The simple sentence and its catagories

makes it possible to analyze the relations between them. These relations may be

of two kinds: symmetrical and asymmetrical. 

                         ЛЕКЦИЯ № 11

                  THE COMMUNICATIVE ASPECT

            OF THE SENTENCE AND ITS ACTUAL DIVISION 

1. Classification of sentences according to the purpose of communication

2. The problem of exclamatory sentences.

3. Transposition on the level of communicative types of sentences.

4. The actual division of the sentence. The central notions of the actual

   division: the theme and the rheme. Dirhemic and monorhemic utterances.

5. The system of means for expressing the components of actual division. 
 

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6. The peculiarities of actual division in different communicative types of

   sentences. The text forming function of actual division. 

       1. From the point of view of its role in discourse the sentence is defined

as a minimum unit of communication. Every sentence is uttered with a certain

communicative aim: either to share information with the listener, or to ask for

information, or to induce the listener to some action.

       According to their communicative aim sentences are divided into three

types: declarative, interrogative and imperative. As a rule one communicative

type differs from another not only in the purpose of communication, but also in

structure, intonation and the listener’s response.

       2. In some grammar books, mostly in practical grammar manuals the

authors point out one more communicative type - exclamatory sentences.

However, a closer look at the exclamatory sentences shows that they can hardly

be placed on the same level with the three communicative types because they

differ in their communicative status. If the function of the declarative sentence

is to give information, the function of interrogative sentences is to ask for

information, the function of imperative sentences is to induce the speaker to an

action, the function of exclamatory sentences is just to express the speaker’s

emotions and that shows very clearly their difference from the three

communicative types. The emotive charge, expressed by exclamatory sentences

presents an additional feature that may accompany the communicative types. So

each communicative type of the sentence may be exclamatory and non-

exclamatory, e.g.

Non-exclamatory:                                     Exclamatory:

It was a silly mistake.                             What a silly mistake it was!

Why did you keep it back from me?                    Why on earth did you keep it

back from me?!

Try to speak sensibly.                              Do try to speak sensibly!

       3. The analysis of communicative types of sentences from the aspect of

syntactic structures in which the communicative aims are realized reveals a

fundamental parallelism between a communicative function and a syntactic

structure. Yet this parallelism is not absolute and in the process of real

communication each of the communicative types of sentences may carry out

secondary communicative functions, i.e. be transposed into the sphere of other

communicative types. D. Bolinger is absolutely right in supposing that

grammatical functions probably started as social (communicative L.K.)

functions thousands of years ago, but as societies grew more complex the simple

social functions became diversified and the old forms had to be adopted for new

purposes [Bolinger 1975, 157]. As a result we have questions that do not really

ask, statements that do not really assert, imperatives that do not really command,

that is we observe the use of one communicative type of sentences in the 
 
 

                                       27 
 

function of another communicative type, i.e. we observe the phenomenon of

transposition on the level of communicative types of sentences.

       The dynamic character of relations between a communicative type of

sentence and its ability to actualize both its primary and its secondary

communicative functions is presented in the following scheme where the

straight lines correspond to the primary functions and the dotted lines - to the

secondary functions:

Communicative function                                Type of sentence 

1. Statement                                                   Declarative

sentence 

2. Question                                                    Interrogative

sentence 

3. Inducement                                                  Imperative

sentence 

       Inducement                                              Imperative

sentence 

       The phenomenon of transposition on the level of communicative types of

sentences can be correlated to the theory of speech acts where it is described in

terms of direct and indirect speech acts ( for more detail see: [Серль 1986])

       4. In the process of communication one and the same sentence may be

used for making different utterances. Thus the sentence William Shakespeare

was born in Stratford-upon-Avon may produce three utterances. If it is used as

an answer to the question “Where was William Shakespeare born?” it is

pronounced with the logical stress on the adverbial modifier or the other parts

of the sentence may be deleted. If it is used as an answer to a question “Did

William Shakespeare live all his life in London?” it is pronounced with the

logical stress on the predicate, or the particle only is introduced before the

predicate. And finally, if it is used as an answer to a question “Who was born in

Stratford-upon-Avon?” it has the logical stress on the subject and the other

parts of the sentence may be deleted. These utterances, though identical in their

syntactic and semantic structures and their communicative functions (all of them

are declarative) carry out different functions in the process of communication.

They differ in their informative value. This aspect in the sentence analysis is

known as the actual division, or the functional perspective of the sentence. 
 
