевого
алломорфа морфемы не лишена основания. Однако существенное их различие
заключается в том, что морфема— единица линейная, имеющая эксплицитную
звуковую форму и представляющая собой одну из составляющих общей суммы
морфем данной словоформы; нулевой экспонент нелинеен, не имеет
эксплицитной звуковой формы, синтагматически невыделим.
Английские словоизменительные аффиксы передают только одно значение.
Так, -s в словоформе rooms передает только значение множественного числа
или значение посессива, -ed указывает только на прошедшее время (или
причастие второе), -ing — на причастие первое или герундий. Наряду с этим
широко распространена омонимия служебных морфем: -s — окончание
множественного числа существительных и третьего лица единственного числа
глагола (в последнем случае как будто совмещаются несколько значений;
10
омонимичны, как показано выше, окончания -ed, -ing. Набор
словоизменительных морфем весьма скуден; он ограничивается приведёнными
выше аффиксами; можно ещё прибавить -еп — показатель некоторых
причастий вторых от нестандартных глаголов и множественного числа
существительных ox-en, childr-en.
Тот факт, что словоизменительный формант, как указано выше, не входит в
минимальную структуру слова и, следовательно, является как бы внешним
добавлением к базисной форме, приводит к тому, что иногда
словоизменительные форманты могут оформлять единицы большие, чем слово.
Так, в словосочетании His daughter Mary's arrival формант - ' s относится ко
всему словосочетанию в целом; сравните русское приезд его дочери Марии, где
флексия родительного падежа повторяется; между тем, His daughter's Mary's
arrival в английском — невозможная структура.
В тех случаях, когда происходит видимость наслоения (buildings), аффикс,
исторически когда-то бывший в этом слове словоизменительным, переходит в
словообразовательный ряд. Вернее, само присоединение словоизменительного
аффикса оказывается возможным именно в силу того, что предшествующая ему
морфема приобрела словообразовательный статус. Наряду с упоминавшейся
выше омонимией аффиксов, следует также отметить распространённость
омонимии состава основ различных частей речи и — поскольку основы в
огромном большинстве совпадают по звуковой форме с базисными формами
— омонимии частей речи. Это обстоятельство является причиной того, что
отношения в предложении передаются в основном синтаксическими
средствами.
В современной морфологии принято заимствованное также из фонологии
понятие «маркированного» (сильного) и «немаркированного» (слабого) члена
оппозиции. Маркированный член имеет формально выраженный признак
(например, окончание множественного числа у существительных) и
обладает более узким и четким грамматическим значением, чем
немаркированный член. В морфологии немаркированный член оппозиции
способен передавать и значение маркированного члена: The oak is a tree.
The mouse is a rodent. Речь идет здесь обо всем множестве данных единиц, и
данное значение может быть выражено и формой множественного числа
(маркированного члена): Oaks are trees. Mice are rodents. Немаркированный»
член (единственное число существительных, действительный залог глагола и
т. п.) включает ряд единиц, неспособных иметь маркированную форму.
В своем описании мы будем исходить из принципа полевой структуры
частей речи. Исходя из этого принципа, лингвист имеет возможность
описывать язык с учётом реальной его сложности, внося известную
гибкость в описание.
Additional reading:
1.стр. 15-27
2.стр. 4-14
3. –
4. стр. 20-29
5. стр. 45-64
Practical tasks:
3. Do the morphemic analysis of the following words:
resourceful, gardener's, red-bearded, take after
11
IV. Synthetic means of expressing grammatical meaning and their role
in the modern English
The means used for building up member-forms of categorial oppositions are
traditionally divided into synthetical and analytical, accordingly, the grammatical
forms themselves are classed into synthetical and analytical. Synthetical gr.forms
are realized by the inner morphemic composition of the word.
The number of morphemes used for deriving word-forms based on synthetic
method are very few in English, as compared to Russian or German, and even
French. They are called bound morphemes, as they can’t be used as separate
words. In every language there is a limited list of bound morphemes, which express
the grammar categories, functioning in this language. Though limited, this list is
extremely big for a synthetic language like Russian (conjugation of verbs of
different types, declension of nouns and adjectives, participles), but the
morphological system of English is very narrow, which makes it possible to
describe English as not synthetic, but analytical language. The list of bound
morphemes in English is complicated by the relations of homonymy:
- (e)s – the plural of nouns, the possessive case of nouns, the third person singular
present of verbs;
- (e)d – the past and past participle of verbs;
- ing – the gerund and present participle;
- er, -est – the comparative and superlative degrees of adjectives and adverbs.
This is the complete list of productive word-changing morphemes, which can be
used for making synthetic forms of new words, which appear in the language.
Whereas non-productive morphemes (-en in the plural of nouns, -ght in the past of
the verbs) are used for a limited number of words and can never be applied to new
words (microchip – microchips, pasteurize – pasteurized).
One of non-productive synthetical forms is suppletivity, based on correlation of
different roots as a means of paradigmatic differentiation. Though the forms don’t
have a common root, they function as members of opposition within their category
(degrees of comparison), ‘better’ is in the same opposition of meanings to ‘good’ as
‘bigger’ is to ‘big’. This allows us to consider them suppletive forms of one word,
but not different words.
5. By sound alternations we mean a way of expressing grammatical category by
changing a sound inside the root (man-men; sing-sang-sung). The morphemes
are called replacive. In some words those morphophonemic alternations are
combined with affixation: leave-left, feel-felt, sell-sold, tell-told, man-menmen’s. These morphemes are also non-productive.
6. English affixes add grammar meaning not only to one word, but also to a group
of words: a black cat – black cats, his daughter Mary – his daughter Mary’s
arrival.
Glossary of Linguistic Terms
1. Opposition – противопоставление двух или нескольких грамматических
форм, объединенных в одну грамматическую категорию.
2. synthetic form – синтетическая флома, образованная путем слияния основы
и формообразующих аффиксов.
3. productive/non-productive forms – продуктивные (широко используемые
для образования новых слов и форм)/непродуктивные (не производящие
новые слова и формы)
4. bound morpheme – связанная морфема, которая может употребляться
только как часть слова, а не самостоятельно
12
5. homonymy – омонимия, употребление одинаковых по форме морфем для
образования разных грамматических форм
6. suppletive form – супплетивная форма, форма одного и того же слова,
образованная от другого корня.
7. sound alternations – чередование звуков, сопровождающее образование
грамматических форм
8. replacive morphemes – чередующиеся морфемы, который служат для
образования грамматических форм путем замены одной или нескольких
букв в корне.
Additional reading
1. стр. 23-24,
2. стр. 13
3. стр. 84-90,
4. стр. 27-29,
5. стр. 65-78
13
V. Analytical means of expression of grammar meaning and their role
in the modern English
Analytical grammatical forms are built up by combination of at least two words,
one of which is a grammatical auxiliary (word-morpheme, free morpheme), and the
other, a word of substantial meaning.
Among the free morphemes there are auxiliary elements of analytical forms: verbal
elements “do, be, have, will, shall, would, should, may, might” adverbial elements
more, most, infinitive particle “to”, articles.
However, there is a tendency with some linguists to recognize as analytical not all
such grammatically significant combinations, but only those that are grammatically
idiomatic, i.e. whose relevant grammatical meaning is not immediately dependent
on the meanings of their component elements taken apart. For example, the form of
the verbal perfect where the auxiliary ‘have’ has completely lost its original
meaning of possession, is the most standard analytical form in English morphology.
But analytical degrees of comparison come very near to free combinations of words
by their lack of idiomatism. But ‘beautiful-more beautiful-the most beautiful’
represent the same coordination of grammar meaning within the category as bigbigger-the biggest, so we have to use the approach of gradation of idiomatism here,
because the demand of absolute idiomatism here is to strong and contradicts with
logical structure.
To tell analytical forms from the phrases several criteria can be used:
- common grammatical meaning is a combination of all the components of the
grammar form (auxiliary verb conveys paradigmatic meanings of, for example,
number and person, but the general tense, voice and modal meaning is
composed only of all the components put together. Each of the components
doesn’t have information about the general meaning of the form (must have
been sent);
- historically analytical forms originated from syntactic phrases, mainly from
certain types of compound predicates. They became analytical forms only when
their syntactic relations disappeared.
Syntactic relations with other words in the text are established only by the whole
form, parts of it can’t have relations with other words: ‘was driving the car’, the car
is an object to the whole of the verb form,’ had often remembered’.
What proves that English is an analytical language? If we compare the number of
word-changing affixes with other, analytical means of word-changing in English,
we will see, that the biggest part of the grammar forms are made with the help of
auxiliary words (auxiliary and modal verbs, prepositions, particles, articles). In a
syntactical language, like Russian, the number of auxiliary words is very small
(будет, может, должен, более), as compared to a great number of inflections for
declension, conjugation etc.
Glossary of Linguistic Terms
1. analytical form – аналитическая форма, составная форма, образованная
сочетанием служебного и знаменательного слов
2. free morphemes – свободные морфемы, образующие аналитические формы
в качестве служебных слов
3. auxiliary – вспомогательное, служебное слово
4. substantial meaning – основательное значение, самостоятельное
лексическое значение
5. idiomatism – семантическая спаянность частей словосочетания, значение
которого не выводится из значений отдельных частей
14
6. compound predicate – сложное сказуемое
7. syntactic relations – синтаксические отношения, между компонетами
словосочетания или членами предложения (атрибутивные, объектные и
др.)
аdditional reading
1. стр. 26-28
2. стр. 14
3. стр. 90-91
4. стр. 29
15
VI. Parts of speech and the principles of their classification
The words of the language, depending on various formal and semantic features, are
divided into grammatically relevant sets of classes. Parts of speech are lexicogrammatical categories of words. The term was introduced in ancient Greece,
where there was no strict differentiation between the word as a vocabulary unit and
the word as a functional element of the sentence.
In modern linguistics, parts of speech are discriminated on the basis of the three
criteria: semantic, formal, and functional. The semantic criterion is based on
evaluation of the generalized meaning, categorial meaning of the part of speech
(noun-things). Words are corelated with classes of reality. The formal criterion is
based on the specific word-building features (-ness, -tion – nouns) and paradigmatic
sets (-s, ‘s – nouns). The functional criterion concerns the syntactic role of words
in the sentence typical of a part of speech or methods of combining with other
words in the phrase. For example, verb combines with a noun (write a letter), with
an adverb (write quickly) and in the sentence functions as a predicate. The said
three factors of categorial characterization of words are referred to as, respectively,
meaning, form, and function.
The difficulty in defining clear categories of words arises from having to apply the
three criteria, which are often in conflict. (loyalty, cattle – are nouns by some
definitions, but not by all, they don’t meet the morphological criterion, the
paradigm, but ‘loyalty’ has a specific suffix, and ‘cattle’ means ‘thing’). A
satisfactory definition can’t be based on such a thing as meaning. Some
grammarians used different criteria for defining different parts of speech.
Inconsistency might result in overlapping categories or in uncovered gaps. So, the
right approach is the pole method – in every PS there is central part of words,
which belongs to this class by all the criteria, and there is field of words, that can be
attributed to the class only gradually.
Ancient Greek grammarians used only one criterion for classification of PS –
formally morphological, a word was attributed to a class on the basis of its
morphological changability.
Jespersen, a linguist from the Copenhagen school, offered a ‘three ranks theory’.
He analyzed morphological and semantic features of words, but also their
subordination in connected speech. He found that in every syntactic combination
there is one word of supreme importance to which the others are joined as
subordinates. This chief word is defined by another word, which in its turn may be
defined by a third word, etc. The ranks of words are established according to their
mutual relations. (primary, secondary, tertiary) – a furiously barking dog. In this
classification morphological, semantic functions and the three ranks interfere with
each other too often.
A different technique has been employed by American linguists Trager and Smith.
They set up 2 systems of classes. One is based on inflectional criteria. We can
distinguish nouns, personal pronouns, adjectives and verbs on this criterion. They
are defined as words showing the following types of inflection:
Friend-friend’s-friends-friends’
I-me-my-mine
Nice-nicer-nicest
Go-goes-went-gone-going
The remaining words, which show no inflection at all, are classified together as
particles. Trager and Smith’s second system is classified by syntactic criteria. The
two systems do not match exactly. Though the facts of English are complex, and no
simple system of PS can be expected to be adequate, the different criteria has to be
16
worked into the most integrated system possible. London linguist Strang introduces
a term “form-class meaning’. Words bear in themselves a lexical meaning, but
what they do in the sentence results from the fact that they are members of classes.
A full description of a language would include an inventory of all forms with their
lexical and class functions, but this inventory will be too big to manage. So, lexical
descriptions is carried out in the dictionary, while the establishment of classes, as
having more general meaning, belongs to the grammar. One of the divisions is into
variable and invariable words, The first class constitute an open class, whose
members can’t be catalogues, they are subject to continual growth, can be
described in the dictionaries by using synonyms and are at the lexical pole.
Invariables constitute a closed system, in the sense that they cannot normally be
extended by the creation of additional members, can be described in the dictionary
by giving uses in a sentence and are at the grammatical pole, they are usually
lexically empty. We can make a complete list of members of the closed system.
4. The division into notional and functional parts of speech reflects the division
into variable and invariable words. Notional parts of speech denote distinct
lexical meaning and perform independent syntactic function in the sentence.
They have certain grammatical categories, they can be connected with each
other directly or with the help of the formal words. To the notional parts of
speech belong the noun, the adjective, the numeral, the pronoun, the verb, the
adverb, the stative.
name
meaning
derivation Grammar
CombinabiFunction in
form
lity in
the sentence
phrases
noun
substance
-er, -ist, Gender,
Another noun Subject,
ess, -ness, number, case,
(prepositional object,
etc
article
), verb,
predicative,
determination
adjective,
attributive,
numeral
adverbial
adjectiv property
-ful, - less, Degrees of
Noun, adverb, Attribute,
e
-ish, -ous, comparison for verb
predicative
-ive, -ic, - qualitative
ly, un-,
adjectives
im-.
Numeral
Pronoun
number
verb
process
adverb
Property of
process or
another
property
Different
states,
mostly
temporary
statives
Indica-tion
-teen, -ty,
-th
Some-,
any-, no-
no
-ise, -ate, ute, -er, erve, etc
-ly, -wise,
--ways, -ward(s)
Mood, voice,
person, number,
aspect, tense
Degrees of
comparison for
qualitative
adverbs
no
Prefix a-
Noun, adverb
attribute
Some categories Noun,
have number,
adjective,
some have case verb
Attribute,
subject,
predicative,
object
Noun, adverb, predicate
adjective,
pronoun
Verbs,
Various
adjectives
adverbial
midifiers
Verb, noun
Predicative,
rarely – postpositional
attributes
17
Contrasted against the notional parts of speech are words of incomplete nominative
meaning and non-self-dependent, mediatory functions in the sentence. These are
functional parts of speech. To them belong the preposition, the conjunction, the
particle, the modal word, the interjection.
name
Grammar meaning
usage
preposition Relations between things or
With nouns, pronouns, numerals,
phenomena
adjectives form objects,
predicatives, modifiers, attributes
conjunction Connections between things or
Connect any words, phrases or
phenomena
clauses, adding the meaning of
addition, contradiction, etc
particle
Show subjective attitude (even,
Enter the part of the sentence
only, exclusively)
formed by any word
Modal
Attitude of the speaker (probably, Show probability, evaluation,
word
luckily)
affirmation, negation
interjection Signal of emotion
Detached position in the sentence
5. Each part of speech after its identification is further subdivided into subseries
according to various semantico-functional and formal features. The nouns are
subcategorized into proper and common, animate and inanimate, countable and
uncountable, concrete and abstract, etc.
Verbs are subcategorized into fully predicative and partially predicative, transitive
and intransitive, active and stative, etc.
Adjectives are subcategorized into qualitative and relative.
6. Charles Fries, of the University of Michigan, in his book “The Structure of
English” tried to build a system of classes, based on the position of the word in the
sentence. His classification is called positional-distributive. Fries studied the
combinability of words by a system of tests in substitution models of phrases and
sentences.(The ______are good.) They used records of live dialogues comprising
about 250,000 word entries (50 hours of talk). Notional words fill in positions in the
models: the position of the doer, of the object, etc.) The words were classified into
4 formal classes- N – substantives, V – verbal words, A – adjectival words, D –
adverbial words. Functional words appear in the models as occupying their
positions as defining and adding to the meaning of the notional words. They form
limited groups totalling 154 units. Those are noun determiners (articles, my-his,
this), modal verbs that add to the meaning of notional verbs, intensifiers of
adjectives and adverbs (rather cold). These are first type function words. The
second type were prepositions and conjunctions, which show the relations of
notional words. The 3rd type of functional words influence the semantics of the
whole sentence: question words, yes-no, requests, addresses. It is clear that this
classification reflects traditional in many aspects, which is another proof of the
objective character of classifications, as they are based on different methods, while
the classification made by Fries is supported by experimental data. Structural
grammar must be judged not as a complete system, but as a skeleton.
The semantico-grammatical analysis of the lexicon, the word-stock of the language, shows
that it is divided into two parts: the notional words and the functional words. The unity of
notional lexemes finds its demonstration in an inter-class system of derivation: strength-to
strengthen-strong-strongly.
This derivational series that unites the notional word classes can be named the ‘lexical
paradigm of nomination’. The general order of classes in the series evidently corresponds
to the logic of mental perception of reality, by which a person discriminates, first, objects
and their actions, then the properties of the former and the latter. By the initial class
lexeme the lexical paradigms are classified into nounal (power-to empower- powerful –
18
powerfully), verbal (to suppose – supposition – supposed – supposedly), adjectival (clear –
clarity – to clarify – clearly), and adverbial (out – outing – to out – outer). Some words
(simple adjectives ‘just’) can be nominatively isolated. The universal character of the
nomination paradigm is sustained by suppletive completion, both lexemic and phrasemic:
An end – to end – final – finally
King – to reign – royal – royally
Game – to play – playful – playfully
Evidence – evident – evidently – to make evident
Wise – wisely – wisdom – to grow wise
Friend – to be friends – friendly – in a friendly way.
So, the lexicon can be divided into 3 unequal parts.
The first part of the lexicon forming an open set includes an indefinitely large number of
notional words which have a complete nominative function, these words can be referred to
as names: nouns as substance names, verbs as process names, adjectives as primary
property names and adverbs as secondary property names. The whole notional set is
represented by the four-stage derivational paradigm of nomination.
The second , intermediate layer of the lexicon forming a closed set includes substitutes of
names (pro-names), Here belong pronouns, and also broad-meaning words and numbers. .
Broad meaning words adjoin the pronouns by their substitutional function (one, thing, do,
make, such, there, then…
The third part of the lexicon also forming a closed set includes function words.
The function of the second and third layers, within the framework of their specifying role,
is to organize together with the categorial means of grammar, the production of speech
utterances out of the direct naming means of language (the first layer).
Glossary of Linguistic Terms
1. semantic criterion – основание для классификации по значению
2.noun - существительное
3. verb - глагол
4. adjective - прилашательное
5. adverb - наречие
6. pronoun - местоимение
7. numeral - числительное
8. modal word – модальное слово
9. stative – слово категории состояния
10. preposition - предлог
11. conjunction - союз
12. interjection - междометие
13. particle - частица
14.variable/invariable – изменяемое/неизменяемое
14. combinability - сочетаемость
15. positional/distributional classification – классификация на основе позиции
слов в предложениях
additional reading
1. стр. 27-34
2. 14-20
3. 92-119
4. 42-53
5. 79-108
Practical tasks:
4.Define the part of speech characteristics of the underlined words:
- Forgive a child who has done wrong.
- For perhaps a minute there was the worst silence I’ve ever experienced.
19
VII. Noun. The general description
Noun as a part of speech has the categorial meaning of substance. Substantivity is
grammatical meaning which allows both names of things and not names of things
(abstract notions, activities, properties etc) to function syntactically as names of
things. Not all the nouns, derived from other parts of speech, have the
morphological categories of noun. Not all the nouns meet every criterion (see the
previous lecture), but they belong to the field structure of noun.
The semantic properties of the noun determine its categorial syntactic properties:
the primary substantive functions of the noun are those of the subject and the
object. Its other functions are predicative (she is a singer), attributive (the stone
wall), which can be treated as turning of the noun into an adjective, which is proved
by the fact, that these words lose the category of number) and adverbial (in the
room).
The syntactic properties of the noun are also revealed in its special types of
combinability. In particular, the noun is characterized by the prepositional
combinability with another noun, a verb, an adjective, an adverb.
As a part of speech the noun has a set of formal features: specific word-building
suffixes, which serves as the only criterion for their belonging to this part of speech.
Two groups of nouns have mostly suffixal structure: persons and abstracts: er, ist,
ess are the person suffixes; ness, ion, ation, ition, ity, ism, ance, ment are abstract
(singer, naturalist, actress, darkness, attention, movement). The vast majority of
nouns are one-syllable words, in which the root coincides with the stem and the
word.
The noun discriminates 4 grammatical categories: the cat. of gender, number, case
and article determination, out of which only number is undoubtful.
The formal features taken together are relevant for the division of nouns into
several subclasses, grouped into four oppositional pairs.
Proper-common – “type of nomination” , animate-inanimate – “type of existence”,
human-non-human – “personal quality”, countable-uncountable – “quantitative
structure”. Also there is an opposition of concrete and abstract nouns. (friendfriendship)
Glossary of Linguistic Terms
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
substantivity – вещественость
predicative – именная часть сказуемого
attribute - определение
one-syllable - односложный
gender - род
number - число
case - падеж
article determination - определённость
proper/common – собственные/нарицательные
animate/inanimate – одушевленные/неодушевленные
human/non-human – названия людей/прочие названия
countable/uncountable – исчисляемые/неисчисляемые
additional reading
стр. 86
стр. 21-22, 28-29, 34
–
стр. 55-58
5. стр. 109-110, 121-122, 129, 132-138
1.
2.
3.
4.
20
VIII. Noun. The category of number
Modern English, as most other languages, distinguishes between two numbers,
singular and plural (dual number). The singular number shows that one object is
meant, and the plural shows that more than one object is meant. Thus, the
opposition is “one – more than one”. The strong member of this opposition is the
plural. Its productive formal mark is the suffix –(e)s [-z, -s, -iz]. The singular is the
weak, unmarked form, characterized by the absence of the suffix. The other, nonproductive ways of expressing the number opposition are vowel interchange in
several relict forms (man-men), the archaic suffix –en supported by phonemic
interchange (brother-brethren), borrowings from Latin and Greek (formulaformulae, phenomenon-phenomena, alumnus-alumni). There are homonymous
plural forms (sheep).
With the reference to the category of number all the nouns are divided into
countable and uncountable. Uncountable nouns can be of two types – singularia
tantum (abstract notions – peace, courage; the names of branches of
professional activity – chemistry, physics, politics /Latin plural physica, politica is
used with singular verb/; the names of mass materials – water, hair; collective
inanimate objects – furniture, equipment, news)
and pluralia tantum (objects consisting of two parts – scissors, jeans; expressing
the idea of indefinite plurality, also a sort of collective inanimate objects –
earnings, clothes, outskirts, contents, supplies – used with plural verb). Nouns
denoting groups of people and animals – family, board, crew, cattle, poultry – can
denote a group as a whole, treated as singular, called ‘collective nouns’(The Board
knows about it.); or as
consisting of a number of persons or animals, termed as ‘nouns of multitude’
(Many cattle are grazing in the field.)
The necessity of expressing definite numbers of uncountable objects brought about
suppletive combinations with words ‘pair’, ‘case’, ‘piece’.
The use of singularia tantum in the plural form can be lexicalized (sorts of steel,
woods, glasses), or it is a case of oppositional reduction.
Oppositional reduction or oppositional substitution, is the usage of one member of
an opposition in the position of the counter-member. From the functional point of
view there exist two types of opp.reduction: neutralization of the categorial
opposition and its transposition.
In case of neutralization one member of the opposition becomes fully identified with
its counterpart. As the position of neutralization is usually filled in by the weak
member of the opposition due to its more general semantics, this kind of
oppositional reduction is stylistically colourless : “Man is sinful”. It is an example
of neutralization of the opposition of the category of number because in the
sentence the noun “man” used in the singular (the weak member of the opposition)
fulfills the function of the plural counterpart (the strong member of the opposition),
for it denotes the class as a whole. Neutralization takes place when countable
nouns begin to function as singularia tantum nouns, denoting in such cases either
abstract ideas or some mass material ‘On my birthday we always have goose’; or
when countable nouns are used in the function of the absolute plural ‘The Board
are not unanimous on this issue’.
Transposition takes place when one member of the opposition placed in the
contextual conditions uncommon for it begins to simultaneously fulfill two functions
– its own and the function of its counterpart. As a result, transposition is always
accompanied by different stylistic effects: the use of uncountable nouns in the
plural form ‘the sands of the desert, the snows of Kilimanjaro, the fruits of the toil’.
21
The plural form is outstretched, transponized into the group of nouns which usually
have no reference to singularity-plurality.
Glossary of Linguistic Terms
1. singular/plural/dual – единственное/множественное/двойственное
2. borrowing - заимствование
3. singularia tantum/pluralia tantum - сингулярия тантум (существительные,
которые употребляются только в едиственном числе), плюралия тантум
(существтительные, которые употребляются только во множественном
числе)
4. abstract notions – абстрактные понятия
5. branches of professional acttivity – отрасли профессиональной деятельности
6. collective nouns - собирательные
7. nouns of multitude – существительные множества
8. oppositional reduction – сокращение оппозиции, употребление члена
бинарной оппозиции вместо второго чллена, что приводит к сведению
противостояния в данной оппозиции к нулю
9. lexicalization – лексикализация, возникновение у формы слова другого
лексического значения
10. neutralization – нейтрализация, снятие значимости противопоставления
11. transposition – перенос значения одного члена оппозиции на другого члена
оппозиции
additional reading
1. стр. 87-41
2. стр. 22-25
3. –
4. стр. 64-69
5. стр. 111, 123-124
Practical Tasks:
5.To what numerical groups do the following nouns belong:
intelligence
feet
flames
trousers
crew
smoke
suburbs
22
IX. Noun. The category of case
Case is a morphological category of a noun showing its relations to other objects or
phenomena, manifested in the noun declension.
There are four theories concerning the case system of English. The first is the
‘limited case theory’ and recognizes the system of two cases, the common, nonmarked member of the opposition and possessive or genitive case, expressed by the
suffix ‘s [-s, -z, -iz]. The genitive case of the bulk of the plural nouns is expressed
only by the graphic sign of the apostrophe, phonetically unexpressed. The genitive
case has several meanings:
- the genitive of possessor: the manager’s desk – the diagnostic test is the
transformation into a construction expressing the idea of possession – the desk
belongs to the manager;
- the genitive of integer (целое, неотъемлемая часть): the patient's health - the
health as part of the patient's state;
- the genitive of received qualification: the computer’s reliability – the reliability
received by the computer;
- the genitive of agent: the great man’s arrival – the great man arrives;
- the genitive of author: Beethoven’s sonatas – Beethoven composed the sonatas;
- the genitive of patient: the team’s defeat – the team is defeated;
- the genitive of destination: children’s books – books for children;
- the genitive of dispensed (распределенная) qualification: a girl’s voice – a
voice characteristic of a girl;
- the genitive of comparison: the lion’s courage – the courage like that of a lion;
- the genitive of adverbial: yesterday’s newspaper – the newspaper issued
yesterday;
- the genitive of quantity: an hour’s delay – a delay which lasted an hour.
The limited case theory is most broadly accepted by linguists (O.Jespersen, A.
Smirnitsky).
However, it is opposed by the theory, according to which English has lost all the
cases in the course of its historical development. The genitive case is considered to
be a noun with a postposition, as ‘s is only loosely connected with the noun and can
be used with different ports of speech as well as with the whole word groups:
somebody else’s daughter, the young moon’s light. Thus, ‘s is a syntactic means, a
particle. Also, the ‘s construction is parallel to the preposition ‘of’ construction.
Besides, the usage of this case is limited to animate nouns and a limited list of
modifiers of time and place. However, the existence of clear opposition of the
marked and non-marked member proves the correctness of this limited case system.
The phrasal use of ‘s is stylistically marked, which shows its transpositional nature.
As for parallelizm with the prepositional form, the latter doesn’t have the meaning
of the subject: My Lord’s choice of the butler.
The third theory is the ‘theory of positional cases”. The unchangeable forms of the
noun are differentiated as different cases by the functional positions in the sentence.
Thus, we can distinguish one inflectional genitive case, and 4 non-inflectional:
nominative, vocative, dative, and accusative. These cases are supported by the
parallel cases of the personal pronouns: Rain falls – position of a subject,
nominative case; Are you coming, children? – function of the address, vocative
case; I gave John a penny – indirect object, the dative case; direct object, the
accusative case. However, the invariable form doesn’t allow us to consider them to
be different morphological forms. This only proves that the functional meaning
23
rendered by case forms in inflectional languages, like Russian or Latin, can be
expressed by other grammatical means, in particular, by word order.
The fourth theory is that of “prepositional cases”, according to which, the
combinations of nouns with certain prepositions can be considered morphological
case forms: dative – to, for; genitive – of, instrumental – by, with. But, if we follow
this theory, every combination of a noun with a preposition can be considered
another case, which will lead to redundancy in terminology.
Glossary of Linguistic Terms
1. declension - склонение
2. common case – общий падеж
3. genitive case – родительный падеж
4. possessor - обладатель
5. integer – неотъемлемая часть
6. received qualification – приобретенное свойство
7. agent – агенс, осуществляющий действие
8. patient – пациенс, ощущающий на себе действия
9. destination - адресат
10. dispensed qualification – качество, распространенное на предмет
11. comparison - сравнение
12. adverbial – относящийся к обстоятельству места или времени
13. quantity - количественный
14. limited case theory – теория ограниченных падежей
15. nominative - именательный
16. vocative - звательный
17. accusative - винительный
18. inflectional languages – языки, где слова изменяют форму при помощи
окончаний
19. dative - дательный
20. instrumental – творительный
additional reading
1. стр. 41-47
2. стр. 25-27
3. –
4. стр. 70-82
5. стр. 111-112, 124-127, 130-132
24
X. Noun. The category of gender.
The problem of gender in English is disputable. Linguistic scholars as a rule deny
the existence of gender in English as a grammatical category and stress its purely
semantic character. The actual gender distinctions of nouns are not denied by
anyone, what is disputable is the character of the gender classification: whether it is
purely semantic or semantico-grammatical.
In fact, the category of gender in English is expressed with the help of the
correlation of nouns with the personal pronouns of the 3rd person. Here English
gender distinctions display their grammatical nature.
The category of gender is based on two hierarchically based oppositions. The first
opposition functions on the whole set of nouns, dividing them into human and nonhuman nouns. The other opposition functions in the subset of person nouns only,
dividing them into masculine nouns and feminine nouns. As the result of the double
oppositional correlation, a specific system of three genders arises: neuter, masculine
and feminine. The strong member of the upper opposition is the human subclass of
nouns, the week member of the opposition comprises both inanimate and animate
non-person nouns.
In English there are many person nouns capable of expressing both feminine and
masculine genders by way of the pronominal correlation. These nouns comprise a
group of the so-called “common gender nouns: person, friend, еtc.
In the plural all the gender distinctions are neutralized but they are rendered
through the correlation with the singular. The category of gender can undergo the
process of oppositional reduction. It can be neutralized (with the group of “common
gender” nouns) and transponized (the process of personification). “A family is
spouses and siblings, who live in one household”, “ The old man was soon asleep
and dreamed of the ocean and his golden beaches.”
Glossary of Linguistic Terms
1. semantic/semantico-grammatical – семантический (по значению)/семантикограмматический
2. hierarchical - иерархический
3. masculine - мужской
4. feminine - женский
5. neuter - средний
6. common – общий
7. personification – персонификация, придавание черт одушевленности
неодушевленным предметам
additional reading
1. –
2. стр. 22
3. 4. стр. 59-63
5. стр. 110-111, 127-128
25
XI. Article, its role and function. The number of articles in English
Article is a determining unit accompanying the noun in communicative collocation.
In contrast to determiners such as –this, any, some – articles 1/. define nouns in the
most general way, without relation to other object or phenomena; 2/. the cases of
non-use of the article are subject to definite rules, as the use of articles.
The status of article in English is difficult to define. Whether it is a purely auxiliary
element of an analytical form of noun, showing the category of determination, or it
is a separate word, a lexical unit of a class of articles, group of determiners. Some
grammarians see there are grammatical relations between the article and the noun it
determines.
Another ambiguity is the number of articles. It appears that there function three
articles: definite, indefinite and the absence of the article.
- The definite article expresses the identification or individualization of the noun.
It can be tested by substitution of the article by a demonstrative determiner:
“Look at the apple-tree!” – “Look at this apple-tree!” The justification of this
test can be proved by a counter-test, a replacement of the definite article by the
indefinite, or the absence of article.
- The indefinite article refers to the object denoted by the noun of a certain class
of similar objects. For testing the indefinite article can be replaced by
constructions “a certain”, “kind of”, “sort of”: “We passed a water-mill. – We
passed a certain water-mill”. (not a wind-mill).
- As for various uses of nouns without articles, from the semantic point of view
they can be divided into two types: stylistic omission in newspaper articles,
messages, where the articles can be easily restored: “Red Cross supply food to
refugees in Palestinian camp.” – “The Red Cross supply (!) food to the refugees
in a Palestinian camp.” And the semantic absence of article for the noun in the
abstract sense, expressing - the most general idea of the object. It can be tested
by inserting a generalizing modifier: in general, in the broadest sense. “Law (in
general) begins with the beginning of human society (in general). – It can also
be used with uncountable noun with the meaning of relative and absolute
generalization: “John laughed with great bitterness (that sort of bitterness –
relative generalization)”. “The subject of health (in general – absolute
generalization) was carefully avoided by everybody”. – The absence of the
article before the countable noun in the plural can also have the meaning of
relative and absolute generalization: “Herrod’s sell luxury clothes (these kinds
of clothes, relative generalization)”. “Plants (in general, absolute generalization)
can generate carbohydrates (in general).”
- There can be idiomatic use of any of the articles: “on fire, in debt, take place, in
a hurry, have a look, out of the common, under the circumstances”.
The basic principle of differentiation between the uses of articles is in the type of
information the article-noun combination conveys. The definite article indicates the
type of the information, presented in the sentence as already known, namely, the
starting point of the communication, called “theme”, in contrast to this, the
indefinite article or the meaningful absence of the article introduce the central
communicative part of the sentence, rendering the immediate informative data to be
conveyed from the speaker to the listener, called “rheme”. Thus, the typical
syntactic position of the noun modified by the definite article is the thematic
subject, while the typical position of the noun, modified by the in.a or abs.a is the
rhematic predicative. : “The day (subject) was drawing to (!) a close.” How to
handle the (!) situation was a big question (predicative). In objects and attributes the
articles reflect the same situational functions. “The farmers on the organic farm
26
produce meat and vegetables” (the subject and the predicative group). “The door
opened and the young man came in” – “The door opened and a young man came in
– The person who came in was a young man”.
As a grammatical category, a.d. is characterized by two sets of binary oppositions.
The first set is def.a vs indef. and abs.a (weak member)…
.: “It was a beautiful summer day for the wedding, a muddy earth but a bright sky”.
