Sentence and Text

For a long time sentence was regarded as the highest language unit though the ideas have been stated that sentences don’t exist in isolation.

Sentences are integral part of speech oral or written. They are interconnected into a larger unit which is usually called text.

At first, texts were considered as not arranged grammatically (Bloomfield).

Nowadays the problem of texts and their arrangement is given much attention, it has been shown that sentences in speech come under broad grammatical arrangement and combine somehow with one another in the text.

The language level that follows the level of sentence (proposemic) in the hierarchy of language levels is the one whose units are formed by separate sentences united into topical groupings.

Such groups of sentences are called in linguistics – supersentential constructions they constitute a text.

In written speech these constructions often coincide with paragraphs.

In oral – are separated by long pauses, combined with concluding tones of voice, are called dictemes.

A succession of sentences in a text serves a common informative purpose, sentences within the text are units both semantically (the meaning of sentences doesn’t contradict the meaning of the whole text), and syntactically (sentences in the text have some special syntactic features showing their connection).

Division of sentence sequence is based on the type of the text:

- monologue sequence; - dialogue sequence.

Monologue – sentences are directed from the speaker to the listener, so it’s characterized as a one-direction sequence.

Dialogue – sentences are produced by two speakers in turn who are at the same time listeners, in a dialogue sequence sentences are directed to meet one another.

Mixed types - # inner dialogue.

Sentences are connected with each other.

Connection may be of different types:

• prospective – sentences in a sequence are connected prospectively if the linking elements are in a preceding sentence.

# I tell you, one of two things must happen. Either he’ll die or become the winner.

• retrospective – connective elements in the sentence that follows and relate – this sentence to a preceding one.

# What curious class sensation was this? Was it merely fellow feeling?

Connecting elements: conjunctions, adverbs, a word in one sentence /succedent/ referring to a word in the other one /antecedent/.

Sentences: leading and sequential according to the role they play in a sequence.

The division of sentence based on the pragmatics. Pragmatic syntax.

Studying language units especially complicated ones we first of all examine their semantic and syntactical structure.

There’s one more aspect which also needs studying – pragmatic. It’s studied by a branch of linguistics – pragmatic syntax.

Pragmatic syntax focuses on the speaker and his relations with the utterances he pronounces, the situation of representation of the utterance and like.

The same sentences actualized in different communicative situations with different communicative intensions turn out to be different ones.

This branch of syntax is rather new and not well – developed though some notions have appeared.

Each sentence is pronounced to reach a certain goal or to solve a certain communicative task.

Sentences possess communicative intension.

In the process of communication there are two participants usually: 1 participant produces an utterance, the other one reacts to it. utterances have illocutive force that results in gaining perlocutive effect.

# An utterance may be intended to describe something – illocutive force.

This results in somebody’s knowing about this object – perlocutive.

Taking into consideration….