- •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.
Actual division of the sentence, its purpose and main components. The formal means of expressing the distinction between the theme and the rheme.
Every sentence is divided into the main parts and the secondary parts. The main parts are the subject and predicate of the sentence. This is grammatical division. But besides it, there is also logical division into the logical subject and into the logical predicate. The logical subject is called in linguistics the theme, and the logical predicate is called the rheme. The theme is the beginning of the statement, and the rheme is the new in the sentence.
The rheme can be expressed by:
emphatic “it” (It was yesterday that I saw it; It was Tom who did it)
the indefinite article (The door opened and a man came in)
the construction “there+verb” (There was a sound of footsteps and Jane saw Soams)
word order (In the middle of the room stood the head of the family)
logical stress (I ought to HAVE done it)
particles “only”, “even” (You know only she allows it)
The theme can be expressed by:
loose parenthesis “as to”, “as for” (As for morality, he took the view)
the definite article (The man appeared again)
word order (Talent he had, money he had not)
the omission of some elements (Where are the books? In my bag)
The problem of actual division is connected with the names of Prof. Koftunova, Prof. Slusareva, Prof. Sheryakova, etc. Not always the theme coincides with the grammatical subject, and the rheme with the grammatical predicate.
The actual division of the sentence finds its full expression in a concrete context of speech, therefore it is sometimes referred to as the “contexual” division of the sentence. It explains the fact that one and the same sentence can be interpreted differently with reference to its division into the theme and the rheme. For example, if the teacher asks the group “Who is absent?” and gets the answer “Petrov is absent”, the theme of the sentence is “is absent” and the rheme is “Petrov”. In a different situation the division of the sentence can be entirely different. If the sentence “Petrov is absent” is a reaction to the teacher’s utterance “Today I’m going to ask Petrov”, the theme here is “Petrov” and the rheme is “is absent”.
The composite sentence as a polyprediative construction. The difference between the composite sentence and its contextually coherent de-compositional presentation. The composite sentence of incoherent complexity as a characteristic feature of literary written speech. Hypotaxis (subordination) and parataxis (coordination) as two principle types of construction of composite sentences. The problem of asyndetic composite sentences.
The composite sentence is a general term for all types of sentences with more than one predicative line. Composite sentence in which clauses are subordinated to one another is called a complex sentence (сложноподчиненное). Composite sentence with coordinated clauses is termed as a compound sentence (сложносочиненное).
Each predicative unit in a composite sentence makes up a clause. This clause corresponds to a separate sentence but is not equivalent to it. For example, the sentence When she entered the hall the party was in full swing includes 2 clauses which correspond to the sentences She entered the hall and The party was in full swing.
The logical difference between the composite sentence and the sequence of simple sentences is in the purpose of communication. The independent sentences are utterances each expressing an event of self-sufficient significance. The communicative purpose of the sentence discussed is to inform of the fact that “the party was in full swing” and is destroyed in a sequence of simple sentences. Thus, we see that the composite sentence, as a particular structural unit of language is remarkable for its own purely semantic merits, it exposes the genuine logic of events making up a situational unity. The fact proves the unity of the 2 predicative units within the composite sentence. The composite sentence including no more than 2 predicative lines is called elementary.
Composite sentence displays 2 principal types of clause connection: hypotaxis (that of subordination) and parataxis (that of coordination).
Subordination is revealed between clauses of unequal rank, one of them being dominated by the other. From the structural point of view it means that one clause is in a notional position of the other clause. It means that a subordinate clause refers to one notional constituent in a principal clause. From the communicative point of view a subordinate clause renders the information which is additional to that of the principal clause.
Coordination is observed between the syntactically equal sentences. For ex.: Soon he left the house and I followed him.
There are two general ways of combining clauses into a sentence. They are syndetic (conjunctional) and asyndetic (non-conjunctional). According to the traditional point of view all composite sentences are classed into compound sentences and complex sentences, syndetic or asyndetic type of clause connection being specifically displayed with both classes.
But besides the classical types of subordination and coordination of clauses there exists loose connection. It is represented in writing by a semicolon or a dash. Usually parenthetical clauses have loose connection (I was afraid to be seen with my new friends: so I asked them to go on first).
By asyndetic we mean composite sentences whose constituent clauses are not joined together either by a conjunction or by any kind of conjunctive word (relative pronoun or relative adverb who, which, that, when, where, etc.). This does not mean that there is nothing at all at the beginning of the second clause to express some kind of relation between the clauses. The second (or third, etc.) clause may begin with some word that does indicate some relation of this kind: for instance, if it begins with the adverb however, this indicates a semantic relation between the clauses akin to that expressed by the co-ordinating conjunction but; if it begins by the adverb instead this, too, indicates some sort of relation. Something similar may be said about such words as nevertheless, nonetheless, therefore notwithstanding, still, etc. It may also be said that a personal or demonstrative pronoun referring back to some person or thing mentioned in the first clause of an asyndetic composite sentence performs some connecting function. Yet we will consider sentences built in this way to be asyndetic, as they do not contain any grammatical link between the clauses.
It must be admitted that the boundary between syndetic and asyndetic joining of clauses in a composite sentence is not clear. To some extent it depends on the way we view a particular word. For instance, if the second clause of a composite sentence opens with the word yet, we may say that it is an adverb and the connection is asyndetic, or else, that it is a conjunction and the connection is syndetic.