The transponized character of the indefinite determination is revealed in its
fulfilling two functions – one of them is primary – one of the types of the earth and
the sky, while its secondary function consists in determining a unique object. Due
to the transpositional use of the article the analyzed context becomes stylistically
marked.
The data obtained show that the English noun distinguishes the category of
determination, expressed by the article paradigm of 3 grammatical forms for the
whole system of common nouns being transpositionally outstretched also into the
system of proper nouns :”She is the Bronte, who wrote Jane Eyre”.
The determiners (this, his, some, another) used with nouns in the absence of the
article expose the essential article meanings for their semantic structure.
Glossary of Linguistic Terms
1. Determiner – определяющее слово
2. substitution - подстановка
3. omission - опущение
4. absence - отсутствие
5. theme – тема, о чем говорится в предложении
6. rheme – рема, что говорится о теме
7. generalization – обобщение
additional reading
1. стр. 47-57
2. стр. 29-33
3. –
4. стр. 83-94
5. стр. 112-113
27
XII. Adjectives. Their grammatical categories.
The adjective expresses the meaning of property of a substance. It means that for
every A used in a sentence some noun is used or implied, whose property it
denotes, such as its material, colour, dimensions, position, state, and other
characteristics, both permanent and temporary. So, unlike nouns, A’s do not have a
full nominative(назывная) value. Words like “long” or “hospitable” cannot
function in the sentence independently from a collocation showing what is long and
who is hospitable. The semantically bound character of the adjective is emphasized
in English by the use of the substitute “one” in the absence of the notional headnoun in the phrase: I could see big figures, but I couldn’t see the little ones on the
chart.
Form the syntactical point of view, A’s can combine with nouns, usually in preposition, and occasionally in post-position: “times immemorial” (usually these are
borrowings from Romanic languages), with link-verbs, both functional and
notional: He was guilty, He was found guilty; with modifying adverbs. I can be
combined with nouns with a preposition (fond of, jealous of, curious of, angry with
etc) Many of such adjectival collocations have essentially a verbal meaning: to be
fond of – love, to be jealous of – envy, etc.
In the sentence the A’s perform the function of an attribute and a predicative. Of the
two, the more specific function of the A is that of an attribute, since the function of
a predicative can be performed by a noun as well.
To the derivational features of A’s belong a number of suffixes and prefixes, of
which the most important are: -ful (hopeful) , - less (jobless), ish (bluish), ous
(famous), ive (decorative), ic (basic), -ly (friendly), -un, im.
As far as word-changing features, A, having lost in the course of history all its
forms of grammatical agreement with the noun, has only the category of
comparison.
Subclasses of adjectives:
1. relative (related to nouns – historical, wooden, mediaeval); among them there
are:
- property that can be graded quantitatively, together with the noun it describes (a
military design, a grammatical topic);
- -relative adjectives receive qualitative features, when used idiomatically
(wooden =awkward)
2.qualitative, which denote various qualities of substances;
- some of them have absolute qualitative meaning (extinct, deaf, dead, but “Take
dead, mort, muerto, and todt. Todt was the deadest of them all”)
- adjectives of moderated quality (whitish, semi-detached, half-open)
- adjectives of extreme quality (ultimate, final, crucial)
28
Categories of adjectives:
The category of comparison gives a relative evaluation of the quantity of a quality.
It is constituted by the opposition of the three forms of degrees of comparison: the
basic form (positive degree), the form of restricted superiority (the comparative
degree, limits the comparison to two elements only); the form of unrestricted
superiority (the superlative degree). This form has lexical restrictions (the strongest
of the group, the biggest in the world).
We have the right to consider this a gradual opposition, as the basic form is used in
comparative syntactic constructions of equality and negated equality: “The day is as
long as the night on the 22nd of March”, “Moscow is not so old as London” and is
the unmarked member of the opposition. Together with marked, strong members of
opposition “Venus is closer to the Sun than the Earth”, “Mercury is the closest
planet to the Sun in the solar system”.
The synthetical form has affixes –er/-est and forms degrees of one-syllable words,
and two syllable words ending in grapho-phonemic complexes –y (busier), -er
(cleverer), -ow (narrower), -ble (nobler).
More than two-syllable adjectives and other two-syllable ones form analytical
degrees of comparison, using auxiliary words – more/the most. The fact that this
form doesn’t have the feature of “semantic idiomatism”, like analytical forms of the
verb, let some grammarians consider that multi-syllable adjectives don’t have forms
of comparison at all. Two other arguments in favour of free syntactic construction:
the analogous construction to more/the most – less/the least; and second, the –mostcombination, unlike the synthetic superlative, can take the indefinite article,
expressing not the superlative, but the elative meaning: “I found myself in a most
awkward situation.”(элятив, возвышенный – добрейший человек, глупейшее
положение). However, the elative just gives the idea of very high degree of
property, like “very awkward”, in oral speech it is always unstressed, while “It was
the most awkward situation in my life” expresses exactly the superlative degree of
quality. The most-combination can also be used as eleative: “We’ll welcome you
with the greatest pleasure”. The expressive nature of the elative is in the
combination of two features that contradict each other: the categorial form of the
superlative on the one hand, and the absence of a comparison on the other. The two
forms of the superlative of different functional purposes receive the two different
marks by the article determination, and the functions of the two combinations are
different.
The meaning of the analytical forms more/the most and less/the least is directly
opposite, which means that they belong to units of the same general order. Thus,
the less/least combinations, similar to the more/most, constitute specific forms of
comparison, which may be called forms of ‘reverse comparison’.The whole
category includes not three, but 5 different forms, making up the two series – direct
and reverse, the inferiority degrees of comparison.
29
Substantivisation of adjectives
In many languages adjectives can become nouns (ученый, рабочий, мороженое).
This means of word building is called conversion or zero-derivation. Substantivized
adjectives acquire grammatical features of noun – the plural form and the genitive
case (natives, sensitives, cutes, relative’s). They can also have articles.
On the other hand, among the substuntivized adjectives there is a set characterized
by hybrid lexico-grammatical features: the poor, the rich, the killed, the wounded.
The have an incomplete set of the part-of-speech characteristics of either nouns or
adjectives. Like nouns, the words are used in the article form; like nouns, they
express the category of number: they have two subgroups – pluralia tantum (the
English, the rich), and singularia tantum (the invisible, the abstract), but their article
and number forms are rigid, not subject to change. This group is open, as this
means of word building is productive.
Adjectivisation of nouns
A noun may stand before another noun and modify it: speech sound, peace treaty,
business contract. The observation that these nouns lose the ability of forming
plural and have articles proves that they possess the features of adjectives. They
also have the meaning of property, not a substance, and they function as attributes.
This can also be illustrated by the difference between such combinations with
proper nouns as “Moscow’s theatres”, “Repin’s pictures” and Moscow region, the
Tretyakov Galery. The second type clearly lost their substantival features.
Glossary of Linguistic Terms
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
property – качество предмета
permanent/temporary – постоянный/временный
nominal – именной, предметный
derivation - словообразование
agreement – согласование (формы зависимого слова)
degrees of comparison – степени сравнения
positive/comparative/superlative degree – положительная/сравнительная/превосходная
степень
elative – елятив, омонимичная с превосходной степенью форма, обозначающая высокую
степень качества
gradual opposition – последовательная оппозиция
grapho-phonemic complex – комплекс звуков и букв, имеющий грамматическое значение
direct/reverse degrees of comparison (the inferiority degrees) – прямые/обратные степени
сравнения (степени понижения качества)
substantivized – субстантивированный, получивший признаки существительного
conversion – конверсия, превращение одной части речи в другую, не сопровождающаяся
изменением формы, а только изменением функции, значения и словоизменительной
парадигмы
rigid form – неизменяемая форма
modify – служить определением, изменять смысл
relative - относительное
qualitative - качественное
moderated/extreme quality – умеренное/крайнее качество
additional reading
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
стр. 58-65
стр. 34-38
–
стр. 220-237
стр. 217-220, 226-228, 230-238
30
XIII. Adverbs. Classification of adverbs.
The adverb is defined as a word expressing either property of an action, or property
of another property, or circumstances in which an action occurs. Adverbs are
characterized by combinability with verbs, adjectives and words of adverbial
nature. The functions of adverbs in these combinations consist in expressing
different adverbial modifiers. “The woman was crying hysterically.” – an adverbial
modifier of manner. “He was nervously anxious’ – an adverbial modifier of
property qualification.
From the point of view of the word-building structure adverbs can be simple (very,
here, quite, when) and derived: suffix –ly (slowly, firstly), -ways (sideways,
crossways), -wise (clockwise, counter-clockwise), -ward(s) (homewards,
afterwards). The characteristic adverbial prefix is a- (away, ahead, apart, across).
Some adverbs are converted from other parts of speech: adjectives – fast, late, high,
tight, many of them have another form, formed of adjective with the suffix –ly, but
with a different meaning: to fall flat into the water – to refuse flatly, to fly high – to
raise a highly theoretical question.
From adjectives with –ly adverbs are also converted – daily, weekly, lively, timely.
From prepositions and conjunctions – never before/ never before a meeting,
somewhere round/round the corner, to hold within/within a week.
There is a group of preposition-adverb-like words, which form phrasal words –
look up, through, after. They are intermediate between functional words and
morphemes, particles of semi-morphemic nature.
The subgroups of adverbs – qualitative (-ly)- bitterly, plainly; quantitative (words
of degree) and circumstantial (words of pronominal nature).
There are several types of quantitative adverbs, functional words, not possessing
nominative value :
1. adverbs of high degree, intensifiers: very, quite, entirely, utterly, highly, greatly,
perfectly, absolutely, strongly, considerably, pretty, much.
2. Adverbs of excessive degree (direct and reverse): too, awfully, tremendously,
dreadfully, terrifically.
3. Adverbs of unexpected degree: surprisingly, unexpectedly, astonishingly,
amazingly.
4. Adverbs of moderate degree: rather, fairly, comparatively, relatively,
moderately.
5. Adverbs of low degree: slightly, a little, a bit.
6. Approximate degree: almost, nearly
7. Optimal degree: enough, sufficiently, adequately
8. Inadequate degree: insufficiently, intolerably, unbearably, ridiculously
9. Under-degree: hardly, scarcely.
10. Numerical-pronominal adverbs: twice, four times, twofold, manifold – they
have full notional value
Circumstantial adverbs are also divided into notional and functional. The functional
circumstantial adverbs are words of pronominal nature: time, place, manner, cause,
consequence – now, here, when, where, so, thus, how, why. Others have
nominative value: adverbs of time and place: today, tomorrow, already, ever, never,
shortly, recently, seldom, early, late, homeward, eastward, near, far, outside,
ashore.
Qualitative adverbs have the category of degrees of comparison: quickly-quickerquickest-less quickly-least quickly. Adverbs converted from adjectives form
degrees of comparison synthetically (fast-faster-fastest), so do “quickly” and
31
“slowly”. Adverbs with the suffix –ly form degrees of comparison with more/most.
Adverbs “well, far, much, little, badly” form suppletive degrees of comparison or
based on the sound alternation.
Similar to adjectives, adverbs with “most” can be used as elative constructions: He
described it most correctly. = very correctly.
Glossary of Linguistic Terms
1. property of the action – признак действия
2. property of another property – признак признака
3. words of adverbial nature – наречные слова, схожие по значению с
наречиями предлоги
4. adverbial modifier of time/place/manner/property qualification –
обстоятельство времени/места/образа действия/оценки качества
5. preposition/adverb-like words – слова похожие на предлоги и наречия
6. semi-morphemic – наполовину морфема, наполовину служебное слово
7. qualitative/quantitative/circumstantial –
качественны/относительный/относящийся к ситуации
8. pronominal – местоименный
additional reading
1. стр. 146-148
2. стр. 87-89
3. –
4. стр. 238-246
5. стр. 220-222, 228-230. 238-243
Practical tasks:
6. Comment on the use of degrees of comparison with the following adverbs and
adjectives:
– He spoke even (quickly) and (correctly) than I expected.
– -We are on most peaceful terms.
– -He is the least unlikely to be suspected of the crime.
– -I’ve been with well-behaved people, far (well-behaved) than you.
32
XIV. Verb. The general characteristics.
The general categorial meaning of the verb is process presented dynamically, i.e.
developing in time. They also include those that denote states, forms of existence,
types of attitude, evaluations, etc, rather than actions.
Its central function is predicate.
From the point of view of their outward structure, verbs are characterized by
specific forms of word-building, as well as by the formal features expressing the
corresponding grammatical categories.
The word stems may be simple, sound-replacive, stress-replacive, expanded,
composite and phrasal.
The original simple verb stems are not numerous: go, take, read, etc.
One of the most productive means of forming verb lexemes is conversion “nounverb”: to park, to man, to water. The sound-replacive type of derivation and the
stress replacive type of derivation are unproductive: food-to feed, blood-to bleed,
import-to import, transport, record, insult. The typical suffixes expanding the stem
of the verb are: -ate (cultivate), -en (broaden), -ify (clarify), -ize (normalize); the
prefixes are: be- (belittle, befriend, bewitch, bewilder), en-/em- (enable, enclose,
embody, embed); re (remake), under- (undergo), over- (overestimate), sub(subdivide), mis- (misunderstand), un- (undo). The composite (compound) verb
stems correspond to the composite non-verb stems from which they are derived
(whitewash, proofread). The phrasal verb stems occupy an intermediary position
between analytical forms of verb and syntactic word combinations. Two types
should be mentioned: have, give, take with a noun (to have breakfast, take a breath,
take a glance, give a smile) and head verb with a verbal postposition (go on, take
off, pick up).
The first category is the category of finitude dividing the verb into finite and nonfinite forms, then the categories of person, number, tense, aspect, voice and mood.
Among the forms the infinitive occupies the position of the principal representative
of the verb lexeme as a whole. Its function is to name the process and to serve as
the derivative base for all the other forms of the verb.
The class of verbs falls into a number of subclasses distinguished by different
semantic and lexico-grammatical features. On the upper level of division two
unequal sets are identified: the set of verbs of full nominative value (notional
verbs), and the set of verbs of partial nominative value (semi-notional and
functional verbs). The first set is derivationally open, it includes the bulk of the
verbal lexicon. The second set is derivationally closed, it includes limited subsets of
verbs characterized by individual relational properties. Semi-notional and
functional verbs serve as markers of predication and include auxiliary verbs, modal
verbs, semi-notional introducer verbs, and link-verbs. Auxiliary verbs serve for
building categorial forms of the verbs: be, have, do, shall, will, should, would, may,
might. Modal verbs are used to express meanings of attitude: ability, obligation,
permission. They also can express probability. It can be tested by correlating the
first meaning with equivalents “be obliged, be permitted” and the second meaning
with equivalents “be likely, be probable”. The modal verbs can, may, must, shall,
will, ought, need used to, dare are defective in forms, and are suppletively
supplemented by stative groups (be able to, have to and other equivalents). There is
also a group of semi-notional introducer verbs (seem, happen, turn out, try, fail,
manage).
On the bases of the subject-process relation, all the notional verbs can be divided
into actional and statal. Actional verbs express the action performed by the subject,
i.e. they present the subject as an active doer (do, perform, read, learn and the like).
Statal verbs denote the state of their subject (live, worry, suffer, see, know). A third
set of verbs can be distinguished, which express processes (thaw, ripen,
33
deteriorate). It can be shown by transformational tests: The snow is thawing – the
snow is in the state of thawing.
Some subsets of verbs are oppositions of verbs of mental process and sensual
process. Within the first group there are verbs of mental perception and mental
activity (know-think, admire-assess, notice-note); within the second group there
verbs of physical perception and physical perceptional activity (hear-listen, seelook, smell (пахнуть)-smell (нюхать).
Aspective semantics exposes the inner character of the process denoted by the verb.
Two aspective subclasses should be recognized: limitive (предельные) unlimitive,
durative (непредельные): arrive, come, find, drop/sleep, behave, hope.
Another division is into verbs transitive and intransitive. Transitivity is the ability
of the verb to take direct object, i.e. an object which is immediately affected by the
process. The direct object is joined to the verb without a preposition.
By morphological criteria verbs are divided into the open group of regular and a
closed group of irregular verbs.
Glossary of Linguistic Terms
1. sound-replacive – основанный на чередовании звуков
2. stress-replacive – основанный на изменении ударения
3. expanded stem – производная основа
4. conversion – конверсия, переход из одной части речи в другую
5. compound - сложный
6. finitude – личность/безличность
7. mood - наклонение
8. voice - залог
9. aspect - вид
10. tense - время
11. person - лицо
12. number - число
13. derivation base – словообразовательная база
14. auxilary - вспомогательный
15. semi-notional introducer – неполнозначный глагол-связка
16. actional – обозначающий действие
17. statal – описывающий состояние
18. transitive - переходный
19. intransitive - непереходный
20. regular - правильный
21. irregular - неправильный
22. limitive – однократного действия
23. durative – длительного действия
Additional reading:
1. стр. 76
2. стр. 46-50
3. –
4. стр. 95-112
5. стр.140-143
34
XV. Verb. The category of voice.
The voice of the English verb shows the direction of the process as regards the
participants of the situation reflected in the syntactic construction. The voice of the
English verb is expressed by the opposition of the passive form of the verb to the
active form. The sign marking the passive form is the combination of the auxiliary
“be” with the past participle of the notional verb. It expresses reception of the
action by the subject of the syntactic construction, the passive subject, denoting the
object of the action. The active form as the weak member of the opposition
expresses non-passivity.
In colloquial speech the role of the passive auxiliary can be performed by the verb
“get” or “become”: Sam got liked for a good reason. The young violinist became
admired by all.
The category of voice has a much broader representation in the system of the
English verb than in the system of the Russian verb, since in English not only
transitive, but also intransitive verbs including prepositional ones can be used in the
passive. Besides, verbs taking two objects can feature both of them in the position
of the passive subject: I’ve just been rung by the police. He was said to have been
very wild in his youth. The child will be looked after all right. In Russian these are
the cases of use of impersonal sentences, or reflexive forms of verbs.
Still, not all the verbs capable of taking an object are actually used in the passive. In
particular, the passive form is not used with many verbs of the statal subclass (have
in direct possessive meaning, belong, cost, resemble, fail, etc. It must be admitted
that the category of voice is represented in all the verbs, not only those which can
be used in the passive, because other verbs express this category by their nonpassivity. Sometimes they use the active form with the passive meaning: The shop
opens at 10. The magazine doesn’t sell well.
Both the active and the passive forms have the same tense and aspect categories,
but the passive forms where the auxiliary “be” must be doubly used as a verbid, are
neutralized. So, the future continuous and all the perfect continuous tenses are not
used, and the corresponding simple forms are used: The police will be keeping an
army of reporters at bay. – An army of reporters will be kept at bay by the police.
We have been expecting the decision for a long time. – The decision has been
expected for a long time.
The typical cases of use of the passive is when the subject is unknown or when the
attention of the speaker is centred on the action as such.
Sometimes it is difficult to tell a passive construction from a nominal predicate with
the link-verb “be”. The door was closed by the butler as softly as it could be. – The
door on the left was closed. The predicate of the first sentence expresses an action,
the second – a state. So, we must consider it a nominal predicate with a link-verb
“be” and a nominal part expressed by a past participle.
Glossary of Linguistic Terms
1. impersonal - безличный
2. reflexive - возвратный
additional reading
1. стр. 114-122
2. стр. 74-80
3. –
4. стр. 191-200
5. стр. 170-205
35
Practical tasks:
8. Comment on the oppositional reduction in the following sentence:
Model: Isn’t that kind of challenge you are always praying for? – The stylistic
effect of something happening too often is brought about by the transpositional use
of the strong member of the opposition (the continuous aspect) instead of its weak
member (the simple aspect with habitual action).
A human being doesn’t live, but is lived.
36
XVI. Verb. The category of mood.
Mood is the category which expresses the relation of the action to reality, as stated
by the speaker. The mood in English is expressed by the opposition of the
indicative and a number of oblique (косвенных) moods.
The use of the indicative mood shows that the speaker presents this action as real.
No matter how fantastic or imaginary the action is, the attitude of it of the speaker
is reflected in the form of the predicate. In the clauses with “if” the meaning of the
verb form is that it is real under a certain condition. This is the mood which
includes all the tenses, because the other moods don’t need any indication of the
time of the action, as we don’t speak of it as about the action which happened, is
happening or will happen.
The imperative mood presents the action as recommended, addressed immediately
to the second person. Its formal expression uses the infinitive without “to”, which is
demonstrated by the verb “be” – Be quick! - Its negative form is expressed by
“don’t”, which makes it different from the negative infinitive “not to be quick” –
Don’t worry! - Imperative mood forms are used in a specific structure of sentences,
imperative, which are characterized by the absence of subject. The use of “you” as
a subject of the imperative sentences is stylistically marked – You get out of here! One of the forms of imperative is that with a modal verb “let”, which in this case
loses its meaning. This form of the imperative can be addressed to the first and third
person – Let us meet. – Let him come. –
The subjunctive mood expresses suppositional or desired activity. It has several
types of meanings, according to which types of subjunctive are named, and several
means of expression.
Meaning
1.Possibility (action thought
of as conditionally possible, or
as purpose of another action,
etc.)2.Unreal condition,
unrealized wish
Means of Expression
( 1 ) (he) come (no ending, no
auxiliary) (2) should come
(should for all persons) (3) may
came,
come had
(?) come (same as past or
past perfect indicative), used in
subordinate clauses
3.Consequence of unreal condition
would come /would have come
st
The 1 type is known as “subjunctive 1” and is used with a
certain list of verbs: sujesst, demand, recommend, insist etc.
Also after some predicatives “it is + ajective”: it is necessory,
The first type is known as subjunctive. It is used in that-clauses, when the main
clause contains an expression of recommendation, resolution, demand (suggest,
demand,
recommend, insist, it is necessary, it is strange, it is advisable, etc).
The
- It is necessary that he should be informed of the rules. – It is necessary that he be
informed of the rules.- Also it is used in the clauses of purpose after the conjunction
“lest” – They covered the goods with canvas lest it (should) be damaged by rain.
The second type is known as “conditional”. It uses forms homonymous to Past
Simple and Past Perfect. “Were” is used for all the persons instead of “was”. The
forms have nothing to do with the time of the action, this action is only unreal
condition. They express the degree of possibility of the action. It is used in
conditional and concessive clauses and in subordinate clauses after verbs like
“wish”. Instead of if-clause inversion can be used: Were I to see him tomorrow, I
would ask him about it. – Had I seen him then, I would ask him about it.
37
The third type is called “modal subjunctive”. It uses in the main clauses analytical
forms with modal verbs “would, might, could” + infinitive or perfect infinitive, it
depends on the degree of possibility of the consequence of unreal condition. Those
forms are different from the use of modal verbs in the indicative mood, because in
the subjunctive the contracted forms can be used: If he did it, we’d know about it.
The fourth type can be called “formulaic subjunctive” it consists of the infinitive
without “to”, but is only used in certain set expressions:
- Come what may, we will go ahead.
- God save the Queen!
- Suffice it to say that …
- Be that as it may …
- Heaven forbid that …
Glossary of Linguistic Terms
1. indicative - изъявительное
2. imperative - повелительное
3. subjunctive - сослагательное
4. conditional clause – условное придаточное
5. concessive clause – уступительное придаточное
6. homonymous – омонимичный, совпадающий по форме
7. formulaic – шаблонный
additional reading
1. стр. 99 – 113
2. стр. 68 – 74
3. –
4. стр. 201 – 219
5. стр. 170-215
38
XVII. Verb. The categories of tense, aspect and time correlation.
Tense is the grammatical expression of verbal time. It is affected in two stages. The
first is the opposition of the past tense to the present tense. The marked member of
the opposition is the past form. At the second stage the forms of the future tense are
opposed to the forms of no future marking.
Jill returns form her driving class at 5 o’clock. – At five Jill returned from her
driving class. I know that Jill will return from her driving class at 5 o’clock. – I
knew that at five Jill would return from her driving class.
The tense system is marked by the do-forms in the simple aspect in the past and
present.
The prospective time category (future-non-future) is neutralized in certain uses: the
use of “going to” with the future meaning, expressing future action which takes
place according to some plan or arrangement, and some others: The government
meets in emergency session today over the matter of continued violations of the
cease-fire.
If things turn out as has been arranged, the triumph will be all ours.
I repeated my request to notify me at once whenever the messenger arrived.
The category of tense is closely connected with the category of aspect. The
aspective meaning of the verb, as different from its temporal meaning, reflects the
inherent mode of the realization of the process irrespective of its timing. This is true
about the opposition of continuous-non-continuous forms, as they reflect the
character of the process, irrespective of its timing.
The plane touched the ground. – The plane was touching the ground when we arrived at
the airport.
Together with the tense, aspect makes a form, characteristic of usage of every verb
– the aspect-tense form. Present simple means the regular action and has a synthetic
form – the opposition of the third person singular against all the rest, and an
analytical form – do + inf – in negative sentences, questions and stylistically
marked positive sentences “He does know the truth!” Present continuous denotes
actions done at the moment of speech, around this moment, temporary actions and
states, future actions, arranged with other people. Transpositionally can be used
with “always” in the meaning of the action that happens more often than necessary.
The category of time correlation is one of the interpretations of the perfect aspect. It
denotes the priority of the action to another action or to the moment of speaking.
The perfect form of a limitive verb denotes reaching a limit: “What you expected
has happened.”
If the verb lexically means a change of the state, its perfect will have the meaning
of the result: “People have grown more sensitive to the environment.”
Durative verbs in the perfect form have the meaning of the action, terminated at the
present moment: “This really has meant something to me, really.
We have always felt that.'
The Present form of Perfect functions mostly in the direct speech.
Aspect forms of the verbs can be expressed only within a certain tense,
forms of verbs unite tense and aspect categories. The past prefect forms
show the correlation of the action with time in the past, expressed by another
action or a direct time marker. Thus, in the past perfect it is the pre -past
39
tense meaning that is more important than the perfect aspect. This is one of
the reasons why this category of time correlation is called a cate gory, not
just a member of the opposition in the aspect category. “I read the book – He
said he had read the book” – they differ not by the category of aspect, but by
the pre-past time. The future perfect forms are correlated with a time point in
future, it denotes an action as the one which will be completed by this point.
It is rarely used in speech:
I'll see you tomorrow night. I shall have thought over your business by then.
The meaning of the perfect continuous forms is another argument in favour
of time correlation as a separate category. It explains how both continuous
aspect and perfect correlation function together. It shows the process as flowing
until it reaches the point of its termination. Limitive verbs in this form denote a
repeated action: “Have you been sending me a lot of telegrams?” The Past form
is used in the meaning of a prior action; the future form is not used.
To fit the category of time correlation into the aspect system we can speak of
the aspect opposition continuous-non-continuous as the aspective category of
development.
Glossary of Linguistic Terms
time correlation – временная соотнесенность
Additional reading
стр. 76 – 99
2. стр. 49 – 68
3.–
4.стр. 150-190
6. стр. 167-212
Practical tasks:
8. Comment on the oppositional reduction in the following sentence:
Model: No problem is too hard for him. – In this sentence generalization withoun
stylistic effect is achieved by the neutralization of the category of number using the
weak member of the opposition (problem, singular) instead of the strong member,
plural.
I’d like some hot water, if it is nor being troublesome.
40
XVIII. Verb. The categories of person and number
The categories of person and number are closely connected with each other. This
aspect allows the verb to reflect the personal and the numerical semantics of the
subject of the sentence.
The category of person in verbs is represented by the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person,
and it expresses the relation between the speaker, the person or persons addressed,
and other persons and things. The 1st person, of course, expresses the speaker or a group
of which the speaker makes a part; the 2nd person, the person or persons spoken to,
and the 3rd, that person or thing (or those persons or things) which are neither the
speaker nor the person(s) spoken to.
The category of number expresses the quantity of the subjects (one or more than
one). Speaking deductively, we might build the following system of personal and
numerical categories:
1st person singular — the speaker
2nd person singular—one person spoken to
3rd person singular — one person or thing (neither
speaker nor spoken to)
1st person plural — the speaker and another person or other persons
2nd person plural — more than one person spoken to 3rd person plural —
more than one person or
— thing (neither speakers nor spoken to)
The expression of the category of person is shown only in the verb of the present
tense of the indicative mood. From the point of view of the expression of the person
there are 3 groups of verbs: - modal verbs have no personal inflections, the category
of person is neutralized with these verbs. – The expression of person by a unique
lexeme “be” is three different suppletive personal forms: “am” for the first person
singular, are for the second person and is for the third person. – The remaining
verbs express person by the opposition of the third person singular against other
persons. The strong member of the opposition is marked by the affix –(e)s, the
other two persons remain unmarked.
In the elevated mode of speech: poetry, prayers, some archaic forms are used:
second person is marked by affixes “canst, wilt, needst, art (singular), comecomest-comes, stop-stoppest-stops.
The category of number is expressed by the opposition of the forms of the verb
“be” in the first and third person in the present and past tenses: am-are, is-are, waswere; and by the opposition in the third person of non-modal verbs in the present
tenses. The marker of the strong member of the opposition (singular number) is the
affix –(e)s.
Thus, we can say that by virtue of the verb “be” we can distinguish three persons
and two numbers in English.
Glossary of Linguistic Terms
1. elevated mode – возвышенный стиль
additional reading
1. стр. 123 – 129
2. стр. 50-51
3. –
4. стр. 138-149
5. стр. 166 - 202
41
XIX. Non-finite verbs (verbids) . Infinitive and gerund.
Verbids are the forms of the verb intermediary in many lexico-grammatical features
between the verb and substantive parts of speech (nouns and adjectives). The mixed
features of these forms are revealed in the meaning, combinability and syntactic
functions. The processual meaning is exposed by them in a substantive or
adjectival-adverbial interpretation. They are formed by morphemes that do not
express the most specific finite verb categories of tense and mood, number and
person. In the sentence they perform as substantives or properties, combining with
notional and link-verbs. But they perform verbal, processual functions within their
own combinations, or constructions, combining with nouns, pronouns, adverbs. –
You choose getting well with the choice of acting right and handling problems as
they appear.What is the reason for considering verbids to be forms within the category of verb,
and not separate parts of speech is that their fundamental grammatical meaning is
processual. Every verb stem takes both finite and non-finite forms, and the
infinitive is the base form of all other forms. The division of functions between the
finite and non-finite forms (predication) shows that the opposition between them
creates a grammatical category of finitude.
The four verbids: the infinitive, the gerund, the present participle and the past
participle are different in form, meaning and function.
The infinitive is the non-finite form of the verb which combines the properties of
the verb with those of the noun, serving as the verbal name of the process. By virtue
of its general process – naming function, the infinitive should be considered as the
head-form of the whole paradigm of the verb (like the nominative case in a Russian
noun). It represents the derivation base for all the forms of verbs, with very few
exceptions.
The infinitive is used in three fundamentally different types of functions: 1. As a
notional, self-positional syntactic part of the sentence – I’d like to go on holiday.
(object)- free form
2. as the notional constituent of a complex verbal predicate – Can speak, must
know, it may rain – half-free form
3. as the notional constituent of a finite conjugation form of the verb – do you
know/does he know, will/would do.- bound form
The combinability of the infinitive reflects its dual semantic nature: the verb-type
combinability is displayed in its combining with nouns expressing the object of the
action, the subject – I want the friends to help me. – modifying adverbs, predicator
verbs of semi-functional nature – seemed to know, began to do regularly - , with
auxiliary finite verbs (word-morphemes) in the analytical forms of the verb.
The noun-type combinability is displayed in its combining with finite notional
verbs - want to do -, to visit him was unwise – as the object or the subject of the
action. (You have studied the functions of the infinitive in various constructions in
your book of practical grammar by Yastrebova, p. 79-114. 9 patterns, for-phrases,
Complex Object and Complex Subject. You must be able to give examples of those
constructions at the exam).
The functions of the infinitive in the sentence are: subject (Complex Subject – The
students expected the professor to come.-), object, (including introduced by the
preposition-particle for – It is incredible for that shy-looking young man to speak so
boldly - ; Complex object – We have heard him play the violin. -) predicative,
attribute – There is a plot to overthrow the government. –
Adverbial modifier of purpose – He worked hard not to lag behind the group.Adverbial modifier of result - he was too worried to listen. –
42
The infinitive exists in two forms – in free use – with the prepositional marker –to-,
called “marked infinitive”; the bound use does not have the marker –to-, called the
“bare infinitive” or “unmarked infinitive”. It is a word-morpheme, its function is to
build and identify the infinitive. It can be used in isolated position to represent the
whole construction: - You are welcome to have a cup of tea if you want to. – Like
other analytical markers, it can be separated from its notional, infinitive part by a
word or a phrase, usually of adverbial nature, forming the “split infinitive”: - My
task is to thoroughly investigate the case. – The marked form of the infinitive is the
analytical form, the use of the form depends on the environment and is described in
practical grammar books.
The infinitive distinguishes three grammatical categories: two aspective categories
– of development (continuous) and retrospective coordination (perfect) and the
category of voice. So, the categorial paradigm of the infinitive includes 8 forms:
simple continuous
perfect
Perfect-continuous
To take To be taking
To have taken To have been taking
active
To be being taken
To have been
To have been being taken
passive To be
taken
(used with stylistic taken
(used with strong stylistic
colouring)
colouring)
The gerund
The gerund is the non-finite verb form which also combines the properties of the
verb with those of a noun. Similar to the infinitive, it serves as the verbal name of
the process, but it has a stronger substantive quality. As different from the
infinitive, and similar to the noun, the gerund can be modified by a noun in the
possessive (or common) case or a pronoun (expressing the subject of the verbal
process) – The driver’s(his) being rude like that was disgusting. I read about the
hostages having been released. -, and it can be used with prepositions.
The combinability of the gerund is also dual, sharing some features of the verb
(inside the construction) with some of the noun. The verb-type combinability is
shown in combination with nouns-objects, modifying adverbs, semi-functional
predicator verbs (start doing, can’t stand doing). Of the noun-type is combinability
with finite notional verbs as the object, subject, as prepositional adjunct (object,
attribute, modifier), with nouns as prepositional adjunct.
The functions of gerund in the sentence can be:
Subject – Repeating your accusations doesn’t make them more convincing.
Object – He delayed breaking news.
Prepositional object – He didn’t object against our coming here.
Predicative – Luck is believing you’re lucky.
Attribute – There is a pleasant prospect of listening to her story.
The formal sign of the gerund is homonymous with that of the present participle, it
is the suffix – ing added to its categorially (not semantically) leading element.
The gerund distinguishes two grammatical categories: the aspect of retrospective
coordination and voice. The paradigm includes four forms:
simple
perfect
taking
Having taken
active
Being taken
Having been taken
passive
Non-objective verbs don’t have passive forms (go).
Since the meaning of the infinitive and the gerund is similar, the reason of usage of
the infinitive after verbs want, expect, and the like, and the gerund after avoid,
delay, deny, and the like, lies in semantic shade of infinitive having the meaning of
purpose, which can be proved by transformation – I want to come. – I want it to
43
happen so, in order me to come. – I deny coming. – I deny the fact, the thing of
coming. – It is also brightly reflected in the use of gerund/infinitive with stop,
remember and try.
