Ответы - Теор. грамматика - ГОС

ЭКЗАМЕНАЦИОННЫЙ БИЛЕТ № 1

1. Read, analyze and evaluate the extract from “The Last Leaf” by O. Henry. Point out the word combinations important for expressing the concept of the given text. Dwell on the basic units of syntax: phrase and sentence.

It is known that syntax treats phrases and sentences. The sentence is the object of larger syntax, the phrase – of minor syntax. These syntactic units belong to different levels of lingual hierarchy.

The phrase is the unit of the phrasemic level. It is understood as a combination of two or more words which is not an analytical form of a word.

The phrase is marked by specific syntactic relations of its constituents. Agreement and government are the main types of such relations. In English agreement is typical only of the category of number in demonstrative pronouns (this cat – these cats, that man – those men). Government is found in the use of the objective case of personal pronouns and the pronoun who when they are used in a verbal phrase or follow a preposition. There is also a special means of syntactic connection of phrase constituents peculiar to Modern English – enclosure. The example is the enclosure of all kinds of attributes between the article and its head-noun.

The sentence is the unit of proposemic level which is above the phrasemic one. As it is stated by prof. Blokh, it is the immediate integral unit of speech built up of words according to a definite syntactic pattern and distinguished by a contextually relevant communicative purpose.

The difference between the phrase and the sentence is fundamental: the phrase is a nominative unit, just as the word is. It fulfils the function of polynomination, i.e. denotes a complex referent or, in other words, a complex phenomenon of reality. The sentence is considered to be a much more complicated unit. It is two-aspective in its character. The sentence names the situational event and at the same time shows the relation of the denoted event towards reality. So, the sentence as a lingual unit performs two essential signemic (meaningful) functions: first, substance-naming, or nominative function, and second, reality evaluating, or predicative function.

The centre of predication in a sentence of verbal type is a finite verb. The finite verb expresses essential predicative meanings by its categorical forms, first of all, the categories of tense and mood. However, prof. Blokh says that predicative semantics can also be expressed by intonation, word order, different functional words, purpose of communication, modal probability, affirmation and negation which, taken together, establish the connection between the named objects and reality.

ЭКЗАМЕНАЦИОННЫЙ БИЛЕТ № 2

1. Read, analyze and evaluate the extract from the text “The Escape” by W. S. Maugham. Point out the linguistic peculiarities of the text which correlate with the theory of grammar. Speak about the grammatical classes of words.

In modern linguistic descriptions different types of word classes are distinguished: grammatical, etymological, semantic, stylistic, etc. The theoretical study of language began with the attempts to identify and describe grammatical classes of words which are traditionally called parts of speech. There are different approaches to classification of the word stock.

The traditional one is based on the three criteria: semantic, formal and functional. The semantic criterion presupposes the evaluation of the generalized categorical meaning of the words of the given part of speech. So, the categorical meaning of the noun is that of substance, the categorical meaning of the verb is the process in its development, etc.

The formal criterion provides for the exposition of all formal inflectional and derivational features of all the lexemic subsets of a particular part of speech. So, according to this criterion, the noun has a set of formal features. It has some typical suffixes, compound stem models, conversion patterns. The noun as a part of speech discriminates 4 grammatical categories: the categories of gender, number, case and article determination.

The functional criterion concerns the typical syntactic functions of a part of speech.

For example, the primary substantive functions of the noun are those of the subject and the object. Its other functions are predicative, attributive and adverbial.

In modern linguistics the words of a language are divided into notional and functional. The notional parts of speech are the words of full nominative value. In English they are the noun, the adjective, the numeral, the pronoun, the verb, and the adverb. To the functional parts of speech the linguists refer the words of incomplete nominative meaning which connect the notional words within utterances. In English they are the article, the preposition, the conjunction, the particle, the modal word, the interjection.

