Glossary of lingustic terms:

1. agreement - согласование

2. government - управление

3. enclosure - замыкание

4. adjoinment – примыкание

The sentence and its aspects

Sentence is the most complex unit in the language system. It is a result of it having both many-layer structure and its various communicative functions. This explains the fact that sentence has several aspects: structural, semantic, pragmatic. Each of the aspects is the basis of classification, according to the structure, meaning and function of the sentences.

The structure of the sentence includes various relations between the elements of the sentence. They are: relations between the parts of the sentence, components of phrases, the sequence of elements of the sentence. According to their structure, sentences can be two-axis and one-axis, simple, composite (complex and compound).

The semantic aspect of the sentence studies the role of components in the semantics of the parts of the sentence and the whole of the sentence. Parts of the co-ordinate complex sentence, clauses also have semantic relations. Besides, parts of the sentence have specific meaning, as agent and patient meaning of objects.

The pragmatic aspect of the sentence is connected with its participation in the act of speech. The sentence is a communicative unit, therefore from the point of view of the function they can be classified into declarative, imperative and interrogative. These communicative types stand in strict opposition to one another, and their inner properties of form and meaning are immediately correlated with the corresponding features of the response.

Glossary of linguistic terms:

1. pragmatic - практический

2. co-ordinate - сложносочиненный

3. clause – придаточное предложение

4. agent – агенс, со значением действующего лица

5. patient – пациенс, со значением объекта действия

Semantic and pragmatic aspects of the sentence

The sentence as a lingual unit performs two semantic functions (as opposed to word and phrase, which have only the function of nomination) – first – substance-naming, or nominative function, second – reality-evaluating, or predicative function. The semantics of the sentence presents a unity of its nominative and predicative aspects, while the semantics of the word is monoaspective.

The notional parts of the sentence, referring to the basic elements of the reflected situation (знаменательные члены предложения, которые соотносятся с основными элементами ситуации, отраженной в предложении) form the nominative meaning of the sentence.

The semantic reflections of the elements of the situation, in contrast to the part of the sentence (upper case) make up the semantic roles or the “deeper cases”. It is only through the sentence constituents that the situation together with its various elements can be reflected. The semantic roles of the sentence are situational meanings of the syntactic parts.

The division of the sentence into notional parts, or the nominative division can be shown by a syntagmatic model and will be described as models of syntactic analyses: immediate constituents, distributional model and transformational model.

The division from the point of view of semantic contribution of the sentence parts is called the actual division.

The sentence is a communicative unit, therefore from the point of view of the function they can be classified into declarative, imperative and interrogative. These communicative types stand in strict opposition to one another, and their inner properties of form and meaning are immediately correlated with the corresponding features of the response.

Thus, declarative sentence expresses a statement, either affirmative or negative, and corresponds with responses of attention, agreement or disagreement. – I want to be given reasons for publishing the poem. – I have the same opinion.

The imperative sentence expresses inducement, either affirmative or negative. It urges the listener to perform of not to perform a certain action. It is connected with “action response” Silence on the part of the listener is also linguistically relevant. In the literary narration it is shown by special comments: Knock on the wood – he leaned forward and knocked three times on the barrier.

The interrogative sentence expresses a question, i.e. a request for information. It is connected with an answer, forming together a dialogue unity.

Ways of expressing different purposes of communication are studied by the branch of linguistics called “pragmatic linguistics”. Each speech act is characterized by a definite communicative intention: statements of facts, conjectures (предположение), confirmations, refutations (опровержение), agreements, disagreements, commands, requests, greetings at meeting, at parting, exhortations (убеждение), recommendations, applications for information, supplications, promises, menaces, etc. Among them there are two mutually opposed pragmatic utterance types, constative utterances and performative utterances. Constative utterances express the speaker’s reflections of reality as they are, performative are verbal actions. Pronouncing a performative utterance, the speaker performs his complete action: I declare the conference open. The performance utterance includes (or implies) the pronoun of the 1^st person singular (the direct indication of the speaker), while its verb is used only in the form of the present tense of the indicative mood active.