Glossary of Linguistic Terms
1. non-finate - неличная
2. infinitive - инфинитив
3. gerund - герундий
4. adverbial modifier – обстоятельство
additional reading
1. стр. 130 – 186
2. стр. 80 – 87
3. –
4. стр. 113 – 121
5. стр. 144-165
6. Ястребова Е.Б., Курс английского языка для студентов языковых вузов,
стр. 212-237
44
XX. Non-Finite Verbs
Participles
The present participle is the non-finite form of the verb which combines the
properties of the verb with those of the adjective and adverb, serving as the
qualifying name of the process. The term “present” has nothing to do with time, it
is only traditional, can be called “participle I”, or “active”.
It has the derivation morpheme homonymous with the gerund, and completely the
same paradigm.
Since it possesses some traits both of adjective and adverb, the present participle is
triple by its lexico-grammatical properties, which is displayed in its combinability
and syntactic functions.
The verb-type is revealed in being combined with nouns as objects, subjects (in
semi-predicative complexes), with modifying adverbs, with the auxiliary finite
verbs (word-morphemes) in the analytical forms if the verb. The adjective-type
combinability of the present participle is revealed in its association with the
modified nouns, modifying adverbs (of degree). The adverb-type combinability is
revealed in its association with the modified verbs.
The functions of the present participle:
Predicative – The questions became (were) irritating.
Attributive – She gave treatment to the surviving baby. – On the pavement there
was a man watching the people. – He was an inquisitive man, always watching the
people.
Adverbial modifier of manner – He ran away, shouting loudly.
Adverbial modifier of cause – Having read the papers, she believed everything.
The present participle, like the infinitive, can build up semi-predicative complexes
of objective and subjective types. The two groups of complexes, the infinitival and
pariticpial, may exist in parallel (for example, with verbs of physical perception),
the difference between them lying in the aspective presentation of the process:
Nobody noticed them approach the house. – Nobody noticed them approaching the house.
Detached semi-predicative constructions with causal meaning – The messenger
waiting in the hall, we had only a couple of minutes to make a decision.
Since the gerund and the present participle have similar structure and categories,
there is a problem of whether they are one form with broader meaning and
functions. But gerund forms an opposition with the infinitive and the present
participle – with the past participle. They make different objects: I felt annoyed at
his/him failing to see my point at once. – He wasn’t against Elen’s/Elen using the
argument.
His use is called “half-gerund” and the difference in use is really very little. But
these are intermediary elements, and polar elements show clear noun-related
meaning and function of the gerund and adjective-related function and meaning of
the participle.
- This was a false, but convincing show of affection – He answered without any
pause or planning. There is also conversion of gerund into noun and participle
into adjective: - your airing the room – take an airing before going to bed.
Animals living in the jungle – living languages.
The past participle is the non-finite form of the verb which combines the properties
of the verb with those of the adjective. It is a single form, having no paradigm. It
conveys implicitly (неявно) the categories of perfect and passive. The main
functions of the past participle are those of the attribute and the predicative.
-
Her softened look gave him a new hope. – It was a victory gained against all the rules.
– The light is inconveniently placed for reading.
The past participle is included in the structural formation of the present participle
(perfect, passive). In the attributive use, the meaning of past participle as perfect
45
and passive is expressed in correlation with the lexico-grammatical character of the
verb. The attributive past participle of limitive verbs expresses priority, while the
past part. of the unlimitive verbs expresses simultaneity: - A tree broken by the
storm – the picture admired by the public –
Like the present participle, the past participle is capable of making up semipredicative constructions of complex object, complex subject and of absolute
complex. – I want the document prepared for signing. Will you have my coat
brushed up? (object) A shot could be heard fired. (subject). The absolute past
participial complex as a rule expresses priority in the correlation of two events: The
preliminary talks completed, it became possible to concentrate on the central point
of the agenda.
The past participles of non-objective verbs are rarely used in independent sentencepart position, they are mostly included in phraseological combinations: faded
photographs, fallen leaves, a retired officer, a withered flower, dream come true.
They can be used as adverbial modifiers of cause and concession: Called up by the
minority the convention failed to pass a satisfactory resolution. – Though welcomed
heartily by his host, he felt at once that something was wrong.
Glossary of Linguistic Terms
1. participle – причастие
2. present participle – действительное причастие
3. past participle – страдательное причастие
additional reading
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
стр. 130 – 186
стр. 80 – 87
–
стр. 121 - 134
стр. 144-165
Ястребова, Курс английского языка для студентов языковых вузов, стр.
317-343
Practical tasks:
9. Point out participle I, gerund and verbal noun in the following sentences:
- Curt came near dying from the effects of that night of waiting in the church.
- They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were
no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange.
- The loud groaning of the waves swallowed up the sailor’s song.
12. Choose infinitive or gerund and give your reasons:
Model - As some water had got in, the engine of the boat could’t but stop…( to
work). – The use of the gerund here is explaned by the substantive properties of the
process.
- I’m afraid our camera wants … (to repair).
- This is not the way … children (to treat).
- I soon regretted … the doctor’s recommendations (not to follow).
- I regret … that I can’t come to your wedding (to say).
- Did they teach you … at school (to dance)
46
XXI. Pronouns
The pronoun has the categorial meaning of indication and substitution, which
unites a heterogeneous class of items into one part of speech. The generalizing
substitutional function of pronouns makes them into syntactic representative of all
the notional classes of words. Even personal pronouns of the first and second
persons play the representative role, which is exposed by the addresses and
appositions – I, Sam Brown, was born in 1975. – Are you happy, children? –
They have numerous subclasses, some of them substitute nouns. Like nouns, they
have two cases: common and genitive (somebody-somebody’s). But seven personal
pronouns have an objective case (I-me). Unlike nouns, pronouns do not admit
determiners (articles), they have person and gender distinctions, singular and plural
forms are often not morphologically related (I-we).
Class 1 – personal, which have person, number and gender distinctions and two
cases. Personal pronouns in nominative case function only as subjects, in objective
case – direct and prepositional objects, predicatives. – We met them. – I have read
about it. – I quite agree with him. – It was me.
Class 2 – possessive pronouns, have person, number and gender distinctions, two
forms: adjectival and nounal (my-mine), function as attributes and subjects, objects
and predicatives.
Class 3 – reflexive and emphatic pronouns, have person, number and gender
distinctions, including number distinctions in the 2nd person. It has an indefinite
form “oneself”. They function as objects after certain verbs. – She hurt herself. – I
saw it myself. –
Class 4 – reciprocal pronouns (взаимные) – each other – indicates two objects, and
one another – indicates more than two objects. Function as objects.
Class 5 – demonstrative pronouns – have singular and plural forms. Function as
attributes, subjects and objects. (also “such”)
Class 6 – interrogative pronouns: who (whom), whose, what, which, function as
question-words, in the interrogative sentence who, what, which are subjects, whom,
what, which are objects, whose is an attribute.
Class 7 – relative pronouns: who (whom), whose, which, that, serve for connecting
relative clauses, where they are, unlike conjunctions, parts of the sentence.
Class 8 – indefinite pronouns, there are simple and compound: some, any, no,
every, as well as none, much, many, little, few, all, both, either, neither, each, other,
one. Many, much, little, few function as pronouns (many of them, much of it), but
have morphological categories of adjectives, so we have to apply a polar approach.
Broad meaning words adjoin the pronouns by their substitutional function (things,
affair, make). The lexical paradigm of nomination has a complete substitutive
representation: one, it, they – do, make, act – such, similar, same – thus, so, there.
Glossary of Linguistic Terms
1. indication - указание
2. substitution - замена
3. heterogenious - разнородный
4. nominative - именительный
5. objective - объектный
6. possessive - притяжательный
7. reflexive - возвратные
8. emphatic - усилительные
9. reciprocal - взаимные
10. demonstrative - указательные
11. relative - относительные
47
12. indefinite - неопределенные
13. broad meaning words – слова широкого значения
additional reading
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
стр. 66-72
стр. 40-46
–
–
48
XXII. Numeral
The numerals are united into one part of speech only semantically – they denote the
number or the order of objects, and are classified into cardinal and ordinal. They are
invariable words and can function as attributes, subjects, predicatives and objects
(when they are substantivized and perform the functions of a noun: – She has not
seen me for four days. – She might be thirty or thirty-five. – We are seven. – I was
looking for old friends and found only two.
An ordinal numeral can be modified by an infinitive denoting an action in which
the object mentioned occupies a definite place – He was the first to come.
Some scholars offer to classify ordinal numerals and pronouns like many, several as
a separate part of speech, quantitative words. Some scolars offer classification of
numerals into nouns (a hundred, used with an article) and adjectives – ordinal
numerals, functioning as attributes. Noun-numerals are offered to be united into one
class with noun-pronouns (we, someone), adjective-numerals – with adjectivepronouns (this, his, other). Besides, some wirds are difficult to classify: some, one.
Adjectives many, much, few, little function rather like numerals, though they have
the category of comparison. There is hardly any difference between a numeral a
hundred and a noun a dosen. Thus, we have to apply polar approach here. They are
substantivised in the plural form: hundreds of people.
It is still more complicated with fractions and decimals: they are used like nouns,
with articles and plural endings when the numerator is more than one – a half, a
third, two thirds, a quarter (fourth), three quarters (fourths), two and five sixths –
the numerator is a cardinal numeral and the denominator is ordinal. Decimals are
compound words, which have the word point and then cardinal numbers. For zero
several different words are used: nought in math, oh in telephone numbers, nil in
sport and some physical magnitudes, love in tennis. They can also be treated both as
nouns and numerals.
Glossary of Linguistic Terms
1. cardinal - количественные
2. ordinal - порядковые
3. quantitative words – количественные слова
4. decimals – десятичные дроби
5. fractions – простые дроби
Additional reading:
1. стр. 73
2. стр. 39
3. –
4. –
5. –
49
XXIII. Words of the category of state, statives
Among the words signifying properties of nouns there is a specific set: the words
built up by the prefix – a and denoting different states, mostly of temporary
duration. They are different from adjectives, because they can’t function as
attributes. Their function in the sentence is that of a predicative, rarely – postpositional attributes to nouns. In Russian those words usually end in –o, but may
have other suffixes: одиноко, радостно, жаль, лень. They form a closed set of
several dozen, they don’t have the degrees of comparison. “The streets were alive
with traffic”, “No man alive could do it”, “Swimmers are afraid of the sharks”,
“The artist felt ashamed of his bad work”, “They were aware of the danger”, “The
whole town was astir with the news”, afire, afoot (затевается), askew
(наклонный), ajar = half-open.
Glossary of Linguistic Terms
1. Indication - указание
2. states of temporary duration – временные состояния
3. extralinguistic phenomena – явления, находящиемя за пределами науки
лингвистики
4. prepositions of place and movement – предлоги места и перемещения
5. causal - причинные
6. contradictory – противоречащие
additional reading
1. стр. 74-75
2. стр. 37-39, 89-90
3. –
4. стр. 224-229
5. стр. 228
50
XXIV. Functional parts of speech. Preposition
The prepositions express the relations between words in a sentence. They don’t
have their own lexical meaning or independent function in the sentence, but they
are a most important element of the structure. In English they are one of the main
means of expressing relations between nouns and other part of the sentence.
Prepositions of place even express extralingustic relations, like notional parts of
speech – on the table-under the table -.
The preposition connects words in such patterns as: “noun+preposition+noun”,
“adjective+preposition+noun”, “verb+preposition+noun”. What predicts the use of
this or that preposition? Sometimes it is the preceding word: depend on, interested
in. In these cases the connection between the preposition and the preceding word is
stronger than the connection with the following word, and usually this noun is an
object, but if the connection with the following word is stronger – is under the
table, rises in the morning – the noun is the adverbial modifier.
The preposition express various relations – place, time, cause etc. and are the only
means of expressing those relations, as there are no case inflections of nouns:
The roof of the house – showed the letter to the manager – the letter was signed by
the manager – he cut the apple with a knife.
The form of the prepositions can be simple, (on, in, with), composite (without,
upon) and group prepositions, or word-combinations serving as prepositions:
according to, instead of, in spite of. Some prepositions are derived from participles
and have the same form: concerning, regarding.
Some prepositions have the same form, as adverbs, but they are different in
function: We spoke about health. – Children were running about. Across the road –
put it across. Down the stairs – looked down (up, down, after, by, in, on, about,
across, above).
Conjunctions
Conjunctions serve to connect words and phrases and clauses. Though they are
functional words, some of them, like the prepositions, have their own lexical
meaning: “He came because it was late.” And “He came though it was late.” The
causal and the concessive connection between the events exist in extralinguistic
reality, outside the language. As there is no difference in the grammatical structure
of the two sentences, the difference lies only in the meaning of the two
conjunctions.
Unlike prepositions, the use of conjunctions is never predicted by any preceding
word.
There are co-ordinating (and, or, but, as well as, both…and, not only…but also,
either…or, neither…nor, also, furthermore, moreover, similarly, besides) and subordinating
conjunctions, classified according to the clauses they introduce: object: that, if,
whether; time – after, as, as long as, as soon as, since, until (till), while, when;
cause: as, because, for; condition: if, on condition, provided/providing, supposing,
unless; purpose: lest, in order that; manner: as, as if, as though, so…that,
such…that; comparison: as …as, not so…as, than; result: so that, therefore, thus, hence,
so; concession: in spite of the fact that, despite, though, although, however, nevertheless.
On the phrase level conjunctions connect words and phrases: “Both the children
and the adults enjoyed the celebration.” (co-ordinating)
51
On the sentence level conjunctions connect clauses of different kind (both coordinating and subordinating) “Hurry up or you will miss the train.” After the plane
took off the hostess served the drinks.”
Sometimes subordinating conjunctions look exactly the same as prepositions or
adverbs: He always comes before (after) I do. – before – conjunction; I’ll go there
before dinner – preposition; I have seen this before – adverb.
The difference is in the syntactical function, and some linguists consider that this
difference is not enough to classify them as different parts of speech, they offer to
classify them as one class of connectives. The fact that one of them connects
clauses, another expresses relations between the verb-predicate and the object, and
the third functions the modifier of time of the action can be explained by different
functions of the same word. But there is more logic in speaking of them as
grammatical homonyms, as the most of the members of their classes are different
words: During her illness – preposition, while she was ill – conjunction, I asked
him, when she was ill – adverb, because it is a part of the sentence.
Particles
Particles are functional words of specifying and limiting meaning. They show
subjective attitude. They refer to the word (or phrase) immediately following and
give special prominence to the notion expressed by this word, or single it out in
some other way, depending on the meaning of the particle. One just does what is
reasonable. She could feel anger, even at this late date.
It can stand apart from the word it refers to – I have only met him twice. It is a
specific part of the sentence, because without it the meaning of it changes.
The particle not deserves special treatment. It may stand outside the predicate – Not
till we landed did we realize that we are alive. Or in short answers: Certainly not.
Perhaps not. Of course not. (with modal words). It appears to be the main part of
the sentence. Another use is within the predicate, as part of the verb: I am not, he is
not, she does not. Here the particle is an auxiliary element within the morphology
of the verb, and it has no syntactic function of its own. Its becoming a morpheme
within the verb form is seen in the contracted forms isn’t, wouldn’t.
Sometimes the word almost causes doubts whether it is an adverb or a particle: The
boat almost overturned. – whether it shows the subjective attitude (it was in danger
of overturning) or it denotes the manner in which the action was conducted. It can
be felt in the translation – чуть не перевернулась – particle, почти перевернулась
– adverb.
Interjection
It is doubtful whether they are involuntary outcries, provoked by feelings of pain,
joy, surprise, not restricted to any given language but common to all human beings
as biological phenomena are.
But this only accounts for the etymology of interjections, which appeared from
involuntary outcries, but now they belong to the word stock of the language as
much as other types of words do. Interjections belonging to a certain language may
contain sounds foreign to other languages. Thus, the English interjection alas
contains the vowel phoneme [ ], which is not found either in Russian or in German
language; the Russian interjection ах contains the consonant phoneme [x], which is
not found in English.
The interjections, as different from nouns, verbs, prepositions, are not names of
anything, but expressions of emotions. Thus, the emotion expressed by the
interjection alas may be named despair, but can’t be named alas.
52
Some of the interjections express quite definite meanings (alas can never express
joy), others express feeling in general (oh – surprise, joy, disappointment, fear).
On the phrase level the problem is whether an interjection can be part of any phrase
and what types of words can be connected with it. Usually interjections are
syntactically isolated, but sometimes it can be connected with a group
“preposition+noun”, naming the person or thing which causes the feeling expressed
by the interjection: Alas for my friends!
The interjection oh can be followed by the adjective dear to form a phrase which
itself is equivalent to an interjection: Oh dear! It can only be the first component of
a phrase.
On the sentence level we have to consider interjections a part of the sentence,
loosely connected with the rest of it, and approaching a parenthesis in its character.
Oh, she used awful grammar, but she was trying so hard to be elegant. They can
form a sentence by themselves: “Oh!” said Scarlet, her hopes dashed. Some
phrases are equivalent to interjections: dear me! Goodness gracious!
Words, that don’t belong to any classification
The existence of such words is admitted by some linguists, Academician Scherba,
for one.
The words “please, yes, no” can’t be described as adverbs either by meaning or by
syntactical function.
Glossary of linguistic terms:
1. co-ordinating - сочинительный
2. subordinating - подчинительный
3. manner – образа действия
additional reading
1. стр. 149-163
2. стр. 92 – 98
53
XXV. Modal words
The distinction between modal words and adverbs is based on two criteria: 1. Their
meaning: modal words express the speaker’s attitude to reality of the action
expressed in the sentence, 2. Their syntactical function: they are not adverbial
modifiers, but parenthesis.
They can be classified into groups according to their meaning: expressing certainty,
such as certainly, surely, undoubtedly; those expressing doubt, such as perhaps,
maybe, possibly, etc.
If the modal word in the sentence is eliminated, the whole thought will lose the
modal colouring and will appear to be stated as a fact, without any specific mention
of the speaker’s attitude: She is a delicate little thing, perhaps nobody but me knows
how delicate.
A modal word can also make up a sentence by itself. This happens when it is used
to answer a general question: Certainly., Perhaps., Maybe. Certainly, I am.
The problem of modal words is connected with the very difficult problem of
modality as a whole.
Glossary of linguistic terms:
1. parenthesis – вводные слова
additional reading
1. стр. 164-165
2. стр. 89-90
54
SYNTAX
XXVI. Sentence and phrase as the main objects of syntax
Syntax treats phrases and sentences. The phrase is a combination of two or more
words which is a grammatical unit but is not an analytical form of a word.
The sentence is the immediate integral unit of speech built up of words according to
definite syntactic pattern and distinguished by a contextually relevant
communicative purpose (functional difference). The difference between the
phrase and the sentence is fundamental: the phrase is a nominative unit (значимая
единица), denoting a complex referent (phenomenon of reality), which can be a
concrete thing, an action, a quality, or a whole situation (a picturesque village, to
start with a joke, extremely difficult, the unexpected arrival of the chief). The phrase
is further analyzable into its component elements with various relations between
them. They (syntactic relations) will be one of the objects of our study of syntax.
Phrases can be of a stable type and of free type. The stable phrases or
phraseological units form the phraseological part of the lexicon, and are studied by
the phraseological division of lexicology. Free phrases are built up in the process of
speech on the existing productive models, which are another object of our study of
syntax. Phrases are used as a notional part of the sentence (subject, object,
predicate, attribute, adverbial modifier, parenthesis). So, above the word in the
lingual hierarchy are notional parts of the sentence, which can be formed by
phrases, or by separate notional words.
The difference between a phrase and a sentence is a fundamental one. A
phrase is a means of naming some phenomena or processes, just as a word is.
Each component of a phrase can undergo grammatical changes in accordance
with grammatical categories represented in it, without destroying the identity
of the phrase. For instance, in the phrase write letters the first component can
change according to the verbal categories of tense, mood, etc., and the second
component according to the category of number. Thus, writes a letter, has
written a letter, would have written letters, etc., are grammatical modifications of
one phrase.
With a sentence, things are entirely different. A sentence is a unit with
every word having its definite form. A change in the form of one or more words
would produce a new sentence. It must also be borne in mind that a phrase as
such has no intonation, just as a word has none. Intonation is one of the most
important features of a sentence, which distinguish it from a phrase.
The sentence is a unit of predication (difference in form) which shows the relation
of the process, described as action, to reality (difference in meaning). When we
transform the sentence so, that it loses the predication, we get a phrase: Yesterday I
received a present from my sister. – My yesterday’s receiving a present from my
sister. So, the sentence as a lingual unit performs not one, but two essential
functions: substance-naming, or nominative function; and reality-evaluating, or
predicative function.
Predication is relation of the utterance to reality as the base of the sentence.
Grammar means of expressing predication are the categories of finite forms of
verbs (tense, person, mood).
Each sentence as the immediate speech element has some standard syntacticosemantic features which make up a typical model, a generalized pattern repeated in
an indefinite number of actual utterances. Those sentence structure patterns are one
more object of our study of syntax.
55
But the sentence is not the highest unit of the language in the hierarchy of levels.
Above is the level of super-sentenial constructions, which are formed by separate
sentences united into topical groupings. These sentence-groups are distinguished by
its micro-topical part of the continual text. In the printed text they coincide with
paragraphs.
Glossary of lingustic terms:
1. nominative unit – значимая единица
2.complex reference – обозначение сложного объекта
3. communicative purpose – цель общения
4.phrase - словосочетания
5.stable phrase – устойчивое словосочетание
6. lingual hierarchy – языковая иерархия
7.super-sentenial constuction – сверхфразовое единство
8.paragraph – абзац
Additional reading:
1. стр. 171-172
2. стр. 100-104
3. –
4. стр. 247 – 248
5. стр. 245 – 247
Practical tasks:
13. Transform the following phrases into sentences:
- sanity and rationality of her behaviour,
- the existence of gypsy curses,
- a man, paying no attention
56
XXVII. Classification of Phrases.
There are several classifications of phrases by different linguists. The traditional
classification is based on the part of speech status of the phrase constituents. So,
there are “noun+noun”, “adjective+noun”, “verb+noun”, “verb+adverb”,
“adverb+adjective”, “adverb+adverb” types of phrases. Phrases are made up not
only by notional words but also by functional words, e.g.: “in accordance with”,
“due to”, “apart form”, “as soon as” – such phrases function in the sentence like
prepositions and conjunctions.
Phrases can also be classified according to the nominative value of their
constituents. As a result three major types of phrases are identified: notional
(consisting of grammatically connected notional words), formative (made up by
notional and functional words – natural for us to expect) and functional, consisting
of functional words alone. Notional phrases are subdivided into two groups on the
principle of the constituent rank: equipotent phrases (the constituents are of equal
rank – young and charming- co-ordinating) and dominational phrases (the syntactic
ranks of the constituents are not equal as they refer to one another as the modifier
and the modified - subordinating). Dominational phrases can be semi-predicative (a
cat walking by himself), objective – bought a house (direct), think of a reason
(indirect), qualifying: attributive – famous people, and adverbial – seriously ill,
surprisingly intelligent.
Phrases can also be divided according to their function in the sentence into
(1) those which perform the function of one or more parts of the sentence, for
example, predicate, or predicate and object, or predicate and adverbial
modifier, etc., and (2) those which do not perform any such function but whose
function is equivalent to that of a preposition, or conjunction (in accordance
with, in favour of, in spite of the fact that) and which are, in fact, to all intents
and purposes equivalents of those parts of speech. The former of these two classes
comprises the overwhelming majority of English phrases, but the latter is no
less important from a general point of view.
Glossary of linguistic terms:
1. equipotent - равносильный
2. dominational – с преобладанием одной из частей
3. semi-predicative – полу-предикативный
Additional Reading:
1. стр. 177-179
2. стр. 104-118
3. –
4. стр. 248-254
5. стр. 247-265
57
XXVIII. The notion of syntactic relations. Their main types.
Syntactical relations are the relations showing interdependence of the
elements of both phrases and sentences. These fall under two main
heads: (1) agreement or concord, (2) government.
Agreement
By agreement we mean a method of expressing a syntactical relationship,
which consists in making the subordinate word take a form similar to that of
the word to which it is subordinate. In Modern English this can refer only to the
category of number: a subordinate word agrees in number with its head word if
it has different, number forms at all. In some other languages, such as
Russian, there is also agreement in case and gender. This is practically found
in two words only, the pronouns this and that, which agree in number with their
head word.
On the sentence level there is agreement of the verb with the noun or
pronoun denoting the subject of the action (a child plays, children play).
(agreement of the predicate with the subject).
Government
By government we understand the use of a certain form of the subordinate
word required by its head word, but not coinciding with the form of the head
word itself — that is the difference between agreement and government.
The role of government in Modern English is almost as insignificant as that of
agreement. We do not find in English any verbs, or nouns, or adjectives,
requiring the subordinate noun to be in one case rather than in another. Nor do
we find prepositions requiring anything of the kind.
The only thing that may be termed government in Modern English is the use
of the objective case of personal pronouns and of the pronoun who when they are
subordinate to a verb or follow a preposition. Thus, for instance, the forms me,
him, her, us, them, are required if the pronoun follows a verb (e. g. find or invite)
or any preposition whatever.
As a kind of government relations we can describe the relations between
verbs and the use of noun-objects after them with certain prepositions,
required by verbs: agree to an offer, listen to music, look at the p icture, wait
for the answer. There is analogy with the way Russian verbs express
government with the case of their noun-object: согласиться на что (в.п.),
ждать чего (р.п.), радоваться чему (д.п.).
There are two more syntactic relations:
adjoinment and enclosure .
Adjoinment is usually described in a negative way, as absence both of agreement
and of government. The most usual example of this type of connection is the
relation between an adverb and its head word, whether this is an adjective or a
verb (or another adverb, for that matter). An adverb is subordinate to its head
word, without either agreeing with or being governed by it.
There may be several verbs in the sentence, and the question has to be
answered, how does the reader (or hearer) know to which of them the adverb is
actually subordinated. Here a lexicological factor intervenes: the adverb must be
semantically compatible with its head word. Examples may be found where the
connection between an adverb and its head word is preserved even at a
58
considerable distance, owing to the grammatical and semantic compatibility of
the adverb. Swiftly he thought of the different things she had told him.
Enclosure (Russian замыкание) plays a significant part in Modern English.
Some element of a phrase is, as it were, enclosed between two parts of another
element. The most widely known case of "enclosure" is the putting of a
word between an article and the noun to which the article belongs. Any word
or phrase thus enclosed is shown to be an attribute to the noun. As is well
known, many other words than adjectives and nouns can be found in that
position, and many phrases, too. The then government — here the adverb
then, being enclosed between the article and the noun it be longs to, is in
this way shown to be an attribute to the noun. In the phrase an on-the-spot
investigation the phrase on-the-spot is enclosed between the article and the
noun to which the article belongs, and this characterises the syntactic
connections of the phrase.
In English very often it is only by lexical relations between the words that
syntactical connections can be clear to the reader or the listener. So, the weakness
of formal indications of syntactical relations makes English the language of
collocations. The funeral was well under way. The adverb well can only modify
the phrase under way, as a phrase well under is unthinkable. This is
possible because the phrase under way, which is a phraseological unit,
has much the same meaning as going on, developing, etc.
Example:
She made him a good husband.
She made him a good wife.
She made him a good dinner.
Glossary of lingustic terms:
1. agreement - согласование
2. government - управление
3. enclosure - замыкание
4. adjoinment – примыкание
Additional reading:
1. стр. 175-181
2. стр. 118-163
3. –
4. –
5. стр. 247-248
Practical tasks:
14. State the type of syntactic relations in the following phrases:
- really amazing
- People were busy
- A lower I’m-talking-to-myself voice
- Came in to ask
59
XXIX. The sentence and its aspects.
Sentence is the most complex unit in the language system. It is a result of
it having both many-layer structure and its various communicative
functions. This explains the fact that sentence has several aspects: structural,
semantic, pragmatic. Each of the aspects is the basis of classification, according
to the structure, meaning and function of the sentences .
The structure of the sentence includes various relations between the elements of the
sentence. They are: relations between the parts of the sentence, components of
phrases, the sequence of elements of the sentence. According to their structure,
sentences can be two-axis and one-axis, simple, composite (complex and
compound).
The semantic aspect of the sentence studies the role of components in the
semantics of the parts of the sentence and the whole of the sentence. Parts of the coordinate complex sentence, clauses also have semantic relations. Besides, parts of
the sentence have specific meaning, as agent and patient meaning of objects.
The pragmatic aspect of the sentence is connected with its participation in the act of
speech. The sentence is a communicative unit, therefore from the point of view of
the function they can be classified into declarative, imperative and interrogative.
These communicative types stand in strict opposition to one another, and their inner
properties of form and meaning are immediately correlated with the corresponding
features of the response.
Glossary of linguistic terms:
1. pragmatic - практический
2. co-ordinate - сложносочиненный
3. clause – придаточное предложение
4. agent – агенс, со значением действующего лица
5. patient – пациенс, со значением объекта действия
additional reading:
1. стр. 182
2. стр. 163 – 172
3. стр. 144- 147
4. стр. 255- 262
5. стр. 256- 266
60
XXX. Semantic and pragmatic aspects of the sentence
The sentence as a lingual unit performs two semantic functions (as opposed to word
and phrase, which have only the function of nomination) – first – substancenaming, or nominative function, second – reality-evaluating, or predicative
function. The semantics of the sentence presents a unity of its nominative and
predicative aspects, while the semantics of the word is monoaspective.
The notional parts of the sentence, referring to the basic elements of the reflected
situation (знаменательные члены предложения, которые соотносятся с
основными элементами ситуации, отраженной в предложении) form the
nominative meaning of the sentence.
The semantic reflections of the elements of the situation, in contrast to the part of
the sentence (upper case) make up the semantic roles or the “deeper cases”. It is
only through the sentence constituents that the situation together with its various
elements can be reflected. The semantic roles of the sentence are situational
meanings of the syntactic parts.
The division of the sentence into notional parts, or the nominative division can be
shown by a syntagmatic model and will be described as models of syntactic
analyses: immediate constituents, distributional model and transformational model.
The division from the point of view of semantic contribution of the sentence parts is
called the actual division.
The sentence is a communicative unit, therefore from the point of view of the
function they can be classified into declarative, imperative and interrogative. These
communicative types stand in strict opposition to one another, and their inner
properties of form and meaning are immediately correlated with the corresponding
features of the response.
Thus, declarative sentence expresses a statement, either affirmative or negative, and
corresponds with responses of attention, agreement or disagreement. – I want to be
given reasons for publishing the poem. – I have the same opinion.
The imperative sentence expresses inducement, either affirmative or negative. It
urges the listener to perform of not to perform a certain action. It is connected with
“action response” Silence on the part of the listener is also linguistically relevant. In
the literary narration it is shown by special comments: Knock on the wood – he
leaned forward and knocked three times on the barrier.
The interrogative sentence expresses a question, i.e. a request for information. It is
connected with an answer, forming together a dialogue unity.
Ways of expressing different purposes of communication are studied by the branch
of linguistics called “pragmatic linguistics”. Each speech act is characterized by a
definite communicative intention: statements of facts, conjectures
(предположение), confirmations, refutations (опровержение), agreements,
disagreements, commands, requests, greetings at meeting, at parting, exhortations
(убеждение), recommendations, applications for information, supplications,
promises, menaces, etc. Among them there are two mutually opposed pragmatic
utterance types, constative utterances and performative utterances. Constative
utterances express the speaker’s reflections of reality as they are, performative are
verbal actions. Pronouncing a performative utterance, the speaker performs his
complete action: I declare the conference open. The performance utterance includes
(or implies) the pronoun of the 1st person singular (the direct indication of the
speaker), while its verb is used only in the form of the present tense of the
indicative mood active.
61
From the point of view of the actual division the interrogative sentence is
rhematically gapping, its function consists only in marking the rhematic position in
the response sentence. Different types of questions present different types of open
rhemes. In the pronominal (special) question, the interrogative pronoun is
immediately connected with the part of the sentence denoting the object about
which the inquiry is made. The gapping meaning is to be replaced in the answer by
the wanted information. Thus, the rheme of the answer is the substitute of the
interrogative pronoun, the two make up a rhematic unity in the broader questionanswer construction. As for the thematic part of the answer, it is already expressed
in the question, therefore it is usually zeroed: Why do you think so? – Because I
keep my eyes open.
The rheme of general and alternative questions is quite different. It is also open, but
it consists in at least two semantic suggestions, presented for the choice. The
answer closes the suggested alternative. – Will you take it away or open it here?
Thus, in terms of rhematic substitution, the special question is a question of
unlimited substitution choice, while the general and alternative question is a
question of a limited substitution choice.
In the structural framework of the interrogative sentence a statement can be
expressed – a rhetorical question. Responses to rhetorical questions exactly
correspond to responses to declarative sentences. – How can a woman be expected
to be happy? – My dear!- Expression of fellow feeling. The rheme of this question
is not open.
The imperative sentences in the form of a question occupy intermediary position
between imperative and interrogative sentences, which is done in order to soften the
meaning of command by adding a meaning of request.
Could you help me up the stairs?
Glossary of linguistic terms:
1. upper case – общее значение
2. deeper case –– значение, модифицированное функцией в предложении
2.actual division – актуальное членение
3.part of sentence – член предложения
4.immediate constituents – непосредственные составляющие
5. declarative - повествовательное
6. imperative - повелительное
7. interrogative - вопросительное
8. inducement - побуждение
9. constative - констатирующее
10. performative - действенное
11. statement of fact – утверждение
12. conjecture - предположение,
13. confirmation - подтверждение
14. refutation – опровержение
15. exhortation- убеждение,
16. supplication - просьба
17. menace – угроза
62
Additional reading:
1. стр. 186 – 187
2. стр. 172-183, 238-256, 267-281
3. –
4. стр. 272 - 291
5. стр. 274-308
Practical tasks:
15. Define the communicative sentence type, define the actual division of the
sentence:
Model: Can the leopard change his spots? - The question is rethorical, the rheme is
informationally closed. “The leopard” is the theme, “Can change his spots” is the
rheme.
- I say, you and Corky haven’t been arguing, have you?
- Why, whatever makes you think so?
63
XXXI. The Structural aspect of the sentence
The structure of the sentence includes various relations between the elements of the
sentence. They are: relations between the parts of the sentence, components of
phrases, the sequence of elements of the sentence. Sentences can be classified into
complete, two-axis sentences, which have both primary parts, the subject and the
predicate, directly expressed in the structure; and incomplete, one-axis sentences,
which have either only subject (vocative – John!; interjectional – Oh, dear!,
exclamatory – What a nice day!) or only predicate – imperative – Don’t go away!
Sentences can also be classified from the point of structure into unextended
(нераспространенные), consisting only of primary parts of the sentence (Elephants
can swim), and extended, which consist both of primary and secondary parts.
Another classification of sentences from the point of view of structure is into
simple and composite. The predicative meaning of the sentence is expressed by the
finite verb, which is immediately connected with the subject of the sentence. This
predicative connection is called the “predicative line” of the sentence. Simple
sentence is a sentence where only one predicative line is expressed. – He opened
the door. – Sentences with several predicatives referring to one and the same
subject cannot be considered as simple: He opened the door and came in.
Glossary of lingustic terms:
1. complete - полное
2. two-axis/one-axis – двусоставное/односоставное
3. primary parts – главные члены
4. unextended - нераспространенное
5. vocative - звательное
6. exclamatory – восклицательное
Additional reading:
1. стр. 187 – 188
2. стр. 183-185
3. стр. 151 – 152
4. –
5. стр. 109
64
XXXII. The actual aspect of the sentence
The actual division of the sentence is the division of it into the part, which carries
the data, known before, what the sentence is about, the theme of the sentence; and
the new information, what is said about the theme, the rheme. Between the theme
and the rheme there are intermediary, transitional parts of division of various
degrees of informative value (transition).
