- •The systemic nature of grammar. The two planes of language: the plane of content and the plane of expression. Two fundamental types of relations of lingual units. Their hierarchical relations.
- •The means employed for building-up member-forms of categorial oppositions. Synthetical and analytical types. The grammatical categories.
- •The category of case. Different approaches to the category of case in English nouns. The range of relational meanings of the English genitive.
- •The category of aspect. The opposition by which the aspective category of development is contrasted. The views on the essence of the perfect forms in modern English.
- •The category of mood. The opposition underlying the category. The problem of the imperative mood. The views on the classification of the subjunctive mood in English.
- •The category of voice, its difference from other verbal categories from the point of its referential qualities. The problem of the reflexive, reciprocal and middle voices.
- •The sentence as a unit of speech. The difference between the sentence and the word. Essential features of the sentence. The nominative function of the sentence.
- •The phrase. Two approaches to the definition of the phrase. Types of phrases. Means of expressing syntactical relations within a phrase.
- •Communicative types of sentences. Speech acts as realization of communicative intentions of the speaker. The three cardinal communicative sentences types. The problem of exclamatory sentences.
- •Actual division of the sentence, its purpose and main components. The formal means of expressing the distinction between the theme and the rheme.
The category of voice, its difference from other verbal categories from the point of its referential qualities. The problem of the reflexive, reciprocal and middle voices.
The form of the verb may show whether the agent expressed by the subject is the doer of the action or the recipient of the action (John broke the vase - the vase was broken). The objective relations between the action and the subject or object of the action find their expression in language as the grammatical category of voice. Therefore, the category of voice reflects the objective relations between the action itself and the subject or object of the action.
The category of voice is realized through the opposition Active voice::Passive voice. The realization of the voice category is restricted because of the implicit grammatical meaning of transitivity/intransitivity. In accordance with this meaning, all English verbs should fall into transitive and intransitive. However, the classification turns out to be more complex and comprises 6 groups:
1. Verbs used only transitively: to mark, to raise;
2.Verbs with the main transitive meaning: to see, to make, to build;
3. Verbs of intransitive meaning and secondary transitive meaning. A lot of intransitive verbs may develop a secondary transitive meaning: They laughed me into agreement; He danced the girl out of the room;
4.Verbs of a double nature, neither of the meanings are the leading one, the verbs can be used both transitively and intransitively: to drive home - to drive a car;
5.Verbs that are never used in the Passive Voice: to seem, to become;
6. Verbs that realize their passive meaning only in special contexts: to live, to sleep, to sit, to walk, to jump.
Some scholars admit the existence of Middle, Reflexive and Reciprocal voices. "Middle Voice" - the verbs primarily transitive may develop an intransitive middle meaning: That adds a lot; The door opened; The book sells easily; The dress washes well. "Reflexive Voice": He dressed; He washed - the subject is both the agent and the recipient of the action at the same time. It is always possible to use a reflexive pronoun in this case: He washed himself. "Reciprocal voice”: They met; They kissed - it is always possible to use a reciprocal pronoun here: They kissed each other.
We cannot, however, speak of different voices, because all these meanings are not expressed morphologically.
The sentence as a unit of speech. The difference between the sentence and the word. Essential features of the sentence. The nominative function of the sentence.
The sentence is the basic unit of syntax. One of the most difficult theoretical problems concerning the sentence is the problem of definition. In the history at least 4 types of definition existed: logical, psychological, structural and phonetical. In the whole a sentence is understood as a combination of words expressing a complete thought.
The traditional definition of the sentence given by acad. Vinogradov is as follows: a sentence is a word or group of words expressing a more or less complete thought. This group of words is connected grammatically and has a finished intonation. The sentence is characterized by the expression of predication which means giving some new information about the subject. It is also characterized by the expression of modality and time.
Prof. Blokh gives another definition of a sentence: the sentence is the immediate integral unit of speech built up of words according to a definite syntactic pattern and distinguished by contextually relevant communicative purpose.
Even one word can constitute a sentence: Night. Congratulations. Why? Away. Certainly. Such sentences which consist of one word are called one-member sentences. They consist of one word which is neither subject nor predicate.
According to the way the main part is expressed in a one-member sentence, one-member sentences are divided into:
Nominal – the main part is expressed by a noun or its equivalent (Morning. Winter).
Adjective – the main part is expressed by an adjective (How wonderful!).
Adverbial – the main part is expressed by an adverbial phrase (In the garden).
Verbal – the main part is expressed by one of the non-finite forms (To go there?).
It is necessary to mention that one-member sentences may consist of not only one word, but of the whole group of words (Awful, broken, muddy roads!). They may reach a size of a paragraph.
A word and a sentence are different elements, though they both belong to nominative units of the language. A sentence as well as a word names smth., so they both possess nominative meaning. But sentence is also a predicative utterance unit. The sentence not only names smth., but refers this event to certain time, voice, mood. This is called predication. Predication is the relation of what is said in the sentence to reality. It is one of the main characteristics of a sentence. Another important characteristic of a sentence is modality. It also shows the relation of what is said to reality, but modality is wider than predication. Modality is not confined to a sentence. It may also belong to words in a dictionary (ex: probably). This modal word also expresses modality as well as a sentence.
A sentence paradigm. According to the definition of traditional grammar, it is a set of word-forms of one lexeme. There’s no unity of opinions concerning a sentence paradigm:
A SP is a system of its forms (Prof. Shvedova). According to her opinion, the sentence is reduced to the morphological paradigm of the verb. This approach is called narrow (Сын учится. Сын учился бы. Сын будет учиться).
The wide approach is proposed by the American scholar Worth and is shared by many representatives of transformational Grammar. We are to distinguish between inflexional paradigm and derivational paradigm. In the inflexional paradigm we find the transforms involving the change of tense, aspect, correlation, etc. They are changes on the morphological level. They are intramodel changes, because they occur within one and the same model. As to the derivational paradigm, transformations performed here are on the syntactic level (The girl plays – She does play – She does not play. What does she do? – Does she play? – How does the girl play!).
The nominating approach. Into one and the same paradigm are included sentences and phrases. They reflect the same objects, phenomena, processes of objective reality and correlations between them (She writes a letter – To write a letter). This conception is wider, because it includes a sentence and a phrase into one paradigm.