- •Теоретическая грамматика английского языка
- •Introduction
- •§ 381. Within a sentence, the word or combination of words that contains the meanings of predicativity may be called the predication.
- •§ 384. The main parts of the sentence are those whose function it is to make the predication. They are the subject and the predicate of the sentence.
- •§ 389. In the sentence Birds fly, as we have seen, the syntactical and the lexical meanings of the subject and the predicate go together. But English has a system of devices to separate them.
- •§391. Let us now consider the grammatical word-morphemes do, does, did in sentences like Does she ever smile? We do not know him, etc.
- •§393. Every predication can be either positive or negative.
- •§ 396. As defined (§ 3), when studying the structure of a unit, we find out its components, mostly units of the next lower level, their arrangement and their functions as parts of the unit.
- •§ 399. Some analogy can be drawn between the structure of a word and the structure of a sentence.
- •§ 401. Depending on their relation to the members of the predication the words of a sentence usually fall into two groups — the group of the subject and the group of the predicate 1.
- •§ 403. Sentences with only one predication are called simple sentences. Those with more than one predication have usually no general name 1. We shall call them composite sentences.
- •§ 409. Not all interrogative sentences are syntactical opposites of declarative sentences.
- •§ 411. The sentences below form opposemes of some syntactical category.
- •§ 415. Let us compare the following pairs of sentences:
- •I'll see him I shall see him
- •It's raining It is raining
- •§ 418. We find no predication in the second sentence of the following dialogue.
- •§ 419. The sentence-words yes and no are regularly used as adjuncts of some head-sentences.
- •§ 421. The traditional classification of the parts of the sentence is open to criticism from the point of view of consistency.
- •§ 425. The subject of a simple sentence can be a word, a syntactical word-morpheme or a complex.
- •§ 426. We may speak of a secondary subject within a complex. In the following sentence it is the noun head.
- •§ 429. If we compare the subject in English with that of Russian we shall find a considerable difference between them.
- •§ 430. The predicate is the member of a predication containing the mood and tense (or only mood) components of predicativity.
- •§ 431. The predicate can be a word or a syntactical word-morpheme. When it is a notional word, it "is not only the structural but the notional predicate as well.
- •Objective Complements (Objects)
- •§ 448. Like other parts of a simple sentence (clause), objective complements may be expressed by complexes and are then called complex objects.
- •Adverbial Complements (Adverbials)
- •§ 454. Below are some specimens of quantitative adverbial complements.
- •§455. Circumstantial adverbials, or as a. I. Smirnitsky calls them, adverbials of situation, comprise:
- •§ 457. As follows from the string of examples given above, in simple sentences adverbial complements are usually adverbs, nouns (mostly with prepositions), verbids and verbid complexes.
- •§458. Comparing English adverbials with those in Russian one can see that despite some common features (meaning, types), they are in a number of points different.
- •§ 459. Attributes are secondary parts of the sentence serving to modify nouns or noun-equivalents in whatever functions they are used in the sentence.
- •§ 460. Attributes are formally indicated only by the position they occupy, save the demonstrative pronouns this, these, that, those which, besides, agree in number with the word they modify.
- •§469. Connectives are linking-words considered as a secondary part of the sentence. They are mostly prepositions and conjunctions.
- •§ 472. The articles resemble particles in being semi-notional and in functioning as specifiers. But they specify only one part of speech, nouns. In this they resemble attributes.
- •§ 473. Parenthetical elements are peculiar parts of the sentence.
- •§ 474. In accordance with their meanings parenthetical elements fall into four major groups:
- •§ 475. In a simple sentence parenthetical elements may be expressed by individual words (modal words, adverbs, nouns) and word-combinations of different nature.
- •§ 476. In most cases parenthetical elements are connected in sense with the sentence as a whole, that is why they have no fixed position in the sentence.
- •I. The Position of the Subject and the Predicate in the Sentence
- •§ 477. We have already dwelt upon the fact that in Modern English syntactical relations of words in the sentence are very often indicated by the position the words occupy in the sentence.