The theme of the actual division may or may not coincide with the subjects of the
sentence. The rheme can coincide with the predicate, or with the whole predicate
group. – Her advice can’t be helpful to us.
In the following sentence the correlation between the nominative and the actual
division is reverse: the theme is expressed by the predicate (the logical subject),
while the rheme is expressed by the subject (the logical predicate): Who is coming
late but John! There is a difference of opinion between the parties.
The actual division of the sentence finds its expression only in a concrete context of
speech. Isn’t it surprising that Tim is so fond of poetry? – But you are wrong. Mary
is fond of poetry, not Tom.
Among the formal means of expressing the distinction between the theme and the
rheme there are word order patterns (inversion), intonation, construction with
introducers (there, it), articles and intensifying particles.
Owing to its basic meaning of "indefiniteness" the indefinite article will of
course tend to signalise the new element in the sentence, that which represents the
rheme. By opposition, the definite article will, in general, tend to point out that
which is already known, that is, the theme. We will make our point clear by taking
an example with the indefinite article, and putting the definite article in its place to
see what consequence that change will produce in the functional sentence perspective.
Let us take this sentence: Suddenly the door opened and a little birdlike elderly
woman in a neat grey skirt and coat seemed almost to hop into the room. (A.
WILSON) The indefinite article before little birdlike elderly woman shows that this
phrase is the centre of the sentence: we are told that when the door opened the
person who appeared was a little birdlike elderly woman. This meaning is further
strengthened by the second indefinite article, the one before neat grey skirt and coat.
Since the woman herself is represented as a new element in the situation, obviously
the same must be true of her clothes.
Now let us replace the first indefinite article by the definite. The text then will
be Suddenly the door opened and the little bird-like elderly woman in a neat grey
skirt and coat seemed almost to hop into the room. This would mean that the woman
had been familiar in advance, and the news communicated in the sentence would
be, that she almost hopped into the room. The indefinite article before neat grey
skirt and coat would show that the information about her clothes is new, i. e. that she
had not always been wearing that particular skirt and coat. This would still be a
new bit of information but it would not be the centre of the sentence, because the
predicate group seemed almost to hop into the room would still be more prominent
than the group in a neat grey skirt and coat. Finally, if we replace the second indefinite
article by the definite, too, we get the text Suddenly the door opened and the little
birdlike elderly woman in the neat grey skirt and coat seemed almost to hop into the
room. This would imply that both the elderly little woman with her birdlike look and
her grey skirt and coat had been familiar before: she must have been wearing that
skirt and coat always, or at least often enough for the people in the story and the
reader to remember it. In this way the whole group the little birdlike elderly
woman in the neat grey skirt and coat would be completely separated from the
rheme-part of the sentence.
This experiment, which might of course be repeated with a number of other
sentences, should be sufficient to show the relation between the indefinite article and
the rheme, that is, functional sentence perspective.
65
The role of the intonation in the actual division of the sentence is called the logical accent
of the sentence. In the printed texts it can be shown by italics. – I can’t bring along
someone who isn’t invited. – But I am invited!
The contextual relevance of the actual division is reflected in the regular deletion
(ellipsis) of the thematic parts of the utterances in dialogue speech. – How did you
receive him? – Coldly. This reduction of the thematic part results from economy of
speech.
Glossary of linguistic terms:
1. theme - тема
2. rheme - рема
3. logical accent – логическое ударение
4. italics - курсив
5. deletion, ellipsis – пропуск элемента высказывания, эллипсис
Additional reading:
1. стр. 191 – 197
2. стр. 256-266
3. –
4. стр. 261-271
5. стр. 265-308
Practical tasks:
16. Comment on the actual division of the parts of the sentences:
Over the breakfast she grew serious.
The old lady I was talking to is Mrs Lancaster.
66
XXXIII. Predication and modality
The communicational frame of the sentence includes its propositional content, the
cognitive content of the utterance. The proposition is the reflection of a state-of
affairs and consists of reference and predication. Reference is the denotation of a
thing, person or idea, predication assigns a property or relation to the denoted thing,
person or idea.
Therefore, propositional content may be described as references to things, persons,
ideas and their predication in terms of properties of, and relations between them in
objective reality:
Propositional content
Reference
To thing, person,idea
(propositional roles)
property
Somebody
relation
Somebody
predication
reference
of property,relation
tothing,person,idea
(propositional predicate) (propositional roles)
is
something
does
something
Predication means that the sentence not only names some referents with the help of
its word-constituents, but also, first, presents these referents as making up a certain
situation, or, more specifically, a situational event, and second, reflects the
connection between the nominal denotation of the event, on the one hand, and the
objective reality, on the other, showing the time of the event, its being real or
unreal, desirable or undesirable, necessary or unnecessary.
I am satisfied, the experiment has succeeded.
I would have been satisfied if the experiment had succeeded.
The experiment seems to have succeeded – why then am I not satisfied?
Night. Night and the boundless sea, under the eternal star-eyes shining with
promise. Was it a dream of freedom coming true?
Night? Oh no. No night for me until I have worked through the case.
Night. It pays all the day’s debts. No cause for worry now, I tell you.
Whereas the utterance “night” in the first of the given passages refers the event to
the plane of reminiscences, the “night” of the second passage presents a question in
argument connected with the situation wherein the interlocutors are immediately
involved, while the latter passage features its “night” in the form of a proposition of
reason.
Предложение является единицей предикативной. Это значит, что в
предложении не только что-то называется посредством составляющих его
слов, но также и устанавливается отношение названной субстанции к
окружающей действительности; устанавливается таким образом, как оно
представляется говорящему или как говорящий хочет его представить, то есть
в виде соответствующей суммы отнесений: коммуникативно-целевого,
временного, вероятностного, и других. Указанная сумма отнесений
формирует общую категорию предикативности, которая связывает воедино
две диалектически-противоположные стороны предложения – речевую и
языковую – и включает предложение на уровне типизированной модели в
знаковую систему языка.
Семантику отношений денотатов к действительности принято называть
модальностью. Известно, что модальность не является специфической
категорией предложения; это более широкая категория, которая может
выявляться как в области грамматико-строевых элементов языка, так и в
области его лексико-номинативных элементов. В этом смысле любое слово,
выражающее некоторую оценку соотношения называемой субстанции с
окружающей реальностью, должно быть признако модальным. Сюда
относятся знаменательные слова модально-оценочной семантики,
67
полуслужебные слова сероятности и необходимости, модальные глаголы с их
многочисленными вариантами их оценочных значений. Что же касается
предикативности, то она представляет собой синеаксическую модальность
как особое языковое свойство предложения, реализующее его качественную
определенность именно как предлодения и, следовательно, не присущее ни
одной другой единицы языка.
Центром предикации в предложении глагольного строя является глагол в
личной форме, и существенные предикативные значения передаются через
его грамматические категории: времени, наклонения. Предикация выявляется
не только в словесных формах личного глагола, связывающих его с
подложащим, но и во всех других формах и элементах предложения,
устанавливающих отношение называемых предметов и явлений к
действительности. В частности, предикация (предикативная семантика)
выражается и интонацией, и порядком слов, и различными служебными
словами, а к ее значениям относятся, наряду с глагольно-категориальными,
также и все другие значения указанного семантико-синтаксического
характера.
Из сказанного о категории предикативности вытекает, что общее смысловое
содержание, передаваемое предложением, далеко не ограничивается
выражением предикативных значений. Для того, чтобы установить в речи
отношение некоторой субстанции к окружающей действительности, нужно
сначала назвать данную субстанцию как таковую, что и осуществляется в
предложении при помощи номинативных средств, которыми оно располагает.
Следовательно, предложение как единица языка выполняет не одну, а две
существенные знаковые функции: во-первых, предметно-назывную,
номинативную, во-вторых, оценочно-установочную, предикативную.
Предикативные значения не только не исчерпывают собой семантику
предложения, но и предполагают наличие в предложении семантики
принципиально иного характера, номинацию, которая отображает
процессную ситуацию, компонентами которой является некоторое действие
(процесс), его агент, его объект, условия и обстоятельства его реализации.
Компоненты пропозитивной ситуации, охарактеризованные через свое
отношение друг к другу, могут быть дополнительно охарактеризованы
признаками. Указанное содержание ситуативных компонетов кладется в
основу понимания членов предложения, само подобное выделение
функциональных членов предложения есть ничто иное, как его номинативное
членение.
Glossary of linguistic terms:
1. propositional content – содержание высказывания
2.reference – мысль, отражающая предмет или явление объективной
действительности и образующая то понятийное содержание, с которым
соотносится данная языковая единица.
3.denotation – денотация, обозначение предмета действительности
Additional reading:
1. -2. стр. 165-169
3.стр. 183- 193
4.стр. 256-260
5.–
68
XXXIV. Elliptical sentences
By "elliptical sentences" we mean sentences with one or more of their
parts left out, which can be unambiguously inferred from the context. We
will apply this term to any sentence of this kind, no matter what part or parts
of it have been left out.
The main sphere of elliptical sentences is of course dialogue: it is here that
one or more parts of a sentence are left out because they are either to be
supplied from the preceding sentence (belonging to another speaker) or may
be easily dispensed with. We take a few examples of elliptical sentences from
contemporary dramatic works: Charlie. Have you asked her yet? Captain Jinks.
Not often enough. It is clear here that the answer means: 'I have, but not often
enough'. Aurelia. And by the way, before I forget it, I hope you'll come to supper
to-night — here. Will you? After the opera. Captain Jinks. Delighted! It is also
clear here that Aurelia's second sentence means: 'Will you come to supper tonight?' and that the captain's answer means: 'I shall be delighted to come'.
Whatever is understood from the preceding context is omitted, and only the
words containing the rheme are actually pronounced. The same is found, for
example, in the following bit of dialogue: Matthew. Why, my dear — you have
a very sad expression! Cynthia. Why not? Matthew. I feel as if I were of no
use in the world when 1 see sadness on a young face. Only sinners should
feel sad. You have committed no sin! Cynthia. Yes, I have! Cynthia's first
sentence obviously means: 'Why should I not have a sad expression?' and her
second, 'Yes, I have committed a sin!' Similarly, in other cases everything
but the words representing the rheme may be omitted.
In one-axis sentence only one axis or its part is explicitly expressed, the other
one being non-presented in the outer structure of the sentence.: Who will meet us
at the airport? – Mary.
The response utterance is one-axis sentence with the subject-axis expressed
and the predicate-axis implied: Mary will meet us at the airport. Both the nonexpression of the predicate and its actual implication in the sub-text are
obligatory, since the complete two-axis construction renders its own
connotations: And what is your opinion of me? – Hard as nails, absolutely
ruthless, a born intriguer.
The response utterance is a one-axis sentence with the predicate-axis
expressed (partially, by its predicative unit) and the subject-axis (together with
the link-verb of the predicative) implied – You are hard as nails.
I thought he might have said something to you about it”. – Not a word.”
The response utterance is a one-axis sentence with the predicate-axis partially
expressed (by the object) and the subject-axis together with the verbal part of the
predicate-axis implied – He said not a word to me.
Glad to see you after all those years!
The sentence is a one-axis unit with the predicate-axis expressed and the
subject-axis implied as a form of familiarity – I am glad to see you…
Alongside with the demonstrated free one-axis sentences, i.e. sentences with a
direct contextual axis-implication, there are one-axis sentences without a
contextual implication of this kind; in other words, their absent axis cannot be
restored with the same ease and, above all, semantic accuracy:
Monsieur Le Sueur was a man of action. He went straight up to Lisette
and smacked her hard on her right cheek with his left hand and then
smacked her hard on the left cheek with his right hand. “Brute,” scream ed
Lisette.
69
The one-axis sentence used by the heroine does imply the you-subject and
can, by association, be expanded into the two-axis one “You are a brute”, but
then the spontaneous “scream-style” of the utterance in the context (a cry of
indignation) will be distorted.
I’m quite miserable enough already. – Why? Because you’re going away
from Mrs Jennett? – No. ‘ From me, then? No answer for a long time. Dick
dared not look at her.
The one-axis sentence ‘No answer for a long time’ in the narrative is
assosiated by variant lingual relations with the two-axis sentence “there was no
answer…”
Glossary of linguistic terms
1. elliptical sentence, ellipsis – эллипс, пропуск элемента высказывания, легко
восстанавливаемого в данном контексте или ситуации.
2. one-axis sentence – односоставное предложение, в котором есть либо
только подлежащее, либо только сказуемое
Additional reading:
1. стр. 250-254
2. 3. –
4. стр. 298 – 302
5. -
70
XXXV. Models of syntactic analysis. Parts of the sentence
While studying sentence structure we use several patterns: the Parts of the sentence
model; Distributional model; the model of Immediate constituents; the
Transformational model.
The nominative parts of the simple sentence, each occupying a notional position in
it, are subject, predicate, object, adverbial, attribute, parenthetical enclosure,
interjectional enclosure. The parts are arranged in a hierarchy and all of them
perform some modifying role. The highest object of this modification is the
sentence as a whole, and through the sentence the reflection of the situation
(situational event).
Thus, the subject is a person-modifier of the predicate, the predicate is a processmodifier of a processual part (actional or statal). The adverbial is a quality-modifier
of a processual part or the whole of the sentence. The attribute is a quality-modifier
of a substantive part. The parenthetical enclosuer is a detached modifier of any
sentence part or the whole of the sentence. The addressing enclosure (address) is a
substantive modifier of the destination of the sentence, the interjectional enclosure
is an emotional modifier of the sentence.
Every modifier can be single or collective (co-modifiers, homogenious). In the
scheme the sentence parts connected by bonds of immediate domination are placed
one under the other in a successive order of subordination, while sentence parts
related to each other equipotently are placed in a horizontal order.
The small lady listened to me attentively.
THE LADY
LISTENED
Subject
predicate
SMALL
TO ME
ATTENTIVELY
Attribute
object
adverbial
The scheme clearly shows the basic logical-grammatical connections of the
notional constituents of the sentence. It can be supplemented with specifying
linguistic information, such as indications of doesn’t lexico-grammatical features of
the sentence parts and their syntactic sub-functions.
The disadvantage of this model is that it presents only the subordination ranks of
the parts of the sentence, but present its linear order in speech. It is overcome in
another scheme of analysis, called the model of immediate constituents.
Glossary of linguistic terms:
1. subject - подлежащее
2. рredicate - сказуемое
3.object - дополнение
4. attribute - определение
5.adverbial modifier - обстоятельство
6.parenthetical enclosure – вводное слово
7.interjectional enclosure - междометие
8.address - обращение
9.homogenious – однородные
Additional reading:
1. стр. 198-211
2стр. 183-190
3–
4 стр. 292-294
5 стр. 309-310
71
XXXVI. THE MODEL OF IMMEDIATE CONSTITUENTS
The model of immediate constituents (IC-model) is based on the groupparsing (разбор) of the sentence. The concept of immediate constituents (ICs) is
important both in morphology and syntax. An immediate constituent is a group of
linguistic elements which functions as a unit in some larger whole.
A basic sentence pattern consists first of all of a subject and a predicate. These are
called the immediate constituents of the sentence. They are constituents in the sense
that they constitute, or make up, the sentence. They are immediate in the sense that
they act immediately on one another: the whole meaning of the one applies to the
whole meaning of the other.
The model consists in dividing the whole of the sentence into two groups: that of
the subject and that of the predicate, which, in their turn, are divided into their subgroup constituents according to their successive subordinative order. The IC-model
shows the structure of the sentence as made up by binary immediate constituents.
As for equipotent (coordinative) connections, they are non-binary and included in
the analysis as inner subdivisions of subordinative connections. The subject of a
basic sentence is a noun cluster and the predicate is a verb cluster, we can therefore
say that the immediate constituents (ICs) of a sentence are a noun cluster and a verb
cluster. Each of the ICs of the sentence can in turn be divided to get ICs at the next
lower level. For example, the noun cluster of a sentence may consist of a
determiner plus a noun. In this case, the construction may be cut between the
determiner and the noun, e. g. the girl. The ICs of this noun cluster are the and girl.
The verb cluster of the sentence may be a verb plus a noun cluster (played the
piano). This cluster can be cut into ICs as follows: played the piano
THE
SMALL
A
LADY
N
LISTENED
V
det
NP
VP
TO
ME
prep NP-pro
NP-obj
ATTENTIVELY
D
NP-subj
VP-pred
S – sentence
NP-subj – subject noun-phrase, VP-pred – predicate verb-phrase
net – determiner
NP – noun-phrase
D (DP) – adverbial (phrase)
VP – verb-phrase
AP (A) – adjective-attribute constituent
N – noun constituent
V, Vf – finite verb
NP-obj – object noun-phrase
prep – preposition
The process of syntactic IC-analysis continues until the word-level is reached, the
ultimate constituents of the sentence.
This model has 2 versions: the analytical IC-diagram and the IC-derivation tree,
which shows the grouping of sentence constituents.
S
NP
VP
det
NP
VP
D
A
N
V
VP
prp
N-pro
When analysing sentences, we expose two types of subordinative relations:
obligatory relations, i.e. such as are indispensable for the existence of the syntactic
unit as such, and optional relations, which may or may not be represented in the
72
syntactic unit. This is explained by the syntactic valency (combining power of the
word). The attribute small and the adverbial attentively are the optional parts of the
sentence. Without them all the positions in the structure are obligatory from the
point of view of the valency of the verb (transitive). This structure is elementary
sentence, which has only principle parts and complementive modifiers, and doesn’t
have any supplementive modifiers. Elementary sentence can be extended without
adding new predicative positions, then it will still be extended, but simple sentence.
Since all the parts of the elementary sentence are obligatory, each sentence can be
reduced to one or more elementary sentences: The tall trees by the island shore
were shaking violently in the gusty wind. The sentence can be reduced to The trees
were shaking., as the verb is intransitive.
The model of immediate constituents includes another model, the distributional
model.
Glossary of linguistic terms:
1. parsing – грамматический разбор
2. binary/non-binary – бинарный, двойной/не состоящий из двух частей
3. cluster – «гроздь», совокупность
4. determiner – определяющее слово
5. syntactic valency – синтаксическая валентность, способность слова вступать
в сочетания с другими словами
6. complementive – комплетивные, восполняющие отношения. Отношения,
при которых зависимый компонент является необходимым смысловым
добавлением, без которого главное слово не обладает достаточной
информативностью
7. supplementive – дополнительные, не являющиеся необходимым
смысловым добавлением для данного главного слова
8. distribuitonal – дистрибутивный, метод распределения языковых элементов
по прусущим данному языку законам.
Additional reading:
1. –
2. стр. 207-209
3. –
4. стр. 294-298
5. стр. 310-335
Practical tasks:
17. Build up the immediate constituents model of the sentences:
Something was stirring in the depth of her subconscious.
The exhausted boy greeted his father rather unwillingly.
73
XXXVII. THE DISTRIBUTIONAL MODEL
The distributional model was offered by the American linguist Charles Freez in his
work “The structure of English”. According to this pattern the sentence is defined
as a certain succession of words belonging to certain sets (parts of speech) and used
in certain forms.
The old man saw a black dog.
1a
2d
1b
D3
he
D3 he/she/it
where: D – determiner of the noun
3 – adjective
1 – noun singular, m
he
2d – verb in Past Tense
1
- noun singular, m,f,n
he,she,it
4 – adverb
a, b – marks above 1 point out that given nouns have different denotates, i.e.
objects.
Freez’s pattern makes it possible to express the sentence structure from the point of
view of distribution of certain forms of certain parts of speech in speech chain.
The fault of this model is that it reveals the succession of words, but not the real
syntactic ties between the words. That is why in terms of Freez’s pattern it is
sometimes impossible to distinguish even rather simple constructions, which have
different syntactic relations, but have the same formular in distributional pattern:
The police shot the man in the red cap. and The police shot the man in the right
arm.
D 1a 2 – d D
1b
f
D
3
1a
+
+
he
F
it
Distributional model is used in the IC model.
Glossary of the linguistic terms:
1. denotate – денотат, предмет или явление действительности, с которым
соотносится данная языковая единица.
Additional reading:
Блох М.Я. «Практикум по теоретической грамматике англ.яз.» – стр. 332 - 335
74
XXXIII. THE TRANSFORMATIONAL MODEL
Transformation is transition from one pattern of certain notional parts to
another pattern of the same notional parts. Some sentence patterns are base
patterns, others are their transforms. A question can be described as
transformationally produced from a statement, a negation – from an affirmation.
You are fond of sport. - Are you fond of sport?
You are fond of sport. – You are not fond of sport.
Why are the directions of transition given in this way and not vice versa?
Because the ordinary affirmative statement presents a positive expression of the
fact, free of the speaker’s appraisals. It carries the propositional content, the
cognitive content of the utterance. Proposition is the reflection of a state-of-affairs
and consists of reference and predication. Reference is the denotation of a thing,
person or idea. Predication assigns o property or relation to the denotated thing,
person, idea.
Similarly, a composite sentence can be presented as dirived from two or more
simple sentences:
He turned to the waiter. + The waiter stood in the doorway. – He turned
to the waiter who stood in the doorway.
These transformational relations can be interpreted as regular derivation stages
comparable to categorial form-making processes in morphology and wordbuilding.
The initial basic elements of syntactic derivation are called kernel sentences.
Structurally in coincides with elementary sentences, described in IC-model. But
the pattern of the kernel sentence is the base of a paradigmatic derivation in the
corresponding sentence pattern series. Syntactic derivation is paradigmatic
production of more complex pattern construction out of kernel pattern
constructions as structural bases.
I saw him come. It is produced from the two kernel sentences: I saw him + He
came.
S
+
S
S
N-subj
VP
N-subj
V
N-subj
VP
V
N-obj
V NP-obj
N
V-inf
The derivation of genuine sentences lying on the surface of speech out of kernel
sentences lying in the “deep base” of speech can be analysed as a set of elementary
transformational steps or procedures:
1. Morphological arrangement of the sentence, morphological changes
expressing syntactically relevant categories, above all, the predicative categories of
the finite verb: tense, aspect, voice, mood.
In paradigmatic syntax, such units as He has arrived, He has not arrived,
Has he arrived, He will arrive, He will not arrive, Will he arrive, etc., are
treated as different forms of the same sentence, just as arrives, has arrived,
will arrive etc., are different forms of the same verb. We may call this view
of the sentence the paradigmatic view.
Now from the point of view of communication, He has arrived and He has
not arrived are different sentences since they convey different information
(indeed, the meaning of the one flatly contradicts that of the other).
2. functional expansion – procedures including various uses of functional
words. From the syntactic point of view these words are transformers of
syntactic construction in the same sense as the categorial morphemes
(wordchanging) are transformers of morphological constructions:
75
He understood my request. – He seemed to understand my request.
Now they consider the suggestion. – Now they do consider the suggestion.
3. substitution by personal pronouns, demonstrative, indefinite pronouns,
substitute combinations of half-notional words.
The pupils ran out of the classroom. – They ran out of the classroom.
I want another pen, please. – I want another one, please.
4. Deletion, elimination of some elements of the sentence in various
contextual conditions. As a result of deletion the corresponding reduced
(elliptical) constructions are produced.
Would you like a cup of tea? – A cup of tea?
It’s a pleasure! – Pleasure!
5. Positional arrangement – changes of the word order into reverse patterns,
questions and inversion: In ran Jim with an excited cry.
6. Intonational arrangement, application of various functional tones and
accents. This arrangement is represented in written and typed speech by
punctuation marks, the use of italics and underlining.
We must go. – We must go? We? Must go??
You care nothing about what I feel. – You care nothing about what I feel!
Clausalization, phrasalization
The transformational model is different form other models, as it not just an
analytical pattern, but a generative one.
Glossary of lingustic terms
1. base pattern – основная модель
2. transform – результат трансформации
3. propositional, cognitive content – пропозиционное, когнитивное содержание,
содержание высказывания
4. kernel - ядерный,
5. paradigmatic – парадигматический, система форм структурной схемы
простого предложения. Парадигматика рассматривает единицы языка как
совокупности структурных удиниц, связанных отношениями
противопоставления, но сопоставляемых друг с другом.
6. clausalization – создание придаточных предложений
7.phrasalization – превращение придаточных предложений в словосочетания с
тем же значением
Additional reading:
1. –
2. стр. 209-230
3. стр. 194-208
4. стр. 303-313
5.стр. 337-357
Practical tasks:
18. Build up the transformational model of the sentences:
The girl grew up to become quite a beauty.
We stayed a bit longer and enjoyed it.
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XXXIX. Principle parts of sentence. Subject
All the basic sentences consist, first of all, of two immediate constituents: subject
and predicate.
In the basic sentence patterns subjects are rather simple, consisting of either a single noun,
a noun with its determiner or a pronoun. They can grow much more complicated: nouns
can be modified in quite a variety of ways and other syntactic structures can be made
subjects in place of nouns or its equivalents.
The subject is one of the two main parts of the sentence. (1) It denotes the thing whose action
or characteristic is expressed by the predicate. (2) It is not dependent on any other part of
the sentence. (3) It may be expressed by different parts of speech, the most frequent ones
being: a noun in the common case – “Dinner will be ready in a few minutes.”, a personal
pronoun in the nominative case – “He can tell stories.”, an indefinite pronoun – “Somebody
is singing outdoors.”, a substantivised adjective – “the English are used to their climate.”, a
numeral – “Two by two is four.” - , an infinitive – “To see you is always a pleasure.”, and
a gerund – “Flying is the fastest means of transportation.”. It may also be expressed by a
phrase. Being out in a boat on the river makes you feel happy. For you to go there would
mean doing what you must. His having been in business failed all the affair.
The subject is the thing with which the predicate is connected.
Though there is no formal indication of the common case of noun in English, we still
should state that the subject can be expressed only by the noun in the common case. The
case can be determined by substitution of the noun by the corresponding form of the
pronoun: “Men make laws.” The subject is the noun, substituted by the pronoun in the
nominative case “they”. In some types of sentence patterns Modern English relies on the
word-order arrangement alone. In The hunter killed the bear variation in the order of
sentence elements will give us a different subject. English syntax is well known as
primarily characterised by "subject — verb — complement" order.
It will be noted, however, that in a good many sentences of this type the subject and
the doer of the action are by no means in full correspondence, e .g.: This room sleeps three
men, or Such books sell readily.
In cases of inversion it is often the agreement in number with a predicate (which has
an evident finite form – is, are, was, were, has) or the lexical relations in the collocation
that can help define a subject in the sentence. Formally, the subject is the word that selects
the form of the verb.
It is not the form of the subject that the predicate corresponds to in number, but its
numerical semantics. When the subject is singular in form, but has the meaning of
multitude, the predicate takes the plural form. And, vice versa, when the subject is a
coordination of several nouns, united by one meaning, the predicate is in the singular: The
staff were very sympathetic about it. (A. J. Cronin); The bread and cheese was
presently brought in and distributed [...] (C. Brontë). The choice of the person of the
predicate in cases when the person of the subject is not clear in form, is made according to
the personal meaning which it has: 'Then i t ' s not your wife who left you; it's you w h o'v e left
your wife. (S. Maugham)
Meaning relationships are varied. Subjects can refer to something that is
identified, described and classified or located; they may imply something that
performs an action, or is affected by action or, say, something involved in an
occurrence of some sort. The are classified as
1) The name of the personal subject of the sentence (agent) – The pilot changed his
tactics. ,
2) Impersonal force (natural force) – The lightning struck the tree. ,
3) the object of the action (patient) – The road will be reconstructed.
4) the person, for whom the action is performed (beneficiary) - He had his hair cut.
5) the described object (nominative) - His face looked surprised. ,
6) the feature of the person or thing (attributive) – The colour of her cheeks
deepened. 7) various modifiers of the action (time, place, etc.) The morning saw
them approaching the airport.
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In Modern English there are two main types of subject that stand in contrast as
opposed to each other in terms of content: the definite subject and the indefinite subject.
Definite subjects denote a thing that can be clearly defined: a concrete object,
process, quality, etc., e. g.:
•> (a) Fleur smiled, (b) To defend our Fatherland is our sacred duty, (c) Playing
tennis is a pleasure, (d) Her prudence surprised me.
Indefinite subjects denote some indefinite person, a state of things or a certain
situation, e. g.:
(a) They say. (b) You never can tell, (c) One cannot be too careful, (d) It is rather
cold, (e) It was easy to do so.
Languages differ in the forms which they have adopted to express this meaning. In
English indefinite subjects have always their formal expression.
Sentences of this type will be found in French: (a) On dit. (b) II fait froid.
Similarly in German: (a) Man sagt. (b) Es ist halt.
In Russian the indefinite subject is expressed by one-member sentences:
Говорят, что погода изменится. Можно предположить, что экспедиция уже
закончила свою работу.
Things are specifically different in cases when it and there(here) are used in subject
positions as representatives of words or longer units which embody the real content of the
subject but are postponed.
It was easy to do so. There are a few mistakes in your paper. There were no seats at
all. Here comes the most important period.
It and there (here) in such syntactic structures are generally called anticipatory or
introductory subjects.
Introductory it is used with the following models: It (be, look, get, grow) strange,
necessary, easy) to V, to VP, to be Part, A (It was strange to be hated., truthful), for N/NP
to V/VP, Ving (It’s no use telling him about it.), relative clause It is most pleasant that she
has already come.
There in such patterns is often referred to as a function word, and this is not devoid
of some logical foundation. It is pronounced with weak or tertiary stress, which
distinguishes it from the adverb there having primary or secondary stress. There is
sometimes called a temporary subject filling the subject position in place of the true
subject, which follows the verb. This interpretation seems to have been borne out by the
fact that the verb frequently shows concord with the following noun, as in:There is a
botanical garden in our town. There were only three of us.
There comes his joy.
Glossary of linguistic terms:
1. introductory, anticipatory – формальное подлежащее, представляющее
логическое подлежащее
2. inversion – инверсия, нестандартное расположение членов предложения
3. agent – агенс, совершающий действие
4. patient – пациенс – объект, на который направлено действие
5. beneficiary - - бенефициарий, объект, для которого совершается действие
6. natural force – природное явление
7.nominative – номинатив, объект описания
Additional reading:
1. стр. 198-200
2. стр. 190-192
3. –
4. –
5. стр. 317-319
78
XXXX. Predicate
In terms of modern linguistics, the predicate is defined as the 1C of the
sentence presented by a finite-form of the verb, if even in its zero-alternant.
(elliptical sentences)
Besides the function of predication the predicate also has the linking function,
of linking semantically the subject with the right side of the verbal surrounding –
the object and the adverbial.
Various criteria of classifying different kind of predicate have been set up by
grammarians. The common definition of the predicate in terms of modern
linguistics is that it is a more or less complex structure with the verb or verbphrase at its core. This is perfectly reasonable and in point of fact agrees with the
advice of traditional grammars to identify a predicate by looking for the verb. The
sentence, indeed, almost always exists for the sake of expressing by means of a
verb, an action, state or being. The verb which is always in key position is the heart
of the matter and certain qualities of the verb in any language determine important
elements in the structural meaning of the predicate. To begin with, the predicate
may be composed of a word, a phrase or an entire clause. When it is a notional
word (including analytical forms), it is naturally not only structural but the notional
predicate as well. It is simple predicate.
If it is made up of more than one word it is called compound. In terms of
complementation, predicates are classified into verbal (time presses, birds fly, the
moon rose, etc.) and nominal (is happy, felt strong, got cool, grew old). \
The two types of predicates in active syntax may be diagrammed as follows:
A. Verbal Predicate Simple Tastes differ.
Compound One must do one's duty.
B. Nominal Predicate
Simple What a beautiful picture!
Compound The picture was beautiful. He may be angry with me.
Another type of sentence with a simple nominal predicate is that in which
the predicative comes first, the subject next, and no link verb is either used or
possible. Such sentences seem to occur chiefly in colloquial style, for instance:
"Splendid game, cricket," remarked Mr Barbecue-Smith heartily to no one in
particular; "so thoroughly English" This is a sentence with a simple nominal
predicate. There is inversion, no article with the predicative noun, and the style
is very colloquial. The phrase representing the rheme comes first, and after it comes
the word representing the theme. That it is the theme is made quite clear by the
preceding context. Priscilla, the mistress of the house, is reading a newspaper at
breakfast: "I see Surrey won," she said, with her mouth full, "by four wickets.
The sun is in Leo: that would account for it!" Although the word cricket is not
mentioned, it is quite evident, from the words Surrey (which here denotes a
cricket team), won and wickets, that she has been reading about the latest
cricket match. The latter part of Mr Barbecue-Smith's speech, so thoroughly
English, adds another predicative to the first, splendid game, and also with no
link verb to it. If changed into the usual compound nominal predicate pattern, the
sentence would run: "Cricket is a splendid game; it is so thoroughly English"; the
meaning would be quite the same as in the original sentence but the specific
colloquial colouring would be gone altogether.
Limits of the Compound Verbal Predicate
Now we come to the second question, about the limits of the compound verbal
predicate. It arises from the fact that a rather considerable number of verbs can be
79
followed by an infinitive, some of them with, others without the particle to. Among
such verbs are: shall, will, should, would, can, may, must (without to); ought,
The relation between these phrases and parts of the sentence is of course not
the same in all cases. We can at once eliminate the phrases "shall, should, will,
would + infinitive", which constitute tense or mood forms of the verb. Thus,
the phrase shall write is a form of the verb write (as it does not differ from the
forms write, writes, wrote in its lexical meaning) and, consequently, it is a
simple verbal predicate. The phrases with the verbs can, may, must, ought (in
the latter case with to) constitute a compound verbal predicate.
There is no difference in part of sentence structure -between began to work and
began his work.
Therefore, approaching phenomena from a grammatical viewpoint, which is
the essential one here, we start from the assumption that in the phrase began his
work the group his work is a separate (secondary) part of the sentence (an object).1
This shows that the verb begin can be followed by a noun functioning as an object
(the same of course applies to a number of other verbs). Since the verb begin can
take an object there appears to be no reason to deny that an infinitive following
this verb is an object as well. We might give here a table based on what is
called transformation:
began to work — began his work
continued to work — continued his work
liked to sing
—liked songs
On the other hand, no table of this kind is possible with such verbs as can,
may, must, ought: they cannot under any circumstances be followed by a noun,
and this is an important difference on which syntactic analysis should be based.
Another question of a similar kind arises with reference to sentences
containing idioms of the pattern "verb + noun", e.g. make a mistake, make one's
appearance, have a look, have a smoke, take a glance, etc. Here two different
approaches are possible, and the approach chosen will predetermine all
conclusions to be arrived at in considering concrete examples.
One approach would be to say that if a phrase is a phraseological unit, that is,
if its meaning is not equal to the sum of the meanings of its components, it
cannot be divided into two parts of the sentence, and has to be taken as one part,
namely, the predicate.
The other approach would be to say that such phraseological phenomena
belong to the sphere of lexicology alone and are irrelevant for grammar, that
is, for sentence analysis.
One of the arguments in favour of the view that phraseological units should
be treated as one part of the sentence, is this. If the phrase "verb + noun" is not
a phraseological unit, a separate question can be put to the noun, that is, a
question to which the noun supplies an answer. For instance, if we take the
sentence He makes toys the question would be, What does he make? and the
answer would be supplied by the word toys, which, accordingly, is a separate
part of the sentence, namely, an object. If, on the other hand, we take the
sentence, He makes mistakes, it would not be possible to ask the question,
What does he make? and to give mistakes as an answer to it. Consequently,
according to this view, we cannot say that mistakes is a separate part of the
sentence, and we must conclude that the phrase makes mistakes as a whole is
the predicate.
