- •Теоретическая грамматика английского языка
- •Introduction
- •§ 381. Within a sentence, the word or combination of words that contains the meanings of predicativity may be called the predication.
- •§ 384. The main parts of the sentence are those whose function it is to make the predication. They are the subject and the predicate of the sentence.
- •§ 389. In the sentence Birds fly, as we have seen, the syntactical and the lexical meanings of the subject and the predicate go together. But English has a system of devices to separate them.
- •§391. Let us now consider the grammatical word-morphemes do, does, did in sentences like Does she ever smile? We do not know him, etc.
- •§393. Every predication can be either positive or negative.
- •§ 396. As defined (§ 3), when studying the structure of a unit, we find out its components, mostly units of the next lower level, their arrangement and their functions as parts of the unit.
- •§ 399. Some analogy can be drawn between the structure of a word and the structure of a sentence.
- •§ 401. Depending on their relation to the members of the predication the words of a sentence usually fall into two groups — the group of the subject and the group of the predicate 1.
- •§ 403. Sentences with only one predication are called simple sentences. Those with more than one predication have usually no general name 1. We shall call them composite sentences.
- •§ 409. Not all interrogative sentences are syntactical opposites of declarative sentences.
- •§ 411. The sentences below form opposemes of some syntactical category.
- •§ 415. Let us compare the following pairs of sentences:
- •I'll see him I shall see him
- •It's raining It is raining
- •§ 418. We find no predication in the second sentence of the following dialogue.
- •§ 419. The sentence-words yes and no are regularly used as adjuncts of some head-sentences.
- •§ 421. The traditional classification of the parts of the sentence is open to criticism from the point of view of consistency.
- •§ 425. The subject of a simple sentence can be a word, a syntactical word-morpheme or a complex.
- •§ 426. We may speak of a secondary subject within a complex. In the following sentence it is the noun head.
- •§ 429. If we compare the subject in English with that of Russian we shall find a considerable difference between them.
- •§ 430. The predicate is the member of a predication containing the mood and tense (or only mood) components of predicativity.
- •§ 431. The predicate can be a word or a syntactical word-morpheme. When it is a notional word, it "is not only the structural but the notional predicate as well.
- •Objective Complements (Objects)
- •§ 448. Like other parts of a simple sentence (clause), objective complements may be expressed by complexes and are then called complex objects.
- •Adverbial Complements (Adverbials)
- •§ 454. Below are some specimens of quantitative adverbial complements.
- •§455. Circumstantial adverbials, or as a. I. Smirnitsky calls them, adverbials of situation, comprise:
- •§ 457. As follows from the string of examples given above, in simple sentences adverbial complements are usually adverbs, nouns (mostly with prepositions), verbids and verbid complexes.
- •§458. Comparing English adverbials with those in Russian one can see that despite some common features (meaning, types), they are in a number of points different.
- •§ 459. Attributes are secondary parts of the sentence serving to modify nouns or noun-equivalents in whatever functions they are used in the sentence.
- •§ 460. Attributes are formally indicated only by the position they occupy, save the demonstrative pronouns this, these, that, those which, besides, agree in number with the word they modify.
- •§469. Connectives are linking-words considered as a secondary part of the sentence. They are mostly prepositions and conjunctions.
- •§ 472. The articles resemble particles in being semi-notional and in functioning as specifiers. But they specify only one part of speech, nouns. In this they resemble attributes.
- •§ 473. Parenthetical elements are peculiar parts of the sentence.
- •§ 474. In accordance with their meanings parenthetical elements fall into four major groups:
- •§ 475. In a simple sentence parenthetical elements may be expressed by individual words (modal words, adverbs, nouns) and word-combinations of different nature.
- •§ 476. In most cases parenthetical elements are connected in sense with the sentence as a whole, that is why they have no fixed position in the sentence.
- •I. The Position of the Subject and the Predicate in the Sentence
- •§ 477. We have already dwelt upon the fact that in Modern English syntactical relations of words in the sentence are very often indicated by the position the words occupy in the sentence.