The elaboration of the above-mentioned three criteria of parts of speech identification was due to the research conducted by the outstanding grammarians V. V. Vinogradov, A. I. Smirnitsky and B. A. Ilyish.

There are also classifications based on one criterion only. Such is the classification worked out by Ch. Fries or classification suggested by O. Jesperson and known as the theory of three ranks. The basic principle of these classifications is a functional one which takes into consideration the position of the word in the syntactic structure.

ЭКЗАМЕНАЦИОННЫЙ БИЛЕТ № 5

1. Read, analyze and evaluate the extract from “Piano” by W. Saroyan. Speak on elliptical sentences as the constituent part of colloquial syntax.

On of the structural classifications of simple sentences presupposes their division into complete and elliptical. The lingual status of elliptical sentences is a disputable question.

Elliptical sentences are sentences with one or more of their parts left out. These parts, however, can be inferred (выводить) from the context. The term is applied to any sentence of this kind, no matter what part or even parts of it have been left out.

The main sphere of elliptical sentences is dialogue. Elimination of one or more parts of a sentence is possible because they are either to be supplied from the preceding sentence (belonging to another speaker) or may be easily dispensed with.

Elliptical sentences are peculiar to colloquial speech. The usage of these sentences is caused by the situational context and the presence of non-verbal means of communication to which gestures of the definite semantics can be referred.

As a part of colloquial syntax elliptical sentences make the whole composition dynamic and alive.

The problem of ellipses is a part of the problem of speech compression. It is also treated within the theory of text.

ЭКЗАМЕНАЦИОННЫЙ БИЛЕТ № 9

1. Read, analyze and evaluate the text “A Telephone Call” by D. Parker.

Dwell on the text as a linguistic notion, its units and categories. Find the lingual means of textual cohesion in the given text.

Traditional grammar treats the sentence as the highest lingual unit. So, L. Bloomfield pointed out that the sentence is the largest grammatically arranged linguistic form. However this thesis was disproved by further studies in this field. In fact sentences in speech do combine with one another syntactically and semantically thus forming a unit larger than a sentence.

M.A.K. Halliday and R. Hasan in their work Cohesion in English state that a text does not consist of sentences; it is realized by sentences, or is encoded in them. So, a text is best regarded as a semantic unit, i.e. a unit of meaning. The authors of Comprehensive Grammar of English (1985) R. Quirk, S. Greenbaum, G. Leech, J. Svartvik express the same idea, saying that “… a text – unlike a sentence – is not a grammatical unit but rather a semantic and even pragmatic one”.

According to prof. Blokh, any text is a coherent stretch of speech. Textual stretches are organized syntactically according to a communicative purpose in a particular communicative situation. As a result, a textual stretch has a unifying topic. So, text as a linguistic notion has two main differential features: topical unity and semantico-syntactic cohesion.

Among the textual units one can single out cumulemes, occursemes and dictemes.

The cumuleme is essentially a constituent part of one-direction sequence of sentences forming monologue speech. Two-direction sequences, called occursemes, build up constituent parts of dialogue speech.

The elementary topical textual unit is a dicteme. It occupies the highest position in the hierarchy of segmental units of language. The dicteme can be expressed either by a cumuleme, or by one single sentence placed in a topically significant position. The dicteme, as an elementary topical textual unit, is polyfunctional. In the text it performs the functions of nomination, predication, topicalization and stylization.

To the list of textual categories scholars usually refer cohesion, informativeness, retrospection, modality, implication, the author’s image and some others. This list seems to be open as linguists try to approach the text from different angles.

The basic textual categories which are recognized by most scholars, are topical unity and semantico-syntactic cohesion.

Among the means of textual cohesion we should name repetition of different kinds (lexical repetition, lexical synonymic repetition, repetition of verbs of motion, etc.), substitutions (nouns by pronouns), connectors (conjunctions, adverbial and parenthetical sentence-connectors, such as then, yet, however, moreover, nevertheless, etc.), contrast, associative relations of words, etc.