Before we go further in this matter, let us consider another case also belonging
here, namely phrases of the type come in, bring up, put down, etc., Should
80
these phrases be taken as the predicate, or should the predicate be limited to
the verb alone (come, bring, put, etc.)? This again is a matter of opinion.
The phrase come in, for instance, can equally well be analysed as the predicate
of the sentence, and as a combination of the predicate and a secondary part.
On the other hand, the phrase bring up (as in the sentence, They brought up
three children) would be taken to be the predicate, rather than a combination
of the predicate with a secondary part, and this of course is due to the
meaning of the phrase, which certainly is not equal to the sum of meanings of
the verb bring and the adverb up. This semantic consideration is in favour of
taking the whole phrase to be one part of the sentence (its predicate).
The Compound Nominal Predicate
The compound nominal predicate always consists of a link verb (also called
copula) and a predicative, which may be expressed by various parts of
speech, usually a noun, an adjective, also a stative, or an adverb (as in the
sentence The lesson is over). Often enough the predicative is represented by a
phrase, most usually of the pattern "preposition + noun", which may or may not
be a phraseological unit.
The true function of a link verb is not a connecting function. It expresses the
tense and the mood in the predicate. The link verb be, which expresses these
categories, and also those of number and person, is rightly considered to be the
most abstract of all link verbs, that is, the one most devoid of any meaning of
its own. Other link verbs have each some lexical meaning.
Besides the verb be there are a number of other link verbs with different
meanings, for instance become, get, continue, grow, turn, e. g. Then he grew
thirsty and went indoors ; But presently the sea turned rough , etc. It will be readily
seen that some of them do not always perform this function but may also be a
predicate in themselves, for instance the verb grow in the sentences The child
has grown, or, We grow potatoes. Of course it is only the meaning of the noun
following the verb that shows whether the noun is a predicative or an object:
compare the two sentences They have grown fine young men and They grow
potatoes. So if we say that a verb is a link verb this need not necessarily mean
that it is always a link verb and cannot perform any other function.
A notional verb followed by a predicative it is, to some extent at least, a
link verb. It contains some information about the subject which may be taken
separately, but at the same time the verb is followed by a predicative (a noun
or an adjective) and is in so far a link verb. This is found in sentences like the
following: He came home tired, She married young, He died a bachelor, etc. The
finite verb in such sentences conveys a meaning of its own (he came, she
married, he died), but the main point of the sentence lies in the information
conveyed by the predicative noun or adjective. We might retell the meaning of
these sentences in another way, namely: He was tired when he came home, She was
young when she married, He was a bachelor when he died, etc. The finite verb,
besides being a predicate in itself, also performs the function of a link verb.
Since such sentences have both a simple verbal predicate and a compound
nominal predicate, they form a special or mixed type: predicates of this kind may
be termed double predicates. Here are some examples: Sunlight seeped thick and
golden through the high windows. Compare also the following sentence: Catherine's
blood ran cold with the horrid suggestions which naturally sprang from these words.
The lexical meaning of the verb run is irrelevant for the meaning of the
predicative. The essence of the predication is of course contained in the
predicative adjective cold.
81
The same is found in the following examples: You've come home such a
beautiful lady. I sat down hungry, I was hungry while I ate, and I got up from the
table hungry.
It should also be noted that the verb preceding the predicative and therefore
performing (at least partly) the function of a link verb, may be in the passive
voice. This is especially true of the verbs find, think, report, as in the sentences, He
was found guilty, He was reported dead, etc.
From such sentences there is an easy transition to sentences in which the finite
verb is followed by an infinitive, as in He was known to have arrived, etc.
Nominative with the infinitive construction can be used as Complex Subject with
the passive forms of the verbs say, state, report, announce, believe, consider,
expect, and others and the active forms of the verbs seem, appear, prove, happen:
The steamer was known to have left the port on Monday. The water seems to be
boiling.
As far as meaning is concerned, there seems to be no difference between the
sentences He was reported dead, and He was reported to be dead, or between the
sentences He seemed clever and He seemed to be clever. As far as structure is
concerned, the second variant in each case is somewhat more complicated, in
that the finite verb is first followed by an infinitive, which apparently is bound
to be a predicative (since it comes after the link verb), but which is itself the
infinitive of a link verb and therefore followed by another predicative.
Glossary of linguistic terms:
1. simple verbal predicate – простое глагольное сказуемое
2. compound nominal predicate – составное именное сказуемое
3. predicative – именная часть сказуемого
Additional reading:
1. стр. 198-210
2. стр. 192-196
3. –
4. –
5. стр. 319-320
Practical tasks:
19. Define the type of subject and the predicate of the following sentences:
Model: One might make a story out of it. – The subject of the sentence is
impersonal, the predicate is compound verbal.
There is Miss Sands here.
Why aren’t you greeting her?
Agatha Christie was educated at home.
82
XXXXI. THE SECONDARY PARTS OF THE SENTENCE
OBJECT
The object is a secondary part of the sentence, referring to a part of the
sentence expressed by a verb, a noun, a substantival pronoun, an adjective, a
numeral, or an adverb, and denoting a thing to which the action passes on,
which is a result of the action, in reference to which an action is committed or
a property is manifested, or denoting an action as object or doer of another
action.
If we take a closer look at this definition, we shall find that it is based on
two principles, namely (1) the relation of the object to a certain part of speech,
(2) the meaning of the object, that is, the relation between the thing denoted
and the action or property with which it is connected.
The first of these principles is syntactical, based on morphology
(morphologico-syntactical), the second is semantic.
The first item of the definition practically means that an object can refer to
any part of speech capable of being a part of the sentence. The second item
enumerates certain semantic points in the relation between the thing denoted by
the object and the action (or the property) with which it is connected.
— "a thing (or person) connected with a process or a property".
Definition of the Attribute
The usual kind of definition of the attribute is this: It is a secondary part
of the sentence modifying a part of the sentence expressed by a noun, a
substantival pronoun, a cardinal numeral, and any substantivised word, and
characterising the thing named by these words as to its quality or property. 1
If we now compare the definition of the attribute with that of the object
we shall see at once that there are two main differences between them: (1) the
attribute, as distinct from the object, cannot modify a verb, an adjective, or an
adverb, and (2) the attribute expresses a property while the object expresses
a thing.
They also have something in common: they both can modify a noun, a
pronoun, and a numeral.
Now let us consider the definition of an adverbial modifier. It may sound
like this: It is a secondary part of the sentence modifying a part of the sentence
expressed by a verb, a verbal noun, an adjective, or an adverb, and serving to
characterise an action or a property as to its quality or intensity, or to indicate
the way an action is done, the time, place, cause, purpose, or condition, with
which the action or the manifestation of the quality is connected. All the
meanings enumerated in the definition amount to one, viz. the characteristic
feature of an action or property.
As to the first item of the definition, it has some peculiarities worth notice:
not every kind of noun can have an adverbial modifier, but only a verbal noun,
that is, a noun expressing an action presented as a thing.
Let us now proceed to compare the parts of speech enumerated in the
definition of an adverbial modifier with those enumerated in the definitions
of the other secondary parts of a sentence, and let us first take the list given in
the definition of the object. There all the parts of speech capable of being parts
of the sentence were given. So the parts of speech which the two lists have in
common are, a verb, a verbal noun, an adjective, and an adverb.
83
If we now compare the list given for the adverbial modifier with that given
for the attribute, we shall find that the only point which they have in common
is the verbal noun: for the attribute it says "noun", which of course includes
verbal nouns, and for the adverbial modifier it expressly says "verbal noun".
Thus the sphere of overlapping between attributes and adverbial modifiers is
very limited.
Summing up these comparisons we find that the first item of the
definitions leaves room for ambiguity in the following cases: (1) if the part
of the sentence which is modified is expressed by a noun, its modifier may
be either an object or an attribute; (2) if it is expressed by a verbal noun, the
modifier may be either an object, or an attribute, or an adverbial modifier;
(3) if it is expressed by an adjective, the modifier may be either an object or
an adverbial modifier; (4) if it is expressed by a cardinal numeral, the modifier
may be either an object or an attribute; (5) if it is expressed by a verb,- the
modifier may be either an object or an adverbial modifier; (6) if it is expressed
by an adverb the modifier may be either an object or an adverbial modifier,
too.
Since in these cases the first item of the definition does not lead to
unambiguous results, we shall have to apply its second item, namely, the
meaning of the modifier: a property, a thing, or whatever it may happen to be.
For instance, if there is in the sentence a secondary part modifying the subject
which is expressed by a noun, this secondary part may be either an object or an
attribute. (It cannot be an adverbial modifier, which cannot modify a part
of the sentence expressed by a non-verbal noun.) Now, to find out whether the
secondary part in question is an object or an attribute we shall have to
apply the second test and see whether it ex presses a thing or a property.
Take, for instance, the following sentence: The dim gloom of drawn blinds and
winter twilight closed about her. Here the phrase of drawn blinds and winter
twilight modifies the noun gloom, which is the subject of the sentence. Since it
modifies a noun it may be either an object or an attribute, and the choice
between the two has to be made by deciding whether it denotes a thing (of
whatever kind) or a property. How are we to decide that? On the one hand, it
may be argued that it denotes a thing and its relation to the other thing, called
gloom, is indicated. Then the phrase is an object. On the other hand, however,
it is also possible to regard the matter differently, and to assert that the
phrase expresses a property of the gloom and is therefore an attribute. We
shall consider, say, every prepositional phrase modifying a noun to be an
attribute.
We might even say that in such circumstances the distinction between object
and attribute is neutralised.
A similar situation is also possible with the object and the adverbial modifier.
This is the case, for instance, in a sentence like this: In her face were too
sharply blended the delicate features of her mother, a coast aristocrat of French
descent, and the heavy ones of her florid Irish father. The question is, what part of
the sentence is in her face. As it modifies a verb it can be either an object or an
adverbial modifier. To decide between these, we apply the second item of the
definitions, and find out whether the secondary part expresses a thing or
characterises the action. Now, obviously it is possible to take it in two ways; we
might say that the secondary part of the sentence expresses an object affected by
the action, or that it expresses a characteristic of the action itself. The right way
out of this is to say that in these positions the distinction between object and
adverbial modifier is neutralised.
84
In a few cases a similar doubt may be possible when we try to decide whether
a phrase is an object without a preposition or an adverbial modifier, as in the
sentence, He walks the streets of London.
There are several types of objects. Objects differ from one another, on the one
hand, by their morphological composition, that is, by the parts of speech or
phrases which perform the function of object, and on the other hand, in some
cases objects modifying a part of the sentence expressed by a verb form (and that
is most usually the predicate) differ by the type of their relation to the action
expressed by the verb.
Classification into direct and indirect objects is both a morphological and
semantic factor. Sentences in which the predicate is expressed by the verbs
send, show, lend, give, and the like usually take two different kinds of objects
simultaneously: (1) an object expressing the thing which is sent, shown, lent,
given, etc., and (2) the person or persons to whom the thing is sent, shown,
lent, given, etc. The difference between the two relations is clear enough: the
direct object denotes the thing immediately affected by the action denoted by the
predicate verb, whereas the indirect object expresses the person towards whom
the thing is moved. This is familiar in sentences like We sent them a present, You
showed my friend your pictures, etc.
There is another consideration here which rather tends toward the same
conclusion. In studying different kinds of objects it is also essential to take
into account the possibility of the corresponding passive construction. It is
well known that in English there is a greater variety of possible passive
constructions than in many other languages. For instance, the sentence We
gave him a present can have two passive equivalents: A present was given to
him (here the subject corresponds to the direct object in the active
construction), and He was given a present (here the subject corresponds to the
indirect object of the active construction). However, the second passive variant is
only possible if the direct object is there, too. The sentence He was given in this
sense (without the direct object) would not be possible. Now, with the verbs tell
and teach things are different. It is quite possible to say The story has been told
many times and I have been told about it (in this case the subject corresponds
to the indirect object of the active construction, and there is no direct object in
the sentence). In a similar way, it is possible to say Geography is taught by a
new teacher and also Children are taught by a new teacher (without any direct
object and indeed without any object corresponding to "geography"). From this
point of view the sentences with the verbs tell and teach are different from
those with the verbs send, show, give, etc.
Direct object can be expressed by 1/ a noun: We all hated the uniform.
2/ a pronoun (of different types): We had to wear it.
3/ infinitive: I’d prefer you to treat me as a groun up.
4/ gerund: I heard him talking. In some few special cases an object may be
expressed by an adverb (as in the sentence We will leave here next week).
From the point of view of morphological composition we must draw a distinction
between non-prepositional and prepositional indirect objects. Under the latter
heading we will include every object of the type "preposition + noun or
pronoun", no matter what preposition makes part of it, whether it be a
preposition with a very concrete meaning, such as between, or a most abstract
one, such as of or to. Some prepositional objects are synonimous with
prepositional: tell him – say to him.
Both non-prepositoinal and prepositional objects (more especially the
latter) may sometimes be hard to distinguish from adverbial modifiers. Usually,
if the usage of the preposition depends on the verb-predicate, this prepositional
85
construction is an object – interested in books, belong to the party, laugh at a
joke. And if the preposition depends on the noun or on the situation, it is an
adverbial modifier: find in books, come to the party, laugh at night.
Objects can also be classified according to their semantic role, the deep
case: the object of object (patient), can be both prepositional and nonprepositional, it is dependant on a verb, an adjective or a stative and
nominating object of action or of a feature. He saw the building. – He
looked at the building. Ask for something – beg something, think of
something – consider something. This object is complementary, as it
appears with the transitive verbs with strong valency. They are not used
without objects.
The object of addressee (beneficiary) nominates a person or an object to
which an action coming from the subject is addressed. The teacher explained
the theory to the students.
The object of subject (agent) is dependant on a verb in passive voice
nominating the doer of the action, used with the preposition by.
The instrumental object is used with the preposition with with the meaning of
the means of the action.
The locative object is used with the prepositions of place and movement and is
difficult to tell from adverbial
THE ATTRIBUTE
As we have already discussed the cases where the distinction between
object and attribute is neutralised, so that a secondary part can equally be
termed the one or the other.
An attribute can either precede or follow the noun it modifies. Accordingly we
use the terms "prepositive" and "postpositive" attribute. The position of an
attribute with respect to its head word depends partly on the morphological
peculiarities of the attribute itself, and partly on stylistic factors.
The pospositional attribute is usually used with prepositions of/from.
The prepositional attributes to one word are placed in accordance with their
qualitative and relative polarity: qualitative attributes to the left side and
relative attributes to the right side: An ordinary little wooden house.
The size of a prepositive attributive phrase can be large in Modern English.
This is mainly due to the fact that whatever is included between the article
(definite or indefinite) and the noun, is apprehended as an attribute to the noun.
Examples of attributes reaching considerable length are met with in usual
literary (though not in colloquial) style. This is what we can see in the
following sentence: The younger, Leander, was above all young, with only a
slightly greater than usual grace. The phrase slightly greater than usual is
characterised as an attribute by its position between the indefinite article and the
noun grace.
He was relieved when I motioned to him and started to wrap the by now
almost insensible figure of Melissa in the soft Bokhara rug.
Such attributes can acquire enormous proportions in humorous writings, so
that whole sentences with subordinate clauses are squeezed into them, as in
the following example (from an article containing criticism of the most
common types of British crime films): Here are two possibilities only, and
the threadbare variations are endlessly woven around them: the "I-ain'taskin'-no-questions-just-tell-me-what-to-do" kind and the "My-God,-Henry,-
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you-must-believe-me" kind (which can also be described as the "Why-the-devilcan't-you-leave-my-wife-alone-Can't-you-see-she's-distraught" kind). The
hyphens connecting the various elements do not of course mean that the
whole has coalesced into one monstrous word: they merely serve to show the
unity of the syntactical formation functioning as an attribute. It goes without
saying that such possibilities are due to the absence of inflections for
number, gender, and case in the part of speech which most usually performs
the function of an attribute, namely, the adjective.
This consideration brings us to what is the most difficult question in the
study of the attribute, its position in the general system of parts of the
sentence. The question is briefly this: is the attri bute a secondary part of
the sentence standing on a footing of equality with the object and the
adverbial modifier, or is it a unit of a lower rank? Approached from another
angle, the question would be this: is the attribute a constituent of the
sentence, or does it belong to the level of phrases? This is of course a
problem of general linguistics, and it has been discussed with reference to
different languages. Here we will treat it taking into account the sp ecific
conditions of Modern English.
The problem can best be approached in the following way. If we take
the sentence: History only emerged in the eighteenth century as a literary art.
and if we want to state the parts of the sentence, we shall stop at the phrase
in the eighteenth century. We shall have to choose between two views: (1)
in the century is an adverbial modifier of time; eighteenth is an attribute;
the two secondary parts of the sentence stand on the same syntactical level;
(2) in the eighteenth century is an adverbial modifier of time and is (as a
whole) a secondary member of the sentence, modifying the predicate verb
emerged; eighteenth is part of that adverbial modifier, which is expressed
by a phrase, and it is part of the phrase, not of the sentence: it stands
on a lower level than the sentence with its parts, i. e. it stands on the phrase
level, being an attribute to the noun century.
The same reasoning and the same choice would of course apply to the
phrase as a literary art. The two possible views of its syntactic function
would be these: (1) as a(n) art is a part of the sentence, namely a
predicative; literary is another part, namely an attribute, standing
syntactically on the same level with it; (2) as a literary art as a whole is a
part of the sentence, namely, a predicative; literary is part of the
predicative, and thus not a separate part of the sentence: it is part of the
phrase, namely an attribute to the noun art, and stands on a lower level
than the sentence and its parts: it stands on the phrase level.
The meaning of the attributes denoted by the genitive case of nouns is
classified in accordance with the semantic classification of the genitive case.
THE ADVERBIAL MODIFIER
Adverbial modifier is a secondary part of the sentence characterised by
free distribution. It is not determined by the semantics of the predicate or
other parts of the sentence. It is a supplementary part.
There are several ways of classifying adverbial modifiers: (1)
according to their meaning, (2) according to their morphological peculiarities,
(3) according to the type of their head word.
Of these, the classification according to meaning is not in itself a
grammatical classification. For instance, the difference between an adverbial
modifier of place and one of time is basically semantic and depends on the
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lexical meaning of the words functioning as adverbial modifiers. However, this
classification may acquire some grammatical significance, especially when we
analyse word order in a sentence and one semantic type of adverbial
modifier proves to differ in this respect from another. Therefore the classification
of adverbial modifiers according to their meaning cannot be ignored by
syntactic theory.
Classification according to morphological peculiarities, i. e. according to
the parts of speech and to phrase patterns, is essential: it has also something to
do with word order, and stands in a certain relation to the classification
according to meaning: place, time, condition, manner of an action, degree of a
property, etc.
Classification according to the element modified is the syntactic classification
proper. It is of course connected in some ways with the classification
according to meaning; for instance, an adverbial modifier can modify a part of
the sentence expressed by a verb only if the type of meaning of the word (or
phrase) acting as modifier is compatible with the meaning of a verb, etc.
The most usual morphological type seems to be the adverb.
Another very frequent morphological type of adverbial modifier is the
phrase pattern "preposition + noun" (also the type "preposition + adjective +
noun" and other variations of this kind). This type of adverbial modifier is one
of those which are sometimes indistinguishable from objects, or rather where
the distinction between object and adverbial modifier is neutralised.
A noun without a preposition can also in certain circumstances be an
adverbial modifier. To distinguish it from an object, we take into account the
meanings of the words, namely the meaning of the verb functioning as
predicate, and that of the noun in question. It must be admitted, though, that
even this criterion will not yield quite definite results, and this means that the
decision will be arbitrary, that is, the distinction between the two secondary
parts is neutralised here, too. Let us consider, for instance, the function of the
noun hour in a sentence like They appointed an hour and in a sentence like
They waited an hour. Since the noun is the same in both cases, the distinction,
if any, can only be due to the meaning of the verb in its relation to that of the
noun. In the first sentence we will take the noun hour as an object — on the
analogy of many other nouns, which can also follow this particular verb (e. g.
appoint a director), and which can all be made the subject of this verb in a
passive construction (e. g. A director has been appointed). In the second
sentence, things are different, as the verb wait can only be followed by a very
few nouns without a preposition (e. g. Wait a minute), and a passive
construction is impossible. This appears to constitute an essential difference
between the two.
There are cases when a noun following the predicate verb is doubtless an
object, and yet a corresponding passive construction does not exist. 1In the
second place, a passive construction proves to be possible in some cases when
we should rather call the noun in the active construction an adverbial
modifier. Something similar is found in the familiar example The bed had not
been slept in, which corresponds to a sentence with the verb in the active voice,
Nobody had slept in the bed. If we had been given only the latter sentence
for analysis, we should probably have said that in the bed was an adverbial
modifier of place; the possibility of the corresponding passive construction
rather shows that it is an object. But the absence of a corresponding passive
construction is hardly final proof of the secondary part being an adverbial
modifier. Perhaps we will do best to say that the opposition between object and
adverbial modifier tends to be neutralised here, too.
88
A very frequent morphological type of adverbial modifier is the infinitive
or an infinitive phrase. This is especially true of the adverbial modifier of
purpose, which may be expressed by the infinitive preceded by the particle to or
the phrase in order to. However, we cannot say that every infinitive or
infinitive phrase acting as a secondary part of the sentence must necessarily be
an adverbial modifier of purpose, or indeed an adverbial modifier of any
kind.
Let us compare the following two sentences: I wanted to read the
advertisement, and I stopped to read the advertisement. From a purely structural
point of view there would seem to be no difference between the two
sentences. It is the meanings of the verbs want and stop which lie at the
bottom of the difference. Grammatically speaking, a transformation test is
possible which will bring out the difference in function between the two
infinitives. In the sentence I stopped to read the advertisement we can insert
in order before the particle to, or, in other words, replace the particle to by
the phrase in order to: in doing so, we get the sentence I stopped in order to
read the advertisement, which is good English and does not differ in meaning
from the original sentence. With the sentence I wanted to read the
advertisement such a change would not be possible.
There are also cases when the infinitive is an adverbial modifier, but not one
of purpose. This is the case, on the one hand, in such sentences as I was glad to
see him, where the meaning of the adjective glad shows the semantic relations,
and, on the other hand, in such sentences as the following: Denis woke up the
next morning to find the sun shining, the sky serene. It is clear from the lexical
meanings of the words woke up and find that the infinitive as adverbial
modifier does not indicate the purpose of the action but the circumstances
that followed it (Denis woke up and found the sun shining). The infinitive to
find is indeed typical of such adverbial modifiers.
So the lexical meanings of words are of first-rate importance for the status
of the infinitive: the form of the infinitive does not in itself determine anything
beyond that the phrase in question is a secondary part of the sentence. The
following sentence is also a clear example of this kind of infinitive modifier: A
young man of twenty-two or so, wearing overalls and carrying an empty buckel,
pushed open the wide, green door to be greeted by whistles, trills, chirps and
murmurings from the double row of cages that lined two walls of the long, low
building. The infinitive in question is here passive, but the grammatical category
of voice does not in itself give sufficient material to judge of the type of
modifier we have here: a passive action might after all be the purpose of an
action. It is rather the lexical meanings of the words and "common sense" that
make everything clear: it could not be the man's purpose to be greeted by
whistles, etc., of birds. Thus the modifier is clearly one of subsequent events.
A different kind of relation between an adverbial modifier and its head
word is found when the head word is an adjective or adverb preceded by the
adverb too: But Magnus's spirit was too robust to admit of difficulties for long.
At first he had been too surprised to feel any definite emotion.
The actual meaning resulting from the pattern "too + adjective (adverb) + to
+ infinitive" of course is, that the action denoted by the infinitive does not
take place.
Adverbial modifier expressed by the participle – He stood on the deck
counting the cases.
Gerund with preposition – He locked the door before leaving the office.
Roughly speaking, in summing up the relations between the semantic and
the morphological types of adverbial modifiers, we may say that some
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general statements on their relations can be made: for example, an adverbial
modifier of place can never be expressed by an infinitive; an infinitive can
express either an adverbial modifier of purpose, or one of subsequent events,
result etc.
1. Time – She will come soon.
2. Place – I found him in the garden.
3. Manner – He spoke slowly.
4. Reason – For not knowing the truth he believed every gossip.
5. Purpose – He stopped to read the advertisement.
6. Degree of property – He has changed greatly.
7. Condition – I’ll help you in case of danger.
8. Accompanying circumstances – He sat at the table reading a newspaper.
9. Subsequent events.
As to the parts of the sentence which an adverbial modifier may modify, it
follows from this definition that an adverbial modifier cannot modify a
part of the sentence expressed by a non-verbal noun; in other words, a
secondary part modifying a part expressed by a noun cannot be an adverbial
modifier.
Glossary of linguistic terms
1. secondary part of the sentence – второстепенные члены предложения
2. direct object – прямое дополнение
3. indirect object – косвенное дополнение
4. instrumental – дополнение инструмента
5. locative – дополнение места
6. degree of property – степень качества
7. condition – условное
8. accompanying circumstances – сопутствующих обстоятельств
9. subsequent events – последующих событий
Additional reading:
1. стр. 211-231
2. стр. 196-207
3. –
4. –
5.стр. 320-327
Practical tasks:
20. Analyze the semantic structure of the following sentences, defining the
semantic roles (deep cases) of the subject and the object:
This woman is easy to talk to.
They don’t know any better life.
The best thing to do would be to ask his wife.
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XXXXII. THE APPOSITION, DIRECT ADDRESS, PARENTHESES,
AND INSERTIONS. LOOSE PARTS
THE APPOSITION(приложение)
It has been often regarded as a special kind of attribute, and sometimes as a
secondary part of a sentence distinct from an attribute.
By apposition we mean a word or phrase referring to a part of the
sentence expressed by a noun, and giving some other designation to the person
or thing named by that noun. If the noun denotes a person, the apposition will
often be a word or phrase naming the title, or profession, or social position
of the person, etc., as the word Captain in the sentence, For a moment, Melanie
thought how nice Captain Butler was. Concerning the apposition the same
question may arise as concerning the attribute, namely, whether it is not part
of a phrase rather than of a sentence, and arguments similar to those applied
to the attribute may be put forward here.
As to the relation between an apposition and an attribute, there seems to be
no convincing reason for considering the apposition a special kind of
attribute. An apposition appears to have distinctive features strong enough to
establish it as a separate secondary part: it is always expressed either by a noun,
or by a phrase centred around a noun, and characterises the person or thing in a
way different from that of an attribute. This will become clear if we compare
the phrases stone wall and President Roosevelt: the relations between their
components are entirely different.
THE DIRECT ADDRESS
There are some elements of the sentence which are neither its main parts,
nor any of the usual secondary ones.
These are the direct address and the parenthesis.
The direct address and the parenthesis are often said to be outside the
sentence, in the sense that they are not an integral part of its structure but
are, as it were, added to it "from the outside". This view, however, seems
hardly justified and it is based on a rather too narrow view of the
structure of a sentence. If we were to take the term "outside the sentence" at
its face value, we should have to omit these elements, for example, when
asked to read a sentence aloud. This is never done, and should not be
done. By "structure of the sentence" we should mean the whole of a
sentence, with all the elements which it may contain, with their varying
degrees of organic unity. In this sense, then, the direct address is no less
a part of the sentence than any other word or phrase.
The direct address is a name or designation of the person or persons (or,
occasionally, thing or things) to whom the speech or writing is addressed. The
purpose may be different in different circumstances, but this does not alter
the fact that it is a direct address in all cases.
The direct address may consist of one word or of a phrase. If it is one
word, this may be the person's name, or profession, or title, or it may denote a
relationship between the person addressed and the speaker. If it is a phrase,
this may again be any of the types just mentioned, or it may be some
emotional address, whether friendly, as my dear fellow, or hostile, as you
swine, you old rascal, etc. In the latter case, it is quite clear that the speaker's
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purpose in using a direct address is to express his attitude towards the person
spoken to, whether it be friendly or otherwise. A few examples from modern
fiction will do well to illustrate the various possibilities in the structure and
function of the direct address. Quite a different emotional note is struck in the
following sentence: Jennie, darling, you're looking very pretty," he said. The
name Jennie as such is neutral in tone, but the second part of the direct address,
darling, of course expresses the speaker's emotional attitude toward the person
addressed.
The emotional range of the words and phrases used in direct address can of
course be very wide indeed
PARENTHESES AND INSERTIONS
Besides the direct address, there are other syntactical elements which are
usually said to be outside the sentence. To illustrate this, we will give two
extreme examples from modern texts: (1) Of course Mrs Elsing was simply
forced to it... (2) . . .he told Nelly that an old friend of his had visited him just
as he was about to leave, and for politeness' sake — mere politeness, that fault
in human intercourse — he had brought her with him. It will be readily seen
that there is a great difference between the additional element in the two
sentences: in (1) the phrase of course expresses the speaker's attitude towards
the thought expressed in the sentence, whereas in (2) the additional
element is of a different kind: it carries some extra information about
something mentioned in the sentence.
A parenthesis should be defined as follows: words and phrases which
have no syntactical ties with the sentence, and express the speaker's attitude
towards what he says, a general assessment of the statement, or an indica tion
of its sources, its connection with other statements, or with a wider context in
speech.
In a vast majority of cases, a parenthesis refers to the sentence or clause as
a whole. Sometimes, however, it refers only to a secondary part of the sentence.
This may be seen, for example, in the following sentences: I was deeply though
doubtless not disinterestedly anxious for more news of the old lady. Here the
parenthesis doubtless refers only to the connection between not disinterestedly and
anxious. Miss Lavish he believed he understood, but Miss Bartlett might reveal
unknown depths of strangeness, though not, perhaps, of meaning. The parenthesis
perhaps refers only to the connection between not of meaning and depths.
As to insertions, they are described as various additional statements inserted
in the sentence. The main carcass of the sentence may be, as it were,
interrupted by additional remarks, clarifications, corrections, extra information
about something, or remarks containing comparison or contrasting something
with what is expressed in the sentence, etc.
Let us, for instance, compare the two following sentences, the first of
which has an adverbial modifier at the beginning, while the second begins
with a parenthesis: Somehow it would come out all right when the war was
over. Perhaps you know best about that, but I should say.
There is a clear difference between the two, yet at the same time there is
something they have in common.
An interjection, or a phrase equivalent to an interjection, can also be
considered a kind of parenthesis (unless, of course, it is a sentence in itself).
Thus, the interjection oh in the following sentence: Oh, but she depended entirely
on her voice! can be called a parenthesis, and so can the phrase oh dear in the
sentence Oh dear, I hope I shall be a success!
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Now let us take a sentence with an insertion: And the thought that, after all, he
had not really killed her. No, no. Thank God for that. He had not. And yet
(stepping up on the near-by bank and shaking the water from his clothes) had he?
Here things are quite different. The insertion contains some information about
Clyde's movements as he was brooding in the way expressed by the main
body of the sentence.
The very fact that an insertion can only come in the middle of a
sentence, interrupting its course, while a parenthesis can also be at the
beginning or at the end of a sentence, is an important point of grammatical
difference between the two.
Glossary of linguistic terms:
1. аpposition - приложение
2. parenthesis – вводное слово
3. insertion - вставка
4.address - обращение
Additional reading:
1. стр. 231-234
2. стр. 207-209
3. –
4. –
5. –
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XXXXIII. Loose parts of sentence
The theory of loose parts of the sentence is another backward element of
syntactic theory. Even the terminology in this field is far from certain. The
term "loose" is used in English grammars chiefly with reference to the
apposition: close apposition and loose apposition are two notions opposed to
each other in grammatical theory. Another term which may be used is
"detached": detached attributes, detached adverbial modifiers, and so forth.
By loose parts of the sentence we mean such parts as are less intimately
connected with the rest of the sentence and have some sort of independence,
which finds its expression in the intonation and, in writing, in the punctuation.
The question now is, what parts of the sentence can be loose. The main
parts, subject and predicate, apparently cannot be loose, as they form the
backbone of the sentence from which other parts may be "detached". Objects
cannot apparently be loose either. So the following parts remain: attributes,
adverbial modifiers, appositions, and parentheses.
Loose Attributes
These may be expressed by the same kind of words and phrases as the usual
attributes. Their peculiarity is, that they are separated from their head word by
a pause, by an intonation of their own, and by a punctuation mark (usually a
comma) in writing. In actual speech such loose attributes often acquire
additional shades of meaning, for example, causal or concessive, which are not
expressed by any specific means, lexical or grammatical, and entirely depend
on the meanings of the words in the sentence. Loose attributes have a
somewhat larger sphere of application than ordinary ones: whereas a personal
pronoun can hardly ever be a head word for an ordinary attribute, it can be one
for a loose attribute. For instance, in the sentence: Unable to sit there any
longer with his mind tormented by thoughts of Tessie, he got up and started
walking slowly down the road towards the Fullbrights' big white house. the
phrase unable... Tessie is a loose attribute to the subject, which is a personal
pronoun. In this case the loose attribute acquires a distinctly causal shade of
meaning, and this is due to the lexical meanings of the words (mainly, the words
unable to sit and got up). Compare also: Red in the face, he opened his mouth, but
in his nervousness his voice emerged a high falsetto. Living or dead, she could
not fail him, no matter what the cost. The semantic connections between the
loose attribute and the rest of the sentence are different in the two cases, but
this depends entirely on the lexical meanings of the words involved. It is
especially the conjunction or in the second example that gives the connection a
concessive shade (living or dead — whether he was living or dead, no matter
whether he was living or dead).
Loose Adverbial Modifiers
Loose adverbial modifiers are perhaps more frequent even than loose attributes.
This is especially true of those adverbial modi fiers which do not modify any
particular part of the sentence but refer to the sentence as a whole. They are often
found at the beginning of the sentence and they point out the place, time, or the
general conditions in which the action takes place: The next day, Scarlett was
standing in front of the mirror with a comb in her hand and her mouth full of
hairpins... On the third of July, a sudden silence fell on the wires from the north, a
silence that lasted till midday of the fourth... In Aunt Pitty's house, the three women
94
looked into one another's eyes with fear they could not conceal. Of course a loose
adverbial modifier can also appear elsewhere in the sentence: Their men might be
dying, even now, on the sunparched grass of the Pennsylvania hills. From such
loose adverbial modifiers, which tend to be rather separated from the rest of the
sentence, we can, step by step, arrive at parentheses and insertions.
Loose Appositions
The term "loose" was first used in English grammatical theory with reference to
appositions. It would seem that in this field the difference between loose and ordinary
parts of the sentence was especially obvious to the authors of grammar books. And
indeed, the difference between the type of apposition found in a sentence like As for Uncle
Peter, he took it for granted that Scarlett had come to stay . and that in a sentence like
These two ladies with a third, Mrs Whiting, were the pillars of Atlanta (Idem) is
most evident. The ordinary apposition (Uncle) makes a whole with its head word, it
cannot be separated from it either in oral speech (that is, by a pause), or in a
written text (that is, by some kind of punctuation mark), whereas a loose
apposition (Mrs Whiting) is separated from its head word by these means. Loose
appositions can contain various kinds of information about the person or thing
denoted by the head word.
