20) Finite and non-finite forms of the verb. Category of representation

In linguistics, a non-finite verb (or a verbal\verbids) is a verb form that is not limited by a subject and, more generally, is not fully inflected by categories that are marked inflectionally in language, such as tense, aspect, mood, number, gender, and person. As a result, a non-finite verb cannot serve as a predicate and can be used in an independent clause only when combined with an auxiliary verb (e.g., "He can write" but not "He to write"). Rather, it can be said to be the head of a non-finite clause. As such, a non-finite verb is the direct opposite of a finite verb.

By some accounts, a non-finite verb acts simultaneously as a verb and as another part of speech (e.g., gerunds combined with articles or the possessive case); it can take adverbs and certain kinds of verb arguments, producing a verbal phrase (i.e., non-finite clause), and this phrase then plays a different role — usually noun, adjective, or adverb — in a greater clause. This is the reason for using the term verbal; non-finite verbs have traditionally been classified as verbal nouns, verbal adjectives, or verbal adverbs.

silk screening. (The infinitive phrase to learn silk screening is the object of wanted.)

Finite Verbs

A finite verbis a verb that is inflected for person and for tense according to the rules and categories of the languages in which it occurs. Finite verbs can form independent clauses, which can stand on their own as complete sentences.

The finite forms of a verb are the forms where the verb shows tense, person or number. Non-finite verb forms have no person or number, but some types can show tense.

Finite verb forms include: I go, she goes, he went

Non-finite verb forms include: to go, going, gone

In the Indo-European languages (such as English), only verbs in certain moods are finite. These include: the indicative mood (expressing a state of affairs); e.g., "The bulldozer demolished the restaurant," "The leaves were yellow and stiff."the imperative mood (giving a command); e. g., "Come here!", "Be a good boy!" the subjunctive mood (typically used in dependent clauses); e. g., "It is required that he go to the back of the line." (The indicative form would be "goes".) the optative mood (expressing a wish or hope). Non-existent as a mood in English.

The opposition between finite and non-finite forms of verbs expresses the category of “finitude”. The grammatical meaning, the content of this category is the expression of verbal predication: the finite forms of the verb render full (primary, complete, genuine) predication, the non-finite forms render semi-predication, or secondary (potential) predication. The formal differential feature is constituted by the expression of verbal time and mood, which underlie the predicative function: having no immediate means of expressing time-mood categorial semantics, the verbids are the weak member of the opposition.

21) General ch-ics of syntax as a part of grammar

Syntaxis concerned with the external functions of words and their relationship to other words within the linearly ordered units – word-groups, sentences and texts. Syntax studies the way in which the units and their meanings are combined. It also deals with peculiarities of syntactic units, their behavior in different contexts.Basic syntactic notions. Syntactic unit is always a combination that has at least two constituents. The basic syntactic units are a word-group, a clause, a sentence, and a text. Theirmainfeaturesare:

1. they are hierarchical units – the units of a lower level serve the building material for the units of a higher level;

2. as all language units the syntactic units are of two-fold nature:

c) they are of communicative and non-communicative nature – word-groups

Syntactic meaning is the way in which separate word meanings are combined to produce meaningful word-groups and sentences.

Syntactic form . John hits the ball – N1 + V + N2.

Syntactic function is the function of a unit on the basis of which it is included to a larger unit. Syntactic position is the position of an element.(importance in analytical languages) The syntactic position of an element may determine its relationship with the other elements of the same unit: his broad back, a back district, to go back, to back sm.

Syntactic relations are syntagmatic relations observed between syntactic units. They can be of three types –coordination, subordination and predication

Kinds of syntactic theories.

1) Transformational-Generative Grammar. The main point of the T-GGram is that the endless variety of sentences in a language can be reduced to a finite number of kernels by means of transformations. The following kernels are commonly associated with the English language:NV, NVAdj, NVN – John is a man. NVNN – John gave the man a book. NVPrep.N – The book is on the table.

2)Constructional Syntax. Constructional analysis of syntactic units was initiated by Prof.G.Pocheptsov. This analysis deals with the constructional significance/insignificance of a part of the sentence for the whole syntactic unit. The theory is based on the obligatory or optional environment of syntactic elements. For example, the element him in the sentence I saw him there yesterday is constructionally significant because it is impossible to omit it. At the same time the elements there and yesterday are constructionally insignificant – they can be omitted without destroying the whole structure.

3)Communicative Syntax. It is primarily concerned with the analysis of utterances from the point of their communicative value and informative structure. It deals with the actual division of the utterance – the theme and rheme analysis. Both the theme and the rheme constitute the informative structure of utterances. The theme is something that is known already while the rhemerepresents some new information. Depending on the contextual informative value any sentence element can act as the theme or the rheme:

Who is at home? - John is at home. Where is John? – John is at home.