- •II. The Position of the Object
- •§ 479. The direct object is usually placed after the verb unless the indirect object precedes it.
- •§ 480. Sometimes the object is pushed to the front of the sentence. It occurs:
- •§ 482. The indirect object cannot be used in the sentence without the direct object. The indirect object is regularly put before the direct object as in That gave me a new idea.
- •§ 483. In most cases they follow the direct object, though for stylistic purposes, I. E. For emphasis and expressiveness, they may be placed at the head of the sentence.
- •§ 487. The position of an attribute depends both on the head-word and on the attribute. If the head-word is a pronoun, the attribute is, as a rule, postpositive.
- •§ 488. In postposition attributes often acquire what we might call a 'semi-predicative' connotation.
- •§ 489. If there are two or more prepositive attributes to one and the same noun their order is dependent upon a number of factors which appear to be semantic and stylistic rather than grammatical.
- •§ 491. As to the position of the other parts of the sentence, see the combinability of the corresponding parts of speech.
- •§ 497. The compound sentence usually describes events in their natural order, reflecting the march of events spoken of in the sequence of clauses.2
- •§ 498. The principal clauses of complex sentences are usually not classified, though their meanings are not neutral with regard to the meanings of the subordinate clauses.
- •§ 502. Subordinate clauses are connected with the principal clause by conjunctions, conjunctive and relative pronouns or asyndetically.
- •§ 506. The mood of the predicate verb of a subordinate clause depends on the principal clause to a greater extent than its tense.
- •§ 507. The subject clause is the only one used in the function of a primary part of the sentence.
- •§ 519. A variety of attributive clauses is the appositive clause, which formally differs from an attributive clause in being introduced by a conjunction (that, if, whether).
- •§ 520. Extension clauses are postpositive adjuncts of adjectives, adverbs and adlinks.
- •§ 521. Most authors who do not regard parenthetical elements as parts of the sentence treat It is past ten, 1 think as a simple sentence. We do not find this view convincing.
- •§ 522. In most cases parenthetical clauses are introduced asyndetically, though now and again the conjunctions as, if, etc. Are used.
- •§ 523. Sometimes subordination and coordination may be combined within one sentence, in which case we may have compound-complex and complex-compound sentences.
- •§ 524. Among the composite sentences of English and other languages we find a peculiar type differing from the rest.
- •§ 525. There is no agreement as to the syntactical nature of a sentence like He said, "I love you".
- •§ 526. Let us compare the two sentences:
- •§ 527. The introductory part of direct speech may precede the quotation, follow it, or be inserted in it.
- •§ 528. The so-called 'indirect speech' does not differ grammatically from the conventional types of sentences.
- •§ 529. The "rules for changing from direct into indirect speech" found in most English grammars are rules for reducing two predicative centres to one — that of the author.
- •Conclusion
- •§ 535. The syntactical system of a language is, as a rule, closely connected with its morphological system. The structure of the sentence and the structure of the word are interdependent.
- •§ 537. The role of grammatical word-morphemes is even greater in English syntax than in morphology.
- •§ 539. It is owing to most of the features described above that Modern English is spoken of as an analytical language.
§ 389. In the sentence Birds fly, as we have seen, the syntactical and the lexical meanings of the subject and the predicate go together. But English has a system of devices to separate them.
To begin with, the overwhelming majority of verb forms in English are analytical 1. When the predicate is an analytical verb, the structural and the notional parts of the predicate are naturally separated, the former being expressed by a grammatical word-morpheme, as in the sentences Mother is sleeping, I shall wait, etc.
When the sentence contains a finite link-verb or a modal verb, the structural and notional predicates are different words as in He is late, She can swim.
The structural and the notional (part of the) predicate are often separated in English by adverbs and other words.
E. g. He i s often late.
You must never d о it again. We s h a l l certainly come.