Loose Parentheses
Besides those parentheses which consist of one word or of a short phrase and are not
separated from the main body of the sentence either in speech or in writing (e. g.
perhaps, probably, no doubt, etc.), there are also parentheses consisting of a larger
number of words and necessarily separated from the main body of the sentence. Their
semantic relation to the sentence is basically the same as with parentheses of the first
kind. A few examples will be enough to illustrate the point: They know already, to be
sure, and everybody knows of our disgrace. At all events, I've got as far as that.
Extensive loose parentheses do not appear to be frequent in modern texts.
Glossary of linguistic terms:
1. loose - несогласованный
2. comma - запятая
Additional reading:
1. 235-236
Practical tasks:
19. Comment on the use of punctuation in the following sentences:
That was about six years ago, just after the rather confusing story of Miss Florence,
my uncle’s book, and Edwin, the boy scout.
The thing really began when I got back to Easeby, my uncle’s country home in
Shropshire.
On top of this, I was trying to read a book.
All perfectly true, no doubt.
Just then, the doorbell rang.
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XXXXIV. Complex, compound and
intermediary types of sentences
The structural classification of sentences offers division into simple and composite,
which are formed by two or more predicative lines. There are intermediary types of
sentences between simple and composite.
(1) sentences with homogeneous parts (sometimes also termed "contracted
sentences"). (2) sentences with a dependent appendix, and (3) sentences with
secondary predication. Different as they are in many respects, these phenomena are
alike in that they gradually get out of the limits of the simple sentence and approach the
composite sentence (some of them the compound, others the complex sentence).
SENTENCES WITH HOMOGENEOUS PARTS
By homogeneous parts of a sentence we mean parts of the same category (two
or more subjects, two or more predicates, two or more objects, etc.), standing in
the same relation to other parts of the sentence (for homogeneous secondary
parts we should say: standing in the same relation to the same head word). Such
sentences used to be termed "contracted sentences", as if they had been
"contracted" of two or more simple sentences. For example, the sentence I met my
relatives is "contracted" out of two sentences: I met my relatives, and I met
my friends. It introduces a sort of historical element, implying the origin of
such sentences.
This category of sentences covers a wider variety of phenomena. Some types
of sentences with homogeneous parts quite clearly fit into the general type of
simple sentences. This is the case, for instance, with sentences having two or
more homogeneous objects to one predicate, e. g. Its literary equipment
consists of a single fixed shelf stocked with old paper-covered novels, brokenbacked, coffee-stained, torn and thumbed; and a couple of little hanging
shelves with a few gifts on them ... The same can be said about sentences
having two or more homogeneous adverbial modifiers to one predicate: /
only came to thank you and return the coat you lent me. And this is also
true of sentences having two or more homogeneous attributes to one head
word — even if we take an attribute to be a secondary part of a sentence
on the same level as objects and adverbial modifiers. ' If, on the other
hand, we take an attribute to be a part of phrase, rather than of a sentence,
the presence of homogeneous attributes is still more irrelevant for the
general character of the sentence.
However, there are sentences in which only the subject keeps the
sentence together: it is the case when there are two verbal predicates, and
each predicate has its objects, adverbial modifiers, attributes to nouns
functioning as objects, etc: Madame Michel put down her netting and
surveyed him sharply over her glasses.
The reason why we cannot call this sentence compound is that it has
only one subject and thus cannot be separated into tw o clauses. If we
repeat the subject before the second predicate we shall get a compound
sentence consisting of two clauses and identical in meaning with the original
sentence with homogeneous parts. Thus the sentence Scarlett stood in her
apple-green "second-day" dress in the parlor of Twelve Oaks amid the
blaze of hundreds of candle, and saw the plain little face of Melanie
Hamilton glow into beauty... cannot be described as a compound one
because it has only one subject, but it cannot very well be described as a
simple sentence either, as its unity depends on that subject alone while the
predicates are different and each of them is accompanied by a set of
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secondary parts. So it will be safe to say that it stands somewhere between
simple and compound sentences.
SENTENCES WITH A DEPENDENT APPENDIX
Under this head we will consider some phenomena which clearly overstep
the limits of the simple sentence and tend towards the complex sentence,
but which lack an essential feature of a complex sentence. Some of these
phenomena are common to English, Russian, and other languages, while
some of them are typical of English alone.
In the first place, there are the phrases consisting of the conjunction than
and a noun, pronoun, or phrase following an adjective or adverb in the
comparative degree, as in these sentences: ...I've known many ladies who were
prettier than you... Come cheer up: it takes less courage to climb down than to
face capture: remember that. It would always be possible to expand this
appendix into a clause by adding the required form of the verb be (or do, or,
in some cases, can, etc.) Thus, for instance, the first of the above sentences
can be expanded into I've known many ladies who were prettier than you are .
. . and the second into . . . it takes less courage to climb down than it does to
face capture. After this change we get a clause introduced by the conjunction
than and the sentence is a complex one. But that should not make us think
that in the original text the verb be or do has been "omitted". These phrases
are classified among those intermediate between a simple and a complex
sentence.
Very similar to these are the sentences containing an adjective or adverb,
which may be preceded by the adverb as, and an additional part consisting of
the conjunction as and some other word (an adjective, a noun, or an adverb), as in
the following examples: His expression had been as bland and clear as the day
without cloud. They contain something which does not fit into the pattern of a
simple sentence, yet at the same time they lack something that is necessary to
make the sentence complex. So it is most natural to say that they occupy an
intermediate position between the two.
Now we shall consider the type of sentence containing a phrase which is introduced by a subordinating
conjunction: Tristram had stood about picking up letters, arranging things, as though preparing with some difficulty just
the situation he wanted. The subordinate part as though preparing is here clearly distinguished from the secondary
parts expressed by participle phrases, picking up letters and arranging things. Catherine, though a little
disappointed, had too much good nature to make any opposition. It seems much better to say that the phrase though a
little disappointed is a subordinate part than to suppose that it is a subordinate clause, with the subject she and
the link verb was ''omitted". As it is, the phrase had best be described as a loose attribute to the subject of the
sentence. Compare: Such a compliment recalled all Catherine's consciousness, and silenced her directly; and,
though pointedly applied to by the General for her choice of the prevailing colour of the paper and hangings,
nothing like an opinion on the subject could be drawn from her. There are some few cases of a subordinating
conjunction being used in a simple sentence, thus introducing no subordinate clause of any kind.
Sometimes a secondary part of a sentence is added on to it, connected with the main body of the sentence by a coordinating conjunction, although there is not in the main body any part that could in any sense be considered to be
homogeneous with the part thus added. Here is an example of this kind of sentence: Denis tried to escape, but in
vain.
Sentences containing a part thus introduced by a sub ordinating or co-ordinating conjunction are best classed
as sentences with a dependent appendix.
SECONDARY PREDICATION
Another syntactical phenomenon which is best considered under this heading
of transition to the composite sentence is based on what is very aptly termed
"secondary predication". Before starting to discuss the syntactical phenomena
involved, we shall therefore have to explain briefly what is meant by
secondary predication.
In every sentence there is bound to be predication, without which there
would be no sentence. In a usual two-member sentence the predication is
between the subject and the predicate. In most sentences this is the only
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predication they contain. However, there are also sentences which contain
one more predication, which is not between the subject and the predicate of
the sentence. This predication may conveniently be termed secondary
predication.
In Modern English there are several ways of expressing secondary
predication. One of them is what is frequently termed the complex object, as
seen in the sentences, I saw him run, We heard them sing, The public
watched the team play, I want you to come to-morrow, We expect you to visit
us, etc. Let us take the first of these sentences for closer examination. The
primary predication in this sentence is between the subject I and the
predicate saw. I is the doer of the action expressed by the predicate verb. But
in this sentence there is one more predication, that between him and run: the
verb run expresses the action performed by him. This predication is obviously
a secondary one: him is not the subject of a sentence or a clause, and run is not
its predicate. The same can be said about all the sentences given above.
On the syntactic function of the group him run (or of its elements) views
vary. The main difference is between those who think that him run is a
syntactic unit, and those who think that him is one part of the sentence, and
run another. If the phrase is taken as a syntactic unit, it is very natural to
call it a complex object: it stands in an object relation to the predicate verb
saw and consists of two elements.
If, on the other hand, the phrase him run is not considered to be a
syntactic unit, its first element is the object, and its second element is
conveniently termed the objective predicative.
The choice between the two interpretations remains arbitrary and neither
of them can be proved to be the only right one. In favour of the view that the
phrase is a syntactical unit, a semantic reason can be put forward. In some
cases the two elements of the phrase cannot be separated without changing the
meaning of the sentence. This is true, for instance, of sentences with the verb
hate. Let us take as an example the sentence, I hate you to go, which means
much the same as I hate the idea of your going, or The idea of your going is
most unpleasant to me. Now, if we separate the two elements of the phrase, that
is, if we stop after its first element: I hate you . . . , the sense is completely
changed. This shortened version expresses hatred for "you" which the original
full version certainly did not imply.
In other cases, that is, with other verbs, the separation of the two
elements may not bring about a change in the meaning of the sentence. Thus, if
we look at our example / saw him run, and if we stop after him: I saw him,
this does not contradict the meaning of the original sentence: I saw him run
implies that / saw him.
Another case in which the two elements of the phrase cannot be separated is
found when the verb expresses some idea like order or request and the second
element of the phrase is a passive infinitive. With the sentence He ordered the
man to be summoned we cannot possibly stop after man.
The objective predicative need not be an infinitive: it may be a participle (I saw him running, We heard them
singing), an adjective (I found him ill. They thought him dead), a stative (I found him asleep), sometimes an
adverb, and a prepositional phrase. The sentence I found him there admits of two different interpretations.
One of them, which seems to be the more usual, takes the sentence as an equivalent of the sentence There I
found him: the adverb there is then an adverbial modifier belonging to the verb find. The other interpretation
would make the sentence equivalent to the sentence I found that he was there. In this latter case the adverb
there does not show where the action of finding took place, and it is not an adverbial modifier belonging to the
predicate verb found. It is part of the secondary predication group him there and has then to be taken as an
objective predicative: I found him there is syntactically the same as I found him ill, or I found him asleep.
The choice between the two alternatives evidently depends on factors lying
outside grammar. From a strictly grammatical viewpoint it can be said that
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the difference between an adverbial modifier and an objective predicative is
here neutralised.
This type of secondary predication brings the sentence closer to a
composite one.
O. Jespersen has proposed the term "nexus" for every predicative grouping of words, no matter by what
grammatical means it is realised. He distinguishes between a "junction" (соединение), which is not a predicative
group of words (e. g. reading man) and "nexus" (ядерная связь), which is one (e. g. the man reads.) If this term
is adopted, we may say that in the sentence I saw him run there are two nexuses: the primary one I saw, and the
secondary him run. In a similar way, in the sentence I found him ill, the primary nexus would be I found, and
the secondary him ill.
THE ABSOLUTE CONSTRUCTION
Another type of secondary predication may be seen in the so-called
absolute construction. This appears, for instance, in the following example: She
was prepared, the situation already falling gracefully into place about her, to
consider it. Here the phrase the situation already falling gracefully into place
about her constitutes an absolute construction. The absolute construction is of
course a case of secondary predication, or, in Jespersen's terminology, a nexus.
The participle falling, which denotes an action performed by the thing denoted
by the noun situation, is not a predicate, and situation is not the subject either
of a sentence or of a clause. This is evidence that the predication contained in
the phrase is a secondary one.
Participles seem to be the most widely used types of predicative element in
the absolute construction. We find them, for example, in the following
sentences. The preliminary greetings spoken, Denis found an empty chair between
Gombauld and Jenny and sat down.
The absolute construction expresses what is usually called accompanying
circumstances — something that happens alongside of the main action. This
secondary action may be the cause of the main action, or its condition, etc.,
but these relations are not indicated by any grammatical means. The
position of the absolute construction before or after the main body of the
sentence gives only a partial clue to its concrete meaning. Thus, for example,
if the construction denotes some secondary action which accompanies the
main one without being either its cause or its condition, it always follows the
main body of the sentence; if the construction indicates the cause, or condition,
or time of the main action, it can come both before and after the main body of
the sentence.
Thus the grammatical factor plays only a subordinate part in determining
the sense relations between the absolute construction and the main body of
the sentence.
The stylistic colouring of the absolute construction should also be noted.
It is quite different in this respect from the constructions with the objective
predicative, which may occur in any sort of style. The absolute construction is,
as we have seen, basically a feature of literary style and unfit for colloquial
speech. Only a few more or less settled formulas such as weather permitting
may be found in ordinary conversation. Otherwise colloquial speech
practically always has subordinate clauses where literary style may have
absolute constructions.
A participle is by no means a necessary component of an absolute
construction. The construction can also consist of a noun and some other word
or phrase, whose predicative relation to the noun is made clear by the context.
Here are a few examples: Bone stood in a patch of sunlight on the gray carpet,
his hands behind him, his face in shadow. This example is characteristic in so far
as the subject of the sentence is a noun denoting a human being, the predicate
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group tells of his position in space, and the subjects of the two absolute
constructions are nouns denoting parts of his body (his hands and his face),
while the predicative parts of the constructions describe the position of these
parts (behind him and in the shadow).
In a few minutes she returned, her eyes shining, her hair still damp. The entire
question of whom one loved, he continued, Emma looking up from her work for the first time as she
listened, seemed to him of relative unimportance. It should also be noted that there is a subordinate clause
(of) whom one loved belonging to the subject group, and another subordinate clause, as she listened,
belonging to the absolute construction, so that the number of elements separating the predicate of the
main clause (seemed to be. . .) from its subject (the . . . question) is quite considerable. However, no
misunderstanding can arise here, though there are three finite verb forms (loved, continued, and
listened) intervening between the subject question and its predicate seemed . . . This is due to the fact
that each of these three finite verb forms is closely connected with Its own subject (in every case a
pronoun immediately preceding it), namely, one loved, he continued, she listened. Besides, it should be
noted that neither loved nor listened would have made any sense in connection with the subject
question, and as to the verb continued, it might be connected with the subject question only if the
verb were followed by an infinitive of appropriate meaning, e. g. the question continued to worry
him. As it is, continued here means 'continued to speak', which can only be connected with a
subject representing a human being.
One more remark about the absolute construction is necessary here. It
concerns the semantic ties between the absolute construction and the rest of
the sentence. For example, we can say that in the sentence She had hoped that
the war being over, life would gradually resume its old face the relations
between the construction and the rest of the sentence are causal: we can
say that the absolute construction is here a loose adverbial modifier of cause.
On the other hand, in the sentence Weather permitting, we shall start on an
excursion the relations between the construction and the rest of the sentence
are those of condition, and the absolute construction may be said to be a loose
adverbial modifier of condition. But now the question is, how do we know that it
is cause in one example, and condition in the other? This is not expressed by any
grammatical means and it only follows from the lexical meanings of the words
and the general meaning of the sentence. What is expressed by grammatical
means is merely the subordinate position of the absolute construction.
Such, then, are the syntactical phenomena which occupy a place somewhere
between the simple and the composite sentence and which may therefore be
considered as a kind of stepping stone from the one to the other.
Glossary of linguistic terms:
1. composite – сложное предложение
2. homogenious parts – однородные члены
3. secondary predication – вторичная предикация
4. dependent appendix – приложение с определяемыми словами
5. absolute construction – оборот
6. nexus – соединение слов и словосочетаний, имеющих отношения
предикации
7. junction – соединение слов и словосочетаний без предикативных
отношений
Additional reading:
1. стр. 254-264
2. стр. 213-227
3. стр. 183-193
4. стр. 303-313
5. стр. 337-357
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XXXXV. THE COMPOSITE SENTENCE. COMPOUND SENTENCES
The composite sentence, as different from the simple sentence, is formed by
2 or more predicative lines. Being a polypredicative construction, it expresses a
complicated act of thought, i.e. an act of mental activity which falls into two or
more intellectual efforts closely combined with one another. It terms of
situations and events this means that the composite sentence reflects two or
more elementary situational events viewed as making up a unity. The logical
sequence of simple sentences is not evident, so if we transform a composite
sentence into a chain of simple sentence: When I sat down to dinner I looked for
an opportunity to slip in casually the information that I had by accident run
across the Driffields; but news travelled fast in Blackstable. If we place the
sentences in their temporal succession, it will destroy the original purpose of
communication.
The use of composite sentences is characteristic of literary written speech
rather than colloquial oral speech. The three reasons for this relate to the actual
needs of expression, the possibilities of production and the conditions of
perception. This type of speech deals with lengthy reasoning, descriptions,
narrations, details. Situational foreground and background, sequence of events
is interrupted by cross-references and comments. Form the point of view of the
possibilities of production the written speech is edited, prepared, and form the
point of view of the possibilities of perception, the written speech can neglect
the limits of the recipient’s immediate memory.
The true limiters of the written sentence volume are logic and style, which
are in contradiction with each other. From the point of view of logic, the
situation can be described in one composite sentence, however long and
structurally complicated it might be. For the reasons of style the unity of events
and circumstances should be presented as a chain of simple sentences, the
whole complex of reflections forming a multisentenial paragraph. Which of the
approaches to choose, has to be decided out of considerations of form and
meaning, the purpose of the text and so on.
The first principle of classification of composite sentences is the way in
which the parts of a composite sentence (its clauses) are joined together. This
may be achieved either by means of special words designed for this function, or
without the help of such words. In the first case, the method of joining the
clauses is syndetic, and the composite sentence itself may be called
syndetic. In the second case the method of joining the clauses is asyndetic, and
so is the composite sentence itself.
SYNDETIC COMPOSITE SENTENCES
We should distinguish between two variants of syndetic joining of
sentences, the difference depending on the character and syntactic function of
the word used to join them.
This joining word may either be a conjunction, a pronoun or an adverb. If
it is a conjunction, it has no other function in the sentence but that of joining the
clauses together.
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If it is a pronoun or an adverb (i. e. a relative pronoun or a rel ative adverb),
its function in the sentence is twofold: on the one hand, it is a part of one of
the two clauses which are joined (a subject, object, adverbial modifier, etc.),
and on the other hand, it serves to join the two sentences together, that is, it
has a connecting function as well.
It is to syndetic composite sentences that the usual classification into
compound and complex sentences should be applied in the first place.
We start, then, from a distinction of compound sentences and complex
sentences. The basic difference between the two types would appear to be
clear enough: in compound sentences, the clauses of which they consist are
arranged equipotently, that is, none of them is below the other in rank, they
are co-ordinated.
In complex sentences, on the other hand, the clauses are arranged on the
relation of domination. In the simplest case, that of a complex sentence
consisting of two clauses only, one of these is the main clause, and the other a
subordinate clause, that is, it stands beneath the main clause in rank. Of
course, there may be more than one main clause and more than one
subordinate clause in a complex sentence.
So far the classification of syndetic composite sentences looks simple
enough. But as we come to the problem of the external signs showing
whether a clause is co-ordinated with another or subordinated to it, we often
run into difficulties. As often as not a clear and unmistakable sign pointing
this way or that is wanting. In such cases we have to choose between two
possible ways of dealing with the problem. Either we shall have to answer
the question in an arbitrary way, relying, that is, on signs that are not
binding and may be denied; or else we shall have to establish a third, or
inter-mediate, group, which cannot be termed either clear co-ordination or
clear subordination, but is something between the two, or something
indefinite from this point of view. It is also evident that the problem is
connected with that of co-ordinating and subordinating conjunctions.
Compound sentences consist of clauses joined together by coordinating
conjunctions. These are very few: and, but, or, for, yet, so. Concerning some
of them there may be doubts whether they are conjunctions (thus, yet may
also be supposed to be an adverb), and concerning the word for it may be
doubtful whether it is co-ordinating or subordinating. The meanings of the
conjunctions themselves are of course a question of lexicology. What concerns
us here is the type of connection between the clauses in a compound sentence.
In terms of positional structure of the sentence the subordinate clause is
placed in a notional position of the other (principal). This latter characteristic
has an essential semantic implication clarifying the difference between the two
types of polipredication. A subordinate clause, however important the
information rendered by it might be for the whole communication, presents it
as naturally supplementing the information of the principal clause. For some
of the clauses their position in the sentence is fixed: I fancy that life is more
amusing now than it was forty years ago. The position of some of the clauses
can be changed: The board accepted the decision, though it didn’t quite meet
their plans. It depends on the type of the clause. In a complex sentence the
subordinate clause refers to one notional constituent (expressed by a word or
phrase) in a principal clause. In a compound sentence the sequential clause
refers to the whole of the leading clause. So, the position of the coordinate
clause is fixed.
The semantic relations between the clauses making up the compound
sentence depend partly on the lexical meaning of the conjunction uniting them,
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and partly on the meanings of the words making up the clauses themselves. It
should be noted that the co-ordinating conjunctions differ from each other in
definiteness of meaning: the conjunction but has an adversative meaning which
is so clear and definite that there can hardly be anything in the sentence to
materially alter the meaning conveyed by this conjunction. The meaning of the
conjunction and, on the other hand, which is one of "addition", is wide enough to
admit of shades being added to it by the meanings of other words in the sentence.
This will be quite clear if we compare the following two compound sentences with
clauses joined by this conjunction: The old lady had recognised Ellen's
handwriting and her fat little mouth was pursed in a frightened way, like a baby
who fears a scolding and hopes to ward it off by tears. The bazaar had taken place
Monday night and today was only Thursday. The first sentence has a shade of
meaning of cause — result, and this is obviously due to the meanings of the
words recognised and frightened. In the second sentence there is something
like an adversative (противительное) shade of meaning, and this is due to
the relation in meaning between the word Monday in the first clause and that
of the words only Thursday in the second. In a similar way other shades of
meaning may arise from other semantic relations between words in two coordinate clauses.
Compound sentences with clauses joined by the conjunction or (or by
the double conjunction either — or) seem to be very rare. I think I see them
now with sparkling looks; or have they vanished while I have been writ ing
this description of them? Are you afraid of their biting, or is it a
metaphysical antipathy?
A typical example of a compound sentence with the conjun ction so is the
following: The band has struck, so we did our best without it.
Besides the conjunctions so far considered, there are a few more, which are
generally classed as subordinating, but which in certain conditions tend to
become co-ordinating, so that the sentences in which they occur may be
considered to be compound rather than complex, or perhaps we might put it
differently: the distinction between co-ordination and subordination, and
consequently that between compound and complex sentences, is in such cases
neutralised. This concerns mainly the conjunction while and the adverbial
clauses of time introduced by it, and the conjunction though and the adverbial
clauses of concession introduced by it.
COMPLEX SENTENCES
There is much more to be said about the complex sentence than about the
compound. This is due to several causes, which are, however, connected with
one another.
For one thing, the semantic relations which can be expressed by
subordination are much more numerous and more varied than with coordination: all such relations as time, place, concession, purpose, etc. are
expressly stated in complex sentences only.
Then again, the means of expressing subordination are much more
numerous. There is here a great variety of conjunctions: when, after, before,
while, till, until, though, although, albeit, that, as, because, since; a number of
phrases performing the same function: as soon as, as long as, so long as,
notwithstanding that, in order that, according as, etc. Besides, a certain
number of conjunctive words are used: the relative pronouns who, which, that,
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whoever, whatever, whichever, and the relative adverbs where, how, whenever,
wherever, however, why, etc.
We may note that the boundary line between conjunctions and relative
adverbs is not quite clearly drawn. We shall also see this when we come to
the adverbial clauses introduced by the word when and those introduced by
the word where. Historically speaking, conjunctions develop from adverbs,
and one word or another may prove to be in an intermediate stage, when
there are no sufficient objective criteria to define its status.
Glossary of linguistic terms:
1. compound - сложносочиненное
2. complex - сложноподчиненное
3. syndetic - союзное
4. asyndetic - бессоюзное
5. adversative - противительное
Additional reading:
1. стр. 264 – 275, 318 – 328
2. стр. 230 – 237
3. стр. 194 – 198
4. стр. 314 – 335
5. стр. 359 – 379
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XXXXVI. TYPES OF SUBORDINATE CLAUSES
Above we defined a complex sentence as a sentence containing at least one
subordinate clause. Any classification of complex sentences is therefore bound to be
based on a classification of subordinate clauses. This will accordingly be our next
task.
It might also prove expedient to have two different classifications independent of
each other and based on different principles.
The first opposition in the sphere of principles would seem to be that between
meaning, or contents, and syntactical function. But this opposition is not in itself
sufficient to determine the possible variants of classification.
From the point of view of their general nominative features all the subordinate
clauses can be divided into three categorial -semantic groups. The first group
includes clauses that name an event as a certain fact. These pure fact -clauses can
be called “substantive-nominal”. It can be checked by a substitute test: That his
letters remained unanswered annoyed him very much. – That fact annoyed him
very much. The woman knew only too well what was right and what was wrong. –
The woman knew those matters well.
The second group of clauses also name an event -fact, but, as different from the
first group, this event-fact is referred to as giving a characteristic to some
substantive entity. They can be called “qualification-nominal”. It can be proved
by the following replacement pattern: The man who came in the morning left a
message. – That man left a message. Did you find a place where we could make a
fire? – Did you find such kind of place?
The third group of clauses make their event -nomination into a dynamic
relation characteristic of another event or a process or a quality of various
descriptions. It can be called “adverbial” and can be tested by transformation:
Describe the picture as you see it. – Describe the picture in the manner you see it.
All will be well if we arrive in time. – All will be well on condition that we arrive
in time.
The categorial features of clauses go together with their functional sentence part features. Subordinate clauses are introduced by functional connective words
which effects their derivation from base sentences. They are divided into two
basic types; those that occupy a notional position in the derived clause and those
that do not occupy such a position. The non-positional subordinators are referred
to as pure conjunctions. Here belong such words as since, before, until, if, in
case, because, so that, in order that, though, however, than, as if. The positional
subordinators are in fact conjunctive substitutes. The main positional
subordinators are the pronominal words: who, what, whose, which, that, where,
when, why, as. Some of these words are double -functional. Also the zero
subordinator can be named, whose polyfunctional status is similar to the stat us of
the subordinator that.
Under the head of "function" we may bring either the position of a clause within a complex sentence, defined
on the same principles as the position of a sentence part within a simple sentence, or (as is sometimes done) on
the analogy between a clause and a part of speech performing the same function within a simple sentence. Besides, for
certain types of clauses there may be ways of characterising them in accordance with their peculiarities, which
find no parallel in other clau ses. For instance, clauses introduced by a relative pronoun or relative adverb may
be termed "relative clauses", which, however, is not a point of classification.
In order to obtain a clearer idea of how these various principles would work out in practice, let us take a complex
sentence and define its subordinate clauses in accordance with each of these principles. Let the sentence be this: It
was unreal, grotesquely unreal, that morning skies which dawned so tenderly blue could be pr ofaned with cannon
smoke that hung over the town like low thunder clouds, that warm noontides filled with the piercing sweetness of
massed honeysuckle and climbing roses could be so fearful, as shells screamed into the streets, bursting like the crack of
doom, throwing iron splinters hundreds of yards, blowing people and animals to bits. (M. MITCHELL) Let us first look at the
two subordinate clauses introduced by the conjunction that: (1) that morning skies. .. could be profaned with cannon
smoke, (2) that warm noontides.. , could be so fearful. From the point of view of meaning they may be called
declarative clauses, or subordinate statements, l as they contain statements which are expressed in subordinate
clauses. From the point of view of function they may be termed, if we cons ider them as something parallel to parts
of a simple sentence, either appositions to the impersonal it which opens the sentence, or subject clauses, if we take the
view that the it is merely an introductory subject, or a "sham" subject, as it is sometimes called. If, last not least,
we wish to compare the clauses to the part of speech which might perform the corresponding function in a simple
105
sentence, we may call them noun clauses, or substantive clauses, which is a very usual way of treating them
in English school grammars.
Now let us turn to the clause coming after the noun skies of the first subordinate clause: which dawned so
tenderly blue. From the viewpoint of meaning this clause can also be said to be declarative, or a subordinate
statement. It may also be termed a relative clause, because it is introduced by a relative pronoun and has a relative
connection with the noun skies (or the phrase morning skies). From the functional point of view it may be called an
attributive clause, and if we compare it to the part of speech which might perform the corresponding function in
a simple sentence, we may call it an adjective clause, which is also common in English school grammars. The same
considerations also apply to the clause that hung over the town like low thunder clouds; it is evident from the context
that the word that which opens the clause is a relative pronoun (without it the clause would have no subject). Now
we take the last subordinate clause: as shells screamed into the streets, bursting like the crack of doom, throwing iron
splinters hundreds of yards, blowing people and animals to bits. This again would be a declarative clause or a
subordinate statement, and from the viewpoint of function it may be termed an adverbial clause, as it corresponds to
an adverbial modifier in a simple sentence. More exactly, it might be termed an adverbial clause of time. Now, for the
last item, if we compare it to the part of speech performing the corresponding function in a simple sentence, we might
term it an adverb clause, which, however, is too close to the term "adverbial clause" to be of much use in
distinguishing the two notions.
To sum up these various possibilities, we have, for the first two clauses, the following terms: declarative clause, or
subordinate statement; apposition clause, or subject clause; noun clause. For the second two clauses: declarative
clause, or subordinate statement; attributive clause; adjective clause. For the clause coming last: declarative, or
subordinate statement; adverbial clause of time; adverb clause.
The term "relative clause" may very well be applied to any clause introduced by a relative pronoun or relative
adverb.O. Jespersen devotes several chapters of his book "A Modern English Grammar" to relative clauses. In
accordance with his general view that elements of language may be divided into primaries, adjuncts, and subjuncts, he
treats the syntactical functions of subordinate clauses as falling under these heads: "relative clauses as
primaries" and "relative clause adjuncts".
From the viewpoint of function the subordinate clauses of these types are of course quite different, yet they
may be all termed "relative clauses". This makes it evident that the notion "relative clause" is not a notion of
syntactic function, since it cuts r ight across syntactical divisions.
There remains now the classification of subordinate clauses based on the similarity of their
functions with those of parts of the sentence, namely the classification of clauses into subject,
predicative, object, attributive, adverbial, appositional, and parenthetical clauses. In this way
the general parallelism between parts of a simple sentence and subordinate clauses within
a complex sentence will be kept up; however, there is no sufficient ground for believing
that there will be complete parallelism in all respects and all d etails: on the contrary, it is
most likely that differences between the two will emerge (especially in the sphere of
adverbial modifiers and adverbial clauses). Subordinate clauses may well be expecte d to
have some peculiarities distinguishing them from parts of a simple sentence.
SUBJECT AND PREDICATIVE CLAUSES
SUBJECT CLAUSES
A clause which performs within a complex sentence the same function that the
subject performs within a simple sentence. Clauses of this kind are introduced
either by a relative or interrogative pronoun or adverb, or by the conjunction
that. We give some examples of each variety. What had happened was that I had
spent too much time in the French Quarter, mostly in jazz bars alo ng Bourbon
Street, but I planned to make up for it by getting my order book filled in Baton
Rouge and Shreveport and thereby make a good showing at the sales conference
in Dallas. What she considered his monkey's, Simon's, value, for instance, was not
lost upon her. In the following sentence there is one subject clause and two
predicative clauses to it: What they learn from me is that they're never going to
have it so good again; that the great ones, the ones they read, saw it all as
pretty black.
The reason for calling these clauses subject clauses would seem to be clear: if
the clause is dropped, the subject is mis sing.
Things are somewhat more difficult and controversial in sentences like the
following: It had seemed certain that their meeting was fortu nate. Here the main
clause has the pronoun it (in its impersonal use) occupying the position
assigned to the subject of the sentence, and after the main clause comes a
subordinate clause whose syntactical function we are to consider now. Two
views appear to be possible here. One of them is that the pronoun it at the
beginning of the main clause is only a "formal subject", or, as it is sometimes
termed, a "sham subject", whereas the subordinate clause coming after the main
one is the real subject. The other view is, that the position of the subject is
occupied by the pronoun it, and, whether "formal" or not, it is the subject of the
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sentence, so that no room is left for any other subject.. If this view is accepted,
the clause will have to be some other kind of clause, not a subject clause. The
best way of treating it in that case would be to take it as a kind of appositional
(приложение) clause referring to the subject of the main clause, namely the
pronoun it.
PREDICATIVE CLAUSES
By predicative clauses we mean the clause ajoining a link-verb and performing
the part of the predicate: This was exactly what she had expected him to say and
for the first time she did not go closer and squeeze his hand intimately. "The only
comforting feature of the whole business," he said, "is that we didn't pay for our
dinner."
We must also consider under the heading of predicative clauses the following type:
"It's because he's weak that he needs me," she added. Here the subordinate clause in
question is included within the construction it is . .. that and thus singled out as the
rheme of the complex sentence. This clause would occupy a different position in the
sentence if it were not singled out; for instance, the sentence just mentioned would run
like this: He needs me because he's weak and the clause would be a clause of cause.
As the sentence stands, however, the clause is treated as a predicative one.
Sometimes we can even find two or three subordinate clauses singled out by being included into the frame it
is . . . that. Here is an example which may be called extreme: It was whether one loved at all, and how much that love
cost, and what was its reception then, that mattered. It may be interesting to note that it would probably have been
impossible to have these three clauses as subject clauses, with the predicate mattered, and without the it is ...
that construction. That the three clauses are subordinate, is shown by several facts: ( 1 ) the conjunction
whether, which is a sure sign of a subordinate clause, (2) the form of the predicate verb in the second subordinate
clause: cost, not did cost, as it would have been in an independent clause (how much did this love cost?); as to the
third subordinate clause, its subordinate status is shown by its being co-ordinated with the other two subordinate
clauses by means of the conjunction and.
Not infrequently there is both a subject clause and a predicative clause in a
complex sentence. The only element outside these clauses is then the link verb. What
I am positive about is that he never expected a wife who would please the family.
OBJECT CLAUSES
The object clause denotes an object-situation of the process expressed by the
verbal constituent of the principal clause.
He bought what he wanted. If we drop the subordinate clause what he wanted
we get the unfinished sentence He bought .. ., which has no definite meaning until we
add some word that will function as an object. This may of course be any noun
denoting a thing that can be bought, for instance, He bought a briefcase. The similarity
in syntactical position between a briefcase and the subordinate clause what he wanted
appears to be sufficient reason for saying that what he wanted is an object clause.
The same may be said about the sentence Tom may marry whom he likes. 1 Here
the clause whom he likes may be replaced by any noun that will fit into the context,
for instance, by any feminine name: Tom may marry Jane, where Jane will be an
object. This, again, seems sufficient reason for stating that the clause whom he likes
is an object clause: its syntactical function is the same as that of the noun Jane which
we put in its place. This sentence differs from the preceding in one respect: the
subordinate clause may be eliminated without the sentence becoming impossible or
incomplete: Tom may marry. This of course depends on the meaning of the verb marry,
which in the sense 'enter upon a married state' does not necessarily require a noun or
pronoun to make the meaning of the sentence complete.
There is also another type of object clause. Th is is found in sentences having
in the main clause a predicate verb which combines almost exclusively with
object clauses and only with a very few possible objects (within a simple
sentence). A typical verb of this kind is the verb say. Compare the following
example: She could not say what is was. If we drop the subordinate clause we get
the unfinished sentence She could not say. . . The words that can come after the
verb say and perform the function of object in a simple sentence are very few
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indeed: these are chiefly the pronouns this, that, anything, everything, and the
noun the truth.