- •II. The Position of the Object
- •§ 479. The direct object is usually placed after the verb unless the indirect object precedes it.
- •§ 480. Sometimes the object is pushed to the front of the sentence. It occurs:
- •§ 482. The indirect object cannot be used in the sentence without the direct object. The indirect object is regularly put before the direct object as in That gave me a new idea.
- •§ 483. In most cases they follow the direct object, though for stylistic purposes, I. E. For emphasis and expressiveness, they may be placed at the head of the sentence.
- •§ 487. The position of an attribute depends both on the head-word and on the attribute. If the head-word is a pronoun, the attribute is, as a rule, postpositive.
- •§ 488. In postposition attributes often acquire what we might call a 'semi-predicative' connotation.
- •§ 489. If there are two or more prepositive attributes to one and the same noun their order is dependent upon a number of factors which appear to be semantic and stylistic rather than grammatical.
- •§ 491. As to the position of the other parts of the sentence, see the combinability of the corresponding parts of speech.
- •§ 497. The compound sentence usually describes events in their natural order, reflecting the march of events spoken of in the sequence of clauses.2
- •§ 498. The principal clauses of complex sentences are usually not classified, though their meanings are not neutral with regard to the meanings of the subordinate clauses.
- •§ 502. Subordinate clauses are connected with the principal clause by conjunctions, conjunctive and relative pronouns or asyndetically.
- •§ 506. The mood of the predicate verb of a subordinate clause depends on the principal clause to a greater extent than its tense.
- •§ 507. The subject clause is the only one used in the function of a primary part of the sentence.
- •§ 519. A variety of attributive clauses is the appositive clause, which formally differs from an attributive clause in being introduced by a conjunction (that, if, whether).
- •§ 520. Extension clauses are postpositive adjuncts of adjectives, adverbs and adlinks.
- •§ 521. Most authors who do not regard parenthetical elements as parts of the sentence treat It is past ten, 1 think as a simple sentence. We do not find this view convincing.
- •§ 522. In most cases parenthetical clauses are introduced asyndetically, though now and again the conjunctions as, if, etc. Are used.
- •§ 523. Sometimes subordination and coordination may be combined within one sentence, in which case we may have compound-complex and complex-compound sentences.
- •§ 524. Among the composite sentences of English and other languages we find a peculiar type differing from the rest.
- •§ 525. There is no agreement as to the syntactical nature of a sentence like He said, "I love you".
- •§ 526. Let us compare the two sentences:
- •§ 527. The introductory part of direct speech may precede the quotation, follow it, or be inserted in it.
- •§ 528. The so-called 'indirect speech' does not differ grammatically from the conventional types of sentences.
- •§ 529. The "rules for changing from direct into indirect speech" found in most English grammars are rules for reducing two predicative centres to one — that of the author.
- •Conclusion
- •§ 535. The syntactical system of a language is, as a rule, closely connected with its morphological system. The structure of the sentence and the structure of the word are interdependent.
- •§ 537. The role of grammatical word-morphemes is even greater in English syntax than in morphology.
- •§ 539. It is owing to most of the features described above that Modern English is spoken of as an analytical language.
§393. Every predication can be either positive or negative.
He is. — He isn 't.
It rains. — It does not rain.
Speak! —Don't speak!
The 'positive' meaning is not expressed. It. exists owing to the existence of the opposite 'negative' meaning. The latter is usually expressed with the help of not (n't) which we might call the predicate negation. It is a peculiar unit differing from the particle not in several respects.
a) The particle not has right-hand connections with various classes of words, word-combinations and clauses.
