- •Class nouns
- •Names of persons
- •Geographical names
- •Miscellaneous proper names
- •Set expressions
- •Some syntactic relations
- •Parts of the day
- •Names of seasons and names of meals
- •"School, college, bed, prison, jail; sea; town, wind, weather, life"
- •Names of diseases and names of languages
- •Certain adjectives, pronouns and numerals
- •The oblique moods subjunctive I
- •Subjunctive II
- •The conditional mood
- •In complex sentences. Real conditions.
- •The suppositional mood
- •The verbals the triple nature of the participle, its tense and voice
- •The functions of p1 & p2
- •The objective participial construction
- •The subjective participial construction
- •The nominative absolute participial construction, the prepositional absolute participial construction
- •The absolute constructions without a participle
- •Double nature of the gerund, its tense and voice
- •Predicative constructions with the gerund
- •The use of the gerund
- •The functions of the gerund
- •The gerund & the participle. The gerund & the infinitive. The gerund & the verbal noun
- •The double nature of the infinitive, its tense, aspect and voice
- •The functions of the infinitive
- •The objective-with-the-infinitive construction
- •The subjective infinitive construction.
- •Syntax the word order
- •Position of the object, the attribute, the adverbial modifiers
- •The subject
- •"It" as the subject of the sentence
- •The predicate
- •The compound verbal predicate. Mixed types
- •Agreement of the predicate with the subject
- •The object
- •The complex object. The cognate object
- •The attribute
- •The adverbial modifier
- •Detached parts of the sentence. The independent elements
- •The simple sentence
- •The compound sentence
- •The complex sentence
- •Attributive and adverbial clauses
- •The rules of the sequence of tenses
- •Indirect speech (statements, questions)
- •Indirect orders and requests, offers, suggestions and advice, indirect exclamations
The subjective infinitive construction.
THE FOR-TO-INFINITIVE CONSTRUCTION
The SIC (sometimes called the Nominative-with-the-Infinitive Construction) is a construction in which the I is in predicate relation to a noun in the common case or a pronoun in the nominative case. It doesn't serve as one part of the sentence: one part has the function of the Subject and the other forms Part of a compound verbal predicate (He's been advised to rest). In Russian неопределенно-личное предложение is used.
The SIC is used with the verbs in the Passive Voice: 1) denoting sense perception ("to hear, to see, etc.") (She was heard to approach the door), a process is expressed by the P1 Indefinite Active (She was heard approaching the door); 2) denoting mental activity ("to think, to consider, to know, to expect, to believe, to suppose") (He is believed to have left for London); 3) "to make" (He was made to sit down); 4) "to say, to report" (She is said to be the nicest person in the world). The SIC is used with the word-groups "to be likely, to be sure, to be certain" (She is sure to call before ten), which is rendered in Russian by a simple sentence with a modal word. It's also used with the pairs of synonyms "to seem-to appear, to happen-to chance, to prove-to turn out" (She appeared to be listening).
The FTIC is a construction in which the I is in predicate relation to a noun or a pronoun preceded by the preposition "for". In Russian a subordinate clause or an I is used.
The functions of the FTIC: Subject (often with the introductory "It") (It's a shame for a man like you to act this way); Predicative (It was for me to find out); Complex object (I waited for her to call); Attribute (There's nothing for you to do but give it up); Adverbial modifier of purpose (He moved away for me to see the picture) and result (He spoke loudly for me to hear).
With the expressions "to be sorry, to be glad" the I is used only if the subject of the sentence represents at the same time the doer of the action expressed by the I (I'm glad to have seen her at last). In other cases a clause is used with these expressions (I'm glad that you have seen her at last).
Syntax the word order
As English words almost don't have any inflexions and their relation to each other is shown by their place in the sentence, word order in English is fixed. So due to the absence of case distinctions word order is practically the only means of distinguishing between the subject and the direct object.
Direct word order: 1. The Subject; 2. The Predicate; 3. Objects; 4. Adverbial modifiers.
Inverted word order (inversion) is the order of words in which the subject is placed after the predicate. Type of sentences that require the inverted order of words: 1) Interrogative sentences have only partial inversion as only part of the predicate (the auxiliary or modal verb) is placed before the subject (When did you see it?), the whole predicate is placed before the subject when it's expressed by the verbs "to be, to have" (Have you any complains?); 2) Sentences introduced by "there" (There is nothing strange about that); 3) Compound sentences, their second part beginning with "so, neither" (I am going home, so are you); 4) Simple exclamatory sentences expressing wish (Be it so!).
Inversion also acquires a stylistic function. It occurs when: 1) An adverbial modifier opens the sentence a) and the subject often has a lengthy modifier (In an armchair, a black shiny leather armchair, was sitting a man), b) and it carries a negative meaning (So little did we know then), c) and it expressed by the adverbs "so, thus, now, then, etc." (no inversion if the subject is a pronoun) (Thus ends my prophecy), d) AM of manner expressed by adverbs (Peacefully and silently did we sleep that night), e) preceded by "so" (So frankly did he speak to us); 2) The emphatic particle "only", the adverbs "hardly, scarcely (with the conjunction "when")", the adverb "no sooner (with "than")" or the conjunction "nor" opens the sentence. If there is inversion the auxiliary "do" must be used if the predicate doesn't contain an auxiliary or a modal verb (Only once did I meet him); 3) The word "here" implying some demonstrative force (Here comes the bus); 4) Postpositions denoting direction like "in, out, down, away, up, etc." (with nouns only) (Down goes the player!); 5) An object or an adverbial modifier expressed by a word-group with "not a, many a" (Many a time did he see it); 6) A predicative expressed by an adjective or by a noun modified by an adjective or by the pronoun "such" (Such is life); 7) In conditional clauses introduced without any conjunction when the predicate is expressed by "was, were, had, could, should" (I'll be here, should any emergency arise).