On the whole it may be said that subordinate clauses are much more characteristic
of the verb say than an object in a simple sentence.
The same may be said about the verb ask. If we take the sentence She asked
whether this was true, and drop the subordinate clause, we shall get the unfinished
sentence She asked. . . The possibilities of completing this sentence by means of an
object within the framework of a simple sentence are again very limited: there
may be the pronouns this, that, something, nothing, and the noun a question. In
this case, too, a subordinate clause is much more characteristic of the verb than an
object in a simple sentence.
Occasionally an object clause may come before the main clause: .. .whatever
courtesy I have shown to Mrs Hurtle in England I have been constrained to show her. In
this example the object clause, which of course depends on the predicate have been
constrained to show of the head clause, comes first. This is a clear indication that the
object clause represents the theme of the sentence, whereas the rheme is represented
by the head clause, and the most important element in this rheme is of course the word
constrained. In fact the essential meaning of the sentence might have been put briefly
in these words: My courtesy to Mrs Hurtle was constrained. In that case the theme
would be represented by the subject group, and the rheme by the predicate.
In speaking of object clauses, special attention must be paid to clauses
introduced by prepositions. These clauses may be termed prepositional object clauses, on
the analogy of prepositional objects in a simple sentence.
We must note that a prepositional object in a simple sentence does not always
correspond to a prepositional object clause: for instance, the verb insist, which
always combines with the preposition on (or upon) in a simple sentence, never has this
preposition when followed by an object clause.
Most verbs, however, which combine with a preposition in a simple sentence, do
so in a complex sentence as well: a case in point is the verb depend, which always
combines with the preposition on (or upon), no matter what follows: compare It
depends on what you will say, It depends on whether you will come.
The following example is very illuminating since a prepositional clause going
with the verb think is then followed by prepositional objects within the main clause:
He thought for a few minutes of what she had said, and of all that they stood for.
Compare also the following example: He questioned me on what Caroline had said.
By substituting a phrase for the clause introduced by the preposition on, we get a
simple sentence with a prepositional object, e. g. He questioned me on Caroline's
opinion. So the prepositional clause is clearly shown to be the equivalent, in a
complex sentence, of a prepositional object in a simple one.
I could not write what is known as the popular historical biography. The
corresponding simple sentence would be, I could not write a popular historical
biography. So if we term the noun a biography the direct object in the latter
sentence, there seems to be no reason whatever to deny that the subor dinate clause in
the former sentence is an object clause.
The specific qualities of an object clause as distinct from an object in a
simple sentence are not difficult to state.
An object clause (clauses of indirect speech included) is necessary when the
notion to be expressed cannot conveniently be summed up in a noun, or a
phrase with a noun as its head word, or a gerund and a gerundial phrase, but
requires an explicit predicative unit, that is, a subject and a predicate of its
own. Or, to put it in a different way: an object clause is necessary when what is
to be added to the predicate verb is the description of a situation, rather than a
mere name of a thing.
In some cases, though, an object in a simple sentence may have a synonymous
object clause, as in the following cases: I heard of his arrival — I heard that he had
arrived, etc. The meaning of the two sentences in each case is exactly the same, but
there is a certain stylistic difference: the simple sentence with the prepositional
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object sounds rather more literary or even bookish than the complex sentence with
the object clause, which is fit for any sort of style.
ATTRIBUTIVE CLAUSES
Subordinate clauses of secondary nominal positions include attributive clauses of
various syntactic functions. They fall into two major classes: descriptive and
restrictive, limiting attributive clauses. The descriptive attributive clause exposes
some characteristic of the substantive referent as such, while the restrictive
attributive clause performs a purely identifying role, singling out the thing in the
given situation.
At last we found a place where we could make a fire. - descriptive
The place where we could make a fire was not a lucky one. - restrictive
An attributive clause (referred to as relative clause, because it is introduced by relative
pronouns and adverbs) tells us which person or thing (or what kind of person or thing)
the speaker means. The connective, which introduces the attributive clause, depends on
the semantics of the word it describes: if it describes a person, it is introduced by the
pronouns who, that or whose – A widow is a woman whose husbans died, a thing – that
or which – I didn’t get the job (that, which) I applied for, a place – where – A cemetery
is a place where people are buried, “the reason” – why, that or asyndetically – The
reason (why, that) the plane couldn’t land was the storm, time (“the day”, “the last
time”) – that or asyndetically – Do you remember the day (that) we met?.
Among the descriptive clauses there are those giving additional characteristics of the
substantive referent and additional information about it: We decided not to swim in the
sea, which looked rather dirty. These extra information descriptive clauses are separated
by commas, we can’t use conjunction “that” in them, and the connective can’t be
ommitted: My sister, who you once met, is visiting us next week. In some cases it is for
the author to decide whether this clause is that of indispencible or extra information,
which is shown in the oral form by intonation, and in the written form – by the use of
commas. The new stadium(,) which holds 50 thousand people(,) will be opened next
month.
Some descriptive attributive clauses have the whole of the main clause as the
substantive referent. In this case they are also separated by commas: The weather was
very good, which we hadn’t expected.
A subordinate clause is analogous to that of an attribute in a simple sentence.
It differs from an attribute in so far as it characterises the thing denoted by its head
word through some other action or situation in which that thing is involved. This
could not, in many cases at least, be achieved within the limits of a simple sentence.
Compare, for example, the sentence By October Isabelle was settled in the house
where, she intended, she would live until she died. The clause where ... she would
live with the dependent clause until she died contains information which could not
be compressed into an attributive phrase within a simple sentence.
The question about the place of an attributive clause d eserves a few remarks.
Most usually, of course, an attributive clause comes immediately after its head word.
This is too common to need illustration. But that is by no means an absolute
rule. Sometimes an attributive clause will come, not immediately after its head
word, but after some other word or phrase, not containing a noun. This is the case,
for instance, in the following sentence: He wanted Ann to die, whom his son
passionately loved, whom he had himself once come near to loving. The intervening
infinitive to die, coming between the attributive clauses and their hea d word Ann,
does not in any way impede the connection between them.
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A different kind of separation is found in the following sentence: Jeremy saw the
scene breaking upon him that he had dreaded all day and he felt no energy to
withstand it. The subordinate clause that he had dreaded all day has the noun scene
as its head word. Now this noun forms part of the complex object the scene breaking
upon him. No ambiguity is created by the separation, as the subordinate clause
cannot possibly refer to the pronoun him, and there is no noun between scene and
the subordinate clause. That the word that is the relative pronoun and not the
conjunction, is seen from the fact that dreaded, being a transitive verb, has no
object coming after it; that the phrase all day is not an object is obvious because
if the thing denoted by it were thought of as the object of the action the phrase
must have been all the day.
ADVERBIAL CLAUSES
With reference to adverbial clauses a question arises that is not always easy
to answer, namely: whether they modify some part of the main clause or the main
clause as a whole. The answer may prove to be different for different types of
adverbial clauses and the question will have to be considered for each type
separately. The criteria to be applied in settling this question have, however (at least
partly), to be stated in advance.
We will first try out a method that has proved valid, on the whole, for
determining whether a clause is an object clause or not. It will serve both for finding
whether a clause is an adverbial clause or not, and if it is one, what it modifies. The
method consists in dropping the clause in question and finding out what has been
lost by dropping it and what part of the main clause has been affected by the
omission (it may be the whole of the main clause). If this method does not yield
satisfactory results in some particular case we will think of possible other ways of
ascertaining the function of the subordinate clause.
The conjunctions introducing adverbial subordinate clauses are numerous and differ
from each other in the degree of definiteness of meaning. While some of them have a
narrow meaning, so that, seeing the conjunction, we may be certain that the adverbial
clause belongs to a certain type (for example, if the conjunc tion is because, there is
no doubt that the adverbial clause is a clause of cause), other conjunctions have so
wide a meaning that we cannot determine the type of adverbial clause by having a look at
the con-junction alone: thus, the conjunction as may introduce different types of
clauses, and so can the conjunction while. With these conjunctions, other words in the
sentence prove decisive in determining the type of adverbial clause introduced by the
conjunction.
TYPES OF ADVERBIAL CLAUSES
Some adverbial clauses can be easily grouped under types more or less
corresponding to the types of adverbial modifiers in a simple sentence, which have
been considered above. Others are more specific for the complex sentence and do not
fit into "pigeonholes" arranged in accordance with the analysis of the simple sentence.
Among those that will easily fit into such "pigeonholes" are clauses denoting place,
those denoting time (or temporal clauses), clauses of cause, purpose, and
concession, and also those of result. There are also clauses of comparison and of
degree.
Clauses of Place
There appears to be only one way of introducing such clauses, and this is by
means of the relative adverb where, and in a very few cases by the phrase from where.
For instance, . . .Miss Dotty insisted on looking into all the cupboards and behind the
curtains to see, as she said, "if there were any eyes or ears where they were not wanted."
This way of indicating the whereabouts of "eyes or ears" serves to characterise it by
referring to a situation expressed by the subordinate clause, rather than to indicate the
precise places meant. Then go where you usually sleep at night. Here the room where the
person addressed is asked to go is characterised by what takes place there.
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Here is an example of a prepositional where-clause denoting place in the
literal sense of the term: From where he stood, leaning in an attitude of despair
against the parapet of the terrace, Denis had seen them. . . The clause from ... the
terrace denotes the place from which the action of the main clause (Denis had
seen) was performed. Occasions for this particular way of denoting the place of an
action appear to be rather rare.
The number of sentences with an adverbial clause of place is negligible as
compared with those containing an adverbial clause of time. The cause of this is
plain enough. It is only in exceptional cases that the speaker or writer deems it
necessary to denote the place of an action by referring to another action which
occurred at the same place. In the vast majority of cases he will rather indicate the
place by directly naming it (at home, in London, at the nearest shop, and so forth).
Sentences with adverbial clauses of place are therefore used only in cases where the
speaker or writer avoids naming the place of the action, or in sentences of a
generalising character, or again in sentences where the place is perhaps hard to define
and the name is unimportant.
Clauses of place can also be used in a metaphorical sense, that is, the "place"
indicated may not be a place at all in the literal meaning of the word but a certain
generalised condition or sphere of action. This of course is made clear by the
context, that is, by the lexical meanings of the other words in the sentence.
Compare the following sentences. Wherever the choice has had to be made between
the man of reason and the madman, the world has unhesitatingly followed the
madman. Both the adverb wherever and the meaning of the sentence as a whole
show that not a concrete place but a general review of conditions is meant.
Proverb: Where there is a will there is a way
Clauses of Time (Temporal Clauses)
The number of conjunctions used to introduce temporal clauses is very
considerable, and it seems to be growing still at the ex -pense of nouns denoting
time units, with the definite article, such as the moment, the instant, etc.
Temporal clauses are used much more frequently than clauses of space.
On the one hand, time relations are much more varied than space relations.
If we want to indicate the time when an action occurred by referring it to another
action, the time relations between the two may be various. The one action may be
taking place at the very time when the other action was being carried out; or it
may have begun a short while after the other action was finished, or it may have
ended just as the other action was about to begin, etc., etc.
On the other hand, it is a very common occurrence to ind icate the time of an
action by referring it to the time of another action, with which it happens to be
connected either by some causal link or by a coincidence in time. The speaker or
writer may in many cases use this way of indicating the time of an action, rather
than an adverbial modifier of time in a simple sentence (such as, at five o'clock,
etc.), because the exact time may be either unknown (this especially refers to
actions in the future), or irrelevant. The time relation between the action of the
main clause and that of the subordinate clause may be expressed with a very great
degree of exactness: the two actions may be simultaneous, or the one may
precede the other, or follow it, or it may last until the other has begun, etc.
There is one more point to be noted here. The action of the head clause may be
connected with that of the temporal clause by some causal tie, that is, if the action
of the temporal clause did not take place, that of the main clause would not take
place either; or the connection may be purely temporal, with no causal relation
implied. This is especially characteristic of temporal clauses indicating natural
phenomena, such as sunrise, sunset, etc., which are not the cause of anything
happening in human relations but merely an external method of reckoning time
as it passes. The cases of the first kind (with causal relation implied) are to be seen
in the following examples: She made a little curtsy as he bowed... She was busy
enough, and on most nights her eyes closed the minute her head touched the pillow.
A case of the second kind (with no causal relation implied) is seen in an example of a
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different character: As she stood hanging to the sill, a deafening explosion burst on
her ears, louder than any cannon she had ever heard.
Occasionally a when-clause indicates an action opposed to that of the main
clause, rather than the time when that main action occurred: Where on earth
was the double game, when you've behaved like such a saint? Here, too, it is the
lexical meanings of the words which make the relation clear. Of course a whenclause of this kind can only come after its head clause.
There are two more points to be mentioned in connection with temporal clauses, and they both bear on the
temporal clause losing its subordinate character and tending to become independent of the clause with which it is
connected.
One of these is the type of sentence which consists of a clause narrating some situation and followed by a whenclause telling of an event which burst into the situation and which is the central point of the whole sentence.
Such a when-clause always comes after the main clause and this may be considered its grammatical peculiarity. A clear
example of this type may be seen in the following sentence: Judith had just gone into her room and closed the door
when she heard a man's voice in the parlour, and in a few minutes she heard the closing of Eve's bedroom door. It is quite
clear here that the when-clause does not indicate the time when the action of the first clause took place but
contains the statement which is the centre of the whole composite sentence. It is also evident that a when-clause of this
kind must necessarily come after the head clause within the composite sentence. Compare also the following passages:
It was the middle of the August afternoon when Harry Emory got back to his office at the canning factory after
lunch and he felt drowsy and sluggish and downright lazy in the summer heat. Once more, we see from the lexical
meanings of the words that the when-clause does not indicate the time when the action of the other clause took
place. It might indeed be argued that it is the other way round: the first clause indicates the time when the action of
the when-clause took place. This way of constructing the sentence seems to be designed to lay the main stress on the
time indication, that is, to mark it out as the rheme of the whole sentence.
The conjunction while, as is well known, expresses simultaneity of an action with another action.
However, this meaning of simultaneity can, under certain conditions, change into a different meaning alto gether.
If, say, two people simultaneously perform quite different actions, possibly opposed to one another in
character, this state of things may serve to characterise the two people as opposed to each other. This may be
the meaning of a sentence like the following: Magnus briefly outlined the case for the independent sovereignty of
Scotland, while Frieda listened without any remarkable interest. It is clear that the while-clause does not here
express the time when the action of the first clause took place: it rather ex presses an action opposed in its
character to the first action, and in this much it serves to characterise the doer of the action. We might here put
the conjunction and instead of while and the actual meaning would be the same, though the sentence would
now be a compound one. Since, therefore, the function of the second clause is quite different from the usual
function of a subordinate adverbial temporal clause, and since no purely grammatical peculiarities make it
necessary to term the second clause a subordinate one, we m ay say that it is not su bordinate and the
sentence not complex.
Causal Clauses
The similarity between temporal and causal clauses is man ifested by the fact
that both kinds of clauses can be introduced by the conjunction as, and nothing but
the context, i. e. the lexical meanings of the words involved, will enable us to tell
whether the clause is temporal or causal. Thus the difference between the two
kinds is not grammatical in these cases. Let us consider the following two
examples: For ever since he had fled from Kansas City, and by one humble device
and another forced to make his way, he had been coming to the conclusion that on
himself alone depended his future, with a clearly temporal meaning, and "So,"
said Helen, "since you obviously don't know how t o behave in Great Britain, I
shall take you back to France directly " , where the connection is causal.
There would be no necessity to analyse the meanings of the words, etc., if
the subordinate clause were introduced by a conjunction which can have one
meaning only, for instance, the conjunction because. No clause introduced by
this conjunction could ever be a temporal clause.
A special problem, which has received much attention, a ttaches to clauses
introduced by the conjunction for. In many ways they are parallel to clauses
with because
But at the same time there is a basic difference between the two types. Becauseclauses indicate the cause of the action expressed in the main clause. They can be
used separately as an answer to the question why...?, as in the following bit of
dialogue: "I must have come." "Why?" "Because I must. Because there would
have been no other way." A for-clause could not possibly be used in this way. The
reason is that a far-clause expresses an additional thought, that is, it is added on to
a finished part of the sentence, as in the following extract: "What game are they
all playing?" poor Fleda could only ask; for she had an intimate conviction that
Owen was now under the roof of his betrothed.
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It would also be impossible to replace because by for in the following
sentence: But either because the rains had given a freshness, or because the sun was
shedding a most glorious heat, or because two of the gentlemen were young in
years and the third young in the spirit — for some reason or other a change came
over them.
This peculiarity of for-clauses as distinct from because-clauses is in full
harmony with the fact that for-clauses can also come after a full stop, thus
functioning as separate sentences, much as sen tences introduced by the
conjunction but do, as in the following extract: This thought cheered him and
caused him to step along most briskly and gaily. For, since having indulged in
this secret adventure so long time, both were unconsciously becoming bolder.
Conditional Clauses
Conditional clauses may be introduced by several conjunctions such as if (the
most general one), unless, provided, supposing (with more specialised
meanings), and the phrase in case.
An essential peculiarity of conditional clauses, or, we should rather say, of
conditional sentences (including both the main and the subordinate clause), is the
use of verbal forms. Here the actual meaning of a verbal form depends entirely on
the syntactical context: it may acquire a meaning which it would never have
outside this context.
The classification of conditional sentences is familiar enough. The main types
are three: (1) If we can get to the bicycles, we shall beat him. (2) If they could derive
advantage from betraying you, betray you they would . . . (3) If you had been
arguing about a football match I should have been ready to take a more lenient
view of the case,..
There may, however, also be other types, with the action of the subordinate
clause belonging to the past and its consequence to the present, e. g. Anyhow, if
you hadn't been ill, we shouldn't have you here, etc.
Subordinate conditional clauses can also, like some types of clauses considered
above become independent sentences expressing wish. From a sentence like If I had
known this in advance 1 should have done everything to help, etc., the conditional
clause may be separated and become an independent exclamatory sentence: If I
had known this in advance! The conjunction if in such a case apparently ceases
to be a conjunction, since there is no other clause here. The conjunction then
becomes a particle typical of this kind of exclamatory sentence. The following
examples will illustrate this point: If only she might play the question loud enough to
reach the ears of this Paul Steitler.
Clauses of Result
Clauses of result give rise to some discussion, since the distinction between them
and some other types of subordinate clauses is in some cases doubtful and to a
certain extent arbitrary.
It should first of all be noted that the term "clauses of result" must n ot be taken
to imply that the result was necessarily planned in advance, or that it was
consciously aimed at. The result may have been brought about without anybody's
intention. So these clauses might be termed "clauses of consequence", but since that
term is also liable to different interpretations, we may as well stick to the usual term
"clauses of result".
Clauses of result may be connected with the head clause in either of two ways: (1)
the clause is introduced by the conjunction that, while in the head clause there is the
pronoun such or the adverb so, which is correlative with the conjunction; (2) the
subordinate clause is introduced by the phrase so that.
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The latter variety does not give rise to any special discussion. Lot us, for instance,
take the sentence: In the centre of the chamber candlesticks were set, also brass, but
polished, so that they shone like gold.
The head clause describes a situation, and the subordinate clause says what the
result (or consequence) of that action was.
Things are somewhat less clear with clauses of the first variety (those introduced
by the conjunction that, with a correlative such or so in the head clause). Here two
possible ways of interpreting the facts appear. Let us take a sentence with the
adverb so in the head clause correlative with the conjunction that introducing the
subordinate clause: She was so far under his influence that she was now inclined to believe
him. One way to look at this sentence is this: the head clause tells of some state of
things, and the subordinate clause of another state of things which came as a result or
consequence of the first. Taken in this way, the clause appears as a clause of result.
However, that is not the only possible way of taking it. The other way would be this:
the subordinate clause specifies the degree of the state of things expressed in the
head clause by illustrating the effect it had. If the sentence is taken in isolation, it is
absolutely impossible to tell which of the two views gets closer to the mark.
If the intensity of the state is described in the head clause and in that case the
subordinate clause would have to be taken as an adverbial clause of result. With
another sequel, it would be obvious that the state of things described in the second
clause had no interest as such, but was mentioned exclusively in order to illustrate the
degree of the state of things described in the head clause. In that case the clause may
be taken as an adverbial clause of degree.
It remains now for us to consider the mutual relations between an adverbial
clause of result and an adverbial modifier of result in a simple sentence.
Adverbial modifiers of result in a simple sentence are extremely rare. Here is a case
in point: She was shaken almost to tears by her anger. Taking into account the lexical
meanings of the words involved, we may perhaps term the phrase almost to tears an
adverbial modifier of result.
In the vast majority of cases the result is an action or a situation which cannot be
adequately expressed without a subordinate clause.
Clauses of Purpose
Clauses expressing purpose may, as is well known, be introduced either by the
conjunction that or by the phrase in order that. There is a basic difference between
the two variants. A clause introduced by in order that is sufficiently characterised as a
clause of purpose, and nothing else is needed to identify it as such. A clause
introduced by that, on the other hand, need not necessarily be a clause of purpose:
it can also belong to one of several other types . To identify it as a clause of
purpose other indications are needed, and the most usual of these is the verb may
(might) or should as part of its predicate.
A clause of purpose can also be introduced by the phrase so that, and some special
signs are needed to distinguish it from a clause of result.
Let us take as an example the following sentence with two clauses
introduced by the phrase so that. Although slightly nearsighted, Elisabeth, so that
nothing might damage the charm of her dark brown eyes, tragic and wide apart
under straight brows, wore no glasses but carried instead a miniature lorgnette,
for which she now searched in her purse, unobtrusively and on her lap so that
Steitler, who was speaking to her son, would not notice.
Both clauses here are clauses of purpose, not result, and this is seen from the
following facts: as to the first clause, its position between the subject of the main
clause (Elizabeth), and its predicate (wore), shows beyond doubt that it cannot express
result: the result could not possibly be mentioned before the action bringing it about
was stated. Another point speaking in favour of the clause being one of purpose is
its predicate (might damage). As to the second clause introduced by so that, its
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position at the end of the sentence does not tell anything about its being a clause of
purpose or of result. That it is a clause of purpose is seen from the predicate
(would not notice), which would have no reasonable sense in a clause of result. If
we make a slight change and replace the predicate would not notice by did not
notice, the clause will decidedly be a clause of result. So the meaning of the clause
appears to depend entirely on the verb would.
Compare also the following sentence: Mrs Cox did not object to this so long as
they talked English, so that she could keep a line on the conversation; if it was French,
she did not know what they were up to. Here the words talked English and could keep a
line point to the meaning of purpose, rather than result.
Clauses of Concession
These clauses express some circumstance despite which the action of the main
clause is performed. They are of several types. One type comprises clauses introduced
by the conjunctions though, although, and (in a somewhat high-flown style) albeit,
which can have no other meaning but the concessive. Another type is represented by
clauses of the pattern "predicative (noun or adjective) + as + subject + link verb", in
which the concessive meaning is not directly expressed by the conjunction as or,
indeed, by any other single word, but arises out of the combined lexical meanings of
different words in the sentence.
The first type may be illustrated by such sentences as: Resolutely she smiled, though
she was trembling. It does not call for any special comment for the time being. The
second type may be seen, for example, in the sentence Clever as he was, he jailed
to grasp the idea, where the concessive meaning arises from the contrast in meaning
between the word clever, on the one hand, and the phrase failed to grasp, on the other.
If this needs any proof, it can be provided by the simple expedient of introducing a
change into the head clause, namely, replacing the phrase failed to grasp by the word
grasped: Clever as he was, he grasped the idea — here the meaning is causal, rather than
concessive, and this of course depends only on the combination of lexical meanings of
the words clever and grasped. The pattern of the sentence, with the conjunction as a
part of it, merely expresses some kind of connection between what is expressed in the
subordinate clause and what is said in the head clause.
Adverbial modifiers of concession are occasionally found in a simple sentence,
and the preposition despite or the phrase in spite of is the usual way of introducing
them. When the obstacle opposing the performance of the action is some other
action, especially when it is performed by another agent, the more usual way of
expressing it is by a subordinate clause.
Clauses introduced by the conjunction though can also, in certain circumstances, go
beyond their essential concessive meaning; that is, in these circumstances they do
not denote an action or situation in spite of which the action of the other clause takes
place. Such clauses may be emancipated, that is, they may acquire an independent
standing, and even become a separate sentence, as in the following example: I
suppose that I am ticketed as a Red there now for good and will be on the general
blacklist. Though you never know. You never can tell. The sentence Though you never
know does not express an obstacle to the statement contained in the preceding
sentence, but a new idea, or an afterthought limiting what had been said before.
The second type of concessive clause is seen in the following sentences: . . . and
great as was Catherine's curiosity, her courage was not equal to a wish of
exploring them (the mysterious apartments.) after dinner. It is the combination of
lexical meanings great ... curiosity, courage . . . not equal that shows the
meaning to be concessive. But deplorable as it might be, and undoubtedly was,
there was another aspect of the case that more vitally concerned himself. It is the
words another and more vitally that point to the concessive meaning. Compare also:
And yet somewhere through all this gentleness ran a steel cord, for his staff was
perpetually surprised to find out that, inattentive as he appeared to be, there
was no detail of the business which he did not know; while hardly a transaction
he made did not turn out to be based on a stroke of judgement.
Another type again may be seen in a sentence like this: Coinciding with his holiday
inclinations this request might have been successful in whatever words it had been couched..
Here it seems to be the meaning of the pronoun whatever which lies at the bottom of
the concessive meaning of the clause.
Clauses of Manner and Comparison
These two kinds of adverbial clauses are not easily kept apart. Sometimes the clause is
clearly one of manner, and does not contain or imply any comparison, as in the
following sentences: You must explain Barbary to him as best you can. Sometimes, on the
other hand, the clause is clearly one of comparison, and does not contain or imply
an indication of manner, as in the following sentence: His wife must be a lady and a
lady of blood, with as many airs and graces as Mrs Wilkes and the ability to
manage Тага as well as Mrs Wilkes ordered her own domain.
But there are also sentences where it may be argued, either that the comparison
is merely a way of indicating the manner of an action, or that the comparison is the
essential point, and the indication of manner merely an accompanying feature.
Since the problem of which view is the correct one, that is, whether the
comparison or the indication of manner is the essential point, cannot be solved by
objective methods, it is best to say that in such cases the distinction between the
two types is neutralised, and that is what makes us treat the two types under a
common bending, "clauses of manner and comparison".
The most typical conjunction in such clauses is t he conjunction as and indeed,
historically speaking, this is its earliest application in the language. The
conjunction as is of course also used to introduce clauses of time and of cause, and
it is only the context, that is, the lexical meanings of the words, that makes it clear
what the function of the clause is. For instance, in the fo llowing example it is the
meaning of the words make money, repeated as they are, that shows the clause to
be a clause of comparison and not a clause of time or cause: With the idea that she
was as capable as a man came a sudden rush of pride and a violent longing to
prove it, to make money for herself as men made money! It is typical of as-clauses of
comparison that the conjunction may have a correlative element in the head
clause, which is usually another as. This may be seen in the following example, which
is somewhat peculiar: Do you find Bath as agreeable as when I had the honour of making
the enquiry before? The when-clause as such is a temporal clause: it indicates the
time when an action ("his earlier enquiry") took place. However, being introduced
by the conjunction as, which has its correlative, another as, in the main clause, it is
at the same time a clause of comparison. It would seem that these two characteristics
do not contradict each other but are, as it were, on different levels: the temporal
clause occupies a position which might also be occupied by an adverbial modifier of
time within a simple sentence, if, for instance, the sentence ran like this: Do you
find Bath as agreeable as last year? In that case the phrase as last year would have
been a subordinate part expressing comparison, while last year as such would have
been an adverbial modifier of time. Such different levels of syntactical analysis do not
appear to have received sufficient attention so far.
There may be some argument about the exact status of the as in the head clause. It
may be said either that it is an adverb modifying the adjective or adverb which follows
it, or that it makes part of a double conjunction as . . . as, whose first element is within
the head clause, while the second element introduces the subordinate clause. The first
view is distinctly preferable, as the idea of an element of a subordinating conjunction
coming within the head clause and tending to modify one of its parts is theoretically very
doubtful.
Another variant including the conjunction as is the phrase in the same way as (in
the same manner as), whose composition and function may be a matter of discussion. It
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may be taken as a phrase equivalent in function to a conjunction, and thus
belonging in its entirety to the subordinate clause. Or else the phrase in the
same way as may be viewed as divided between the head clause and the subordinate
clause, only as belonging to the subordinate, and in the same way making part of
the head clause as an adverbial modifier of manner. There seems to be no valid
objective method of setting this question and it remains largely a matter of
individual opinion. It may perhaps be argued that some sentences rather incline
toward one interpretation, and others toward the other.
Another conjunction used to introduce clauses of comparison is than. It is
naturally always associated with the comparative degree of an adjective or
adverb in the head clause, as in the sentence: Nobody can appreciate it more than I
do. Than-clauses do not seem to offer occasion for any special comment.
Let us now turn to the question of clauses of manner and comparison and
adverbial modifiers in a simple sentence.
It is quite clear from the outset that a clause of comparison or manner is used
when an action described in the head clause is to be characterised by comparing it
to some other action. Adverbial modifiers in a simple sentence give only
limited possibilities for this. They can be used to express that sort of idea if the
comparison is not, strictly speaking, between the actions themselves but
between different subjects performing the same action. This particular kind of
comparison may indeed be expressed with the help of the conjunction like, as in the
following example: I never see a young, woman in any station conduct herself
like you have conducted yourself. (DICKENS, quoted by Poutsma) This usage
belongs to low colloquial style.
A similar kind of idea can also be expressed by means of a dependent
appendix introduced by the conjunction as. In fact in some cases the difference
between a simple sentence with a dependent appendix of this type and a
complex sentence with a subordinate clause of comparison appears to be very
slight: one may be changed into the other by merely adding or dropping the
corresponding form of the verb do or be: He works as efficiently as you (do), He
was as excited as she (was), etc. It is therefore natural that sentences without the
form of do or be should have been considered as elliptical, with the verb
"understood". However, as we have adopted the principle of not admitting ellipsis
unless this is strictly necessary, we have chosen to treat those sentences (without
do or be) as simple ones with a dependent appendix. So, accordingly, comparing
them now with the complex sentences, we may state that the difference in such
cases appears to be stylistic rather than anything else. The complex sentences are
somewhat more literary in style than the simple ones with the dependent
appendix introduced by the conjunction as.
The same considerations apply to the subordinate clauses with the
conjunction that and simple sentences with a dependent appendix introduced
by the same conjunction: compare I am taller than he (is), He works better than
they (do), etc.
Other Types of Adverbial Clauses
There will always be subordinate clauses that will not fit into any of the
types and subtypes we have considered above. Since it would be unsound to try
and squeeze them into one of the classes so far established, two ways are open
to us in this respect: either we shall try to establish some new classes, based on
the characteristic features of these clauses, or we shall leave them outside all
classes, contenting ourselves with the statement that they are subordinate clauses.
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One of these types has been extensively treated in Poutsma's grammar. It is the type
represented by the sentences: The more narrowly I look the agreeable project in the
face, the more I like it. The more she thought about it, the more suspicious and upset she
became, and she made up her mind to find out where he went and what he did every Friday
night for week after week and month after month. The characteristic features of this type
are, the particle the with a comparative degree of an adjective or adverb at the
beginning of each clause, and the meaning that two actions develop in a parallel way: as
the one develops, so does the other. Another variety of the same semantic type may be
seen in the sentence, As I grew richer, I grew more ambitious. (CONAN DOYLE, quoted by
Poutsma) Here it is once again the conjunction as introducing the main clause, and only the
meanings of the words make it clear that it belongs to this particular type. Poutsma
calls such clauses "clauses of proportionate agreement". This is a plausible view, and
those who would like to have a complete system, where, as far as possible, every single
type of clauses should be foreseen and assigned its proper place, will agree with Poutsma
in this question.
Another type of subordinate clause, which Poutsma proposes to term "clauses of
alternative agreement", may be seen in the following examples, taken from Poutsma's
Grammar: He is said to have worn a coat blue on one side and white on the other,
according as the Spanish or French party happened to be dominant. (From "Notes
and Queries") The day had been one long struggle between mist and sun, a continual
lightening and darkening, big with momentary elations and more tenacious
disappointments, according as to which of the two antagonists got the upper hand.
As to these clauses, they are probably too rare to require a special category or
"pigeonhole" to be arranged for them.
The same may be said about another type of subordinate clause found in Poutsma's
Grammar, one which he terms "clauses of exception", and which he illustrates, among
others, by the following examples: The Somersetshire peasants behaved themselves
as if they had been veteran soldiers, save only that they levelled their pieces too high.
Miss Blimber presented exactly the same appearance she had presented yesterday,
except that she wore a shawl.
Sentences of the type It is the emotion that matters have also to be considered here.
There are two ways of looking at a sentence of this type. Either we take it as a simple
sentence with the construction it is . . . that used to emphasise the word or words included
in it, or we take it as a complex sentence with a subordinate clause beginning with the
conjunction that (or, in other cases, with one of the relative pronouns who, which, or
that). If the latter alternative is preferred (and it seems to be preferable, on the whole), the
question arises, what kind of subordinate clause we have here, and this is indeed difficult
to decide. Such clauses bear some resemblance to attributive clauses, but they will not
easily fit into the definition of such clauses. Perhaps they had better be considered a
special type of subordinate clauses, peculiar to such constructions.
In a similar way other types of subordinate clauses might be found, and an
exhaustive system would hardly be possible. Besides, there is another consideration that
we must take into account. In analysing a simple sentence we do not call the phrase
"except + noun" an adverbial modifier of exception; there would seem to be no
sufficient reason, therefore, to term the sentence given above from Dickens' "Dombey
and Son", and other sentences of the same kind, subordinate clauses of exception.
It seems better, therefore, to leave such clauses and others which may occur outside the
exact classification, characterising them as adverbial subordinate clauses only.
APPOSITIONAL CLAUSES
Speaking of the simple sentence and its parts, we recognised the apposition as a
special part of the sentence, not as a variety of an attribute. In a similar way, we will
treat appositional clauses as a special type of subordinate clauses, not as a variety of
attributive clauses, though they have some features in common with these.
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Appositional clauses always modify a noun, usually an abstract noun, such as fact,
thought, idea, question, suggestion, and the like. An appositional clause is introduced by
the conjunction that (never by the pronoun that), by the conjunction whether, and its
meaning is to show what idea, thought, or question, etc., is spoken of. Here is a typical
example: "One suffers so much," Denis went on, "from the fact that beautiful words don't
always mean what they ought to mean."
In this sentence it is the grammatical context that shows that the word that
introducing the subordinate clause is a conjunction, not a relative pronoun. It cannot be
a relative pronoun, because it cannot be the subject of the clause since there is a subject
(the beautiful words), and it cannot be the object either, since there is an object clause
to the predicate don't mean. So it cannot be a part of the clause and it can only be a
conjunction introducing the clause. Compare also this sentence: I had little hope that my
reproof would get through so easily; and it did not.
An appositional clause may be separated from its head word, as in the following
example: But he did announce his opinion to his daughter-in-law that the ends of
justice would so be best promoted, and that if the matter were driven to a trial it would
not be for the honour of the court that a false verdict should be given. The two appositional
clauses, that the ends of justice would so be best promoted, and that . . . it would not be
for the honour of the court, with the two subordinate clauses of the second degree of
subordination attached to it, obviously have the noun opinion as their head word.