E. g. You may come any time, but not when I am busy. Not wishing to disturb her, he tip-toed to his room. May I ask you not to cry at me? The predicate negation has only left-hand connections with the following 24 words and word-morphemes which H. Palmer and A. Hornby call anomalous finites and J. Firth names syntactical operators: am, is, are, was, were, have, has, had, do, does, did, shall, should, will, would, can, could, may, might, must, ought, need, dare, used 1. In the sentence, as we know, all these words and word-morphemes are structural (parts of) predicates.
b) Unlike the particle not, the predicate negation is regularly contracted in speech to n't and is as regularly fused with the preceding structural (part of the) predicate into units differing in form from the sum of the original components do + not = don't [dount], will + not = won't [wount], shall + not = shan't, can + not = can't [ka:nt].
c) The predicate negation remains with the predication when the latter is reduced to its structural parts alone.
E.g. Is mother sleeping? She isn't. He has bought the book, hasn't he?
d) The predicate negation may represent the whole predication like a word-morpheme.
E. g. Are we late? I believe not. Here not substitutes for we are not or we aren't late.
Hence we must regard the predicate negation as a special syntactical unit, as. a syntactical word-morpheme of negation. It differs from other means of expressing negation.
Cf. He d i d n ' t return. There isn't any book on the table. He never returned. There is n о book on the table.
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1 Here is what \V. Twaddell says on the subject: "True sentence negation requires an auxiliary to precede the signal -n't (not); any other location of 'not' specifically makes the negation partial, affecting part but not all of the sentence. The unstressed suffix -n't is not only the normal negative signal with an auxiliary: it occurs only with auxiliaries and the related copula 'be'". (Op. cit., p. 13).
§ 394. In English there are 'predications' which retain only the notional part of the predicate without its structural part. They are known as secondary predications or complexes (see § 310), and contain a verbid instead of a finite verb.
J ohn smoking
gerundial complexes
J ohn smoking
J ohn smokes John smoking participial complex
J ohn... (to) smoke
infinitival complexes
(for) John to smoke
As we see, the complexes possess only the person component of predicativity. The other two components can be obtained obliquely from some actual predication. That is why the complexes are always used with some predication and why they are called 'secondary' predications. In the sentence I felt him tremble the complex him tremble borrows, as it were, the tense and mood components of predicativity from the predication I felt and becomes obliquely equivalent to an actual predication He trembled into which it can be transformed. Thus a complex may be regarded as a transformation (transform) of some actual predication, the verbid acting as an oblique or secondary predicate.
§ 395. The terms 'transform', 'transformational' have become popular among linguists after the publication in 1957 of Syntactic Structures by Noam Chomsky. Chomsky's transformational grammar is a theory for grammatical description of linguistic structure. It is a generating grammar in the sense that it is a body of rules to generate an infinite set of grammatically correct sentences from a finite vocabulary. As B. Strong has it, it "combines great precision with a cumbersomeness that unsuits it for ordinary purposes."
In this book we do not deal with transformational grammar as a theory, and we use the term transform as it is defined by R. Long. Transforms are "Syntactic patterns that closely parallel other syntactic patterns, from which they are conveniently considered to derive, but that are nevertheless distinct in form and use. Thus the main interrogative Was Jane there? is conveniently regarded as a transform of the main declarative Jane was there. Clauses with passive-voice predicators 1 are obviously transforms of clauses with common voice 2 predicators. I gave him the book can profitably be considered a transform of I gave the book to him, and an economics teacher of a teacher of economics."
Similarly, the sentence The bus being very crowded, John had to stand can be regarded as a transform of the sentence As the bus was very crowded, John had to stand or the participial complex as a transform of the subordinate clause.
Likewise can the infinitival complex of the sentence It is not possible for him to do it alone be treated as a transform of the subordinate clause in It is not possible that he should do it alone.
The gerundial complex in I resent your having taken the book can be viewed as a transform of the subordinate clause in I resent that you have taken the book.
As we see, the complexes retain the lexical meanings of the clauses, but they are deprived of the predicative (structural) meanings of mood and tense, which they borrow, as it were, from the finite verb.
This correlation of structural and non-structural predications is also part of the system of a language regularly detaching the structural part of the predicate from the notional one.
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1 Predicates.
2 Active voice.
THE STRUCTURE OF A SENTENCE