 
 

                                       28 
 

                             ЛЕКЦИЯ № 12

                      THE PARTS OF THE SENTENCE 

1. The general characteristic of the parts of the sentence

2. The relations between parts of the sentence and parts of speech, parts of the

   sentence and semantic actants.

3. The system of parts of the sentence in English

4. Borderline cases in the system of parts of the sentence 

       1. Analyzing the sentence from the point of view of its constituents we

come down to the minimal units of syntactic analysis. These minimal syntactic

units distinguished on the basis of their formal features (morphological forms

and position in the sentence) and their syntactic function in the structure of the

sentence are called parts of the sentence. A part of the sentence, in fact,

presents the realization of a notional word in the sentence, a syntactic form of a

notional word. The theory of parts of speech has a long history, its basic

positions were worked out by the traditional syntax and it was further elaborated

by the semantic syntax with its focus on the relations between the syntactic

(surface) and the semantic (deep) structures of the sentence. The theory of parts

of the sentence was subjected to criticism by structural syntax and attempts were

made to replace the traditional parts of the sentence by such notions as

immediate constituents, tagmemes, strings etc., but the theory of parts of the

sentence survived and no syntactic analysis is possible without addressing the

notions of the subject, predicate and the other parts of the sentence. The vital

necessity in this theory probably lies in the fact that, on the one hand, parts of

the sentence reveal the peculiarities of the sentence structure, and, on the other,

the are related to the elements of objective reality conceptualized by the human

mind and reflected in the semantic structure of the sentence.

       2. Thus parts of the sentence establish the correlation between the two

planes of the language: the formal and the semantic planes. From the point of

view of their semantic aspect parts of the sentence denote certain elements of the

situation which carry out their typical functions in the events described in the

sentence and, consequently, certain typical functions in the semantic structure of

the sentence which serves as a generalized representation of the event (such

functions as the action, the agent, the object, the instrument). From the point of

view of their formal properties parts of the sentence are characterized by certain

formal features, such as their position in the sentence and also the fact that these

positions are designed for words as representatives of certain parts of speech.

(When we discussed parts of speech we characterized them as cognitive-

discursive formations which, on the one hand, are designed for naming certain

concepts, and on the other, for certain positions in the utterance).

       Thus in the study of the parts of the sentence we have to consider the

relations between: 1) the parts of the sentence and the parts of speech; 2) the 
 

                                       29 
 

parts of the sentence as components of the syntactic, or formal structure of the

sentence and the semantic actants (semantic functions) as elements of the

semantic, or deep structure. 

                             ЛЕКЦИЯ № 13

                       THE SYNTAX OF THE PHRASE 

1. The definition of the phrase and the main problems in the study of phrases.

2. The problem of phrase classification.

3. Nominalization and its functions in the language.

4. Grammatical means of expressing syntactic relations between the

   components of the phrase. 

        1. If we look attentively at the structure of a sentence we shall see that in

fact it is not composed of separate words but rather that words are first grouped

into phrases and then these phrases serve as prefabs for making a sentence. E.g.

The little man looked in our direction. The prefabs for making the sentence

are: the noun phrases the little man and in our direction, then the verb phrase

looked in our direction and then the N-phrase and the V-phrase are combined to

produce a sentence. Thus if we compare a sentence with a building we may

conclude that it is built not out of bricks (words) but rather out of prefabs

(phrases). The phrase is a group of two or more syntactically related

notional words within the structure of the sentence based on certain

grammatical relations between its components, which itself is not a

sentence. This definition of the phrase is based on the understanding of the

phrase shared by many scholars on the material of different languages

(V.V.Vinogradov, L.S.Barkhudarov).

        The definition points out two most important specific features of the

-phrase:

        1) it is a combination of two or more notional words, from which it

follows that a combination of notional word with a functional word ( e.g. in the

yard, from the town etc.) are considered to be not phrases, but the syntactic

forms of the word (see a different opinion in: [Ilyish 1971, 171]). We consider

that being functional words (or grammatical lexicon, as they are called by S.D.

Katsnelson) functional words do not establish phrases with notional words but

they participate in establishing grammatical relations between the components

of a phrase as we shall see later;

        2) the phrase is basically different from the sentence. The principal

difference between the phrase and the sentence lies in the fact that the sentences

a unit of communication whereas the phrase is not. The sentence has a

nominating function (it names an event or a situation of reality) and a

communicative function (it is used with a certain communicative aim) whereas 

the phrase has only a nominating function - it names some phenomena or

processes and in this respect it is closer to a word.

      2. There are several ways of classifying phrases based on different

principles: structural, morphological, semantic and derivational.

      3. Nominalization plays a very important role in the grammatical structure