In interrogative and negative sentences the structural (part of the) predicate is usually detached from the notional (part of the) predicate and is placed before the subject or the negation.
Is mother sleeping? Mother is not s l e e p i n g. Shall I wait? You must not с r у.
When the predicate is expressed by a synthetic form and contains no word-morphemes, as in the sentence Birds fly, special word-morphemes do, does, did are introduced to separate the structural and the lexical meanings of the predicate verb in interrogative and negative transforms of the sentence.
D о birds fly? Birds d о not fly. He smiles. Does he s т i l e? He smiled. Did he smile?
The same phenomenon is observed in sentences like Little does he e x p e с t it, indeed. Only then did we b e g i n. Also for emphasis in sentences like We d о l i k e it, But he d i d so want, and the writing said he never would. (Galsworthy).
Now observe the so-called 'contracted forms', so widely used in colloquial English: I'm sure, He's writing, We'll come, You're students, They've left, etc. They are another manifestation of the tendency to bring together the structural meanings by isolating them from the notional (part of the) predicate.
The tendency to detach the structural part of the predicate from its notional one is obvious in disjunctive questions.
He i s working, ins't he? They haven't come yet, have they? You know him, don't you? You can swim, can't you?
The same tendency is evident in sentences like John graduated last year and so did Mary. John hasn't married yet. Neither has Peter. He was glad the play had ended as it had. (Galsworthy).
But especially manifest is the tendency in short replies of the type He does, They will, etc. When in answer to the question Has John really promised that? we say He has, we repeat the predicative part of the previous sentence, leaving out the notional part.
Thus, we must say that the tendency to detach the structural from the notional is a typical feature of the English predicate, which is connected with the extensive use of grammatical word-morphemes and semi-notional verbs. The ties between analytical morphology and syntax are obvious.2
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1 See § 12.
2 This is what W. Twaddell says about the function of what he calls 'verb auxiliaries': "Recent research on English verb grammar has increasingly revealed the crucial functions of the auxiliaries as grammatical sentence elements...". After describing their main syntactical uses he continues: "These four grammatical functions of auxiliaries are a peculiar feature of English grammar. It must be noted that they are not mere 'privileges' for auxiliaries: an auxiliary is an indispensable component in any English construction of sentence negation, interrogation, stress for insistence, and echo-repetition".
§ 390. The subject is in most cases a word uniting the syntactical meaning of 'person' with the lexical meanings. But English has developed special word-morphemes to separate them, as in the dialogue below.
— It is necessary to warn her, isn't it?
— It is.
The subject it has no notional value, but it contains the predicative meaning of 'person'. The correlated but detached lexical meaning is in the infinitive to warn. Thus, it has only the form, but not the content of a word. In content it is a grammatical morpheme, and we may, consequently, regard it as a grammatical word-morpheme. But it differs from the grammatical word-morphemes already described in not forming part of an analytical word while making part of a sentence. Hence the conclusion that grammatical word-morphemes divide into morphological and syntactical ones. It in the sentences analysed is a syntactical word-morpheme used to detach the predicative meaning of the subject from its lexical meaning.
Another syntactical word-morpheme of this type is there in the following dialogue.
— There is no money in it, is there?
— There is.
As a result of a long course of development this there has lost its lexical meaning, its connection with the pro-adverb there, and acquires the predicative meaning of the subject when it occupies its position. There shows, like most subjects, that neither the speaker not the listener are involved.
In the sentences above there is the subject owing to its position, though the predicate agrees in number with the noun money, which is the notional correlative of there. W. Twaddell writes: "Like the interrogative subjects who (what) which? the empty subject there is itself unmarked for number. A following verb displays the number agreement appropriate to the predicative noun complement or to an earlier noun or pronoun reference. "Who is coming? Which are staying? What's the best way to Newport? What are those things?" — Similarly, "There is a tide in the affairs of men. There are more things in heaven and earth. There happen to be several good reasons. There does not seem to be any objection".