However, the first of the appositional clauses is separated from its head word by the
phrase to his daughter-in-law. No ambiguity can arise here, as the lexical meanings of
the words contained in the appositional clauses show that the clauses cannot possibly
have daughter-in-law as their head word: that combination would make no sense. So
here again, as in the other examples we have considered, separation of the subordinate
clause from its head word is permissible where the lexical meanings of the words prevent
any ambiguity or misunderstanding.
In the following example the appositional clause is separated from its head word
by a verb: But before Scarlett could start the two on their homeward journey, news
came that the Yankees had swung to the south and were skirmishing along the railroad
between Atlanta and Jonesboro. The subordinate clause, that the Yankees ... Jonesboro, of
course has the noun news as its head word, and the predicate verb came cannot obscure
the relation.
The same is found in the following sentence, where the appositional clause introduced by
the conjunction whether is separated from the noun word, to which it belongs, by the
adverbial modifier now. They're waiting for Sir Robert's word now whether old
Smokey's got to go.
PARENTHETICAL CLAUSES
In our treatment of parenthetical clauses, we will follow the lines set down for
treatment of parentheses in a simple sentence: we will distinguish parenthetical clauses
from inserted clauses and state that their function is the same as that of parentheses in
a simple sentence.
The relation between parenthetical and subordinate clauses gives rise to some
discussion. The traditional view held by most grammarians was that parentheses are not
parts of a simple sentence but are outside it, and in a similar way parenthetical clauses
were held not to be an organic part of a complex sentence and, consequently, not to be
subordinate clauses but to be outside the structure of the sentence. In the same way that
we have abandoned this view with reference to parentheses in a simple sentence, and
recognised them as parts of the sentence, we will abandon the traditional view with regard
to parenthetical clauses, and we will treat them as subordinate clauses of a special kind.
This view is confirmed by the fact that the same conjunction as which we found
introducing attributive, temporal, causal, and other types of clauses, can also introduce a
parenthetical clause of a very familiar type exemplified by the following sentence:
Catherine endeavoured to persuade her, as she was herself persuaded, that her father
and mother would never oppose their son's wishes. The clause introduced by the
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conjunction that is here subordinated to the main clause, and at the same time it
is also subordinated to the as-clause, which is apparently a kind of parenthetical
clause (having also a shade of meaning of comparison). In this way it is at the
same time a first-degree subordinate clause from one viewpoint, and a seconddegree clause from another.
The following example is also instructive: Hope, if it was Hope, had not heard
him, and the chances of their ever meeting again were as slight as they were
unimportant to him. Let us consider what will be changed if the if-clause is
dropped. What will be actually lost is the information that he was not quite certain
whether it was Hope after all. If it was not she, he could not assert that she
had not heard him. So this if-clause curiously vacillates between a conditional and
a parenthetical clause, and of course no choice between the two is here possible on
grammatical, or, indeed, on any other grounds.
There appears to be no reason to deny that a parenthetical clause of this kind is
a subordinate clause. If this view is endorsed there is every reason to suppose that
a sentence consisting of a main and a parenthetical clause is a usual kind of
complex sentence.
Glossary of linguistic terms:
1. subordinate clause – придаточное предложение
2. subject clause – придаточное-подлежащее
3. predicative clause – придаточное-сказуемое
4. object clause – дополнительное придаточное
5. attributive clause – определительное придаточное
6. descriptive - неконкретизирующее
7. restrictive (limitive) - конкретизирующее
8. causal clause – придаточное причины
9. temporal clause - временное придаточное
10. clause of concession – придаточное уступки
Additional reading:
1. стр. 275-328
2. –
3. –
4. стр. 333-359
5. стр. 379-394
Practical tasks:
20. Define the types of clauses constituting the following sentences:
He knows exactly what to give a young gentleman with a headache.
Bertie turns to his valet every time he gets into trouble.
She was looking for the place where they might lunch, for Ashurst never looked for
anything.
21. Correct the punctuation mistakes, if any, in the following sentences:
Lupin whose back was towards me did not hear me come in.
She hated him in despair that shuttered her and broke her down.
The wedding which only memebers of the family were invited to took place on Friday.
In fact it is he who had bought her the luxurious little villa in which we were now
sitting.
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XXXXVII. THE PROBLEM OF HIGHER SYNTACTICAL UNITS
This problem may be formulated as follows: is the sentence the highest existing
syntactical unit, or are there higher syntactical units than the sentence — units
of which a sentence is but a component part?
The traditional view of course is that the sentence is the highest syntactical unit
and that whatever units we may find of a higher order will be not syntactical,
but either stylistic, or literary.
What reasons are there, then, to suppose that there exists a grammatical, that
is, a syntactical unit higher than the sentence, and how are the limits of this
higher unit to be delineated?
Text is a coherent stretch of speech which is a semantico-topical and a
syntactic unity, centered on a common informative purpose. Text can be
interpreted as a lingual unity with its two distinguishing features: first semantic
(topical) unity; second semantico-syntactic cohesion.
The primary division of sentence sequences in speech should be based on
the communicative direction of their component sentences. From this point of
view monologue sequences and dialogue sequences are to be discriminated.
In a monologue, sentences connected in a continual sequence are directed from
one speaker to his one or several listeners. Thus, the sequence of this typed can be
characterized as a one-direction sequence.:
We’ll have a lovely garden. We’ll have roses in it and daffodils and a lovely
lawn with a swing for little Billy and little Barbara to play on. And we’ll have
our meals down by the lily pond in summer.
The succession of sentences is called a “super-phrasal unity”.
As different from this, sentences in a dialogue sequence are uttered by the
speakers-interlocutors in turn, so that they are directed, as it were, to meet one
another; the sequence of this type is characterized as two -direction sequence:
“Annette, what have you done?” – “I’ve done what I had to do.”
The monologue text, or “discourse”, is then a topical entity; the dialogue
text, or “conversation”, is an exchange-topical entity.
On the basis of the functional nature of connectors, cumulation of sentences
is divided into two fundamental types: conjunctive cumulation and correlative
cumulation.
Conjunctive cumulation is effected by conjunction-like connectors. To these
belong, first, regular conjunctions, both coordinative and subordinative;
second, adverbial and parenthetical sentence connectors (then, yet, however,
consequently, hence, besides, morover, nevertheless). Adverbial and
parenthetical sentence connectors may be both specialized, i.e. functional and
semi-functional words, and non-specialized units performing the connective
functions:
The two conjunctions that are especially frequent in this function are, and and but.
The conjunction and is found in this function often enough, and some writers
seem to have a special predilection for it.
Here is a typical example from Th. Dreiser's "An American Tragedy":They had
been to all these wonderful places together. And now, without any real
consciousness of her movements, she was moving from the chair to the edge of the
bed, sitting with elbows on knees and chin in hands; or she was before the
mirror or peering restlessly out intothe dark to see if there were any trace of
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day. And at six, and six-thirty when the light was just breaking and it was
nearing time to dress, she was still up — in the chair, on the edge of the bed, in
the corner before the mirror. But she had reached but one definite conclusion
and that was that in some way she must arrange not to have Clyde leave her.
It might perhaps be said that the higher unit established by co-ordinating
conjunctions is somewhat like what we call a "paragraph". But a conjunction of
this kind may even be found at the beginning of a paragraph. Thus, in the
passage just quoted the sentence And now, without any real consciousness... stands
at the opening of a new paragraph, and so does the sentence beginning with But she
had reached...
It is necessary to add something to the definition of a conjunction: a
conjunction may unite words, parts of a sentence, clauses, and independent
sentences as well.
There was no train till nearly eleven, and she had to bear her impatience as
best she could . At last it was time to start, and she put on her gloves.
Correlative cumulation is effected by a pair of elements one of which, the
“succeedent”, refers to the other, the “antecedent”, used in the foregoing
sentence; by means of this reference the succeeding sentence is related to the
preceding one, or else the preceding sentence is related to the succeeding one.
As we see, by its direction correlative cumulation may be either retrospective or
prospective, as different from conjunctive cumulation, which is only
retrospective.
Correlative cumulation, in its turn, is divided into substitutional connection and
representative connection. Substitutional cumulation is based on the use of
substitutes:
Spolding woke me with the apparently noiseless efficiency of the trained
housemaid. She drew the curtains, placed a can of hot water in my basin,
covered it with the towel, and retired.
A substitute may have as its antecedent the whole of the preceding sentence or a
clausal part of it. Furthermore, substitutes often go together with conjunctions,
effecting cumulation of mixed type.
Representative correlation is based on representative elements which refer to one
another without the factor of replacement:
She should be here soon. I must tell Phillipp, I am not in to any one else.
I went home. Maria accepted my departure indifferently.
Representative correlation is achieved also by repetition, which may be complicated
by different variations:
Well, the night was beautiful, and the great thing not to be a pig. Beauty and
not being a pig! Nothing much else to it.
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A cumulative super-phrasal unity is formed by two or more independent sentences
making up a topical syntactic unity. The first of the sentences is the leading sentence,
the succeeding are sequential.
This super-phrasal unity is marked in the text by a finalizing intonation counour with
a prolonged pause; the relative duration of this pause equals two and a half moras
(mora – the conventional duration of a short syllable), as different from the sentencepause equalling only two moras.
This unity is a universal unit of language, like a sentence, and it is used in all the
functional varieties of speech. For instance, a part of the author’s speech in the work
of fiction:
The boy winced at this. It made him feel hot and uncomfortable all over. He knew
well how careful he ought to be, and yet, do what he could, form time to time his
forgetfulness of the part betrayed him into unreserve.
Compare this with a unit in a typical newspaper article:
We have come a long way since then, of course. Unemployment insurance is an
accepted fact. Only the most die-hard reactionaries, of the Goldwater type, dare to
come out against it.
Here is a sample of scientific-technical report prose:
To some engineers who apply it to themselves the word “practical” as denoting the
possession of a major virtue, applied research is classed with pure research as
something highbrow they can do without. To some businessmen, applied research is
something to have somewhere in the organization to demonstrate modernity and
enlightenment. And people engaged in applied research are usually so satisfied in the
belief that what they are doing is of interest and value that they are not particularly
concerned about the niceties of definition.
Poetical text is formed by super-phrasal units, too:
She is not fair to outward view,
As many maidens be;
Her loveliness I never knew Until she smiled at me.
Oh, then I saw her eye was bright,
A well of love, a spring of light.
But the most important factor showing the inalienable and universal status of the
super-phrasal unit in language is its use in colloquial speech (which is reflected in
plays, as well as in conversational passages in works of various types of fiction).
The basic semantic types of super-phrasal units are “factual” (narrative and
descriptive), “modal” (reasoning, perceptive, etc) and mixed. Here is an example of a
narrative super-phrasal unit:
Three years later, when Jane was an Army driver, she was sent one night to pick up a
party of officers who had been testing defences on the cliff. She found the place where
the road ran between a cleft almost to the beach, switched off her engine and waited,
hunched in her great-coat, half asleep, in the cold black silence. She waited for an
hour and woke in a fright to a furious voice coming out of the night.
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A reasoning unit of perceptional variety:
She has not gone? I thought she gave a second performance at two?
A remonstrative unit:
Are you kidding? Don’t underrate your influence, Mr. O’Keefe. Dodo’s in. Besides,
I’ve lined up Sandra Straughan to work with her.
A reasoning unit expressing reassurance:
Don’t worry. There will be a certain amount of unpleasantness but I will have some
photographs taken that will be very useful at the inquest. There’s the testimony of the
gunbearers and the driver too. You’re perfectly all right.
A paragraph is a stretch of a written text marked by a new line at the beginning and
an imcomplete line at the close. Paragraphs are connected within the framework of
larger elements of texts making up different paragraph groupings. Even larger
stretches of text can be cumulated to one another in the syntactic sense, such as
chapters and other compositional divisions. For instance, compare the end of Chapter
XXIII and the beginning of Chapter XXXIV of J.Galsworthy’s “Over the River”:
Chapter XXIII… She went back to Condafold with her father by the morning train,
repeating to her Aunt the formula: “I’m not going to be ill.”
Chapter XXIV. But she was ill, and for a month in her conventional room at
Condaford often wished she were dead and done with. She might, indeed, quite easily
have died …
The means which are used to establish connections between sentences. And this
leads on to a series of questions which may be said to lie on the border line of
grammar.
What is meant is study of the structure of entire texts, such as short newspaper
notices, poems, or novels. In this study it does not appear possible to stay strictly
within the limits of grammar: some lexical phenomena will also have to be taken
into consideration.
We will only give some hints as to the possible trends of investigation in this
field, and we begin by studying some opening paragraphs of a modern novel.
Let this be Eyeless in Gaza by Aldous Huxley:
The snapshots had become almost as dim as memories. This young woman
who had stood in a garden at the turn of the century was like a ghost at cockcrow.
His mother, Anthony Beavis recognised. A year or two, perhaps only a month or
two, before she died. But fashion, as he peered at the brown phantom, fashion is a
topiary art. Those swan-like loins! That long slanting cascade of bosom — without
any apparent relation to the naked body beneath! And all that hair, like an
ornamental deformity of the skull! Oddly hideous and repellent it seemed in 1933.
And yet, if he shut his eyes (as he could not resist doing), he could see his mother
languidly beautiful on her chaise-longue, or, agile, playing tennis, or
swooping like n bird across the ice of a far-off winter,
Now let us take a look at the elements in this passage which in some way or
other tend to establish connections between sentences.
In the first sentence there is the past perfect form had become, which points to
two time levels in the narration. In the second sentence, there is another past
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perfect form — had stood and this time it is correlated with the past indefinite
form was in the same sentence.
In the third sentence the possessive pronoun his does not establish any
connection with the preceding text, as there has so far been no mention of any
man, to whom the possessive pronoun might refer. It refers to the name Anthony
Beavis, which appears after the pronoun (this is not a frequent use). If there had
been mention of a man in the preceding text this would be misleading. In the
next sentence the pronoun she establishes a connection both with the second
sentence (the phrase this young woman) and with the third (the phrase his
mother).
In the next sentence, the conjunction but establishes a relation with the preceding
text. So does the pronoun he, referring to the name Anthony Beavis, and also
the phrase the brown phantom, which (as is clear from the context) refers to
features of the woman in the photo. Then the pronoun it refers to the phrase all
that hair, and would be unintelligible without this reference. Finally, the
phrase his mother in the last sentence of the passage clearly refers back to the
identical phrase his mother used in the third sentence.
Текст
Предложение – единица сообщения – не существует в речи изолированно,
а соединяется с другими предложениями, образуя развернутый текст, в
котором отражаются и закрепляются результаты работы человеческой
мысли.
В объективной действительности языка текст существует и как
законченное целое, будь то письменное монологическое сочинение или
утсный диалог, - ведь и последний имеет свое начало и свой конец,
позволяющий подвести итог реализованному обмену мыслями.
Какое место в грамматическом изучении текста должно занять
предложение? Наблюдения над речью разных форм и назначений (устная,
письменная, обиходная, профессиональная, спокойная, эмоциональная) с
учетом парадигматического фактора, показывают, что предложение
явялется кардинально существенным элементом выражения именно с точки
зрения строя текста. Предложение является выразителем предикации, то
есть отнесения номинативного содержания речи к действительности.
Другие единицы текста не обладают собственными средствами
предикации. Это значит, что вне предложения текст не может выражать
суждений и умозаключений, то есть лишается способности служить
полноценным средством осмысленного отражения окружающего мира.
Любые устные формы речи становятся носителями информативного
смысла лишь в соединении с предикативными ядрами речи, лишь в составе
предикативных объединений слов. Физиологическое производство речи
подчиняется законам функциональной синтаксической деривации, которые
всевозможное хеканье и мычание реального говорящего отодвигают на
роль информационных помех или шумов ( такие шумы могут нести свою
полезную функцию, служа заполнителями молчания, сигналами
настроения, запросами внимания).
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Критерием деления сверх-фразовых единств является коммуникативная
направленность составляющих их предложений. С этой точки знения
различаются последовательности монологические и диалогические.
Монологическая последовательность однонаправленна, она исходи т от
одного говорящего к его слушателю или слушателям. Диалогическая
последовательность двунаправленна. Ее компоненты, состоящие из одного
или нескольких предложений. Произносятся собеседниками по очереди,
как бы навстречу друг другу.
Однонаправленная последовательность самостоятельных предложений
формируется при помощи присоединения, или кумуляции, в отличие от
синтаксического сложения предложений, превращающего его в части
(клауземы) сложного предложения. Поэтому непосредственное
объединение предложений присоединительного типа, соответствующее
сверхфразовому единству, можно назвать кумулемой. Формирование
двунаправленной последовательности базируется прежде всего на самом
факте их встречной обращенности. Поэтому данный тип предложений
может быть назван встречным или оккурсивным.
В книжно-печатном монологическом тексте кумулема очерчивается
границами абзаца. Абзац представляет собой строчное единство,
выделяющееся красной строкой в начале и неполной строкой в конце. В
устной речи абзац выделяется паузой не менее чем в две с половиной
моры.
Glossary of linguistic terms
1. mora – мора, условная длительность краткого слова
2. super-phrasal unit – сверхфразовое единство
3. to cumulate – накапливать, создавать кумулемы, смысловые группы
предложений
4. conjunctive cumulation – кумуляция при помощи союзов
5. correlative cumulation – кумуляция при помощи местоимений и иных словзаместителей
6. narative - повествовательный
7. discourse – дискурс, рассуждение
8. colloquial – разговорный, нелитературный
9. intonation contour – интонационный рисунок, шкала
10. paragraph - абзац
Additional reading:
1. –
2. –
3. стр. 199-213
4. стр. 392-404
5. стр. 395-420
Practical tasks:
22.Study the following example of the analysis of means of cohesion in the given text
fragment:
Ten minutes later, with face blanched by terror, and eyes wild with grief, Lord Arthur Savile
rushed from Bentinck House, crushing his way through the crowd of fur-coated footmen that
stood round the large striped awning, and seeming not to see or hear anything. The night was
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bitter cold, and the gas-lamps round the square flared and flickered in the keen wind; but his
hands were hot with fever, and his forehead burned like fire. On and on he went, almost with
the gait of a drunken man. A policeman looked curiously at him as he passed, and a beggar,
who slouched from an archway to ask for alms, grew frightened, seeing misery greater than
his own. Once he stopped under a lamp, and looked at his hands. He thought he could detect
the stain of blood already upon them, and a faint cry broke from his trembling lips.
Murder! That is what the cheiromantist had seen there. Murder! The very night seemed to
know it, and the desolate wind to howl it in his ear. The dark corners of the streets were full
of it. It grinned at him from the roofs of the houses.
First he came to the Park, where sombre woodland seemed to fascinate him. He leaned
wearily up against the railings, cooling his brow against the wet metal, and listening to the
tremulous silence of the trees. “Murder! Murder!” he kept repeating, as though iteration
could dim the horror of the word. The sound of his own voice made him shudder, yet he
almost hoped that Echo might hear him, and wake the slumbering city from its dreams. He
felt a mad desire to stop the casual passer-by, and tell him everything.
(from O.Wilde “Lord Authur Savile’s Crime”)
The principal means of textual cohesion in this fragment is repetition of different
kinds: 1) lexical repetition (repetition of the key word): “Murder!…, the repetition of
the pronouns: he and it (substituting “the murder”), repetition of the words used to
describe the background: “night, dark, wind”; 2) lexical synonymic repetition: “with
the face blanched by terror”, “the horror of the word”, “eyes wild with grief”, “seeing
misery greater than his own”; 3) repetition of the verbs of motion: “rushed, crashed
the way through, on and on he went, he passed, came to the Park”.
Among the other means we find substitution (Lord Authur Savile – he, his; the
murder – it, the word, everything) and representation: “Murder! Murder! He kept
repeating” – “iteration”.
Besides, the function of connectors is performed by conjunctions (but, and, yet).
Another means if textual cohesion is contrast: “the night was bitter cold, and the gaslamps round the square flared and flickered in the keen wind; but his hands were hot
with fever, and his forehead burned like fire.
The whole piece deals with the description of the main character’s agitated state of
mind after he had learnt his fate. The following lexical units contribute to the thematic
unity of the text: fact blanched with terror, eyes wild with grief, rushed, crushing his
way, seemed not to see or hear anything, his hands ere hot with fever, his forehead
burned like fire, the gait of a drunken man, misery, could detect the stain of blood, a
faint cry, trembling lips, desolate wind, leaned wearily, the horror of the word,
shudder, a mad desire.
Analyze the following text from the point of view of the means of cohesion:
We sat there for half-an-hour, describing to each other our maladies. I explained to
George and William Harris how I felt when I got up in the morning, and William
Harris told us how he felt when he went to bed; and George stood on the hearth-rug,
and gave us a clever and powerful piece of acting, illustrative of how he felt in the
night.
George FANCIES he is ill; but there’s never anything really the matter with him, you
know.
At this point, Mrs. Poppets knocked at the door to know if we were ready for supper.
We smiled sadly at one another, and said we supposed we had better try to swallow a
bit. Harris said a little something in one’s stomach often kept the disease in check;
and Mrs. Poppets brought the tray in and we drew up to the table, and toyed with a
little steak and onions, and some rhubarb tart.
(from J.K.Jerome “Three Men in a Boat”)
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XXXXVII. GRAMMAR AND STYLE
From the stylistic viewpoint, it should first of all be noted that some grammatical categories
and phenomena are neutral while others are not. To be more explicit, this means that some
grammatical phenomena may appear in any sort of speech, whether oral or written, whether
solemn or vulgar, etc., without in any way conflicting with the stylistic colouring of the text,
whatever it may happen to be. Other grammatical phenomena, on the other hand, have a distinct
stylistic colouring and will produce an effect of inappropriateness if applied outside their stylistic
sphere.
To illustrate this general statement, we might say that the past indefinite tense is devoid of any
stylistic colouring, it is stylistically neutral and it appears both in a solemn hymn and in a street
song, and indeed in any kind of text without any exception whatsoever. On the other hand, the
so-called absolute construction, as in the sentence She picked up a large split-oak basket and
started down, the back stairs, each step jouncing her head until her spine seemed to be trying to
crash through the top of her skull has a distinctly literary flavour. Constructions of this kind are not
used in colloquial speech and if, say, an author were to put a construction of this kind into the
mouth of a character in a comedy of modern English life, it would sound singularly
inappropriate. To take a different example: the forms of the personal pronouns him, her, us,
them, used in the function of a predicative after the subject it and the link verb is, or was, have a
very distinct low colloquial tinge, and they would be completely inappropriate in a literary, still
more so in a solemn context. A sentence like It was them that did it has that peculiar stylistic
colouring which creates a certain atmosphere, even if nothing preceded that sentence (for
example, if it were the opening sentence of some short story). All this has to be rec koned
with in characterising the grammatical resources of the Modern English language.
We will now give a brief survey of the grammatical categories and the grammatical
phenomena which bear (or tend to bear) some kind of stylistic colouring or other, first those of
morphology, then those of syntax.
Morphology
In the sphere of nouns there is not much to be noted in the way of stylistic colouring.
In a very few cases where a noun has alternative plural forms, the irregular form (the one
not in -s) naturally tends to have a high-flown, archaic, or poetic flavour. The very fact that
there exists a plural form in -s alongside of it gives the other form the character of something
unusual and restricted in use to special purposes. The only two words that have to be mentioned
in this connection are, brother with its alternative plural form brethren differing from brothers
not in stylistic colouring alone, and cow, with its alternative plural form kine having a very
strong archaic and poetic tinge.
In the sphere of case it can be noted that the genitive in -'s tends to acquire a specific
stylistic flavour when formed from a noun not denoting a living being. As a rule the of-phrase
is used to express relation between the thing denoted by the noun and that denoted by another
noun. For instance, if this sort of relation has to be expressed between England and history, the
usual, stylistically neutral way of expressing it is to say the history of England, and this, indeed,
is the title, for instance, of most textbooks on the subject. But alongside of it the variant
England's history is also permissible. It has a poetic and possibly patriotic shade about it and
it will do very well in an emotional context, but would be out of place in a strictly scientific
one.
There is little to be said about adjectives, too, which have only degrees of comparison as a
morphological characteristic.
What matters here is the stylistic colouring of degrees of comparison in -er, -est of such
adjectives as do not usually possess such forms. Where such forms do appear they tend to have a
peculiar solemn stylistic quality which would make them unfit for any other context. The English
nineteenth-century writer and philosopher Thomas Carlyle would use a superlative in -est of
two-syllable adjectives derived from present participles in -ing, as will be seen from the
following example: With unabated bounty the land of England blooms and grows. Waving with
yellow harvests, thick-studded with workshops, industrial implements, with fifteen millions of
workers, understood to be the strongest, the cunningest and the willingest our Earth ever had...
Neither of these forms occur in ordinary style: the analytic formations most cunning, most
willing, etc. would be used instead.
In the sphere of pronouns, there is the use of the forms I or me, etc., which we have already
considered in Chapter VI, and we need not dwell on it here.
128
Another point to be noted about pronouns in the morphological way is the form 'em in
sentences like I'll show 'em alongside of I'll show them. Strictly speaking this is a
morphological point if we consider 'em to be a different form, not merely a phonetically
weakened variant of them. If we take it that way we will state that the morphological variant
'em for the objective case of the third person plural personal pronoun has a definite stylistic
colouring of low colloquial style. It would be, for instance, entirely out of place in a serious
scientific treatise. It is, however, quite appropriate in reproducing low colloquial (and
possibly vulgar) speech.
The main bulk of stylistic remarks in the sphere of morphology belongs of course to the verb.
There are a considerable number of details here which point to a peculiar stylistic colouring,
either solemn and archaic, or low colloquial and eventually vulgar.
The first to be noted are the forms in -th for the third person singular, present indicative,
that is, forms like liveth, knoweth, saith, doth, hath, etc. These have acquired (since the 17th
century) a definite archaic and poetical flavour and cannot accordingly be used in any other, or
in any neutral stylistic surroundings. Examples of their use in modern texts are rare indeed.
The same stylistic colouring as with the -th-forms is also inherent in forms in -st for the
second person singular of both the present and the past indicative (that is, the forms livest,
knowest, sayst, dost, livedst, knewest, saidst, didst, hadst, etc.) and also the forms shalt, wilt,
art, wert (or wast) of the verbs shall, will, be. These forms are practically inseparable from
the second person singular personal pronoun thou. In every other respect the -st-forms of the
second person are exactly similar to the -th-forms of the third. They are quite rare in Modern
English.
These, then, are forms which may, generally speaking, be d erived from every verb.
The other forms with special stylistic colouring belong to definite individual verbs only,
though some of them, belonging to verbs which are or may be auxiliary, can accordingly be brought
into the system of all verbs which use the auxiliary. Here we must first of all mention the form
ain't pronounced [eint], or ain [ein] of the verb be, corresponding to the forms am not, is not,
and are not of the stylistically neutral set. The essence of all of them is, of course, that the
combination of a verb form with the negative particle not differs from the same form without the
particle. The difference between am not, is not, and are not is in these cases neutralised. So
this whole question also has some bearing on the categories of person and number in the verb
be. The stylistic tinge of the form ain't is a very definite one: it is low colloquial with a clear
tendency towards vulgarity, and of course it would be inadmissible in any serious literary style.
Here are some examples: The house aint worth livin in since you left it Candy. Our quarrel's
made up now, ain it? James and me is come to a nunnerstanding — a honorable unnerstandin. Ain
we, James?
A similar stylistic character attaches to the forms has, is, and was for the plural, e. g. Yes:
limes 'as changed mor 'n I could a believed. I hused to wonder you was let preach at all.
As the verb be is an auxiliary of the continuous aspect and of the passive voice, the form
ain't can accordingly appear in every verb possessing either of these categories, or both, e. g.
Ope you ain't lettin James put no foolish ideas into your ed?
Besides, a certain number of verbs have, alongside of their no rmal and neutral forms, some
special ones, differing from the usual by a distinct archaic or solemn colouring, e. g. spake
for spoke (past tense of the verb speak); throve for thrived (past tense of the verb thrive); bare
for bore (past tense of the verb bear).
In the opposite way, there are some forms having at present a very distinct vulgar or
illiterate stylistic character and only used in writing to characterise an illiterate speaker. They
are forms of the past tense and second participle on -ed of verbs regularly deriving these forms
by ablaut (vowel change) or by adding the -n-suffix for the second participle, e. g. seed for saw
(past tense) or seen (second participle of the verb see); knowed for knew (past tense) or known
(second participle of the verb know). These forms are distinctly illiterate and in this they differ
from the form ain't, for instance, which is somehow within the standard, though certainly at the
lowest level of it.
It would seem that no verb has archaic and vulgar variants at the same time, that is, no
verb has three variants: the normal one, an archaic one, and an illiterate one. For instance, the
verb speak has an archaic variant spake for its past tense spoke but it has no illiterate variant; on
the other hand, the verb see has an illiterate variant seed for its past tense saw but it has no
archaic variant, etc.
Some peculiarities in the sphere of stylistically coloured verb forms should also be noted in
American English. The chief of these concerns forms of the present perfect tense. In low colloquial
American style there is a very clear tendency to drop the auxiliary have (has) in the present
perfect, so that only the second participle remains. Now, if the second participle is homonymous
129
with the past tense, as is the case with most verbs, the result of the omission is a form not to
be distinguished from the past tense, for instance , I have found > I found. If, however, the
second participle is not homonymous with the past tense, the result of omitting the auxil iary is a
new form, not coinciding with the usual past tense: I have taken > I taken, he has written > he
written, etc. We may see this in the following quotation from an American author representing
low colloquial speech: I been around to see her a coupla times since then, only Esta didn't want me
to say anything about that either.
However, such forms may also be found in England, e. g. James: three year ago, you done me a
hill turn. You done me hout of a contrac.
H. L. Mencken, the author of the well-known book, "The American language" (first
published in 1919), treats such forms as I taken, he written as a past tense. He also asserts
that with the auxiliary have preserved, the form of the second participle is took, wrote, etc., so that
the British paradigms take, took, taken; write, wrote, written correspond to the American take,
taken, took; write, written, wrote, and gives a list of irregular verbs arranged in this way.
Mencken's view appears to be an exaggeration not borne out by American narrative and dramatic
literature. I taken is common enough in American colloquial style, but I have took does not
appear to be so.
It is clear that forms like I taken have a stylistic tinge but their peculiarity is that they hardly
appear outside the USA.
This is about all that can be said about stylistic values of morphological forms in present-day
English.
Syntax
In the sphere of syntax we have to look for syntactical synonyms differing from each other by
their stylistic colouring. We may look for two sets of cases: (1) each of the two syntactical
synonyms has a peculiar stylistic colouring of its own, (2) of two syntactical synonyms one is
stylistically neutral, that is, it may appear in every sort of style, while the other has a distinct
stylistic colouring, that is to say, its use is limited to definite stylistic conditions.
The first of these sets of cases can hardly be frequent, since it would imply that there is no
neutral syntactical means available to express the idea in question.
As a rare example of the first kind we can point to the variants It is I and It is me. The
difference between them is certainly one of style, and it seems that neither of them is really
neutral stylistically. It is me has a very clear colloquial colouring, while It is I is stiff and
formal. This of course is a state of affairs due to a historical development in the course of which It
is me has been steadily gaming ground, and most probably it will in a near future lose th at specific
colouring of colloquial style, and become the normal, that is, the stylistically neutral variant,
while It is I will be relegated to a distinctly archaic sphere.
Far more numerous are the cases when one of a pair of syntactical synonyms has a specific
stylistic colouring while the other is stylistically neutral. This is the case, for example, with the
absolute construction and its synonyms — subordinate adverbial clauses of time or cause. The
absolute construction has practically always — with very few exceptions, phraseological units like
all things considered, or weather permitting — a distinctly literary or even bookish character.
A distinctly literary or bookish colouring also attaches to non-defining attributive clauses.
For instance, the following sentence would not be possible in colloquial style: Cathleen
Calvert, who came out of the house at the sound of voices, met Scarlett's eyes above her
brother's head and in them Scarlett read knowledge and bitter despair.
These notes on the stylistic values of some grammatical facts are no more than hints.
They are meant to suggest that alongside of grammatical phenomena that are indifferent to
style there are some which have a distinct stylistic colouring and are decidedly inappropriate
outside a certain stylistic sphere. This is most essential both from a purely theoretical
viewpoint and from the viewpoint of teaching the language to foreigners. A bookish grammatical
construction appearing in a colloquial context, though "grammatically correct", is as serious an
error against English usage as a mistake in grammatical construction. This should especially be
remembered in giving exercises of the kind providing for changing one con struction into
another (such as replacing a subordinate clause by an absolute construction, and the like).
130
Revision Tasks
Account for the ambiguity of some of these sentences:
1. Sergent: “Who likes moving pictures?”
(Most of the men eagerly step forward.)
“All right, you fellows carry the pictures from the basement to the attic.”
2. - What has four legs and flies?
- I don’t know.
- A dinner table.
3. A lady had just bought a postage stamp.
“Must I stick it on myself?”
“Positively not, Madame. It will accomplish more if you stick it on the envelope.”
4. – Is the chicken big enough to eat when it’s 2 days old?
- Of course, not!
- Then how does it manage to live?
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Contents:
page
1. Grammar as a linguistic science.
Morphology.
2. Grammatical form, meaning and category.
3. Wordbuilding and wordchanging.
4. Synthetic means of expressing grammatical meaning.
Their role in the Modern English.
5. Analytical means of expressing grammatical meaning.
Their role in the Modern English.
6. Parts of speech and the principles of their classification.
7. Noun. The general description.
8. Noun. The category of number.
9. Noun. The category of case.
10. Noun. The category of gender.
11. Article, its role and function. The number of articles in English.
12. Adjectives. Their grammatical categories.
13. Adverbs. Classification of adverbs.
14. Verb. The general characteristics.
15. Verb. The category of voice.
16. Verb. The category of mood.
17. Verb. The categories of tense, aspect and time correlation.
18. Verb. The categories of person and number.
19. Non-finite verbs (Verbids). Infinitive and gerund.
20. Non-finite verbs. Participles.
21. Pronouns.
22. Numeral.
23. Words of the category of state, statives.
24. Functional parts of speech.
25. Modal words.
Syntax
26. Sentence and phrase as the main objects of syntax.
27. Classification of phrases.
28. The notion of syntactic relations, their main types.
29. The sentence and its aspects.
30. The semantic and pragmatic aspects of the sentence.
31. The structural aspect of the sentence.
32. The actual aspect of the sentence.
33. Predication and modality.
34. Elliptical sentences.
35. Models of syntactic analysis. Parts of sentence.
36. The model of immediate constituents.
37. The distributional model.
38. The transformational model.
39. Principal parts of sentence. Subject.
40. Predicate.
41. The secondary parts of the sentence.
42. The apposition, direct address, parentheses and insertions.
43. Loose parts of sentence.
44. Complex, compound and intermediary types of sentences.
45. The composite sentence. Compound sentences.
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46. Types of subordinate clauses.
- Subject clauses
- Predicative clauses
- Object clauses
- Attributive clauses
- Adverbial clauses
- Clauses of place
- Clauses of time
- Causal clauses
- Conditional clauses
- Clauses of result
- Clauses of purpose
- Clauses of concession
- Clauses of manner and comparison
- Other types of subordinate clauses
- Appositional clauses
- Parenthetical clauses
47. The problem of higher syntactical units.
48. Revision tasks
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